Category: Korea-General Topics

This was not a fight Uber was going to be able to win against the powerful taxi lobby in South Korea:

Uber, a taxi-hailing app operator, has suspended its popular ride-sharing service in Korea, succumbing to mounting concerns by Seoul authorities and angry taxi drivers.

The San Francisco-based start-up last week announced it was suspending its UberX budget service that allowed passengers to hail the company’s registered drivers through its smartphone application.

Its premium Uber Black, a limousine service for foreign nationals, senior citizens and handicapped people, will continue operating in accordance with local laws, the company added.

“We stay committed to cooperate to reach a compromise with the city and taxi industry, and look forward to working together to bring regulated options to Seoul,” Uber said Friday in a statement.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

Korean robots of yesteryear @ #TaejonExpo, 1993. Don't miss a truly retro transfomertive moment about 30 seconds in: https://t.co/KQuRWwt2wk

— Aidan Foster-Carter (@fcaidan) March 8, 2015

The Philippines would definitely be a much cheaper option than sending kids off to an English speaking country to attend school:

Over the past three years alone, roughly fourteen thousand Koreans have traveled to the Philippines to study the language at private academies for a fraction of the price of classes in many other English-speaking nations.

Kang Tae-won is among a group of 11 students from the city of Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, who are spending their winter vacation at the Widest Asian Learners English School, or WALES, in Baguio, 250-kilometers north of Manila.

On a recent morning, the 17-year old came down from his dorm room into the “English Speaking Zone” where for the rest of the day he practiced conversational English with several Filipino ESL teachers.

Mr. Kang said that after a few weeks of studying here his English has improved. Baguio, he says, “has a good atmosphere for learning English” so that Koreans can get higher test scores.

South Korean families spend billions of dollars a year on private education to prepare their children for standardized tests that are required for entrance into university, study overseas and many white collar jobs. Those include English competency exams like the TOEIC. Some parents believe that total emersion into English speaking countries will give their kids an advantage in taking those tests.

Yoo Moon-young, the owner of the EZ Foreign Language School in Pyeongtaek, brings some of her pupils to Baguio every winter. On average, a high school student’s family pays $5,200 for an all-inclusive, two-month sojourn in a learning environment she describes as “Spartan. Students study, eat and sleep in the school, with supervised excursions out of the academy only on weekends.  [Wall Street Journal-Korea Real Time]

You can read more at the link.

You can tell Ambassador Lippert is playing to the crowd while he recovers:

Doctors at Yonsei University Severance Hospital said Sunday that U.S. Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert is recovering fast and may go home as early as Tuesday afternoon.

“Ambassador Lippert feels overwhelmed by the messages of support for him,” the embassy’s minister-counselor for public affairs, Robert W. Ogburn, said during a press conference. “The ambassador said kimchi is helping him recover.”

Dr. Yoon Do-heum, the head of the hospital, said during a media briefing that the 80 stitches Lippert received for a facial injury would be removed today, and the pain in his left wrist was easing.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link such as Ambassador Lippert saying he is reading the “Two Koreas” by Don Oberdorfer while he is recovering.  This book in my opinion is the best modern Korean history 101 book out there.  With that said I would of thought that Lippert would of read this book before becoming Ambassador?  Either that or is he just playing to the crowd again?

In the continuing series of interviews that the Joong Ang Ilbo is publishing with former ROK Prime Minister, this next article describes how he first met former Korean strongman Park Chung-hee:

Looking back, there was nothing special in my first meeting with Park Chung Hee. But on the cusp of turning 90, when I recall my first encounter with him, it comes back to me vividly.

I began my military career as a commissioned officer assigned to the Army headquarters’ intelligence bureau after I graduated from the military academy in June 1949. I was assigned to a strategy intelligence unit with seven of my fellow graduates. We reported our appointment to Col. Paik Sun-yup, who was director of the intelligence bureau. He said there was one more person we need to report our appointment to in an operations room.

We did as told, reporting for duty to a man dressed in a black suit. The man had a small figure and looked tanned. He smiled shyly as he said in a humble manner, “Hello. I am Park Chung Hee. You don’t need to report for your duties. I am not that important here. Please take a seat.”

