The KBO and ESPN have finally struck a deal to air Korean baseball games, however neither side is disclosing what the financial terms of this arrangement are:

The U.S. sports cable giant ESPN will broadcast South Korean baseball games to its American audience, starting with the first day of the season on Tuesday.

The Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) announced Monday that ESPN has struck a deal with Eclat, the Korean company with international distribution rights to KBO games. ESPN will air one game per day and six games per week, with an opening day game between the Samsung Lions and the NC Dinos leading things off. The game is set to begin at 2 p.m. Tuesday Korean time, or 1 a.m. Tuesday Eastern Standard Time (EST).

The KBO said ESPN will also offer KBO highlights.

In its own press release, ESPN said it will become “the exclusive English-language home” for live KBO games, and the deal covers the postseason and the Korean Series, the best-of-seven championship final here. Games will mostly air on ESPN2 and on the ESPN APP.

ESPN will announce its game selections on a week-to-week basis. It added that its play-by-play voices, analysts and reporters will provide commentary in English, remotely, from their home studios. The group will include Karl Ravech, Jon Sciambi, Eduardo Perez, Jessica Mendoza and Kyle Peterson.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see how American fans take to watching Korean baseball. It is too bad the stadiums will not have fans because it would be interesting to get American reactions to Korean baseball fans.

Here is a long, but interesting read from Australia’s Daily Telegraph about a leaked document supposedly prepared by western governments about the possibility of the coronavirus being unintentionally released from the Wuhan lab:

China deliberately suppressed or destroyed evidence of the coronavirus outbreak in an “assault on international transparency’’ that cost tens of thousands of lives, according to a dossier prepared by concerned Western governments on the COVID-19 contagion.

The 15-page research document, obtained by The Saturday Telegraph, lays the foundation for the case of negligence being mounted against China.

It states that to the “endangerment of other countries” the Chinese government covered-up news of the virus by silencing or “disappearing” doctors who spoke out, destroying evidence of it in laboratories and refusing to provide live samples to international scientists who were working on a vaccine.

Daily Telegraph

You can read more at the link, but even though there is no direct evidence yet that it was unintentionally released from the lab, there is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing that way laid out in the article. Unfortunately it appears that circumstantial evidence is only relevant depending on ones politics.

Another step towards normalcy in South Korea:

The government has decided to further loosen its guidelines on social distancing, beginning Wednesday, amid clear signs of a slowdown in the number of new COVID-19 infections here, Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said Sunday.

Under its “Distancing in daily life” plan, the government will allow the phased reopening of facilities that have been shut down amid the coronavirus outbreak, Chung said. 

The government will also allow meetings and events to be held as long as participants abide by some basic quarantine guidelines. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The ROK government plans to stimulate the economy by giving additional money to pensioners and those on disability:

The government began offering emergency disaster relief funds to some 2.8 million households, Monday, as part of efforts to minimize the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic by boosting consumption, according to the Ministry of Interior and Safety.

Eligible households include those living off the government’s livelihood support, the basic pension or disability programs.

Those households can receive cash payouts up to 1 million won ($816) without going through a separate application process.

The amount depends on the number of family members ― 400,000 won for single-person households, 600,000 won for two-member households, 800,000 won for three-member households and 1 million won for households with four or more family members.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

A positive from the North Korean perspective that has come out of Kim Jong-un’s extended time out of the spotlight was that these recently elected defector lawmakers have been greatly discredited:

The ruling party on Monday urged two North Korean defectors-turned-lawmakers-elect of the conservative opposition parties to stay away from the National Assembly committees that handle top-secret security information.  
   
Rep. Kim Boo-kyum of the Democratic Party (DP) made the request to Thae Yong-ho, elected as a lawmaker in last month’s general elections for the main opposition United Future Party (UFP), and Ji Seong-ho, a proportional lawmaker-elect of the satellite Future Korea Party (FKP) affiliated with UFP.  
   
Thae and Ji are the first North Korean defectors to be elected to the National Assembly by South Korean voters.   

“You must never again mix your wishful thinking with false information and spread it to the media,” Kim said in a Facebook message, criticizing Thae and Ji for claiming that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was in a critical health condition.    

As the young dictator of the reclusive communist state conspicuously remained out of the public eye for nearly three weeks, Thae and Ji fueled media speculation by saying Kim was gravely ill. Ji even claimed that he was “99 percent certain” that Kim was dead and predicted that the North would formally announce his death in the coming weekend. Thae also said Kim “could not stand up by himself or walk properly.”   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This month South Korean children will be heading back to school as early as May 13th:

South Korea on Monday announced plans to reopen schools starting next week, more than two months after schools were closed in a precautionary measure against the new coronavirus that has infected more than 10,000 here.

“Starting on May 20, which is two weeks after key holidays in May, we will push to (reopen schools) in a phased and sequential process,” Education Minister Yoo Eun-hae said at a press briefing.

Under the plan, high school seniors will return to school on May 13, while other grades will return to school gradually in the following weeks.

Students in grade 2 of high school, grade 3 of middle school and grades 1 and 2 in elementary schools will return on May 20, while those in grade 1 of high school, grade 2 of middle school and grades 3 and 4 in elementary schools will go back on May 27. Students in grade 1 of middle school and grades 5 and 6 in elementary school will return on June 1.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.