This is the lowest I can remember any Korean President’s approval rating going:
A citizen holds a picket that says “Park Geun-hye Out” in front of barricades made of police buses in central Seoul on Nov. 12, 2016, during a massive rally to demand the president’s resignation over the latest influence-peddling scandal involving her confidante. (Yonhap)
Investigators have been declining to comment on possible investigation into Park, and they have not suggested that she profitted from the scandal either.
Despite suspicions by many in the country that Park profitted from the scandal, no president since Roh Tae-woo, who left office in 1993, has ever been implicated in using the office to amass personal wealth, although relatives and close associates have done so, with many going to jail for their misdeeds.
Park’s approval rating remained at a record-low 5 percent this week, according to local pollster Gallup Korea. [Yonhap]
Everyone has to make their own personal decision about whether or not to have kids and the man featured in this article decided raising kids with limited financial resources was not for him:
Shin Ji-hoon, 33, went to the hospital for a vasectomy in February. An office worker, he is in his fourth year of marriage. Shin and his wife had given up on the idea of children for financial reasons, and he thought he needed a more reliable form of birth control. “I’m not very well off myself, and I figured that I would end up leaving my kids in an even worse position. After deciding not to have a child, I settled on a surefire way of eliminating the possibility of pregnancy,” he said.Shin felt sorry about having had his wife get prescriptions for “morning after” pills. These days, he says, vasectomy often comes up in conversation with people he knows. “When I hang out with friends my age, we often have debates about whether it’s even possible to raise kids,” he said.
Vasectomies once symbolized the South Korean government’s policy of decreasing the birthrate. During the 1960s, the government covered the cost of vasectomies as part of its family planning program; in the 1970s, it gave men who had vasectomies an advantage in bidding for apartments.But the government did an about-face when South Korea’s birthrate tanked. At the end of 2004, the government even eliminated coverage for vasectomies under national health insurance. But despite government policy, the story of this man in his 30s who rejected the idea of having children and decided to have a vasectomy reflects the harsh truth of South Korean society, in which people can’t have children even when they want to. [Hankyoreh]
You can read more at the link, but falling birthrates are sign of a modernizing country. So unless South Korea wants to import a huge amount of immigrants that could lead to social problems down the road they are going to have to look for ways to reduce the costs of raising kids to really improve the birthrate.
This is basically a scam which I am not sure how the Korean government stops people from being stupid and wasting away money like this?:
Ahn Jae-sung married Natasha, an Uzbek woman, in 2007 through a matchmaking agency. He now works full-time counseling Korean men at the International Marriage Victims’ Center, which he founded in 2010. [PARK SANG-MOON]Choi Eun-suck was lonely. The 39-year-old administrator at a high school in Seoul wanted to get married but women weren’t impressed by his job. In early 2014, Choi turned to a matchmaking agency that specialized in international marriages. It showed him a computer profile of an eligible girl. She seemed both sweet and sophisticated.
Within weeks, Choi was at Incheon International Airport holding his passport and a round-trip ticket to Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. His father warned him not to be hasty.
He should have listened. Choi met the woman whose profile he liked. She was 13 years younger than him. A few days later, he showed for a ceremony that was supposed to seal their betrothal.
It turned out to be his wedding. Before he knew it, Choi was a married man.
Choi returned home in late April 2014 to start the legal procedure to bring his wife to Korea. In June, she called to say she had been raped by a taxi driver and was pregnant. She didn’t know who the father was: Choi or the rapist.
In March 2015, Choi’s wife changed her story. She knew who the father of the baby was – and it wasn’t Choi. She had never been raped. She wanted a divorce.
Choi tried to have the marriage annulled but failed. He is now legally divorced, which puts him in a bad place in terms of getting remarried in Korea, where divorce is still stigmatized.
“People tell me to marry a Korean woman next time,” says Choi, “but no Korean family will approve of me. They’ll assume that my ex-wife divorced me because I physically abused her.”
