Tag: South Korea

It looks like the US government will not be participating in any talks with North Korea any time soon:

The White House expressed veiled opposition to South Korea’s proposal for rare inter-Korean talks Monday, saying current conditions are “far away” from those needed to reopen dialogue with the recalcitrant state.

Seoul proposed military talks for this coming Friday and Red Cross talks on Aug. 1 to discuss ways to ease tensions along their shared border and resume reunions of families separated since the 1950-53 Korean War.

The offer came amid renewed tensions over the North’s first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile on July 4.

“Well, obviously those comments came out of the Republic of Korea and I would refer you back to them,” Press Secretary Sean Spicer said during a briefing, when asked if there are certain conditions U.S. President Donald Trump would like to see met before the talks take place. “That being said, I think the president has made clear in the past with respect that any type of conditions that would have to be met are clearly far away from where we are now.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Considering in the past rapists would go free because victims did not resist enough, the fact this teacher received six years is surprising:

A high school teacher has been jailed for six years for sexually harassing a female student multiple times.

The Daegu High Court’s ruling on Sunday did not change the lower court sentence of the man, who is in his 50s, on charges of infringing laws on sexually protecting adolescents and teenagers.

The court heard that at about 7:20 p.m. last September the man called the student, who had recently broken up with her boyfriend, to a teachers’ office, saying he had advice on the matter.

The teacher asked her to take off her clothes, saying he would “personally check if she had had illicit experience with her boyfriend.”

The man told the girl to do this four times in one month, calling her to isolated places in the school.

The court said the victim “suffered extreme mental distress and embarrassment, which may disrupt her sexual security or socio-interactive understanding to be formed in future.”

However, the court took into account the man’s clean criminal record and the fact that he had admitted the offenses.  [Korea Times]

It would be political suicide if the Moon administration forced the 12 North Koreans who defected from a restaurant in China to be repatriated:

South Korea may propose inter-Korean military talks as early as this week to follow up on President Moon Jae-in’s offer to stop all acts of hostility on the border, a government official said Sunday.

The unification, military and other relevant ministries are discussing the plan one day after Pyongyang first reacted to Moon’s suggestion, according to the official who asked not to be named de to sensitivity of the issue.

During his speech in Berlin on July 6, Moon laid out his vision for bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula, including a proposal to mutually halt acts of hostility along their tense border as of the July 27 anniversary of the armistice treaty that ended the three-year Korean War in 1953.

He also offered to hold reunions of families torn apart by the war on Oct. 4, Korea’s lunar fall harvest holiday and the 10th anniversary of the second inter-Korean summit.

The Rodong Sinmun, the official newspaper of the North’s ruling party, carried a commentary by a private writer, on Saturday saying it seemed “fortunate” as Moon included his government’s committment to the landmark joint declarations signed at the inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007. The two declarations aim to foster cross-border cooperation, exchanges and reconciliation.

The newspaper emphasized that the first step to improve relations should be the resolution of the fundamental issue of military confrontation.  (………..)

But experts said the resumption of the event may take a bumpy road since the communist state continued in the commentary to demand South Korea repatriate 12 female North Koreans who worked at a Pyongyang-run restaurant in China and defected to Seoul en masse last year.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Very insightful piece https://t.co/BQCrGzc5ra

— Yeonmi Park (박연미) (@YeonmiParkNK) July 14, 2017

I'm gonna start a startup that advises #Korean startups on what to NOT name their startups. #Paycock https://t.co/cZFWgkrIdB

— KingSejong (@KingSejong) July 13, 2017

South Korea’s Brain Drain | The Diplomat https://t.co/XbEqFgnLBB

— KingSejong (@KingSejong) July 14, 2017

A member of Save Korean Dogs, an activist group opposing the dog meat trade, stages a solo rally in Seoul on July 11, 2017, to express the group’s objection to eating dog meat and call for the government to enact a law prohibiting dog-meat consumption. (Yonhap)

A police officer uses a device in a bathroom at the Han River Pool in Seoul on July 11, 2017, to detect whether there is a hidden camera as part of efforts to rid public places of privacy infringement. (Yonhap)

It is pretty incredible that this guy rapes and assaults a female high school student in South Korea and gets no jail time:

A Korean man who fled the country after raping a minor was repatriated after committing the same crime in Australia, according to the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) Thursday.

The rapist, surnamed Hwang, 35, was initially sentenced to 30 months’ jail, suspended for four years, in 2010 for raping and assaulting a female high school student.

But during his probation, police and the prosecutors’ office investigated Hwang for breaking and entering in June 2012.

Sensing his probation would be cancelled, Hwang fled to Australia after a layover in the Philippines in July 2012.

The Korean court sentenced Hwang to an additional eight months in prison in his absence.

But even in Australia, Hwang’s old habits continued.

He was eventually caught and an Australian court sentenced him to nine years in prison on four charges of rape and attempted rape during his stay in New South Wales.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but this is another example of past lenient sentences for sex criminals in South Korea.  These past sentences were so weak that a Korean family had the rape of their son by a Camp Jackson NCO transferred to the US military legal system instead of being tried in a ROK civilian court.  The NCO rapist received a 30 year sentence for his crime while the guy in the above article rapes a high school student and goes free.

One of the worst sentences I have seen is when a 19-year old US Army private was raped by a taxi cab driver that picked her up at Incheon International Airport and he received no jail time because she did not resist enough.

Here is the typical response from the Pentagon to North Korean provocations:

Two U.S. long-range strategic bombers flew over the Korean Peninsula on Saturday in a stern warning to North Korea for its long-range missile launch last week.

The B-1B Lancers based in Guam practiced “attack capabilities,” accompanied by South Korea’s F-15K and the U.S. Air Force’s F-16 fighter jets, for several hours in the joint show of force, according to the allies.

In a rare move, they made public a photo and footage of the bombers dropping inert GBU-56 laser guided bombs onto a mock target at the Pilsung range in Gangwon Province.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but of interest is that the ROK Air Force escorted the B-1’s across the Korean peninsula and then handed off the escort to the Japanese Air Self Defense Force who escorted the bombers across the East China Sea back to Guam after the flight over the Korean peninsula.  That is actually great to see the cooperation between the ROK and Japan which I am sure the Kim regime took notice of.