Tag: South Korea

What I am wondering is if the Koreans can build this entire smart city quicker than it took to build the Camp Humphreys expansion that has been going on for over a decade?:

The Korean public and private sectors will help build a new city in Kuwait. This will be the first time Korea will construct a so-called smart city abroad.

The Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) has signed a contract with Kuwait’s Public Authority for Housing Welfare to lead the project that aims to build a new city called South Saad Al-Abdulla, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport said on Monday.

The city is about 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of the capital of Kuwait City and is 64.4 square kilometers (15,913 acres), about 300 percent larger than Korea’s Bundang. The Kuwaiti government plans to make it the first city in the Middle East to be both environmentally friendly and smart.

The Korean Transport Ministry said the LH will manage the project and Korean consortium in which Korea’s city planning firms will come up with plans to design the city. Posco A&C and Hyundai Architects & Engineers will be a few of the companies that will join the consortium.

The consortium will be fully organized in 2018 and Monday’s deal will give the group two years to design the city.

The Korean and Kuwaiti governments will analyze the profitability of the project plans submitted by the consortium in 2019 and will decide whether to proceed as early as 2019. The Korean Transport Ministry, however, said that the date of completion for construction is still undecided.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The yellow dust is getting so bad in Korea that in the future everyone may need these air purifiers in their homes as a must have appliance:

The ever-dirtier air in Korea has sparked consumer interest in air purifiers for the home and local electronics companies are cranking out new models, including ones that use the Internet of Things technology.

The number of air purifiers sold last year was one million units compared to 900,000 in 2015 and 500,000 in 2014. In money terms, sales of air purifiers amounted to 1 trillion won ($894.2 million) last year – which may grow to 1.5 trillion won this year, according to industry insiders.

Discount chain E-Mart reported a 60.8 percent increase year on year in air purifier sales between March 1 and 23. Electronics retailers Lotte Hi-Mart said its air purifier sales rose 30 percent year on year from March 1 through 22.

“With the influx of Chinese smog and lack of rain, the number of days with excessive fine dust was particularly high this year,” said Cho Yong-wook, E-Mart’s buyer for electronics. “As a consequence, we’re seeing a sharp increase in customers shopping for air purifiers.”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like former US Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert is a really big fan of the Doosan Bears:

Former U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert returned to Seoul on Friday to attend a baseball game.

Lippert, whose term ended in January after a little over two years, attended the 2017 Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) season opener between the home team Doosan Bears and the Hanwha Eagles at Jamsil Stadium.

A Bears official said Lippert had contacted the club about 10 days ago saying he wanted to be here for the first game of the new season.

During his time here, Lippert, an avid baseball fan, had been an honorary ambassador for the KBO. The Bears are his favorite team, and he often traveled across the nation to watch them in postseason play.  [Yonhap]

NBC News is going to be putting the spotlight on USFK this week:

NBC’s Lester Holt will anchor Nightly News from South Korea Monday and Tuesday for what NBC calls “unprecedented access to the U.S. military’s combined air, ground and naval capabilities.”

Holt’s reporting trip comes as tensions rise in the region and a day after Defense Secretary Mattis said North Korea must be stopped from its ability to threaten a nuclear attack.  [TVNewser, hat tip Jodi]

The yellow dust this year has been absolutely horrible in Korea and it seems to get worse every year:

Image from the Korea Herald.

Korean consumers’ concern about fine dust, which is believed to come from China, seems to be legitimate as confirmed by a report published Thursday in the peer-reviewed international journal Nature.

About 30,900 people in Korea and Japan die prematurely every year due to fine dust from China, according to the study jointly conducted by researchers in China’s Tsinghua and Peking universities, the University of British Columbia and the University of California, Irvine.

Analyzing the number of early deaths from heart, lung and blood vessel-related diseases and the density and movement of fine dust, the researchers found out that 411,100 people worldwide died prematurely due to fine dust from outside their countries.

The researchers especially pointed out that China, as the largest producer of fine dust particles, causes the greatest number of deaths because of the high population density of itself and its neighbors.

