Broadcast vehicles are parked in front of a court in southern Seoul on April 5, 2018, the eve of the sentencing hearing for ousted President Park Geun-hye. Impeached and arrested in March last year, Park, 66, has been on trial on bribery, abuse of power and 16 other charges. (Yonhap)
I would be surprised if this happens in South Korea:
Starbucks and other coffee sellers in California must warn customers of a potentially cancer-causing chemical in coffee, following a ruling from a Los Angeles judge last week.
Now the global coffee chain is concerned that the impact of the decision may go beyond the U.S. state.
“The ruling aroused concern among company employees,” a senior Starbucks Coffee Korea official told The Korea Times Wednesday. “But we have not taken any specific measures in regard to the issue, given that the ruling is not final. This matter is affecting the whole coffee industry, not just Starbucks.”
The comment came several days after Starbucks’ China unit said it would ensure it provided quality and safe products to consumers in a response to the ruling.
A nonprofit organization, the Council for Education and Research on Toxics, sued 91 coffee companies, including Starbucks, for failing to warn consumers of a chemical that could cause cancer.
The chemical is acrylamide, which also can be found in some foods and cigarette smoke. It is a byproduct of roasting coffee beans that is present in high levels in brewed coffee.
Korean customers are exposed to the same health risk as Californians, given that the way coffee is produced is practically the same. However, a Starbucks Korea PR official said Korea does not have the same regulations that would enforce such a requirement ― yet.
Lee Hyun-ki, head of a civic group for food safety, reportedly said he thinks Starbucks Korea needs to review the necessity for such a requirement here. “If any of the U.S. states make efforts for food safety, Starbucks needs to consider doing the same for Korean consumers … They have the right to know about acrylamide,” he said.
L.A. Superior Court Judge Elihu Berle said in a decision that Starbucks and other coffee firms had failed to show that the level of acrylamide produced in the coffee roasting process does not pose a significant cancer risk. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but acrylamide is also found in other foods such as french fires, potato chips, bread, and other foods. So will California require other food products to have warning labels as well for acrylamide?
Condolences to the families of the two ROK pilots killed in this tragic crash:
The debris of the F-15K is scattered on a mountain in Chilgok, North Gyeongsang Province, Thursday. / Yonhap
An Air Force jet crashed into a mountain in Chilgok, North Gyeongsang Province, 216 kilometers southeast of Seoul, Thursday, killing two pilots, the Air Force said.
The military initially said both ejected from the jet safely. No civilian damage was reported. The crash site is close to a golf course.
The crashed jet was an F-15K that was returning to an Air Force base in Daegu after an airstrike exercise. The crash happened at 2:47 p.m. [Korea Times]
Considering that the two pilots did not eject whatever happened, happened extremely fast before they could react and eject. Yonhap News has identified the two pilots as Capt. Choi, aged 29, and 1st Lt. Park, 27. Fortunately no civilians were killed on the ground.
Does anyone know if this is something that Korean employers try to implement as well?:
Timing of one unidentified woman reportedly clashed with pregnancy “shifts” drawn by the childcare centre director
Japanese worker has been reprimanded by her boss for “selfishly breaking the rules” after she became pregnant before it was her “turn”, according to media reports.
The woman was working at a private childcare centre in Aichi prefecture, north Japan, when she found out she was pregnant.
However, the timing reportedly clashed with “shifts” drawn by the childcare centre director, which listed when female staff were allowed to marry and have children.
The plight of the woman, who has not been identified, highlights the unsettling practice of some Japanese companies dictating when female staff are allowed to marry and have children, depending on their level of seniority. [The Telegraph]
How much of Choe Sang-hun's bias is it possible to squeeze into one headline? In fact, we have plenty of leverage over N. Korea if we're willing to use it. Moon Jae-in & his lapdog, Choe, just don't want us to. https://t.co/u3jGjo9p4n
The date for the planned summit between the ROK and North Korea is set:
Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon, center, speaks to reporters in Seoul before leaving for talks with North Korea to prepare for a summit between the leaders of the two rival nations.
