This makes me wonder if anywhere else would charge an ambulance driver for running a red light while trying to get an infant to the hospital?:
An ambulance carrying an infant suffering a possible medical emergency and an SUV collided at an intersection in Songpa-gu, Seoul, early Jan. 1. / Yonhap
The driver of an ambulance carrying an infant suffering a possible medical emergency faces prosecution for ignoring traffic lights after the vehicle and an SUV collided.
The incident happened about 2 a.m. on January 1 at an intersection south of Olympic Bridge in Songpa-gu, Seoul. The ambulance, with its siren sounding, was coming from North Chungcheong Province and heading to Seoul Asan Hospital. It was also carrying the three-month-old child’s parents and a nurse. The infant was in a critical condition with fluid on the lungs.
The ambulance ran a red light before the collision with the SUV. Police said the SUV driver’s blood-alcohol level was 0.12 percent, enough for license revocation. No one was seriously injured in the crash.
Songpa police booked both drivers without arrest ― the ambulance driver for ignoring the traffic light and the SUV driver for driving under the influence of alcohol. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but long time residents in Korea are probably used to seeing how few cars bother to get out of the way of ambulances with their warning sirens and lights on as well.
Here is what one good idea fairy Mr. Emanuel Yi Pastreich from Kyunghee University wants to do with the UN Headquarters:
So what are the implications of American disengagement from the U.N. for South Korea, and for the peninsula as a whole? The immediate response among my Korean friends is dread. After all, Koreans see their country as a “shrimp among whales” that needs constant protection and support from the U.S.
But every crisis is an opportunity, if you have the courage to seize the moment.
No country is more deeply committed to multilateralism in trade, in diplomacy and in security than South Korea, granted that the alliance with the U.S. limits the South’s ability to make good on this general sentiment among policy makers. Whether on the left or on the right, there is a remarkable consensus in South Korea concerning good relations with all its neighbors (with the notable exception of North Korea).
What if South Korea proposed that U.N. headquarters be moved from New York City to the Korean Peninsula, perhaps even to Seoul?
To start with, the Trump administration might welcome this proposal. Just look at all the administration has done to undermine multilateral cooperation over the last year. Moreover, there are also progressive voices around the world that suggest the U.S. is no longer qualified to be home to such an institution in light of the country’s recent shift to isolationism.
There has been a strong argument for years that a major U.N. institution should be located in Northeast Asia. After all, other than the United Nations University in Tokyo and some smaller offices, The major U.N. institutions are in Geneva (and elsewhere in Europe), Nairobi, New York City and Washington D.C.
Northeast Asia, as the new center of the global economy and a growing source for new cultural production, would be a logical place for the headquarters. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but I do find it interesting that Mr. Pastreich is claiming US isolationism and disengagement from the UN when the Trump administration has repeatedly gone to the UN for sanctions on North Korea. Mr. Pastreich’s argument is mostly based on the Trump administration’s decision to relocate the US embassy to Jerusalem. Last I checked the United Nations has no authority to tell other countries where their embassy should be located.
Also Mr. Pastreich talks about the Trump administration wanting to limit or end global governance. In my opinion the Trump administration wants to influence global governance that is not in the US’s interest. Sanctions on the Kim regime is in the US’s interests thus why the Trump administration pursues it with the United Nations. Signing on to the Paris Climate Accord brokered by the UN the Trump administration determined was not in the US’s economic interest.
The Moon administration seems giddy after Kim Jong-un’s New Year message offering to send a delegation to the Winter Olympics:
This photo, taken on Jan. 2, 2017, shows Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon proposing high-level talks with North Korea next week. (Yonhap)
Unification Minister Cho Myoung-gyon proposed Tuesday holding high-level talks with North Korea, Jan. 9, to discuss its participation in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.
Cho’s offer came in response to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s New Year’s message, in which he said he was willing to send a delegation of athletes to the South’s first Winter Olympics.
Minister Cho suggested holding the cross-border dialogue at the truce village of Panmunjeom. He said Seoul is open to discuss the timing, venues, methods and other preparatory steps regarding the talks with Pyongyang.
“We propose to hold high-level talks on Jan. 9 at the Peace House (on the South Korean side of Panmunjeom),” Cho said during a press conference at the ministry in downtown Seoul. “We’re willing to talk with the North freely over the necessary steps both sides must take. To do so, the dialogue channel at Panmunjeom should be restored promptly. We expect to hear a positive response from the North soon.”
