Tag: South Korea

It appears we may be beginning to see the playing of the anti-U.S. card by the Korean left:

Amid deteriorating inter-Korean relations, a South Korea-U.S. working group is taking flak for hampering progress in bilateral ties due to its excessively harsh standards adopted on North Korea. 

Critics say unlike its initial goal of coordinating policy on the North, the group is obsessed with whether Seoul-driven initiatives to engage with Pyongyang violate economic sanctions on the reclusive state, with some even calling for its breakup.

The working group, co-chaired by Lee Do-hoon, special representative for Korean Peninsula Peace and Security Affairs and U.S. Special Envoy for North Korea Stephen Biegun, was set up in November 2018 following three inter-Korean summits earlier that year. 

Upon its establishment, the government had high hopes that it would be in close communication with the U.S. via the organization. But due to Washington’s stern stance that inter-Korean economic cooperation should proceed in step with significant progress in denuclearizing the North, the group has been more focused on whether inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation violate international and U.S. sanctions.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the Moon administration has been holding off on playing the anti-U.S. card because of the efforts of the Trump administration to work out a deal with North Korea. However, no deal to end sanctions was ever reached. The Kim regime has lost patience thinks now is the time to pressure the Moon administration to unilaterally violate sanctions. This is because the Moon administration firmly won the April parliamentary elections and the Trump administration is bogged down with a number of issues.

To unilaterally violate sanctions the Moon administration will need to set conditions to blame the U.S. for the new tensions with North Korea. Sending out the activist groups to blame the South Korea-U.S. Work Group is just the start of this effort.

This is a pretty prestigious recognition for Coupang:

Coupang is No. 2 on the 2020 CNBC Disruptor list.  
   
It is the first Korean company to make it onto the list, which has been published by the U.S. business channel since 2013. Coupang was also the first Korean company to be nominated.  
   
Each year, the broadcaster identifies 50 private companies with breakthroughs influencing business and market competition. All private, independently owned start-up companies founded after Jan. 1, 2005 were eligible to be nominated this year.  
   
Coupang was ranked No. 2 from a total 1,355 nominees selected by the station and a board of advisors.    
   
How the companies reacted to the coronavirus was key in the selection process this year. CNBC gave credit to the retailer’s fast delivery service, and its effort to replenish necessities, such as face masks and hand sanitizers, during the pandemic.    
   
The American broadcaster ranked Coupang high on the list considering its ability to withstand a rush of online orders during the virus outbreak while maintaining its quality delivery service. CNBC complimented the company for freezing the prices of face masks and hand sanitizers to prevent customers from being adversely affected by the disruption in the supply chain caused by the outbreak.    
   
Coupang said in a statement Wednesday that its vast logistics network and infrastructure it aggressively built in recent years may have helped it reach second place. The retailer claims more than 70 percent of the Korean population lives 10 minutes away from its “Rocket Delivery” logistics hubs.    
   
Coupang said it will continue to contribute to the fight against the pandemic. It created around 20,000 jobs in the first quarter in the face of a national unemployment crisis.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This is something that very visible, but at the same time no cost to North Korea to do:

North Korea blew up the inter-Korean joint liaison office in its border town of Kaesong on Tuesday, sharply escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula after near-daily threats to punish Seoul over anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets.

The surprise explosion sparked concern that the communist nation could put other threats against the South into action, including taking military action and moving troops to border regions disarmed under inter-Korean agreements.

South Korea expressed “strong regret” and warned the North not to aggravate the situation.

“The destruction … is an act that breaches the hope of all people wishing for the development of inter-Korean relations and a lasting peace on the Korean Peninsula,” Cheong Wa Dae said in a statement after an emergency meeting of the National Security Council.

“The government makes clear that all responsibility caused by this rests totally with the North Korean side,” he said. “We sternly warn that if North Korea takes steps further aggravating the situation, we will respond strongly to it.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime has no fear that the Blue House “will respond strongly to it” and that is part of the problem. The Kim regime expects a Hans Blix style response.

The Kim regime will likely next occupy all the DMZ outposts they vacated two years ago. This will force the ROK Army to reoccupy their outposts, but they blew them up and would have to rebuild them all. By the way does anyone still think the shots fired last month by North Korea at a ROK DMZ guard post was still unintentional as the Moon administration has been claiming? This is all part of the usual provocation patterns used by the Kim regime for decades to extract the concessions they want from South Korea.

In this case it is to defy international sanctions and move forward with the cross-border projects they want the ROK to fund. It also appears they are using this provocation cycle to build up Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-jong’s standing within the regime since she has been the main spokesperson so far.

North Korea is threatening military action so this is the perfect time to find something the bash the Japanese with to divert attention:

South Korea called in Japan’s top envoy in Seoul and voiced “deep regrets” Monday after Tokyo failed to honor wartime forced labor victims at an information center on industrial revolution sites registered on UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

Second Vice Foreign Minister Lee Tae-ho called in Japanese Ambassador Koji Tomita, hours after the Industrial Heritage Information Center in Tokyo opened to the public following a monthslong closure due to the new coronavirus.

Upon the 2015 World Heritage designation of 23 Meiji-era sites, Tokyo said it would establish the center to remember the victims based on its recognition of “Koreans and others who were brought against their will and forced to work under harsh conditions in the 1940s at some of the sites.”

