Category: Korea-General Topics

This is horrible and hopefully Lee Jae-myung is able to fully recover from this attack:

 Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung was attacked during a visit to the southeastern port city of Busan on Tuesday and taken to a hospital while conscious.

Lee, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party, was attacked on the left side of his neck by an unidentified man at 10:27 a.m. during a question and answer session with reporters after touring the construction site of a new airport on Busan’s Gadeok Island.

Lee was transferred to Pusan National University Hospital approximately 20 minutes after the attack.

At the time of the transfer, Lee remained conscious, but the bleeding continued.

The male suspect, pretending to be one of Lee’s supporters, approached the politician asking for an autograph and then carried out the attack with an unidentified weapon approximately 20-30 centimeters in length, according to eyewitnesses. 

He was arrested at the scene.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is not the first time political violence like this has happened in South Korea. Park Geun-hye was slashed in the face in 2006 and U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert’s face and neck back in 2015. Hopefully the man that committed this latest political violence spends a long time in jail.

The tsunami waves in South Korea got up to 67 inches which is just over 2 feet, so fortunately these were pretty small waves that hit South Korea:

South Korea reported small tsunamis in parts of the East Sea on Monday following a major earthquake off Japan’s west coast.

The Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said a 7.6 magnitude quake that struck Ishikawa and nearby prefectures around 4 p.m. caused minor tsunamis in waters off South Korea’s east coast province of Gangwon on Monday evening.

According to the KMA, a wave off the east coast city of Gangneung reached 20 centimeters at 6:01 p.m., while a wave seen off another coastal town of Donghae was measured at 45 centimeters at 6:05 p.m.

As of 8 p.m., a tsunami wave had hit 67 centimeters off Mukho, a district in Donghae. Earlier in the day, the KMA had estimated that the maximum vertical height of the tsunami waves in the region would stay below 50 centimeters — a level that will prompt a tsunami warning. The KMA also said even waves at 20 to 30 centimeters can still cause damage.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

As usual the numbers in the article are used to provoke a reaction that women are being treated unfairly in Korean workplaces, however without further information these numbers do not prove that point. For example are Korean women primarily working in lower wage occupations compared to males? This article doesn’t say, but I suspect that is probably the biggest reason for the wage gap. If someone did a study that showed males were making more than females in the same occupation with the same hours worked and time in service then it would be a meaningful study:

While the wage gap between men and women is narrowing slowly in Korea, female workers still make only 70 percent of what their male counterparts earned per hour last year, according to a report co-published by the gender and labor ministries on Wednesday.

The average hourly wage of female workers was 18,113 won ($14) in 2022, while male workers earned 25,886 won, according to the “Women’s Economic Activity White Paper 2023.” This means that even though they work the same amount of time, women earn only 70 percent of what men receive.

However, the general wage gap has narrowed gradually, from 64.8 percent in 2012 to 65.9 percent in 2017, 69.8 percent in 2021, and 70 percent in 2022. Last year, the average monthly wage of men was 4.12 million won, compared to 2.68 million won for women.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Considering all the criticism past elections have been receiving that is impacting public confidence in elections, hand counts verifid by a machine count I think is the most effective way of maintaining election creditability which is what Korea plans to do:

The National Election Commission (NEC) said Wednesday it will introduce a manual ballot counting system for general elections in April in an effort to ensure transparency and prevent potential election rigging.

Currently, machines are used to sort out and count votes. 

Under the envisioned new system, however, ballots will first be sorted out by machines, and election staff will manually check all of them before putting them into the counting machines.

“It is meant to boost transparency and credibility over the course of the elections to prevent vote-rigging suspicions,” the commission said, adding that repeated suspicions over election fraud have “hampered national unity and fostered the boycott of election results.”

