Blue House spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom denies spying on private citizens on Tuesday. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]
Accusations that the Moon Jae-in Blue House spied on private citizens broadened on Tuesday after a local broadcaster reported that the presidential office’s special inspection bureau looked into a corruption allegation about Airport Railroad, a private operator of trains connecting Incheon International Airport and downtown Seoul.
After Channel A ran a report on its evening news show on Monday, the Blue House said it was a mere mistake: The bureau’s head erroneously thought the firm was a public company due to its “name and characteristic of work.”
Opposition parties aren’t buying that explanation. The Liberty Korea Party threatened to bring the case to the National Assembly for a parliamentary investigation unless the Moon Blue House clears everything up – instead of blaming mistakes or rogue elements.
You can read more at the link, but the only thing that I would surprised by is if anyone in the Moon administration is held accountable for the domestic spying. As we have seen with other Moon administration scandals they will go to great lengths to defend their allies.
As we have seen repeatedly the Moon administration is willing to go great lengths to protect their friends and punish their enemies. Now they are targeting a corruption whistleblower and letting the media know they will go after them as well if they continue to report his claims:
A former investigator with the Blue House special inspection bureau accused President Moon Jae-in’s top aides of covering up bribery allegations against Korean Ambassador to Russia Woo Yoon-keun and said he was kicked out of the prestigious Blue House team for looking into the case.
Kim Tae-wu, an investigator with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors’ Office who was temporarily dispatched to the Blue House last year to work for the special inspection bureau, told local media on Saturday that he was victimized for targeting Woo, a high-profile figure in Korean liberal politics who formerly served as a lawmaker in the ruling Democratic Party (DP) and has close ties with Moon. In an email to several media outlets, Kim said he wanted to shed light on the truth and recover his tarnished reputation.
Both the Blue House and Woo adamantly denied Kim’s claims that the envoy was bribed. In scathing remarks, Yoon Young-chan, Moon’s senior secretary for public affairs, referred to Kim as a “loach” in a written statement issued to Blue House correspondents on Saturday, saying the investigator was “completely muddying stream water” now that he’s been cornered.
Yoon added that the truth will soon be revealed and the Blue House will “certainly” press legal charges against Kim for the spread of false information and defamation. Yoon went on to express “deep regret” for the local media outlets who were writing stories based on “unilateral claims” from Kim. Kim was one of 20 to 30 members of the so-called special inspection bureau under the office of Cho Kuk, presidential senior secretary for civil affairs.
#MoonJaein, just because he was elected #SouthKorea's president, obviously thinks he has a mandate to end the existence of the South Korean state. I suspect most voters don't want to surrender their freedoms to him or his buddy, #KimJongUn. https://t.co/ywVEVJuxl6
An outdoor mural on a grain silo in the port city of Incheon, west of Seoul, has been recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s largest, the city government said Monday. The silo is 48 meters high, 168 meters long and 31.5 meters wide, and its mural occupies 23,688.7 square meters. Guinness has published the record, which was recognized Sept. 20, on its website. Previously, the Pueblo Levee Project in Pueblo, in the U.S. state of Colorado, held the Guinness World Record for the largest outdoor mural at 16,554.8 square meters. [Korea Times]
The Korea Times has a compilation of opinions from North Korean defectors on what they think about the current North Korean peace initiative:
Mikyung, female, escaped from North Korea in 2016 and arrived in 2016
I am amazed that South Koreans have high expectations that Kim Jung-un is seeking peace. It should be clear to anyone who understands the regime that it is seeking survival on its own terms, not to compromise. At last, more people are recognizing that he will not give up his nuclear weapons. The next realization needs to be that he won’t give up control of North Korea, that he will continue trying to exert complete control over everyone within North Korean territory and maybe even the entire Korean Peninsula.
We can see that even though he seems to be opening up, he still isn’t allowing North Koreans to talk with the outside world, to visit South Korea, or to even Skype with their elderly relatives in the South. It is a human tragedy, not just a North Korean tragedy.
South Koreans will be disappointed later when it is clear that he won’t change, and hopefully they will start to recognize that soon.
Eunji, female, escaped from North Korea in 2015, arrived in 2015
After I escaped to South Korea, I was shocked to learn that it was North Korea that had attacked South Korea in 1950. When I was in North Korea, I had learned the opposite, and so many other things that clearly were not true. There are some things that only North Korea believes. Sometimes it seems that South Koreans have been learning the North Korean version of history. I won’t be surprised if some South Koreans start insisting that it was South Korea that attacked North Korea.
And the people who are welcoming Kim Jung-un? They are crazy people. Some of my South Korean friends and colleagues have asked me about this, some of them even believe that I should welcome Kim Jung-un. I tell them, “Kim Jung-un’s supporters need to go to a mental hospital to have their brains checked. They need to live in North Korea, then they can learn what a real dictator is like.”
South Koreans hated Park Geun-hye, she was removed through the constitutional process and even jailed, so she was not a real dictator. But now the people who held candle-light vigils against President Park are now welcoming a real dictator? When I was in North Korea, I had an excuse for being ignorant about the outside world because I was taught only the truth according to the Kim family. If you live in South Korea, with so much information available everywhere, then you have no excuse.
