Tag: South Korea

I am sure these Chinese students realize they can beat down Koreans with no consequences like we saw during the Olympic Torch protests back in 2008. Back in 2008 the Chinese Embassy in Seoul actually directed the protests which makes me wonder if they are encouraging the behavior of these Chinese students as well?:

Tensions are escalating on university campuses here between Korean students supporting the pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and Chinese students studying here who oppose them, citing Beijing’s “One China” doctrine.

There is concerns that the conflict could lead to emotional responses by both sides, with some students seriously worrying about physical clashes. School authorities are also paying close attention to the tension as Chinese students account for the largest portion of foreign students at colleges in Korea.

On Wednesday, dozens of Korean and Chinese students at Hanyang University in Seoul scuffled over the setting up of a “Lennon wall” and posting of messages supporting the Hong Kong protests by the former.

Fifty Chinese exchange students and 10 Korean students clashed. The exchange students said the Korean students were “interfering with domestic affairs,” and the Hong Kong protests were “nothing to do with Koreans.” The Koreans refuted this, saying that they had the right to freedom of speech on the issue, according to witnesses.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but can you imagine what the reaction would be if Japanese students did something like this? There would be mass protests and hate directed towards Japan, yet once again you don’t see this happen with China.

The case of the repatriation of two North Koreans that supposedly murdered 16 other fishermen before defecting to the South continues to cause controversy:

In the investigation that followed, the two North Koreans asked to defect to South Korea, but the government eventually chose to repatriate the two sailors. 

They were handed off to the North’s authorities through the Koreas’ land border at Panmunjom on Thursday, while the boat they used was also given back to the North on Friday. 

Given the extraordinary circumstances of the case – unprecedented in inter-Korean history – the decision to expel the sailors continues to be subject to heavy controversy over its legality. 

Lawmakers of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, who were the first to make the issue public before the government announced the expulsion decision, raised doubts as to just how three people were able to murder 16 others on a small boat, which measured only around 15 meters (49 feet) long and weighed 17 tons, and were able to evade North Korea’s own naval surveillance to escape to the South. 

South Korea’s lack of a judicial procedure on the alleged crime also invited protests from civic groups, which cited that the sailors had the right to a trial given that the South Korean Constitution does not recognize North Korea and considers all its residents as citizens of South Korea.

To these questions, the Unification Ministry said South Korea’s regulations governing refugees from North Korea also explicitly forbids Seoul from giving shelter to North Koreans who have committed “serious non-political crimes” which include murder, terrorism or illicit drug trafficking.  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but it seems to me that if these two legitimately admitted to murdering 16 people, are these two really refugees that citizens in the ROK would want to harbor? The question becomes did they legitimately admit to the murders or did the ROK government simply take the word of the North Korean government before handing them over?

Yes it is probably a good idea to plan for a provocation cycle after the New Year because it is does not appear any denuclearization deal is close to being negotiated:

The United States is trying hard to coax North Korea into restarting nuclear talks, as South Korea is also quite “serious” about the year-end deadline set by Pyongyang, a top Cheong Wa Dae official said Sunday.

The North has emphasized that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump should change tack and put forward fresh offers based on a “new calculation method” by the end of this year or face an end to the already troubled dialogue process itself.

Regarding the North’s own deadline, “The South Korean government is also keeping an eye on (relevant situations) quite seriously,” Chung Eui-yong, head of the presidential security office, told reporters. (…….)

South Korea is also coordinating closely with the U.S. so that denuclearization talks can proceed smoothly, getting “various contingency plans” ready for use, he said without elaborating.

The South Korean government’s position is that security conditions on the peninsula should never return to the level before 2017.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but I would not be surprised if the Moon administration’s response to a North Korean provocation would be to unilaterally violate sanctions to pay off the Kim regime and say it is for humanitarian reasons.

I seriously doubt the Moon administration will cut any deal with the Japanese on the forced labor issue because what will the Korean left campaign on in the Parliamentary elections next year? They need this issue as a distractor from the economic woes facing the country and the Cho Kuk corruption mess:

 From creating a fund to compensate victims of Japan’s wartime forced labor to entrusting a civilian panel with addressing the thorny issue, a flurry of proposals are raising cautious hope for a thaw in frosty ties between Seoul and Tokyo.