It is expected to take longer for the commission to confirm election results under the new system, and the commission will significantly beef up personnel for the process.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

What a quick turn for the worse his life had taken after reaching the heights of fame by winning an Oscar for his performance in Parasite:

Actor Lee Sun-kyun of the Oscar-winning film “Parasite” was found dead in an apparent suicide Wednesday amid an investigation into suspected drug use.

Police found a man in his 40s dead in a car near Waryong Park in central Seoul at 10:30 a.m. and later identified him as Lee. A charcoal briquette, which can cause fatal carbon monoxide poisoning, was found on the vehicle’s front passenger seat. 

Lee’s manager had earlier reported to the police that the actor left home after writing a memo akin to a suicide note and that his car was gone. The manager had visited Lee’s home in Cheongdam-dong in southern Seoul as he was out of contact.

Lee’s body was later taken to Seoul National University Hospital for his funeral.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Lee was under investigation for using drugs at a Gangnam hostess bar. He claims he was being extorted by the hostess and tested negative for drugs when questioned by police. Regardless of the drug allegations, Lee is married with two kids so why is he hanging out at a hostess bar in the first place?

This is a horrible way to die, being electrocuted in a sauna:

Three elderly women died from electrocution at a public bathhouse in the central city of Sejong on Sunday, police said.

The three, all in their 70s, were in a hot tub at the bathhouse in Sejong’s Jochiwon district when the accident happened at 5:37 a.m. A witness told the police the three collapsed with a scream, and she called the 119 emergency number for help.

When rescue workers arrived, all three were in a state of cardiac arrest and were rushed to a hospital, but two of them died shortly thereafter, and the other was also pronounced dead hours later.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

This is horrible that this man had to jump from his apartment holding his child and died from the impact, but the child survived:

A father in his 30s died Monday after jumping from the fourth floor of a high-rise apartment building in Seoul carrying his young child, in a desperate attempt to flee from a fire on Christmas Day.

He was one of two fatalities from the fire, which broke out at the apartment building in Banghak-dong, in Seoul’s Dobong district. As of Monday afternoon, 30 suffered injuries.

According to local news reports, the 30-something-year-old victim, wife and two children aged 7 months and 2 years, were residents of a unit right above the third floor where the blaze started.

His wife also jumped with another child. She survived despite suffering life-threatening injuries. The two children were reported to be injured but in stable condition.

Another victim of the fire was a 38-year-old individual identified by the surname Lim, a resident of the 10th floor. Lim was discovered in full cardiac arrest on the stairs of the 11th floor. Fire authorities suspect that Lim succumbed to smoke inhalation while attempting to evacuate, according to news reports.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

The complaints about this training sound like a whole lot to do about nothing. If these athletes cannot do morning physical fitness training or row a rubber boat they probably should not be Olympic athletes to begin with:

Members of South Korean women’s national handball team perform a team-building exercise with rubber boats during a training at a boot camp for the Marine Corps in Pohang, South Korea, on March 30, 2016. South Korea’s Olympic chief has defended a decision to send hundreds of athletes to a military camp next week as part of preparations for the 2024 Games in Paris, citing a need to instill mental toughness in competitors. (Choe Dong-joon/Newsis via AP)

South Korea’s Olympic chief has defended a decision to send hundreds of athletes to a military camp next week as part of preparations for the 2024 Games in Paris, citing a need to instill mental toughness in competitors.

About 400 athletes, including women, will arrive at a marine boot camp in the southeastern port city of Pohang on Monday for a three-day training aimed at building resilience and teamwork, the Korean Sport and Olympic Committee said.

The program, pushed by the committee’s president, Lee Kee-Heung, has faced criticism from politicians and media who described the training camp as outdated and showing an unhealthy obsession with medals.

Officials at the committee have played down concerns about the potential for injuries, saying the athletes will not be forced into the harsher types of military training. Morning jogs, rubber-boat riding and events aimed at building camaraderie will be on the program. Sports officials are still finalizing details of the camp with the Korea Marine Corps., committee official Yun Kyoung-ho said Thursday.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.