Category: Korea-General Topics

Here is the latest COVID policy coming to South Korea:

South Korea will introduce a digital certification system to verify a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status through a smartphone application this month, amid the government’s efforts to boost people’s participation in the public vaccine program, the prime minister said Thursday.

“The people will be able to experience a sense of return to normality from a vaccine passport or green card systems,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said during a daily interagency meeting on the government’s coronavirus response.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Its that time of the year again in Korea:

An extraordinarily strong yellow dust storm originating from the inland deserts in northern China and Mongolia blanketed all of South Korea on Monday, prompting authorities to issue a yellow dust warning for Seoul and almost all parts of the country for the first time in a decade.

The density of fine dust particles smaller than 10 micrometers in diameter, known as PM 10, soared to 1,174 micrograms per cubic meter in Daegu on Monday morning, the worst level since Nov. 12, 2010, when the corresponding figure reached 1,047 micrograms in the southeastern city.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest coronavirus restriction in South Korea:

 The government will ban eating at mass gathering establishments like sports stadiums, libraries and museums starting Monday, officials said, amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

Eating will be banned at 21 types of public places, which also include karaoke bars, public saunas and movie theaters, and violators will be fined 100,000 (US$88) starting April 5 after a one-week grace period, officials said.

Other facilities subject to the ban include cram schools, hair dressers, gyms, casinos and exhibition halls.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Not a good look even if there isn’t corruption going on, but in the case of the LH scandal we know there was corruption likely going on:

About half of top officials at the central government and state-run institutions own land as part of their wealth, a government report showed Thursday, amid mounting public outrage over a land speculation scandal involving public officials. (…….)

The report came in light of a snowballing controversy surrounding alleged speculative land purchases by employees at the Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), the state housing supply arm, based on insider knowledge. 

At least 20 LH employees are suspected of having purchased huge swathes of undeveloped land around Seoul over a few years with undisclosed information on plans to construct major residential towns there. The scandal has rocked the nation as it emerged at a time when public anger over the nation’s soaring housing and rent prices is running high.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The mandate for testing only foreigners continues to cause controversy in South Korea:

Several South Korea provinces and cities continued to require coronavirus testing for foreign workers, despite a request from the national government that prompted Seoul to end its mandate amid international outcry.

Last week the headquarters of the nation’s pandemic control effort asked local governments to end mandatory testing for foreigners, and improve testing policies to eliminate discrimination or rights violations. But only Seoul scrapped its controversial order.

The same day, Daegu, the fourth-largest city, with a population of 2.5 million, doubled down with a second order expanding the number of foreign workers that needed to be tested. No foreign workers among 2,553 in the first round tested positive, Daegu said in a statement.

Reuters

You can read more at the link.

Her is the latest stupid online conspiracy theory in South Korea:

Daegu police on Wednesday opened an investigation into claims circulating online that President Moon Jae-in’s vaccine was secretly switched –– and he did not get the AstraZeneca jab.  
   
On Tuesday, Moon and First Lady Kim Jung-sook became the first Koreans over 65 to be vaccinated for Covid-19. The first couple got their shots at a public health center in Jongno, central Seoul, near the Blue House, ahead of the president’s trip to Britain for a Group of Seven summit in June.  
   
A video of the president and first lady being administered the AstraZeneca vaccine was part of the government’s attempt to calm public fears over the vaccine’s safety, following two local reports of blood clots arising in patients who received AstraZeneca shots. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but if the President was going to fake a vaccination couldn’t he have just had water injected into his arm? Why bother switching vials while being filmed?

Notice how these politicians are always pushing out their goals to dates they will likely not even be alive to avoid political responsibility for their decisions:

President Moon Jae-in on Friday declared 2021 as the starting year of South Korea’s green transition for daily infrastructure, reiterating his commitment to the Green New Deal policy.

Attending a government strategy meeting on the Green New Deal policy at the Boryeong Thermal Power Plant in Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province, Moon said the nation’s political, economic, social and cultural sectors should be overhauled “with an extraordinary determination that the Green New Deal is the only way for the nation to survive.”
The Moon administration has been campaigning for the Green New Deal aimed at fostering environment friendly industries in tandem with a push for balanced national development.

On his vision of South Korea achieving carbon neutrality and reducing carbon emissions to zero by 2050, Moon said the nation has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 10.8 percent over the past two years, thanks in part to the earlier-than-scheduled closures of coal power plants.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Historian Robert Neff has another interesting historical nugget in the Korea Times about one of the first reported bank robberies in South Korea:

One of the first bank robberies in Korea took place in Jemulpo (modern Incheon) on June 25, 1892 ― a dreadfully hot day. A young Japanese employee of the First National Bank of Japan went to the Korean Customs Office to collect the daily duties on goods being imported and exported through the port. It was a fairly substantial amount of money ― nearly 700 dollars.

Korea Times

You can read the rest at the link.

The latest Korean manufactured satellite has been launched:

South Korea’s next-generation midsized observation satellite successfully entered its target orbit and made its first contact with a base station on Monday, the science ministry said, marking the country’s latest step to boost its space industry.

The 540-kilogram satellite made contact with the Svalbard Satellite Station in Norway around 100 minutes after its launch on Russia’s Soyuz-2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at around 11:07 a.m. (local time), according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is an interesting tourism idea to promote a remote part of South Korea:

 Dressed all in purple, bent-over women held long rakes aloft as they walked in a line to a lavender field to carry out some pruning on an island in southwest South Korea.

Inspired by their native balloon flower, residents of the Banwol and Bakji Islands, known as the ‘Purple Islands’, have painted their houses, roads and bridges in shades of the hue, and planted purple flowers such as lavender and asters to transform their town into a tourist attraction.

Reuters

You can read more at the link.