Alternative headline: 6150 South Korean citizens want to give their money to an enemy regime that enslaves millions of their fellow kinsmen because they want to take selfies at a mountain. https://t.co/dBk6hsUvmg
— John Lee (The Korean Foreigner) (@koreanforeigner) June 14, 2019
President Moon must be thinking he is going to convince President Trump into a “pretend denuclearization” deal when they meet later this month in South Korea:
The international community is “open to discussions on easing economic sanctions on North Korea” with security guarantees from the progress of the denuclearization talks, according to President Moon Jae-in on Friday evening (KST).
“The international community is ready to ease economic sanctions on North Korea and provide firm security guarantees upon the level of progress in the denuclearization talks,” Moon said during his major speech in the Parliament House of Stockholm, Sweden.
Korea Times
People best watch President Trump’s actions more than what he says. He is clearly talking nice about Kim Jong-un in an effort to keep dialogue open while at the same time continuing to enforce sanctions on them to pressure them into a deal:
U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday appeared to downplay North Korea’s recent missile launches amid assessments that they violated international sanctions.
In a phone interview with the Fox News program “Fox & Friends,” Trump said North Korea is “not testing nuclear and not testing anything.”
He said the North sent some short-range missiles out which he said “everybody else does too.”
Regarding alleged sanctions violations by Pyongyang, such as illicit ship-to-ship transfers of oil, Trump said in the interview that “everybody tries to break sanctions” but that the sanctions are hurting North Korea badly and the U.S. “never took the sanctions off.”
Trump continued to note the U.S. has a “good relationship” with the North and that he is in no rush to resume negotiations for a nuclear deal.
KBS World Radio
It appears President Xi blinked on this attempt to further crackdown on Hong Kong’s independence. The people of Hong Kong best remain vigilant because I would not be surprised if this comes up again:
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam delayed indefinitely Saturday a proposed law to allow people to be extradited to mainland China for trial after wide spread anger and large-scale protests in the Asian financial hub.
In one of the most significant climb downs by the government since Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule in 1997, Lam said the city’s legislature would stop all work on the bill. The next steps would be decided after consultations with various parties, she said.
About 1 million people marched through Hong Kong last Sunday to protest the bill, according to organizers of the march. Street demonstrations throughout the week were met with tear gas and rubber bullets from the police, plunging the city into chaos.
The extradition bill, which will cover Hong Kong residents and foreign and Chinese nationals living or travelling in the city, has many concerned it may threaten the rule of law that underpins Hong Kong’s international financial status.
Korea Times
Hopefully forensic investigators can quickly identify who the remains belong to:
South Korean search crews working in the heavily fortified border area found a skeleton believed to be from an American or French soldier killed during the 1950-53 Korean War, the defense ministry said Monday.
Stars & Stripes
The remains were unearthed Wednesday during an excavation project at the former battleground known as Arrowhead Hill, which is in the Demilitarized Zone that has divided the country since the war ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
The area was cleared of land mines in the fall as part of an inter-Korean agreement reached in efforts to improve relations between the two countries in connection with separate nuclear negotiations between Pyongyang and Washington.
You can read more at the link.
HongKongers write on social media re the police using force ag/citizens standing up to China. Some are writing it in Korean to appeal to South Korea. But the #Moon administration & the so-called "democracy activists" who are in power now are eerily silent.https://t.co/nPFm8iHHdo
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) June 14, 2019
The findings from this recent poll are especially troubling when you consider that last year a different poll found that 78% of South Koreans said they trusted Kim Jong-un. It would be interesting though if someone polled these two questions together to the Korean public. However, such polling numbers may seem to make no sense that Koreans would trust the leader of country committed to their destruction over a country that has no hostile intentions towards them, but for anyone that has followed Korea and Japan issues it makes perfect sense:
Three-quarters of Japanese do not trust their South Korean neighbours – and the feeling is mutual, a study has found.
A record 74 per cent of Japanese were now distrustful of South Koreans, found the study by the Yomiuri Shimbunin Japan
and the Hankook Ilbo in Korea. That was more than at any time since the study was first conducted in 1996 and well above last year’s figure of 60 per cent. Meanwhile, 75 per cent of South Koreans
had no trust in the Japanese, down from 79 per cent last year.
Those personal sentiments appeared to mirror a strained diplomatic relationship between the two countries. Some 83 per cent of Japanese respondents thought bilateral relations were bad, up from 63 per cent last year, while 82 per cent of Koreans thought the same, up from 69 per cent last year.
South China Morning Post
You can read much more at the link, but the reasons for the distrust are the usual ones, the Japanese did not apologize enough for World War II and the Japanese say they are tired of apologizing over and over again. Then there is always the Dokdo craziness.
As I have long said there is no reason for the South Korean political left to give up their anti-Japanese stance. It is even hard for the South Korean right to do so, though the prior President Park Geun-hye tried and the current government scrapped the deal she made with Japan. The issue is too great of punching bag for politicians to turn to when they need to deflect attention from domestic issues. How many times have we seen a Korean politician under domestic pressure show up on Dokdo?
This is all why I have long believed that if Japanese Prime Minister Abe was really clever he should apologize for war time sexual slavery once again, but this time in a large public speech to draw maximum media attention. During this speech then announce that Japan to atone for its past sins would become a champion of women’s rights beginning with the plight of modern day sexual slavery of North Korean women in China that both the South Korean and Chinese governments choose to ignore.
North Korean women trafficked in the sex industry in China are the modern day comfort women that the Chinese and South Koreans do nothing to stop. Japan becoming an advocate for these women would expose the current hypocrisy of their critics on this issue.
Such a stance would make it difficult for the political demagogues in South Korean to bring up more demands for apologies when it would reflect negatively on their own current human rights failures. It would no doubt be a bold measure, but I see no other way of ending the current impasse.
What this will lead to is small business owners hiring foreigners instead of Koreans that will ultimately create higher unemployment:
Small business owners want the government to introduce a lower minimum wage for foreign workers in Korea.
At Monday’s public hearing on next year’s minimum wage in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, representatives of employers said “steep” minimum wage hikes over the past two years have pushed many small businesses to the edge and that the government should help them by adopting a “different” wage system for foreign workers.
Song Young-soo, a small business owner in Gwangju, was among participants who reportedlyvoiced the need for a lower minimum wage for foreign employees, who they say show lower labor productivity than Korean workers mainly because of communication problems.
According to a Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business survey early this year, the productivity of an average foreign worker (E-9 visa holder) was 87.5 percent of a Korean worker.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link.
