Considering that the suspect is an ethnic Korean it will be interesting to see if the Korean media tries to keep a low key approach to this case or not:
An American soldier of Korean ethnicity has been charged with raping a Korean woman at a Busan guesthouse.
Busan Jungbu police have charged the man, 21, with raping the woman, 24.
The soldier, from a U.S. Forces Korea camp in Gyeonggi Province, made the woman’s acquaintance through an online dating app.
On Feb. 18, he met her in person in Busan while on a brief vacation. At about 4:30 a.m., after they had been drinking, the soldier took her to a guesthouse, where he allegedly raped her.
Police said the man had denied the charge.
The police plan to refer the case to U.S. military police, who will deal with it according to the Status of Forces Agreement between Seoul and Washington. [Korea Times]
Rep. Lee Cheol-woo, chairman of the National Assembly’s intelligence committee; Kim Kwan-yong, governor of North Gyeongsang Province; and Rep. Lee Wan-young of the ruling Liberty Korea Party (L to R) call for the deployment of an advanced U.S. missile defense system, dubbed “the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD),” on the country’s soil during a news conference in Seoul on Feb. 16, 2017. The main opposition Democratic Party opposes the deployment. (Yonhap)
Here is an interesting theory on why South Koreans hate the Japanese so much:
Korean school children draw anti-Japanese pictures to post at a subway station.
If South Korea can only weakly legitimate itself through democracy, and with race-nationalism so powerful, Seoul must go head-to-head with Pyongyang over who is the best custodian of the minjok and its glorious 5000 year history. This is a tussle South Korea cannot win, not only because of the North’s mendacious willingness to falsify history, but South Korea’s Westernized culture, massive U.S. presence, rising multiculturalism leading to mixed race citizens, and so on.
The North’s purer minjok nationalism will always have resonance in the South, where for a generation former dictator Park Chung Hee invoked race for legitimacy, 10% of the public voted for an openly pro-North Korean party in the last parliamentary election, and the main left-wing party has consistently equivocated on whether the U.S. represents a greater threat to South Korea than North Korea does.
Enter Japan, then, as a useful ‘other’ to South Korea, in the place that really should be held by North Korea. All Koreans, north and south, right and left, agree that the colonial take-over was bad. The morality of criticizing Japan is undisputed, whereas criticizing North Korea quickly gets tangled up in the ‘who-can-out-minjok-who’ issues raised above. [The National Interest]
I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but likewise the anti-Japanese hatred is irrational when compared to the Chinese as well. The Chinese are actively conducting anti-Korean initiatives because of the THAAD issue, have a territorial dispute with Korea, are the chief benefactor of North Korea, a country committed to the destruction of the ROK, and China was the last country to invade the ROK and nearly destroyed it during the Korean War. Heck the Chinese embassy even sent protestors into the streets of Seoul to beatdown Koreans during the Olympic torch protest.
Despite all of this, hatred is directed towards the Japanese who should be a natural geopolitical ally. I have always believed that the persistent anti-Japanese sentiment and rotating bouts of anti-US sentiment is because South Koreans know they can protest both countries without repercussions. As the current THAAD dispute shows the Chinese government does not sit idly by without retaliating against Korea, likewise for North Korea. If South Koreans push North Korea too much a ROK ship may get sunk or artillery rounds may land in the ROK. Protest Japan or the United States and little to nothing happens. That makes both countries easy targets to direct Korean nationalism towards especially for domestic political reasons.
I don’t expect this dynamic to change unless South Koreans are put into a position where they have to forgive and forget with Japan for national security reasons. As long as the US-ROK alliance this is something Koreans do not have to worry about.
What this Japanese Kindergarten is doing is wrong, but South Korea has little creditability to complain considering the anti-Japanese hatred taught to kids in their country:
Screen shot from Tsukamoto Kindergarten’s website. / Yonhap
Tsukamoto Kindergarten, a preschool in Osaka city, Japan, is being investigated for allegedly handing out flyers containing hate speech against Koreans living in Japan and against Chinese people, Kyodo News reported on Thursday.
“Korean residents in Japan and Chinese people are devious,” read the flyer that the kindergarten allegedly distributed.
