Tag: South Korea

Korean pizza. Delicious or completely insane?

Photo by @hanbae pic.twitter.com/qWmIu8vrlu

— Oels Bae Seasoning (@oelsbae) October 15, 2016

This has to be one of the weakest sexual harassment claims I have seen yet:

Rep. Han Sun-kyo has become the target of opposition criticism after making what female lawmakers claimed was a “sexually harassing” remark to Rep. Yoo Eun-hye during National Assembly audit sessions on Thursday.

Han, a ruling Saenuri Party lawmaker, was addressing sessions held to question the Education, Culture and Tourism Committee, of which he is a member. As he mentioned the rising controversies of the Mir and K-Sports foundations, he caught some of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea (MPK) lawmakers, including Yoo, laughing.

Apparently angered, Han, a former MBC news reader, asked Yoo, “What is so funny? Do you find me attractive or something?”

Yoo, offended by the comment, demanded Han apologize. MPK’s poet-turned-lawmaker Do Jong-hwan and Park Kyung-mi joined Yoo in criticizing Han.

Han apologized, saying he and Yoo are from the same alumni circle.

“I guess I might have lost grip since I perceived her as my colleague,” Han said during the audit’s follow-up session in the afternoon. “If she is still uncomfortable about what I said, I will make further apologies.”

Yoo was not moved by his apology.

“Before I am your colleague, I am a lawmaker representing my citizens and we are in the middle of an Assembly audit session,” Yoo said. “Your comment embarrassed me and neither is it appropriate to the committee.” [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I find it ironic these opposition lawmakers are claiming that Han’s comment was inappropriate during a committee meeting when they were the ones giggling and disturbing the meeting in the first place.

I agree with the concept that a “grand bargain” with China is the only way to end the Kim regime’s nuclear weapons program, but I don’t think what the professor is recommending that the US offers in return would cause the Chinese to turn on the Kim regime:

The United States should seek a grand bargain with China that commits Beijing to use its leverage over North Korea to end its nuclear program in exchange for American concessions like the scrapping of a decision to deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea, a U.S. expert said Wednesday.

Amitai Etzioni, a George Washington University professor, made the point in an article in the National Interest, stressing that the “greatest threat” to U.S. security that the new American president will have to confront is North Korea.

The professor said that efforts to simply “urge” or “shame” China into acting won’t work.

“The costs to China if it were to move to rein in North Korea are considerable. China views living with a Communist-ruled nuclear-armed state on its border as preferable to the chaos of its collapse,” he said.

Instead, China should be offered a deal based on “differential salience,” which means that each side should get what’s important to its national interests from the other side by giving up what’s less important.

“China might well have a high interest in gaining assurances that if the North Korean regime collapses and the two Koreas are unified, the United States will not move its troops to the border with China,” the professor said. “This is a no- or low-cost proposition for the United States, because once the North Korean nuke program folds or the regime collapses, the United States should be quite content not to move its troops north.”

He also said that the U.S. could offer not to deploy THAAD because once the North’s s nuclear missile program is no longer an acute threat, the United States should be quite willing not to place THAAD in South Korea.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but for the Chinese to turn on the Kim regime I think they would want something extremely significant in return that meets their security interests.  North Korea is a buffer state for them that can also be counted on as a third actor if conflict with Taiwan for example was to occur to tie up US forces.  This is a huge strategic benefit from the Chinese perspective.  That is why I think the complete removal of USFK from the peninsula is the only thing that would get the Chinese attention.

From the Chinese perspective if the Kim regime is removed and the Koreas are united what other reason would the US have to keep troops in Korea other than to threaten China?  I don’t think the Chinese would even go for this proposal and would push for more US concessions in regards to Taiwan to really strike a deal, but I think any proposal would have to include the removal of US troops from Korea.

Maybe I am wrong, does anyone else have any differing opinions on what it would take to strike a deal with China?

This is a really horrible tragedy which appears to have been caused by negligence by the driver:

A fire on a tour bus killed 10 people Thursday night on a highway in Ulsan. Seven others on the bus, which was carrying 22 people including a tour guide and the driver, were injured.

