Two child monks touch each other’s head after attending a shaving and Buddhist confirmation ceremony at a Buddhist temple near the eastern coastal city of Sokcho on April 14, 2017, ahead of Buddha’s Birthday that falls on May 3. (Yonhap)
I wonder how long she has been getting away with this?:
This provided image, taken from CCTV footage, shows a 20-year-old woman (in red circle) stealing two bracelets at a jeweler’s shop in the central city of Cheongju on April 1, 2017. (Yonhap)
Police have booked a 20-year-old woman for allegedly stealing two gold bracelets and hiding them in her buttocks at a jeweler’s shop in central South Korea earlier this month, they said Wednesday.
The Heungdeok Police Station in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, said the woman, along with her 21-year-old friend, visited the shop on April 1 and browsed the bracelets on display. She repeatedly put her hand into her pants while the other woman was talking to an employee over the purchase of a ring.
According to the police, the shopowner found that two bracelets, worth 980,000 won (about US$856), were gone. The woman was later spotted picking them up in CCTV footage.
She denied the allegations and demanded that the shop call the police to determine whether she stole them, saying that she wore a pair of leggings and had nowhere to hide them.
Two female police officers arrived at the shop and conducted a strip search in a bathroom near the shop after getting the suspect’s consent, eventually obtaining her confession that she had hidden them in her buttocks. [Yonhap]
You would think this guy would find a more secure location to hide this much money. He is lucky the students who found the money did not just walk away with it. Considering he is now under arrest maybe it would have been better for him:
(Left) A money envelope containing bills in a locker at Sungkyunkwan University on March 7. (Right) Inside is 200 million won (177,000 dollar) in cash. [SUWON JUNGBU POLICE PRECINCT]An envelope containing a bundle of bills amounting to 200 million won ($177,000) was found in a student locker at Sungkyunkwan University campus in Suwon, Gyeonggi.
The owner happens to be a professor of Sungkyunkwan University and husband to attorney, Choi Yu-jeong, who was arrested last year for her involvement in corruption.
The life science student association at the Sungkyunkwan University Natural Sciences campus in Suwon was undergoing spring cleaning on March 7 when they discovered a locked locker. Unable to identify the owner, they forced open the locker.
Inside they found a yellow envelope containing 1,800 50,000 won bills and 1,000 100 dollar bills. The student association immediately notified the school and reported this to the police.
The Suwon police poured through footage from the CCTV cameras on campus. However, as there were no CCTV cameras covering the lockers, the investigation did not progress. The students said the locker had been locked since August.
Fortunately, police were able to spot a man, later identified as a Sungkyunkwan University professor, moving towards the student lockers with a bag on Feb. 16.
The Sungkyunkwan University professor returned to the scene on March 8 to verify whether the money was still safely stashed there. Since there are no faculty offices in the vicinity of the student locker room and the area is generally not visited by professors, this piqued the interest of investigators.
Unluckily for the academic, that day happened to be a day after the student association’s report to the police.
The police found he was the husband of Choi and subsequently searched his office on Tuesday while requesting his presence at the police department. “At the request of my wife, I deposited [the money] at the locker,” he confessed. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
According to the article Ahn Cheol-soo is attracting conservative voters who have no other viable candidate to vote for in the upcoming ROK presidential election:
Ahn Cheol-soo
Presidential candidate Ahn Cheol-soo of the People’s Party has knocked frontrunner Moon Jae-in of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK) off the top spot in several poll results released Sunday, a month before the May 9 election.
Moon, who had been leading the polls for months, slipped back to 32.7 percent as Ahn gained 36.8 percent in a poll conducted by Korea Research Center.
In the hypothetical two-way competition, Ahn beat Moon by over 10 percentage points, with 49.4 percent to Moon’s 36.2 percent.
Ahn was also neck and neck with Moon in other polls.
Another poll conducted by Hankook Research on the commission of Hankook Ilbo, the sister paper of The Korea Times, showed Moon gained 37.7 percent, and Ahn was on his heels, having 37 percent. [Korea Times]
You can read much more at the link, but to woo conservative voters Ahn has supported the THAAD deployment and maintaining tough sanctions on North Korea:
The more centrist Ahn Cheol-soo this week won the People’s Party nomination. He is currently second in the Realmeter poll at 34 percent, but he has been slowly closing the gap in recent weeks with Moon. The South Korean software mogul pulled out of the 2012 presidential election to support Moon, but this time he vows to stay in and expects to win.
On national security Ahn takes a somewhat tougher stance than Moon, supporting THAAD and international sanctions imposed on North Korea for breaching United Nations Security Council resolutions banning its nuclear program. But Ahn says he too would press for inter-Korean talks at some point.
“What is the purpose of putting in sanctions against North Korea? Because we would like to persuade them to come to the negotiating table at the time we want and under the conditions that we want,” said Ahn. [VOA News]
I guess the real question is if the conservative voters in a close election will be as motivated to turn out and vote for Ahn as Moon Jae-in’s voters will for him?
