Attendants listen to speakers at an international conference in Seoul on Aug. 5, 2016, against killing dogs for meat, organized by the Korea Animal Rights Advocates. (Yonhap)
It looks like the student protesters won their argument to keep Ewha University as an elitist institution plus they will face no punishment for detaining professors for 46 hours. Despite this they are still not happy:
Ewha Womans University President Choi Kyung-hee has filed a petition calling on authorities not to punish students who blocked four professors and a school worker from leaving a school building for 46 hours during a sit-in protest against the school’s plan to set up a night college for workers.
Choi visited Seodaemun Police Station in central Seoul Friday morning to submit the petition, which read that the professors and the worker do not want the students to face action.
Hundreds of Ewha students began the sit-in on July 28 and prevented the five people from leaving. School officials asked police to intervene and some 1,600 officers were mobilized to remove the protesters on July 30.
Police are identifying the students by reviewing video footage. A police officer said, “The petition will not affect the ongoing investigation. It may affect the level of punishment if they are indicted, but it’s up to the court.”
Following the protest, Choi said the school would scrap the night college plan. But students are still staging the sit-in, demanding Choi’s resignation. [Korea Times]
It seems to me that if the South Africans were banned from the Olympics because of their Apartheid policies than why is North Korea with its far worse human rights violations allowed in the Olympics?:
North Korea made a restrained, orderly entrance at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics on Friday.
The North Korean delegation, with male weightlifter Choe Jon-wi as its flagbearer, marched into Maracana Stadium as the 156th country in the “Parade of Nations” as per the Portuguese alphabet.
Choe was followed by Yun Song-bom, the chef de mission, and several other members trailed them, waving their national flag.
They weren’t carrying mobile phones or camcorders to capture the moment, as most other athletes or officials did.
Choe Ryong-hae, the powerful vice chairman of Pyongyang’s State Affairs Commission, rose from his seat to greet the delegation.
North Korea has 31 athletes competing in nine sports here, including weightlifting and judo. It won four golds at the 2012 London Olympics, three from weightlifting, and finished 20th place overall in the medal standing. [Yonhap]
Another example of someone using their position of authority to take advantage of young people:
Pastor Lee Dong-hyun, head of popular Christian teenage evangelical community “Rise Up Movement,” has admitted sexually molesting a female follower for years.
Lee, 48, harassed the high school girl ― who was 17 ― from 2005 until 2008, consistently demanding her to have sex with him, according to NewsNJoy, an online news outlet, Tuesday. When the victim refused, he threatened her, saying: “Your life will be ruined once our relationship is known among Korean society” and “How will you manage to get married after you had sex with me?” the report said, citing the victim, now 28.
NewsNJoy said Lee preferred female followers as his aides and when he took a small group of teenagers to Europe, he often slept in the girls’ room.
With the scandal becoming viral, Lee said on the “Rise Up Movement” web page Tuesday he will no longer chair the group. The site said the community will cancel a mass Christian gathering planned for Aug 7. The group, established in 1999, has been holding an annual mass gathering at Seoul Plaza, drawing about 30,000 teenagers and parents.
“I committed a mistake when I was still a neophyte as a Christian leader,” Lee said, according to Hankook Ilbo. “I admit the whole wrongdoing. I am sorry to all the students who followed my leadership.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but this has nothing to do with being a neophyte as a Christian leader. This guy knew exactly what he was doing just like policeman, school teachers, military leaders, etc. that have been caught before doing the same thing.
No matter where the THAAD radar is located it will be radiating over somebody so I don’t see what moving the site really gains the government other than a large construction bill and an extended deployment timeline:
A placard that reads “No THAAD in Gimcheon” is hung in Joma Township in Gimcheon, North Gyeongsang Province, Friday. Residents there hung three such placards amid rumors that Geumsu Township in Seongju Country near Joma Township could be an alternative site for a U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense battery. / Korea Times
The government is facing growing doubts over whether it will can allow the deployment of a U.S. anti-missile battery by next year after President Park Geun-hye raised the possibility of choosing an alternative location within Seongju County in North Gyeongsang Province.
Park said this during a meeting with ruling party lawmakers, Thursday, in an effort to calm the fears of Seongju residents over the safety of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. However, military officials say it will take considerable time to find a new site and build a base for an artillery unit, which means deploying the system by next year would be almost impossible.
On July 13, the Ministry of National Defense announced that the anti-missile battery will be set up in Seongsan-ri, which is currently home to the South Korean Air Force’s air defense artillery unit that operates a Hawk ground-to-air missile battery. The ministry said THAAD will be fully deployed by the end of next year as threats from North Korea’s nuclear and missile program are growing.
“The reason why the two countries can be sure that the deployment will be done by next year is that the artillery unit already exists in Seongsan-ri, meaning that the military does not need to build a site,” a military official said on condition of anonymity.
Finding a new suitable place and building another site from scratch would take at least four to five years and tens of billions of won as the military needs to remove the top of a mountain and purchase adjacent privately owned land. In this case, the deployment is impossible within Park’s tenure and will be handed over to the next government as she completes her term in office in February 2018. [Korea Times]
Remember all the talk about how China was really serious this time with enforcing sanctions against North Korea? Well the data shows that to not be true:
The latest U.N. Security Council sanctions on North Korea are having little impact on the country’s economy, a U.S. expert said, citing trade data between the North and its biggest economic partner, China.
William Brown, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and non-resident fellow at the Korea Economic Institute in Washington, also said in a recent report that the sanctions do not appear to be affecting the North’s domestic economy.
The latest sanctions, which were adopted on March 2 in response to the North’s fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch the following month, have been billed as the harshest-ever sanctions imposed on the communist regime.
The sanctions require mandatory inspection of all cargo going in and out of the North, regardless of whether by land, sea or air, while banning its exports of coal, iron and other mineral resources, a key source of hard currency that accounts for nearly half of the country’s total exports.
“The March 2 U.N. sanctions are having little impact so far on North Korea’s economy although they may be making Pyongyang even more dependent on China. Trade with countries except China seems to be slipping but, because it was so low to begin with, the significance pales in comparison to the large and generally flat pace of China-North Korean trade,” Brown said in the report. [Yonhap]
Hopefully the House shoots down this BAH plan because all it is going to do is increase paperwork for troops, cause personnel to rent larger houses than they need and then inflate the housing market around military bases while taking money out of soldiers’ pockets:
A leading defense analyst is calling the Senate’s plan to reform military housing allowances a potential disaster for troops’ finances.
The proposal, included in the Senate draft of the fiscal 2017 defense authorization act, would require the Defense Department to reimburse only troops’ exact rent and utilities costs, instead of issuing stipends that estimate cost of living in different areas.
The move could pull hundreds of dollars a month out of some families’ military payouts, although Senate planners argue those troops are receiving more than their share of housing costs.
But Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an editorial in Politico this week called the housing plan “perhaps the most misguided proposal with the greatest potential for unintended consequences” in the annual budget bill.
“What the Senate proposal fails to recognize is that the housing allowance, despite its name, is not really about housing at all,” he wrote. “Congress has used the housing allowance to increase cash compensation for the military, and it’s a smart way to do that because it doesn’t incur additional liability for retirement pensions.” [Army Times]
The only part of this plan that I think the Senate has a fair point is having one BAH for dual military married couples. That is a harder entitlement to defend considering just one housing allowance is needed to provide housing just like soldiers who are not married to another servicemember do.