You can read articles, books and even see videos showing both sides of an issue, instead of the situation of North Korea where only one side is presented. If Kim Jung-un truly changes and North Koreans can become free, then even I would welcome him. Before we can welcome Kim Jung-un, there needs to be truth about North Korea, there needs to be freedom for North Koreans. A murderer and dictator should not be welcomed as a hero.
She is absolutely right, anyone championing Kim Jong-un is not only crazy but should be considered treasonous considering how many South Koreans the Kim regime has murdered, injured, and kidnapped over the years that they have never been held responsible for.
You can read more opinions from North Korean defectors at the link.
Anchor: The National Tax Service has launched a tax probe on Google Korea amid controversy that many multinational IT firms in the nation are not paying enough taxes compared to the profits they reap. Our Bae Joo-yon has more on whether it’s possible to impose further taxes on such companies.
Report: National Tax Service inspectors secured account books and electronic data Wednesday from the Seoul headquarters of Google Korea.
Some market observers say the inspectors are probing tax evasion allegations involving high-income content creators on YouTube, the global video streaming service owned by Google.
Others say authorities are probing whether Google Korea may be involved in offshore tax evasion.
The probe comes amid controversy that Google Korea has been paying too little taxes.
As I have been saying, I think these cost sharing talks are linked to the North Korean nuclear negotiations. If the Trump administration drops sanctions for little to nothing in return from North Korea, the Moon administration will likely give them the cost sharing deal they prefer:
Korea and the United States failed to strike an agreement on how much Seoul will pay to station American troops on the peninsula, a government official here said Friday. Senior diplomats from the allies held three-day talks in Seoul to set the amount of Seoul’s financial contributions for the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).
It marked the 10th round of bargaining, as the current five-year accord expires at the end of this month.
The two sides remain divided over the total amount of Seoul’s financial contributions, a contract period and some other contentious issues, according to the official. “Again, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed,” he told reporters on condition of anonymity. “The two sides will continue consultations through diplomatic channels.” He ruled out the possibility of another round of formal talks within this month.
In case no deal is reached in the coming two weeks, he agreed, it’s expected to cause a problem when the USFK has to pay wages for Korean civilian workers. About a third of Seoul’s payment is used for the wages of around 8,000 workers.
Ex-defense chief at trialFormer Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin (C) arrives at the Seoul Central District Court to attend a trial over allegations that he interfered in politics by mobilizing the Cyber Warfare Command. (Yonhap)
Of course North Korea is going to use child and slave labor, they will just be smart enough to not use it front of the cameras to give them plausible deniability. The more slave labor they use, the more money that will be pocketed by the Kim regime to fund their nuclear program and extravagant lifestyle:
The ‘chain gang’ of children works along a stretch of railway (Image: Daily Mirror)
North Korea’s economy – and construction industry, in particular – is built on slave labor. For decades, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children are dragooned into dolgyeokdae, literally “stormtrooper,” work crews for little or no pay, barely fed enough to survive and often forced to sleep in makeshift housing they built themselves, according to rights groups and reports by the State Departmentand others. Today, South Korean President Moon Jae-in is talking boldly of building road and railway links inside North Korea as a first step toward European Union-style regional economic integration. In September, Moon took his country’s business elite, including the head of the national railway company, to Pyongyang to persuade North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the South was ready to invest as soon as U.N. sanctions are lifted. But human rights activists are asking: Could Moon’s ambitious plans help undermine North Korea’s entrenched system of forced labor? Or will they inadvertently fuel and encourage that system? “The South Korean government and companies chomping at the bit to get into North Korea need to consider the kind of reputational damage they will suffer if it’s found their investments are being supported by forced labor,” wrote Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division. “South Korea has so far been shamefully negligent in doing real due diligence on labor rights grounds for proposed projects in North Korea.”
It looks like the Japanese military is experiencing a growth in female recruits:
Female Japanese junior officers from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force visit the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Honolulu, Hawaii, June 9, 2010. COHEN YOUNG/U.S. AIR FORCE
Japan’s Self-Defense Forces are considering new female training units to accommodate an influx of female recruits that is expected to continue to climb in the coming years, Japanese media reported this week. The island nation is finding it increasingly difficult to accept female recruits with its existing units stretched to capacity, the Jiji Press news agency reported, citing sources with knowledge of the deliberations. As a result, the Self-Defense Forces are considering the addition of new units across the country to accommodate recruits in all three service branches.
Here are some statistical facts about females in the Japanese military:
The Ground Self-Defense Force mainly holds female recruit training at Camp Asaka in Saitama prefecture, Jiji said. It too is considering the formation of a new unit to relieve the pressure on Asaka, but further details were unavailable. The Self-Defense Forces have gone from 144 female servicemembers in its inaugural year, 1954, to more than 15,000 as of March 2018, or 6.5 percent of the total force, according to its website. That number is up 1.6 percent since 2008 and continues to climb, the Defense Ministry’s 2018 white paper added. The ministry plans to eliminate quotas and raise the number of female servicemembers to more than 9 percent by 2030.
