Pringles lovers may have a hard time finding chips for sales:
South Korea’s food safety agency on Friday imposed a temporary sales ban on Pringles potato chips imported from Malaysia after the body of a lizard was found in one of the imported products.
Nongshim Co., the local importer of Pringles chips, has also been ordered to recall all other packages from the same Malaysian manufacturer, according to the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety.
The recall affects 4,410 kilograms of Pringles chips produced in Malaysia on July 2, it added. [Yonhap]
I don’t see how South Korea can be considered a low cost manufacturing country especially considering the KORUS FTA has made it cheaper for them to manufacture in the US compared to South Korea:
Trump hasn’t spelled out how he wants to rearrange NAFTA, but the basic idea is to encourage or compel more production in the United States, which would mean less production in places like Mexico. But that would be highly disruptive and would penalize American automakers more than their foreign rivals. Trump could probably rewrite the rules in a way that limits Mexican imports to the United States, for instance. But that doesn’t mean automakers would simply move Mexican factories north of the border. They might look for other low-cost countries instead, such as South Korea, India or China. The Trump administration could pursue trade restrictions on those countries as well, but that becomes a game of free-trade whack-a-mole in which the government is trying to tell multinational companies where to invest their money—hardly the lightly regulated pro-growth environment Trump says he wants to create.
If Trump tries to stop US automakers from producing in Mexico, that doesn’t mean he can stop foreign automakers from operating there. So the government would essentially be raising costs for American firms by forcing them out of Mexico, but not for their global competitors. [Yahoo Finance]
I wonder if these two American figure skaters would be given dual citizenship or will they have to renounce their US citizenship?:
South Korea will likely grant citizenship to four foreign athletes in preparation of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
The Korean Sport and Olympic Committee met Wednesday to discuss the issue at the Korean National Training Center in northeastern Seoul.
The four include two American figure skaters, Alexander Gamelin and Themistocles Leftheris, and two Russian biathletes.
The two American figure skaters paired with South Korean partners and have been competing in ISU championships as South Korean teams since June of last year. [KBS World Radio]
A section of Haeundae Beach on the southeastern port city of Busan bears the marks of being submerged on Nov. 16, 2016, apparently affected by an unusually high tide stemming from the pull of the recent supermoon, which happens when a full moon or new moon coincides with the moon’s closest approach to Earth. (Yonhap)
Activists hold a rally in front of the government complex in Seoul on Nov. 17, 2016, to call on the government to stop its push for a formal agreement with Japan on the sharing of military intelligence on North Korea. The two neighbors inked a provisional deal in Tokyo on Nov. 14, despite strong public objection in South Korea. (Yonhap)
Here is an example of a major cultural difference between how much the United States and South Korea value the importance of national testing:
A test-taker gets encouragement from his mother in front of a high school in central Seoul on Nov. 17, 2016, before entering the school to sit for the state-administrated college entrance exam that takes place nationwide the same day. Some 605,000 students nationwide are taking the test to enter college in the spring semester that begins in March. (Yonhap)
Some 606,000 high school seniors and graduates in South Korea took the state-administered annual college entrance exam Thursday, as the government implemented various traffic control and anti-noise measures near nationwide testing sites.
A total of 605,987 students, down about 25,200 from last year, registered to take the standardized College Scholastic Ability Test that was administered at 1,183 testing sites, according to the Ministry of Education.
Similar to the American Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), the exam is considered the most crucial test of students’ academic careers and seen as the deciding factor in their choice of college and future professions.
The exam, which consists mostly of multiple-choice questions, is divided into five sections — Korean language, mathematics, English, social and natural sciences, and a second foreign language. Starting this year, all test-takers must take a separate Korean history exam during the social and natural sciences test time.
The test started at 8:30 a.m. and ran through 5:40 p.m., including lunch and breaks.
As in previous years, the government imposed various traffic control and anti-noise measures as part of its efforts to ensure that the test be executed without any problems.
Subways and trains in the capital area extended their rush hour services by two hours to help all exam-takers arrive at the test sites on time. Bus operations were also expanded during the commuting time.
The stock markets opened for trade one hour late, while government offices and enterprises in nearby areas also started work an hour later than usual to keep the roads clear for students on their way to the test centers. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but it is also common for the underclassmen to be cheering on the students taking the tests and parents flocking to Buddhist temples and churches to pray for the success of the kids taking the test. In the past USFK conducted very limited operations of post to limit noise and traffic in order to not interfere with the national testing.
A major down side of the national testing is the many suicides that tend to happen after these tests are completed by students that do not do as well as they expected.
Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn inspects a barbed wire fence at a military unit in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in Yanggu, about 175 kilometers northeast of Seoul, on Nov. 16, 2016. The DMZ has separated the two Koreas since the end of the three-year Korean War in 1953. His visit comes amid a snowballing political scandal involving a longtime confidante of President Park Geun-hye. (Yonhap)
This opposition by the Korean left to the ROK-Japan military intelligence sharing pact is not surprising. Japanese Prime Minister Abe could apologize for everything from the Hideyoshi invasion of Korea to World War II and then commit seppuku on top of Mt. Namsan and the Korean left would still oppose this pact simply because the Korean right wants it:
Defense Minister Han Min-koo
Opposition parties Tuesday set in motion a campaign to oust Defense Minister Han Min-koo over a controversial military pact with Japan that was tentatively signed by the two sides late Monday.
Making good on their pledge, the three groups — the Democratic Party of Korea, People’s Party and Justice Party — decided to submit a parliamentary motion to recommend the minister’s dismissal on Nov. 30 and put it to vote at a plenary session slated for Dec. 2.
Its passage is likely, since the opposition bloc controls more than a majority of seats in Parliament.
A provisional deal was reached in Tokyo on Monday evening on the General Security of Military Information Agreement, which aims to enhance cooperation in coping with North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats. It does not require parliamentary ratification.
A previous effort to sign the deal was derailed in 2012 in the face of strong public disapproval in Seoul.
The opposition parties have threatened to unseat the defense minister if he pushes through the deal this time, without public consensus.
The tentative signing came less than two weeks after talks reopened between the two countries on military intelligence sharing. The first working-level meeting was held on Nov. 1. Seoul and Tokyo had made official the negotiation’s resumption on Oct. 27. [Korea Herald]
