A ceremony to mark the 99th anniversary of the establishment of the Korean government-in-exile in Shanghai during the Japanese colonization of Korea (1910-45) takes place at the memorial hall of late independence fighter Kim Koo in Seoul on April 13, 2018, in this photo provided by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs. (Yonhap)
Here is another case of a Korean man allegedly behaving badly on Guam:
A Superior Court of Guam judge has allowed a South Korean soccer player charged with sexual assault to return home for military service, pending his trial.
Kim Byong-oh is accused of sexually assaulting a woman on Jan. 22 at a Guam resort, the Pacific Daily News reported Monday.
Kim was indicted on three counts of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and four counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Kim was on Guam with the Sangju Sangmu soccer team for training in January.
The 22-year-old woman who accused Kim told police that she woke up in a hotel room to Kim rubbing her stomach and breast. She told police that Kim also took off her underwear and raped her.
The woman said she ran out of the hotel room and found a security guard who called police. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the woman is from South Korea so it will be interesting to see if the Guam legal system moves forward with prosecution or hands it over to Korean authorities to prosecute.
This may end of backfiring on the Moon administration:
Robert Gallucci, head of the USKI
The U.S.-Korea Institute (USKI) stated it will close next month due to a cut in funding from the South Korean government, media outlets reported Tuesday.
The USKI is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, affiliated with the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. It runs the website 38 North specializing in North Korea affairs.
The USKI received 2.1 billion won ($1.87 million) in annual funding from the government, through the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy (KIEP) affiliated with the Prime Minister’s Office.
This is about 60 percent of its total budget, according to a KIEP official. The USKI also receives funding from Johns Hopkins University, she said.
According to AP, USKI Chairman Robert Gallucci said the think tank will close in May, after rejecting “utterly inappropriate meddling” in its academic affairs.
Earlier, the government stated it would stop funding the institute starting in June, citing problems with transparency in accounting and selecting visiting scholars and interns.
The USKI claimed there had been pressure from Cheong Wa Dae to oust the institute’s director Jae H. Ku, due to his conservative inclinations that were out of line with the liberal Moon Jae-in administration. Ku has headed the think tank since 2007. [Korea Times]
The silencing of the US-Korea Institute I think may backfire because they have been largely friendly to the Moon administration’s policies. Now that the organization is no longer funded by the Korean government their may be more of a willingness to take on the Moon administration. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Apparently some Korean guy needs to learn to keep his hands to himself when on vacation:
A man was arrested and charged over the weekend after six women told Fish Eye Marine Park employees about a man in yellow shorts who touched them inappropriately while they were swimming, according to a magistrate’s complaint filed in the Superior Court of Guam.
Officers arrested Myeong Seop Lee, 34, who was wearing yellow shorts but denied that he touched anyone. He said he was at the park with his family, documents state.
Police met with the Fish Eye manager on Friday. The lifeguards told the manager about a man touching six women while swimming, but by the time police arrived four of the women had left, documents state.
Police spoke with the remaining two women, the magistrate’s complaint states. [Pacific Daily News]
You can read more at the link, but the women pointed out Lee to police as the groper and incredibly he was snorkeling at the marine park with his family. I can only imagine what his wife had to say about this.
A sign with Donald Trump's face at the demonstrations in support of disgraced former South Korean president Park Geun-hye: "All Koreans love USA. Please save Korea's ex-president PGH" https://t.co/5umsrnQbLPpic.twitter.com/0xWtFcwGU0
Over at One Free Korea here has a very interesting posting up about how liberal South Korean administrations target certain think tanks to fire employees or lose funding:
Robert Gallucci
Contemporary press reports alleged that Roh’s people directed the funding cut because they didn’t care for what TAE wrote, and because they really didn’t care for Nicholas Eberstadt (interviewed at this blog eons ago). One of the TAE authors called for an “amicable divorce” of the U.S.-Korea alliance, something that even most anti-American South Koreans fear. If this were to happen prematurely, it could cause capital flight, crash the KOSPI, and undermine the political support left-wing politicians build by profiting from the anti-American demagoguery of their simpaticos without openly propagating it themselves. Clearly, these issues are important matters of public policy for Americans. [One Free Korea]
Here is the most recent example of a liberal administration trying to influence a think tank:
Paradoxically, USKI is best known for publishing the reliably soft-line, anti-anti-North Korean, pro-“engagement” 38 North blog. It’s the last outlet you’d think Moon Jae-in’s people would mess with. (…………)
Not surprisingly, USKI and the KIEP have different explanations for KIEP’s funding decision, and by the end of this post, you’ll see why. KIEP says the National Assembly demanded the cut over questions about the transparency of USKI’s budget. But Robert Gallucci, the Director of USKI, says the real reason is that the Blue House wanted him to fire Jae Ku, one of the few right-of-center thinkers at USKI. (Mr. Ku gave an interview to this blog way back in 2005. I hope I’m not doing him any more harm by calling him a friend.) Later, Gallucci says the Blue House also told him to fire Jenny Town, a co-founder of 38 North. [One Free Korea]
I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link, but it looks like the people at the Blue House involved in cutting the funding have ties to the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) organization.
