Tag: South Korea

This is not good for South Korea’s economy by becoming increasingly dependent on Chinese imports, especially semiconductors:

U.S. high-tech restrictions on China are taking a toll on Korea’s trade balance.  
   
For the first time in 30 years, Korea has recorded a trade deficit with China, its biggest trading partner.   

Exports to the country totaled $13.4 billion in May and imports $14.6 billion, resulting in a $1.1 billion deficit, according to the Korea Custom Service. This month, a $690 million shortfall is forecast.    
   
The government is concerned about the growing trade deficit with China, and the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) Beijing office has started to work on damage assessment.    
   
According to a KITA study, 16.5 percent of Korea’s imports from China were semiconductors, 10.3 percent fine chemicals for batteries and 5.5 percent computers.    
   
Last month, Korea imported $2.4 billion of Chinese semiconductors, a 40.9 percent increase year-on-year. Korea’s No.1 export to China was semiconductors. On year, semiconductor exports to China were up 11 percent.    
   
China has been speeding up its semiconductor localization after efforts by the United States to cut it off from certain key technologies.  
   
The development of semiconductors in China is being pursued much as the country pursued the atomic bomb, the hydrogen bomb and the satellite.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This is something that the ROK government needs to stop or they are going to end up with a large drug addicted homeless population like we have in the US:

“Do you want to try it? It feels really good, and it helps you lose weight too. One time can’t hurt.”  
   
Those were the words heard by a 17-year-old student as she was handed a syringe by a man in his thirties, whom she met through a slightly older friend.  

He was lying. The first time led to another, and another — and an addiction.

Arrested by the police last year, the 17-year-old student admitted she made a mistake taking that first injection. But the older man wasn’t honest at all with her. “If I knew it was methamphetamine inside that syringe, I would have never done it in the first place.”  

Korea is developing a teen drug problem, its size difficult to estimate. One indication: over 100 million individual purchases every year of drugs from overseas, according to the Supreme Prosecutor’s Office.

Importing, manufacturing, trading, buying, selling, transporting, possessing, and using drugs are all considered drug crimes in Korea.   (……)

“Based on the UN’s standards, if the number of drug offenders exceeds 20 in a population of 100,000, it means that drugs aren’t under control and it is not a drug-free nation,” said Cheon young-hoon, a psychiatric specialist and director of Incheon Chamsarang Hospital.    
   
“Considering Korea’s population of 50 million, the number of drug offenders per 100,000 is actually more than 30.”

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

It has been nearly five years since the last trilateral meeting, so it is great to see this coordination happening again:

President Yoon Suk-yeol will hold a trilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in Spain this week on the sidelines of a NATO summit, his office said Sunday. 

The trilateral summit, set for Wednesday in Madrid, will be the first such gathering in four years and nine months since the last meeting was held in September 2017 on the margins of a U.N. General Assembly. No trilateral meeting has since taken place amid badly frayed relations between Seoul and Tokyo.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I am not sure how much more sternly the ROK can respond to North Korean provocations, but I guess we will soon find out:

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo vowed a stern response to any North Korean provocation, Saturday, as the nation observed the 72nd anniversary of the outbreak of the 1950-53 Korean War.

In a speech during a ceremony marking the anniversary, he said the North’s recent missile launches and nuclear weapon test preparations have escalated tensions beyond the Korean Peninsula and are posing a threat to international peace.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

Here is an interesting diplomatic development for South Korea since it shows that NATO countries recognize the ROK’s military capabilities as an alliance partner:

South Korea has decided to establish a mission to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Brussels, a presidential official said Wednesday ahead of President Yoon Suk-yeol’s participation in a NATO summit next week.

Yoon will attend the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain, on June 29 and 30, on his first overseas trip as president, National Security Adviser Kim Sung-han said during a press briefing.

South Korea is not a member of the military alliance but has been invited as a partner nation, along with countries, such as Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

The new NATO mission will be headed by the South Korean ambassador to Belgium, who currently also doubles as the ambassador to the European Union, a second presidential official said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I guess animal rights is a pretty safe issue for the highly criticized first lady to come out in public in support of:

First lady Kim Keon-hee called for animal rights in her first media interview given since her husband, President Yoon Suk-yeol, took office on May 10. 

“Korea and China are the only two economically successful countries that consume dog meat,” Kim said during an interview with local newspaper Seoul Shinmun that was published on Monday. “I believe the universal culture (of not consuming dog meat) should be shared in Korea with other developed countries. Otherwise, it could stoke an anti-Korean sentiment,” Kim said. 

To end the practice, Kim said the government could support dog meat traders to transition into new industries, underlining the unsanitary environment in which dogs are raised before being consumed as meat.

“Dog meat is not good for health. Dogs that are raised to be consumed as meat are locked in small cages, where they eat, sleep and defecate all their lives. And some of them are even fed antibiotics,” Kim said. “Ultimately, dog meat consumption must be stopped out of respect for man’s best friend and life.”

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.