I wonder how much this has to do with protectionism for ROK companies that provide mapping services?:
South Korea decided Friday not to allow Google Inc. to take government-supplied map data outside the country, citing possible security breaches.
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which supervises mapping policy, announced the decision after a meeting with officials from the foreign, defense and other-related ministries.
“There are security concerns amid the confrontation between the South and the North,” the ministry said. “(The ministry) suggested Google come up with supplementary measures to relieve security concerns, but Google did not accept this.”
The Seoul government had said it might allow Google to use the government-supplied map data if it deleted or blurred sensitive and military facilities, including the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae. [Yonhap]
Could humans one day have pig organs and even wear pig skin? South Korean scientists are taking the first steps to make this one day possible:
South Korean scientists have successfully transplanted organs from a genetically modified pig to a monkey.
The Rural Development Administration said Wednesday that the monkey remains healthy for a record 51 days after receiving the heart and cornea of a pig named “Mideumi.”
The administration said the transplant was conducted on September 26th by a joint team from Konkuk University Medical Center and the National Institute of Animal Science, a research arm of the state-run agency.
On October 24th, Samsung Medical Center and Hallym University Medical Center jointly transplanted the pig’s skin to a monkey for research.
The pig, engineered by the administration in 2010 for xenotransplantation research, carries a gene that helps prevent transplant rejection from one species to another. [KBS World Radio]
A senior student looks at a slip of her self-graded score on the state-administrated scholastic aptitude test at Seocho High School in Seoul on Nov. 18, 2016. The official scores for the nationwide exam will be announced about a month later. The exam, which took place the previous day, is a deciding factor in entering college, with the spring semester beginning in March. (Yonhap)
Pringles lovers may have a hard time finding chips for sales:
South Korea’s food safety agency on Friday imposed a temporary sales ban on Pringles potato chips imported from Malaysia after the body of a lizard was found in one of the imported products.
Nongshim Co., the local importer of Pringles chips, has also been ordered to recall all other packages from the same Malaysian manufacturer, according to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
The recall affects 4,410 kilograms of Pringles chips produced in Malaysia on July 2, it added. [Yonhap]
What I am wondering is how many other well connected Korean kids received special treatment to attend Ewha Women’s University as well? I seriously doubt Choi’s daughter is the only one to receive special treatment during the admissions process:
Chung Yoo-ra, the horseback rider daughter of Choi Soon-sil, President Park Geun-hye’s longtime friend (Yonhap)
Chung Yoo-ra, the daughter of President Park Geun-hye’s embattled confidante Choi Soon-sil, was illegally admitted to a prestigious university in Seoul and was also given special treatment in academic records after enrollment, the Education Ministry confirmed Friday.
In a briefing to release the result of the audit of Ewha University and its faculty members, the ministry said that the school manipulated its admission process to accept Chung and she was given overly generous marks despite not attending classes, taking exams and turning in assignments.
Chung is a 19-year-old horseback rider and the daughter of Choi, the civilian accused of peddling influence and meddling in state affairs through her ties to Park. [Korea Herald]
Here is an example of a major cultural difference between how much the United States and South Korea value the importance of national testing:
A test-taker gets encouragement from his mother in front of a high school in central Seoul on Nov. 17, 2016, before entering the school to sit for the state-administrated college entrance exam that takes place nationwide the same day. Some 605,000 students nationwide are taking the test to enter college in the spring semester that begins in March. (Yonhap)
Some 606,000 high school seniors and graduates in South Korea took the state-administered annual college entrance exam Thursday, as the government implemented various traffic control and anti-noise measures near nationwide testing sites.
A total of 605,987 students, down about 25,200 from last year, registered to take the standardized College Scholastic Ability Test that was administered at 1,183 testing sites, according to the Ministry of Education.
Similar to the American Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the exam is considered the most crucial test of students’ academic careers and seen as the deciding factor in their choice of college and future professions.
The exam, which consists mostly of multiple-choice questions, is divided into five sections — Korean language, mathematics, English, social and natural sciences, and a second foreign language. Starting this year, all test-takers must take a separate Korean history exam during the social and natural sciences test time.
The test started at 8:30 a.m. and ran through 5:40 p.m., including lunch and breaks.
As in previous years, the government imposed various traffic control and anti-noise measures as part of its efforts to ensure that the test be executed without any problems.
Subways and trains in the capital area extended their rush hour services by two hours to help all exam-takers arrive at the test sites on time. Bus operations were also expanded during the commuting time.
The stock markets opened for trade one hour late, while government offices and enterprises in nearby areas also started work an hour later than usual to keep the roads clear for students on their way to the test centers. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it is also common for the underclassmen to be cheering on the students taking the tests and parents flocking to Buddhist temples and churches to pray for the success of the kids taking the test. In the past USFK conducted very limited operations of post to limit noise and traffic in order to not interfere with the national testing.
A major down side of the national testing is the many suicides that tend to happen after these tests are completed by students that do not do as well as they expected.
