In this photo provided by Daegu Metropolitan City, a Korean woman shows a group of foreign tourists the way to pack herbal medicines in paper during the 2016 Daegu Yangnyeongsi Herbal Medicine Festival on May 8, 2016. (Yonhap)
I would have to think that alcohol probably had something to do with this tragic accident:
A couple fell to their death while kissing on a rooftop in Itaewon on Sunday.
According to the Yongsan police, at around 2 a.m., a 31-year-old man from the United States and a 26-year-old woman from South Africa accidentally fell from a three-story building while kissing precariously close to the banister.
Witnesses have reported that the woman fell first and the man, while attempting to catch her, fell after her.
The two were taken to the hospital but did not survive due to head injuries. [Korea Herald]
Welcome to Korea Finder. The way this contest works is that each week a new image is posted and the first reader to accurately describe or locate the image gets a point. At the end of the year the reader with the highest amount of points will win a Korea related book of their choice.
Who knows what the building in the center of this picture is?
I don’t think there is much the ROK government could do about this if they wanted considering the award is from a private foundation:
Nguyen Dan Que
A prestigious human rights award that commemorates one of Korea’s defining democratic moments has angered an Asian government – because it honors one of its dissidents.
Late last month, Nguyen Dan Que, 74, a pro-democracy activist in Vietnam, was named this year’s recipient of the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights, along with Bersih, a coalition of nongovernmental organizations in Malaysia that fights for fair elections.
The committee responsible for naming the award winners declared on Thursday that the Vietnamese government has demanded a retraction and is pushing Korean authorities to “take all necessary actions” to ensure that the award be withdrawn. Hanoi threatened strained diplomatic relations if Seoul fails to follow through. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
It is pretty amazing how much similarity there is between Rodrigo Duterte and Donald Trump. It will be interesting to see if he does get elected if he can reduce crime and corruption in the Philippines like he claims he will do:
On the eve of the final day of campaigning, President Benigno Aquino III made a desperate call on candidates to agree to an alliance to defeat the brash Duterte, who has been likened to U.S. Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump for his controversial remarks but has topped election polls.
Duterte’s lead in the polls can be overcome if his trailing rivals — mainly Roxas and Poe — join hands, Aquino said, implying that some of them should back out and support a single aspirant.
Under the Philippine electoral system, a candidate who gets the most votes is proclaimed the winner, even if no one gets a majority. (……….)
A longtime mayor of southern Davao city, Duterte, 71, courted controversy with his profanity-laden speeches, vulgar jokes and devil-may-care irreverence, but has successfully tapped into public insecurities with a bold promise to wipe out crime and corruption in three to six months if he is elected.
The national police chief has doubted that campaign promise. Police have issued statistics showing Davao city, where Duterte has served as mayor for more than 22 years, placed fourth among 15 major Philippine cities with the highest number of crimes from 2010 to 2015.
“I thought he was like Batman and Superman combined,” Aquino said sarcastically of Duterte’s anti-crime pledge.
Aquino, business executives and church leaders felt that Duterte crossed the line when he joked about wanting to have been the first to rape an Australian missionary who was gang-raped and brutally killed by inmates in a 1989 jail riot. [Stars & Stripes]
The rhetoric from Donald Trump to make US allies pay 100% of the costs for stationing US troops in their countries has brought increased attention of how much US allies do pay. For those that didn’t know Japan pays nearly 3/4 of the costs for the stationing of US troops in their country:
A senior Japanese government official said Friday that Tokyo intends to work harder to convince Trump and his policy advisers to change their stance. “He doesn’t understand that the stationing of troops here is in the interest of the United States,” the official said.
Meanwhile, a Foreign Ministry source said, “As [Trump] has been obsessed with placing more of a burden on U.S. allies, he’s unlikely to back down.” (………..)
According to a report compiled in 2004 by the U.S. Defense Department, Japan’s financial contribution accounted for 74.5 percent of the total, or about 4.4 billion dollars U.S.(about 470 billion yen at a recent exchange rate). [Stars & Stripes]
Kim Jong-un is once again making it pretty clear to the rest of the world that he has no intention to ever denuclearize:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country will not use nuclear weapons as long as the country’s sovereignty is not threatened and called his regime “a responsible nuclear state” at the seventh congress of the Workers’ Party in Pyongyang.
“Our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes,” Kim was quoted as saying by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sunday. Kim made the remark in a report on the achievements of the Workers’ Party during the congress. KCNA didn’t specify whether Kim made the remark on Friday or Saturday.
It was considered a clear rebuff to calls from the international community that he drops North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
This is horrible way to lose a son, to a toxic humidifier:
A South Korean father who claims to have lost his son to a harmful Oxy Reckitt Benckiser humidifier sterilizer said Saturday he will file a compensation suit against the British company later this month.
Kim Deok-jong, 40, said he decided to file the damage suit against the British company after CEO Rakesh Kapoor refused his demand to visit South Korea to make an apology in front of the sterilizer’s victims. His 5-year-old son died in 2009 after battling a respiratory disease.
His legal representative will notify Oxy of his intention to file for a compensation claim next week, a preliminary process needed to proceed with a formal suit. (………)
A criminal suit will be possible after South Korean prosecutors announce its investigation results, which would provide the legal grounds that Oxy headquarters approved sales of the harmful product in the Korean market. (…………)
The humidifier disinfectant case, one of the worst scandals involving a consumer product using chemicals, came to light after four pregnant women died of lung problems for unknown reasons in 2011. A government-led investigation confirmed a connection between more than 100 people who died of lung problems and the chemicals used to clean household humidifiers.
The focus of the investigation will be on whether the company’s high-ranking executives approved the sales of its disinfectants while knowing the health risks. [Korea Herald]
