Tag: South Korea

This is really morbid:

The whereabouts of another unregistered baby is unknown, officials said Thursday, after two undocumented babies were found dead in a refrigerator, revealing serious problems with the country’s birth registration and child abuse prevention systems.

The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said it booked a woman in her 20s on charges of abandoning her baby. She claimed she gave away the baby to a stranger she got to know online a month after giving birth in December 2021, but police believe her statement is suspicious.

The incident is the second such case after a woman in her 30s was taken into custody Wednesday for killing two babies shortly after their births in 2018 and 2019, and storing their bodies in a fridge in her apartment in Suwon, just south of Seoul.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Kim Gi-hyeon does make a good point and this proposal would encompass more than just Chinese nationals:

The leader of the ruling People Power Party (PPP) on Tuesday suggested scrapping the voting rights of Chinese nationals living in South Korea, saying that vice-versa is not the case.

Rep. Kim Gi-hyeon made the remark in an address at the National Assembly as leader of a parliamentary negotiating bloc, saying relations between South Korea and China should be based on the principle of reciprocity.

“At the time of the local elections in June last year, about 100,000 Chinese nationals residing here had the right to vote. However, no suffrage is guaranteed at all for our people in China,” Kim said during the address.

“Why should we be the only one opening the latch? What is fair would be not to give voting rights to foreigners from countries that do not give our people voting rights,” he said.

Since 2005, South Korea has given foreigners the right to vote in local elections if three years have passed since they gained permanent residency. Some critics have said the law gives Chinese too much say in local politics.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it will be interesting to hear what the Chinese response to this will be.

It looks like the Yoon administration has France on its side if they need to have the UN send Kim Jong-un any sternly worded letters:

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol (L) and French President Emmanuel Macron give a joint press statement ahead of their summit at Elysee Palace in Paris on June 20, 2023. (Yonhap)

President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday that South Korea and France will cooperate closely to deal with North Korea’s unlawful provocations as fellow members of the U.N. Security Council.

Yoon made the remark before going into a summit with French President Emmanuel Macron at Elysee Palace, the presidential office and residence.

Yoon arrived in Paris the previous day to attend a general assembly of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE), the international body in charge of overseeing the World Expo, to promote South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in its southeastern city of Busan.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I don’t think the Yoon administration is going to get any appropriate response back from China because the ambassador likely said exactly what the CCP thinks of Korea:

Lee Jae-myung (L), leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, talks with Chinese Ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming during their meeting at the envoy’s residence in Seoul on June 8, 2023. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)

South Korea is waiting for China to take an “appropriate measure” following controversial remarks made by its ambassador in Seoul over South Korea’s ties with the United States, a presidential official said Tuesday.

Tensions have flared between Seoul and Beijing after China’s Ambassador to South Korea Xing Haiming said in a meeting with main opposition Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung that those who “bet on China’s loss” in its rivalry with the United States “will definitely regret it.”

The remarks were interpreted as a warning to Seoul against aligning itself with Washington.

“From our point of view, there was something that ran contrary” to diplomatic protocols, the presidential official told reporters.

“We’re waiting for the Chinese side to carefully consider this problem and to take the appropriate measure regarding this,” he said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Korean shoppers are supposedly hoarding sea salt due to fears that all the salt off the shores of Korea will soon be contaminated by the release of radioactive water from the Fukushima nuclear plant:

Workers produce sea salt at a salt farm in Sinan County, South Jeolla Province, in October 2021. Korea Times photo by Seo Jae-hoon

The Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries denied that the salt price has increased due to hoarding amid the Fukushima concerns. 

“The major cause for the salt price rise was a decrease in production due to more rainy days than usual and retailers’ stockpiling in preparation for the monsoon season,” a ministry official said. 

But the view of industry players was different. They said that while this year’s production decreased by about 30 percent from a year earlier, this was not enough to explain the soaring salt price at present. 

“Japan’s plan has scared consumers off. This would not be the sole reason for increasing salt prices but had some impact for sure,” an official of a salt farm in Sinan County said. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the IAEA approved of the plan by the Japanese to release the water into the ocean with a small enough amount of radioactivity that it would be diluted. According to the Korean government they have stepped up monitoring of the ocean water around Korea and have not detected any radioactivity.

