Category: Korea-General Topics

The latest “me-too” clone movement in South Korea has taken out two big name athletes:

South Korean volleyball twins Lee Jae-yeong and Lee Da-yeong have been dropped from their national and club sides amid claims of teenage bullying. The 24-year-old sisters, two of the country’s best known female athletes, have both apologized after being anonymously accused of bullying previous students at their school. In Jae-yeong’s apology she referred to “actions and images from her teenage years.”

CNN via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but the alleged bullying happened 10 years ago in middle school. Because of this they have been dropped from playing in the Olympics this summer and suspended from their club team. This seems like something extreme to do based off of anonymous social media accusations.

I had things happen to me while in school that would be considered bullying, especially since I was an athlete just like these twins and hazing was a right of passage back then. I don’t condone hazing and I think it is good that it is going away, but I don’t wish people that hazed me to be cancelled. Heck I have enough self esteem I don’t need or expect any apology. That is why I think these accusations say just as much about the accusers as the Lee twins. If you read the article the accusers actually consider themselves “victims”. This seems like another example of the cult of victimhood where people search to be part of some kind of victim class to bring attention to themselves, especially in the social media age.

These twins being premier athletes who received a lot of attention in middle and high school probably were jerks. However, people change significantly between middle school and adulthood. Are they still jerks? I don’t know the article doesn’t ask anyone they play with now. It seems like if they were still jerks teammates would be telling their stories to the media.

It seems like this could have been something handled with a statement of apology from the twins and their pledge to lead an anti-bully awareness campaign. It seems like this would have been more helpful to addressing bullying than cancelling them.

The Korea Herald has an article published on why elderly people can often be seen pulling carts and picking up cardboard in South Korea:

When the temperature dropped to minus 7 degrees Celsius in mid-February, Lee Deok-ja, 74, was dragging her handcart around Deungchon-dong, western Seoul, picking up cardboard. 

It was about 12:30 p.m. and her handcart was empty. Lee said she had already been to the junk shop three times that day. Instead of filling up the handcart — which appears to weigh more than 40 kilograms when empty — the petite lady chooses to go to a junk shop several times a day and fill her cart little by little. 

“Every time I go there, I get 1,000 won (90 cents), 2,000 won or 3,000 won. That’s how I earn 10,000 won to 15,000 won a day,” she said. The nation’s minimum hourly wage this year is 8,720 won.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but the common element on why they pick up cardboard is that they do it to supplement the national pension check they receive each month. It is very difficult to survive on just the pension check and many kids supplement their elderly parent’s income. If an elderly person does not have kids who give them money they end of doing low skilled job as picking up cardboard to supplement their pension.

Here is the latest “Me-to” like movement happening in South Korea which is going after celebrities who anonymous people claim were bullies in school:

Some celebrities and stars accused of bullying have denied allegations about their past deeds. 

Countering an anonymous schoolmate’s claim that she was beaten and abused by a violent girl who later became a star, K-pop girl band (G)I-DLE member Soojin said she was not a violent girl when she was in school.

“It’s true that I was a bit unusual when I was a middle schoolgirl. There were always bad rumors about me which I was quite used to. I wore clothing that was not suitable for a schoolgirl. I once smoked, too, as I was curious about smoking,” she said in a statement she uploaded on her online fan community. “But there’s one thing I’d like to make it clear regarding the allegations. There was no violence involved. I know who the girl is but I never hit her or stole her school uniform or her other belongings as she claimed.” (……..)

K-pop star Hyun-ah is another denier about her past. An anonymous internet user claimed in a post on an online community that the singer was her elementary classmate and she was a violent girl. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but attacking celebrities for things that may or may not have happened in elementary school or middle school I think says more about the accusers than the celebrity. How do you let something that happened in elementary school define and impact you your entire life as these accusers are claiming?

The Biden administration is currently helping the Iranians cash in on hostage taking:

The Biden administration is working to free billions of dollars in Iranian assets currently frozen in South Korea, the country’s Yonhap news agency reported on Tuesday.

There is currently about $7 billion in Iranian assets frozen in two banks based in Seoul, blocked by U.S. economic sanctions. Korea’s foreign ministry confirmed on Tuesday that a deal had been reached to free those assets.

“Our government has been in talks with Iran about ways to use the frozen assets, and the Iran side has expressed its consent to the proposals we have made,” the ministry said in a statement. “The actual unfreezing of the assets will be carried out through consultations with related countries, including the United States.”

Tensions rose between the two countries after Iran seized a South Korean oil tanker in early January. South Korea’s foreign ministry has denied the seizure is linked to the frozen assets.

Yahoo News

You can read more at the link.

A new South Korean app called Clubhouse has received a bunch of free publicity when South Korea’s Prime Minister decided to open an account:

After garnering an estimated 8 million downloads since its launch, Clubhouse’s popularity continues across the world and even outside of its original tech-focused seed community.

The latest news comes from East Asia, where Korean media reported this morning that the country’s current prime minister, Chung Sye-kyun, has officially joined the social audio app under the username @gyunvely, making him among the most senior political leaders worldwide to join the burgeoning app. 

