Steel products are stored at a factory in Dangjin on the west coast on Feb. 19, 2018. South Korean steelmakers are bracing for a U.S. move to slap high import tariffs on steel products from South Korea and a handful of other countries. (Yonhap)
A man received two years behind bars for going to massage parlor ― among other crimes ― leaving his five-year-old son alone in a car.
Chunchon High Court confirmed a lower court sentence for the man, 60, Monday, for child abuse and endangerment.
Court records showed the man had a fight with his wife who demanded child support and left the scene, telling her that she wouldn’t see them. He also attacked his wife with blunt objects.
He took their second son, a five-year-old away in a car, after his older nine-year-old escaped, as he drove away.
The man stopped at a massage parlor in his neighborhood and left the son locked in the car.
Police found the car and the child inside after the wife called them to report the incident.
The child was locked inside the car for nearly two hours. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the man says he went to the massage parlor to calm himself down after fighting with this wife.
The ROK government intends to give Ivanka Trump the same red carpet treatment that gave Kim Yo-jong in hopes of apparently convincing President Trump to go along with President Moon attending an Inter-Korean Summit in Pyongyang:
Ivanka Trump
The government is preparing a VIP welcome for U.S. President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, who comes to Korea for the closing ceremony of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics on Feb. 25. The government apparently wants to soften her up so Trump agrees to a mooted visit to Pyongyang by President Moon Jae-in.
One key ruling-party lawmaker said, “You can say that Ivanka Trump holds the key to convincing the U.S. government. We will provide all the support we can in terms of diplomatic protocol.”
Trump runs the White House like a private fiefdom and has levered both Ivanka and her husband Jarred Kushner into ill-defined foreign-policy roles.
Technically, Seoul has no diplomatic obligation to roll out the red carpet for the child of a U.S. leader, and even the head of a U.S. presidential delegation does not receive the treatment given to a head of state.
But a government official here said, “We are considering exceptional measures by having a high-ranking official greet Ivanka and accompany her during her visit.” The Cheong Wae Dae security team rather than the police handle her safety during her visit. (…….)
“Since President Trump cannot make it to Pyeongchang, Ivanka is his proxy and envoy,” a ruling-party official said. “It’s important to win her support to realize the inter-Korean summit.” [Chosun Ilbo]
I also find it interesting that the Chosun Ilbo took a shot at Melania Trump:
First lady Kim Jung-sook may also show Ivanka around, on the assumption that she is to all intents and purposes the first lady of the U.S. rather than Trump’s reluctant wife Melania.
I have been saying for years that the ROK government should only agree to another Inter-Korean Summit if it is held in Seoul. Mr. William Brown an adjunct professor at Georgetown University shares this assessment:
Will President Moon Jae-in accept North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s invitation to Pyongyang?
It must be a very tricky decision for Moon. If he raises the issue of denuclearization, North Korea might revert to its belligerent stance.
But if Moon opts to go to Pyongyang for talks for the sake of talks it could jeopardize the alliance between South Korea and the United States, or other allies.
William Brown, adjunct professor at Georgetown School of Foreign Service, suggests Moon make a counteroffer by inviting Kim to Seoul to avoid the same old mistakes his liberal predecessors have made.
“We have seen far too many VIP trips to Pyongyang over the past decades, and every time, Pyongyang has hoodwinked the visitors into giving it something, even billions of dollars,” Brown said in an interview, citing former President Kim Dae-jung.
“I’m sure Kim Jong-un is well aware of that and in need of big money. So, Kim wants an improvement in inter-Korean ties but only to help him pursue his new ‘unification’ dream.”
He pointed out the North has “engagement” down to a fine art, knowing how to cater to foreign and South Korean egos. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but after the first Inter-Korean Summit in Pyongyang with ROK President Kim Dae-jung, the then North Korean leader Kim Jong-il promised to visit Seoul at the next Inter-Korean Summit. During the administration of ROK President Roh Moo-hyun a second Inter-Korean Summit was held in Pyongyang. Kim Jong-il said that he could not hold the summit in Seoul due to “security concerns”.
