It seems like countries that tried the COVID Zero strategy are now the ones experiencing massive outbreaks. New Zealand and Hong Kong, like South Korea were all hailed as COVID success stories and all three have largely given up now on stopping COVID:

Korea reported a record 342,446 new Covid-19 infections on election day, and one in 10 people in the country have contracted the virus.  
   
Wednesday’s count was up 139,726 from the previous day, or 68.9 percent, and crossed the 300,000 mark for the first time. All but 58 cases were locally transmitted, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).  
   
The total caseload now stands at 5,212,118, exceeding 5 million for the first time. That is 10.2 percent of the country’s total population of 51.3 million people.  
   
On Feb. 28, health authorities warned the pandemic would peak at up to 350,000 daily cases around mid-March based on the predictions made by research institutes. After then, the government scrapped the vaccine pass system to get into restaurants, bars and cafes, and the mandatory quarantine of virus patients’ cohabitants. It also relaxed a curfew on businesses by an hour to 11 p.m. Such eased public health measures, along with and more transmissible strain of the virus known as “Stealth Omicron,” led to the sharp rise in infections.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Congratulations to Yoon Suk-yeol on winning an extremely close ROK Presidential election:

Yoon Suk-yeol of the main opposition People Power Party (PPP) was elected as Korea’s next president early Thursday morning, narrowly beating his liberal rival.    
   
Yoon, the first former prosecutor to be elected as president, stressed a message of national unity and cooperation with the opposition in a speech at the National Assembly in Yeouido, western Seoul, shortly after his victory was ascertained.    
   
In Korea’s closest presidential election, frontrunners Yoon and Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) were neck-and-neck in exits polls Wednesday evening, making a victor too close to call nearly all the votes were tallied around 4 a.m. Thursday.  
   
At 4:05 a.m., with 98.15 percent of the ballots counted, Yoon earned 48.59 percent of votes, effectively confirming his victory in the 20th presidential election. Lee received 47.8 percent of votes, just 0.8 percentage points less than Yoon.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but it will now be interesting to see what position Ahn Cheol-soo receives because it is arguable that his coalition with Yoon put him over the top to win the Presidency.

Additionally we will need to wait and see what the reaction from North Korea will be. Considering Yoon’s hardline rhetoric towards North Korea during the campaign it seems the Kim regime is likely to go bigger on whatever provocation they have planned. There has been reports of North Korea preparing for a nuclear test so this could be their response if preparations are complete. If not another ICBM or other missile tests would be a near term way for them to respond to Yoon’s election.

Fortunately Song Young-gil is out of the hospital and back campaigning for Lee Jae-myung, but what a nut job his assailant appears to be:

Video footage captured by a bystander showed the assailant dressed in hanbok (traditional Korean attire) holding a selfie stick in one hand and a black plastic bag in the other, which turned out to be concealing a hammer. The suspect was restrained by people at the scene and arrested on the spot by police.  
   
Song, bleeding from the head, was whisked to the emergency room of Severance Hospital in Sinchon. DP campaign officials later said Song’s skull was partially depressed, but that there was no damage to his brain or tissues, nor were there any signs of brain hemorrhage. The injuries, overall, were non-life-threatening, they confirmed.  
   
The suspect apparently had been following Song on the campaign trail since last month, as seen through videos he uploaded to his own YouTube channel. Witnesses said he shouted, “I am against South Korea-U.S. military exercises,” and “I can’t pass on such a world to young people.”  
   
Videos on his YouTube appeared to be generally in support of DP’s presidential candidate Lee, but a number of uploads were critical of Song. In one video, the suspect urged “anti-nationalist” Song to retire. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

The North Koreans have already restarted their ICBM testing, so it only makes sense that they will restart nuclear testing as well to further pressure the Biden administration and whoever the new incoming Korean President is:

Satellite images show renewed construction activity at the Punggye-ri nuclear test site, almost four years after North Korea demolished most of its facilities at the location before world media in 2018, according to a U.S. think tank on Monday.  
   
The California-based James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies said it analyzed satellite images of North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear test site in North Hamgyong Province and found construction of new buildings and repairs of existing buildings.  
   
The center told Voice of America (VOA) that changes in the site documented through satellite images taken by Maxa Technology on Feb. 18 and March 4 allowed it to determine that renewed construction activity had taken place.  
   
In particular, a vacant lot of land photographed on Feb. 18 had been filled with construction materials by March 4, suggesting the existence of ongoing work at Punggye-ri. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This is a list South Korea and Japan should be proud to be part of:

Russia has designated South Korea as an “unfriendly” nation after Seoul joined international sanctions against Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine, according to local reports Monday. 

The Russian government released a decree that South Korea is included on its list of “unfriendly states” that “have carried out unfriendly actions” against Russia, its nationals or entities, Moscow’s state news agency TASS reported. 

The United States, European Union states, Japan and several other nations that have imposed or joined sanctions against Russia following its attacks on Ukraine were also labeled as unfriendly states subject to restrictions imposed by Moscow.

Yonhap

You can read more at the list.

Here is an update on the COVID situation in Japan which continues to show signs of improvement each week:

The number of new COVID-19 infections in Japan’s capital city on Monday was 4,000 less than a week prior, according to public broadcaster NHK and city data.

Tokyo confirmed another 5,374 people were infected with the coronavirus respiratory disease, 4,258 fewer than Feb. 28. 

Also Monday, the Japanese government lifted emergency measures in 13 prefectures across the country, from Niigata in central Honshu, the largest of Japan’s four main islands, to Kagoshima at the tip of Kyushu, the southernmost of the four, according to a Japan Times report. 

The government also extended to March 21 the emergency in Tokyo and 17 other prefectures, including its neighbors Kanagawa, Chiba and Saitama, thanks to a slow decline in case numbers, according to the Asahi Shimbun on Thursday. The emergency was scheduled to end Sunday.

It means that, among other measures, bars and restaurants are still encouraged to close early and to curtail their alcohol sales.

Japan reported 63,591 new cases Saturday and 184 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. In March, so far, Japan has averaged nearly 67,100 new COVID-19 cases per day.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.