“It costs less to manufacture goods in places like China and Southeast Asia, mostly because those places have cheaper labor than the West,” Steven Davis, co-author of the paper, said. “But they also tend to have less stringent environmental protections.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Today's cherry blossoms by Yeojwacheon Stream 😍
Don't miss out on the Starlight Festival tomorrow!
For more info👉https://t.co/QXlPohCLSs pic.twitter.com/vMu2gGymRT

— VisitKorea (@KoreanTravel) March 30, 2017

I think long time Korea watcher Michael Breen is spot on with this assessment of the impeachment of President Park:

Compared to many countries, South Korea is fiercely democratic. But South Koreans want to be better. After each election, the winner is allowed to act like a short-term monarch and everyone blessed with a connection looks for advantage. By the end of the fourth year, the stench of favor is too much, and approval ratings plunge so low that the outgoing president is considered a liability by his own party’s next candidate. Of the five democratically elected presidents before Park, one was jailed, another committed suicide to avoid a prosecution investigation, and the other three saw their family members go to jail. Now, Park is the first to actually be tossed out.

Although disappointing on the policy front, Park, in all fairness, has been no worse than the others on the moral front. In fact, being unmarried—and, as far as we know, never even having had a boyfriend—as well as being distanced from her siblings, she was assumed to be free of the complications that dogged her predecessors. So, when it turned out she had a best friend who enjoyed unheard of privileges, whose daughter rode a horse in the Olympics, and who received unfair entrance to a university, the country went ape.  [The Atlantic]

You can read the rest at the link, but Michael Breen goes on to explain how the establishment knew Park had to go because of how unpopular she had become and the size of the protests against her and thus impeachment was inevitable.

I wonder if this will still be the direction given to the ROK military after the Korean left likely wins the Presidency in May:

South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo on Wednesday instructed troops not to hesitate to take retaliatory actions in the event of a North Korea attack.

Inspecting a coastline guard post of the Army’s 32nd Infantry Division, Han stressed the need for “perfect” combat posture both on the front lines and in the rear.

“There shouldn’t be any disorder even by an inch in the military,” he said. “Any provocation from the North should not be tolerated.”

The minister urged the military to be fully ready for the completion of operations “on-the-spot” at a “decisive” time, citing the grim security conditions on the peninsula.  [Yonhap]

Long time Korea watchers may remember that the last time the Korean left held the presidency, ROK servicemembers who defended the nation against North Korean aggression were treated like criminals.  Hopefully these same policies are not enacted when the Korean left likely takes over this time.

For anyone that has been waiting to see a Choi Soon-shil inspired movie hit the big the screen well here it is:

The massive presidential scandal involving Choi Soon-sil, the central figure who allegedly abused former Korean President Park Geun-hye’s authority to amass wealth, will be made into a comedy movie.

“Gate” will be directed by Shin Jae-ho, a comedy-movie director. It will star renowned Korean actress Jeong Kyung-soon as “Aeree,” a character allegedly based on Choi, Park’s longtime friend.

Shin told The Korea Times: “I picked up the idea of the movie from the scandal, but I will not specify Aeree as Choi Soon-sil. Also, the movie’s main story is not about Aeree , but a small family living in a suburb.”

Shin dismissed the idea that the impeached former president was taken into account in the plot, saying there is a character in the movie “who talks to Aeree but she is not based on any real person.”  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes this news that Constitutional Court judge involved who approved the impeachment of former President Park Geun-hye has been given a prestigious position at Korea University:

Lee Jung-mi, the former acting chief justice of the Constitutional Court who impressed many with her grace under pressure as the court ruled on Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, will take up a chair at Korea University, her alma mater.

Lee will teach at the university’s law school for a year from April 1, Korea University said on Thursday.  [Chosun Ilbo]

I think it is a very fair question to ask whether Lee would have been given this position if she had decided the other way on the impeachment?  Considering she took this job so quickly after stepping down she must have known that this was something being offered when she was making her decision on impeachment.  Would she have been able to take this job if she decided the other way with protesters and the media hounding her every move?