Actress Jun Ji-hyun attends an event in Seoul on March 6, 2015, to promote the accessory brand “Rouge & Lounge.” (Yonhap)

This was not a fight Uber was going to be able to win against the powerful taxi lobby in South Korea:

Uber, a taxi-hailing app operator, has suspended its popular ride-sharing service in Korea, succumbing to mounting concerns by Seoul authorities and angry taxi drivers.

The San Francisco-based start-up last week announced it was suspending its UberX budget service that allowed passengers to hail the company’s registered drivers through its smartphone application.

Its premium Uber Black, a limousine service for foreign nationals, senior citizens and handicapped people, will continue operating in accordance with local laws, the company added.

“We stay committed to cooperate to reach a compromise with the city and taxi industry, and look forward to working together to bring regulated options to Seoul,” Uber said Friday in a statement.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

Korean robots of yesteryear @ #TaejonExpo, 1993. Don't miss a truly retro transfomertive moment about 30 seconds in: https://t.co/KQuRWwt2wk

— Aidan Foster-Carter (@fcaidan) March 8, 2015

President Park Geun-hye (R) visits U.S. ambassador Mark Lippert at Severance Hospital in Seoul on March 9, 2015. Park went to the hospital as soon as she came back from a nine-day Middle East tour to encourage Lippert. The U.S. envoy underwent face surgery for 80 stitches last week after an anti-U.S. activist attacked him with a knife at a function in Seoul. (Yonhap)

Interesting article in the Diplomat which discusses what should be the trigger for the ROK to launch a preemptive strike on North Korea’s nuclear program?:

As North Korea continues to develop both nuclear weapons and the missile technology to carry them, pressure on South Korea to take preemptive military action will gradually rise. At some point, North Korea may have so many missiles and warheads that South Korea considers that capability to be an existential threat to its security. This is the greatest long-term risk to security and stability in Korea, arguably more destabilizing than a North Korean collapse. If North Korea does not arrest its nuclear and missile programs at a reasonably small, defensively-minded deterrent, then Southern elites will increasingly see those weapons as threats to Southern survival, not just tools of defense or gangsterish blackmail.  [The Diplomat]

You can read the whole thing at the link, but the author makes an argument that at some point the ROK cannot allow the North Koreans to manufacture a huge stockpile of nuclear arms. Right now they have it is believed 5-10 nukes which is good enough for regime survival purposes, however what happens if they begin developing over 100 nukes?  This would change the military balance of power on the peninsula towards North Korea because the ROK does not have the missile defenses to survive an attack from that many nuclear weapons not to mention the conventional artillery strikes they would launch.

I think the wild card in this is if the Chinese want that many nuclear weapons right on their doorstep or the threat of a war caused by a preemptive strike to stop their nuclear program.

The Philippines would definitely be a much cheaper option than sending kids off to an English speaking country to attend school:

Over the past three years alone, roughly fourteen thousand Koreans have traveled to the Philippines to study the language at private academies for a fraction of the price of classes in many other English-speaking nations.

Kang Tae-won is among a group of 11 students from the city of Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, who are spending their winter vacation at the Widest Asian Learners English School, or WALES, in Baguio, 250-kilometers north of Manila.

On a recent morning, the 17-year old came down from his dorm room into the “English Speaking Zone” where for the rest of the day he practiced conversational English with several Filipino ESL teachers.

Mr. Kang said that after a few weeks of studying here his English has improved. Baguio, he says, “has a good atmosphere for learning English” so that Koreans can get higher test scores.

South Korean families spend billions of dollars a year on private education to prepare their children for standardized tests that are required for entrance into university, study overseas and many white collar jobs. Those include English competency exams like the TOEIC. Some parents believe that total emersion into English speaking countries will give their kids an advantage in taking those tests.

Yoo Moon-young, the owner of the EZ Foreign Language School in Pyeongtaek, brings some of her pupils to Baguio every winter. On average, a high school student’s family pays $5,200 for an all-inclusive, two-month sojourn in a learning environment she describes as “Spartan. Students study, eat and sleep in the school, with supervised excursions out of the academy only on weekends.  [Wall Street Journal-Korea Real Time]

You can read more at the link.

South Korean ambassador shows face to the cameras 3 days after attack http://t.co/k1sfTShXac pic.twitter.com/w7Z8gJ89u3

— NorthKoreaRealTime (@BuckTurgidson79) March 8, 2015

President Park Geun-hye hugs a female noncommissioned officer at a port in Abu Dhabi on March 6, 2015. Park toured the South Korean destroyer Daejoyeong, which is docked at the port as part of its multinational anti-piracy operations. (Yonhap)

You can tell Ambassador Lippert is playing to the crowd while he recovers:

Doctors at Yonsei University Severance Hospital said Sunday that U.S. Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert is recovering fast and may go home as early as Tuesday afternoon.

“Ambassador Lippert feels overwhelmed by the messages of support for him,” the embassy’s minister-counselor for public affairs, Robert W. Ogburn, said during a press conference. “The ambassador said kimchi is helping him recover.”

Dr. Yoon Do-heum, the head of the hospital, said during a media briefing that the 80 stitches Lippert received for a facial injury would be removed today, and the pain in his left wrist was easing.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link such as Ambassador Lippert saying he is reading the “Two Koreas” by Don Oberdorfer while he is recovering.  This book in my opinion is the best modern Korean history 101 book out there.  With that said I would of thought that Lippert would of read this book before becoming Ambassador?  Either that or is he just playing to the crowd again?

Via a reader, this story just makes you wonder who the North Koreans are smuggling gold for or is gold some how being used to get around financial sanctions?  That is the biggest questions that need to be looked at with this story:

Bangladeshi customs officers caught a North Korean diplomat trying to smuggle an estimated $1.4 million worth of gold into the country, a senior official said on Friday.

“We recovered the gold both in the form of bars and ornaments from Son Young Nam, the First Secretary of the North Korean Embassy in Dhaka,” said Moinul Khan, Director General of the Custom Intelligence department, adding the gold weighed about 27 kg (60 pounds) in total.

The diplomat was released after his confessional statement, but Bangladesh is seeking to press charges.

“What he did is beyond diplomatic norms,” Khan told Reuters, adding that a visitor can legally bring up to $1,282 worth of gold into Bangladesh.

Khan said the diplomat had passed through the green channel at Dhaka international airport on a late arriving Singapore Airlines flight from Singapore. Customs officials then asked to scan his hand luggage.

“He told our officials there was nothing to scan,” said Najibur Rahman, chairman of the National Board of Revenue.

“Later we informed our foreign ministry and he was released on Friday under the Vienna Convention,” Najibur told Reuters.

A case has been filed against him with the customs department, Khan said. “We have also initiated the process to file a criminal case against him.”  [Huffington Post]

You can read more at the link.