If you feels like Seoul has a lot of elderly people living in it, you would be right:
Senior citizens in Seoul have outnumbered children for the first time, the Seoul Metropolitan Government said Thursday.
As of April 30, there were 1,234,181 people 65 or over in the capital, slightly surpassing the number of children under 15 ― 1,232,194.
The aging index, the ratio of elderly people to children, recorded 100.4, exceeding 100 for the first time.
“The higher index means the number of elderly citizens is increasing more than the younger generation, which will be the working-age population needed to support them,” a city official said. [Korea Times]
It looks like North Korea has its very own Amazon like online shopping service now with likely few people to use it:
Online shopping has arrived in North Korea, though it is as isolated from the rest of the world as the country itself, and the vast majority of North Koreans lack the technology to use it.
The website Okryu, aimed primarily at smartphone users, offers products from North Korean companies including women’s clothing, bags, shoes, medicine, cosmetics, furniture and food. Payment, in local currency only, is taken from the main North Korean debit card system.
To keep it all hermetically sealed, the site works not on the World Wide Web but on North Korea’s own intranet, a self-contained version of the Internet set up and maintained strictly for domestic use.
North Koreans call it the “domestic web” and it’s been around for years, but not used very much, largely because very few North Koreans have personal-use computers that can go online at all.
Smartphone use, however, is growing, and Okryu’s presence suggests that the government does not consider the technology to be a threat to the country’s rigid social order. (…………..)
Okryu is managed by the General Bureau of Public Service, a government organization that oversees shops, restaurants and producers of consumer goods. Bureau official Jong Sol Hwa recently confirmed the online shopping site, announced with much pride by state media last month, is up and running.
It is impossible to say how popular the new site is or if the average North Korean shopper is even aware of it. The site’s managers have not announced statistics about page views, unique users or sales volume. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Patriots and Veterans Affairs Minister Park Sung-choon (R) and Korea Military Academy chief Yang Jong-soo applaud after the school unveiled a statue for Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun at the academy in Seoul’s Nowon Ward on May 1, 2015. in honor of Ahn. The independence fighter under the Japanese colonial rule of Korea was executed at a prison in China by Japanese authorities after being arrested in 1909 for assassinating Ito Hirobumi, the Japanese resident-general in Korea, at a railway station in Harbin, a city in China’s Heilongjiang Province. (Yonhap)
Richard Sung Kang’s American dream shattered along with his liquor store’s window during the Baltimore riots earlier this week.
The 49-year-old Korean immigrant saw his liquor store and bar, the Oxford Tavern, wrecked by a group of violent rioters following the funeral of Freddie Gray, who died of a spinal injury he apparently received while in police custody. Despite Sung closing the front door, the looters smashed the window and plundered the establishment. Even the store’s ATM was torn out, leaving a gaping hole in the exterior wall of the building.
“This is America. I wanted to follow my dream and wanted to make something for myself,” Kang told the Associated Press. He added that it was only his first year of owning the business and was unsure of reopening the store, as it could mean taking on more debt and paying higher insurance premiums.
“The most important thing is, I have to move on,” Kang said as his locksmiths worked on his doors. “But is it better to rebuild and start again or give up and find some other place? I don’t know.” [KoreAm Journal]
You can read the rest at the link, but according to the article 200 small businesses were unable to open after the riots with 40 Korean-American owned businesses among them. If many of these businesses do not re-open than that will just further cause economic problems in area already economically depressed in the first place.
The Korea Times has an update on the Lone Star issue which has been quiet for about three years, but is now ready to move towards arbitration:
V.V. Veeder, a British national, has been appointed as the presiding arbitrator for a 5-trillion-won international litigation between the Korean government and Lone Star Funds, sources said Tuesday.
He was one of the three arbitrators who ruled in favor of the U.S. buyout firm in 2011 in its dispute with a Korean government owned company.
According to industry sources, Veeder will arbitrate Lone Star’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) case against the government, whose first hearing will be held on May 15 at the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes in Washington D.C.
In most cases, investment tribunals are composed of three arbitrators; one is appointed by the investor, one by the state, and the third is usually chosen in agreement between the parties. The presiding arbitrator holds the casting vote when the other two fail to agree.
The Dallas-based firm filed an ISDS suit in 2012 for 5.13 trillion won ($4.7 billion), arguing that the Korean government had caused it serious financial damage by delaying its approval for the firm to sell the Korea Exchange Bank from 2007 to 2012. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but basically the crime Lone Star made was that it made too much money in Korea and then tried to take its profits outside of the country. Their sale of the Korea Exchange Bank led to large protests which caused the government to try and stop the sale any way it can.
It seems to me that this “Silk Road” initiative is an attempt by the Chinese to put infrastructure in place in neighboring countries so that they become more dependent on Chinese trade and thus can be more easily controlled by Beijing:
China has told North Korea that its ambitious Silk Road project aimed at reviving the ancient trade route between Asia and Europe would bring a “historic” opportunity to advance bilateral cooperation between the two nations.
The Chinese ambassador to North Korea, Li Jinjun, made the remarks at a meeting with the North’s Vice Foreign Minister Ri Gil-song on Monday, the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang said in a statement.
It was the second time in less than two weeks that the Chinese ambassador publicly briefed North Korea on Beijing’s Silk Road project.
With a US$40 billion fund, China has aggressively pushed for the so-called “One Belt, One Road” initiative aimed at building ports, expressways, railways and other infrastructure with its neighboring countries.
“China is pushing ahead with the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative that will bring new and historic opportunities for bilateral and regional cooperation,” the Chinese ambassador was quoted as telling the North Korean official.
On April 23, the Chinese ambassador met North Korea’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Ri Ryong-nam, and expressed hope for the North to join the Silk Road project. [Yonhap]