Hong and his boss Jang spent 6 years at People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy: it's an activist group ostensibly opposed to abuses of power by government & chebols. But it also put on anti-US beef (mad cow disease) demos and called for alternative Cheonan investigations pic.twitter.com/f4OW0Vay6u
So who is PSPD? They are a group that has long championed anti-US causes to include opposing the US-ROK FTA, the Camp Humphreys expansion, exploiting the No Gun Ri issue, wanting SOFA changes, and closing the Kooni Bombing Range. The most ridiculous issue they helped to lead was the 2008 anti-US Beef Riots. Most recently PSPD has been one of the major groupsbehind the anti-THAAD protests in Seongju.
The way I look at it the Korean government has every right to cut funding to think tanks they support. However, then they should release from jail the people imprisoned for the so called cultural blacklist during the Park Geun-hye administration. If the Park administration could not blacklist certain cultural organizations than shouldn’t the Moon administration not be able to blacklist certain think tanks?
It looks like some apartment complexes in South Korea are having mountains of recyclable waste building up around them as private companies are having a harder time making money from recycling the waste:
A worker at a recycling company examines piles of compressed plastic bottles in a yard in Chuncheon, Gangwon, on Thursday. [YONHAP]As the confusion over recyclables continues in apartment complexes in Seoul and Gyeonggi, the Ministry of Environment on Thursday began an emergency round of checkups to find out which private companies are refusing to retrieve plastic and Styrofoam waste.
Forty-eight private recycling companies announced last week they would no longer retrieve plastic and foam waste because they could no longer make a profit from it. Paper collection was not affected.
The announcement threw people into confusion over how to discard their recyclables until Monday, when the Environment Ministry said in a statement that after negotiations, all 48 waste disposal companies agreed to resume regular services.
But the agreement may not have been as final as the ministry thought.
According to the Gyeonggi provincial government on Wednesday, 20 out of 31 local governments in the province said the companies were collecting recyclables the same way as before.
The rest are “in the process of negotiating.”
“We are in the process of negotiating to resume regular services, but some apartment complexes may experience inconveniences for a while,” said an official from the Resource Recirculation Division of the Gyeonggi provincial government. “We will try to reach agreement as soon as possible, and if we cannot, then we will have the city governments and county offices provide the services instead.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read the rest at the link, but the main issue appears to be the decision by China to cut the import of many types of recyclable waste. China had been taking the waste and making solid fuel pellets for it to burn in factories or heat homes, but to decrease air pollution they have cut the import of the recyclables.
This has to continue to be infuriating for the families of the deceased sailors killed by this attack:
The wreckage of the Cheonan frigate displayed at the Navy’s 2nd Fleet Command in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province / Yonhap
North Korea has again denied its involvement in a torpedo attack of the South’s Cheonan frigate in 2010, expressing discomfort over Seoul repeatedly laying responsibility on Pyongyang.
The regime has for years claimed no responsibility for the tragic incident that left 46 South Korean sailors dead. But the latest in a series of verbal conflicts came on Monday when Kim Yong-chol, vice chairman of the regime’s ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, sarcastically vented his anger about the incident.
In a recent meeting with South Korean journalists, Kim introduced himself as “the man who the South claims masterminded the attack.”
A group of South Korean musicians visited the North for three days beginning Sunday in a move to enhance a festive and reconciliatory inter-Korean mood ahead of the planned summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un later this month.
The remark came about a month after the ranking North Korean official visited Seoul on the sidelines of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. At that time, South Korean activists and opposition parties denounced President Moon for allowing the alleged “Cheonan culprit” to visit the South. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but it seems pretty clear the ROK government is not going to make any demands for the North Koreans to come clean on this murder of 46 ROK servicemembers.
How much of Choe Sang-hun's bias is it possible to squeeze into one headline? In fact, we have plenty of leverage over N. Korea if we're willing to use it. Moon Jae-in & his lapdog, Choe, just don't want us to. https://t.co/u3jGjo9p4n
