Category: Korea-General Topics

This is a really horrible tragedy which appears to have been caused by negligence by the driver:

A fire on a tour bus killed 10 people Thursday night on a highway in Ulsan. Seven others on the bus, which was carrying 22 people including a tour guide and the driver, were injured.

About 10:10 p.m., the bus scraped against a crash barrier several times while changing lanes. It then caught fire.

The passengers could not get out because the crash barrier was blocking the door. Some of them managed to break the window and escape, but 10 people could not escape from the smoke and fire, survivors and witnesses said.

Firefighters extinguished the fire at 11:01 p.m. Only the frame of the bus was left.
The tour guide told police that they couldn’t find the emergency hammer, so the driver used a fire extinguisher to break the windows.

The driver, surnamed Lee, 49, claimed that one of the tires went flat and made the bus lose balance. He added he did not doze off. But police suspect he was speeding, based on traffic camera footage and testimony from some of the passengers that the bus was travelling at high speed before suddenly changing lanes.

Police will request an arrest warrant for the driver for accidental homicide, saying Lee did not drive safely enough. “The driver claims the accident was caused by a flat tire, so we will send the bus to the National Forensic Service for inspection,” Choi Ik-soo, chief of the Ulju Police Station, told journalists at a briefing. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I think when determining if a minimum wage is too high or too low it depends on if the minimum wage is supposed to be something that people are supposed to make a living off of.  If the minimum wage is supposed to be livable wage then the increase is probably not enough considering the high cost of living in a place like Seoul:

Four subway rides, a newspaper and packet of cigarettes, or one Big Mac: That is what a minimum-wage worker can buy after an hour on the job, and have change of a couple of hundred won. The minimum hourly rate of 4,860 won, due to rise to 5,210 next year, amounts to 1.08 million won a month for a 40-hour work week. Differences in purchasing power make comparison between countries difficult, but the nation’s rate ranks on the low end of the scale among wealthy nations. In 2011, just eight of the 23 OECD countries aside from Korea had a lower hourly minimum. Many of those countries with higher rates, however, also have significantly higher GDPs per capita. Nonetheless, whether the current wage is reasonable depends very much on who you ask. Neither employers nor labor groups expressed satisfaction with the most recent increase for 2014, the former having called for an outright freeze, the latter a rise of more than 21 percent.

“It is very hard to pin down whether the minimum wage is high or low. It is somewhat relative,” Woo Seok-jin, an economics professor at Myongji University in Seoul, told The Korea Herald. “We have some minimum living standard costs, and the minimum wage should be determined based on that level.”

Whether the current rate meets such a standard is a matter of debate. Park Jeong-woo, a 20-year-old music student at Seoul National University of Arts, has worked numerous minimum wage jobs such as a convenience store clerk alongside his studies. Even though he avoids rent by living with his parents, he still finds the current rate to be out of synch with the rising cost of living.   [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

So true: South Koreans revere King Sejong, monarch who invented Korean alphabet. But he gets scant mention in #NorthKorea. #history #divided https://t.co/v74FPfpI8a

— Jean H. Lee (@newsjean) October 10, 2016

Noh Hyo-dong (R), a Yonhap correspondent in Washington, poses with U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Mark Lippert during an award ceremony for the Don Oberdorfer Prize at the American Center Korea in Seoul on Oct. 4, 2016. Noh became the first recipient of the prize which was initiated this year to honor the late Oberdorfer, a former Washington Post journalist and foreign affairs expert best known in South Korea for his influential best-seller “The Two Koreas.” (Yonhap)

Typhoon Chaba struck South Korea pretty hard causing a handful of deaths and missing people.  I don’t mean to make light of the people who died or missing but scrambling on to your roof, hanging out at a construction site or trying to tie down your fishing boat are not activities I recommend in the middle of a major typhoon:

Typhoon Chaba slammed through southern cities Wednesday morning, killing at least four people, paralyzing flights and trains and knocking out power for a few hours.

According to the Ministry of Public Safety and Security, 1,183 hectares of farmland was flooded in South Jeolla, 950 cars get trapped in water in Ulsan and Jeju, and some 210,000 houses lost power in Jeju, South Jeolla and South Gyeongsang.

