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The deportation of two North Korean defectors by the Moon administration is getting really interesting. Now it is being alleged that they did not murder 16 people and instead it was an accusation made by North Korea that the Moon administration accepted in order to repatriate them:
The Ministry of Unification has raised doubts over murder accusations brought up against two North Korean fishermen who were deported against their will three years ago based on that claim.
Korea Times
A high-ranking official told reporters Thursday that no one other than the judiciary “has the authority to decide whether they are brutal criminals.” The latest move by the ministry is a de facto retraction of the claims it made over the fishermen during the previous Moon Jae-in administration.
Authorities under the Moon administration accused the fishermen of conspiring with a third man to kill their captain and 15 others on a boat before their escape to the South on Nov. 2, 2019. After a three-day investigation, South Korean authorities sent the fishermen back to the North on Nov. 7, claiming that they confessed to the murders.
The high-ranking official said the truth will be uncovered through the prosecution’s ongoing investigation. But he refused to comment further on questions including whether the ministry can disclose information about the 2019 investigation.
The same day, a government official familiar with the matter also questioned the credibility of the murder allegation, claiming that their confessions were factually inconsistent on simple points such as how many people were on the boat and how they killed them. Munhwa Ilbo, a daily newspaper, reported that they were forced to make those confessions through “cruel treatment.”
Citing intelligence reports, the official said the fishermen were executed within several days after being sent back to North Korea.
Rep. Han Ki-ho, head of the ruling People Power Party’s team investigating misconduct involving North Korea during the Moon administration, claimed Wednesday that the murder allegations were an outright lie.
Citing a source living in North Korea’s northeastern city of Kimchaek, Han said the fishermen were brokers who had tried to help 16 people from five households escape to South Korea.
“The two were set to guide the 16 people to South Korea on a fishing vessel, but fled when they realized they were being arrested,” Han said during a meeting at the National Assembly in Seoul.
Han claimed that the North Korean regime fabricated the story and lied to the Moon administration in an attempt to have the fishermen repatriated. He believes South Korean authorities probably knew what really happened, but went ahead with the deportation.
This is not the first time that North has made false accusations of crime against someone to gain what it wants. Rep. Tae Yong-ho, former deputy ambassador of North Korea to Britain, was also falsely accused as a child rapist by the North after defecting to the South in 2016, said Rep. Kweon Seong-dong, the party’s interim head.
“North Korea’s unilateral claims were accepted as fact without verification,” Kweon said during a speech at the Assembly. “The Park Geun-hye administration did not trust such claims by the North. As a result, we have the lawmaker, Tae Yong-ho, at the National Assembly.”
You can read more at the link, but it seems totally foolish to accept the word of the North Koreans on anything relating to defectors. If this allegation is in fact true, I am not sure if anything legally can be done about it, but the people involved in this decision need to be at least publicly brought to light.
It will be interesting to see what the results of this survey are, but expect that it will likely show the majority of the population in South Korea has been infected with COVID:
The results of an on-going large-scale COVID-19 antibody survey, the first of its kind since the outbreak of the pandemic, are expected in early September.
The antibody positivity rate survey, launched last Tuesday, will be conducted on some 10-thousand South Korean citizens over the age of five across 17 cities and provinces nationwide.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, along with the Korean Society of Epidemiology, are currently selecting a demographic group based on age, region and case prevalence that is representative of the nation.
Health authorities hope the survey results will become the stepping stone to a more accurate and scientific COVID-19 policy by finding the scale of “hidden infections” that were excluded from official statistics.
The survey aims to find viral antibodies that were developed through natural infections, not those acquired through vaccinations, which would yield an estimated scale of infections excluded from government statistics.
KBS World News
You can read more at the link.
The fact that the fatality rate is now equivalent to the common flu does not seem to register with the critics that want to bring back stringent COVID protocols to slow the spread of the virus. Considering the sinking approval ratings that the Yoon administration has now, bringing back stringent COVID protocols would sink the administration approval rating even more:
The government decided Wednesday to secure an additional 4,000 hospital beds, as well as increase the number of testing centers and the distribution of self-testing kits amid the resurgence of new COVID-19 infections caused by the fast-spreading BA.5 Omicron subvariant.
Korea Times
Some health experts, however, are urging the government to reintroduce social distancing measures at least to some extent before the infections spiral out of control. The country reported 76,402 new infections for Tuesday, including 429 from overseas, bringing the total caseload to 18,937,971, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). The number of critical cases stood at 96, with 12 new COVID-19-related fatalities.
The authorities predicted that the current wave will reach its peak between mid-August and the end of that month, during which the country may see up to 300,000 new infections per day.
Alarmed by the increasing number of infections, the Central Disease Control Headquarters announced Wednesday that it will set up 70 additional temporary testing centers ― 55 in the Seoul metropolitan area and 15 in other regions ― across the nation and expand the distribution of self-testing kits at convenience stores. It also obligated workers at nursing homes to take PCR tests on a weekly basis.
“If you look at the measures announced by the government so far, you can see that there’s no strategy to reduce the current scale of the spread of the virus,” Eom Joong-sik, an infectious disease expert at Gachon University Gil Medical Center said during an interview with local radio CBS.
“Now that the authorities have decided not to use preemptive distancing measures as a response, the virus will simply spread around freely, considering the increase in the number of people moving around and of person-to-person contact, as well as the vaccination rate and the high transmissibility of the variants,” he warned.
You can read more at the link.
It looks like the Putin regime is looking for some cheap near slave labor to rebuild the areas they destroyed and occupied in Ukraine:
North Korea could send workers to two Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine, according to Russia’s ambassador in Pyongyang – a move that would pose a challenge to international sanctions against the North’s nuclear weapons programme.
According to NK News, a Seoul-based website, ambassador Alexander Matsegora said North Korean workers could help rebuild the war-shattered infrastructure in the self-proclaimed people’s republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. (……..)
He told the Russian newspaper Izvestia in an interview, according to NK News, that “highly qualified and hard-working Korean builders, who are capable of working in the most difficult conditions, could help us restore our social, infrastructure and industrial facilities”.
The Guardian
You can read more at the link, but Russia has a long history of using North Korean near slave laborers which is also a lucrative money making enterprise for the Kim regime.
The Unification Church has definitely been in the headlines recently due to its link to the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe:
The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, better known as the Unification Church, claimed that the church and its members in Japan faced death threats and hate crimes following the assassination of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
Korea Times
The threats were reactions to “abusive” donation practices of the church, founded by self-claimed messiah Moon Sun-myung in 1954 in Seoul.
Tetsuya Yamagami, the suspected gunman in the assassination of Abe during a campaign speech in the city of Nara on July 8, confessed to police that he came to hold a grudge against the former prime minister for his alleged link to the church. Yamagami’s mother reportedly made a huge donation to the Unification Church that forced her into bankruptcy.
In a statement released on Monday, the church’s headquarters in Korea blamed media outlets for what it called “inaccurate and biased” news reports, following a news conference hosted by a group of Japanese lawyers on July 12 that it claims triggered a raft of hostile media coverage against it.
Since then, the church noted that several media reports have been produced solely based on comments from the members of the National Network of Lawyers Against Spiritual Sales of Japan, a group that represents former Unification Church members and their families.
You can read more at the link, but Yamagami’s mother was reported to donated $720,000 of her family’s inheritance to the church and then proceeded to go bankrupt a few years later.
