Tag: South Korea

If the Japanese made such a film that gloats about marching into Seoul I am willing to bet the reaction from South Korea would be much different.  However, since it is China making a film gloating about marching into Seoul I bet there will hardly be any notice:

A teaser for a patriotic film that features Chinese veterans of the Korean war has ignited controversy in China and revived debate over the country’s controversial role in the deadly conflict six decades ago.  It has also triggered calls on Chinese social media to boycott My War, by Hong Kong director Oxide Pang and due to premiere on Thursday, as some internet users said the film treated poorly historical facts of the war that killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers from China and more from the two Koreas, which remain divided and hostile to each other.

The two-minute teaser shows a group of elderly Chinese tourists on a bus in Seoul as a young Korean tour guide welcomes them on their first trip to South Korea’s capital city.

An old lady interrupts, telling the guide they had visited before in the past.

“Lady, we came here before, about 60 years ago,” an old man says.

“We held the Chinese flag and came here,” another man explains.

The tour guide, wearing traditional Korean dress, looks puzzled, asking how they would hold the Chinese flag in Seoul.

The tourists tell the guide she will realise how they did so after she sees My War.

“Resist US aggression and aid Korea, protect our home and defend our country,” the tourists chant at the end of the teaser.

The slogan is widely used in Communist propaganda to describe China’s role in coming to North Korea’s aid in 1950, resulting in the deaths of between 149,000 and 400,000 Chinese soldiers.  [South China Morning Post via a reader tip]

You can read the rest at the link, but if someone made that such comments to me I would have responded if they brought their Chinese flag back with him when they ran with their tails between their legs out of the city from the United Nations forces?

Anyway here is a Youtube clip of the movie’s controversial promotion video:

Radars are extremely hi-tech and complicated pieces of equipment that require maintenance and some ROK politicians are using maintenance outages to criticize the ROK military:

The country’s two Green Pine antiballistic radar units, which play a key role in detecting North Korea’s ballistic missile launches, have malfunctioned 21 times in the past three years, according to a military report that was submitted to Rep. Lee Chul-gyu of the ruling Saenuri Party and exclusively acquired by the JoongAng Ilbo on Sunday.

Considering that the military operates one radar unit at a time biweekly and it takes two hours to turn on the other radar when one breaks down, 21 malfunctions means the South went 42 hours with neither radar working.

The Air Force acknowledged the malfunctions as well as the gap of 42 hours, but said there wasn’t a single time that both units were simultaneously broken.

The military said that the radars stopped working mainly when droplets of water formed inside the machine due to a temperature difference with the outside layer, which paralyzed the system’s transmission output.

According to Lee, the military has recently decided to spend an extra 13 billion won to build a dome that would cover the radars, decreasing the temperature difference to prevent future malfunctioning.

“I can’t help but doubt the military’s professionalism,” said Lee. “How could they pay 200 billion won for each radar and not have prevented dew forming?”  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Lawmakers of the ruling Saenuri Party visit Rep. Lee Jung-hyun, the party head who has been carrying out a hunger strike, at the National Assembly headquarters in Seoul on Oct. 2, 2016. Lee has said he will end the strike after National Assembly Speaker Chung Sye-kyun resigns over backing the opposition bloc’s move to sack a Cabinet minister. (Yonhap)

Won Buddhism believers hold a rally in front of the Defense Ministry in Seoul on Sept. 30, 2016, to protest a ministry decision to pick a golf course in the southeastern county of Seongju as the “final” site for an advanced U.S. missile defense system known as Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). The golf course is about 500 meters away from the religion’s sacred ground. (Yonhap)

Maybe the ROK is taking the approach President Duerte takes for drug dealers and applying it to Chinese fishermen who continue to plague the country’s waters:

Three Chinese fishermen were killed on Thursday in a fire that broke out on their boat when South Korean coastguard men trying to apprehend them for illegal fishing threw flash grenades into a room they were hiding in, a South Korean official said.

Disputes over illegal fishing are an irritant in relations between China and U.S. ally South Korea, even as their economic relations grow close. They also share concern about North Korea’s nuclear weapon and missile programs.

The three men were believed to have suffocated, a coastguard official in the South Korean port city of Mokpo said, adding that the incident was being investigated.

