Swedish royalty is is town giving Welfare advice to President Park:
The heir to the Swedish throne kicked off her official visit to Korea with a meeting with President Park Geun-hye Tuesday, with a focus on sharing knowledge about her country’s welfare policies.
The heir apparent discussed the low birth rate and aging Korean society with the President.
“Sweden set a good example in policies in childcare and balancing between work and family,” Park said.
President Park also paid tribute to Sweden’s participation in the 1950-1953 Korean War.
“The Korean public remembers Sweden played an important role as an ally when security in Korea was at risk,” she said, citing Sweden having been a member of Neutral Nations Supervisory Nations for the past 60 years after the Korean War. [Korea Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but I wonder if the Princess mentioned anything in regards to it being impossible to have a Welfare state and lax immigration policies which is currently straining Sweden’s social harmony.
Not only is he out of the next Olympics, but I have to imagine this will kill his endorsement deals which have to be worth a lot of money in Korea:
Former Olympic swimming champion Park Tae-hwan was suspended 18 months for doping.
In a doping hearing session in Lausanne, Switzerland, Tuesday, the world swimming governing body FINA handed down Park the ban for being tested positive for testosterone in a drug test in September.
The punishment will expire on March 2, 2016, giving the 26-year-old a chance to swim at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
However, the Korean Olympic Committee prohibits an athlete whose suspension expired less than three years before the Olympics from representing the country
FINA added that Park’s results from Sept. 3 will be annulled and prize money will be forfeited, meaning he will have to return the one silver and five bronzes he won at last year’s Asian Games. [Korea Times]
A ceremony is under way at Incheon International Airport on March 20, 2015, for the delivery of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in the 1950-53 Korean War for repatriation to China. (Yonhap)
The North Koreans figure they can probably just wait out the Park administration and eventually have the sanctions removed without taking responsibility for the murder of the 104 South Korean sailors:
North Korea on Tuesday ruled out any apology over the 2010 sinking of the South Korean navel corvette Cheonan, and demanded Seoul lift sanctions imposed after the incident in which Pyongyang has always denied involvement.
Two days ahead of the fifth anniversary of the sinking, in which 46 South Korean seamen died, the North’s top military body, the National Defence Commission (NDC), condemned Seoul’s steadfast insistence on the “cock-and-bull” idea that Pyongyang was responsible.
The Cheonan was carrying 104 personnel when it sank near the disputed Yellow Sea maritime border between North and South Korea on March 26.
A South Korean-led investigation involving a team of international experts concluded it was sunk by a North Korean submarine torpedo.
Despite Pyongyang’s heated denials, Seoul responded with the so-called “May 24 measures” — which amounted to an effective trade embargo on North Korea which remains in place today.
South Korea has insisted it will only consider lifting the sanctions after the North acknowledges its responsibility and apologises.
The NDC statement on Tuesday demanded the immediate end of the trade embargo, arguing that it had been “cooked up under the absurd pretext of the … fictitious story” of North Korean involvement in the Cheonan sinking.
“The South should clearly understand that its sophism that ‘apology’ and ‘expression of regret’ have to precede the lifting of the ‘step’ can never work,” a spokesman for the NDC’s policy department said in the statement carried by the North’s official KCNA news agency.
Calling for an apology in such circumstances amounted to an “intolerable mockery” of the North’s dignity, the spokesman said [AFP]
Here is another preventable deadly safety related accident in South Korea:
Five people, including three children, died and two others were injured in a tent fire at a camping site in Incheon, a port city west of Seoul, early Sunday, police and fire officials said.
The fire broke out around 1:20 a.m. inside a 16 square-meter tent set up at a camping ground close to a beach on Ganghwa Island of Incheon, according to the officials. Those killed included a 37-year-old father, identified only by his last name Lee, and two of his sons, aged 11 and six, they said. Lee’s middle school friend, surnamed Cheon, and his seven-year-old son were also killed inside the same tent. [Yonhap]
I guess just the fact that all three foreign ministers are meeting is progress, but I don’t expect anything to become of it:
Ships assigned to Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, Indian navy, and U.S. Navy steam alongside Ticonderoga-class guided-missile destroyer USS Shiloh in the East China Sea on July 27, 2014. Abby Rader/U.S. Navy
For the first time in nearly three years, the foreign ministers of China, South Korea and Japan will meet Saturday for trilateral talks that could pave the way for a new era of cooperation – or prolong festering animosities rooted in the World War II era.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se will host his Chinese and Japanese counterparts, Wang Yi and Fumio Kishida, in Seoul for the discussions, which were last held in 2012.
