Former President Lee Myung-bak is helped out of a prison vehicle as he arrives at the Seoul Central District Court in Seoul on July 20, 2018, to stand trial on corruption charges, including allegations that he accepted 11 billion won (around US$9.69 million) in bribes while in office. (Yonhap)

These deportations and arrest will likely give critics support for not admitting anymore refugees into South Korea:

Six migrant workers have been deported this year over allegations they supported international terrorist groups.

This followed a joint operation by South Korea’s top law enforcers.

Police, prosecutors, the national intelligence service and the justice ministry discovered evidence that the suspects endorsed the terrorist groups “beyond curiosity” and shared information about them with others.

The information came to light in a report revealed during the national anti-terror committee’s regular meeting at the Seoul Government Complex on Monday. Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon presided over it.

Another report said a Syrian migrant worker was arrested in Incheon for inciting co-workers to join extreme Islamic terrorist group ISIS. The Incheon Metropolitan Police Agency’s international criminal investigation bureau arrested the man, 33, for showing ISIS promotional video clips to the workers and encouraging them to join it. The authority sent his case to prosecutors early this month.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but a flood of Muslim refugees into Jeju Island from mostly Yemen has caused terrorism fears to grow in South Korea in recent months.

It didn’t take long for the North Koreans to use the proposed family unions as leverage against the South Korean government:

North Korea’s state-run media released a string of articles on Friday that criticized the South Korean government, hinting that planned reunions for families split between the two nations could be canceled. An editorial in the official state newspaper of the North Korean ruling party, Rodong Sinmun, argued that South Korea had been exaggerating its role in denuclearization talks between Pyongyang and Washington. South Korea’s role in the talks does “not even amount to that of an assistant,” the editorial stated. The same article described comments made by South Korean President Moon Jae-in in Singapore last week as “presumptuous” and “flippant.”  [Washington Post]

You can read more at the link, but it appears the North Koreans are trying to put the ROK government back in its place as being subservient to the Kim regime with the denuclearization talks solely between the US and North Korea.

Here is the main reason they are threatening the cancelation of the family reunions:

In another attack against the Moon administration, Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean propaganda website, urged it to repatriate a dozen North Korean restaurant workers who came to the South in 2016.

The 12 had worked at a North Korean restaurant in China. Pyongyang claims they were abducted by South Korean authorities. The South has said the workers defected of their own free will.

Uriminzokkiri said there could be an “obstacle” in the planned reunion of families divided by the 1950-53 Korean War next month if the workers are not returned.

It lashed out at Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon by name, accusing him of “siding with” the former government which it said plotted the workers’ defection. [Reuters]

I think even for a left wing administration like President Moon’s, this will be politically very difficult to do.  Could you imagine the backlash of forcibly removing these defectors from South Korea and handing them over to the Kim regime?

The piling on of former President Park Geun-hye continues:

A Seoul court on Friday sentenced former President Park Geun-hye to eight years in prison for illegally taking off-book funds from the state spy agency and interfering in elections during her term in office.

Televised live, the Seoul Central District Court meted out the guilty verdict to the 66-year-old, who’s already serving a 24-year jail term on a string of corruption charges in a nation-rocking scandal that led to her ousting last year.

The court also ordered her to forfeit 3.3 billion won (US$2.91 million).  (…….)

She’s also been indicted for interfering in the then-ruling Saenuri Party’s candidate nominations for the 2016 general elections.

But the court on Friday acquitted her of the bribery charges, ruling that the NIS provisions of its funds to Park’s office were not paid in return for any favors.  [Yonhap]

So if the funds were provided by the NIS were not in return for favors then why were they providing them to former President Park?  Because they have been providing the funds to past ROK Presidents as well:

The court acknowledged that it has been customary for the spy agency to provide funds to the presidential office from its own state coffers, known as the untraceable special activities fund.

The fact that the then spy chiefs had delivered the funds to Park’s Cheong Wa Dae in a fixed amount, and on a regular basis, is far from the conventional way of paying someone a bribe, which usually comes in a lump sum payment at one time.  [Yonhap]

Basically what the NIS has been doing is giving the ROK President money to pay for things like cell phones and medical treatment that would not be subject to any government record keeping.  However, some of her expenses with this secret fund were definitely shady:

Park allegedly squandered the taxpayer money on maintaining her private house, financing a boutique where her secret confidante Choi Soon-sil — the central figure in the corruption scandal — had Park’s clothes made and other private purposes, including massage treatment.  [Japan Times]

I think the most significant thing about this ruling is that if Park was convicted of receiving money from the NIS, then former President Lee Myung-bak who has also been arrested for corruption will also get convicted for the same thing if he received NIS special activities funds.

What I am wondering is if the NIS was also making the payments to former President Roh Moo-hyun as well?  The opposition party in South Korea has already claimed that the Roh administration had their own special activities fund they wanted a special counsel to investigate.

The proposed investigation largely targets key figures from the former liberal Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations of 1998-2008. It also seeks to check whether the NIS and prosecution under the incumbent government have misused their funds.

“The misappropriation of special activity funds has long been a practice, so to speak, and it is one of Korea’s representative ills,” the request reads. “We demand institutional improvements be made by addressing the suspicions through a thorough investigation.” [Yonhap]

So far the Moon administration has not allowed any investigation into the prior Roh and Kim administration’s use of special activities funds.

Former President Roh committed suicide after the Lee Myung-bak administration began an investigation into him taking bribes.  There would be no legal implications if the NIS gave him money since he is deceased, but it would still be an interesting fact to know.  President Roh was hugely popular with the South Korean left and current President Moon Jae-in was his chief of staff at the time.  This is likely why the prior left wing administration will not be investigated.