This is a bizarre accident I have never heard of happening before:

An escalator ran reversely at a subway station in Bundang, south of Seoul, on Thursday, leaving 14 people injured, police said.

The accident occurred around 8:20 a.m. when the upwards escalator leading to exit 2 of Sunae Station on the Bundang Line reversed suddenly and went backward for several seconds, according to police and fire authorities. 

Three people were transported to a hospital after sustaining injuries on the back and legs. Eleven others sustained minor injuries, received treatment and were sent home. None of them were in life-threatening condition.

Police are looking into the exact cause of the accident but said there is little chance of someone using the escalator’s manual operating system to reverse its direction. 

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a big win for President Yoon to secure this seat on the U.N. Security Council at a time of increasing tensions with North Korea:

South Korea was elected Tuesday as a nonpermanent member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) for a two-year term, expanding its foothold in the U.N. body to better address the North Korean issue and other global security challenges.

As the only candidate nation in Asia, Seoul was chosen in a vote at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, returning to the UNSC in 11 years after last sitting on the council in 2013-14.

South Korea won the seat after garnering 180 votes among 192 member states during the assembly.

This marks the third time for South Korea to serve as one of the 10 nonpermanent UNSC members. It previously served in the seat during the 1996-97 term.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Considering this happened 59 years ago the fact this woman was punished for fighting back to excessively and injuring this rapist is not surprising to me. This is because back in 2004 a 19-year old U.S. Soldier was raped by a Korean taxi driver and the man was let go because she did not fight back enough. Fortunately Korea seems to be taking rape more seriously and hopefully this woman can get some justice after all these decades:

Choi Mal-ja, 77, is awaiting the Supreme Court’s decision on her request for a retrial of her sexual assault case nearly 60 years ago. This photo, taken May 2, shows Choi partaking in a press conference in front of the Supreme Court in southern Seoul that day. Choi was assaulted by a man in her hometown of Gimhae, South Gyeongsang, in 1964. She bit off his tongue in what she said was an act of self-defense. The court issued a stronger sentence on her than on the man. [NEWS1]

Choi Mal-ja, 77, is still expressing rage at the courts nearly six decades after she was sexually assaulted by a stranger.    
   
On May 6, 1964, Choi was an 18-year-old walking down a street in Gimhae, South Gyeongsang, when a man surnamed Roh, three years older and a complete stranger to her, asked her for directions on the road.  
   
Choi, trying to show him the way, walked a little with him, then in an alleyway, Roh suddenly turned and pushed her to the ground.   

She tried to fight back but he threw her to the ground, at least three times, according to her testimony in court.    
   
The next thing Choi knew, she was on the ground on her back and Roh was on top of her. He pinched her nose so that she had to open her mouth and was trying to forcibly kiss her.  
   
Choi bit hard, though she later told the court that she didn’t even know she was biting off the man’s tongue, before running away from him. (………)

The police, without the power to indict, passed over Choi’s case to the prosecution, asking them to indict Roh on the charges. But the prosecution dropped the charge of attempted rape and indicted Roh for trespassing and intimidation with weapons.    
   
Choi told the court that all the actions she took were out of self-defense. Still, the court handed down a stronger sentence on Choi, giving her a suspended sentence of 10 months for inflicting a serious physical injury to Roh.  
   
In contrast, Roh received a suspended sentence of only six months for trespassing and intimidation with weapons.    
   
Choi’s case has regained traction in recent years after she requested a retiral of her case. Her case was dubbed on social media a “59-year-old Me Too case.”  
   
Experts have said that the prosecution’s decision to drop the attempted rape charge on Roh may have made a difference in the final rulings, significantly weakening Choi’s case against Roh.    
   
The court at the time had said that Choi’s actions of self-defense were “excessive.”  
   
“Even if her action was that of a young woman to protect herself from forced kissing, her act of self-defense went so far as to cut off the tongue of the perpetrator and inflicted a lifelong injury that bars him from speaking,” said the court in its ruling. “Such defensive action was deemed, both generally and objectively, excessive compared to what the laws allow.”  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.