Tag: South Korea

If the autopsy shows the girl died from alcohol poisoning I would hope these two are charged with at least manslaughter:

An arrest warrant is being sought against two high schoolers on charges of allegedly raping a high school girl, Saturday, the police said. The girl was found dead afterwards.

According to the Yeonggwang Police in South Jeolla Province, two 17 year-old students surnamed Jung and Baek raped the victim, 16, in a motel room in Yeonggwang county on Thursday.

It was between 2:10 a.m and 4:15 a.m. when the two left the crime scene. The victim was later found dead by the owner of the motel who came in to clean up the room, around 4 p.m. that day.

According to the police, Jung and Baek had planned to commit sexual assault after they got the girl drunk in a “drinking game.” They had known the girl since childhood.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see how many more requests General Brooks will be receiving from the Moon administration to send materials across the border:

The U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) authorized South Korea vehicles and personnel to cross the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) to support construction of communication infrastructure that will be used in inter-Korean business projects.

“Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, Commander of United Nations Command, authorized vehicles and personnel from the Republic of Korea to cross the Military Demarcation Line today in the eastern transportation corridor to support construction of communication infrastructure to be used between the Republic of Korea and North Korea,” said the UNC press release, Thursday.

“The approval allows more material than what is needed to repair communication lines, and will result in the construction of a communication building.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the opening of the Inter-Korean office at Kaesong:

South and North Korea launched their joint liaison office on Friday, securing a platform for round-the-clock communication that is expected to help foster cross-border exchange and ease tensions.

The liaison office was launched in the North’s border town of Kaesong, with around 50 people each from the two Koreas attending the opening ceremony.

The move is a follow-up on an agreement that the leaders of the two Koreas reached in their April summit to run such an office on hopes that the office will serve as a communication channel to help facilitate inter-Korean cooperation on various fronts.

“The inter-Korean joint liaison office is a channel for round-the-clock communication in the new era of peace,” South Korea’s Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon said in a congratulatory speech.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link but according to the article South Korea will have around 20 people working there.

Yet more libel cases to silence critics. #SouthKorean prosecutor seeks 1 year jail sentence each for #journalist Kim Se-ui & #cartoonist Yoon Seo-in. The former was making a comment on social media. #FreedomOfPress. #FreedomOfSpeechhttps://t.co/uRe0rpphze

— Tara O (@DrTaraO) September 12, 2018

Kim Jung-hun, a firefighter from the southwestern city of Jeongeup, flexes his muscles while holding an electric saw in a bodybuilding contest of the World Firefighters Games Chungju 2018 in the city some 150 kilometers southeast of Seoul on Sept. 11, 2018. The games, regarded as the Olympics of firefighters, will continue to Sept. 17, with some 6,000 people in the profession from more than 50 countries participating. (Yonhap)

Of course the Moon administration is going to downplay the cost of the money they plan to give to North Korea:

The Unification Ministry is rejecting suspicions it is downplaying the costs of implementing April’s inter-Korean Panmunjeom Declaration.

A ministry official told reporters Wednesday that the practice of submitting estimated next-year budget requests was established by the Roh Moo-hyun government in 2007, and that this government is simply following precedent.  He was responding to the concerns raised by some opposition lawmakers that the total cost of implementing the Panmunjeom Declaration may be far higher than the Moon administration’s 471-billion estimate, and say that requesting funds in year-by-year amounts may be a way of minimizing perception of that total cost.

Earlier this week, the government told lawmakers that  it will require an additional 298-point-six billion won next year to implement the agreement.

Estimated costs include operating the inter-Korean liaison office, holding family reunions, and a range of infrastructure projects to modernize North Koreas roads and rails. [KBS World Radio]

What is funny is that the Moon administration is claiming they are following precedent set during the Roh Moo-hyun administration.  Current President Moon was the Chief of Staff for former President Roh, so essentially his administration is following a precedent of downplaying Inter-Korean cooperation costs he helped to create.

It looks like the Moon administration better hurry up and fire everyone else at Statistics Korea because the job numbers just continue to be dismal:

Anchor: New jobs figures released Wednesday show a bleak situation. Unemployment reached its highest point last month since the Asian financial crisis nearly 20 years ago.
Our Park Jong-hong has this report.

Report: The latest figures show South Korea’s jobless rate rose slightly in August to four percent due to a fall in employment in the retail and manufacturing sectors.

Young adults aged 15 to 29 who were out of a job last month stood at ten percent, up six-tenths of a percentage point from the previous year and the highest since 1999.

The number of employed went up by a mere three-thousand compared to August last year to 26-point-nine million.

This increase in jobs last month is the smallest since January 2010, when ten-thousand jobs were cut.

For the second month in a row, the number of newly added jobs has stayed below ten-thousand per month.

An official at Statistics Korea, which compiled the report, said one main reason behind the dismal figures is the struggling business at automakers and shipbuilders which is spilling over to related sectors like retail.  [KBS World Radio]

You can read more at the link.

This undated file photo, released by the Cultural Heritage Administration on Sept. 11, 2018, shows the site of Manwoldae, which was the palace of the 918-1392 Goryeo Dynasty, in the North Korean city of Kaesong. The administration said that it has agreed during a working-level meeting with the North’s National Reconciliation Council in Kaesong on Sept. 6 to conduct a joint survey and preservation of the Manwoldae site for three months from Sept. 27 to Dec. 27. (Yonhap)

With the is rise of the anti-American left in South Korea once again, the Sept. 11th anniversary is good time to remind readers of how blatant anti-Americanism once was in South Korea:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2005/09/911-hate-fest-in-south-korea-2/

This is something to keep in mind, in South Korea someone can accuse you of sexual harassment with no evidence and then demand money from you through the court system.  If you don’t pay you could go to jail:

She said her husband had attended several court hearings until September without telling her. The plaintiff demanded the defendant pay 10 million won for settlement but he refused, trusting the court would acquit him.

The court’s ruling statement from Sept. 5 says the plaintiff “explained in a coherent manner how the defendant sexually harassed her” and that “the accused was not regretful of his wrongdoing and didn’t seem to want to seek forgiveness from the accuser.”

“I know the recent ‘#Metoo movement’ has made all sexually related issues very sensitive but, even as a woman, I cannot understand her and how she so easily turned an innocent man into a sexual harasser,” the wife said, criticizing Korean anti-sex crime laws that “lopsidedly supported women over men.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.