Diplomatic circles, scholars and media in both countries have put forward the ideas while Seoul and Tokyo have been exploring a diplomatic off-ramp — or at least a path for de-escalation — through a series of high-level or working-level talks in recent months.

“These proposals illustrate the resilience of the Seoul-Tokyo relationship at work, when both countries apparently feel fatigued about their ties having long been on a collision course,” Nam Chang-hee, a professor of international politics at Inha University, said.

This week, Japan’s Kyodo News reported that Seoul and Tokyo are weighing the idea that the government and companies in South Korea, with the participation of Japanese firms, set up a fund under the name of “economic cooperation,” not as compensation for forced labor.

Seoul’s foreign ministry rejected the report as “untrue,” while reiterating its “openness” to searching for a solution “acceptable to the victims and people of both countries.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but what I think is going on is that each side trying to create the appearance that they are the ones that are being reasonable by trying to work towards a solution knowing full well one will not be agreed upon.

This is clearly just more anti-Japanese stir of the pot in South Korea. This commercial makes absolutely no reference to anything in regards to comfort women:

The Japanese clothing retailer Uniqlo has pulled an ad from South Korean TV after it was accused of mocking victims of wartime sexual slavery.

The company said it had stopped airing the 15-second ad after critics pointed out that the Korean-language subtitles appeared to question the testimony of women who said they were forced to work in Japanese military brothels across Asia before and during the second world war. (……)

In the ad, the 97-year-old model Iris Apfel is asked by the 13-year-old designer Kheris Rogers how she dressed when she was her age. Apfel replies: “I can’t remember that far back.” But the version with Korean subtitles gave Apfel’s reply as: “Oh my God, how can I remember what happened more than 80 years ago?”

The Korea Herald said some viewers interpreted the time reference as an attempt to ridicule former sex slaves and forced labourers, whose recollections of abuses have been questioned by rightwing politicians and academics in Japan.

The Guardian

You can read more at the link, but this company is trying to sell clothes to Koreans, do people really think they would make a commercial to ridicule Korean comfort women?

As I have been saying the Korean left in order to help their parliamentary election chances next year, have to keep stirring the pot of anti-Japanese in South Korea. Continue to expect every little thing they can sensationalize or just make up to stir anti-Japanese sentiment to continue.

Well at least this time the Russians did not violate South Korean airspace like they did earlier this past summer:

Six Russian military aircraft violated South Korea’s air defense identification zone on Tuesday, prompting the Air Force to scramble fighter jets to turn them back, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

An A-50 early-warning aircraft, three SU-27 fighter jets and two TU-95 bombers entered the Korean Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ) four times between 9:23 a.m. and 2:44 p.m. without prior notice and stayed in the zone for about four hours in total before leaving at around 3:13 p.m., according to the JCS.

The warplanes breached the KADIZ over waters surrounding the Korean Peninsula, including the country’s easternmost islets of Dokdo and the island of Ulleung in the East Sea; above the southern city of Pohang and the island of Jeju and areas in the Yellow Sea.

But none of the aircraft violated South Korea’s territorial airspace, the JCS said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I will have to check this strip out the next time I am in Gangneung:

More than 30 coffee shops are lined up along the Anmok Beach in the east coast city of Gangneung, 170 kilometers east of Seoul, which played host to skating and other ice events of the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. 

From rooftop terraces to a five-story all-cafe building, most of the coffee houses, which boast ocean panoramas, serve high-end pour-overs freshly brewed by skilled baristas. 

Such large coffee franchises as Starbucks and Caffe Pascucci also have their own berths on the Coffee Street, dubbed a “holy land” for baristas and coffee lovers.

But they are apparently the underdog in the half-kilometer stretch of road selected as a “Star of Korea Tour” and one of the “Top 10 Must-Visit Tourist Spots” by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism and the Korea Tourism Organization.

Initially, the district was home to a strip of instant coffee vending machines in the 1980s. Anmok’s first two cafes opened in 1998, around when South Koreans began paying attention in earnest to hand-drip coffee instead of ready-to-drink soluble products.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but have any ROK Heads visited this strip of coffee shops before?