Tag: Moon Jae-in

President Moon To Ask President Trump for North Korean Sanctions Relief During Summit

| April 10, 2019

Is anyone surprised that President Moon is pushing for sanctions relief on behalf of North Korea before any denuclearization happens?:

President Moon Jae-in speaks at the start of a weekly meeting with Cabinet members at Cheong Wa Dae, Tuesday. Yonhap

Moon Jae-in plans to ask the U.S. to ease sanctions on North Korea when he meets President Donald Trump at the White House this week, say unnamed South Korean officials cited by the Korean Times.
The South Korean president is visiting Washington D.C. for a summit on North Korean nuclear diplomacy, where the two leaders are expected to discuss how to achieve the denuclearization of the north and peace on the Korean Peninsula.
“Moon plans to embrace the risk of personal diplomacy by asking Trump to grant reciprocal measures after Seoul and Washington laid out the necessary groundwork via working-level discussions,” a South Korean official told the Korea Times.

Although it remains to be seen which sanctions Moon might ask the U.S. to revoke first, officials said he is likely to focus on those that impact the country’s citizens.
“It’s likely President Moon may raise the lessening of sanctions that affect the lives of the North Korean people,” an official said, according to the Korea Times.

TIME Magazine

The only reason sanctions are impacting the lives of ordinary North Koreans is because the Kim regime allows them too. They have enough money to fund a nuclear weapons and ICBM program, which means they should have enough money to spend on the welfare of their own people if the regime wanted to.

President Moon’s Approval Rating Drops to 41%; the Lowest of His Presidency

| April 7, 2019

I am really not surprised at all by this decline, it was actually very predictable considering his economic and North Korea policies had little chance of ever working:

President Moon Jae-in’s approval rating has hit the lowest level of his presidency while his disapproval rating reached its highest point, according to a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday.

According to the weekly poll, Moon’s approval rating was 41 percent and 49 percent gave negative responses to Moon’s performance. 

Moon’s approval rating, which skyrocketed in his early months of the presidency, has now dropped to the level of the share of votes he won in the presidential election two years ago. Moon has lost additional supporters, mostly moderates, that he had attracted since he first took office.

Moon started his presidency in May 2017 with an over 80 percent approval rating and maintained strong figures throughout his first year. In May 2018, shortly after Moon’s first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his approval rating was 83 percent, according to Gallup Korea.

Joong Ang Ilbo

Keep in mind that President Moon’s approval rating dropped to 41% even though he forcibly took control of most of the major media in South Korea and has been imprisoning opposition journalists.

Tweet of the Day: President Moon’s Comments on Newspapers

| April 7, 2019

Government Investigating Who Put Up Posters Critical of President Moon

| April 2, 2019

This is another example that there is not freedom of speech in South Korea:

In this photo, provided by a reader, a bulletin board at a university in Mokpo, in South Jeolla Province, bears a North-Korean style poster on March 31, 2019. (Yonhap)

 Police said Monday they began a preliminary probe into North Korean-style posters that appeared on walls at several universities nationwide lampooning the current Moon Jae-in government over its key policies. 
The National Police Agency said it is gathering facts on a number of 112 calls made since Saturday with regard to the anti-government posters found hanging on bulletin boards at least 30 colleges in Seoul, Busan, Gangwon, as well as the southern Gyeongsang and Jeolla regions. 
“We will see if the content of the posters carry expressions that can be deemed defamation or contempt,” a NPA official said. 
The 55-by-80 centimeter, two-page poster, entitled “A Letter to South Korean Students,” blasts President Moon Jae-in’s key policies, such as income-led growth, his push to phase out nuclear power and the policy of engagement with North Korea. 
The poster is printed in the unique typeface North Korea often uses in its propaganda and appears intended as ridicule of the government. 
It calls for the overthrow of the liberal Moon administration and ends with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s signature, by his official title as chairman of the DPRK State Affairs Commission. 
The DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. 
The poster, claiming to be written by Jeondaehyup, calls for students to join a massive rally slated for Saturday at a public park near Seoul’s Hyewha Station. 
Jeondaehyup is an abbreviation for the now-disbanded hard-line national student activists’ association that led key democracy movements in the 1980s. The association had been attacked by South Korea’s conservative bloc for its pro-North Korea tendencies.

Yonhap

The Moon administration has been very active squelching freedom of speech in South Korea, but remember that the prior Park administration took legal action against political posters as well. However, a loop hole is to call a political poster a work of art and then it is apparently legal.