This is of course nonsense, the real reason he did not want to come to Seoul is because of the propaganda value it gives to the ROK government. The Kim regime has long held that the ROK government is an illegitimate puppet regime of the evil American Imperialists™. Kim Jong-un traveling to Seoul for talks gives legitimacy to the ROK government and eliminates the propaganda value to North Korea of ROK government leaders making kowtowing tribute visits to Pyongyang.
Considering the North Korean sympathizers within the Moon administration it is unlikely they would demand that the next Inter-Korean Summit be held in Seoul. Instead if the Trump administration says they would participate in a Inter-Korean Summit if it is held in Seoul this may force the ROK government’s hand to ask that the summit be held in Seoul. This would then put the onus on the Kim regime to see how serious they are about peace. If Kim Jong-un refuses to attend an Inter-Korean Summit in Seoul it shows he is not serious about peace and instead just looking for another payday.
Ryu Hee-in, a senior official of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, visits a security control center of the PyeongChang Olympics Organizing Committee in the northeastern alpine city of PyeongChang in this photo provided by the ministry on Jan. 17, 2018.
The U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) is providing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and other assistance to help ensure security during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Sunday.
The USFK’s UAVs have been mobilized for surveillance activities around all stadiums to prevent possible terrorist attacks and accidents during the Olympics and the Paralympics. The Olympics run through next Sunday, while the Paralympics will take place from March 9-18.
“The USFK is offering UAV support in close cooperation with South Korean and U.S. military authorities, as well as the Olympic organizing committee, the ministries of foreign affairs and defense, and the U.S. Department of State,” the JCS said.
“This clearly shows that the solid South Korea-U.S. alliance is shining more at the scenes of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics,” it added.
The UAVs are producing live video feeds, which the Olympic security control center uses to protect Olympic venues from any potential dangers.
The type of UAVs remains unknown. But the USFK is known to operate small ones, such as the RQ-11B Raven and the RQ-7B Shadow. [Yonhap]
How come I get the feeling there is more to this story?:
A North Korean defector has been arrested and indicted on charges of supporting the North and preparing to defect back to Pyongyang in violation of the National Security Law, prosecutors here said Sunday.
The defector identified only as a 49-year-old woman is accused of sending 130 tons of rice worth about 105 million won (US$97,000) to North Korea’s State Security Ministry, according to the Suwon District Prosecutors’ Office.
The rice was sent via a broker in China on two occasions last year, the prosecutors said.
Prior to her arrest, the defector again attempted to send additional rice to the North by remitting 80 million won to the broker, they noted.
The former North Korean woman is also suspected of having attempted to return to the North, as she has sold her house in the South and disposed of other personal belongings.
It is rare for a North Korean defector to voluntarily send rice to a North Korean government organ.
The woman came to the South in 2011 and began contacting the North’s government early last year, prosecutors said, adding she told investigators she wanted to return to the North to be reunited with her son. [Yonhap]
I would not be surprised if this woman was being blackmailed with threats by Kim regime agents against her son if she did not send the payments.
Keep the name Im Jong-seok and his background in mind over the next year as South Korea likely moves forward with appeasement Sunshine 2.0 with the Kim regime:
President Moon Jae-in’s chief of staff, Im Jong-seok, left, fires back at opposition lawmaker Jun Hee-kyung, who raised questions about his ideological background. [YONHAP]I knew very little about Im Jong-seok until he became President Moon Jae-in’s chief of staff in May. All I knew was that as president of the National Council of Student Representatives, he served a prison term for orchestrating his fellow student Lim Su-kyung’s unauthorized trip to North Korea in 1989.
The council had been influenced by Kim Il Sung’s Juche idea of self-reliance and supported North Korean ideas like the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Korea, abolishing the National Security Law and achieving unification with North Korea based on a federal system. Therefore, it might be natural that some people consider the president’s chief of staff as a former Juche activist since he had been the head of a pro-North group. I thought so, too. If the public is wrong, it is up to Im, as a public official and politician, to set the record straight.
It was a surprise to me that Im responded fiercely when Juche was debated during the National Assembly’s audit of the Blue House on Nov. 6. Jun Hee-kyung, a lawmaker from the opposition Liberty Korea Party lawmaker, brought up the issue and said she saw the Blue House being dominated by Juche supporters and National Council of Student Representatives alumni.