If North Korea accepts, this will be the first cross-border dialogue since President Moon Jae-in took office in May 2017. It will also be the highest-level contact between the two Koreas since December 2015 when vice minister-level officials met. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but for long time Korea watchers like myself this is just another example of the pattern with North Korea of raising tensions with provocations and then conducting a charm offensive to get concessions. Once they get the concessions they will then break whatever agreement they made and blame the US and the ROK and restart the provocation cycle.
What is different this time is President Trump seems determined to enforce stricter sanctions and President Moon seems determined to start another Sunshine Policy particularly trying to reopen the Kaesong Industrial Complex. I can easily see a return to the failed Sunshine Policy causing tension politically between the US and the ROK which is likely one of the goals of the Kim regime if they do implement a charm offensive.
It seems to me having your daughter go missing under your care is worse than having an accidental death due to choking:
Police on Friday found the body of a 5-year-old missing girl on a hillside in the western coastal city of Gunsan following her father’s confession to having disposed of it, officials said.
The Jeonbuk Provincial Police Agency said that at 4:45 a.m., the body of Koh Jun-hee was discovered wrapped in a towel under a tree on the hillside, about a 50-minute drive from where she stayed. She was reported to have gone missing a little over three weeks ago.
The investigation into the case gained traction as her 36-year-old father, who was put under emergency arrest, confessed Thursday to having dumped her body on a hill in the city 270 kilometers south of Seoul in April.
Based on the father’s statement, police presume that Koh died because she choked on food. Her father has said that he concealed her death for fear that it would cause trouble in his divorce settlement with her birth mother.
Police plan to examine her body to find out the exact cause of death, officials said. [Korea Times]
It looks like there is an English teacher job opening at Sahmyook University after one of their professors was fired due to his link to the murder of four people back in Canada:
Paul Laan
A former professor at a Seoul-based university is a suspect in a mysterious missing-person case in Canada, according to South Korean broadcaster JTBC.
Canadian Paul Laan taught English at Sahmyook University in Nowon, northern Seoul, from 2014. The university stripped him of his professorship early this month after learning of the accusations in Canada and then terminated his contract.
According to the report, Laan came to Korea in 2006 and earned a living by teaching English at private or public institutes.
According to JTBC and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), he was a suspect in a high-profile missing-person case in Ontario in 1998. A woman in her 70s, known as the “Cat Lady,” was a tenant in his house and disappeared outside Huntsville. Police later found that three other tenants were missing.
Police investigating the case saw Laan as a suspect but they found no evidence, and it became a cold case.
CBC put the case back in the spotlight on its investigative program “The Fifth Estate,” aired in September.
The program said the residents’ disappearance was not reported and that pension checks were stolen from them by the Paul family. The youngest of the family was living in South Korea as a professor, according to the program.
“Paul now teaches English at a university in South Korea and travels with his wife extensively, professing their love for God on their family blog,” CBC reported. [Korea Times]
You can read the whole CBC report on these murders at this link. The Paul family are all part of a crime family in the Huntsville area of Canada that have a long criminal history culminating in the murder of four people.
It appears that the Moon administration is trying to develop a political path to bring the Kaesong Industrial Park back from the dead:
This file photo shows the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the now-shuttered inter-Korean industrial park, just north of the inter-Korean border. (Yonhap)
Ousted former President Park Geun-hye unilaterally ordered the shutdown of an inter-Korean industrial complex last year without proper consultations or a legitimate process, a panel report showed Thursday.
The report was unveiled by a nine-member committee of civilian experts that has been reviewing the previous conservative governments’ North Korea policies, including Seoul’s closure of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in February 2016. The panel was launched by Seoul’s unification ministry in September.
The Park administration shut down the factory zone, just north of the inter-Korean border, in response to North Korea’s fourth nuclear test and long-range rocket launch in 2016. The move put an end to the last symbol of inter-Korean reconciliation.
“It is verified that the closure was decided by the president’s unilateral verbal order without discussions or consultations at the official decision-making level,” the report showed.
The former government said that the shutdown was decided at a National Security Council meeting on Feb. 10, 2016, right before the announcement. But the report showed that Park made the order two days earlier.
