Tag: South Korea

It looks like the Saudi money overcame what was clearly a better Expo site in Busan. Who is excited to go to Riyadh?:

South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo shakes hands with a Saudi official after the final presentation for South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo at the 173rd general assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions held at the Palais des Congres in Paris before its members their vote for the host city on Nov. 28, 2023. (Yonhap)

 South Korea’s Busan came up short in its bid to host the 2030 World Expo on Tuesday as Saudi Arabia’s Riyadh won a resounding victory over Busan and Italy’s Rome without a runoff vote.

Members of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), the body responsible for overseeing the international fair with the potential to generate economic benefits and stimulate job creation, held a ballot in Paris after representatives from the three candidates made final presentations of their proposals.

In the first round of voting, the Saudi capital won 119 votes against Busan’s 29 votes and Rome’s 17 votes. Riyadh’s votes were more than a two-thirds majority needed for a candidate to win without a runoff.

The Saudi delegation celebrated as the results were displayed on an electronic board, concluding the anonymous voting held in Issy-les-Moulineaux, the southwestern suburban area of the French capital.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

From a national security perspective this is not good news because it means a smaller population of young men to conscript to defend the country. Hopefully North Korea, China, and Russia are not even greater threats than they are now in the next 30 years towards the ROK:

The number of young South Koreans is forecast to halve in 30 years amid a rapid aging trend and a record low birthrate, the statistics agency said Monday.

The number of people aged 19-34 came to 10.21 million in 2020, and the figure is forecast to tumble to 5.21 million in 2050, according to the analysis by Statistics Korea.

The proportion of the young population out of the country’s total came to 20.4 percent in 2020, but it is expected to fall to 11 percent in 2050, it added.

The number of young people has been on a steady decline over the past decades from 13.85 million in 1990, accounting for 31.9 percent of the total, to 12.88 million in 2000, 10.97 million in 2010 and 10.21 million in 2020.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I am not sure what they are going to talk about because China is not going to stop their provacative activities in the region no matter what the ROK and Japan tell them:

Foreign Minister Park Jin departs from Incheon International Airport in Incheon, southwest of Seoul, on Nov. 14, 2023, to attend a ministerial meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco, in this file photo provided by the foreign ministry. (Yonhap)

Top diplomats of South Korea, China and Japan were set to hold talks in the southeastern port city of Busan on Sunday, with discussions on resuming the long-stalled three-way summit of the three countries’ leaders expected to be in focus. 

The trilateral meeting among Foreign Minister Park Jin, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa also comes after about a four-year hiatus as the three neighboring countries seek to deepen the tripartite cooperation despite many pending bilateral issues. 

Wang and Kamikawa arrived in Busan on Saturday.

Park is joining the two ministers the day after returning from a trip to London and Paris, where he accompanied President Yoon Suk Yeol.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The North Koreans have repeatedly violated the Inter-Korean military agreement signed in 2018. However, experts have cautioned Seoul from ending the agreement for the following reasons:

South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo, front row left and North Korean Minister of the People’s Armed Forces No Kwang-chol, front row right, shake hands after signing an inter-Korean military agreement during the inter-Korean summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-in, back row left, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang, Sept. 19, 2018. Joint Press Corps

“The agreement establishes guardrails that could prevent incidents from escalating into crises, however imperfect they may be. There is some utility in having buffer zones,” said Naoko Aoki, an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation who specializes in East Asian security issues.

The CMA has instituted buffer zones between the two Koreas by prohibiting hostility on land, sea and air near the border. Specifically, the two sides are restricted from conducting live-fire artillery drills within five kilometers of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL). Plus, no-fly zones have been implemented along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), along with a ban on the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles, helicopters and other aircraft within 40 kilometers of the MDL.

“Given the current tensions (between the two Koreas), it is unlikely that another agreement like this can be drawn up in the foreseeable future, so that should be taken into consideration,” she added.

Terence Roehrig, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College, echoed this sentiment, stating, “Though North Korea has violated the agreement on several occasions and is not adhering to the spirit of the CMA, South Korea is better off with the agreement in place than walking away from it.”

