Many foreigners do not seem to realize this, but attending protest rallies is actually illegal in Korea:
Foreigners participating in the protests against President Park Geun-hye may carry legal complications ― theoretically.
“As legal counsel I would say not to go to the rallies, as there are some articles in law that in principle prohibit foreigners from attending rallies,” said Nam Won-chul, a lawyer with Hwang Mok Park law firm.
According to the Immigration Control Act, “No foreigner sojourning in the Republic of Korea shall engage in any political activity with the exception of cases provided by this Act or other statutes.” The act empowers the Ministry of Justice to order a violator “in writing to suspend such activity” or “take other necessary measures.”
This may include deportation or a ban on visa renewal, according to one source familiar with the matter.
The law applies to all foreigners regardless of visa type, Nam says. “According to the text of the article, I think all foreigners are uniformly prohibited from political activities.” [Korea Times]
It is looking like President Park Geun-hye will resign as the South Korean President in late April which means elections are supposed happen 60 days after that. That makes late June 2017 as the timeframe for the next ROK Presidential election:
A rift emerged in the opposition alliance to impeach President Park Geun-hye this week as last-minute talks among the leaders of three liberal parties broke down Thursday, while ruling party lawmakers united to promote an “orderly” resignation of the president in April.
Chairwoman Choo Mi-ae of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea, Rep. Park Jie-won, acting head of the People’s Party and Chairwoman Sim Sang-jeong of the Justice Party held a meeting Thursday afternoon to discuss a specific timeline for an impeachment motion in the National Assembly. Citing an agreement from the previous day, Choo and Sim said the motion must be submitted on Thursday to allow a vote today. Park disagreed. He said he opposed a vote that was guaranteed to fail.
The embattled president issued a public statement Tuesday saying she was willing to cut her term short. She asked the National Assembly to decide the fate of her presidency in response to a public clamor for her resignation over a still snowballing abuse of power scandal.
Her proposal was considered an alternative to impeachment. Since Tuesday, members of her own party who were supporting impeachment have swung to the idea of another kind of resignation, which has been code-named the “orderly” departure scenario.
Park won a five-year presidential term in the 2012 election and her tenure is scheduled to end in late February 2018. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
I am not sure what else the Pentagon is supposed to say other than they plan to continue to move forward with the THAAD deployment unless told otherwise:
The U.S. Defense Department said Tuesday that the planned deployment of a U.S. advanced anti-missile system to South Korea will move forward regardless of President Park Geun-hye’s possible resignation or impeachment over the corruption scandal.
“Our Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) deployment continues,” said Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook at a briefing. “Those remain ongoing, and the alliance continues to move forward with that plan.” [Korea Times]
This will be a big change for the job hiring process in South Korea if this bill gets implemented, but it seems that face to face interviews will be the way for employers to get around the intent of this bill:
Rep. Han Jeoung-ae of the main opposition Democratic Party (Yonhap)
The South Korean parliament’s labor committee on Monday approved a bill which bans employers from requiring job seekers to provide a headshot and information such as their weight and height.
It also seeks to prohibit the “discriminatory” practice of requiring information about an applicant’s birthplace, religion, marital status, assets and family details on application forms.
Violators will be slapped with fines of up to 5 million won (US$4,275) under the bill proposed by Rep. Han Jeoung-ae of the main opposition Democratic Party.
The proposal calls for punishing acts of requesting and offering illegal favors, exerting undue influence and giving and taking gifts or cash in the recruitment process with fines of up to 30 million won. [Yonhap]
It appears that one way or another President Park is not going to complete her little over one year remaining in office after this announcement:
President Park Geun-hye speaks during an address to the nation at the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul on Nov. 29, 2016. (Yonhap)
President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday called on parliament to determine her fate, saying she will step down in line with a timetable and procedures reached by political parties that can minimize any confusion arising from a government change.
Opposition parties dismissed the call as part of a political gambit to stall for time and thwart their impeachment push, stressing they won’t break ranks and will continue their move to oust the president.
During her third address to the nation over the corruption scandal centered on her confidante Choi Soon-sil, Park renewed her apology for her inability to address mounting public fury, but repeated her denial of any involvement in the scandal.
Earlier this month, the prosecution cited Park as an accomplice in “considerable parts” of the alleged wrongdoings carried out by Choi and her former aides — allegations denied by the presidential office Cheong Wa Dae.
“I will entrust the National Assembly with (the task of) making decisions on issues, including the shortening of my presidential term,” she said during the five-minute address. Her single, five-year term ends in February 2018. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but I think President Park probably does not want to put her political party members in a tough situation in regards to whether or not to support the impeachment vote coming up. Offering to resign buys her political party time to organize a campaign for a person to replace her. After she resigns elections are supposed to be held in 60 days. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out for President Park.
Via a reader tip comes news that ROK government held a meeting with USFK to address changes they want made to the US-ROK Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA):
Yeo Seung-bae (R), director-general for North American affairs at the South Korean foreign ministry, shakes hands with Deputy Commander of U.S. Forces Korea Thomas Bergeson in Seoul on Nov. 22, 2016, before a joint committee meeting on a bilateral agreement governing the legal status of American forces here, known as the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), to discuss a range of pending issues. (Yonhap)
South Korea and the United States on Tuesday had a joint committee meeting to discuss various issues on their agreement governing the legal status of American forces stationed in South Korea, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Tuesday.