About 10:10 p.m., the bus scraped against a crash barrier several times while changing lanes. It then caught fire.

The passengers could not get out because the crash barrier was blocking the door. Some of them managed to break the window and escape, but 10 people could not escape from the smoke and fire, survivors and witnesses said.

Firefighters extinguished the fire at 11:01 p.m. Only the frame of the bus was left.
The tour guide told police that they couldn’t find the emergency hammer, so the driver used a fire extinguisher to break the windows.

The driver, surnamed Lee, 49, claimed that one of the tires went flat and made the bus lose balance. He added he did not doze off. But police suspect he was speeding, based on traffic camera footage and testimony from some of the passengers that the bus was travelling at high speed before suddenly changing lanes.

Police will request an arrest warrant for the driver for accidental homicide, saying Lee did not drive safely enough. “The driver claims the accident was caused by a flat tire, so we will send the bus to the National Forensic Service for inspection,” Choi Ik-soo, chief of the Ulju Police Station, told journalists at a briefing. [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This makes me wonder if these three were killed as part of feuding between drug gangs or as part of the government’s drug crackdown?  I guess we will find out as more details become available:

Three people, at least two of who were identified as South Korean nationals, were found dead near a small Philippine city on Tuesday.

All three individuals were found with gunshot wounds, with their wrists or legs bound with electric tape, South Korean news service Newsis reported on Thursday, local time.

The bodies were discovered in a sugar cane field near the city of Bacolor in Pampanga Province, about 50 miles from Manila, at around 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday.

Of the victims, two men and a woman who were in their 40s and 50s, one man had had his legs tied with electric tape, and the woman’s wrists were bound.

No arrests have been made and the case is under investigation.

Violent deaths of South Korean nationals in the Philippines have been on the rise in 2016, with the death count up to 6 this year.  [UPI]

You can read more at the link, but Yonhap is reporting the third person is likely a South Korean national as well.

I think when determining if a minimum wage is too high or too low it depends on if the minimum wage is supposed to be something that people are supposed to make a living off of.  If the minimum wage is supposed to be livable wage then the increase is probably not enough considering the high cost of living in a place like Seoul:

Four subway rides, a newspaper and packet of cigarettes, or one Big Mac: That is what a minimum-wage worker can buy after an hour on the job, and have change of a couple of hundred won. The minimum hourly rate of 4,860 won, due to rise to 5,210 next year, amounts to 1.08 million won a month for a 40-hour work week. Differences in purchasing power make comparison between countries difficult, but the nation’s rate ranks on the low end of the scale among wealthy nations. In 2011, just eight of the 23 OECD countries aside from Korea had a lower hourly minimum. Many of those countries with higher rates, however, also have significantly higher GDPs per capita. Nonetheless, whether the current wage is reasonable depends very much on who you ask. Neither employers nor labor groups expressed satisfaction with the most recent increase for 2014, the former having called for an outright freeze, the latter a rise of more than 21 percent.

“It is very hard to pin down whether the minimum wage is high or low. It is somewhat relative,” Woo Seok-jin, an economics professor at Myongji University in Seoul, told The Korea Herald. “We have some minimum living standard costs, and the minimum wage should be determined based on that level.”

Whether the current rate meets such a standard is a matter of debate. Park Jeong-woo, a 20-year-old music student at Seoul National University of Arts, has worked numerous minimum wage jobs such as a convenience store clerk alongside his studies. Even though he avoids rent by living with his parents, he still finds the current rate to be out of synch with the rising cost of living.   [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

The gloves may finally be coming off after the sinking of a ROK Coast Guard speed boat by the illegal Chinese fishing boats this past week:

China’s foreign ministry on Wednesday asked South Korea to stay calm in dealing with Chinese boats illegally fishing in the neighboring country’s waters a day after Seoul said it will be more firm with lawbreakers.

South Korea’s decision to strengthen law enforcement, even authorizing the use of firearms, is not a fundamental solution to the problem and will only cause more trouble, said Chinese ministry spokesman Geng Shuang during a regular press briefing.

