From my perspective the McDonald’s in South Korea always seem cleaner and more professionally run than most I see back in the US:
An inspector of the Korea Consumer Agency leaves a McDonald’s restaurant in Gangnam, Seoul, carrying an ordinary paper bag without an airtight sterilization container./ Courtesy of McDonald’s Korea
McDonald’s Korea has filed a court injunction against the disclosure of the results of the Korea Consumer Agency’s sanitary inspection, the U.S.-based fast food chain said Wednesday.
The agency recently investigated 38 hamburgers marketed by six fast food franchises and five convenience store chains, following lawsuits over alleged undercooked McDonald’s patties.
Five Korean consumers have sued the company so far, claiming their children suffered hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS), or the so-called “hamburger disease,” after eating McDonald’s hamburgers.
Although none of the products contained the controversial E. coli bacteria, which is known to cause HUS, the agency found that one McDonald’s hamburger contained staphylococcus aureus above the standard level. The bacterium is a common cause of food poisoning.
The agency initially planned to unveil its findings Tuesday, but scrapped the plan following McDonald’s Korea’s complaint that was applied a day earlier.
McDonald’s Korea criticized the agency for neglecting the required procedures.
“Food hygiene tests should be conducted by trained inspectors who should not hide their identity. A sample should be contained in an airtight sterilization container as well,” a spokeswoman of McDonald’s Korea said.
“However, an inspector, who visited our Gangnam store, pretended to be an ordinary customer. He also carried the sample in a paper bag, not immediately putting it into an airtight sterilization container.” [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but I can understand McDonald’s beef (pun intended) if the inspectors are not conducting inspections by agreed upon standards.
The North Koreans bombed an airliner prior to the 1988 Seoul Olympics and the games still occurred so I don’t think a bunch of rhetoric is going to stop the Winter Olympics:
But here we are, talking about miniaturization and intercontinental ballistic missiles, fretting about that inflection point where words turn to bombs, understanding that not only PyeongChang next year but Tokyo in 2020 will live under the constant threat of annihilation from the most irrational of actors.
And it’s amid this dread that Olympians stare at the potential danger, weigh it against four years of grueling training for an unmatched apex and, well, shrug. They comprehend the gravity. They recognize the threat. They’ve just got better things to do than worry about it.
Maddie Bowman is 23 years old. She won Olympic gold in Sochi with a flawless halfpipe skiing run and went viral thanks to her grandma. She balances training for PyeongChang with studying for college, though neither keeps her from remaining historically conscious enough to grasp the threat of North Korea that has existed for decades.
Still, when Bowman attended a February test event at Bokwang Phoenix Park, where the freeskiing and snowboarding halfpipe contests will take place, no sense of impending doom imperiled her.
“When we went to South Korea, I felt safe,” Bowman told Yahoo Sports. “And in Russia, I felt pretty safe. I think as skiers, we obviously don’t see risk as a big thing in our lives. In talking with fellow athletes, it’s like, yeah, maybe the Olympics won’t happen, but it’s hard for us to see that risk. It’s not going to get in the way of my goals. I like to keep up with what’s going on in the world and am concerned with decisions we make as a country, but it’s not affecting my training.”
The chatter among fellow Olympians, Bowman said, centers more on the possibility of the PyeongChang Games being canceled rather than athletes pulling out because of concerns over the region’s stability. [Yahoo Sports]
You can read more at the link, but unless an actual conflict breaks out I would be very surprised if the Winter Olympics is cancelled.
Amazingly a Washington Post writer is declaring the North Korean nuclear crisis as being former President Reagan’s fault:
Over the past few days, the United States and North Korea have become locked in nuclear brinkmanship. After North Korea declared that its ballistic missiles could hit anywhere in the United States, President Trump vowed that continued North Korean provocations would be “met with fire and fury and — frankly — power.” North Korea responded by threatening to attack the tiny island of Guam, a U.S. territory.
But it was another tiny island that set the United States and North Korea down this path. Few Americans will recall the 1983 invasion of a small Caribbean nation thousands of miles from North Korea. But in fact, this conflict set the stage for the nuclear standoff today. It intensified the animosity between the two countries, sending North Korea on a quest for nuclear weapons to combat what it saw as a looming U.S. threat.
