I feel horrible for the rental car employee that discovered this seen:
A photo of the Gyeonggi Gwangju Police Station provided by the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency
Four people have been found dead inside a car in an apparent group suicide in the southern outskirts of Seoul, police said Tuesday.
The four — three men in their 30s and a woman in her 20s — were discovered by a car-rental company employee inside the car parked under an overpass in Gwangju, 32 kilometers south of Seoul, at 5:20 p.m. on Monday.
Inside the car, traces suggesting suicides were found, police said, adding there were no signs of intrusion or foul play. Four wrecked mobile phones presumably belonging to the deceased were also found on the scene.
The car was reportedly leased last Friday but was not returned on time, prompting the employee to track its location.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
As low as Yoon’s approval ratings are at 37%, this is actually up from the 27% he was previously at just a month ago. However, his negative rating is 60% which is driven by economic concerns. The impact of the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. continues to be an issue his critics have been hammering him on since he could not get any concessions from the Biden administration for Korean companies:
President Yoon Suk Yeol’s approval rating stands at 37.5 percent ahead of this week’s first anniversary of his inauguration, a Yonhap News Agency-Yonhap News TV joint survey showed Tuesday.
The survey also showed the ruling People Power Party (PPP) and the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) would win 32 percent and 30 percent of the vote, respectively, if next year’s parliamentary elections were to take place tomorrow.
Seven out of 10 people also said they are worried about South Korea’s security, the survey showed, amid a series of North Korean missile launches, and tensions with Russia over Ukraine and with China over the cross-strait issue.
According to the poll, the positive assessment of Yoon’s performance was 37.5 percent, while the negative assessment came to 60 percent. (……….)
Defense and diplomacy were the factors most cited by respondents in giving positive assessments of Yoon’s performance, followed by science, health care, culture and the economy, the poll showed.
In contrast, the economy was the factor most cited by respondents in giving negative assessments.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
I did not realize there was that many Vietnamese in the southwest Gyeongi-do area to support their own club, much less one trafficking in illegal drugs:
South Korean police on Saturday arrested 10 people for suspected illegal drug use after raiding a foreigners-only club in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province.
According to officials, five police stations across the provincial cities of Siheung, Osan, Hwaseong and Ansan conducted a joint crackdown of a local club located in Jeongwang-dong, Siheung, arresting two Koreans and eight Vietnamese. One of the Koreans was a man in his 40s who owns the club — operated exclusively for Vietnamese — while three of the Vietnamese were club workers.
The police raided the venue after receiving a tip-off that “100 people were doing drugs at a Vietnamese club.” Officials ran drug tests on the 70 people who were at the club and arrested 10 people who tested positive.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
Here is some analysis on what Japanese Prime Minister Kishida’s statement of regret for Korean forced laborers during World War II means:
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Sunday that he felt “strong pain” in his heart when he thought of the suffering of the Korean victims of forced labor during his country’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
In carefully selected words, he expressed sympathy for the Koreans at a press conference in Seoul after his summit with President Yoon Suk Yeol, acknowledging “the extreme difficulty and sorrow that many people had to suffer under the harsh environment in those days.”
Kishida’s remarks suggest both his determination to improve Korea-Japan relations and how far he was willing to go in that effort, given his political climate at home, according to experts, Monday.
“In his famous 2015 address [marking 70 years since Japan’s defeat in World War II], former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his administration would not let their future generations ‘be predestined to apologize’ ― a position from which Kishida is not free. This is why Kishida said he would carry forward the positions on colonial-era history of Japan’s previous cabinets during Yoon’s visit to Japan in March,” Shin Kak-soo, former vice foreign minister and former Korean ambassador to Japan, told The Korea Times. “In that sense, his comment this time is a step forward.”
The former ambassador said that Kishida ― under pressure from both Korea and the conservative wing of his ruling Liberal Democratic Party in Japan, which rejects any form of concession ― appeared to have expressed his stance by sophisticatedly using restrained terms.
“From what I heard, Japan’s foreign ministry opposed the idea [of expressing his sympathy]. That means Kishida made his own political decision,” he added.
Jin Chang-soo, an expert on Japan at the Sejong Institute, a think tank, agreed.
“There is a wide political consensus in Japan that it should stop apologizing to Koreans over historical issues,” Jin said. “Given the situation, I think Kishida’s remarks, though insufficient, helped make progress in rapprochement.”
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but apology fatigue in Japan is a real thing. Additionally the fact that Japan has made apologies and concessions in the past to just have the Korean administration change and rip up prior agreements and make new demands is something President Yoon will have to convince PM Kishida will not happen this time before any larger concessions are made.
I feel horrible for the surviving child that saw his parents and sibling gun down in front of them:
Three members of a Korean American family were among the deceased victims of a weekend shooting spree at an outlet mall in Texas, a South Korean diplomatic mission said Sunday.
The couple in their 30s and their three-year-old son were shot to death in Saturday’s rampage at the mall in Allen, while another child of the couple was injured and is being treated at a hospital, according to the South Korean Consulate in Dallas.
The shooting has left at least eight people dead and seven others injured, according to CNN.
The gunman, identified as 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, was killed by a police officer who was at the mall for an unrelated issue. The motive behind the killings remains unclear.
Yonhap
What I find interesting about his shooting is the media has been focusing on how he is an alleged white supremacist without mentioning the irony of judging by his name he is Hispanic. The focus really should be on is that this guy has long had mental issues. He was kicked out of the Army back in 2008 after only 3 months of service due to mental health issues. So how is a guy too unstable to stay in the Army allowed to buy a gun?
