Here is the latest attempt by the Moon administration to reduce the power of prosecutors in South Korea:
The Feb. 1, 2021, file photo shows Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl answering questions before meeting Justice Minister Park Beom-kye in Gwacheon, south of Seoul, on Feb. 1, 2021. (Yonhap)
Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-yeol strongly criticized a recent move by the ruling party to create another state investigative agency to limit the power of the prosecution service.
“Taking investigative power away from the prosecution amounts to regression of democracy and destruction of the spirits of the Constitution,” the top prosecutor said in an interview with Kookmin Daily published Tuesday.
“I am willing to stake my position for the 100th time if I could stop it,” he said.
The ruling Democratic Party (DP) is seeking to establish yet another agency tasked with investigating six types of serious crimes, including abuse of power and corruption, under the Ministry of Justice, which will strip the prosecution service of investigative power into those crimes and leave it only with the power to prosecute.
You can read more at the link, but this issue really comes down to is who would control this new investigating agency? If it is controlled by the Blue House with the potential to be used to settle political scores then I can understand the concern of setting up this new agency.
Here is the latest anti-Japanese colonialism effort by the ROK government:
Park Cheol-woo, spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice, (center) speaks during a press briefing Friday. The ministry filed complaints then to take back 85,094 square meters of land from descendants of four Japanese collaborators. (Yonhap)
The South Korean government has started a legal challenge to confiscate 11 land properties from descendants of four Japanese collaborators, the Ministry of Justice said Monday.
The ministry said it filed complaints with the Seoul Central District Court and the Seoul Western District Court on Friday to take back 85,094 square meters of land valued at 2.68 billion won ($2.4 million) from descendants of those on the list of pro-Japan collaborators announced in 2007.
Here is a though experiment for everyone. What would happen in the U.S. if the government tried to confiscate property from the descendants of people that swindled Native-Americans out of their land?
It looks like some messy driving conditions on the Donghae Expressway:
Hundreds of cars were trapped on some parts of a highway along the east coast Monday as heavy snowfall caused a traffic gridlock, the road authority said.
Gangwon Province received about 10 centimeters of snowfall earlier in the day, which caused many cars returning from a three-day holiday to be stuck on the snow-covered Donghae Expressway, according to Korea Expressway Corp. (KEC)’s regional office.
The start of vaccinating health care workers in South Korea against COVID-19 has begun:
Chung Mi-kyeong (2nd from R), a sanitation worker of the National Medical Center, receives a Pfizer vaccine at the hospital in central Seoul on Feb. 27, 2021, while Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun (3rd from L) looks on. She became the first South Korean to get the Pfizer product. (Yonhap)
About 18,500 people received a vaccination for COVID-19 in South Korea on the launch day of the nation’s public vaccination campaign against the pandemic, a government agency said Saturday.
The latest “me-too” clone movement in South Korea has taken out two big name athletes:
South Korean women volleyball twin stars Lee Jae-yeong, left, and Lee Da-yeong, right, of the Heungkuk Life Insurance Pink Spiders posing after they selected as all-stars before a V-League game at a gymnasium in Incheon. This picture was taken on January 26, 2021.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 look at brochures at a job fair for foreign residents at COEX in Seoul, Sept. 18, 2019. / Yonhap
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.
