Month: February 2015

The construction of a military residential complex resumes near the site of a new naval base on Jeju Island on Feb. 2, 2015. (Yonhap)

Hyundai is thinking big with the construction of what they hope will be a landmark building in Korea:

Hyundai Motor Group began negotiations with the Seoul city government over the construction of a 115-story headquarters at the Samseong-dong plot in Gangnam it purchased from Korea Electric Power Corporation (Kepco) for 10.55 trillion won ($9.6 billion) last September.

According to the city government Sunday, Hyundai Motor has submitted a plan to build the highest building in the country at 571 meters (1,873 feet), 16 meters higher than the Lotte World Tower.

Currently, the country’s highest skyscraper is the North East Asia Trade Tower in Songdo, Incheon, according to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

That building, which was finished last July, has 68 floors and is 305-meters high. Offices occupy the first 35 floors, and the remaining floors are used as a hotel and for restaurants.

The world’s fifth-largest automaker said it wants to build a landmark dubbed the Global Business Center at the Kepco site in Gangnam when it purchased the land last year.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

Due to the famine of the 1990’s North Korea is now requiring all females after finishing high school to serve 5 years in the military:

North Korea is making military service mandatory for young women in a bid to strengthen the nation’s armed forces, sources inside the secretive state have told DailyNK.

The measure is said to apply to women aged between 17 and 20, and has been handed down to mobilisation offices in each province, city, and county. Implementation is reported to be already underway.

“Late last year, we received orders for all women who have graduated from middle and high school to undergo mandatory military service,” a source based in North Hamkyung Province told Daily NK this week.  [The Guardian]

You can read the rest at the link, but women have to serve 5 years and men still have to serve 10 years.

It looks like the squid industry on Ullengdo is on the verge of collapse due to overfishing by Chinese boats:

Once abundant squid stocks in the East Sea have now almost been depleted by Chinese fishermen who operate in North Korean waters. This has caused tremendous hardship among fishermen on Ulleung Island, Korea’s most famous squid fishing point.

“Only five years ago the market was brimming with boxes of fresh squid every morning, but now we can no longer talk about it with any pride,” said 59-year-old trawler captain Lee Ju-hyuk.

The Jeodong market near the pier, where all the catch is gathered and traded, was one-third empty around 6:30 a.m. on Monday. But at this hour five years ago the catch was so abundant that people had to put spare boxes in nearby buildings.

Bright squid-lure lamps lit up the horizon off the island all night. When the boats arrived at dawn, workers cleaned the squid and middlemen bought and loaded them on their trucks.

But on Monday only about 30 middlemen and workers hovered around the fish collection point, and most of them had to turn back empty-handed. Around this time of year, squid used to be dried everywhere — on the seawall, in front of the door and on the tin roof of every household. Now that is history.

People here put the blame squarely on Chinese fishermen, who started fishing in northern waters in 2010.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

The measures the ROK Army is taking to stop sex crimes is even stricter than anything we have seen in the US Army yet:

The Army is scrambling to come up with a new code of behavior in response to a recent series of sex crimes in barracks.

“A top brass meeting held on Tuesday decided to work out a code of conduct to cope with sex crimes,” an Army spokesman said Thursday. “It will be issued in the name of the Army chief of staff and violators will be subject to punishment under military law.”

Male or female soldiers will be banned from visiting the quarters of soldiers of the opposite sex alone. Soldiers of different genders will only be allowed to shake hands with one hand.

Soldiers of different ranks will be prohibited from dating, and no soldier will be allowed to travel, or stay in the same office, alone with another of the opposite sex. When it is inevitable that they are alone in the same office, they must leave the door open.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

Australia beats South Korea in extra time to win its first Asian Cup http://t.co/nQCJjZeP1E

— South Korea Daily (@SouthKoreaDaily) February 2, 2015

Female noncommissioned officers salute during their commission ceremony at the Special Warfare Training Group in Gwangju, south of Seoul, on Jan. 30, 2015. (Yonhap)

Indictments have now been released for Homeplus executives involved in the customer data selling scandal:

Homeplus Co., the South Korean unit of British retail giant Tesco PLC, has been indicted on charges of illegally selling customer data to insurance firms in exchange for money, a government investigation team said Sunday.

