I forgot these people were still being held in North Korea because it has been so long. It seems unlikely the ROK will be able to get them back considering how much the Kim regime hates Christian missionaries:
This file photo, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows Kim Jung-wook, a South Korean pastor who has been detained in North Korea since 2013. (Yonhap)
The unification ministry on Sunday urged North Korea to immediately send a South Korean pastor and five other nationals back home, condemning their yearslong detention as “illegal and inhumane.”
The ministry made the appeal in a statement marking 10 years after South Korean pastor Kim Jung-wook was arrested in Pyongyang in 2013 and then sentenced to hard labor for life on charges of spying for South Korea’s spy agency.
In 2014, two other South Korean missionaries, Kim Kuk-gi and Choe Chun-gil, were also detained in the North on charges of committing what the North’s regime called anti-North Korea crimes. Three former North Korean defectors, who had obtained South Korean citizenship, were detained in 2016.
“The government condemns North Korea’s illegal and inhumane measure and strongly calls on North Korea, a signatory to the International Covenants on Human Rights, to immediately send them back to their beloved family members,” Koo Byoung-sam, spokesperson at the ministry, said in the statement.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It will now be harder for anyone in Korea looking to travel to Israel with Korean Air canceling flights to the country:
Korean Air Co. has canceled its flights from Incheon to Tel Aviv this week amid safety concerns over the escalating conflict between Israel and Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, according to company officials Monday.
South Korea’s leading air carrier has canceled all three KE957 flights from Incheon to Tel Aviv, which run regularly on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for the week.
The company, however, has kept in place the returning KE958 flights, which transport passengers from Tel Aviv to Incheon. It plans to decide whether to operate the return flights after reviewing the airport situation in Tel Aviv.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.
According to the article the “gapjil” problem of professors abusing their authority does not really happen in undergraduate classes, but instead in graduate school where students have to work closely with their professors:
Earlier this month, a former professor saw his appeal denied in a lawsuit he filed to overturn the university’s decision to dismiss him. He was fired for sending inappropriate messages to a graduate student — a female foreign national doing a doctorate.
In 2021, the male professor sent sexually suggestive messages to the Ph.D. student, while implying that he would not pass her dissertation if she continued to avoid his advances. In some of the messages disclosed to the media, he described himself as an “emperor” and the victim a “concubine.”
The case appears to be a classic instance of “gapjil,” which refers to a superior’s abuse of power over an individual in a subordinate role, often by harassment or exploitation.
Although it typically occurs in the workplace, gapjil is also common in universities between professors and students.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but the article is recommending more gender equality centers on campus.
Here is the memorial that will be built in Itaewon by the one year anniversary of the crowd crush tragedy:
This image of memorials commemorating the Itaewon crowd crush and its victims is provided by groups representing bereaved families. (Yonhap)
A set of memorials will be installed in commemoration of last year’s deadly crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district on the occasion of the tragedy’s first anniversary next month, bereaved families said Friday.
The crowd crush killed 159 people, many of them women in their 20s, on a narrow, sloped back alley in the nightlife district of Itaewon on Oct. 29 as a massive crowd packed the path amid Halloween festivities.
With the accident’s first anniversary just a month away, groups representing families of the victims said memorials, called “The Path of Memory and Safety,” will be installed along the accident site and unveiled to the public on Oct. 26.
The installation, designed by public art creator Kwon Eun-bi, will comprise a signboard bearing the name of the memorials and three light emitting diode-equipped bulletin boards displaying a description of the crowd crush as well as mourning messages from people and photos.
In commemoration of foreign victims of the tragedy, a mourning message, “All may go well today with all of you who remember that night,” will be inscribed in 14 different languages on the boards.
The memorials will also include two stone sign plates, each to be laid on the ground at the start and the end of the accident alley, to remind visitors of the crowd crush and its victims.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
