Tag: South Korea

Both business and the labor unions are unhappy with the rise:

The country’s hourly minimum wage for 2022 has been set at 9,160 won ($7.98), a 5.1 percent increase from the current 8,720 won, which did not satisfy either the union or business sectors. 

Unions expressed anger over President Moon Jae-in’s unfulfilled campaign pledge to hike the minimum wage to 10,000 won per hour during his five-year-term, as this year’s negotiations were the last to be held during his term. 

Representatives from business were equally unsatisfied, as they had been calling for a virtual freeze of the minimum wage considering the problems facing small- and medium-sized enterprises due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Around midnight, Monday, the 27-member Minimum Wage Commission, a trilateral panel composed of nine members each from the union, business and public sectors, voted on the new wage during its final plenary session held at the Government Complex Sejong. 

Only 14 members participated in the vote as all nine members from the business sector and four union representatives left the room in protest against the proposed wage hike. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

If there is actually a bear on the lose I hope it gets far away from the horrible conditions it is being held in based on the pictures of these cages:

It has been a week since two Asian black bears escaped from a breeding farm in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, but authorities are still searching for one of them after the other was killed. 

Earlier on July 6, the owner of a bear breeding farm in Yongin reported to the city government that two three-year-old male bears, weighing 60 kilograms each, disappeared at around 10:30 a.m. Workers from the city’s wild animal control department and the Ministry of Environment conducted a search operation of nearby mountainous areas and killed one of them after finding it near a house about a kilometer from the farm.

But the authorities suspended the search two days later as no trace of the other bear had been found. The city government said it would lure the bear to the farm and attempt to capture it rather than killing it following protests from animal rights groups. It installed three unmanned traps and three thermal imaging cameras near the farm.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but according to the article the owner of the farm may be lying about there being two bears escaped and it could have only been the one that was shot.

Here is the latest on the Korean wartime forced labor lawsuits against Japanese business firms:

 A local court on Monday dismissed a damages suit launched by 85 South Korean victims of wartime forced labor in Japan and their families against 16 Japanese companies, saying the plaintiffs don’t have litigation rights.

The Seoul Central District Court said South Korean wartime forced laborers cannot claim individual legal rights to damages from Japan, while deciding to reject their collective suit.

The 85 forced labor victims and their families started their damages suit against 16 Japanese companies, including Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Metal Corp., Nissan Chemical Corp. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., in 2015.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but it is interesting how this ruling is the complete opposite of what the Korean Supreme Court ruled for in favor of compensation for a different lawsuit a couple of years ago.

It looks like major tech companies like Netflix and Google will no longer be able to avoid paying taxes in South Korea and possibly other countries as well:

The Korean offices of Netflix and Google will have to pay higher corporate taxes, upon the agreement of over 130 participants in the OECD blueprints drawn up to tackle global tax challenges.

Apart from the two firms, global IT giants including Amazon, Facebook and Apple will be subject to the so-called “Google tax,” whereby large digital companies will have to pay a certain amount of corporate tax, the rate of which is yet to be determined. 

“The government will have the grounds to tax them, if the agreement is reached. Nothing has been finalized yet,” a finance ministry official said, Tuesday. 

This is part of the global wave of efforts to tax the lucrative firms based on where their revenues are generated, not where their regional headquarters are located. Many global tech heavyweights have long managed to pay only a fraction of their profits as taxes here, largely by routing them to lower rate tax jurisdictions where their headquarters are based. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The U.S. went through this same problem of trying to avoid vaccine doses going to waste through missed appointments:

 South Korea on Thursday launched an innovative pilot program to help non-priority people receive AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccines made available from canceled appointments, but the so-called leftover vaccines can hardly be found in reality, many citizens said.

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) began the test operation of the search and reservation system for AstraZeneca vaccines available from appointment no-shows through the country’s largest web portal Naver and top mobile messenger KakaoTalk at 1 p.m.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like South Korea is having the same problem many other countries are having with vaccine hesitancy:

Deaths following Pfizer jabs are exceeding those after AstraZeneca shots, although experts say that many of the casualties were over the age of 74, with weaker immune systems and pre-existing medical conditions.  

Since the vaccination program began on Feb. 26, a total of 153 cases of death after inoculation had been reported as of Monday, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA). Pfizer accounted for 93 cases and AstraZeneca 60.  (……….)  

Enthusiasm for the shots isn’t high. As of Monday, the booking rate for Covid-19 vaccinations — the percentage of people in an age group who have made reservations — was only 55.9 percent among people aged 60 to 74, who are eligible for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The booking rate for people between the ages of 60 to 64 was only 47.4 percent.  (……….)

