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.
It seems like there is more and more media articles targeting foreigners in South Korea in regards to the COVID-19 pandemic. There must be an election coming up:
The government said Thursday it will deport foreigners who do not comply with COVID-19 measures despite being suspected or confirmed of having the coronavirus.
Korea Times
The Ministry of Justice has unveiled stronger measures against foreigners who do not follow health authorities’ requests to be tested, treated or quarantined.
“If they refuse to comply with requests by health officials, we will immediately enforce the new rules, including deportation and entry ban,” the ministry said.
If any foreigners cause financial damage by violating the health measures, the ministry said it will continue to seek compensation from them.
You can read more at the link.
I would say that this is what unemployment insurance is for instead of implementing a universal basic income:
Nearly 60 percent of Koreans say they oppose introducing a universal basic income in response to the economic shock of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Korea Times
According to a survey conducted on Friday by Embrain Public, a local pollster, 57.6 percent of those questioned said they were against giving every citizen 1 million won ($830), while 39.8 percent said they were in favor. The rest (2.6 percent) did not respond.
Among supporters of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea, 57.7 percent were in favor of the idea, whereas 81.5 percent of the main opposition United Future Party were against it.
The findings come as politicians across the country discuss the need for support for people whose businesses have been hit hard by COVID-19.
You can read more at the link.
Hopefully this gives people cautious optimism that the worst of the coronavirus spread will be over once the temperatures warm:
The virus that causes Covid-19 may have a temperature sweet spot at which it spreads fastest, a new study has suggested, but experts say people should avoid falling into the trap of thinking it will react to seasonal changes in exactly the same way as other pathogens, like those that cause the common cold or influenza.
The study, by a team from Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, the capital of south China’s Guangdong province, sought to determine how the spread of the new coronavirus might be affected by changes in season and temperature.
Korea Times
Published last month, though yet to be peer-reviewed, the report suggested heat had a significant role to play in how the virus behaves.
“Temperature could significantly change Covid-19 transmission,” it said. “And there might be a best temperature for viral transmission.”
The “virus is highly sensitive to high temperature”, which could prevent it from spreading in warmer countries, while the opposite appeared to be true in colder climes, the study said.
As a result, it suggested that “countries and regions with a lower temperature adopt the strictest control measures”.
You can read more at the link.
This was a Chinese study, so like with any information coming from China be suspicious of its accuracy:
People with type A blood are more likely to catch coronavirus while those with type O seem more resistant, a preliminary study of about 2,000 patients in China showed.
Korea Times
A team of Chinese researchers, led by Wang Xinghuan from the Centre for Evidence-Based and Translational Medicine at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, conducted the study.
They took blood group patterns of patients in Wuhan and Shenzhen and compared them to local healthy populations. They found that blood type A patients showed a higher rate of infection and tended to develop more severe symptoms.
In the general population, type O blood (34 percent) is more common than type A (32 percent). But in the infected, this was reversed, with type O people at 25 percent and type A at 41 percent. People with type O blood made up 25 percent of deaths in the research. Normally, people with type O blood account for 32 percent Wuhan’s population.
You can read more at the link.
I am surprised this did not happen sooner:
The U.S. Embassy in Seoul said Wednesday that it will suspend all routine visa services from Thursday for an unspecified period of time in keeping with the State Department’s measures to respond to the new coronavirus outbreak.
The embassy said in a statement that it “will cancel all routine immigrant and nonimmigrant visa appointments” starting Thursday. However, this will not affect the existing visa waiver program, and services to U.S. citizens will continue.
The visa waiver enables Korean nationals to travel to the United States for tourism or business purposes for 90 days or less without obtaining a visa.
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link.