North and South Korea will hold their first summit in more than a decade on April 27, the two sides said Thursday.
The date for the historic meeting between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was set during a high-level meeting on the northern side of the truce village of Panmunjom in the tense border area. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the link, but no word yet on when President Trump will meet Kim Jong-un. I suspect that date will be announced pending the outcome of this first summit, but they are supposed to meet sometime in May.
This may cause some to wonder if the weather was just good excuse to not provoke North Korea prior to President Moon’s summit?:
Korean Assault Amphibious Vehicles with Republic of Korea Marine Corps Regimental Landing Team 7 take part in a beach landing March 12, 2016, during exercise SsangYong 16.
The United States and South Korea canceled plans to conduct a Marine amphibious assault exercise as part of joint war games this week due to bad weather, the Combined Forces Command said Wednesday.
The announcement comes days after the allies began annual military drills known as Foal Eagle amid a diplomatic push with North Korea that has sharply eased tensions on the divided peninsula.
The allies are keeping this year’s exercises low-key due to the developing detente with the North after months of saber rattling and missile tests as it made progress in its nuclear weapons program.
The U.S.-led command said the changes to the Ssangyong exercises, which are part of Foal Eagle, were due to bad weather.
The assault exercise, which evokes memories of the World War II invasion of Normandy, had been scheduled for Thursday.
“U.S. and (South Korean) leadership canceled the amphibious landing portion of the training exercise … after weather assessments indicated unsafe landing conditions for servicemembers,” the CFC said in a press release.
Participating units in the air and sea portions will continue training as planned, it said, adding the routine drills are held twice a year to build and maintain fundamental military readiness.
“This was a good call by the on-scene commanders, who must balance readiness and risk — even in a training environment,” said Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of the CFC and U.S. Forces Korea. [Stars & Stripes]
Robert Gallucci the former nuclear negotiator with North Korea during the Clinton administration recently sat down and conducted an interview with the Joong Ang Ilbo about the upcoming Trump-Kim summit. Here is an excerpt from the interview:
Former diplomat Robert Gallucci, chairman of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, sits for an interview at the university in Washington on March 8. [LEE GWANG-JO]Q. Do you think a “one-shot” negotiation is possible between Trump and Kim Jong-un at the first U.S.-North Korea summit?
A. First of all, it never occurred to me that this would be a one-shot negotiation. It is hard for me to believe that anybody familiar with the complexity of the issues would think that anybody — and I do mean anybody — could sit down at a negotiation and work out all the differences between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the United States in one session. It is, for me, inconceivable. If you accept that, that means that if this is going to be a successful engagement, the summit between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump will be the start of a series of talks which will be top-down, because you can’t go higher up. So that means that there would be presumably professional diplomats or at least representatives of both governments who would then meet someplace or at an extended period of time, back and forth, to work out the details of an agreement. I cannot see a single session solving this problem.
What issue will be most hotly contested at the U.S.-North Korea summit?
If I look back to 1994 and to the 2000s, transparency, verification, monitoring, that’s always a difficult matter in the negotiation where we are looking to limit capability on both nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles. I imagine what’s in the mind of the American side is that they would want to reach an agreement in which the North Koreans commit to giving up their nuclear weapons program, that they want a nuclear weapons-free peninsula. So you can imagine North Koreans saying, “Sure. It’s done. We dismantled all our nuclear weapons yesterday. Everything’s done. Now, here’s what we would like.”
We might say, “We think the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) needs to get back in and do what it considers a full scope of safeguards.” North Koreans might hop on, maybe not. So what I’m saying here, you want to know where I see the greatest sensitivity will be, it will be on gaining agreement by the North Koreans to adequate measures to permit transparency, to permit monitoring of the agreement and ultimate verification of compliance with the agreement. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but let me remind everyone that Mr. Gallucci is the guy a few months ago that said even a deal North Korea cheats on is still a good deal. I have so far seen no indications that the Trump administration is ready to sign up for any deal that allows North Korea to cheat.