Everyone has to make their own personal decision about whether or not to have kids and the man featured in this article decided raising kids with limited financial resources was not for him:
Shin Ji-hoon, 33, went to the hospital for a vasectomy in February. An office worker, he is in his fourth year of marriage. Shin and his wife had given up on the idea of children for financial reasons, and he thought he needed a more reliable form of birth control. “I’m not very well off myself, and I figured that I would end up leaving my kids in an even worse position. After deciding not to have a child, I settled on a surefire way of eliminating the possibility of pregnancy,” he said.Shin felt sorry about having had his wife get prescriptions for “morning after” pills. These days, he says, vasectomy often comes up in conversation with people he knows. “When I hang out with friends my age, we often have debates about whether it’s even possible to raise kids,” he said.
Vasectomies once symbolized the South Korean government’s policy of decreasing the birthrate. During the 1960s, the government covered the cost of vasectomies as part of its family planning program; in the 1970s, it gave men who had vasectomies an advantage in bidding for apartments.But the government did an about-face when South Korea’s birthrate tanked. At the end of 2004, the government even eliminated coverage for vasectomies under national health insurance. But despite government policy, the story of this man in his 30s who rejected the idea of having children and decided to have a vasectomy reflects the harsh truth of South Korean society, in which people can’t have children even when they want to. [Hankyoreh]
You can read more at the link, but falling birthrates are sign of a modernizing country. So unless South Korea wants to import a huge amount of immigrants that could lead to social problems down the road they are going to have to look for ways to reduce the costs of raising kids to really improve the birthrate.
This is basically a scam which I am not sure how the Korean government stops people from being stupid and wasting away money like this?:
Ahn Jae-sung married Natasha, an Uzbek woman, in 2007 through a matchmaking agency. He now works full-time counseling Korean men at the International Marriage Victims’ Center, which he founded in 2010. [PARK SANG-MOON]Choi Eun-suck was lonely. The 39-year-old administrator at a high school in Seoul wanted to get married but women weren’t impressed by his job. In early 2014, Choi turned to a matchmaking agency that specialized in international marriages. It showed him a computer profile of an eligible girl. She seemed both sweet and sophisticated.
Within weeks, Choi was at Incheon International Airport holding his passport and a round-trip ticket to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. His father warned him not to be hasty.
He should have listened. Choi met the woman whose profile he liked. She was 13 years younger than him. A few days later, he showed for a ceremony that was supposed to seal their betrothal.
It turned out to be his wedding. Before he knew it, Choi was a married man.
Choi returned home in late April 2014 to start the legal procedure to bring his wife to Korea. In June, she called to say she had been raped by a taxi driver and was pregnant. She didn’t know who the father was: Choi or the rapist.
In March 2015, Choi’s wife changed her story. She knew who the father of the baby was – and it wasn’t Choi. She had never been raped. She wanted a divorce.
Choi tried to have the marriage annulled but failed. He is now legally divorced, which puts him in a bad place in terms of getting remarried in Korea, where divorce is still stigmatized.
“People tell me to marry a Korean woman next time,” says Choi, “but no Korean family will approve of me. They’ll assume that my ex-wife divorced me because I physically abused her.”
And he feels cheated. The Kyrgyzstani woman was never sincere and Choi paid his matchmakers 23 million won ($20,079), which doesn’t include the money he sent his wife every month for a year. He believes he’s owed the matchmaking fee back. He is awaiting a final appeal in the case. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but someone has actually started a International Marriage Victims’ Center to counsel and provide support to people burned by international marriages in Korea.
This really shows how fed up the Korean people are with President Park that the Korean left was able to get far more people to this weekend’s rally than what they were able to get to attend the anti-US beef protests in 2008:
Protesters stage a candlelight rally on a thoroughfare in downtown Seoul on Nov. 12, 2016, as they take part in an anti-government rally to demand President Park Geun-hye resign over an influence-peddling scandal implicating her longtime close friend Choi Soon-sil. In the background is Mount Bukak, at the foot of which the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae is located. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Seoul on Saturday and into the early hours of Sunday, in numbers not seen in decades, for the latest massive rally to demand President Park Geun-hye’s resignation over the growing scandal involving her confidante.
Over 1 million people joined the candlelight rally at Gwanghwamun Plaza in downtown Seoul as of 7:30 p.m., according to organizers. Police said 260,000 people gathered, which surpasses the 170,000 they had originally expected.
It is the largest rally to be held in South Korea this century to date, comparable to one that took place in 1987. Over 1 million Koreans took the streets at that time, leading the then Chun Doo-hwan military regime to accept their calls to adopt a direct presidential election system.
The previous record was set in June 2008 when 80,000 people, based on police calculations, turned out for a rally in Seoul against the government decision to resume U.S. beef imports. Organizers then put the number at 700,000.
Police said they deployed some 25,000 officers in riot gear on Saturday to prevent potential violence.
Major streets near Gwanghwamun were packed with citizens — men and women, young and old — holding banners that said “Step down Park Geun-hye!” and chanting slogans against the current administration.
Three opposition parties joined the rally, along with some potential presidential hopefuls, including Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon of the Democratic Party. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it appears that Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon is the one on the Korean left trying to best position himself as their standard bearer if Park does in fact resign.
![Ahn Jae-sung married Natasha, an Uzbek woman, in 2007 through a matchmaking agency. He now works full-time counseling Korean men at the International Marriage Victims’ Center, which he founded in 2010. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/jmnet/koreajoongangdaily/_data/photo/2016/11/13202946.jpg?resize=610%2C442)