Homeplus is accused of gathering more than 24 million pieces of customer data, including birth dates, number of children and other personal information, and selling them to a number of insurance firms for a total of 23.17 billion won (US$21.14 million), the investigation team said. Most of the information were collected under the guise of conducting a lottery for free gifts.

Homeplus chief Do Sung-hwan, five other former and current company executives and staff, and two officials from the insurance companies have also been indicted over their involvement in the case, according to the team.

Do and the other Homeplus staff are accused of requiring customers to submit personal information in order to enter draws for the gifts.

Most customers who entered the draws were unaware that their personal information would be sold to insurance companies as such details were provided in barely visible print on the coupons. Some of the customers were not even contacted upon winning a prize, the investigation team said.  [Yonhap]

Isn’t this though pretty much what Facebook does every day?

Just another example of the growing military capabilities of the ROK Navy:

The South Korean Navy on Sunday inaugurated a submarine command as part of efforts to bolster its underwater capabilities and combat readiness against North Korea.

The fleet of the command, based in the southern port city of Jinhae and led by a rear admiral, is composed of 13 submarines under the Ninth Submarine Flotilla, the Navy said in a statement.

The Navy operates nine 1,200-ton submarines and four 1,800-ton subs, while planning to add five more 1,800-ton submarines to be built by 2019. In addition, it plans to deploy nine 3,000-ton submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles, starting in 2020.

The launch made South Korea, which commissioned its first submarine from Germany in 1992, the sixth nation in the world with a submarine command after the United States, Japan, France, Britain and India.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Park administration is upset with some of the details included in former President Lee Myung-bak’s book about his time in office:

The Blue House expressed its annoyance with the memoir released by former President Lee Myung-bak Friday, saying it would not help national interest.

A senior Blue House official speaking on the condition of anonymity said Lee’s revelations of behind-the-scenes talks with North Korean officials in particular would not improve current inter-Korean relations.

The official also said that Lee’s claim in the book about President Park Geun-hye’s real motives for opposing Lee’s plan to scrap the relocation of the central government to Sejong City was based on a “misunderstanding.”

The Blue House’s response, although unofficial, was clear annoyance as the release of the former president’s memoir was brought forward to Friday, three days ahead of its original schedule.

The memoir comes out at a time when President Park’s approval ratings have hit 29 percent, the lowest level since she took office two years ago.

Media reports on leaked manuscripts of the book said that Lee thought Park objected to his revisions to the Sejong City plan because she was worried that former Prime Minister Chung Un-chan, who led the campaign on behalf of the Lee government, could emerge as a threat to her presidential ambitions.

In a press briefing held by Kim Du-woo, former presidential secretary for public relations at the Lee Blue House who participated in writing the memoir, the former president tried to exclude experiences that could trigger political controversy. Kim said the current Blue House occupants would understand Lee’s true intentions once they read the entire book. [Joong Ang Ilbo]

It really wouldn’t be surprising if a politician was concerned about another politician gaining advantage over them, so nothing shocking there.  I do not understand why the Park administration would be upset with this assessment that only the most partisan wacko leftist will not admit to being true:

In the memoir entitled “The President’s Time,” Lee touches on inter-Korean relations with a highly critical view of the engagement policy carried out by the two liberal governments that preceded him. Lee said North Korea misused the good intentions of the Seoul government and pursued nuclear weapons development with the financial assistance and economic cooperation provided under Seoul’s “Sunshine Policy.”

You can read more at the link, but Lee’s book has reportedly also made the claim that the North Koreans wanted $10 billion to hold a summit between the two nations.  The book will also be translated into English which means I will have to add this to my reading list.