The Dongchun Circus performs in downtown Seoul on June 26, 2016, as part of the culture show “I.Carnival. You.” The circus troupe, with a 91-year history, is the only remaining one in the country. (Yonhap)
https://twitter.com/pearswick/status/742515438286868480
It is that time of year again when the Christian groups come out to protest the Korea Queer Culture Festival in Seoul:
Queer Culture Festival image via Wikipedia.A conservative Christian nongovernmental organization protested the 17th Korean Queer Culture Festival to be held today and condemned Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for supporting sexual and gender minority rights in front of Seoul City Hall on Friday.
“Homosexuality out! Park Won-soon out! Ban Ki-moon out!” a pastor from the Jesus Foundation shouted on a stage at Seoul Plaza. “Antidiscrimination law out! Islam out!”
A flier in front of a tent erected by the foundation read, “Homosexuality is a sin that challenges the order God has created!”
The Jesus Foundation has been conducting protests of the annual gay pride parade in front of Seoul City Hall for over 400 days and collecting signatures on a petition to propose an anti-gay marriage bill. The foundation stepped up its demonstration a day before the opening of the biggest festival in the nation to advocate the rights of the so-called LGBTAIQ, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, asexual, intersex and queer, community.
The size of the festival has grown from only 50 people in 2000 to 30,000 in 2015. Some 65,000 are expected to participate in today’s parade, and a police force of about 2,000 will be dispatched to oversee the event.
The event will be held from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at Seoul Plaza. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
As usual these protesters always produce some funny quotes:
The foundation denounced Park and Ban for their active support of gay people. “Homosexuals in Korea enjoy the most privileges in the entire world; they are like VIPs,” Rhim said, despite the fact that gay marriage is still not recognized in Korea.
You can read more at the link, but I wonder what VIP privileges Mr. Rhim is referring to?
It should be interesting to see what comes out of this study from NASA where they are trying to determine how much of the pollution over Seoul is produced domestically compared to what blows in from China:
The cockpit warning blared insistently as the plane spiraled downward to 500 feet above Seoul: “Too low, too low, terrain. Pull up, pull up, pull up.”
The pilots ignored the automated voice despite a nervous glance from a visiting reporter. Their mission was to take the DC-8 as low or as high as the NASA scientists working in the back required.
The flight was part of a six-week joint Korea-U.S. air-quality field study — known as KORUS-AQ — which officially kicked off on April 29. The timing coincided with the so-called yellow dust season that sees fine particulate matter swept into the air from neighboring China’s Gobi Desert. [Stars & Stripes]
You can read more at the above link as well as more about Korea’s yellow dust problem at this link.
This is just an example of why Korean youth have such a hard time finding employment when retirees over 60 with no job training are given jobs they have no skills for:
Seoul Metro, which has been outsourcing maintenance work to reduce costs, pressured subcontractors to hire its own retirees at triple the salary of regular mechanics.
And many were hired to do mechanical work for which they had no training.
The influx of untrained Seoul Metro retirees over the age of 60 resulted in the real mechanics being forced to work alone, as was a teenaged maintenance worker who was killed by an arriving train at Guui Station on May 28.
Internal records of Eunsung PSD, the subcontractor who employed the 19-year-old accident victim, showed that Seoul Metro has been pressuring such subcontractors to hire its retirees. (……..)
“The situation today is no different to and perhaps worse than the social hierarchy of the Joseon Dynasty,” said the Saenuri Party’s floor leader Chung Jin-suk. “How is it possible that a 19-year-old young man receives 1.44 million won while a Seoul Metro retiree rakes in some 4 million won per month?”
The history of so-called revolving door appointments – the finding of cushy jobs for people retiring from government corporations – between Seoul Metro and the subcontractor does not end there. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link.
Some may say this is victim blaming, but I think it is just common sense to not get drunk alone with people you just met in a foreign country you know nothing about, unless of course they used a date rape drug against her which is an entirely different story. With that said lets hope these three guys are vigorously investigated by Korean authorities which have a well established track record of poorly handling sexual assault cases like this:
Three Korean males have been arrested on charges of gang-raping a Swedish tourist they met at a nightclub in Hongdae, Seoul, police said Wednesday.
The men, in their 20s, allegedly asked the woman to go out the club, saying they would “show her Korean nightlife” on May 14, according to investigators.
The tourist and the men drank until the next morning, resulting in the victim becoming very drunk. The men then allegedly took her to a house, where they raped her and photographed her naked body.
The victim complained to the Swedish Embassy, which asked police to investigate the matter.
The three were arrested on May 24 after police viewed surveillance camera recordings and photos of the suspects left on the woman’s mobile phone, according to Mapo Police Station. [Korea Times]
It looks like a New Zealand diplomat and his friends are in some serious trouble from an incident that happened recently in Itaewon:
Police questioned a New Zealand diplomat on Wednesday for allegedly obstructing officers who tried to arrest his friends on suspicion of molesting a female bar worker.
Yongsan Police Station in Seoul said two companions of the diplomat, whose identity remains unknown, allegedly molested a female employee at a bar in Itaewon Tuesday night and assaulted a security guard who tried to take them to police. As police tried to arrest the two, the diplomat allegedly pushed them and kicked the patrol car.
The diplomat and his friends were taken to the police station that night. But the diplomat was freed under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which gives foreign diplomats here immunity from civil or criminal prosecution. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link.
Considering some of the drunken and mentally unstable incidents I have seen happen on the Seoul subways this is a job I have a lot of respect for the people working it:
Wearing stab-proof vests over their uniform shirt, they patrol underground during duty hours. Their mission is to help secure safety of people and keep peace.
Policemen? No, they are Subway Guards helping prevent crimes and incidents and establish order at more than 300 subway stations in Seoul. (……)
Although guards do not have the power to arrest, unlike police officers, most of them are well-trained professionals, each mastering several martial arts.
“I majored in security science. I am a third-degree black belt in Taekwondo and fourth in Hapkido. Many guards here have similar backgrounds,” Han Ji-yong, Lee’s partner, said.
The number of guards for Seoul Metro has increased from 40 in 2011 to 133 this year. According to Seoul Metro’s data, the guards were involved in 53,448 cases of violations in 2015, up 20 percent from three years earlier. The daytime shift workers take on the job from early morning — 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. — and from then come nighttime shifters to work until the last train arrives at 1 a.m. Ten guards work each shift per line.
The work becomes tough when they have to face violent drunken passengers. “They are usually typical patriarchal men in their 50s and 60s,” Lee said. [Korea Herald]
You can read more at the link.
Gender Minister Kang Eun-hee looks at a myriad of Post-it condolence messages on the wall of a subway exit in southern Seoul on May 20, 2016, which citizens voluntarily left to mourn the brutal murder of a 23-year-old woman in an alleged hate crime. The woman was fatally stabbed by a stranger in a bathroom near Gangnam Subway Station on Tuesday, sparking a nationwide outpouring of mourning. (Yonhap)
The dome is an architectural marvel.
Gocheok Sky Dome is the city’s newest indoor baseball stadium. The stadium, based in western Seoul, has a capacity of 16,000 and is home to the Nexen Heroes baseball team. The dome officially opened in 2015 and is the country’s first stadium of its kind containing transparent soundproof panels keeping the noise from the game from disrupting the neighbors. The Gocheok Sky Dome is also used to host concerts and has a swimming pool as well as other sporting facilities at the site. With a fantastic, futuristic exterior and an almost guaranteed super atmosphere inside, Gocheok Sky Dome is certainly worth a visit! [Seoul Flickr Page]
