Tag: South Korea

To be fair this is nothing new in modern societies with politicians using welfare handouts to get votes:

The government’s cash handouts as part of welfare benefits will reach a record W33 trillion next year (US$1=W1,130). The cash handouts for people in need have increased by W10 trillion in the two years since President Moon Jae-in came into office, with the total number of recipients reaching 10 million or one out of five citizens.

There are no fewer than 50 different types of welfare benefits ranging from basic pension payments for the 5.39 million elderly people to child benefits for 2.3 million people, living cost subsidies for 1.58 million low-income households and financial support for some 100,000 young jobseekers. Of course the government should provide for the needy, but the current administration’s cash welfare programs are like showering gifts of money on all comers.

In reality they are money for votes. Opposition parties do not want to sit idle and take the blows, and the Liberty Korea Party has already promised to boost next year’s proposed budget by W7 trillion to expand childcare support and others to keep up.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

That + neutralizing SK as a threat to KJU's legitimacy by (1) extinguishing speech that criticizes NK & (2) ensuring that SK media smuggled into NK are either not anti-NK or affirmatively pro-NK.
Goal isn't occupation; it's political supremacy, which looks increasingly plausible. https://t.co/siDMRG7UVq

— Joshua Stanton (@freekorea_us) November 22, 2018

So many people said the police was investigating their bank accounts for donations, and here's one. This is so illegal, yet the police is told to do this & they comply. #MoonJaein -Im Jong-seok admin of #SouthKorea is suppressing the freedom of assembly. https://t.co/Fc5K7fK56C

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) November 23, 2018

The demilitarization of the ironically named Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) continues:

Military construction crews from North and South Korea, building the first central inter-Korean road in 65 years, met today at Arrowhead Hill in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and shook hands.

Arrowhead Hill was the place of one of the bloodiest battle sites of the war is now the first.

In October South and North Korea troops began the task of removing land mines from the Joint Security Area (JSA) in Panmunjom as well as the Arrowhead Hill (Hwasalmeori) region in Cheorwon, Gangwon Province, where joint exhumation of the remains of Korean War MIA/POW are set to take place. (Hani.co.kr)

On Thursday troops from the North and South met and shook hands on Arrowhead Hill.  [Gateway Pundit via a reader tip]

It seems that taxi drivers going on strike actually encourages people to use carpooling apps even more:

Taxi drivers from four interest groups gathered outside the National Assembly Thursday to protest Kakao’s move to introduce a carpooling service.

The drivers are demanding legislators make the proposed business illegal, claiming that the service will threaten their livelihoods.

The collective move came after a 24-hour strike on Oct. 18. The strike itself was called two days after Kakao made public on Oct. 16 its plans to introduce the Kakao T carpooling service and began recruiting drivers.

Kakao has not been dissuaded. After the strike, it released an app for carpooling drivers and added a tab for the carpooling service to its existing Kakao T taxi app.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but instead of trying to get the government to give them special treatment, it seems the taxi cab drivers should improve their business model to compete with the ride sharing apps instead.

It is good to see that General Paul Freeman’s name is being maintained on the new 2ID division headquarters building at Camp Humphreys:

The 2nd Infantry Division dedicated its new headquarters building on Camp Humphreys Tuesday, officially opening a new chapter after moving from its decades-old home north of Seoul.

The ceremony took place at the entrance of the new Freeman Hall, which retains the name of the previous headquarters on Camp Red Cloud in Uijeongbu.

The Indianhead Division has been stationed near the front lines with North Korea since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice instead of a peace treaty.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but if you are interested in learning more about one of my Heroes of the Korean War, Paul Freeman I recommend checking out the below link:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2007/02/heroes-of-the-korean-war-colonel-paul-freeman/

It looks like many servicemembers serving stateside will not be going TDY to Korea for Foal Eagle:

Seoul and Washington will scale back a major annual joint military drill next spring, the Foal Eagle exercise, said U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis Wednesday, a concession to ongoing denuclearization talks with North Korea.

Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon in Washington, “Foal Eagle is being reorganized a bit to keep it at a level that will not be harmful to diplomacy.”

South Korea and the United States have suspended several major joint exercises this year following the June 12 North Korea-U.S. summit, including the Ulchi-Freedom Guardian drills, which would have happened in August.

Vigilant Ace, a massive joint aerial exercise scheduled for December, was also suspended last month after a meeting between South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and Mattis. The United States and South Korea agreed to conduct a review by Nov. 15 and reach a decision on plans for large-scale military exercises next year by Dec. 1.

“We have taken a decision,” Mattis said Wednesday. “We are not canceling exercises. We are realigning one exercise.” He did not elaborate further.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but the article did not state what the way ahead is for the Key Resolve exercise that usually overlaps with Foal Eagle.  Key Resolve is a large command post exercise involving senior US and ROK leadership usually held in the spring time.  Key Resolve was the last major exercise conducted jointly with the ROK before the current “peace mood” has caused the cancelling of a number of exercises.

So does anyone really think Yongsan Garrison will be completely turned into a park?:

Garrison commander Col. Monica Washington said the process of returning the land to the South Korean government isn’t likely to begin until July 2020 at the earliest.

“At that point then we think that we will be ready, of course if everything goes according to plan, to begin to look at some of the return, actually going through some of the returns process, which is actually going to take some time,” she told Stars and Stripes.

The next major milestone will be late next year when the Brian Allgood Community Hospital is due to close as its namesake hospital on Humphreys opens. That will trigger the closure of the commissary, the post exchange, the gas station and other facilities.

“There will be a … very minute footprint here on Yongsan, although we will still have families that we will have to support here,” Washington said in a recent interview in her office near a pedestrian overpass that crosses a busy thoroughfare that bisects the base.

She estimated it will take six or seven months to do the closure process, including moving equipment and turning off utilities, once most of the garrison is vacated in December 2019.

The military plans to maintain a small section for residual forces from the Combined Forces Command, USFK, the garrison and supporting agencies on the side of the base known as South Post. Dragon Hill Lodge, a resort-style military hotel, is planning to continue operations despite reports to the contrary. The U.S. Embassy also has residential housing in the area, although it will eventually build a new compound on a corner of the sub-base known as Camp Coiner.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but the ROK government is sticking with the idea of making a city park.  I suspect a park will be built one day over the old Yongsan Garrison, but it will be a smaller park the initially envisioned.  The rest of the land I would not be surprised is developed for other purposes around the smaller park.

Here is the new Interpol chief, hopefully he has a better fate than the last one:

South Korea’s Kim Jong-yang has been elected as new chief of global police organization Interpol, officials in Seoul said Wednesday.

Kim, who had served as chief of South Korea’s Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency and vice president of Interpol, will become the first South Korean to head the global police body.