The 197th joint committee meeting of the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which defines areas of legal responsibility of the 28,000-strong U.S. soldiers here, was held at the foreign ministry in Seoul. The SOFA meeting is held once or twice a year, and this was the first time since last December that South Korea and the U.S. officials convened.
The foreign ministry said Yeo Seung-bae, the foreign ministry’s director-general for North America and his counterpart Thomas Bergeson, deputy commander of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), touched on issues such as education of American forces on local law and customs, the USFK’s stable employment of South Korean workers and environmental problems near the U.S. bases here.
The ministry added that the two sides also talked about implementation measures taken after a live anthrax sample from a U.S. military laboratory was shipped to a local military base by mistake and caused alarm bells to go off in the country last year.
The meeting took place before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump — one of whose campaign pledges was to have allies, including South Korea, pay more for American troops stationed in those countries — took over the White House. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the ROKs are still complaining about the oil leak issue in the Seoul subway system they have been blaming on Yongsan Garrison for years now. You would think if the oil leak was coming from Yongsan they would have found it by now. The other thing in the article that caught my attention was that they are still complaining about GI crimes. The article even states that the US military crime rate has steadily dropped since 2010 from an already extremely low crime rate compared to the surrounding Korean population.
You can read more about the US-ROK SOFA at the below link:
The issue of foreign English teachers being forced to take a HIV test before gaining employment in Korea has come up again:
One of my favorite cartoons from the English Spectrum-gate timeframe.
To teach English in Korea, Christina had to prove she was not HIV-positive.
The US citizen was reluctant, but complied with the rule, undergoing a blood test for HIV and submitting the results to local authorities in order to get a job at a public school.
When she found out that Korean and Korean-American teachers at the school were exempted from the test despite doing the same job, she was offended.
“It perpetuates perceptions of foreigners as dirty, dangerous and impure. I think it is discriminatory and xenophobic,” said Christina, who first came to Korea in 2010 and now teaches in Gwangju.
“It also perpetuates stereotypes about HIV and the people who have it,” she told The Korea Herald.
For nearly a decade, South Korea has made it mandatory for foreigners wishing to work here to undergo blood tests for HIV, rejecting those found to be HIV-positive.
This policy, introduced in 2007 after complaints from locals over “dangerous law-breaking foreigners,” including English teachers, may come to an end soon, as the government is considering a recent recommendation by the country’s human rights panel to do away with it.
“The Justice Ministry is collecting opinions from relevant ministries such as the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health and Welfare to decide whether to accept the recommendation,” it said in response to an inquiry by The Korea Herald.
A recommendation of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea is not legally binding, but the government must decide whether to accept it within 90 days. In this case, the deadline is Dec. 7. [Korea Herald]
You can read much more at the link, but over at Gusts of Popular Feeling there is a good run down on the history of the HIV testing law.
For those who are not long time readers of the ROK Drop the passing of the mandatory HIV testing law had nothing to do with concerns about HIV or drugs. It began in 2005 when English Spectrum-gate occurred. Some foreign English teachers made derogatory comments about Korean women on the English Spectrum website that a Korean netizen noticed. It soon exploded within the Korean Internet community who rallied to take down the webpage. However, the taking down of English Spectrum did not stop the Korean netizen fury against what they believed to be unqualified foreign English teachers running around the country taking drugs and molesting Korean women. An Anti-English Spectrum group was formed that actually wanted to provoke incidents with foreigners in certain university areas in order to push them out.
The controversy led the Korean government to order a crackdown against foreign English teachers. The crackdown got so bad I felt compelled to offer my advice to English teachers on how to blend in as a US GI. The anti-English Spectrum group was eventually able to lobby to get laws passed in 2007 to make it harder to get an E2 visa which is how the HIV testing came about. Since then the Korean government has faced accusations of discrimination, but have refused to revoke the HIV testing law. It looks like within the next few weeks we will know if South Korea will continue to enforce this discriminatory law.
The government is issuing a 48-hour temporary nationwide “standstill” order this weekend banning the movement of poultry in an effort to prevent the spread of bird flu.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs came to the decision at a meeting Friday as the bird flu alert status was raised from “caution” to “alert.”
The two-day standstill applies all day Saturday and Sunday.
Some 89-thousand poultry farms, slaughter houses, fodder plants and related vehicles registered with the Korea Animal Health Integrated System(KAHIS) are subject to the order.
The move comes amid outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N6 strain of avian influenza(AI) at farms nationwide. [KBS World Radio]
The Associated Press has an article published which looks at how each President of the Republic of Korea since its founding has had scandals of some kind mar the end of their presidencies:
Former ROK Presidents Roh Tae-woo and Chun Doo-hwan in prison outfits.
If there’s one thing that South Korean presidents dread more than the looming threat of rival North Korea, it may be this: becoming an ex-president.
Nearly all former presidents, or their family members and key aides, have been embroiled in scandals at the close of their terms or after leaving office. There have been corruption allegations, coups — even a suicide and an assassination.
Now, South Korean prosecutors say they believe current President Park Geun-hye, facing historic levels of unpopularity as she approaches her last year in office, conspired in the criminal activities of a confidante who allegedly exploited her presidential ties to force businesses to donate money to two foundations she controlled.
Here’s a look at the troubles faced by South Korean presidents over the years: [Associated Press]
What is probably the most disappointing thing about President Park Geun-hye for many Koreans is that they thought she would at least be a relatively scandal free Presidency since she had few immediate family members to create corruption scandals like past presidencies. However, her lack of immediate families members were replaced by cult figures that went on to do the same things that got past South Korean presidents in trouble.
