Tag: South Korea

I am surprised it took this long for the popular Pokemon Go game to come to Korea:

Popular augmented reality (AR) game “Pokemon Go” was officially released in South Korea on Tuesday, six months after becoming a global hit with millions of downloads.

Users can download the Pokemon Go official application from Google Play store and Apple’s App store, and it is available in Korean.

Pokemon Go didn’t work in most parts of South Korea as the AR game uses data from Google’s mapping service, which is restricted by the Seoul government due to security concerns.

However, tens of thousands of local users have downloaded the mobile game since its launch in the United States in July 2016.

Game developer Niantic Inc. said that it will hold a press conference later on Tuesday.  [Yonhap]

It looks like the impeachment ruling by the ROK Constitutional Court will be issued by March 13th.  If the impeachment is confirmed a new election will happen up to 60 days later which means early May could see the next Presidential election happen:

Constitutional Court President Park Han-chul said Wednesday that the court should make a ruling on President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment by March 13.

The call for a speedier decision reflects concerns that the impeachment trial might not be completed as two out of nine justices are soon to retire. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the state sponsored textbooks is another casualty of the President Park political scandal:

The parliament’s education committee on Friday passed a bill to ban state-authored textbooks amid the boycott from conservative parties.

The National Assembly Education, Culture, Sports & Tourism Committee approved the bill that bans the use of textbooks whose copyrights are held by the government. The bill has been handed over to the Legislation and Judiciary Committee.

The bill targets the Park Geun-hye government’s plan to provide middle and high school students with state-authored history textbooks, which critics say is intended to imbue students with rightist views of the nation’s modern history.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but the significance of this is that these textbooks are hold overs from the Sunshine Policy years where leftist teachers were able to get pro-North Korean textbooks into the schools.  Today the Sunshine Policy and its leftist supporters have been greatly discredited, but the books still remain in the schools which is what the Park administration however incompetently was trying to address.

Eggs from US chicken farmers have now arrived in South Korea to stop the rise in prices caused by the ongoing bird flu epidemic.  Fortunately there was no one out protesting about Mad Egg Disease or any other nonsense to stop this US import like we have seen in the past:

Eggs imported from the United States began to hit shelves Saturday, industry sources said, as the government seeks to contain rising egg prices amid the outbreak of bird flu.

About 96 tons of eggs from the U.S. passed the state food regulator’s quarantine review earlier in the day, the sources said, a week after they arrived in South Korea to serve as a cheaper alternative to the expensive eggs from local farms.

Local egg prices jumped in recent weeks as South Korea is struggling to control the spread of bird flu that has led to more than 30 million chickens and ducks being culled since the outbreak in mid-November.

Right after the eggs cleared procedures for safety checks, distributors transported some of them to discount supermarket chains in Seoul and adjacent areas, according to the sources.

They said that distribution of the imported eggs began Saturday, and most consumers will be able to purchase them at supermarket chains starting early next week.

A carton of 30 U.S. eggs was being sold at 8,950 won (US$7.61) at a mart in southwest Seoul, almost 1,000 won less than the cheapest bundle of local eggs being sold, according to an official.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Here is what a Yonsei professor who is an expert in international relations had to say about the incoming Trump administration:

Hankyoreh (Hani): Can you describe in broad strokes how the Trump administration will affect the Korean Peninsula?

Moon Chung-in (Moon): The Korean Peninsula policy won‘t be taking shape until April or May, when all the assistant secretaries have been appointed and confirmed. There are a lot of variables. But the main question is whether the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” policy will be retained, since that is linked to the global strategy the Trump administration comes up with. One has to bear in mind that Trump will reconsider the alliances according to his “America first” policy and that he’s more interested in geoeconomics [than geopolitics]. It’s also important to remember that Trump has a tendency to acknowledge what is called the Chinese and Russian sphere of influence, so he‘s not on the same page as the geopolitical strategy of checking and blockading China.

Hani: What kind of changes do you expect for the South Korea-US alliance?