Tech Crunch

You can read more at the link, but the Clubhouse app is an audio app where you go into rooms and talk with other people. I haven’t used this app before; has any ROK Heads tried out this app?

Considering how hard it is for Koreans with advanced degrees to land good paying jobs in the current Korean market, it should be no surprise that foreigners are having a hard time as well:

Foreigners who obtained an advanced degree in Korea are having difficulties finding work due to insufficient employment information and a lack of Korean language skills, according to the Korea Research Institute for Vocational Education and Training.

The institute released a report, Sunday, on the career preferences of international graduates with a master’s degree and above, and their perceptions on the domestic labor market. 

The study found that around 25 percent of the 8,427 foreign nationals who had completed a master’s course in the country between 2016 and 2018 were currently working here, and 53 percent of the 2,647 of those who completed their doctoral degrees here between 2017 and 2019 were employed in the country. 

The vast majority of working foreign nationals with a master’s degree were employed by private companies, while 70 percent of doctorate holders in employment were working in universities and research centers. 

The study also included a survey conducted among 650 foreign residents who had finished a postgraduate course between 2015 and 2019 on the difficulties they had faced when looking for jobs after graduation.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link,

Some good news for Korean small business owners that have bore the brunt of COVID related shutdowns:

 The government decided Saturday to lower social distancing levels by one notch each for the greater Seoul area and the other regions next week, but kept tight vigilance to curb COVID-19 by retaining a ban on gatherings of five people or more.

Health authorities said that starting Monday, they plan to lower social distancing guidelines to Level 2 — the third highest in a five-tier system — for the greater Seoul area and Level 1.5 for other regions until Feb. 28.

They will also ease restrictions on restaurants, cafes, gyms and other public facilities in the Seoul metropolitan area to allow them to operate for one more hour until 10 p.m., amid complaints by pandemic-hit small business operators.

Entertainment facilities across the nation will also be allowed to operate until 10 p.m. on condition that they abide by key antivirus rules, such as wearing masks and keeping distance among their clients.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The comfort women controversy is one of these issues where facts do not matter, how people feel about the topic is what matters:

Korean students at Harvard University have strongly criticized a professor over his controversial claim that Japan’s wartime sexual slavery was actually voluntary prostitution, demanding its immediate withdrawal and his official apology to victims.

Harvard Korean Society made the demand in a statement on its website after Harvard Law School Japanese legal studies professor J. Mark Ramseyer caused controversy with his recently published paper titled “Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War.”

“It is a wrong conclusion based on grounds very biased and lacking trustworthiness,” the statement said. “Harvard Korean Society demands Prof. Ramseyer’s official apology and immediate withdrawal of the paper.”

“The issue of comfort women is an international inhumane act, and his academic view which justifies and negates the act is an immoral and shameless view,” it added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have not read Professor Ramseyer’s paper yet because it is behind a pay wall. Maybe it is out of line, but I would not be surprised if it has similar conclusions to what Sejong University Professor Park Yu-ha wrote a few years ago about the comfort women issue:

“Park believes that Japan did not recruit comfort women in Korea, which was part of Japan from Tokyo’s perspective, in quite the same way that it did on the front lines and in occupied areas, such as in the Philippines. In those areas, records show that Japanese soldiers were directly involved in the forcible and violent taking away of comfort women. ‘Many of the Korean comfort women were apparently recruited while being cheated by agents of prostitution, some of whom were Koreans, or being sold by their parents,’ Park said. ‘While some have testified they were forcibly taken away by military personnel, I suppose that such cases, if there were any, were exceptional.’

She was of course arrested for writing such a book. The Korean public likes to think that all the comfort women were girls sleeping in bed and kidnapped by evil Japanese soldiers while the Japanese rightists like to think they were all willing prostitutes.  Both historical narratives are untrue if one really looks at the history.

What Professor Park writes about is the same historical narrative that Sarah Soh wrote about in her book “The Comfort Women“.  In the book Soh provides documented evidence that most of the Korean women put into the comfort women system were sold by Korean brokers.  The actual kidnapping of Korean women by Japanese soldiers would be a very rare occurrence when the broker system made so many of these women readily available.  This does not absolve the Imperial Japanese from responsibility since they ran the comfort woman system that provided the demand for the Korean brokers to meet.  To make even worse is that many of these girls were teenagers when sold into prostitution.  I see no way that a young teenager should be considered a willing prostitute.  Especially when many girls were sold by their families into prostitution for money due to the extreme poverty.  This was actually a practice that was going on well into the US military era in South Korea.

It is pretty clear that the comfort women issue is not black and white, but ultimately the Imperial Japanese government was responsible for the actions of the Korean brokers that supplied the majority of the Korean girls that were underage.  There is no need to create a false narrative of what happened to the comfort women when the truth is bad enough.

Some further relief for business owners in South Korea:

The government said Saturday it will allow businesses outside the greater Seoul area to operate until 10 p.m. starting next week, relaxing the distancing rules amid growing discontent over the prolonged virus curbs. 

The revised measure will permit businesses like restaurants and fitness clubs to extend their operating hours by one hour under Level 2 distancing currently imposed on the provincial regions, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said in a government response meeting.

“After careful deliberation based on the various opinions from all walks of life, we are adjusting the business hours for publicly used facilities,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.