It also said that the closure was a decision that transcended law, adding that even a political decision amid a security crisis should be made within the boundary of law and under legal procedures. [Yonhap]
It was no secret that the Kaesong Industrial Park could be shutdown in retaliation for North Korean provocations. There were plenty of discussions over a prolonged period of time before the final shutdown in 2016. Park may have decided she wanted to shutdown Kaesong, but she still clearly held a National Security Council meeting to discuss it before the final decision was announced. This seems like an extreme reach to try and find fault with the decision making process in my opinion.
Here is the most ridiculous part of the government’s findings:
At that time, the ministry said that the decision was aimed at preventing money generated by the industrial park from bankrolling North Korea’s nuclear and missile development.
But the panel said that there is no sufficient information or evidence to support the claim that funds from the complex had been used for other purposes.
“This hampers the legitimacy of the government’s decision and limits Seoul’s future stance over the resumption of the Kaesong complex,” the report showed.
The Kim regime is paid directly in US dollars which makes it very easy for the Kim regime to divert the money to support their weapons programs as has been previously reported:
South Korea said 70 percent of the U.S. dollars paid as wages and fees for the suspended Kaesong industrial project, run jointly with the North, had been diverted for Pyongyang’s weapons program and luxury goods for leader Kim Jong Un. (……)
“The wages for the North’s workers and other fees were paid in cash in U.S. dollars to the North’s authorities and not to the workers,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry said on Sunday. “This is believed to be channeled in the same way as other foreign currency it earned.”
The cash is then kept and managed by the ruling Workers’ Party’s Office 39 and other agencies, the ministry said. The ministry said it had confirmed the movement of the money through various sources but did not specify them.
Office 39 is widely believed to exist to finance the luxurious lifestyle of the North’s leader. The office is also believed to be part of the North’s agencies that fund the country’s missile and nuclear program. [Reuters]
For the Moon administration to claim that no money from Kaesong was used to support the Kim regime’s weapons programs is very deceptive. This is because the Kim regime is not going to provide a financial audit that shows conclusively where the dollars they received went to. However, reasonable people can conclude that any money received by the Kim regime from Kaesong to fund their government is more money ultimately available to fund their weapons programs.
The Moon administration clearly has a political motive to try and reopen Kaesong, but I would be very surprised if the Trump administration will ever agree to this. Could you imagine the Tweet storm from President Trump if President Moon announces the reopening of the Kaesong Industrial Complex?
Participants, along with a girl statue symbolizing a “comfort woman,” sit on 300 chairs placed at Gwanghwamun Square in downtown Seoul in a performance themed “A Promise Inscribed on an Empty Chair” after finishing this year’s final weekly rally in front of the Japanese Embassy on Dec. 27, 2017, calling for Japan’s apology for its army’s sexual enslavement of hundreds of thousands of Korean women during World War II. Such victims are euphemistically called “comfort women.” Portraits of late comfort women and chrysanthemums are placed on the chairs. (Yonhap)
This was pretty stupid that this ship would sail into a South Korean port after illegally delivering oil to North Korea:
This composite photo of oil transfer between China and North Korea is captured from the website of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. (Yonhap)
A Hong Kong-flagged vessel has been seized and inspected by South Korean authorities after secretly transferring oil to a North Korean vessel in international waters in a ship-to-ship transfer prohibited by the United Nations Security Council, government officials said Friday.
South Korean customs authorities took and searched the vessel, Lighthouse Winmore, when it entered the country’s Yeosu Port on Nov. 24 after transferring 600 tons of refined petroleum to a North Korean vessel on Oct. 19, the officials said.
UNSC Resolution 2375, adopted in September, bans member countries from ship-to-ship transfer of any goods for North Korea. Resolution 2397, adopted just a week earlier allows a country to capture and look into a vessel suspected of engaging in prohibited activities with North Korea.
The Hong Kong-flagged ship was chartered by Taiwanese company Billions Bunker Group and previously visited South Korea’s Yeosu Port on Oct. 11 to load up on Japanese refined petroleum and head to its claimed destination in Taiwan four days later, the authorities noted.
Instead of going to Taiwan, however, the vessel transferred the oil to a North Korean ship, the Sam Jong 2, and three other non-North Korean vessels in international waters in the East China Sea, they said. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but the ROK is expected to hold on to the ship for six months while the legal process plays out. It seems to me the ROK ought to just auction the ship off. How many companies would want to do illegal oil transfers with North Korea if they risk having their shipped sold off?