The opposition party’s attack might have been expected, but Im questioned Jun’s motivations in the inquiry. “I don’t know how you lived during the Fifth and Sixth Republic juntas when soldiers-turned-politicians infringed democracy,” Im fired back.
But that was it. I wonder why Im let go of such a great opportunity. If he had said, “I never supported Juche and believe in liberal democracy; how can you say I support Kim Il Sung’s philosophy?,” all doubts could be cleared. But he did not.
So I traced his past and found many aspects of an emotional North Korea sympathizer. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
The always interesting B.R. Myers has an interesting essay posted about the role the Lee Myung-bak conservative right played in the impeachment of fellow conservative President Park Geun-hye:
Not until Park Geun-hye’s presidency (2013-2017) did the issue make a strong comeback. Conservatives in the National Assembly were then roughly divisible into a faction loyal to Park and one loyal to her predecessor Lee Myung Bak. Naturally his followers had learned to like the presidential system during his occupancy of the Blue House (2008-2013), only to find it inherently despotic again the moment Park took over. What really worried them was the likelihood that she would take revenge for the “nomination massacres” that had occurred during Lee’s rule, when he had excluded many of her followers from candidacies in parliamentary elections.
Sure enough, there ensued the “nomination massacre” of spring 2016, in which even some of the most popular pro-Lee or “non-Park” politicians were bypassed for nominations in favor of the president’s people. From then on calls for a parliamentary system grew in intensity until the Lee-conservative press broke the story of the Choi Soon-sil scandal in the autumn of 2016.
It was just what many pols had been waiting for: a chance to get the public so angry about the status quo that it would finally sign off on a whole new system of government. Conservatives were confident they could remove Park with left-wing help without losing the presidency altogether. They would simply make the returning hero Ban Ki-moon their candidate while pushing hard for constitutional revision, then trounce Moon in the election. What could go wrong? [B.R. Myers]
Well a lot did go wrong if the Lee Myung-Bak supporters thought they could get Ban Ki-moon elected. He ended up quickly dropping out of the election because of what he said was all the “Fake News” published about him. It probably was all fake news, but if he can’t fire back against lies in the media he clearly did not have what it took to be the President of South Korea. Without a strong candidate the Korean right ended up getting trounced in the election now leaving them in a worse position than if Park remained President.
JTBC reporter Shim Su-mi reports where and how she found the tablet PC.
The evidence has turned out to be thinner than was initially believed. The tablet PC on which Choi allegedly edited Park’s Dresden speech had so obviously been tampered with that the court did not consider it in Choi’s trial. It is still unclear how Park’s pressuring of businesses to contribute to this or that national team or foundation differed to a criminal degree from established presidential practices. We have to wait and see, but the recent decision to charge her even with meddling in her own party’s nominations suggests a desperation to find things that will stick. While she may well have deserved impeachment by absolute standards, she was probably less deserving of it than a few of her predecessors.
The planting of the tablet PC is the real scandal which no one in the Korean media seems eager to try and uncover. The finding of the tablet is in my opinion what turned the tide against President Park.
Anyway so what happened after President Moon took power? Well he staffed the Blue House with the same type of people that President Park had around her with hardly a complaint from the media and candlelight protest crowd:
The once bipartisan pretense that removing Park was a non-ideological response to her abuses of power is now upheld only by the right-wing impeachers and the foreign press. Upon his election Moon appointed several Gangnam leftists with records of tax avoidance, real-estate speculation, and the Choi-like pulling of strings on relatives’ behalf. This prompted much use of the crypto-Sinitic compound naero nambul, short for “When I cheat, it’s romance, when others do, it’s adultery.”
Also, how can anyone describe an admirer of Kim Il-sung as a "democracy activist?" https://t.co/YWy2IWpUKS It would be accurate to say he sought to replace an authoritarian system with a totalitarian one. Left unsaid is whether he still supports the totalitarian system.
The Seoul-Busan highway is crowded with heavy traffic in both directions on Feb. 16, 2018, the Lunar New Year Day, as people travel to and from their hometowns for the holiday. (Yonhap)