“It is deeply regrettable that this center runs counter to Japan’s pledge and includes content that completely distorts historical facts,” Kim In-chul, spokesman for the ministry, said in a commentary. 

“Especially, South Korea cannot help but feel concern and disappointment, as we cannot find any effort to commemorate the victims in any exhibitions at the center, though the Japanese government pledged to establish the center as a measure to remember the victims,” it added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but unless you check the Japanese media you would not know that the site does in fact include information about Korean laborers, it just doesn’t feed the narrative of the evil Imperial Japanese slave drivers that one sees in South Korea:

Although the exhibit on the sites, mostly in southwestern Japan and added to the UNESCO list in 2015, include descriptions of Korean labor, it incorporates testimonies from second-generation Korean Japanese residents claiming there was no discriminatory treatment of Korean workers there.

Much of the Korean media’s criticisms were aimed at the display for the Hashima Coal Mine in Nagasaki, known as Gunkanjima (Battleship Island) because of its shape.

Guests can learn about the experiences of former residents. Accounts of Hashima residents include the late second-generation Korean Japanese Fumio Suzuki, who spent his childhood years on the island and said he never heard of Koreans subjected to slave labor.

According to the Chosun Ilbo, a major South Korean daily, the exhibitions deny the reality of forced labor under harsh conditions and threaten to “exacerbate an already fraught” relationship between South Korea and Japan.

The liberal Hankyoreh newspaper likewise reported the exhibits as a “distortion” of history.

The exhibit consists of panels and large screens that illustrate Japan’s rapid industrialization from the middle of the 19th century to the early 20th century.

The display for the Hashima Coal Mine includes digitally archived documents indicating the existence of workers from the Korean Peninsula, who were drafted to the island during World War II, as well as records of a bonus salary paid to a Taiwanese laborer.

Japan Times

You can read more at the link.

It is pretty clear that the Kim regime is just putting pressure on the Moon administration to see how much concessions they can extract out of him:

North Korea’s decision to sever all official communication channels with South Korea is further weighing on President Moon Jae-in, who was already frustrated by Pyongyang’s lack of response to his inter-Korean peace initiative.

Experts advise Seoul to take a “timeout” from repeatedly offering something to engage the Kim Jong-un regime, while bracing for any possible fallout from increasing tension on the Korean Peninsula.

On Tuesday, the North cut off all cross-border communication lines, including the hotline between Moon and Kim, due to its apparent anger over the South’s “failure” to prevent North Korean defectors and activists from sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the border tethered to balloons. In addition, the North said “the work toward the South should thoroughly turn into the one against an enemy.”

At the start of the year, the Moon administration emphasized the importance of inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation. In March, the President offered cross-border healthcare cooperation and made another proposal last month to deal with inter-Korean projects that could be carried out separately from the North’s denuclearization negotiations with the United States. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but what does the Kim regime have to lose by playing hard to get? They know the Moon administration will bend over backwards to accommodate them thus they will keep the pressure on them to maximize concessions.

Besides some schools in the Seoul area the vast majority of South Korea’s schools are now open:

The final batch of students returned to school Monday, completing a three-week phased reopening of schools as Korea steps into the post-Covid-19 age.  
   
Yet even as fifth, sixth and seventh graders finally began their school year after a three-month delay, anxiety loomed in many parts of the Seoul metropolitan area, where several clusters of coronavirus infections have popped up lately.  
   
The Ministry of Education announced that 517 schools remained closed Monday, almost all in Seoul, Incheon or Gyeonggi, due to fear of infections. The closed schools account for about 2.5 percent of 20,902 nationwide schools. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This is going to be the new normal for a while of cluster infections popping up at indoor locations where people work or congregate:

A health product retailer is emerging as a new coronavirus cluster in the Seoul metropolitan area, officials said Friday.

The densely-populated area has been hit by a string of cluster infections originating from call centers, clubs, churches and warehouses.

According to quarantine authorities, the number of COVID-19 cases traced to the health product seller, called Richway, located in Seoul’s southwestern ward of Gwanak, increased by 19 from the previous day to 29 as of Friday noon. Eighteen of the 29 patients are from Seoul, with Gyeonggi, Incheon and South Chungcheong accounting for five, four and two, respectively.

The authorities are concerned, as most of Richway customers are in their 60s and 70s, who are known as the most vulnerable group for the coronavirus.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like this could start another diplomatic back and forth between Korea and Japan when things have been quiet the past few months due to COVID:

 A local court has decided to begin a legal procedure that could lead to liquidating seized assets of a Japanese firm that has ignored a ruling to compensate Korean victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor.

According to the legal representatives for four Korean plaintiffs Wednesday, the Pohang branch of Daegu District Court, in southeastern Korea, decided Monday to take the legal procedure of “delivery of public notice,” where a court ruling is considered to have been delivered to a defendant who fails to respond either purposely or with invalid address.

The decision was made as the Japanese foreign ministry has failed to pass the document containing the Korean court’s asset seizure ruling to Japan’s Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but you know things are getting back to normal with the Koreans and Japanese have time to start bashing each other again.

By the way I wonder if anyone is going to seize any assets from Yoon Mi-hyang who has allegedly swindled millions from the comfort women?