The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) issued typhoon warnings in Busan, Ulsan and South Gyeongsang regions from 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, as the tropical storm that passed through Jeju Island Tuesday approached. The maximum wind speed reached 115 kilometers per hour (71 miles per hour) on Wednesday afternoon.

According to authorities, four people died and two went missing on Wednesday.

According to Busan police, a 90-year-old woman fell from the rooftop of her house in Mangmi-dong due to strong winds and died. A 59-year-old construction worker died when he was crushed by a falling crane at a construction site at Kosin University. A 56-year-old surnamed Heo, who was reportedly checking whether his boat was fastened to a breakwater in Daehang-dong, was swept away by waves and later found dead.

A resident of Ulsan was found dead some 60 meters (197 feet) from his apartment entrance, and a rescue worker in Ulsan and a fisherman in Jeju went missing, according to local authorities.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

If you live on the southern coast of South Korea it is best to take precautions for the flooding that Typhoon Chaba is likely to bring:

Typhoon Chaba will threaten lives and property across mainland Japan and South Korea this week after lashing the Ryukyu Islands on Monday night.

Chaba reached super-typhoon status, strengthening to the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, on Monday afternoon, local time. Chaba has since weakened below super-typhoon status, but residents of Japan and South Korea should not let their guard down.

Powerful winds, torrential rain and rough seas around Chaba’s center will pose significant danger to shipping interests across the East China Sea, Korea Strait and Sea of Japan through Wednesday night.

Residents of southern mainland Japan and southern South Korea need to prepare for Chaba to make a direct hit or pass dangerously close on Tuesday night into Wednesday.  [AccuWeather]

You can read more at the link.

After finding a stack of Jeju photos in his parent’s house, Pete DeMarco decided to follow in his father's footsteps https://t.co/P1Gw4wLfkl

— The Jeju Weekly (@JejuWeekly) September 26, 2016

It looks like there could be some serious gridlock if the subway workers strike as planned to stop the implementing of performance based pay:

The Korean Public Service and Transport Workers’ Union will enter an all-out strike from today, while metros in Seoul and Busan also announced a strike from today, which comes as worrying news for many commuters who fear they may have to contend with nationwide paralyzed underground and railroad traffic.

The announcement on Monday heralds the first time in 22 years that the transport workers’ union and public metro companies in Seoul decided to hold a simultaneous strike.

The transport workers’ strikes follow a general strike by the Korean Financial Industry Union since Friday, and will be followed by another from Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union on Wednesday and by the Federation of Korean Trade Unions and Korean Confederation of Trade Unions on Thursday.

The unions are protesting the central government’s plan to extend the performance-based salary system to more employees of public companies and organizations.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

I really can’t blame South Koreans for wanting their own nuclear deterrent considering the threat they are facing on a daily basis from the Kim regime:

Nearly 60 percent of South Koreans support the country’s development of its own nuclear weapons, a poll showed Friday, amid the rising calls among hawkish lawmakers for Seoul to consider the aggressive option to curb Pyongyang’s provocations.

According to the data compiled by pollster Gallup Korea, 58 percent of the respondents agreed with South Korea’s nuclear armament scenario, while 34 percent expressed an opposition. The study was conducted on 1,010 South Koreans throughout the country this week.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

With all the recent major crimes being committed on Jeju island some resident want to see the visa waiver program ended to better ensure public safety:

In line with the rise, the number of foreign tourists who commit crimes at one of the country’s most popular tourist sites has also increased.

The Jeju Provincial Police Agency said 347 foreign offenders have been arrested on Jeju as of July. The figure is up by nearly 60 percent from the number tallied in the same period last year, which stood at 218.

Among the 347 foreigners, Chinese nationals accounted for the largest proportion of offenders with 240, or 69.2 percent, followed by Americans with 13.

Reflecting such trends, calls to beef up security by local residents have been rising.

More than 14,500 people have signed a petition filed at a bulletin board of local Internet portal Daum as of Tuesday since it was first proposed on Sunday.

“The country’s precious island of Jeju has turned into a lawless zone with Chinese tourists who enter without visas,” the netizen who first proposed the petition said. “The safety of South Koreans should be given top priority than what can be earned from tourism.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.