I shook hands and sat down. He told me he was stripped of his uniform because he got in trouble, without divulging any details. “I heard you guys graduated at the top of the class from the military academy. Welcome to the unit,” Park said.

Park was working as a civilian officer after his dismissal earlier that year. I had heard his name when I was in the military academy. He was a company commander overseeing military academy cadets. I had also heard that sometime in 1948 he was taken somewhere.

It was only later that I found out that he almost landed on death row for being a member of the outlawed communist Workers Party of South Korea tasked with recruiting party members. A military court spared his life in February 1949 by giving him a suspended jail term. Shortly after his release, he had no choice but to leave the Army.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more about Kim Jong-pil’s interactions with Park Chung-hee at the link such as this nugget that is was famed Korean general Paik Sun-yup that worked to get Park Chun-hee’s death sentenced revoked.

Former Korean Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil has his second tell-all interview published in the Joong Ang Ilbo which discusses the details before the 1961 military coup led by Park Chung-hee:

 

Former President Park Chung Hee, third from left, then-chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, made his first official inspection of the main spy agency, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, which is now called the National Intelligence Service, on Jan. 20, 1962, accompanied by agency chief Kim Jong-pil, far left. Provided by Kim Jong-pil’s secretary’s office

I asked my wife to bring me military uniforms on the night of May 14, 1961. It was a cocky color uniform that I was stripped of three months earlier for demanding the dismissals of military leaders [for corruption and incompetence]. I was forcibly discharged from the military as a result. The next morning, I was about to embark on a journey wearing this uniform – not knowing whether I would make it back home.

I was overwhelmed by a feeling I couldn’t even describe. On a fine spring day, I was determined to put my life on the line to make the revolution successful. I was so filled with a sense of determination that I was ready to sacrifice my life.

I was only 35 and yet my mind bore a maturity from having experienced Japan’s 36-year-colonial rule on the peninsula, a bitter division of the Korean Peninsula and the subsequent 1950-53 Korean War, which I went through as a military official. And yet, I was heavy-hearted because I could lose everything, including my life.

I spent the two previous nights staying awake writing. It was a composition in which I poured my whole life into. It was a declaration of promises by the revolution to the nation.

It was a set of promises declaring the demise of old rules and the establishment of new ones. I kept repeating a saying to myself: “History is not to be read but to be written.”

I was known as a good writer by many at the time. But it took me two days to finish the fateful declaration.

A year earlier, students took to the streets for the April 19 revolution. But that stopped short of fixing the social ills brought in by the ruling Liberty Party under the Syngman Rhee government [Korea’s first elected government]. The Chang Myon administration, which took power following the collapse of the Rhee administration, was utterly incompetent in managing state affairs.

It did not govern the country in a way that would liberate it from chaos and the damages caused by the Korean War. The military, the cornerstone of national security, was ridden with corruption but showed no sign of shame. A wave of student-led protests filled the streets nationwide and the civilian government just stood by.

A sense of chaos and confusion consumed the country. In June 1960, police officers organized a rally against the government. In March of the following year, citizens in Daegu took to the streets carrying torches demanding the repeal of anti-Communist laws. University students organized a rally at Seoul Stadium calling on the authorities to arrange a meeting of students from Seoul and Pyongyang.

All of this was happening less than 10 years after the Korean War, which left the country in total ruins. I was getting more and more anxious every day. A majority of the public felt the same way and hoped for decisive change. Painful memories of the war had faded into oblivion, putting national security at grave risk. But I was not one of those who forgot the pains of the war. I lost half of my fellow 1,300 military academy schoolmates during the war. I was growing firmer in my belief that I could not let incompetent and corrupt politicians govern the country anymore – that I must bring an end to this.

Before moving into action, I concentrated all of my strength to the tip of a pen. I was reminded of a maxim by Victorian Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, who said, “Life is too short to be little,” which impressed me deeply in my late teens.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but it is incredible how much history Kim Jong-pil was part of dating all the way back to the Japanese colonization of Korea to where the country is today.

How do you forget to do something as basic as hooking up a harness to somebody going on a zip line?  This is like telling someone to jump out of a plane without giving them a parachute:

A 12-year-old boy died in a 24-meter (78-foot) fall from the starting point of a zip line, an adventure sport in which people slide down a cable using a pulley, in Boeun County, North Chungcheong, on Saturday, raising concerns about Korea’s lack of safety standards for leisure activities.

