Tag: Seoul

Fortunately this guy was extremely incompetent in regards to his attempted attack on the US embassy in Seoul:

A Korean-Canadian man has been arrested for a botched Molotov cocktail attack on the U.S. embassy in Seoul, police said Monday.

The man, in his 30s, reportedly told police the attack was to punish the United States, which “has bullied South Korea and me.” He is known to have a mental disorder.

According to Jongno Police Station, which is in charge of the embassy’s external security, the man lit a handmade Molotov cocktail just outside the barbed wire fence encircling the embassy and was about to throw the fire bomb over the fence at 7 p.m. Sunday.

But he accidently dropped the Molotov cocktail into a bag filled with nine other Molotov cocktails, and set them all alight. He threw away the burning bag and fled, but was caught by police who rushed to the scene.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Kim Yo-jong was school in Switzerland so she does know what a free city looks and feels like:

Kim Yo-jong, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister, said Seoul felt familiar even though it was her first-ever visit to the South, at an official dinner Saturday, according to a pool report.

“It doesn’t feel unfamiliar,” she replied when Choi Moon-soon, governor of Gangwon Province, asked her how she felt about Seoul.

Wearing a wine-colored jacket and black pants, Kim attended the dinner held at a hotel in Gangneung, the sub-host city of the Olympics. It was hosted by Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon for North Korea’s high-level delegation.

North Korea’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-nam, Choe Hwi, the chairman of the National Sports Guidance Committee, and Ri Son-gwon, the head of the North’s state agency in charge of inter-Korean affairs, were also in attendance.

Kim Yong-nam celebrated the South’s hosting of the Winter Games.

“As the Olympics were opened successfully with applause from North and South Korea, we believe that the games will pave the way for the two sides’ reconciliation, and stronger inter-Korean ties, and furthermore for Koreans’ unity and unification,” Kim said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but someone should have asked her if the city would have felt more like home if there were forced labor camps and executions?

Not entirely sure about the marketing rationale but here are some presidents eating burgers in Seoul pic.twitter.com/tSu0mCUoTt

— Anna Fifield (@annafifield) February 1, 2018

Meh. I've had much worse and weirder things happen to me on the subway. https://t.co/ol3vOQCaYf

— KingSejong (@KingSejong) January 26, 2018

Considering that the vast majority of the pollution is coming from China I doubt banning cars will make much of difference while highly inconveniencing the public:

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon said Sunday that his government would seek the power to ban vehicles based on license plate number during days with bad air pollution to reduce the number of cars running on city roads.The Seoul Metropolitan Government plans to request an amendment to the enforcement ordinance of the Clean Air Conservation Act that will allow city mayors and provincial governors to issue a directive that bans cars with even- or odd-numbered license plate numbers from operating on certain days with bad pollution.

The request will be sent to the Ministry of Environment, which has the authority to amend the enforcement ordinance.

“The ban will, in effect, be carried out by the local governments of Seoul and surrounding areas,” said Lee Byung-chul, head of the Seoul government’s air quality policy team. “It cannot be carried out by Seoul alone. We have yet to determine the exact system of how we would enforce the ban, such as having checkpoints to stop odd- or even-numbered license plates from entering the capital area, or whether to utilize police and CCTV cameras to enforce the ban.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

A group of civic activists in front of the foreign ministry in Seoul on Dec. 27, 2017, calls for the scrapping of an agreement made between the South Korean and Japanese governments in 2015 over issues surrounding the Japanese military’s sexual enslavement of Korean women during World War II. Earlier in the day, a foreign ministry task force announced the outcomes of its five-month review, concluding that the accord lacked efforts to listen to victims, euphemistically called “comfort women,” before reaching the deal. (Yonhap)

Participants in Santa outfits march in a parade on Seoullo 7017, an overpass that has been redeveloped as a walking path, on Dec. 23, 2017.  [Yonhap]

South Korean Speaker Chung Sye-kyun (R) poses with visiting Filipino boxer and Senator Manny Pacquiao at the National Assembly in Seoul on Dec. 22, 2016. (Yonhap)

A group of Islamic residents and South Korean activists holds a news conference condemning U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in front of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul on Dec. 12, 2017. (Yonhap)

The poster does seem to suggest the model is taking her hanbok off which considering all the sexual harassment cases going on in America, it is probably not a good way to promote your city:

Seoul City has dropped promotional posters after they drew criticism for sexually objectifying women.

The posters were going to be exhibited in New York City’s Times Square and SoHo, among other areas, including 150 bus stations, from Dec. 18 to Jan 14.

“I thought she was undressing,” said Alex Costilhes, an engineer graduate who lives in New York.“The tagline doesn’t help either. The tagline, with the woman pulling on her dress, gives it a sexual connotation. It could be fixed easily with her just not tugging on that ribbon.”

New York resident Paula Martinez said it had not crossed her mind at first that it was a sexualized image. But “the directorial choice to have the model pulling on the ribbon is kind of weird,” she said. “I can definitely see how it might play into the Western fetishization of East Asian women.Like, that being used to draw white men to come to Korea for tourism. I feel like it’s not that overt, though.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.