This is also why the conservatives in South Korea consider the arrest and imprisonment of former Presidents Lee and Park as political payback for causing Roh’s suicide by exposing his corruption.

A gang rape in Daegu is drawing national media attention in South Korea after a mother’s petition to the ROK Blue House draws large public support:

A petition to the Cheong Wa Dae website posted by the mother of a gang-rape victim has garnered more than 300,000 supporters in less than a month.

This means the presidential office should act on the petition within 30 days.

In the petition, the mother said her daughter is still suffering from threats from the alleged perpetrators and their friends.

“They boasted about raping my daughter and posted on Facebook their claim that my daughter had seduced them to have sex, which is not true,” the mother said. “My daughter couldn’t bear it and stopped going to school.”

According to Jungbu Police Station in Daegu, six middle school and high school students have been charged with raping the girl in April.

The mother said in an interview with a local daily that it was not six but seven involved in the crime, with one getting away because he didn’t have sex. She said the students and their parents never apologized.  [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link.

It looks the Korean treasure hunters who claimed to have found a sunken Russian treasure ship may have executed an elaborate hoax:

The Shinil Group’s announcement on July 17 that it had located the Dmitrii Donskoi, a Russian cruiser that went down 113 years ago, just two days before created a sensation, with the stock price of Jeil Steel (in which the Shinil Group holds a majority share) soaring and setting a new record.But the next day it turned out that the Dmitrii Donskoi was not a new discovery by the Shinil Group but had actually been found fifteen years before by the government-funded Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), which had also attempted to raise the wreck.

KIOST furthermore argued that the Shinil Group had located the Donskoi through the unauthorized use of location information that belonged to the institute, which raises questions about the credibility of the Shinil Group’s assertion that it is “the first to discover the Dmitrii Donskoi and the only proven right holder.

”For now, therefore, extreme caution and care are probably required for the various projects and deals organized by the Shinil Group and promoted with rumors that the Donskoi is loaded with 150 trillion won (US$132.41 billion) worth of gold coins and gold bars. Jumping into these projects could have unforeseen consequences.“We had already discovered the Donskoi in 2003 and even released photos. It’s preposterous for the Shinil Group to claim ownership as if they’d been the first to find it,” a key official at KIOST said during a phone call with the HuffPost on July 18.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link, but if another group found the ship 15 years ago it seems to me they would have removed any gold that was there by now, assuming there was any gold to begin with.

Police officer tries to break push-up world record https://t.co/RbtTbx0gxo

— WWLP-22News (@WWLP22News) July 19, 2018

I kind of feel bad for Lee Hyo-ri and her husband that they had to sell their her house on Jeju, but you would have thought that they would have seen this coming after agreeing to make the show:

Singer Lee Hyo-ri’s slow life on Jeju Island with her musician husband Lee Sang-soon has been ruined by break-ins, curious tourists and pranksters.

In response, the couple has sold their home that served as the location for reality show “Hyori’s Homestay” to the cable network that made the program.

JTBC said it bought it over fears the program’s image would be damaged if it were sold to a third party.

“There is a possibility that the content image of ‘Hyori’s Homestay’ could be ruined if it was used for commercial purposes such as an open facility,” JTBC said.

Even before “Hyori’s Homestay” was aired, the couple was the target of excessive public attention. But the program made it worse.

“There were those who knocked on the door of the couple’s home and even trespassed inside,” the channel said. “This kind of privacy violation issue was at a level beyond the expected range.”

“Hyori’s Homestay” started last year. The second season ran from February to May.  [Korea Times]

The show is actually available on Netflix and I thought it was pretty entertaining.  I really liked her husband Lee Sang-soon who seemed like a pretty cool person to hang out with.  I thought their home and surrounding property was quite nice, but it only had a chain link fence around it that anyone could jump over.  I remember watching the show thinking that they were going to have stupid people jump over that fence and trespass on their property.  Sure enough that is what happened and now they had to sell their house because of it.

Even fairy tale characters are no longer safe from accusations from feminists:

A prominent lawyer says Gender Equality and Family Minister Chung Hyun-back’s depiction of a folktale hero as a kidnapper-rapist is not based on law but on herd mentality.

Hwang Ju-myung, a former judge and chairman of HMP Law, said Chung did not provide evidence to support her accusation and by her logic would have to prepare for a legal challenge from the woodcutter in the “Woodcutter and the Fairy.”

“Besides, it is being silly to accuse the character from the old story of such a heinous crime,” Hwang said when asked his legal view of the minister’s argument. “As far as the law is concerned, it is hard to find any indication in it that he resorted to coercion to have sex with the fairy or to force her to live with him.”

Chung claimed during a seminar Saturday: “When in elementary school, I took a great pity on the woodcutter but seen from the standpoint of the fairy, two children she had with him, and the fairy’s parents, he could be a kidnapper and rapist. The point of view should be changed in the context of achieving gender equality.”

The minister is a ferocious supporter of feminism and she attended a weekend pro-woman, anti-man protest and promised thousands of women that she wouldn’t forget their voices.   [Korea Times]

You can read the rest at the link, but for those that have read this Korean fairy tale, there is no suggestion in the book that the woodcutter kidnapped and raped the fairy.  I have to seriously wonder what is wrong with someone mentally to even think of something like that from this story?  By the way it would be funny if someone sued Chung on behalf of the woodcutter for libel which this clear is.

Additionally when did it become okay to attend anti-man protests, especially a cabinet member in the South Korean government?  What would people say if anti-women protests were held?