Kyodo News also pointed out that the flyer called Chinese people “shinajin,” a derogatory term.
The kindergarten is known to have sent out flyers in December 2016, criticizing Korean residents in Japan.
“The problem is that people, who are Korean at heart, reside in Japan as Japanese,” read the flyer.
The school has previously been criticized for making students memorize the “Imperial Edict on Education,” used during Japan’s imperial rule of other countries.
During a field day in 2015, the school also allegedly made students take an oath blaming Korea and China for making Japan a malevolent nation. [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but the Osaka government has sent a warning to the school to stop their anti-Korea and China activities. Has the Korean government ever warned any of their schools to stop anti-Japanese activities?
I know a few people that have been impacted by this government hiring freeze. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts:
Col. Joseph Holland, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, says the federal hiring freeze is having a big impact on military operations in South Korea, despite exemptions.
The Trump administration’s hiring freeze has left key jobs vacant and could jeopardize readiness at this U.S. base, the commander said Wednesday.
“The hiring freeze that we’re under right now … is having a big impact on us in Korea writ large,” Col. Joseph Holland, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys, said in an interview in his office.
President Donald Trump ordered a government-wide hiring freeze on Jan. 23, just three days after taking office. He excluded the military and allowed the Office of Personnel Management to grant exemptions elsewhere. [Stars & Stripes]
Here is an example of some of the impacts the hiring freeze is having on Camp Humphreys:
For example, the air field, which is active around-the-clock, is relying on an acting manager because officials were unable to push through a final offer to fill the role on a permanent basis before the Feb. 22 cutoff date, Holland said.
“We have a final offer given to a gentleman coming from the United States, but he can’t come here because of the hiring freeze. He fell outside of the window,” he added.
Holland said other vacancies stranded by the hiring freeze included directors for the Army’s substance-abuse program and the community service program, as well as the garrison sexual-assault response coordinator and victim advocate.
It looks like Korean motorists will have a high end electric car choice available to them in May:
Tesla completed the manufacturer registration process to sell cars in Korea on Wednesday, putting it on track to begin operations here within the first half of this year.
“Tesla plans to bring its test product into the country by this month and begin sales in May,” said an official from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which is in charge of the registration process.
The only step left for the automaker is to report basic specs of the model it plans to sell at least 10 days before sales begin, a relatively simple step compared to previous hurdles. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but South Korea I believe is a perfect market for electric cars considering the short driving distances to get around the country.
It looks like Paris has their own example of apparent police misconduct being used as an excuse by thugs to riot and rob:
A group of South Korean tourists in Paris were robbed of their train tickets and one passport in what appeared to be a case linked to the recent unrest over alleged police brutality, officials said Sunday.
Some 40 Korean tourists were on a bus to their hotel around 9 p.m. Saturday (local time) when three or four black men boarded the bus and fled with the tourists’ Eurostar tickets and the passport of the group’s Korean tour guide, according to officials at the South Korean Embassy in Paris.
The men shouted and brandished what appeared to be glass bottles and struck some of the tourists on their heads. The group included children and senior citizens.
An official at the embassy urged caution in the suburbs north of Paris where the hotel is located, citing safety concerns. More than 2,000 protesters gathered in the nearby suburb of Bobigny the same day to express support for a 22-year-old black man who was alleged raped and subjected to unnecessary violence by police officers during his arrest on Feb. 2. [Yonhap]
Police have cleared two civilians over a man’s death during a citizens’ arrest.
The civilians, surnamed Kim and Kwon, saw the man carrying out a sexual act near a villa in Suwon on Aug. 13, 2016.
They chased the man and caught him after he collided with a power pole.
They subdued him and handed him to the police, but he died en route to the police station.
The man’s family sued Kim and Kwon in October after the National Forensic Agency found that the death was related to physical impact during the arrest.
But on Saturday, Suwon Nambu police sent the case to the prosecutor, saying there was no evidence for an indictment.
“The police investigated the death and the manslaughter suit against the civilians,” a police official said.
“However, the prosecution concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge the civilians with manslaughter and ordered the case to be designated ‘clear from suspicion’.” [Korea Times]