And he feels cheated. The Kyrgyzstani woman was never sincere and Choi paid his matchmakers 23 million won ($20,079), which doesn’t include the money he sent his wife every month for a year. He believes he’s owed the matchmaking fee back. He is awaiting a final appeal in the case. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but someone has actually started a International Marriage Victims’ Center to counsel and provide support to people burned by international marriages in Korea.
Here is the latest on the THAAD deployment to South Korea:
Lim Sang-hwan, who has an anti-THAAD banner across the front of his cellphone shop, says he thinks up to 90 percent of his neighbors are worried that the system’s high-powered radar will pose a hazard.
“It’s being deployed too close to where families live,” he says. “I have a 4-year-old son and I don’t want him harmed.”
Since the South Korean government chose the site in neighboring Seongju County in September, it’s created tension in the adjacent communities, says Shin Sang-won, a taxi driver here.
“A lot of people argue about it,” he says. “I don’t talk about the missiles unless my passenger brings it up. I don’t want any problems.”
Shin says he personally supports the new defense system and doesn’t believe speculation about the potential effects of the radar emissions.
Anger over the THAAD deployment, which is expected to take place by the end of 2017, has focused on officials in Seoul. Locals say they feel they were left out of the decision-making process and their concerns have not been addressed.
Both the U.S. and South Korean militaries have tried to calm local concerns. They’ve said the THAAD system’s radar emissions meet safety standards and there won’t be any adverse effect on the surrounding communities.
Still, local farmers don’t want their produce to be known as THAAD grapes or plums, according to Kim Hee-soo. The supermarket manager, 45, has joined recent demonstrations against the missile shield system, which so far have been peaceful.
“If these missiles are brought to the area, I expect the protesters might turn aggressive,” she said. [USA Today]
You can read more at the link, but the protesters vow to demonstrate and block the roads of the identified THAAD site when the missile defense system arrives. With a politically weaken Park Geun-hye it is going to be interesting to see how this all plays out next year.
Artistic director Cha Eun-taek, a key suspect in the influence-peddling scandal involving a close friend of President Park Geun-hye, arrives at the Seoul Central District Court on Nov. 11, 2016, to attend a hearing to review the legality of his detention. Prosecutors have sought an arrest warrant for Cha over suspicions that he and Park’s confidante Choi Soon-sil meddled in state affairs and gained financially using Choi’s ties with the president. (Yonhap)
At best this so called airplane looks more like hang-glider which the Koreans do not even have any physical or design evidence to support its existence:
This Yonhap file photo shows the model of “Bicha,” a plane allegedly built by military officer Jeong Pyeong-gu during the Japanese invasion of Korea (1592-98). It is displayed at the Air Force Museum in Cheongju, 137 kilometers south of Seoul. (Yonhap)
Korea had built an airplane 300 years ahead of the Wright brothers, although none of the ancient plane or its design has been left, the head of an organization to restore the ancient plane, an activist claimed Thursday.
“Korea is the origin of the flying aircraft. We should perfectly restore the plane to get recognition of it worldwide,” Kim Dong-min, chairman of the Jinju Bicha Restoration Commitee, said at a seminar in Jinju, 434 kilometers southeast of Seoul. [Yonhap]
Climbers take pictures on the summit of Mount Deokyu in Muju, some 240 kilometers south of Seoul, on Nov. 11, 2016, as the season’s first snow fell on the 1,614-meter mountain, in this photo provided by the office of Mount Deokyu National Park. The first snow with a precipitation of 3 centimeters was 15 days earlier than usual. (Yonhap)
![Ahn Jae-sung married Natasha, an Uzbek woman, in 2007 through a matchmaking agency. He now works full-time counseling Korean men at the International Marriage Victims’ Center, which he founded in 2010. [PARK SANG-MOON]](https://i0.wp.com/pds.joins.com/jmnet/koreajoongangdaily/_data/photo/2016/11/13202946.jpg?resize=610%2C442)