The yellow dust this year in South Korea is as bad as I can remember it ever being and it seems Korean citizens are beginning to take action to do something about it:
Mask-wearing protestors demand the Korean government to come up with measures to reduce air pollution in a rally held in central Seoul on April 2. (Yonhap)
Many believe that while South Korea has had its own air problem, the recent sharp deterioration is mainly due to China, the world’s biggest polluter.
This belief has led to the first civil lawsuit filed by South Korean citizens against the governments of both Korea and China.
Choi Yul, an environmental activist and president of the Korea Green Foundation, and attorney Ahn Kyung-jae filed the suit Wednesday with the Seoul Central District Court, seeking 3 million won ($2,650) each in compensation.
The data on how much of the airborne pollutants in Korea are from China is not seen as reliable.
The Comprehensive Plan on Fine Particulate Matter compiled by several government bodies put the figure at 30-50 percent.
Such figures are estimated using data from Baengnyeongdo, a remote western island.
However, a report from the Munhwa Ilbo uncovered that the decimal point on the published data data collected at Baengnyeongdo over the past two years had been put in the wrong place giving much lower readings than was the case. Officials say they used the correct data in their calculations, and had therefore not underestimated China’s influence, but are coy about releasing the data.
A study leaked from the Ministry of Environment estimated that 86 percent of ultrafine dust particles in Seoul and its surrounding cities on March 21, when the entire country was choked with high dust concentrations, was of Chinese origin.
The ministry confirmed that figure, but has been reluctant to reveal more data on the China factor, claiming a significant portion of the pollutants originate here. [Korea Herald]
You can read more at the link, but the Seoul city government did recently release statistics that showed 55% of the air pollution in Seoul was coming from China. The ROK can take measures to reduce pollution domestically, but ultimately it will not matter until they get the Chinese government to do something on their end. Good luck with that.
Nobody likes bullies, but this reaction to bullying was a bit too extreme:
The Ulsan District Court has jailed a man who raided a middle school with six thugs to threaten teenage girls who bullied his daughter.
The court Tuesday jailed the father for a year and sentenced the gangsters he hired to terms ranging from eight months to a year. They were accused of the crime in 2015.
The convicted man’s daughter allegedly suffered serious distress two years ago because of school bullies.
The man acted after the bullies shared a photo of his daughter’s body parts with classmates without her permission, asking the thugs to “take revenge.”
Later, the father and one of his henchmen broke into the school principal’s office, threatening the principal to assemble the bullies. The five other thugs were waiting at the school’s main gate to intimidate students and staff.
The principal refused to give in, so the men broke into the bullies’ classroom. They forced the alleged bullies to kneel in front of the class and threatened to beat them. [Korea Times]
The Sea of Japan/East Sea issue has come back up again:
Shortly after North Korea’s ballistic missile launch on Wednesday, the U.S. military issued a statement that may add to the anger of Koreans over the naming of the waters between the peninsula and Japan.
In a five-paragraph document posted on its website, the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM), headquartered in Hawaii, confirmed the North’s firing of a missile, saying it flew nine minutes before falling into the “Sea of Japan.”
Almost simultaneously, the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) here uploaded a statement on its own homepage with mostly the same content.
The only differences were the time, as PACOM’s version is based on Hawaii time and the USFK’s notes Korean standard time, and the name of the waters, which Koreans call the East Sea.
The USFK’s statement said the missile landed in “waters East of the Korean Peninsula.”
Some South Korean journalists stationed at the defense ministry’s press room complained about PACOM’s use of the Sea of Japan alone in the official document directly involving Korea and read by many people in the key regional ally. [Yonhap]
You can read the rest at the link, but USFK admitted they modified the naming in their statement which makes sense since their statement is directed more towards a Korean audience. PACOM on the other hand makes statements directed towards a regional audience that includes Japan, so of course they are going to use the internationally recognized naming convention for the body of water between the two countries which is the Sea of Japan.
South and North Korean players compete at the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Women’s World Championship Division II Group A at Gangneung Hockey Centre in the namesake city, 237 kilometers east of Seoul, on April 6, 2017. The South shut out the North 3-0. (Yonhap)
It has seemed to me that the yellow dust pollution from China has gotten worse every year and this study now confirms that it in fact has:
Seoul’s government is trying its best to counter the gunk in the city’s air.
But it admitted Thursday that sources of pollution from outside Korea, including fine particle pollution from China, have increased in the past few years.
“According to our research conducted in 2011 and 2016, Seoul’s contribution to pollution grew from 21 percent in 2011 to 22 percent in 2016,” said Hwang Bo-yeon, head of the Climate and Environment Headquarters of the Seoul Metropolitan Government. “But the contribution to air pollution by international factors, including fine dust from China, grew from 49 percent to 55 percent in the same period.
“The city will do all it can, including increasing city-to-city meetings with Beijing to address the problem together.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