President Moon Replaces “Peace Regime” with “Peninsular Regime” In Independence Day Remarks

| March 3, 2019

Notice how President Moon is not using the term “peace regime” like he usually does, he now is saying “peninsular regime”. Is he signaling that he wants his confederation with North Korea without an agreed upon peace treaty between the US and North Korea?:

South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in laid out his vision for a “new Korean Peninsula regime” Friday, calling it a community for peaceful and economic cooperation that breaks with the country’s checkered history of conflict and ideological divide.
Speaking at a ceremony marking the centennial anniversary of the March 1 Independence Movement against Japanese colonial rule, Moon said that the regime will create a peaceful order in the coming century in which “we will take on a leading role.” (…..)

Moon said the new peninsula regime will be a new community of economic cooperation. For this, he said his government will consult with the U.S. on ways to resume stalled tours to Mount Kumgang on the North’s east coast and the operation of the joint industrial complex in the North’s border city of Kaesong.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I recommend reading my prior posting on Moon’s confederation idea with North Korea.

It will be interesting to see what the US reaction would be if Moon decides to unilaterally break sanctions by restarting the tourism project or the Kaesong Industrial Park. Moon is probably under enormous pressure from North Korea now to do something to relieve sanctions since the 2nd Trump-Kim Summit failed to do so.

Why is Representative Sohn Hye-won Not Being Prosecuted for Corruption?

| February 12, 2019

Dr. Tara O has an article published over at the East Asia Research Council that digs into the Sohn Hye-won Real Estate Scandal. ROK Heads may remember that Sohn is the ruling party parliament member who used insider knowledge to benefit financially in real estate transactions in Mokpo.

Figure 1.  Properties in Mokpo bought in the names of Sohn Hye-won’s relatives & associates; 20 properties are shown here, but the number is at least 25 as of 2019-1-19.

Sohn’s supporters ask what is wrong with her buying properties and making a profit?  Buying properties and making profit is normal under free market capitalism. What is wrong, and illegal, is benefiting from privileged insider information, the abuse of authority, and using false names to purchase properties.

1.  Sohn Hye-won is on the National Assembly’s Culture and Tourism Committee (국회 문화체육관광위) as the ruling party’s assistant administrator.  As such, she had access to information about which areas would be designated as “cultural heritage” zones. She also has influence on which areas may receive the designation.  Such a designation usually increases the value of properties in the zone. Using insider knowledge to gain in itself is illegal, but it also is an abuse of her position and authority. (…….)

Using another person’s name to buy property, open a bank account, or otherwise conduct transactions in another person’s name are illegal in South Korea.  It is even worse when a lawmaker breaks the law.

Regarding the property that is in the name of Sohn Hye-won’s nephew (her younger brother’s son), the nephew did not even know there was a property under his name, according to the Kakaotalk chat between him and his mother.  It stated “I invested in a property?  A mere 23 year old conscript in the military?  I don’t know anything about real estate. I supposedly invested in real estate?  Me? It was given to me?” He was serving in the military at that time and only found out when the news broke.

East Asia Research Council

I have always found it interesting how the Moon administration is busy throwing every conservative or even liberal rivals into jail, but for some reason are not going after Sohn.

So what leverage does she have that they are not going after her?

Well Dr. O has found out that Sohn is close friends with Moon Jae-in’s wife Kim Jung-sook since they went to high school together. This close connection led the Moon administration to give the National Medal of the Order of Merit for National Foundation to Sohn’s deceased father in 2017.

Sohn’s father served in the Communist Youth League opposed to the Republic of Korea, but regardless was recognized by President Moon with the medal. This is more than a medal though, recipients and their family members receive a large financial stipend from the government:

This designation not only offers a recognition and national gratitude, but also allows Sohn Yong-woo’s wife to receive 1,518,000 won (~$1,400) per month plus other benefits from the government.  It also provides  1,483,000 won ($1,325) per month and other benefits, such as priority in housing, education, and government jobs, to the family members other than the spouse, which includes Sohn Hye-won and her five siblings plus all of their respective children (Sohn Yong-woo’s children and grandchildren). 

You can read much, much more at the link, but what else I found of interest is that Sohn owns a powerful marketing company. It makes me wonder how involved this marketing company was in creating the many false narratives used to take down former President Park Geun-hye and promote President Moon?