It looks like President Elect Yoon is setting the prelude to withdrawing from the Inter-Korean Military Agreement since North Korea is refusing to follow it:
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol said Tuesday that North Korea’s recent artillery firing was a violation of an inter-Korean military tension reduction agreement.
Yoon made the remark during a meeting with members of his transition team, two days after South Korea’s military said North Korea fired four shots from multiple rocket launchers into the Yellow Sea.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It will be interesting to see if landlords do drop rents when these property taxes are frozen or just pocket the extra income:
The government is expected to freeze property tax for the entire homeowners including owners of one expensive home with an officially appraised value of over 1.1 billion won ($905,000) subject to the Comprehensive Real Estate Tax, according to government ministries, Sunday. The hefty Comprehensive Real Estate Tax is imposed for retaining expensive homes.
Korea Times
The measure is part of the real estate market policy revisions pledged by President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, whose win by a razor-thin margin was underpinned in considerable part by public fury over the housing prices doubling under the Moon Jae-in administration due to two dozen botched government policies.
Higher housing prices led to a tax spike for homeowners, almost all of whom passed the unexpected burden to tenants in the form of higher rent, threatening their stable living arrangements.
You can read more at the link, but it will also be interesting to see what losing all this property tax revenue will do to the national budget.
It looks like the North Koreans decided to fire something to keep tensions high while they figure out what went wrong with their recent ICBM test:
North Korea on Sunday fired four suspected shots from its multiple rocket launchers into the Yellow Sea, South Korean military officials said, the latest show of force that could heighten tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
South Korea’s National Security Council (NSC) held an emergency vice-ministerial meeting over the four shots that fell into the western waters during a span of an hour from 7:20 a.m. from an unspecified location in South Pyongan Province, according to officials.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It is just becoming bizarre how South Korea just continues to set new record highs for COVID cases while most of the rest of the world is in a steep decline. However with that all said the fatality rate continues to drop to .14% when it was .69% back in early February:
South Korea’s new COVID-19 cases hit yet another somber milestone of more than 400,000 on Wednesday, driven by the dominant omicron variant spreading at an overwhelming speed.
The country added 400,741 new daily COVID-19 infections, mostly locally transmitted, raising the total caseload to 7,629,275, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) said.
It’s an all-time high since South Korea reported the first COVID-19 case on Jan. 20, 2020, and a big jump from Tuesday’s 362,338. The previous record high was 383,659 reported last Saturday.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It looks like Ahn Cheol-soo’s reward for ending his campaign and supporting Yoon Suk-yeol is that he will get to have a big vote on who joins the new government:
President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol named his candidacy merger partner Ahn Cheol-soo chairman of the transition committee Sunday, making the first step to take over the administration and set the agenda for the next five years.
Yoon also tapped his campaign chief, Rep. Kwon Young-se of the People Power Party (PPP), as vice chairperson of the committee, and appointed former Jeju Gov. Won Hee-ryong, who served as policy chief of the campaign, as the committee’s planning chief.
Ahn, who heads the minor People’s Party, dropped out of the presidential race at the last minute to support Yoon under a candidacy merger deal. The two said at the time that they will work together in forming the transition committee and the government.
“We share the same values and philosophy about running state affairs,” Yoon said of Ahn’s appointment at a press conference at the PPP headquarters in Seoul. “Ahn has a will to lead the committee and I also believe he is the right person.”
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
Via a reader tip comes this news of irregularities once again with the early voting processes. If Yoon Suk-yeol loses a close election the ineptitude of the early voting will likely lead to mass protests. Hopefully this doesn’t happen, but clearly mass early voting and absentee ballots are once again damaging the creditability of an election:
Early voting for COVID-19 patients in the presidential election has ended with claims of election fraud, as voters alleged the National Election Commission (NEC) mishandled ballots at polling sites across the country.
Korea Times
Rival parties slammed the NEC’s “unpreparedness,” warning that polling station workers’ unprofessional handling of the early voting could trigger another vote-rigging controversy, following a previous conspiracy theory surrounding the 2020 National Assembly elections.
On Sunday, the NEC released a statement on the previous day’s early voting for COVID-19 patients across the country in which it apologized for “any inconvenience caused to voters.”
“The voting method for COVID-19 patients was fully in compliance with laws and rules, with the presence of election observers recommended by political parties,” the NEC said in the statement.
“However, we should admit that there were shortcomings in carrying out COVID-19 patients’ early voting due to the unprecedentedly high turnout and limits in personnel and facilities.” The apology came after media reports and social media postings about the NEC’s mishandling of COVID-19 patients’ votes across the country on Saturday.
You can read more at the link.
It will be interesting to see what Ahn gets in return for joining the campaign of Yoon wins the Presidency. They do seem like quite the odd couple to be joining campaigns:
People Power Party Chairman Lee Jun-seok on Friday dismissed rumors of a co-chairmanship with Ahn Cheol-soo as various rumors about Ahn‘s next steps arose since his stepping out of the race.
Ahn, the chairman of the minor opposition People’s Party, conceded his candidacy to the People Power Party’s Yoon Suk-yeol on Thursday. There were rumors about Ahn‘s next moves, including one about him possibly becoming a co-chairman of the main opposition once the two parties merged after the election.
As local reports raised the possibility of Ahn undertaking a co-chairman position in the merged party, Lee dismissed the idea, saying he has not considered such an option.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link.
