Tag: South Korea

It looks like more gas stations in Korea are going to become more like their counterparts in the U.S.:

Gas stations are soon to become something very different, as charging units and hydrogen compressors are added across the land. But there’s more, as operators in the business look to diversify and make the outlets more profitable.

They are adding a wide range of goods and services, including maintenance centers, convenience stores, fast food restaurants and even coffee shops. Parcel delivery is also on the list.

Such changes come as gas stations struggle under intense competition. On average, 170 of them are driven out of business annually, forcing the adoption of new strategies to survive.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Found this picture by chance. It seems about right. pic.twitter.com/i2KRRvGZqS

— John Lee (The Korean Foreigner) (@koreanforeigner) July 25, 2019

Weekly Chosun says the current friction btwn ROK and JPN is the one btwn ROK politicians who are incompetent and ideology-oriented and JPN officials who are experts in their work. https://t.co/91QZr4nzGX

— bmk218 (@bmk218) July 24, 2019

The Japanese government is looking for every opportunity now to stick it to the Moon administration:

Anchor: Amid Seoul and Tokyo’s ongoing trade spat over the Abe administration’s export curbs, tensions between the neighboring countries have been further exacerbated after Tokyo renewed its claim over South Korea’s Dokdo islets in the East Sea. South Korea dismissed Japan’s renewed territorial claim over the Dokdo islets, reiterating that the islets are Korean territory historically, geographically and by international law.

Kim Bum-soo has more. 

Report: As a Russian warplane violated South Korean airspace above the easternmost Dokdo islets Tuesday, Tokyo used the opportunity to renew its claim over the East Sea territory.

[Sound bite: Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga (Japanese)] 

“Regarding the airspace invasion by the Russian military aircraft yesterday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, through the Japanese Embassy in Russia, strongly objected the violation and at the same time urged efforts to prevent a recurrence. The government will solve the territorial issue, raise a peace treaty and continue to work persistently under this basic policy.”

Tokyo’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga also said Japan’s Air Self-Defense Force scrambled fighter jets in response.

Seoul, however, finds Tokyo’s response to be preposterous. South Korea’s presidential office refuted Japan’s claim on Wednesday, saying it should confine its concerns to its own air defense identification zone while South Korea responds to matters in its own airspace. The foreign and defense ministries in Seoul also issued statements.

KBS World Radio

You can read more at the link, but it seems it would have been better for Japan to keep quiet on this. The Dokdo issue is one thing that 99% of Koreans seem to agree and Japan’s comments are just causing Koreans to rally around President Moon.

It seems this former ambassador got off pretty light:

South Korea’s former Ambassador to Ethiopia Kim Mun-hwan, 55, was sentenced to jail on Monday for raping an employee of a Ministry of Foreign Affairs agency.

The Supreme Court on Monday confirmed the appellate court’s one-year sentence for the ex-ambassador for abusing his authority.

Kim was indicted in August 2017 on charges of raping a staff member of the Korea International Cooperation Agency at his residence in Ethiopia in 2015. He was also suspected of molesting two embassy officials on two different occasions while serving as ambassador from 2014 to 2017.

The ministry dismissed him from his post in September 2017.

In addition to the jail term, the court sentenced Kim to 40 hours of sex offender treatment. He is also barred from working at institutions related to children or adolescent affairs.

Korea Herald

Once again when are so called patriotic Koreans going to pull a stunt like this at the Chinese embassy to protest their current economic retaliation against South Korea and historical wrong doing against the Korean people?:

Police detained six college students Monday after they staged a demonstration inside the Japanese Consulate in the southeastern port city of Busan in protest of Japan’s trade restrictions on Korea. 

The students were in the consulate’s library, then stormed out to its yard at around 2:30 p.m. They shouted slogans and held banners that read, “We denounce Japan’s re-invasion,” “We condemn economic provocations,” and “Abe must apologize.” 

They were taken to a police station and are being probed on the account of trespassing the premises of a diplomatic mission, the police said. 

The students, who claim to belong to an anti-Japan group based in Busan, individually entered the consulate building earlier through due procedures, according to the police.

At the time of their protest, a coalition of 30 civic groups in the city was holding a joint news conference in front of the consulate’s rear gate to condemn Japan for its export restrictions against South Korea and call for a boycott of Japanese products.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but when are these protesters going to demand the Emperor President Xi of China apologize?

Anyway these activists pull these stunts against Japan because they know they can get away with it. If they tried this against the Chinese embassy they know there would likely be real repercussions. Remember the Chinese embassy once sponsored the assault of Korean citizens in Seoul and got away with it.  

Could you imagine what would happen if the Japanese embassy organized a mob to assault Koreans in Seoul?

The Chun Doo-hwan may have considered cheating in the 1987 election, but there is no evidence they actually did:

Newly declassified US intelligence reports that were originally submitted during South Korea’s 1987 presidential election campaign have confirmed that – as was widely suspected at the time – the military-backed ruling party considered using “black propaganda and dirty tricks” against the opposition, the South China Morning Post reported.

However, “it is unclear to what extent the ruling camp followed through on its plans to cheat in the election,” the newspaper concluded in its weekend report, saying it had obtained the reports through a Freedom of Information Act filing.

As the election turned out, ruling party candidate Roh Tae-woo, who’d been chosen by dictator Chun Doo-hwan, won handily thanks to a split opposition. He drew 37% of the vote as against 28% and 27% for Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, respectively. Each of the two Kims had refused to withdraw in favor of the other.

In the end – this reporter covered it – the election was generally viewed as having been honestly conducted. While dirty tricks would not have surprised anyone at the time, evidence that the former generals had employed them failed to materialize in any major way.Newly declassified US intelligence reports that were originally submitted during South Korea’s 1987 presidential election campaign have confirmed that – as was widely suspected at the time – the military-backed ruling party considered using “black propaganda and dirty tricks” against the opposition, the South China Morning Post reported.

However, “it is unclear to what extent the ruling camp followed through on its plans to cheat in the election,” the newspaper concluded in its weekend report, saying it had obtained the reports through a Freedom of Information Act filing.

As the election turned out, ruling party candidate Roh Tae-woo, who’d been chosen by dictator Chun Doo-hwan, won handily thanks to a split opposition. He drew 37% of the vote as against 28% and 27% for Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, respectively. Each of the two Kims had refused to withdraw in favor of the other.

Asia Times

You can read more at the link.

I would not be surprised if this man had a history of mental problems:

A 78-year-old South Korean man died hours after setting himself ablaze near the Japanese Embassy in Seoul on Friday, police said, at a time of worsening tensions between Seoul and Tokyo.

The man, surnamed Kim, ignited a fire inside his car parked in front of the building where the Embassy is located. The man died later Friday while being treated at a Seoul hospital, police said.

Police said Kim had phoned an acquaintance earlier to say he planned to self-immolate to express his antipathy toward Japan.

Kim’s family told investigators that his father-in-law had been conscripted as a forced laborer when the Korean Peninsula was under Japan’s colonial rule from 1910-45, according to a police statement.

Associated Press

Of course the news media did not bother to fact check if he was in fact a force laborer. Simple math puts this highly in doubt. The article says he is 78 years old, which means that in 1945 when most of the forced labor happened he would have been 4 years old.