Roehrig added that security concerns regarding North Korea’s non-compliance with the CMA are relatively minor compared to the security and political costs of ending the agreement, which would undercut the broader goal of promoting long-term stability on the Korean Peninsula.

The absence of the military agreement would lead to increased belligerence from North Korea, analysts believe.

“Pyongyang would craft a narrative portraying Seoul as the aggressor, using South Korea’s suspension of the military agreement to justify its military provocations,” Roehrig said. 

In that sense, Aoki suggested that South Korea should further use the idea of suspending the CMA as political leverage against North Korea, instead of actually taking actions to scrap it, saying, “North Korea’s violation of the agreement makes it a problematic actor, so South Korea has the moral high ground.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Some people have pigs as pets, so should pork be banned too?:

South Korea is planning to introduce a ban on dog meat consumption by the end of this year, Seoul authorities said Friday.

Eating dog meat is neither explicitly prohibited nor legalized in South Korea, and successive governments have failed to make progress on pledges to stop the practice.

Public and political momentum to outlaw dog meat has been growing in the country as the centuries-old practice has fallen out of favor with most young Koreans. It has also attracted international criticism from international rights activists.

The ruling People Power Party on Friday laid out a timetable for action.

“We are planning to enact a Special Act to ban dog meat within this year to address this issue as soon as possible,” said ruling party lawmaker Yu Eui-dong, after a meeting at parliament attended by the Agriculture Ministry officials and animal rights groups.

The special act will allow a three-year period to phase out the industry. If the bill passes the legislature before the year-end, the dog meat ban would come into full effect in 2027.

Washington Post

You can read more at the link, my biggest problem with dog farming in South Korea is that some of these farmers are very inhumane with dogs raised in small cages and then beaten to death to better tenderize the meat.

Increased economic integration between Japan and South Korea makes so much sense:

 South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed Friday to work together to cut costs and establish international rules in the hydrogen sector.

During a discussion at Stanford University, the two leaders talked about ways their countries can cooperate in the hydrogen sector, given South Korea’s wide use of hydrogen cars and Japan’s large number of hydrogen-related patents.

Both Yoon and Kishida attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco this week.

The discussion came a day after they held a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the APEC summit, their seventh bilateral summit this year, as Seoul and Tokyo push to mend and develop their relationship after years of tensions over historical disputes.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but hydrogen cars are great if you have nuclear or hydro energy to power the process to create hydrogen. If coal or gas plants are used the emissions savings is actually negligible for hydrogen cars.

This is not a renewable energy issue, this is more an issue of government picking winners and losers and people in the government benefiting from the winners they chose:

A total of 251 officials at public institutions were found to have taken part in solar panel businesses to make money in violation of ethics regulations during the previous Moon Jae-in administration, the state audit agency said Tuesday.

The officials from eight institutions, including the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), ran solar panel businesses either under their own names or under the names of relatives, according to the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI).

During the Moon administration, solar power was considered not only as clean and environmentally friendly energy but also as a potentially lucrative investment opportunity, with stability and long-term prospects supported by strong government backing.

An example includes a KEPCO official who operated six solar power stations under the names of relatives after using insider information, reaping a combined profit of 880 million won (US$662,000), the BAI said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Via a reader tip comes news that South Korea will no longer ban plastic straws or single use cups due to the burden it is putting on small business owners:

“It is not the government’s duty to impose another burden on small business owners and self-employed people when they are already suffering from difficult economic conditions,” Lim told reporters during the briefing.

The Environment Ministry also pointed out that paper straws, an alternative to plastic straws, are 2 1/2 times more expensive but have lower consumer satisfaction.

“The use of plastic straws and stirring bars will be banned when the quality of replacement products is improved and the prices stabilize,” said Lee, without clarifying a specific time frame.

Although the ministry claims it has considered various situations, including the economic burden on consumers, criticism of the massive retreat on eco-friendly policies seems inevitable.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but I will never understand why activists are against paper cups. Paper is a renewable resource that is biodegradable.