Health authorities, however, explained that none of the deaths reported so far are related to the vaccinations.  

“On the elderly without underlying diseases who died after inoculation, we could find the causes of death through an autopsy, such as cardiac infarction, heart rupture or pulmonary embolism,” an official from the KDCA told the Korea JoongAng Daily.  

“We don’t think there is a meaningful difference [between AstraZeneca and Pfizer in terms of deaths] seeing the situations abroad,” the official added.  

The death rate per 100,000 vaccinated people was similar between Pfizer (2.71 per 100,000 people) and AstraZeneca (2.62 per 100,000 people), and those results were similar to other countries, according to the KDCA.  

For example, in the U.K. where a larger number of inoculations have being done, there were 3.19 deaths per 100,000 people for Pfizer, and 3.29 for AstraZeneca. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Here is what people who attended a meeting with President Moon are claiming he said:

President Moon Jae-in on Wednesday expressed skepticism over the idea of a big joint military drill by Korea and the United States this year — after Washington supplies Covid-19 vaccines to Korean troops.    
   
Moon had a luncheon with leaders of five political parties at the Blue House Wednesday to discuss last week’s summit with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House, where the two leaders reached a series of agreements on economic cooperation and a vaccine partnership.    
   
Chairman Song Young-gil of the ruling Democratic Party (DP), Acting Chairman and Floor Leader Kim Gi-hyeon of the People Power Party (PPP), Justice Party Chairman Yeo Yeong-gug, People’s Party Chairman Ahn Cheol-soo and Open Minjoo Party Chairman Choe Kang-wook attended the meeting, accompanied by their spokesmen.    
   
“Considering the Covid-19 situation, wouldn’t it be hard to hold a large-scale military exercise?” Moon was quoted as saying by Justice Party spokesman Lee Dong-yeong. “The United States will also make a decision taking into account North Korea-U.S. relations.”    
   
According to Lee, Moon made the remarks in response to Justice Party Chairman Yeo ‘s proposal that a Korea-U.S. joint military exercise scheduled for August be canceled or delayed to revive inter-Korean talks.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Hopefully President Moon doesn’t have any summits in China anytime soon because it sounds like they CCP is not too happy with him right now:

China is aware that part of a joint statement from last week’s summit between South Korea and the United States is targeted at Beijing, though it made no mention of the country, the top Chinese envoy here said Monday.

Chinese Ambassador Xing Haiming made the remarks amid expectations that the statement following the first in-person summit between Presidents Moon Jae-in and Joe Biden on Friday could stir unease in China, as it touches on sensitive issues involving the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea.

“There was no mention of China, but it’s not that (Beijing) is unaware it is targeting China,” Xing told reporters after a forum, noting he watched the summit between Moon and Biden unsatisfactorily.

“For instance, the Taiwan issue is an internal Chinese affair, but that was brought up. There exists no problem with the South China Sea as free transit is guaranteed. That’s a matter involving China and its neighboring countries,” he added.

The joint statement stressed “the importance of preserving peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait,” the first time the Taiwan issue has been included in a joint summit statement between Seoul and Washington. Still, it included no mention of China.

The statement also mentioned the freedom of navigation and overflights in the South China Sea, the lion’s share of which is claimed by China.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the CCP is also unhappy with South Korea increasing the range of their missiles and statements about the Quad.

This appears to be a commercial logging operation being disguised as combating global warming. It seems like every industry tries to claim some kind of environmental benefit in an effort to get approved:

The Korean government’s plans to plant 3 billion new trees over the next 30 years after logging aged trees in an attempt to offset carbon emissions has been raising controversy recently.    
   
Earlier in the year, the Korea Forest Service announced plans to plant 3 billion trees over the next 30 years as a part of the country’s efforts to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The government, through a forestation plan that will cost around 6 trillion won ($5.3 billion), aims for the absorption of some 34 million tons of carbon through the felling of old trees and planting of young ones as part of its 2050 carbon-neutral forestry sector plan.  
   
The Forest Service claims that trees older than 30 years have poor carbon absorption capacity. Most of the planting of trees in Korea took place in the 1970s and 1980s, the forestry agency points out, saying it is time to replace them.  
   
However, environmental groups and opposition lawmakers have called the 34-million-ton carbon absorption an inflated figure and also question the research on the lifetime carbon absorption of trees cited by the government. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.