This is a pretty strong storm with wind speeds at roughly 100 mph; be safe everyone effected by this typhoon:
Typhoon Maysak was barreling toward South Korea on Wednesday, putting the country on high alert over what was forecast to be one of the most powerful typhoons in years.
The typhoon was moving at 19 kph over seas some 190 kilometers south of Seogwipo in Jeju as of 3:00 p.m., according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA). Its maximum wind speed was 45 meters per second.
Maysak was forecast to make landfall between Busan and Geoje at around 1:00 a.m. Thursday before moving northward to the country’s eastern coastal regions. It was then expected to travel to North Korea before downgrading near the North’s eastern city of Chongjin on Thursday night.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It appears even South Korea has anti-maskers though I suspect alcohol is probably more to blame for this confrontation on the subway:
A man in his 50s attacked two passengers who asked him to wear a mask on a line no.2 subway train during morning commute.
The man got angry when he was asked to put on a mask and began slapping the passenger on the face multiple times with his slipper.
Another passenger sitting nearby was also assaulted and verbally abused by the man who attempted to strangle him.
A total of 349 people have been arrested for face mask-related conflicts over the last three months since May 26 when the government applied a “No mask, no ride” policy on all public transportation.
Among them, 164 people were held for assault.
Korea Times
The number of coronavirus cases continues to grow in South Korea, but despite this there have been no new deaths which hardly gets reported:
Months after South Korea successfully flattened its coronavirus curve, the country, yet again at a crossroads in the face of the most daily new infections since early March, is inching closer to adopting the toughest-ever virus infection measures.
South Korea added 441 more COVID-19 cases Thursday, bringing the nation’s total caseload to 18,760, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Thursday’s daily tally marks the largest since March 7 when the country was reeling from a large outbreak in the southeastern city of Daegu and its neighboring North Gyeongsang Province tied to the minor religious sect, Shincheonji.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
In the entire greater Seoul area there is 319 ICU beds for patients with severe COVID and now 300 are filled up:
Health authorities Wednesday vowed to find more hospital beds for seriously ill coronavirus patients as more of Korea’s older population contract the disease, saying there were only 19 such beds left in the greater Seoul area by Tuesday evening.
Joong Ang Ilbo
The promise came as the nation counted 320 new cases of Covid-19 on Tuesday, according to data released Wednesday morning by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC). Monday’s toll was 280 cases.
More than two-thirds of Tuesday’s case load came from the Seoul metropolitan area encompassing Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi, as a cluster from the Sarang Jeil Church in Seongbuk District, central Seoul — a controversial Presbyterian church mostly attended by older conservatives — continues to swell.
Yoon Tae-ho, an official on the Korean central government’s Covid-19 command center, said during a Wednesday press briefing that more people in their 60s or above were contracting the virus lately, which was leading to an uptick of seriously ill patients. The older demographic is generally considered to be at higher risk for getting really sick from the coronavirus.
You can read more at the link, but the claim of running out of beds is slightly misleading. This is because more beds can be allocated, but it will take away from the hospital’s ability to handle other patients for elective procedures. This is an issue that hospitals in the U.S. have had to deal with which can be financially troublesome because elective procedures generally make more money for the hospital compared to COVID patients.
There is no evidence that the European, Middle East, North American strain of the coronavirus is more infectious, but it is interesting how this strain has now become the prevalent form of the virus in South Korea:
South Korea has been detecting more of a mutated strain of the new coronavirus that swept North America, Europe and the Middle East, health authorities said Wednesday, although there is no evidence that the mutation is more infectious.
Based on the type of amino acid of a certain gene, the World Health Organization (WHO) classifies the novel coronavirus into seven strains — S, V, L, G, GH, GR and the rest.
The GH strain, which is most common in North America, Europe and the Middle East, was first found in South Korea in April.
Of a total of 685 patients, the number of patients infected with the GH strain stood at 169 in May, 223 in June, 47 in July and 85 in August, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
The mutated strain accounted for 77.4 percent of the 685 patients, the KCDC said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
What gets me the most about this case is that when the sexual assault allegation occurred the ROK Foreign Ministry relocated the diplomat to the Philippines of all places:
A New Zealand advocate for sexual assault victims has expressed disappointment towards the South Korean foreign minister’s recent apology over sexual abuse allegations against a Korean diplomat in the Oceanian country, according to a news report Tuesday.
A former New Zealand employee at South Korea’s Embassy in Wellington has accused a senior South Korean diplomat of groping his body on three occasions in 2017, a case that has drawn attention after the country’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern raised the issue in last month’s phone talks with President Moon Jae-in.
On Monday, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha in a meeting with senior officials made an apology over the case. According to the minister’s office, Kang stated that the case has been “a diplomatic burden” for the government and apologized “for causing concern to the public.”
Louise Nicholas, a New Zealand advocate for victims of sexual assault, however, expressed frustration with Kang’s apology for it not addressing the victim himself.
“He’s quite distraught over (the apology) and I don’t blame him at all,” Nicholas, who has been supporting the victim, said in an interview with New Zealand broadcaster Newshub.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It appears the spread of the coronavirus in South Korea may be slowing:
South Korea has reported less than 300 new COVID-19 cases for the second consecutive day.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(KCDC) on Tuesday announced 280 cases compiled throughout the previous day, bringing the cumulative total to 17-thousand-945.
The nation registered 266 cases on Monday after the daily tally hovered over 300 for three days in a row, including the five-month high of 397 on Sunday.
KBS World
You can read more at the link.
