Has anyone tried this yet?:

Young Koreans are going crazy for KFC’s new fried chicken skins as the so-called bizarre food trend sweeps the country.

At 9: 40 a.m. on Wednesday, the KFC in Gangnam Station, southern Seoul, was full of people waiting to get their hands on the snack. When the store started serving food 20 minutes later, people rushed to line up at the self-service kiosk stands. 

They were rushing to get their hands on the limited-edition fried chicken skin, which are sold for 2,800 won ($2.40) for 12 pieces. 

The salty and greasy fried skins were first offered at KFC restaurants in Indonesia. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

#KoreanHistoryToday: President Syngman Rhee unilaterally releases 27,312 prisoners of war who disavowed communism in 1953. This caused a major disruption in the ongoing armistice talks between the UN forces and the DPRK/PRC pic.twitter.com/EuJT1901fo

— KEI (@KoreaEconInst) June 18, 2019

This statement from Kiron Skinner from the State Department is just bizarre:

Kiron Skinner says the U.S. is fighting a racial war of civilizations pitting the Americans against a non-Caucasian foe in China for the first time.

What about the Pacific War, part of World War II, waged between the U.S. and Japan? So the U.S. State Department’s policy planning director is factually inaccurate. 

Also her being Afro-American may have tinted her lens, putting the situation in a racial perspective. After all it is plausible that the U.S.-China rivalry, now being expressed in a trade war, is a clash of values, not race, as one of my Western friends argues.

On the surface, my friend’s argument may make sense and it looks like Skinner is out of her depth. That is by and large the reaction so far to her remarks at a security forum in Washington in late April, reflecting the “She is wrong but what if she proves right” kind of sentiment. 

Korea Times

How does someone working at the State Department forget about Imperial Japan during World War II? You can make an argument that the U.S. fighting the communist North Koreans and the Chinese during the Korean War was a clash of civilizations.

It is just troubling that this is one of the senior people making policy in the State Department.

Just what South Korea needs Muslim Brotherhood asylum seekers:

Mohamad Sabry came to Korea in July 2016 to seek asylum. In his refugee interview, Sabry told the immigration officer he faced political persecution in Egypt for being an active member of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

The official didn’t write this down.

“My interview was totally fabricated as they wrote that I had said like this in the interview: I confessed what I wrote in the application was false and I came to Korea to work as I had no job in Egypt,” Sabry told reporters at a press conference organized by NANCEN, a refugee support group, at the National Human Rights Commission of Korea office in Seoul, Tuesday.

Sabry is one of the victims of a deliberately rigged interview process against Muslim and Arab asylum seekers by multiple immigration officers under the Ministry of Justice here. 

In Tuesday’s press conference, five asylum seekers ― three of them now refugees ― spoke out about how certain immigration officials discriminated against them and deliberately falsified their interview testimony. The problem first surfaced in 2017, after NANCEN and other NGOs came across multiple cases where testimony given by Arab or Muslim asylum seekers during refugee interviews were deliberately altered by immigration officers who recorded them ― making up pieces and leaving out crucial claims while adding false information that made the applicants look like they came in Korea just to find a job. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

A country that can afford nuclear weapons, ICBMs, and a space program cannot afford to buy rice?:

South Korea will send 50,000 tons of domestically produced rice as humanitarian aid to North Korea through the World Food Programme (WFP), according to the Unification Ministry on Wednesday.

The food aid package, which is believed to be worth around 27 billion won ($22.9 million), follows Seoul’s donation of $8 million won to the WFP and Unicef earlier this month, which is to be used for emergency nutritional and medical assistance for children and pregnant women in the North. 

This will be the first time in nine years for South Korea to send rice to the North and the first time rice harvested from South Korean paddies will be provided to Pyongyang through the WFP. On earlier occasions when Seoul went through the WFP, its aid packages largely consisted of corn, mixed grains or flour. 

“The government hopes that the food it provides through the WFP rapidly makes it into the hands of the North Korean people,” read a Unification Ministry press release. “The timing and amount of any further food aid to North Korea will be decided after the results of this assistance package are monitored.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to see if this rice ends up on the North Korean blackmarket or not.

#MoonJaein nominated Inspector Yoon Seok-ryul, who viciously went after Moon's political opponents, to the post of chief prosecutor. https://t.co/Jgkn1APjBK

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) June 17, 2019

Here we go again with another example in South Korea of a criminal getting away with a sex crime by claiming the victim did not resist enough, and this time it was a 10 year old girl:

Criticism is mounting over a recent high court ruling that commuted a prison term for a child rapist.

The court said the 10-year-old victim’s testimony was insufficient to prove there was “enough threat and physical assault” that made the victim unable to defend herself ― which would constitute a rape charge.

In the June 13 ruling, the Seoul High Court handed down a three-year jail term to the offender, a cram school teacher surnamed Lee, 35. The sentence was reduced drastically from an earlier term of eight years given by a local court.

Lee met the victim through a chatting app in April last year. He brought her to his home and had her drink two glasses of soju to get her drunk. He then sexually assaulted her by holding her hands and pressing against her body so she could not move.

Lee denied the allegations, claiming he did not know that the girl, who was 160 centimeters tall, was 10 years old at the time, and that he had sex with her with her consent. 

Although the local court acknowledged Lee used threats and physical assaults to the point where she was unable to defend herself, the high court did not ― it said the girl’s statement was the only evidence regarding the threat and assault and that it was insufficient.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but this case shows that in South Korea you can get a 10 year old drunk with soju, hold her down, and rape her and not be convicted for forcible rape. At least they up held the statutory rape conviction on him which will keep him in jail for 3 years.

This issue is nothing new ROK Heads may remember the rapist of a U.S. soldier who was set free by this same Seoul High Court because she could not prove that she resisted enough.

It seems to me that having a lower minimum wage for foreign workers will increase unemployment because small business owners will look for foreigners to hire instead of Koreans:

Korea’s opposition party leader has vowed to introduce a “different” minimum wage system for foreign workers.

Hwang Kyo-ahn, chairman of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP), said Wednesday he will press ahead with revising related laws to lighten small business owners’ financial burden. He made the pledge at a meeting with employers in Busan.

Given “the different degrees of their contribution to Korea,” he said, it is “not fair” to set the same minimum wage for Korean and foreign workers.

“Koreans contribute more to the country, for example, by paying more in taxes,” Hwang said. “Our party will revise related laws to improve the situation (for employers).”

His remarks come amid complaints that steep minimum wage hikes over the past two years have pushed many small businesses to the edge.

But Article 6 of the Labor Standards Act stipulates that an employer cannot discriminate against workers on the basis of gender, nationality, religion and social status.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.