Here is something that any foreigner traveling to Korea should keep in mind, the Korean taxpayer will no longer pay for your COVID-19 treatment if you get sick:
The South Korean government on Sunday decided to push to revise the law to require foreign coronavirus patients to cover the costs of their treatment amid a spike in the number of new infections among foreigners arriving from abroad.
The decision was reached at a pan-governmental COVID-19 meeting of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters, chaired by Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun.
Under the current law, in-hospital care and treatment costs for confirmed patients are covered by the government regardless of nationality.
The health ministry will be in charge of revising regulations to demand treatment costs from foreigners who know they are infected with COVID-19 yet travel to Korea and those who end up confirmed with the coronavirus during their two-week quarantine period upon arrival.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
As I predicted South Korea’s daily coronavirus infection numbers have dropped sharply after being artificially increased due to Russian sailors and returned expats from Iraq testing positive earlier last week:
South Korea’s new coronavirus cases dropped to under 60 on Sunday, a day after the country recorded its highest figure in nearly four months due to a surge in infections among people arriving from abroad.
The country added 58 new cases, including 46 cases from abroad, bringing the total to 14,150, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but I think this what the new normal in Korea is going to look like, of double digit daily coronavirus infections and the occasional cluster infections pushing the number into triple digits. In other words Korea has the virus well under control until a vaccine is developed.
This high number though is kind of an artificial jump in infections due to a number of Russian sailors and returning Korean workers from Iraq testing positive for the virus. I would suspect next week it will go back down again:
Anchor: The number of COVID-19 cases imported to South Korea from overseas surged to a record daily high on Friday. Due to an influx of infections from Iraq and Russia, South Korea added 86 additional imported cases on top of 27 locally-transmitted infections.
Jim Bulley has more.Report: The daily increase of COVID-19 cases in South Korea has topped 100 for the first time in 115 days, according to figures released on Saturday.
Many of the new infections are imported cases among Russian sailors and South Korean workers who returned from Iraq on government-arranged flights.
The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention(KCDC) announced the latest tally, saying that 113 new cases were reported throughout Friday.
The accumulated total stands at 14-thousand-92.
Of the new infections, 86 are imported including 32 Russian sailors and 36 Korean workers airlifted from Iraq. Eighty-one of the imported cases were detected upon arrival.
An imported caseload of 86 is the highest since the first coronavirus patient was confirmed in South Korea on January 20. The previous high in imported cases was 67, recorded on March 29.
Among the 27 new domestic transmissions tallied Friday, Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province each reported eleven cases tied to a church, a facility for the elderly and a military unit in Pocheon.
KBS World Radio
You can read more at the link.
Another Korean journalist is heading to jail and yet the international media doesn’t seem to even care:
Another journalist, Woo Jong-chang (우종창, 63), is jailed in South Korea after being convicted of the “crime” of “libel” for announcing “false information.” On July 17, 2020, Judge Ma Seong-yeong (마성영) (with judges Kim Young-hwan 김영환 and Yoon Jeong-un 윤정운 on the team) of the Seoul Northern District Criminal Court sentenced journalist Woo Jong-chang to eight months in jail for libel and “Violation of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communication Network Utilization and Information Protection” and imprisoned him. When the sentence was announced, a woman sitting in the court yelled out, “Is this a dictatorship? How can this happen?”
Judge Ma Seong-yeong stated, “As a journalist, he did not even go through the process of confirming the minimum facts and forced false information through broadcasting.”
East Asia Research Center
I highly recommend that everyone read the whole article from Dr. Tara O at the link. If what Woo reported on his Youtube channel from a tip he received is true it would be very problematic for the Blue House.
However, could you imagine what would happen to the U.S. news media if every tip they reported on led to them being prosecuted for libel and put in jail?
This is another example of how Korea’s libel laws are used to attack people for political reasons. In this example they were used by the Moon administration to attack a liberal political rival for the Presidency:
Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung will be able to retain his position after the Supreme Court sent his case back to an appeals court, Thursday, which had previously found him guilty of violating the Election Law.
The ruling also cleared the way for Lee to pursue a presidential bid on the ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s (DPK) ticket in 2022.
In a 7-to-5 vote, the court ruled that he had not violated the Election Law.
“The law can’t punish Lee Jae-myung for disseminating false information (at the debate) unless he actively declared the false claim was a fact. Some of Lee statements in the debate were simply made to deny claims made by his opponent and this cannot be seen as a deliberate act to disseminate false information…,” Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su ― who wrote for the majority ― said during the session which was televised on TV and livestreamed on YouTube. (………..)The governor was indicted last December for having his older brother forcibly committed to a psychiatric care facility in 2012. The prosecution also claimed he violated the Election Law by lying about the brother in a nationally televised debate with other election candidates in 2018.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link, but the libel laws were also used to go after his wife as well for posting supposed false information on Twitter. She was previously cleared of the allegations as well. Could you imagine if in the U.S. politicians and their supporters could be charged for libel for giving false information on Twitter and during debates? We would have no politicians left.
Anyway this is just an example of how clever and ruthless the Moon administration was to win the Presidency. ROK Heads may also remember that they got Ban Ki-moon to drop out of the race by using what he called deliberate “fake news” against him. With Ban and Lee out of the race Moon then had a clear path to the Presidency after former President Park’s impeachment.
I think it is safe to say that investigation this will go nowhere:
South Korean prosecutors have begun an investigation into North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister and the North’s military chief on charges of blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong last month, officials said Thursday.
The unprecedented and symbolic probe into Kim Yo-jong, the sister now serving as the first vice department director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, and Army Gen. Pak Jong-chon, chief of the General Staff of the North Korean army, came after a South Korean lawyer filed a criminal complaint against them over the Kaesong office demolition in mid-June.
Seoul-based lawyer Lee Kyung-jae filed the complaint against the North Korean figures with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office on July 8, and the case was assigned to the office’s public investigation division on Monday, according to the officials informed of the case.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
