Tag: South Korea

Here is the latest coronavirus restriction in South Korea:

 The government will ban eating at mass gathering establishments like sports stadiums, libraries and museums starting Monday, officials said, amid an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

Eating will be banned at 21 types of public places, which also include karaoke bars, public saunas and movie theaters, and violators will be fined 100,000 (US$88) starting April 5 after a one-week grace period, officials said.

Other facilities subject to the ban include cram schools, hair dressers, gyms, casinos and exhibition halls.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Not a good look even if there isn’t corruption going on, but in the case of the LH scandal we know there was corruption likely going on:

About half of top officials at the central government and state-run institutions own land as part of their wealth, a government report showed Thursday, amid mounting public outrage over a land speculation scandal involving public officials. (…….)

The report came in light of a snowballing controversy surrounding alleged speculative land purchases by employees at the Korea Land and Housing Corp. (LH), the state housing supply arm, based on insider knowledge. 

At least 20 LH employees are suspected of having purchased huge swathes of undeveloped land around Seoul over a few years with undisclosed information on plans to construct major residential towns there. The scandal has rocked the nation as it emerged at a time when public anger over the nation’s soaring housing and rent prices is running high.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The latest Korean manufactured satellite has been launched:

South Korea’s next-generation midsized observation satellite successfully entered its target orbit and made its first contact with a base station on Monday, the science ministry said, marking the country’s latest step to boost its space industry.

The 540-kilogram satellite made contact with the Svalbard Satellite Station in Norway around 100 minutes after its launch on Russia’s Soyuz-2.1a rocket from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan at around 11:07 a.m. (local time), according to the Ministry of Science and ICT.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is an interesting tourism idea to promote a remote part of South Korea:

 Dressed all in purple, bent-over women held long rakes aloft as they walked in a line to a lavender field to carry out some pruning on an island in southwest South Korea.

Inspired by their native balloon flower, residents of the Banwol and Bakji Islands, known as the ‘Purple Islands’, have painted their houses, roads and bridges in shades of the hue, and planted purple flowers such as lavender and asters to transform their town into a tourist attraction.

Reuters

You can read more at the link.

Doctors have concluded that so far 8 out of the 11 reported vaccine deaths were caused by pre-existing conditions:

South Korea has tentatively concluded that there is no causal relation between COVID-19 vaccines and eight out of 11 reported deaths after vaccinations, health authorities said Monday.

Investigations were concluded on the eight people who died within days of receiving AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccines. An epidemiological survey is still under way for three other recipients.

The authorities tentatively concluded that their deaths were highly likely to be connected to their pre-existing conditions.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but all 8 people who died after getting the vaccine were not only unwell, but were in longterm care facilities as well. The government is stilling doing epidemiological surveys on the remaining three deaths.

This same phenomenon is devastating many businesses in university town’s in the United States as well:

The streets near the campus of Hannam University in Daejeon used to be packed with students at this time of year.    
   
Now only advertisements plastered on the windows of empty stores greet visitors.  
   
“Many of us in the area are going out of business, as most university classes are being held online in the pandemic and students are not returning to the campus,” one store owner in the neighborhood told the JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday. “I’m afraid that at this rate, half of the stores in the area will go out of business in the next couple of years.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

I don’t play these games, but based off of what I am reading this does appear to be a form of gambling. Does anyone that plays these games want to comment on this proposed legislation?

A loot box is a common feature in both PC and mobile games. Users pay to draw game items like weapons or armor from a loot box. The prize may be worth several times what they paid for the draw — or worth close to nothing at all.  
   
The problem occurs when players start drawing multiple times to get their hands on items they want, which some say becomes a form of gambling. Although game publishers officially ban the practice, rare items are often traded online in exchange for cash.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

This will be a big accomplishment by South Korea’s aerospace industry once complete:

A nearly completed prototype of Korea’s first indigenous fighter jet was unveiled to the media in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang on Wednesday ahead of its official rollout in April.  
   
Jung Kwang-sun, chief of the Korea Fighter Experimental (KF-X) project of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), said the first domestically produced fighter jet will be a “landmark moment” for the country and its aerospace industry. 
   
Aimed at replacing the Air Force’s dated McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II and Northrop F-5 fighter jets, the 92-percent-completed KF-X prototype is the first fruit of a development project that began in 2015, led by Korea’s sole aircraft manufacturer, Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI). 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest anti-Japanese colonialism effort by the ROK government:

The South Korean government has started a legal challenge to confiscate 11 land properties from descendants of four Japanese collaborators, the Ministry of Justice said Monday.

The ministry said it filed complaints with the Seoul Central District Court and the Seoul Western District Court on Friday to take back 85,094 square meters of land valued at 2.68 billion won ($2.4 million) from descendants of those on the list of pro-Japan collaborators announced in 2007.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

Here is a though experiment for everyone. What would happen in the U.S. if the government tried to confiscate property from the descendants of people that swindled Native-Americans out of their land?

It looks like some messy driving conditions on the Donghae Expressway:

Hundreds of cars were trapped on some parts of a highway along the east coast Monday as heavy snowfall caused a traffic gridlock, the road authority said.

   Gangwon Province received about 10 centimeters of snowfall earlier in the day, which caused many cars returning from a three-day holiday to be stuck on the snow-covered Donghae Expressway, according to Korea Expressway Corp. (KEC)’s regional office.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.