The remark was made a day after South Korea’s Coast Guard said it plans to actively use force, including crew-served weapons, against boats and fishermen that violently interfere with the authorities’ execution of their duties.

The announcement by the Seoul government came a few days after a 4.5-ton Coast Guard speedboat was sunk Friday during an operation against illegal fishing in the Yellow Sea when a 100-ton Chinese boat intentionally rear-ended it.

The Chinese ministry, however, said the Chinese boat was legitimately operating in a zone where fishing was allowed.

South Korea should refrain from using excessive force that could harm the safety of Chinese nationals, the spokesman added.  [Yonhap]

What would the Chinese government do if the ROK had fishing boats parked right off the coast of Hainan or the Paracel Islands in southern China and their coast guard personnel were attacked? I am willing to bet they would not show the restraint the ROK Coast Guard has so far shown.

You just have to love the hypocrites in the Russian and Chinese military who come out against THAAD deployment to South Korea with comments like this:

Washington was using the North’s actions as a pretext to gain military superiority over China, Chinese general Cai Jun told defence officials at a briefing on the forum’s sidelines.

Deploying the system in South Korea, he said, was “not conducive to the peace and stability of the Korean peninsula”, he said, adding “it has increased the risk of military conflict in the region”. [AFP]

You know what is not conducive to “peace and stability” North Korea continuous provocations, missile firings and nuclear tests.

Beijing fears that THAAD could be used against its own missiles, effectively undermining its nuclear deterrence capabilities against the US.

From a global perspective, Cai said, the US’s insistence on developing its missile defence programme could trigger “an arms race at a high level, even to outer space.”

It is pretty ironic that the Chinese are worried about an arms race when their unilateral territorial grabs in the South China Sea and the East China Sea is causing an arms race with neighboring countries in the reasons.

Speaking on a panel during the forum, Russian deputy defence minister Anatoly Antonov also slammed the agreement.

“We are concerned about the attempts of certain nations to exploit the complex situation in the Korean peninsula,” he said, “pumping this sub-region with clearly excessive defence capabilities.”

The decision has “aggravated regional tension” and “adds problems to solving the situation.”

You can read more at the link, but if the Russians are so concerned about aggravating regional tensions and adding problems then why don’t they do something to stop North Korea nuclear and missile programs that are the main cause of all the regional tensions and problems?

Riot police confront unionized truckers at a port in Busan, 453 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Oct. 10, 2016, blocking them from marching onto the streets for a protest rally. The truckers are striking to protest government plans to deregulate the number of trucks. (Yonhap)

I will never understand how these leftists continue to think that the Kim regime will ever denuclearize?  How does he plan to do this?  By more talks and negotiations with the North Koreans:

Rep. Moon Jae-in, a former leader of the main opposition Minjoo Party of Korea and presidential aspirant, called on the government Sunday to temporarily suspend ongoing procedures to deploy a U.S. anti-missile system to the Korean Peninsula, demanding diplomatic efforts resume to denuclearize North Korea.

In his Facebook post, Moon also pointed out that the agreement between Seoul and Washington to deploy a Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system to the peninsula by end-2017 needs parliamentary approval.

“Rather than arguing that only the THAAD deployment serves the national interests, there should be discussions about national interests from a more comprehensive perspective,” he wrote, apparently alluding to President Park Geun-hye’s defense of the deployment plan.

But he added it would not be easy to reverse the agreement with the United States, South Korea’s top security ally, to station a THAAD battery in a golf course in the southern county of Seongju, about 290 kilometers southeast of Seoul.

Moon, then, said that South Korea has already shown to the world a “strong resolve” against Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs through the deployment decision, and that a delay would not cause any big change in the allies’ efforts to install the THAAD in Seongju.

“The fundamental resolution of North Korea’s nuclear problem is through the realization of (the goal to) denuclearize the Korean Peninsula,” he said. “A freeze on the North’s nukes is urgent, and then we should go in a direction towards a complement dismantlement of the North’s nuclear arms.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.