Tag: South Korea

Below is a well made Youtube video that goes into the history of Samsung.

I did not realize that Samsung was founded as a truck company in Daegu by Lee Byung-chul who was chummy with the Imperial Japanese. He eventually moved his business down to Masan which was the main port the Japanese were using to export out of Korea.

After the colonial occupation Lee would go on to become friends with President Rhee Syngman and business continued to grow. Then during the Korean War business continued to thrive as he had contracts to move U.S. supplies and equipment with his trucks. After the war is when Samsung grew dramatically as it expanded into building construction and other industries to where today it is Korea’s flagship global business conglomerate.

As it turns out Emperor President Xi will not visit South Korea on this way to Japan for the G20 summit:

Chinese President Xi Jinping won’t visit South Korea on the occasion of the upcoming G-20 summit in Japan, a government official here said Friday.
“President Xi is not coming to South Korea” just before or after his trip to Osaka for the June 28-29 G-20 session, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The confirmation came amid multiple news reports here that Xi is expected to travel to South Korea on his way to Osaka or after travelling there.
A Cheong Wa Dae official indicated that President Moon Jae-in instead has a plan to sit down with Xi on the sidelines of the G-20.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

A trip to Jeju that a man took to visit his daughter at his ex-wife’s house did not go very well:

Police have arrested a woman who allegedly murdered her ex-husband on Jeju Island and mutilated his body before discarding it in at least three locations across the nation. 

Ko Yoo-jung, 36, was apprehended at her house last Saturday in Chungju, North Chungcheong Province. 

The victim, surnamed Kang, 36, was meeting Ko on Jeju to see their six-year-old son for the first time in two years since she took custody after their divorce. Kang’s family reported him missing after he didn’t return.

Ko traveled to Wando from Jeju on a ferry three days after the alleged murder. She was caught on surveillance camera footage throwing a plastic bag into the ocean during her trip. 

She had purchased 30 trash bags and a suitcase from a supermarket about two hours before she left Jeju. 

Police suspected that she threw away a similar plastic bag near her father’s house in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province. She returned to her house on May 31. 

Korea Times

US: “It can only range Seoul, so what do we care?”
SK: “Missiles? What missiles? In the interest of inter-Korean comity, we prefer to see them as ‘projectiles for peace’ instead.” https://t.co/GY4dKpFeNy

— 🇰🇷Edward Oh🇺🇸 (@EdwardHBOh) May 22, 2019

This incident definitely does not put female police officers in a good light:

The government’s move to increase the number of female police officers has been called into question, after a short video of a female officer struggling to contain a violent drunk went viral. 

Frustrated by her “inability,” a petition was posted on the presidential office’s website, calling for an end to the recruitment of female law enforcement officers.

The Moon Jae-in administration aims to increase the proportion of women on the police force to 15 percent by 2022.

“We don’t need a police officer that requests help from citizens when they are making an arrest,” the petitioner said. “There should not be sexual discrimination, but there is a physical difference. The female officers should take the same physical tests as men or be placed in a safer and more comfortable position.”

The video which was posted Friday, shows one policeman and a policewoman confronted by two drunken men, but as the conversation heats up, one of the drunks slaps the male officer. The man was immediately knocked to the ground by the policeman but the female officer failed to restrain the other man, who even tried to push the male officer off his friend.

The policewoman radioed for back up as soon as the male officer was assaulted, which raised criticisms that the officer was unable to control the situation.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I don’t think this is necessarily a female criticism issue, but really more about putting the most effective officers on a patrol like this. The officer is question was clearly not very effective at handling this situation.

This editorial in the North Korean state controlled newspaper is clearly intended to send a message to the Moon administration to violate international sanctions:

Pyongyang’s state media on Sunday condemned the South for citing humanitarian reasons for its plans to provide food aid to the North, saying Seoul is “playing with empty words” rather than attempting to tackle “fundamental issues” in their relationship. 

