This reads like a story you would read on a news satire site, but it is actually happening in South Korea:

Gyms in the capital area may need a new instrument in the fight against COVID-19 — a metronome.

As of Monday, the government has banned gyms in the greater Seoul area from playing music faster than 120 beats per minute (bpm) during group exercises.

That’s to prevent people from breathing heavily and accidentally getting saliva on each other — an extra precaution amid a record-breaking surge in COVID-19 cases in the country.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

No matter what the combined US-ROK exercise is called North Korea is still going to complain about it:

North Korea has resumed its belligerent rhetoric against a combined summertime military exercise between Seoul and Washington, raising questions about whether the Kim Jong-un regime will escalate the situation with a military provocation. 

Uriminzokkiri, a North Korean propaganda website, issued a warning Tuesday to South Korea and the U.S. with regard to the drill expected to be held in August, saying that “war exercises” and peace cannot exist simultaneously. 

“The current instability on the Korean Peninsula is fully attributable to the warmongers among the South Korean military colluding with an outside power, and engaging in reckless, confrontational machinations,” the website commented.

Citing previous exercises including the Combined Command Post Training in March and Seoul’s participation in the cooperative maritime exercise Pacific Vanguard, it alleged “(South Korea) showed its craze for war exercises.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I guess we will see what North Korea decides to do next month.

Both business and the labor unions are unhappy with the rise:

The country’s hourly minimum wage for 2022 has been set at 9,160 won ($7.98), a 5.1 percent increase from the current 8,720 won, which did not satisfy either the union or business sectors. 

Unions expressed anger over President Moon Jae-in’s unfulfilled campaign pledge to hike the minimum wage to 10,000 won per hour during his five-year-term, as this year’s negotiations were the last to be held during his term. 

Representatives from business were equally unsatisfied, as they had been calling for a virtual freeze of the minimum wage considering the problems facing small- and medium-sized enterprises due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Around midnight, Monday, the 27-member Minimum Wage Commission, a trilateral panel composed of nine members each from the union, business and public sectors, voted on the new wage during its final plenary session held at the Government Complex Sejong. 

Only 14 members participated in the vote as all nine members from the business sector and four union representatives left the room in protest against the proposed wage hike. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

If there is actually a bear on the lose I hope it gets far away from the horrible conditions it is being held in based on the pictures of these cages:

It has been a week since two Asian black bears escaped from a breeding farm in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, but authorities are still searching for one of them after the other was killed. 

Earlier on July 6, the owner of a bear breeding farm in Yongin reported to the city government that two three-year-old male bears, weighing 60 kilograms each, disappeared at around 10:30 a.m. Workers from the city’s wild animal control department and the Ministry of Environment conducted a search operation of nearby mountainous areas and killed one of them after finding it near a house about a kilometer from the farm.

But the authorities suspended the search two days later as no trace of the other bear had been found. The city government said it would lure the bear to the farm and attempt to capture it rather than killing it following protests from animal rights groups. It installed three unmanned traps and three thermal imaging cameras near the farm.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but according to the article the owner of the farm may be lying about there being two bears escaped and it could have only been the one that was shot.

The WHO is lending creditability to North Korea that they are in fact free of the coronavirus:

North Korea has conducted coronavirus tests on around 35,000 people so far but found no infections, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday, amid the global spread of the more contagious delta variant.

According to the WHO’s weekly report on COVID-19, 718 North Koreans underwent virus tests from June 25 to July 1, bringing the total number of tested citizens to 32,512, but none were found to have been infected.

Korea Times via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but I guess it is easier to enforce quarantines when you have shoot to kill orders. Fortunately no other government has gone this far to enforce coronavirus restrictions.

It looks like Koreans may see reduced restaurant hours due to the current coronavirus wave:

 Owners of mom-and-pop restaurants and cafes in the greater Seoul area are considering scaling back operating hours for two weeks, as the country went into a semi-lockdown Monday and most people are expected to cancel dinner appointments and stay at home.

The government imposed the most stringent social distancing rules in the area, effective until July 25, since coronavirus cases have been surging to record levels, with a majority of the cases breaking out in the capital and its surrounding region.

Gatherings of three people or more in restaurants and cafes are banned after 6 p.m., and most public and private companies ordered their employees to work from home to bring the rapid spread of the coronavirus under control.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.