It is truly amazing how eager the Korean left is to fund North Korea’s military and nuclear weapons program that can be used against them:
Finance Minister Hong Nam-ki said Friday that conditions must be fostered to carry out inter-Korean economic projects and that Seoul will make internal preparations to do so.
Hong spoke to reporters at the International Monetary Fund headquarters in Washington during his visit to the U.S. capital to attend a meeting of the Group of 20 finance ministers and central bank governors.
He said he believes that sanctions on North Korea need to be eased or lifted in order for inter-Korean economic projects to begin in earnest.
You can read more at the link, but the last time the cross border projects were operating the money was not used to better the lives of ordinary citizens, instead the Kim regime made extensive advances in their nuclear and ICBM programs.
What evidence does anyone have that this time will be any different if sanctions are eased and the cross border projects are allowed to restart?
#KimJongUn to regional Party officials & military late-March: "The unification of the fatherland is the greatest task of our ethnic nation, which cannot be delayed any further. The unification of the fatherland shall be completed by 2020 no matter what." https://t.co/vQTlF8sArZ
President Moon’s goal was to get sanctions relief for North Korea and it appears he got President Trump to at least consider some relief in the future:
President Donald Trump’s meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in comes amid uncertainty over whether the leader of North Korea is considering backing out of nuclear negotiations or restarting nuclear and missile tests. Trump, in his first meeting with Moon since the unsuccessful U.S. summit with Kim in Hanoi, said the U.S. wants to keep economic sanctions in place to pressure Kim to denuclearize. But Trump said he retains good relations with Kim and didn’t rule out a third summit or taking steps to ease food or other shortages in the repressive nation. “We want sanctions to remain in place,” Trump said Thursday at the White House. “I think that sanctions right now are at a level that’s a fair level.” Moon, for his part, has called for an easing of sanctions, including those holding back joint economic projects between North and South Korea. But he didn’t speak to the sanctions issue as he and Trump spoke with reporters at the start of their talks.
Trump said he would favor easing those sanctions at the right time but added: “This isn’t the right time.” He said he was open to discussing smaller steps, such as helping to ease North Korea’s humanitarian problems, but that, in general, the U.S. wants sanctions to remain. “There are various smaller deals that maybe could happen,” Trump said.
You can read more at the link, but if the Kim regime can afford a nuclear weapons and ICBM programs then they can afford to buy food for their people. Any humanitarian crisis in North Korea is regime manufactured and not because of the sanctions.
I can only imagine how many people must have been exposed to the AIDS virus from this sex worker:
An illegal immigrant in her 40s, who worked at a massage parlor in Pohang, North Gyeongsang Province, was diagnosed with AIDS just days before she died of pneumonia and other complications April 3.
The woman was hospitalized March 26 and diagnosed with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) April 1, according to the public health centers in Pohang, Tuesday.
She reportedly visited Seoul and Busan for treatment.
Police investigated the massage parlor and its customers. But health officials and police are struggling to establish how many people she had sexual contact with.
Here is a strange story of a Mormon missionary turned international lawyer and Korean citizen arrested for using drugs in South Korea:
Robert Holley is escorted to Suwon Nambu Police Station, Tuesday, after being questioned at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency over allegations of using illegal drugs. Yonhap
Mark Peterson, professor emeritus at Brigham Young University in Utah, claimed Tuesday that popular TV personality Robert Holley, known by the Korean name Ha Il, who was arrested for allegedly using methamphetamine, was the victim of “dirty” Korean cops.
In a posting on historian Robert Neff’s Facebook, Peterson, a Korea Times columnist, wrote: “Rob’s a friend of mine. The police have been dogging him for about a year because another entertainer who is guilty has accused Rob as a way of lightening his own sentence.
“Rob refutes every accusation, and the police will not give it up. Several months ago they gave him a clean bill of health, but they will not give up. Rob doesn’t do drugs ― he doesn’t even drink. This isn’t a drug story; it’s a dirty cop story.”