The police think a worker at the zip line didn’t properly attach the victim’s harness to the pulley. The worker was a 23-year-old university student on a leave of absence. The boy, who lived in Cheongju, an adjacent city, was on a group outing.

“We believe the employee did not do his job, which is to attach the pulley to the rider’s harness before the jump,” said a police officer. “The employee stated in the investigation that he thought he connected the wire to the boy before he departed.”

The operator of the park immediately suspended operations and took the boy to a nearby hospital, but the victim died of excessive bleeding later that day. The police are planning to charge the employee for involuntary manslaughter due to professional negligence, while they investigate other kinds of negligence in the operation and maintenance of the park.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but condolences to the family of the boy.

It would be quite a disaster if Mt. Halla did ever erupt considering the increasing amount of development happening on Jeju:

A July report from the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) surprised volcanologists by dating Jeju’s most recent volcanic eruption to 5,000 years ago. Media outlets gleefully reported Mt. Hallasan was not dead, or dormant, but alive.

The research team, led by Jin-yeong Lee, radiocarbon dated carbonised wood (charcoal) below the basalt layer at Sangchang-ri, Seogwipo City, to 5,000 years old. This was 2,000 years more recent than the 7,000-year-old eruption at Mt. Songaksan, thought to be Jeju’s last volcanic activity.

Scientists had speculated that the basalt layer at Sangchang-ri was formed 35,000 years ago, yet the carbonised wood was below the basalt, making the rock at least as young as the ancient trees. Sangchang-ri was thus confirmed as the site of the most recent volcanic activity in South Korea. (The title of most active volcano on the peninsula goes to Mt. Baekdusan in North Korea, which last erupted in 1903.)

The findings were picked up by media outlets and headlines stated that Mt. Hallasan was “alive” and not dead, a fact already known as the earlier Songaksan activity was already within the same Smithsonian Institute’s Global Volcanism Program (GVP) 10,000 year timeframe for active volcanoes. Nevertheless, the Science Daily headline, “Jeju Island, Korea is a live volcano,” typified the reaction.  [Cheju Weekly]

Here is an interesting historical account from the article:

While scientific evidence of volcanism on Jeju Island is proving difficult to confirm, one piece of historic evidence suggests that the island was active much more recently than 5,000 years ago. The “Dongguk Yeoji Seungram,” a Joseon Dynasty geography textbook (multiple volumes published between 1481 and 1530) includes this seemingly eye-witness account.

“In June 1002 CE, a mountain arose in the middle of the sea. There were four giant holes at the top of the mountain, out of which red liquid flowed and soared, and thick smoke plumed for five days. All the red liquid hardened and became stone like roof tiles.”

You can read the rest at the link.

Via the Korea Herald.

The anti-adultery law has been repealed by a South Korean court:

South Korea’s Constitutional Court threw out a decades-old anti-adultery law on Thursday, reflecting a growing importance of personal choice over marital order in a traditionally group-oriented society.

In a 7-2 decision, the nine-member bench ruled that Article 241 of the criminal code was unconstitutional.

“The article violates individuals’ freedom to choose their sexual partners and their right to privacy,” said an opinion presented by five of the justices. “Not only is the anti-adultery law gradually losing its place in the world, it no longer reflects our people’s way of thinking.”

Two other justices supported this view, saying family issues should not be criminal, or even if so, the weight of the penalty should vary according to the intricacy of the matter.

The remaining two justices voiced opposition, saying the law was necessary to protect sexual ethics and the institution of marriage.

Under the landmark ruling, some 5,400 people indicted or convicted of adultery after Oct. 30, 2008, when the law was last upheld, may ask for a suspension of indictment or a retrial.

South Korea had been one of the few remaining countries in Asia that prohibits infidelity, next to North Korea and Taiwan. Extramarital affairs here had been banned under the criminal law since 1953, and before that, only women were held accountable for some fooling around.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but this decision made me think of the good, old Sergeant Han case who was a Camp Red Cloud Non-Commissioned Officer who faced 10 months in prison for adultery and lying about an offer of marriage to his girlfriend.