South Korea’s most hated Chaebol family member, Cho Hyun-ah is definitely not going away any time soon as she makes a bid to wrest control of Hanjin Group from her brother:

Cho Hyun-ah, 45, whose family control the Hanjin group that includes flag-carrier Korean Air, made headlines worldwide with her furious reaction when she was served nuts in a bag instead of a plate in first class.

A series of scandals centring on abuse of subordinates rapidly made the Chos the South’s most vilified billionaires.

But now her struggle against brother Cho Won-tae could mark a watershed moment for the family-controlled conglomerates known as chaebols that dominate business in the world’s 12th-largest economy.

She has joined forces with an activist investment fund, Korea Corporate Governance Improvement (KCGI), which says better chaebol management will improve efficiency, employee engagement, and shareholder returns.

Cho Won-tae inherited the chairmanship of the conglomerate’s holding company Hanjin Kal after the siblings’ father Cho Yang-ho — who led the successful bid for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics — died last year.

But “you can’t just run a company because you happen to be a grandson of its founder”, said Lee Seung-hoon, KCGI’s head of global business.

AFP

You can read more at the link, but Cho Hyun-ah also has other family members and Delta Airlines backing her to take over Hanjin Group from her brother. However, she claims she will not take over the President spot and instead install a professional to run the conglomerate.

Not even a global health crisis can stop North Korea from trying to catch a few headlines by launching missiles:

 North Korea on Saturday fired two projectiles presumed to be short-range ballistic missiles toward the East Sea, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, the latest in a series of such launches this month.

They were fired northeastward from areas near its western county of Sonchon in North Pyongan Province at 6:45 a.m. and 6:50 a.m., respectively, the JCS said, adding that they flew around 410 kilometers, reaching a maximum altitude of around 50 km.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

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

I think all of us who closely follow Korea issues have noticed how the foreign press will not report on Moon administration scandals that are very similar and arguably worse than what former President Park Geun-hye was impeached for. This is in stark contrast to the massive interest the foreign press showed during the timeframe prior to the impeachment of President Park.

Well now ROK Drop favorite Professor B.R. Myers shares his opinion on why this is:

1) Since Trump was elected, most Western correspondents feel a moral duty to root openly for whatever main political figure in the host country they consider less Trump-like, who in this case is Moon. The same “mirror imaging” dictates that they root against South Korea’s main opposition party, to which they occasionally apply the label “far right,” although it’s well to the left of our Republicans, and most of its members voted in favor of impeaching Park in 2016.

2) When deciding which local stories merit attention, correspondents (and perhaps their editors) seem to follow the lead of the New York Times’ bilingual correspondent Choe Sang-hun, whose own record of stories over the past 10 or so years parallels the agenda of the once-opposition, now staunchly government-loyal Hankyoreh newspaper he used to write for. The language barrier also forces correspondents to rely on local assistants and interns who, like most young people here, get their news from the Naver portal, which has ties to the Blue House and steers clear of stories riling up the Moon-critical half of the country.

3) Foreign journalists are as reluctant as their local colleagues to annoy Moon’s excitable netizen base, especially since the orchestrated attacks in 2019 on a South Korean journalist for Bloomberg who had referred to his reputation in some quarters as a “spokesman for Pyongyang.” (The chairman of the ruling party denounced her as “a black-haired foreigner” for her “borderline traitorous” article.)

B.R. Myers

You can read much more at the link, but Professor Myers goes on to explain how the foreign media is giving favorable reporting to the Moon administration for how they are handling the coronavirus outbreak despite weeks of problems that Koreans were highly upset about similar to what you seeing going on in the U.S. now. The foreign media is also helping the Moon administration to scapegoat the Shincheonji Church for the coronavirus outbreak problems as well.

It is ironic they are doing this after complaining about Japan putting a quarantine on South Korean travelers when the ROK had the second highest amount of infections behind China:

South Korea will conduct new coronavirus tests on all arrivals from Europe and require them to self-isolate for two weeks as part of ongoing efforts to guard against imported cases of the novel coronavirus, the country’s health authorities said Friday.

The measures, to be effective starting Sunday, are the latest in a series of stepped-up quarantine moves by the country amid growing concerns over a rise in imported virus cases. 

The country will require all returnees from European nations to get tested for the virus, and if a person arrives in South Korea from Europe for a long-term stay, he or she will be required to self-isolate at home for two weeks, even if they test negative for COVID-19, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

If the person has no home in South Korea, they will be sent to an isolation facility, according to Yoon Tae-ho, a senior health ministry official who is in charge of containment measures.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the USFK furlough issue:

U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) said Thursday it has completed sorting out its Korean employees that provide essential duties to be excluded from a potential furlough in case Seoul and Washington fail to work out a defense cost-sharing deal in time.

The USFK has warned that some of its 9,000 Korean workers could be forced to go on unpaid leave starting in April should Seoul and Washington fail to reach a deal on the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) that regulates their sharing of the upkeep of the 28,500-strong USFK on Korean soil.

“The USFK has completed its Partial Furlough Implementation Process analysis for Korean national employees who will be retained to provide life, health, safety and readiness services,” USFK said in a release, adding that it is reviewing the results with the union of the Korean employees.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.