The fire broke out in the boat’s steering room, the official, who is not authorized to speak with media and declined to be identified, told Reuters by telephone.

South Korean authorities were questioning the 14 surviving crew and coastguard members involved in the operation, the official added.

China’s Foreign Ministry said it had lodged a protest with Seoul about the incident.

Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told a daily news briefing Beijing was also urging South Korea to hold a “comprehensive and objective” investigation into the incident, along with China.  [Reuters via reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but definitely compared to the past where these fishermen having actually murdered Korean Coast Guard personnel it is clear ROK authorities have taken a more aggressive stance to stop them.

Further Reading:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2014/10/korean-coast-guard-kills-chinese-fishermen-during-raid/

Here is something interesting, the U.K. is going to take part in a joint military drill with the US and the ROK in November:

To counter the rising threats from North Korea’s intensified nuclear and missile tests, South Korea and its allies – the US and the UK – are gearing up for a joint military drill in November.

Earlier in the week, South Korea and the US conducted a joint naval drill in the Sea of Japan in the Korean peninsula, which was said to be a show of force by the two countries against North Korea. The countries are also discussing imposing tougher sanctions against Kim Jong-un’s regime to stop him from pursuing the banned nuclear programme.

The South Korean Air Force said in a statement that the maiden joint military drill will be conducted between 4 and 10 November at Osan Air Base in Pyeongtaek, 70 km south of the South Korean capital Seoul. The drill, dubbed the “Invincible Shield” will involve a combined aerial exercise, the first of its kind, the statement added.

The UK is planning to send four Eurofighter Typhoon combat jets, Voyager tanker aircraft and C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft to take part in the exercise. F-15K and KF-16 fighters from South Korea will also participate in the drill with the US’s F-16 fighters, the statement added.  [International Business Times]

You can read more at the link.

From this Daum blog comes this photo of an inspector checking the measurements of a woman wearing a mini-skirt in 1973 Seoul:

It has long been suspected that the Lotte Sky Hill Golf Course would be the final site for the deployment of the US THAAD battery and the ROK government has finally made it official:

South Korea selected a golf course in the southeastern part of the nation as the “final” site for an advanced U.S. missile defense system to better counter North Korea’s evolving missile and nuclear threat, the defense ministry said Friday.

The decision comes nearly three months after Seoul and Washington originally chose the Seongsan anti-aircraft missile base in Seongju, 296 kilometers southeast of Seoul, to host the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system by 2017.

“We have conducted a simulation-based evaluation on three alternative sites in Seongju. The test results showed the Lotte Skyhill Country Club is the most optimal site for THAAD in terms of six principles,” Moon Sang-gyun, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense, told Yonhap News Agency.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Here is an update on the Hanjin Shipping bankruptcy, the Korean government is trying to get Hanjin’s former chairwoman to cough up more personal funds to help cover some of the bankruptcy costs:

Choi Eun-young, former chairwoman of Hanjin Shipping, refused at a parliamentary hearing late Tuesday to cough up additional funds from her personal assets to help save the world’s seventh-largest container carrier.

On Sept. 12, Choi vowed to provide 10 billion won ($9.1 million) in private funds to cash-strapped Hanjin help tide the company over during the ongoing crisis. She knelt in front of lawmakers at the hearing at the Sejong Government Complex Tuesday, when Park Wan-joo, a lawmaker with the opposition Minjoo Party, berated her.

“You dragged up Hanjin Shipping’s debt ratio from 155 percent to 1,445 percent during your term and now you are saying you cannot donate your own assets because [Hanjin Group] Chairman Cho Yang-ho has been in charge since 2014?” Park asked. “Do you think you have served your responsibility? You are supposed to be sincere when making apologies.”

“I am sorry if I appear I am not properly apologizing. I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” she said, falling to her knees and sobbing with her head down for half a minute. “But [coughing up more of my fortune] would be difficult because it may wreak havoc with the management of Eusu Holdings.”

She currently is chairwoman of Eusu Holdings, which was split when she gave up oversight of Hanjin Shipping in May 2014.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link, but according to the article she is worth anywhere from $40-$180 million dollars.

Further reading:

https://www.rokdrop.net/2016/09/should-korean-government-bailout-hanjin-shipping/

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