Moon: Trump is blunt about the alliances. He has called out South Korea, Japan, NATO, Germany and Saudi Arabia for getting a “free ride.” He has a strong sense that the US is the benefactor and that its allies are the beneficiaries. The primary issue is adjusting how much of the joint cost of the South Korea-US alliance is covered by the two sides. First is defense burden sharing. South Korea spends 2.4% of its GDP on defense, and Trump could ask it to increase this to the US level of 4.3%. Second is defense cost sharing related to US Forces in Korea. South Korea is covering around 50%, and Trump could ask it to cover as much as 100% of this. These adjustments could be complicated by resistance inside South Korea. If a progressive government comes to power in South Korea, the question of pushing forward the transfer of wartime operational control [of South Korean troops to South Korea] would be sure to come up. Trump is likely to say that South Korea can have it right now if it wants it. He tends to act on instinct and impulse.  [Hankyoreh]

You can read more at the link.

#Asia's largest #drone show hits Busan this week from Thursday – Saturday. https://t.co/0gfkigosa2 #korea #busan #tech pic.twitter.com/RtPJ7SXbdq

— Busan Haps Magazine (@BusanHaps) January 16, 2017

An otter walks on the frozen Eomcheon River in Hamyang, a town in South Korea’s southeastern province of South Gyeongsang, on Jan. 16, 2017, in this photo released by the Hamyang municipality. The otter, an endangered animal, is designated as the country’s Natural Monument No. 330. (Yonhap)

This is a pretty bold sexual assault to drug multiple women in the back of a taxi and then sexually assault them.  I am willing to bet this is probably not the first time this taxi cab driver has done this:

Two South Korean women said they were sexually attacked by a taxi driver while traveling to a night market in Taipei, according to local reports and the Korean foreign ministry on Sunday.

According to the reports, three Korean women hired a taxi around 6 p.m. on Thursday to visit the popular Shilin Night Market. The taxi driver, identified only by his surname Chan, was said to have given them a soft drink while heading to the market. Two of them, sitting at the back, passed out after drinking it while the one who was sitting in the passenger seat didn’t drink it.

Upon arriving at the market, the sober woman tried to wake them up, to no avail, and went to check out the market alone, thinking the two fell asleep due to tiredness. She went back to the taxi around an hour later to find out they were still sleeping. The three then returned to the hotel.

The next day, the two reported to the local police that they were sexually assaulted by the taxi driver.

On Saturday night, the police summoned Chan for investigation. They soon detained him as the suspect partially admitted to the assault in his testimony. He is reported to have said he only meant to touch them.

Meanwhile, a blood test revealed that the victims had sleeping-inducing drugs in their blood.

“The Taiwanese police detained the suspect for investigation and are likely to charge him,” an official from the foreign ministry told Yonhap News Agency, adding that the women have returned to Korea.  [Yonhap]

Yonhap has an interesting article published about the different incentives being offered in South Korea for families to have 3 or more children in order to improve the nation’s birthrate:

The government spent more than 101.6 trillion won from 2006 to 2016 to encourage people to have more babies, though it was not enough to boost the low birthrate. The government said it has set aside more than 22.4 trillion won this year to help raise the country’s birthrate.

“It’s fair to say financial incentives are part of South Korea’s efforts to raise the low birthrate,” said Kye Bong-oh, professor of sociology at Kookmin University and a member of the Population Association of Korea.

Still, he said it remains to be seen how effective South Korea’s birth promotion policy will be.

Kang said she feels relieved that her county offers 10 million won in incentives to promote birth.

Kang’s view was echoed by Lee Su-min who is entitled to receive 47 million won from the southeastern county of Changnyeong and the central government over the next five years for her fourth baby.

“Financial incentives are of help to my family, as my husband is the sole breadwinner,” Lee said by phone from Changnyeong.

The southern South Korean island of Wando also offers 5 million won as a lump sum and another 15 million won in installments over three years for those who have a fifth baby. So far, there is only one recipient, but he declined to give an interview, citing privacy.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Yes it's 'Bandemonium' but Ban Ki-moon's critics & enemies need no encouragement to take this 'slippery eel' to task https://t.co/zwMUE45c1a pic.twitter.com/WXO2nnKFSv

— Noon in Korea (@AllNewsKorea) January 14, 2017