The Moon administration’s response to their poor economic policies appears to be to just spend more money:
President Moon Jae-in ordered the government on Thursday to spend more aggressively to solve problems such as slowing growth, weak jobs and worsening demographic changes.
“There are many areas in which we are still inadequate where people could feel improvements in the overall quality of their lives,” Moon said during a government national fiscal strategy meeting in Sejong. “There’s a need for the [government] finances to take a bolder role, more than ever, in urgently solving our society’s structural problems from low growth, polarization [of the top and bottom tiers], jobs, low fertility rate and aging population.”
Although this is the third meeting held under the current administration, it was the first time that the meeting was held in Sejong instead of at the Blue House.
“We’re at a turning point where we have to look back on our achievements in the last two years and prepare for the remaining three years,” Moon said.
Moon particularly stressed that low-income people outside of the employment market, such as those who run small businesses like restaurants and convenience stores, need help.
“Self-employed people and those in lower-income households are struggling the most and this hurts me,” Moon said. “There is a demand for a more aggressive fiscal role in expanding jobs, enhancement on job safety nets such as introducing a system where additional financial support is provided for those whose unemployment paychecks has ended and measures for self-employed businesses.”
You can read more at the link, but the whole reason small businesses are struggling and unemployment is up is because of the steep minimum wage increase that has raised labor costs and caused major job layoffs.
Against ride-hailing serviceTaxi drivers call for the suspension of the operations of ride-hailing startup Tada during a rally at Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul on May 15, 2019. (Yonhap)
Here is the latest update on the ever changing location of the CFC headquarters:
The United States told the Moon Jae-in administration that it wants to move the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command from its planned relocation site in Yongsan District, central Seoul, to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi, government sources told the JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday.
“General Robert Abrams, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea and the commander of the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command, recently told Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo about the change of plans,” the JoongAng Ilbo quoted a government source as saying in its Thursday edition. “The Ministry of National Defense is currently reviewing the proposal.”
The newspaper also said multiple government sources confirmed the U.S. military’s relocation plan. Originally, the United States planned to keep the Combined Forces Command (CFC) in Yongsan.
Other top U.S. military offices – the headquarters of the U.S. Forces Korea, United Nations Command and Eighth Army Command – have been relocated away from Yongsan to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek.
According to the sources, General Abrams had considered two options for relocating the CFC. One was to move it inside Camp Humphreys and the other was to keep it inside the U.S. military base in Yongsan until the United States completed the process of handing over wartime operational control of Korean troops to Korea.
Seoul and Washington originally agreed to keep the CFC inside the compound of the Korean Ministry of National Defense in Yongsan. During a lecture on Jan. 4 last year, General Vincent Brooks, then the commander of the Korea-U.S. CFC and U.S. Forces Korea, said the CFC will remain in Seoul.
You can read much more at the link, but this is all coming down to who is going to have to commute. According to the article General Abrams is having to commute twice a week to Seoul from Camp Humphreys to execute his CFC duties. Additionally he says it is hard to find good staff officers to serve in CFC if they have to commute from Camp Humphreys where their families are.
Moving the CFC headquarters to Camp Humphreys means all the Koreans living in Seoul would be forced to commute down to Camp Humphreys. Additionally there is concern of having the CFC headquarters on a US military base after operational control of forces in Korea is supposed to be handed over to the ROK by 2022.
This photo shows South Korean President Moon Jae-in (L) meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington on April 11, 2019. (Yonhap)
U.S. President Donald Trump will visit South Korea next month for talks with President Moon Jae-in on the denuclearization of North Korea and alliance issues, Moon’s office announced Thursday amid growing concerns about the overall peace process. Trump plans to visit South Korea in late June as part of his regional trip. He will travel to Osaka, Japan, for the two-day G-20 summit to open on June 28. The exact schedule for Trump’s second trip to South Korea as U.S. president remains unannounced. He made a state visit to South Korea in November 2017. “The two leaders plan to discuss ways for the establishment of a permanent peace regime through the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the strengthening of the South Korea-U.S. alliance,” Cheong Wa Dae spokesperson, Ko Min-jung, said early Thursday morning (Seoul time).
Has anyone tried this Blue Bottle Coffee before? I would never wait in line for over an hour just to get a cup of coffee, but that is what people are doing in Korea for Blue Bottle:
People wait in line in front of Blue Bottle Coffee shop in Seongsu-dong, Seoul, May 8.
Blue Bottle Coffee finally came to Korea on May 3. The opening of the artisanal coffee shop in Seongsu-dong, Seoul had been the talk of the town for years and social media was flooded with posts awaiting its arrival.
Before the opening of the store at 8:00 a.m., more than 300 people lined up in advance, some having been there all night, to be the first to try the coffee. Over 1,000 people were reported to have lined up for approximately three hours on that day.
Sales of Blue Bottle Korea recorded around 60 million won ($50,400) in a single day, which is equal to the combined daily sales of 70 Blue Bottle stores across the globe.
A week later, this reporter visited to find out what the fuss was all about. Upon arriving at 4:30 p.m. and despite being a Wednesday, there was already a long queue outside.
When asked how long it would take to get in, a Blue Bottle staff member said it would take roughly 90 minutes from the end of the line.
eo Jong-su (2nd from L), leader of the Seoul Bus Drivers Labor Union, poses for a photo with Pi Jeong-kwon (2nd from R), head of the Seoul Bus Operators Association, and Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon (C) at the Seoul Regional Labor Relations Committee on May 15, 2019, after reaching a compromise agreement with management. The agreement was reached with less than two hours left until a planned walkout by unionized bus drivers. (Yonhap)
This story about an Army National Guard officer who stole a tracked vehicle and went joyriding in Virginia continues to get weirder:
Emergency personnel surround a National Guard military vehicle taken from Fort Pickett, Va., on June 5, 2018. Police said they arrested an officer who took the armored personnel carrier after chasing him for more than 60 miles. (Grace Hollars/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)
The Army National Guard officer accused of stealing an armored personnel carrier from Fort Pickett last June is scheduled to go on trial May 20. But Joshua Yabut’s trial has been put on hold because the 30-year-old first lieutenant plans to plead not guilty by reason of insanity, according to WTVR. A new hearing in Nottoway County, Virginia, is set for July 2. Yabut is accused of stealing the military vehicle and leading police on a more than 60-mile chase to Richmond, Virginia, while under the influence of drugs. He said he had permission to take the APC, but Virginia National Guard officials denied that in initial reports.
Yabut’s case took another twist in January when he violated the terms of his bond and traveled to Iraq, somehow losing his ankle monitoring bracelet along the way.
He used his valid military ID to board a flight at Naval Station Norfolk before flying commercially from Charlotte, North Carolina, the rest of the way to Baghdad. He returned to Norfolk two days later, according to WTVR. His military ID is no longer valid and he was put back behind bars.
Something to keep in mind that these jobless numbers have probably been modified as much as possible to make it not look as bad since President Moon fired the prior head of Statistics Korea and replaced her with an ally. The actual jobless is probably far worse:
Over 1.24 million people remained jobless in April, the highest in 19 years, a clear indication of the tightening job market amid an economic slowdown here, government data showed Wednesday.
Statistics Korea said the number of jobless stood at 1,245,000, up 84,000 from a year earlier and the highest number since June 1999 when the agency began compiling related data.
The jobless rate also jumped to 4.4 percent in April, up 0.3 percentage points year-on-year, the highest since 2000 when it stood at 4.5 percent.
The rate for those aged between 15 and 29 reached 11.5 percent, up 0.8 percentage points from a year earlier, also the highest since April 2000.
