Tag: Seoul

I wonder if this brothel owner was not making the appropriate bribes to get raided like this:

“Put your clothes on,” shouted a police officer as he entered a small room during an evening raid on a massage parlor set up as a front to conceal a brothel in Gangnam, southern Seoul.

A man and a woman lying down on a single bed tried hastily to cover their naked bodies with a large bath towel.

The man turned his face away from the officer, while the woman bowed her head.

Four other officers entered another seven rooms connected by a network of underground corridors.
Five government human rights officers and a reporter from The Korea Times accompanied the raid conducted by officers from Gangnam Police Station on Nov. 18.

“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer began reading the couple their rights.

The brothel was located in a nondescript, three-story building located in Nonhyeon-dong.

A neon sign was on one corner of the building but it did not specify any of the services available or the activities conducted inside. Outside a man was standing guard with a walkie-talkie in his hand.

When the policemen told him to move aside, he offered little resistance.
A door was then flung open and the policemen ran downstairs.

They reached a lounge where a hidden corridor was discovered after an air conditioner was removed.

The operation was made possible by two undercover officers inside the building who posed as customers and text-messaged reports to colleagues waiting outside.

Although the remaining seven rooms were also occupied, officers struggled to break the locks on the doors. By the time they gained entry, men and women inside the rooms were fully clothed and officers were unable to find physical evidence such as used condoms in the room and had to let them go.

“We just had a chat,” said one man, who was accompanied by a woman.
“I was unlucky,” said the man who was caught in bed with a woman, as he was escorted into an unmarked police van.

Also taken into custody was a blind man who managed the premises, but officers said he was just a front man and not the real owner.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if the local government will send in thugs to chase people out of this shantytown like they have done in the past in other neighborhoods in Seoul to get them redeveloped?:

The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) and Gangnam District Office have agreed to resume a long-stalled project to develop a shanty town in the most affluent district in Seoul, officials said Friday.

Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon and Shin Yeon-hee, head of the district office, will hold a joint press conference next week to announce details of the agreement, an SMG official said.

The SMG and the district office have long been at odds over how to develop Guryong Village, considered the last remaining urban slum in Seoul, and how to compensate the residents.

“The SMG has decided to accept the district office’s demands regarding how to develop the area,” the SMG official said.

The SMG’s change of stance was prompted by a fire in the village on Nov. 10 that left one person dead and destroyed the homes of 136 people. It was the eleventh fire in the village since 2009.

“We understood the urgency for the government to take swift action, since political gridlock means nothing when people die and lose their homes,” the official said.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This is the first time I have ever heard of a woman in Korea coming up on sexual harassment charges:

Park Hyun-jung, president and CEO of the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, is under fire over allegations that she sexually harassed employees, verbally assaulted them and abused her power in hiring and promotion decisions.

Insiders of the Seoul-government funded orchestra say Park tried to touch a male employee’s genital area in October last year by pulling him by his necktie at a public dinner gathering after drinking an excessive amount of alcohol.

“From the look of you, I think you will do well as a (bar) hostess,” she was also quoted as saying to a female employee during a meeting.

A petition filed against her reveals that Park told two other female employees at the meeting that they should serve important guests by sitting next to them and doing the duty of bar girls.  [Korea Observer]

You can read more at the link, but Park has been on the job for almost two years and was the first woman appointed to lead the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra despite having no musical or orchestra experience in the past.

The first snow of the season falls in Gyeongbokgung Palace in downtown Seoul on Dec. 1, 2014. (Yonhap)

The Best Hostels in Seoul (Itaewon) http://t.co/E1xOKtp181 via @Drewbinsky7

— Christine Kaaloa (@grrrltraveler) November 26, 2014

The leading conservative daily in Korea, the Chosun Ilbo is not happy with the announced changes to the Yongsan Garrison relocation plan:

Korea and the U.S. have agreed to keep the Combined Forces Command in Seoul even after the U.S. Forces Korea headquarters moves to Pyeongtaek in 2016. The CFC compound accounts for between eight to nine percent of the total area of the U.S. garrison right in the middle of Seoul.

If the housing compound for American Embassy staff is included, the total area of the base that the U.S. will continue to use rises to 17 percent. A Defense Ministry official claimed relocating the CFC further south would make it “difficult” to establish a smooth command system in conjunction with South Korean top brass in an emergency.

The official claimed that it would cost an additional W400 billion (US$1=W1,058) to relocate the CFC to Pyeongtaek. These are all valid reasons.

But Korea and the U.S. are in the process of building a new military base in Pyeongtaek at a cost of almost W9 trillion. Supporters say the move would help the U.S. military’s capabilities. The CFC was to be among the facilities being relocated, and the budget had taken that into account. Now the military is saying that the CFC should stay in Seoul. That is an absurd reversal.

The government hopes to build a 2.64 million sq.m park at the Yongsan site that rivals New York’s Central Park. The relocation of the U.S. garrison is also a highly symbolic event that signifies the return of land back to the Korean people after being used by foreign armies for around a century.

When Seoul and Washington agreed in 2004 to relocate the Yongsan base to Pyeongtaek, then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it was absurd to have a foreign military base sitting in the middle of a nation’s capital. Seoul agreed to shoulder the entire cost of the relocation because the Korean public agreed with Rumsfeld’s view.

But now, the symbolic significance of the relocation is about to lose its luster although trillions of won in taxpayer’s money have been spent. (Chosun Ilbo)

You can read more at the link, but the Chosun thinks the land should be developed into a park with some land sold to make apartments to offset the cost.

Shown is a picture of the main street in front of the Gwanghwamun, the main gate of the royal Gyeongbok Palace, in Seoul taken in 1900. The picture is displayed at a photo exhibition at the Seoul Museum of History. (Yonhap)

Either someone is really stupid or something was lost in translation with this story:

An Irish school teacher was turned away from a position in South Korea due to the “alcoholism nature of [her] kind”.

Katie Mulrennan, from County Kerry, had applied for a job in the capital Seoul after seeing the role advertised on Craigslist.

However, the 26-year-old received a rejection email telling her that she would not be offered the work because, as the stereotype goes, Irish people are drunks.  [The Independent]

You can read more at the link, but she has since found another job.

A giant yellow rubber duck sitting on Seoul’s Seokchon Lake has captured the hearts and minds of thousands of South Koreans, while carrying the hopes of a local retail giant trying to dampen public fears over a controversial construction project in a posh Seoul neighborhood.

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s rubber duck, weighing seven tons with a concrete anchor and pontoon that supports it, arrived at the Seoul lake last week in time for the opening of Lotte World Mall, a disputed high-rise developed by Lotte.

In addition to its familiarity as a bath time toy and the gigantic size that is hard not to notice, the art installation has garnered public attention for its Lotte affiliation.

Critics charge that the conglomerate invited the public art project to Seokchon Lake, which faces Lotte World Mall, to mitigate public unease over the new shopping complex.

While no clear link has been confirmed, the appearance of sink holes and a fall in the lake’s water level have spurred safety concerns over the development where construction of a 123-story skyscraper is still underway. The lower floors of the complex opened last week.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.