Category: Korea-General Topics

I don’t see how hiking slow improves the environment, but that is what the National Park Service is claiming:

The Korea National Park Service will stage a campaign that encourages hikers to slow their pace when hiking mountains rather than just rushing to the peak.

The agency announced the campaign on Thursday, adding it will hold various promotional events as a part of the event that will go until Sunday.

There is an online event on how to improve the hiking culture, while events will be held at all national parks on Saturday to promote good hiking etiquette.

The slow hiking campaign is to help better protect the environment and prevent accidents in the mountains.  [KBS World Radio]

There may be safety benefits from hiking slow to avoid tripping, but if the National Park Service wants to improve hiking culture in Korea how about people picking up all their trash they bring into the mountains?

http://img.yonhapnews.co.kr/etc/inner/EN/2015/07/13/AEN20150713007200320_01_i.jpg

https://twitter.com/CoolstuffKorea/status/619427261452787712

It looks like Koreatown in Los Angeles is about to have its very own Korean-American museum:

The proposed Korean American National Museum, expected to sit in the heart of Koreatown, Los Angeles, upon completion, has found an architecture design adviser in noted architect Eui-sung Yi, 47.

Yi, a professor, director of UCLA’s The Now Institute and design principal at Morphosis Architects, previously oversaw the completion of the Korean Embassy in Tokyo and the Korean Consulate in Guangzhou, China.

In 2013, the project received a permanent site from the city of Los Angeles on the corner of Vermont Avenue and 6th Street. The museum, originally planned for a three-story, 45,000-square-foot structure, will preserve and educate future generations on Korean American history and culture.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is some good news for the people in Korea:

Anchor: The Ministry of Health and Welfare says no new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome were reported for the sixth straight day on Saturday, marking the longest period of time to date in which no new cases were confirmed.
Our Mina Cha has more.

Report: The Ministry of Health and Welfare said Saturday that no new cases of the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) have been reported for the sixth straight day, leaving the number of total confirmed MERS patients from the current outbreak unchanged at 186.

The Ministry’s central MERS-response headquarters said this marks the longest period of time to date in which no new cases were confirmed since the outbreak in South Korea that began in May.

Three more patients have fully recovered and were released from hospital, while one more patient has died from the deadly virus.

Five-hundred-13 suspected patients remain under quarantine at home or hospital, 53 fewer than Friday.

If the MERS outbreak continues to subside at this pace with no additional patients, those under quarantine are also all expected to be released by around July 25.   [KBS World Radio]

You can read more at the link.

https://twitter.com/SouthKoreaDaily/status/618156399789346816

For those going out to clubs in Itaewon over the long 4th of July weekend, here is one club you will not get into:

An upscale nightclub in Itaewon, Seoul, has stopped accepting foreign customers over the past two weeks in fears of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), a virus that has taken lives of 33 people in South Korea, the owner of the club said Wednesday.

Kim Jong-hyun, owner of Lounge & Club Move contacted The Korea Observer and requested that we remove an article that we published a day earlier as he believes it implies the club has a racist policy in place.

“We absolutely don’t accept foreigners because of MERS,” said Kim. “Above all, Korean people don’t want them. This is Korea, isn’t it?”  [Korea Observer]

Here is what he had to say about US military servicemembers:

“Most of the time when a customer loses a cellphone, the CCTV reveals that the thieves are Middle Eastern people or foreigners.”

Kim agreed with his manager Lee’s statement that the club has been hesitant to have foreign customers because it is hard to make them liable when they cause property damages, sexually harass customers or start a brawl.

He also stressed that foreign customers frequently start a fight with U.S. servicemen.

“U.S. servicemen don’t behave badly. The problem is other foreign customers who constantly provoke them into a fight,” Kim said.

“It is better not to have them because we lose too much for trying to make a small amount of money from them.”

You can read the rest at the link, but US servicemembers have been accused for so long for being the ones to start fights in Korea that I don’t know how to react.

If anyone has wondered what most of the South Korean population would do if North Korea attacks, this poll gives some indication:

Four out of 10 Seoul residents would simply flee to another country if another war breaks out on the Korean peninsula, a poll suggests. Also, more than 60 percent of Seoul residents said they have no idea what the instructions are in the event of a war.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government surveyed 3,039 residents earlier this month and found that 36.2 percent would escape to a safer place, while 5.6 percent said they would leave Korea. Only 11.6 percent said they want to take up arms to defend the country, and the remainder would be willing to give the military some auxiliary support  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

According to the KoreAm Journal they are hoping that the recent Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage across the US will help change the opinions that supposedly many in the Korean-American community have about gays:

As much as Friday’s ruling resonated around the country, some advocacy groups are urging greater acceptance within the greater Korean American community of LGBTQ individuals—an issue touched on by KoreAm in this June 2013 feature story about the community’s attitudes towards same-sex marriage.

“We’re thrilled by the national progress on LGBTQ equality, but deeply disappointed by the hostility we and our families continue to face in Korean American communities,” The Dari Project, an LGBTQ Korean American organization based in New York City, said in a statement. “There’s no way to sugarcoat it: homophobia and transphobia are still incredibly serious problems in Korean American communities and cause very real harm to LGBTQ Korean Americans.

“We urge Korean American allies to not be silent when they witness homophobia and transphobia in Korean American communities and to use today’s court decision to start conversations in their families, churches and other Korean American community spaces that will help Korean American communities recognize the humanity of LGBTQ people just as the Supreme Court did today,” added the organization. [KoreAm Journal]

You can read more at the link, but considering how churches are such an integral part of many Korean-American communities it may take a while for opinions to change, but I think they eventually will.

Unwed women fired for being pregnant in Korea http://t.co/BJ9VSVh3D5 #코리아옵저버 #pregnancy #korea #expats pic.twitter.com/buTpBP905d

— The Korea Observer (@koreaobserver) June 23, 2015