Category: Korea-General Topics

The four remaining families say they don’t want to take the compensation unless it comes straight from the Japanese government:

Lawyer Lim Jae-sung, right, who represents some of the forced labor victims who sued Japanese companies for compensations for their forced labor, speaks with the press just outside the Foreign Ministry building in Seoul on Monday to protest the ministry’s decision to make public deposits of third-party compensation money that four out of 15 plaintiffs refused to accept. [YONHAP]

The Foreign Ministry will deposit at local courts compensation money for victims of wartime Japanese forced labor and their relatives who have so far refused to accept the government’s compensation scheme.  
   
Some of the money will also go to parties who have been unable to receive compensation due to personal circumstances.  
   
As of Monday, 11 out of 15 plaintiffs who sued Japanese companies for compensation of their forced labor during the 1910-45 Japanese annexation of Korea have received third-party compensation, mostly from Korean corporate donations.

For the remaining four plaintiffs, two of whom are surviving victims and the rest relatives of victims who had already passed away, the Foreign Ministry announced it was depositing the compensation money so that they could choose to take it from a local court close to where they live “whenever they wish.”  
   
“This decision was reached so that any of the plaintiffs who change their mind and decide to take on the compensation can do so at their leisure,” said a high-ranking Foreign Ministry official in speaking with the press in Seoul on Monday. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

It is about time this happened because telling the age of Koreans can be difficult:

South Korea will scrap its traditional method of counting age and adopt the international standard starting Wednesday, resulting in the reduction of a person’s age by one or two years on official documents, officials said.

Under the revisions to the Civil Act and the General Act on Public Administration, multiple age systems will be unified under the internationally recognized system in which age is based on birth date, according to the Ministry of Government Legislation.

In South Korea, three age systems are currently in use.

Under the most commonly used system of so-called “Korean age,” a person turns 1 on the day they are born and adds a year on the first day of the new year. For instance, a baby born on New Year’s Eve becomes 2 years old as soon as they pass midnight.

The second system is the internationally recognized system, whereby a person’s age is determined according to their birth date, while the third system adds a year to a person’s age on the first day of the new year.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Korean officials that studied the plan to release contaminated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant into the ocean as the best of bad options:

Japan’s decision to release contaminated water from its crippled Fukushima plant was finalized years ago as the most realistic alternative, and there is no point in talking about other ways to dispose of the water now, an official said Monday.

Amid concerns about health hazards, critics have suggested alternative ways, other than releasing the wastewater into the ocean, such as solidifying the water within concrete or storing the water in massive tanks.

“That part is something that was discussed for more than four years in the mid-2010s,” Park Ku-yeon, the first deputy chief of the Office for Government Policy Coordination, said of other methods during a daily briefing on the Fukushima release plan.

“At the time, there were extremely complex discussions within Japan, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was in the final decision,” Park said. “The current method of releasing it into the ocean was finalized as the most realistic alternative when scientific precedents and safety were comprehensively taken into account.”

Suggesting the IAEA reverse the decision would contradict the principles of faith and trust, Park said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The Korea Times has article published that Korean-Americans fear gun violence more than any other Asian ethnic group. Some Korean-Americans are now arming themselves because of the gun violence in America:

As fear escalates to new heights, some Korean Americans have decided to take their safety matters in their own hands. How? It’s simple. Owning your own gun.

While advocacy groups are firm in their belief that gun ownership is never the correct way to deal with fears, some Korean Americans feel it is the only way for them to feel safe in America.

Brian Kim is one of those people.

“I had returned home from visiting my parents and noticed my window was left wide open,” he explained. “I knew then I had to protect myself. Up until then, I had no idea how easy it was to obtain a gun.”

Kim states that with his gun, he feels much safer than before.

“Obviously, if I were living in Korea, I would never feel the need to own a gun because no one else has one, but in America, your safety is kind of up to you,” Kim said. “I was also threatened with a gun last year, so I’ve been thinking about purchasing another one for my car.”

Kim, however, does not agree with open carry, which refers to carrying a firearm in public in circumstances where the firearm is fully or partially visible to others.?He thinks there are simply way too many people that are unhinged for open carry.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but being a victim of a crime is much more likely than being a victim of a mass shooting. Having guns to deal with criminals was very beneficial to the Rooftop Koreans during the LA riots.

It looks like the Yoon administration has France on its side if they need to have the UN send Kim Jong-un any sternly worded letters:

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron give a joint press statement ahead of their summit at Elysee Palace in Paris on June 20, 2023. (Yonhap)

President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday that South Korea and France will cooperate closely to deal with North Korea’s unlawful provocations as fellow members of the U.N. Security Council.

Yoon made the remark before going into a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron at Elysee Palace, the presidential office and residence.

Yoon arrived in Paris the previous day to attend a general assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), the international body in charge of overseeing the World Expo, to promote South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in its southeastern city of Busan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Apparently this odd advertisement in the Korea Times is very popular on Twitter right now:

A bold but cryptic full-page advertisement about the power of women in the US edition of the Korea Times has set Twitter abuzz as concerns about alarmingly low birth rates have persisted in Korea.

The Korean-language daily — the largest in the US, headquartered in Los Angeles with bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Chicago, Seattle, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Hawaii, Toronto and Vancouver — featured the print ad on June 14. The ad simply shows two sentences that read, “The most powerful force of a woman is not giving birth” in both Korean and English.

The two sentences are attributed to “Sung Sam Bang.” The individual’s identity remains unknown, with no clear indication if it is a real name or pseudonym.

At the bottom of the page, a disclaimer from the Korea Times in small print confirms that the advertisement was paid for, but refrains from either supporting or dismissing its content.

A tweet featuring a photo of the ad shared three days later on June 17, saw more than 2.5 million views by June 19, along with nearly 25,000 retweets and over 10,000 likes. Twitter’s viewer metrics include any logged-in user who encounters the tweet, including the author.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.