This just shows how touchy of an issue real estate is in Korea; that mostly this one issue has caused the ruling party to quickly slide in public polling:
081401-Poll-Graph
For the first time since the 2016 political scandal that led to President Park Geun-hye’s removal from office, the approval rating of the United Future Party (UFP) overtook that of President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party (DP), a poll showed Thursday.
Joong Ang Ilbo
According to a Realmeter poll conducted earlier this week, 36.5 percent of respondents said they support the UFP, up by 1.9 percentage points from the previous week. That figure was the highest since the party was rebranded in February.
In the same survey conducted from Monday through Wednesday on 1,507 adults nationwide, the DP’s approval rate was 33.4 percent, down by 1.7 percentage points.
It was the first time the UFP outstripped the DP in Realmeter’s weekly approval rating poll since October 2016.
You can read more at the link, but the Korean public is upset about the government’s efforts to manipulate the real estate market while many government officials to include President Moon are being accused of hypocrisy and benefitting from real estate speculation.
This is not a good look for doctors to be going on strike during a pandemic, but they are at least going to keep the ICU’s staffed with personnel:
Doctors working at vital departments, including intensive care units, will continue to be on normal duty on Friday despite the strike. Last week, trainee doctors at hospitals also launched a one-day walkout.
As of Thursday, 8,365, or 24.7 percent of 33,836 clinics across the nation, reported they will close their doors on Friday, according to the health ministry.
“It will take some time to estimate how many hospitals will join the strike, as some of them may also be closing for the vacation season,” a ministry official said.
South Korea’s medical law stipulates that the minister, or related regional governors, can issue an order for hospitals to open if “a serious hazard occurs or is likely to occur to public health.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but this strike has to do with the Moon administration trying to increase the quota on how many doctors can be trained each year to try and better staff rural areas. However, the doctors are saying there are plenty of doctors, the problem is most of them want to live in the Seoul area for better hospitals and quality of life.
This seems like an almost impossible task for Korean families members trying to find out what happened to their relatives that were conscripted to work on Sakhalin Island during World War II:
Historians say Japan forcibly mobilized around 30,000 Koreans as workers during the late 1930s and 1940s on what was then called Karafuto, or the Japanese-occupied southern half of Sakhalin, near the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.
They endured grueling labor in coal mines and logging and construction sites as part of Imperial Japan’s wartime economy, which became heavily dependent on conscripted Korean labor when Japanese men were sent to war fronts.
Families thought their loved ones would return when Japan’s surrender in WWII cemented the Soviet Union’s full control over Sakhalin.
Soviet authorities repatriated thousands of Japanese nationals from Sakhalin. But they refused to send back the Koreans, who had become stateless after the war, apparently to meet labor shortages in the island’s coal mines and elsewhere.
Moscow’s attitude hardened further after Communist ally North Korea invaded South Korea in June 1950; most of the Korean laborers in Sakhalin had come from the South.
South Korea and Russia established diplomatic relations in 1990 and about 4,000 Koreans have returned from Sakhalin since. But people like Shin who lost track of their relatives long before then have seen little progress.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but there are descendants from these Korean forced laborers that still live on Sakhalin Island that organizations sponsor to visit Korea.
Just another example that the freedoms that the people in Hong Kong once enjoyed are over:
Right before China retook control of Hong Kong in 1997, tycoon Jimmy Lai started Apple Daily in part to promote democracy in the city. For 25 years, the newspaper survived advertising boycotts and political pressure but never backed off its tough coverage of the Chinese government and pro-Beijing lawmakers.
It might not last through the summer. Hong Kong police arrested Lai and several of his top executives on Monday and sent hundreds of officers to search the Apple Daily offices, a demonstration of the broad potential for the new national security law to silence criticism and dissent beyond pro-democracy protests and activism.
Passed in June, the legislation bars “crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces” as interpreted by the Chinese government and enforced by Beijing’s new security office in Hong Kong. Lai’s arrest wasn’t entirely unexpected, but it still shook the foundations of press freedom in the financial center and raised fears about what might come next.
His arrest under the security law was part of an investigation into an online activist group that received more than $129,000 (HK$1 million) funding from overseas bank accounts, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday, citing unidentified people.
Agnes Chow, a prominent activist and founding member of the-now dissolved pro-democracy Demosisto party, also was arrested for on suspicion of breaching the security law, Cable TV reported Monday night.
Bloomberg
You can read more at the link, but if the CCP was smart they would just arrest these people for violating “libel laws” like the Moon administration in South Korea does. This sounds better than arresting people for violating national security laws. These arrests show they don’t care what international community thinks and just want to publicly show the people in Hong Kong that the way things were before are over.
This has the potential to turn into a much larger outbreak if these people were not wearing masks and social distancing while infected:
At least 11 employees at a local fast-food franchise have tested positive for the new coronavirus, officials said Wednesday, raising concerns over a possibly bigger outbreak.
Ten employees of Lotteria were found to have had a meetiing at the franchise restaurant near Gunja subway station in the eastern Seoul ward of Gwangjin between 3:18 and 5:25 p.m. on Aug. 6, according to health authorities and the Seoul city government.
They later visited two other restaurants in the area, with nine more people joining them.
An employee who lives in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, first tested positive on Tuesday, and three others, all Seoul residents, also tested positive on the same day.
Additional infections were reported on Wednesday, bringing the number of cases to 11 as of 6 p.m.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Here is a non-Korea stupid soldier story for everyone:
A 19-year-old American soldier who is accused of trying to steal a taxi at Munich International Airport was thwarted by the car’s transmission, German police said.
The soldier, a member of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment based at Vilseck in Bavaria, was supposed to be flying back to the U.S. from Munich International Airport last week, regiment spokesman Maj. John Ambelang said.
Instead, he is accused of trying to take a Mercedes taxi for a spin after seeing the keys in the ignition and no one in the driver’s seat, said the Munich airport police, who are investigating the incident.
The soldier is also accused of assaulting the 50-year-old cab driver when he tried to stop him from taking the car, the police statement said.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link, but what an idiot. I will never understand what goes through people’s mind to think that while waiting for an airplane it is a good idea to go and steal a taxi cab?
I can only imagine what the call to the commander and first sergeant was like being told about this stupidity.