The editorial from Arirang Meari – a state-run outlet in Pyongyang that mainly covers inter-Korean issues – criticized the South for being “entangled with an external environment” and putting off the implementation of their joint declarations from earlier summits. Calling the South’s references to humanitarianism “empty words” and “showing off,” the piece went on say that making a “big deal out of a few counts of humanitarian cooperation projects” was an “insult to public opinion and an act lacking respect and ethics.

“[The South] must not make a mockery out of the historic inter-Korean joint declaration with a trivial counts of goods trading or human exchanges,” the essay continued. “If [South Korea] is truly interested in improving inter-Korean relations as a primary party to national issues, it must boldly divorce itself from a policy of foreign dependence and fulfill its duty to the people by actively sticking by the inter-Korean declarations.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but the Kim regime is trying to push the Moon administration to unilaterally restart joint projects such as the Kaesong Industrial Park that would violate international sanctions.

I had thought that maybe the Korean woman rescued by French commandoes was a missionary, but it appears she was simply an around the world traveler. I just don’t understand why people would put themselves and more importantly others sent to rescue them in danger needlessly like this:

The South Korean woman who was rescued from a hostage situation in western Africa had traveled to Mali, a country that the Seoul government has advised nationals to either not go to or to leave, before she was kidnapped, a foreign ministry official said Monday. 
The Korean woman in her 40s was freed in an operation led by the French military in Burkina Faso last week after near monthlong captivity by an apparent Islamic militant group. She was safely transported to Paris on Saturday (Paris time) and arrangements are being made for her return to South Korea at an early date. 
A foreign ministry official said the victim had been traveling to conflict-prone nations in the African region as part of a round-the-world trip that began about 18 months ago. 
She had visited Morocco, Senegal and Mali before arriving in Burkina Faso. She was said to be on her way to Benin when she was taken hostage, the official said. 
“Objectively speaking, it is true that the victim passed through fairly dangerous areas,” the ministry official said. 
Under South Korea’s four-level travel warning system, Mali and northern Burkina Faso have been designated “red alert,” meaning South Koreans are advised not to go or to leave such places, largely due to political unrest.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This must have been quite a bad work environment to win a settlement from the Army:

An African-American civilian hospital employee “reached a significant settlement agreement” with the Army in late April after a lawsuit filed last year alleging that she was subjected to a racist and sexist command climate while working in South Korea.
Shawlawn Beckford, who served on active duty for 11 years before returning in 2006 as a civilian, had accused the Army of supporting a hostile work environment at Brian Allgood Army Community Hospital at Yongsan, where she was an administrator from 2009 to 2015.
“As a civilian employee it is my duty to represent and uphold the Army’s mission, vision, and leadership philosophy — in or out of uniform,” Beckford said in a May 1 statement from the office of her attorney, Kellogg Hansen in Washington, D.C. “But I am more than a position. I am a person with feelings and emotions, and I was mistreated in a system that failed to protect me.”
Reached for comment by Army Times, Beckford requested to keep the dollar amount of the settlement private.

Army Times

This is something I have seen before, people thinking it is okay to use racial slurs if they are of the race the slur is intended for:

“On a weekly basis during that time period, [the command sergeant major] would visit Ms. Beckford’s office and make belligerent, gendered comments toward her,” according to the lawsuit. “For example, he told her, ‘You’re a single parent. You’re a slut.’ ”
He also made comments about her race, the complaint said, calling her “just a house [N-word],” “dumb [N-word],” “our token Black person” and “ghetto.” (…….)

The 15-6 investigation found that though he used racial slurs in the office, it wasn’t in a discriminatory manner, because he himself is black. Still, he was relieved of his position and barred from leading a command again, according to the complaint, but stayed working within the office and continued to harass Beckford.

You can read more about the poor work environment at the link, but the hospital at Yongsan Garrison seems to have had some highly unprofessional people working there.