I am wondering who is paying for all the food for all the refugees they have living in the airport:
Some 150 foreigners live in a 30-person deportation room of Incheon International Airport. They spend their days in the windowless room watching TV channels broadcast in Korean, or sleeping on benches or floors. [JOONGANG ILBO]Some 150 foreigners are trapped in a single room in Incheon International Airport after their attempts to enter Korea were blocked. They have access to toilets and showers, and are given one blanket each. They eat fast food sandwiches and Coca-Cola – three times a day.
They may be here for a while.
“There is no way we are going to return to our country, which is still at war,” said 28 Syrians caught at the airport in a lawsuit filed in the Incheon District Court last month. It called for a revocation of the immigration office’s rejection of their refugee-status applications.
The 28 Syrians are sharing the 470-square-meter (5,060-square-foot) deportation room with people from nine other countries who have been refused entry, including Thailand, China, Egypt, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. The room is designed for 30 people.
Omar Muhammad (a pseudonym) is one of the Syrians trapped in the terminal. Since leaving the Aleppo region last December, Omar transited through Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates and then flew on to Korea. All of what he has seen of Korea is the eastern end of Incheon airport.
The immigration office at the airport decided not to submit his refugee-status application to the Ministry of Justice for “lack of clear reason for entry” into South Korea.
“Often, we cannot determine the exact reason for the applicants leaving their home country, and the airport needs to filter these applicants out,” a Justice Ministry official said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Here is the latest education reform being pushed in South Korea:
South Korea will reduce the size of high school classes to match international standards as part of an effort to provide a better educational environment, the government said Monday.
Under the envisioned plan, the class size of an average high school will be reduced to an average of 24 students by 2022 from last year’s 30, the Ministry of Education said.
Also, the ratio of high school students to teachers will be cut from 16.6 to 13.3, according to the plan.
The plan is in line with standards set by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries. [Yonhap]
I would hate to think what would happen in South Korea and especially North Korea if the peninsula was ever hit by a major earthquake because of the amount of buildings that appear would not withstand a strong earthquake:
Domestic earthquake experts have warned that the recent quakes in Japan will likely cause a tremor with a magnitude of five to five-point-five on the Korean Peninsula within several years.
Director Chi Heon-Cheol of the Earthquake Research Center under the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources on Monday presented the projection, citing that Kumamoto Prefecture hit by the recent quakes and the Korean Peninsula are located on the same tectonic plate.
Professor Hong Tae-kyung at the Department of Earth System Sciences at Yonsei University also warned that the peninsula could come under additional pressure if strong earthquakes occur around it. He said that South Korea cannot be certain of safety from quakes.
Hong said that when a strong quake occurs, its aftershocks can continue for five to eight years, increasing the number of quakes. [KBS World Radio]
Doesn’t the State Department have bigger priorities other than criticizing South Korea for what textbooks its government wants to use in its schools? What would most Americans think if South Korea released a report criticizing the US for government for its No Child Left Behind and Common Core educational mandates?:
The Park Geun-hye administration’s plan for introducing state-issued history textbooks was singled out as a matter of concern in a US State Department human rights report.Section 2 on “Respect for Civil Liberties” in the department’s “2015 Human Rights Report” published on Apr. 13 included two new references to South Korea’s middle and high school history textbooks in an item on “Freedom of Speech and Press.”“In October the Ministry of Education announced plans to require middle and high schools to use only Korean history books authored by the government-affiliated National Institute of Korean History starting in the 2017 school year,” the report noted in a subsection on “Censorship or Content Restrictions.”
“This would end the right of schools, since 2010, to choose from a range of textbooks approved by the ministry,” the report continued.The textbook issue was mentioned again in another item on “Academic Freedom and Cultural Events” in the section on “Freedom of Speech and Press.”“There were no government restrictions specifically targeting academic freedom or cultural events. However, a government plan to end middle and high schools’ right to choose Korean history textbook [sic] raised concerns about academic freedom,” the report noted. [Hankyoreh]
I wonder if Donald Trump will mention South Korea’s illegal immigration crackdown on the campaign trail?:
The government said Monday it will clamp down on foreigners staying in South Korea without proper visas and reduce the rate of illegal aliens in the country below 10 percent by 2018.
The government will selectively allow entry to foreigners with low possibility of violating the immigration control law and beef up screening of visa issuance, it said during a planning committee meeting on foreigners policy held in Seoul.
The government’s move is in response to a recent series of airport-related security problems that caused alarm bells to go off.
In January, two Chinese nationals snuck into the country without being noticed by immigration officials or picked up by the airport’s security systems. Later in the same month, a Vietnamese transfer passenger forced his way through the gate of an unmanned automatic immigration checkpoint without being checked.
All the people that entered South Korea illegally were later apprehended.
Last year, 11.3 percent of foreigners in South Korea were believed to be staying here illegally, according to the Ministry of Justice. [Yonhap]
The people most needed to fight the North Koreans, the younger generation are the ones the least likely to want to fight according to the below survey. I guess this survey could be used to justify why the ROK continues to need the mandatory service requirement:
A government survey finds that 72 percent of South Koreans are willing to fight for the country if a war breaks out.
According to the survey by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs, those in their 50s were the most willing to participate at 83-point-five percent, followed by those in their 60s at 81-point-five percent.
The rate was 50-point-seven percent among those in their 20s, with the rate for those in their 30s reaching 59 percent.
The rate was lower among younger people, white-collar workers, students and highly-educated people.
Fifty-five percent of the respondents said that the country should side with the U.S. if a war breaks out between the U.S. and North Korea. Twenty-four percent said the country should remain neutral, while five-point-eight percent said the country should side with North Korea.
About half of the respondents viewed the country’s security conditions as serious.
The ministry conducted the survey on about one-thousand people age 15 or order in November last year. [KBS World Radio]
