The Moon administration as expected is moving forward with attempting to tarnish former Prosecutor General Yoon Seok-youl before the upcoming Presidential election:

A state anti-corruption investigative agency will question a senior prosecutor this week as a witness for its probe into Yoon Seok-youl, a former prosecutor general and one of the leading presidential hopefuls, over abuse of power allegations, sources said Sunday, three months after the probe began.

The Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) will call in Lim Eun-jeong, a prosecutor in charge of inspection affairs at the Ministry of Justice, Wednesday for questioning into allegations Yoon abused his power as a prosecutor general to interfere with an investigation by prosecutors on a high-profile criminal case involving former Prime Minister Han Myeong-sook.

Yoon was booked in June for allegedly hindering the probe to protect the prosecutors accused of forcing prison inmates to make false testimonies against Han in 2011 and helping them evade indictment.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but this is clearly an attempt to tarnish Yoon before the Presidential election and payback for going after a Korean left favorite, Han Myeong-sook who was the first female Prime Minister of Korea. She was jailed for bribery which the left claims was politically motivated.

This is kind of basic medicine to make sure doses of vaccines are not expired which these people screwed up:

Over 100 people were given Pfizer vaccines that had passed their recommended usage dates at a general hospital in Gyeonggi Province last week, health officials said Sunday.

Pyeongtaek St. Mary’s Hospital in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers south of Seoul, gave Pfizer vaccines to a total of 104 people on Thursday and Friday that exceeded their expiration date of Wednesday, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said. 

The latest incident comes after one hospital in Seoul and another in the southeastern city of Ulsan gave Pfizer vaccine doses nearing their expiration dates or exceeding them to over 230 people last week.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but hopefully these people are not physically harmed by this.

Here is some gender wage gap information from the ROK government:

Male workers in listed firms in South Korea earned 1.6 times higher wages than their female colleagues last year, a government survey showed Thursday.

Men were paid an average 79.8 million won (US$68,800) in 2020, while their women counterparts received 51.1 million won, according to the study on 2,149 listed firms by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family.

The gender wage gap, referring to the rate of men’s average pay to that of women, reached 35.9 percent last year, far higher than 12.8 percent, the latest average of the Organization for the Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) released by British weekly The Economist, according to the ministry.

It is the first time the South Korean government had unveiled the average earnings by gender in local listed firms.

Yonhap

So why is the ROK government revealing this for the first time? Could it be because of the ROK presidential election within a year where the ruling party can claim only they can save women from gender discrimination?

Anyway if people are wondering why there is a wage gap here is part of the reason:

The average length of corporate service was 12.2 years for male workers and 8.2 years for female workers last year. The difference in their career length marked 32.6 percent in 2020, down 2.6 percentage points from 35.2 percent tallied the previous year.

The ministry said the wage gap tends to be in line with the disparity in workers’ length of service. It hits 28.7 percent when both genders have worked the same length of time, but the gap hikes to 46.1 percent when men’s length of service is 50 percent longer than that of women’s.

Time in service plays a major role in the gap which makes sense. What the article does not say is what is the difference in hours worked? Are the male workers putting in more overtime than female employees? This could further explain the wage gap as well.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

Nobody does military parades as good as the North Koreans:

Nearly 10,000 troops have been observed at a major airfield in North Korea recently, a possible sign that the communist country is preparing for a military parade to mark major anniversaries, sources said Thursday. 

The troops and military vehicles have been spotted at the Mirim Parade Training Ground in the country’s capital city since a few days earlier, and the South Korean military is closely monitoring related activities, according to government sources.

The Mirim airfield has been a venue for the North to conduct rehearsals for military parades organized to mark important anniversaries, such as the establishment of its communist government that falls on Sept. 9 and the Oct. 10 founding anniversary of the ruling Worker’s Party.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here are the latest changes coming to the ROK military:

The South Korean military will begin to deploy new weapons systems and significantly upgrade its technological capabilities in response to South Korea’s shrinking population and the North’s development of nuclear weapons, including a ballistic missile as destructive as a tactical nuclear weapon, according to the Defense Ministry’s 2022-2026 defense plan which was released Thursday.   
   
It is expected that 315.2 trillion won ($271.8 billion) will be spent achieving the plan, the military’s five-year blueprint for upgrading its arsenal.   
   
A highlight of the plan is a surface-to-surface missile that can carry a 3-ton warhead and fly up to 400 kilometers (248 miles), which is in the final phase of development.  
   
The plan comes after the United States agreed to lift Cold War-era restrictions on South Korean missile technology in May, following a summit between President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Joe Biden.  
   
The plan would also re-organize the armed forces to reflect the rising significance of technology and the military’s declining pool of eligible men to serve.  
   
The Army will be reorganized into a troop-saving unit structure based on high-tech technology, maintaining the current two-fold operational command structure: the Ground Operations Command and the Second Operations Command.  
   
However, with the elimination of the 6th and 8th Army Corps, the number of Army Corps will be reduced from eight to six, while the number of divisions will decrease from 35 to 33.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but if the ROK military is making cuts because of decreases in manpower they could always start conscripting women as well.

By the way does anyone find the Defense Minister visiting a ROK Navy ship in a hazmat suit a bit ridiculous?