Here is the latest on the development of the Yongsan Park:
The idea of creating Yongsan Park became official in 2005 after the Roh Moo-hyun administration and the U.S. agreed to relocate troops there to Pyeongtaek.
Korea Times
In 2007, the National Assembly passed a special act on the creation of the park and the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport began allocating resources for it.
No one expected the relocation would take so long.
One reason for the delay was that government had to find money to finance the Yongsan Relocation Plan ― which it was supposed to pay for. Occasional provocations from North Korea were also a factor that influenced the project.
Now, the former U.S. site is more than 90 percent empty.
The land ministry projects the park will be opened in 2027, but many, including the Ministry of National Defense responsible for the site return negotiations, are cautious, only saying it will largely depend on the talks which are expected to hit a stumbling block over the issue of soil contamination.
The land ministry has got many things done so far.
In 2012, it selected a team of architects and urban planners to design the park ― the final version of the plan was made public last week and can be found at park.go.kr.
The ministry is also carrying out aggressive public awareness campaigns about the park.
In 2018, the ministry began offering tours of the garrison, inviting a limited number of residents to see the historic buildings and sites.
On Aug. 1, the ministry is opening up the 50,000 square meters of land that used to be a residential compound for U.S. military officers and their families. The land was returned to Korea in 1986 but instead of opening up to the public immediately, the government built new houses and rented them to USFK personnel until the end of last year.
You can read more at the link, but how many people think all of Yongsan Garrison will be turned into a park? I also wonder if the historic Imperial Japanese era buildings will be torn down as well.
It doesn’t matter if he had COVID-19 or not, the Kim regime is clearly using him for domestic propaganda to discourage defectors by claiming South Korea is filled with people running around with coronavirus:
Last week, a 24-year-old defector returned to North Korea the way he left in 2017, authorities say, but with a coronavirus pandemic raging in the background this time, his illicit trip drew far more attention.
South Korea has identified the man only by his surname, Kim, and said he was the “runaway” who North Korea accuses of illegally crossing their shared border last week with symptoms of COVID-19.
Facing a sexual assault investigation, Kim evaded high-tech South Korean border control systems by crawling through a drain pipe and swimming across the Han River to the North on July 19, the South Korean military has said. He appears to have spent several days there before being caught.
South Korean military chief Park Han-ki told parliament on Tuesday that Kim, who is 163 cm (5.35 ft) tall and weighs 54 kg (119 lb), cut his way through barbed wire fences installed at the end of the pipe leading to the river.
A Seoul official told Reuters that Kim is believed to have taken a similar path when he defected to the South in 2017, and authorities say he scoped out the area earlier in July, apparently in preparation.
Kim’s story as a defector begins and, so far, ends in the city of Kaesong, a North Korean border town that hosted a now-shuttered inter-Korean factory park and liaison office.
When that industrial project was shut down amid rising tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme in 2016, the economic shock prompted Kim to try his luck in the South in 2017, he said in a YouTube video filmed with a fellow defector in South Korea in June.
Reuters
You can read more at the link, but this defector had $16k in debt he piled up and the job he was pursuing dried up because the pandemic. It is kind of ironic he left Kaesong for economic reasons to end up in a financial straits in South Korea as well. The real reason though he defected appears to be the fact an arrest warrant was issued for a sexual assault he is accused of committing. Hopefully someone tells Kim Jong-un to make sure they keep this guy on the other side of the border this time because he clearly is a scumbag.
This is a very North Korean thing to do while the US and the ROK held a ceremony in commemoration of the Korean War armistice:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un handed out commemorative pistols, while the U.S.-led United Nations Command reaffirmed its commitment to seeking a “lasting peace” on the Korean Peninsula as the rival nations Monday marked the 67th anniversary of the end of the Korean War.
Stars & Stripes
You can read more at the link.
Only in Korea is an ambassador shaving off his mustache major news:
U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Harry Harris has figured out a way to stay cooler in a hot and humid Seoul while keeping his mask on amid the coronavirus pandemic ― go clean-shaven.
Korea Times
Harris is now a mustache-free man after removing his signature facial hair at an old barbershop in central Seoul, a video posted on his Twitter page showed.
In the video clip, the ambassador says he thought he had to do something to “get cooler” during the muggy and hot summer in the host country while at the same time complying with the coronavirus guideline by wearing a mask.
You can read more at the link, but this is only news because the Korean left using racist attacks tried to demonize Ambassador Harris as being a Japanese lackey because of his mustache.
Here is something that any foreigner traveling to Korea should keep in mind, the Korean taxpayer will no longer pay for your COVID-19 treatment if you get sick:
The South Korean government on Sunday decided to push to revise the law to require foreign coronavirus patients to cover the costs of their treatment amid a spike in the number of new infections among foreigners arriving from abroad.
The decision was reached at a pan-governmental COVID-19 meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, chaired by Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun.
Under the current law, in-hospital care and treatment costs for confirmed patients are covered by the government regardless of nationality.
The health ministry will be in charge of revising regulations to demand treatment costs from foreigners who know they are infected with COVID-19 yet travel to Korea and those who end up confirmed with the coronavirus during their two-week quarantine period upon arrival.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
As I predicted South Korea’s daily coronavirus infection numbers have dropped sharply after being artificially increased due to Russian sailors and returned expats from Iraq testing positive earlier last week:
South Korea’s new coronavirus cases dropped to under 60 on Sunday, a day after the country recorded its highest figure in nearly four months due to a surge in infections among people arriving from abroad.
The country added 58 new cases, including 46 cases from abroad, bringing the total to 14,150, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but I think this what the new normal in Korea is going to look like, of double digit daily coronavirus infections and the occasional cluster infections pushing the number into triple digits. In other words Korea has the virus well under control until a vaccine is developed.