Peterson spoke similarly to Yonhap News over the phone.
He was quoted as saying that police didn’t have any evidence and forced Holley, 58, to make a confession.
You can read more at the link, but Holley supposedly tested positive for drugs after doing a urinalysis and they have evidence of him depositing money to a drug dealers account. This seems like pretty damning evidence to me.
Return of independence fighters’ remainsThe remains of independence fighters Lee Jae-soo, Kim Tae-yon and Kang Young-gak arrive at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, on April 9, 2019. The remains were returned home from China and the United States on the occasion of the centennial of the Korean provisional government during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea in the early 20th century. Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon (far right) follows the procession. (Yonhap)
This just makes me wonder how many other South Korean ships have been violating sanctions that have not been caught yet?:
A South Korean cargo vessel suspected of illicitly transferring oil to a North Korean ship is impounded at a shipyard in Busan Harbor. [YONHAP]
A South Korean cargo vessel has been impounded in Busan Harbor since last October on suspicions of violating international sanctions on North Korea, a Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday.
This is the first time a ship flying the South Korean flag has been accused of breaking United Nations Security Council sanctions imposed on the North for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
According to the official, the ship, named Lunis, was one of four held in South Korean ports since October for having allegedly transferred banned petroleum products or coal to or from North Korean ships. The other three vessels are reportedly registered in Togo, Hong Kong and Panama.
The shipping company working with the South Korean vessel has admitted to a transfer of refined oil to a tanker from the North through a ship-to-ship operation, the official said.
All four ships, including the Lunis, were among dozens of foreign vessels named in a U.S. Treasury Department report released March 21 for allegedly having engaged in such illicit transfers of oil or coal to or from North Korean vessels.
Over at One Free Korea he has a good round up about from the State Department report that criticizes the Moon administration for their on going efforts to censor criticism from their opponents:
In December, I was a panelist at this event at the American Enterprise Institute. You can read the transcript here, or watch it on video here. In my remarks, I tried to put the censorship of South Korea’s left and right into that country’s recent historical context, noting the signs that left-wing leaders who emerged from a nominally pro-democracy movement were now engaging in a strategic and systematic campaign to silence defectors, vloggers, and political critics through internet censorship and defamation suits. The Korean Embassy sent its resident propagandist to that event to denounce this as “fake news,” a phrase that Donald Trump has sown in the lexicons of authoritarians everywhere. You can see me harangue him near the end of the event, after each panelist speaks and after Professor Sung-yoon Lee’s more extended comments.
As it turns out, I was not the only one who noted some of the same events with concern. The State Department’s annual country reports on human rights also mentioned a number of them:
The bus ad: "Do you want to hack the White House?" "Then it's Woosong Univ" in #SouthKorea. Anti-US themes, blatant praise of Kim Jong Un, submissive attitude toward China–not the SK most people know, but made possible by #MoonJaein, his party, his supporters–small % of SK popn https://t.co/g7h0rB1f79
It will be interesting to see if the use of over four different genders spreads throughout other government agencies in South Korea:
The National Human Rights Commission will add a non-binary gender option in its official document. / Yonhap
The state-run human rights watchdog is set to add a non-binary gender option in official petition documents in a move to embrace lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered (LGBT) people.
The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) will be the first government organization to offer a gender-neutral option in official papers.
“After recently receiving a petition urging us to allow a third-gender option in our petition documents, a relevant department reviewed it and reached the conclusion that this was permissible,” said an NHRCK official.
“We are now working to change our petition forms to reflect the decision, and new documents will be available within a month.”
Currently, those who file petitions with the commission must identify themselves as male, female, transgender male or transgender female in their applications.
“We accepted the petitioner’s claim that there could be more than the four genders,” the official said.
You can read more at the link, but at least there is not 71 different gender options yet. Can you imagine what government forms would look like with 71 different gender options on them?