In October 1983, the United States invaded Grenada. The Kim family regime that controls North Korea saw this invasion as an early warning sign: If the United States could perceive even a small spice island as a threat, so too could it eventually train its sights on North Korea. Without an effective deterrent, any regime perceived as a threat would be little match for American military might. [Washington Post]
You can read the rest at the link, but comparing Grenada to North Korea is completely apples and oranges. Does anyone think the US would have invaded Grenada if there was a massive artillery and WMD threat that could kill millions to include large numbers of US troops and American expats? That has the been reality for decades with North Korea’s strategic military advantage with Seoul within convention artillery range. This fact has kept American military action against North Korea in check despite numerous deadly provocations over the decades.
If anything is driving Kim Jong-un to develop his missile and nuclear programs it is what he saw happen to Saddam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi under the last two Presidents, not Reagan. Kim Jong-un probably cannot even find Grenada on a map.
Shown is a stamp issued by North Korea on Aug. 8, 2017, to commemorate the successful test launch of a Hwasong-14 intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4, North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said. (Yonhap)
This is very interesting that the Chinese government has apparently given the US the go ahead to attack North Korea in response to a strike against US soil, but not to the extent that it leads to regime change:
China won’t come to North Korea’s help if it launches missiles threatening U.S. soil and there is retaliation, a state-owned newspaper warned on Friday, but it would intervene if Washington strikes first.
The Global Times newspaper is not an official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, but in this case its editorial probably does reflect government policy and can be considered “semi-official,” experts said. (…..)
“China should also make clear that if North Korea launches missiles that threaten U.S. soil first and the U.S. retaliates, China will stay neutral,” it added. “If the U.S. and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korean Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so.” [Stars & Stripes]
In his latest broadside at North Korea, President Trump bluntly warned dictator Kim Jong Un on Friday that the U.S. military was “locked and loaded” in case the country should “act unwisely.”
“Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” Trump said on Twitter.
It was not clear exactly what sort of “military solutions” Trump was referring to or what precisely would constitute unwise action by the North Korean leader.
But North Korea said on Thursday it was putting together a plan to fire four missiles in the direction of the U.S. territory of Guam, a Pacific island that is home to large American military installations.
Trump’s warning came a day after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told reporters in Silicon Valley that the U.S. effort to “get this under control” was “diplomatically led,” “gaining traction,” and “gaining diplomatic results.”
Mattis underlined that he wanted to “stay right there right now” and warned that the cost of conflict could be “catastrophic,” but also said that when it comes to the U.S. military, “we are ready.” [Yahoo News]
Here is a good article in the Joong Ang Ilbo about the difficulties Korean adoptees are having tracking down their birth parents in South Korea:
Left: Lida Bouts returned to Korea in February 2016 as an exchange student at Sungkyunkwan University, 22 years after she was adopted by a Dutch couple. Her search for her family failed as there was no response to letters sent by her adoption agency to her birth parents. Middle left: Bouts’ adoption document drawn up in 1993. Middle right: Megan Green as a 2-year-old before an adoption that sent her to the U.S. state of Nebraska in 1986. Right: Green’s adoption document drawn up in 1986. [LIDA BOUTS, MEGAN GREEN]Korea Adoptions Services collects all family search requests from private adoption agencies. It reports that in 2016, there were 1,940 requests from Korean adoptees trying to find their birth parents. Only 102 of them, or 5 percent, ended up meeting their biological parents. The year before, the figure was 91 out of 2,012 requests, or 4.5 percent.
And such reunions are getting harder with time. Parents who gave their babies up after the Korean War were poor and had no choice – and were more likely to agree to meet them two or three decades later.
But adoptions processed in the 1980s and later often involved single mothers, who were afraid of the social stigma attached to unwed mothers. “They have probably found someone to marry after sending children away for adoption, and now have a family,” said Kim. “They are much more reluctant to be reunited.”
In 2016, 880 children were put up for adoption both domestically and internationally. Of the total, 808, or 91.8 percent, were born to unmarried couples.
“While it is important for an adoptee to trace his or her family roots, it is equally important for parents to keep their privacy,” said an official at the adoption bureau at the Ministry of Health and Welfare.
“We have many single mothers in the country, and a large number of birth parents who wish to hide their adoption records. Many have moved on and have families on their own,” the official continued.
Bouts is frustrated because she has a lot of information about her birth family from the time of her adoption, but can’t do anything with it. “I know full names of everyone, birth dates and even the region they lived in,” she said. “I’m not angry at my birth parents for anything. I can even accept that my parents wouldn’t want to know or meet me. I would just really want to meet my sister.”
Bouts’ adoption document mentions a sister seven years older than her.
“I think it would make me more complete if I would meet them,” she said. “I would like to tell them that they made the right choice and that I’m living a very happy and blessed life.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