The meeting is seen as a possible prelude to a three-way summit between leaders of the countries later this year. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met briefly on the sidelines of the APEC world leaders’ gathering in Beijing in November, but have never had a bilateral summit since they both came to power in 2012. Nor has Abe had a summit with South Korean President Park Geun-hye. Park and Xi, however, have met repeatedly, and warmly.
The 70th anniversary of the war’s end will be marked this summer in Asia with a variety of high-profile events, including a military parade in Beijing. Seven decades since Tokyo’s surrender, Japan, South Korea and China have strong economic ties, but deep strains remain, inhibiting collaboration on a range of matters including maritime issues and North Korea.
Frostiness between South Korea and Japan – both U.S. allies – and closer relations between South Korea and China have complicated Washington’s diplomacy in the region amid China’s continuing rise. [LA TImes]
Here is why it is not in the interest of China or South Korea to resolve these issues with Japan:
At the same time, leaders in China and South Korea often see an advantage to stirring up nationalist, anti-Japan sentiments at home as a way of shoring up political support. Blatant anti-Japanese propaganda appears regularly in state-run media in China, for instance. And conflicting claims to uninhabited islands have also marred relations between Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul.
Whether the three nations now have the will to break their cycle of recriminations and defensiveness remains to be seen. World leaders from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon have been urging all three countries in recent weeks to forge a new path.
To be fair members of the Japanese government also use the historical issues to push their own domestic agendas as well. Just visit the Yushukan Museum next to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo and see the absurd historical revisionism going on there that many on the Japanese far political right support. If the Japanese government was serious about resolving these historical issues this is what I recommend they should do.
I’m not sure what this teacher’s group is complaining about? Do they want bribery and corruption in the teaching profession?:
The country’s largest right-leaning education organization on Thursday denounced an order issued this week by the Seoul education authority that strictly prohibits teachers from accepting bribes from parents, otherwise known here as chonji.
On Sunday, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education issued a press release announcing that bribery would not be tolerated in any form and that any person who reported a teacher accepting gifts or cash would be given a reward ten times the amount of the kickback, up to 100 billion won ($89.4 million).
The Korea Federation of Teachers’ Associations (KFTA) subsequently requested that Seoul Superintendent Cho Hee-yeon apologize for publicly regarding all educators as “potential perpetrators,” arguing that teachers already attempt to foster a morally sound atmosphere.
“Given that teachers are required to have a relatively higher level of morality, we’ve been making efforts to create a more transparent culture by establishing an ethics charter in 2005,” KFTA Chairman Ahn Yang-ok said at a rally Thursday morning in front of the capital city’s education office. “The overall majority of teachers are not accepting chonji at all.”
“But the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education has issued provocative press releases saying they would discipline even those who accept 10,000 won and have disgraced all teachers,” he continued. “Cho must apologize and come up with countermeasures.”
The Seoul’s education office explained that when it announced the new regulation, it merely intended to reassure parents so that they wouldn’t agonize over bringing in a gift for their child’s teachers.
The new regulation also demands that schools not disclose the home addresses of its teachers and send text messages to parents explaining that bribery will not be allowed. Educators are only allowed to accept gifts that do not exceed 30,000 won and only at public events like Teachers’ Day or graduation ceremonies. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
With its red, cursive font, the sign on the outside of the café looks eerily familiar.
While there is no Tim Hortons franchise in South Korea, that hasn’t stopped people from wondering about the story behind “Tim House,” a soon-to-open coffee house in Daerim, a neighbourhood in Seoul.
Earlier this week, a photo of Tim House attracted international attention. The picture was taken by A.J. Specht, a Canadian English teacher who was biking by and noticed the familiar-looking sign.
She posted a snapshot on Facebook, and it began to attract attention from Canadians in South Korea and at home.
But the Tim House logo is where the resemblance ends, at least for now. Tim House has yet to open, and its owner isn’t talking. [CBC News]
You can read more at the link, but there is much bigger brand ripoffs than this coffee shop in a little known district of Seoul.
