When you think about it most of these senior public officials are likely older and have more time to accumulate wealth. $1.3 million in average wealth is not that outrageous, but it does show you can do well in South Korea working in government:

Senior public officials in central and local governments have more than 2 billion won (US$1.3 million) in personal wealth on average, data showed Thursday.

A total of 1,903 senior officials declared an average of 2.09 billion won in personal assets as of end-2024, up about 30 million won from the average figure a year earlier, according to the Government Ethics Committee data.

Of the total, 616 officials, or 32.4 percent, had assets exceeding 2 billion won, followed by 538 with 1 billion won to 2 billion won and 374 with 500 million won to 1 billion won. The rest had less than 500 million won.

President Lee Jae Myung reported 4.97 billion won in assets, up 1.88 billion won from his last disclosure, mostly due to book royalties, his salary and unrealized gains of his exchange-traded fund investment.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Despite the most recent Dokdo nonsense, Korean consumers do not seem to car as they continue to buy Japanese beer:

Driven by younger consumers who focus on what they buy rather than past grievances between Korea and Japan, Korea’s imports of Japanese beer hit an all-time high of 119.2 billion won ($78.94 million) last year. The record surge suggests the 2019 ‘No Japan’ boycott has faded amid a thaw in relations and a sharp rise in tourism. 

The shift is evident at the retail level. When Sapporo Beer opened its first official outlet in Korea in Seongsu, eastern Seoul, last December, the venue was crowded with visitors. Younger consumers willingly paid 9,000 won for a glass — 30 to 60 percent higher than domestic options and nearly twice the price of some Korean beers.

“The foam is soft and the mouthfeel is different,” a woman in her 30s who visited the store with a friend said.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Here we go again with more Dokdo nonsense from Japan:

South Korea urged Japan on Tuesday to correct its territorial claims over Dokdo, Korea’s easternmost islets, in new high school textbooks, after Tokyo announced the list of state-approved publications for next year.

The foreign ministry called in Hirotaka Matsuo, deputy chief of mission at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, to lodge a complaint, expressing deep regret over the description of distorted facts about the islets.

Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology announced the final list of social studies-related textbooks approved for use in high schools starting next year.

Most of the textbooks describe Dokdo, referred to as Takeshima by Japan, as part of Japanese territory.

The textbooks state that Dokdo was placed under Japanese jurisdiction and incorporated into Shimane Prefecture in 1905, describing South Korea’s control of the islets as “illegal.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

As the war with Iran drags on more governments are going to have to implement fuel saving policies like this:

The government will strictly enforce a mandatory five-day vehicle rotation system for the public sector to respond to possible oil supply disruption amid persisting tensions in the Middle East while implementing additional energy-saving measures, the climate ministry said Tuesday. 

Starting Wednesday, the government will beef up monitoring of the public sector’s compliance with the license plate-based rationing system, under which cars are divided into five groups based on the last digit of their license plate numbers and each group is prohibited from driving on a designated weekday, according to the Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment. 

The system has been in place but run loosely. Electric and hydrogen vehicles are exempt from such restrictions.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is going to be interesting to see if over time defectors from this area come down with a higher rate of cancer like what happened to people exposed to radiation at the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombing sites:

A quarter of North Korean defectors from regions near the northeastern Punggye-ri nuclear test site have shown chromosome mutations possibly attributable to exposure to radioactivity, data showed Monday. 

Radioactive exposure tests conducted in 2024 by the Korea Institute of Radiological & Medical Sciences (KIRAMS) on 35 North Korean defectors from eight regions near the Punggye-ri nuclear test site found that 12 of them, or 34 percent, showed chromosome mutations possibly linked to radiation exposure, according to the unification ministry.

The regions include Kilju, Kimchaek and Paekam. Since 2006, the North has conducted all of its six nuclear tests at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, located in Kilju County.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

All the appeasement by President Lee hasn’t matter as Kim Jong-un continues to bash South Korea:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un formally called South Korea the “most hostile state” and warned of merciless consequences if provoked, the North’s state media reported Tuesday.

South Korea “is officially designated as the most hostile nation,” the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) quoted Kim as saying on the second and final day of the first session of the Supreme People’s Assembly. 

Kim said South Korea will pay the price for any provocation if Seoul provokes Pyongyang, according to the KCNA. 

Kim also said his country’s status as a nuclear weapons state will never change, vowing to make efforts to fight “hostile forces” against Pyongyang.

Yonhap

An authoritarian cult of personality like what North Korea has must have a threat to justify its rule. No matter what President Lee does the Kim regime is going to label South Korea as an enemy. The best they can hope for is to be called a puppet regime of their other enemy the United States. Notice though that Kim has been real quiet about bashing Trump. He seems to understand better than many leaders in the West that if you don’t bash Trump he won’t bash you. Pretty simple.