Now 2 journalists in jail: Byun Hee-jae (2 yrs) & Hwang Ui-won (1 yr) for correctly pointing out JTBC's false reporting of "the tablet PC." The judge wasn't even interested in further discovery. They are in appeals now. Why are they in jail at all for libel? https://t.co/Lsh6E1ZEuU
— Tara O (@DrTaraO) March 20, 2019
President Moon has fighting words for the doctors that have gone on strike this week:
South Korean President Moon Jae-in sent a warning message on Aug. 24 to physician groups that launched a collective strike to protest plans to create new public health colleges and raise the admissions cap for medical schools.
“We will have no choice but to respond sternly to the collective use of force in violation of the law, such as strikes and walkouts,” Moon said, describing the current situation as a “desperate moment where the number of people infected [with COVID-19] could skyrocket anywhere at any time if we let down our guard even a little.”Presiding over a meeting of senior secretaries and aides at the Blue House that day, Moon said, “We would like the medical community to refrain from collective action.
Collective action that holds the public’s life hostage will not gain support at a time when we need to be harnessing our national capacities to stop the virus from spreading.”“One can oppose or criticize government policy, but it cannot cross the line of what is lawful,” he stressed in his first public message directed at the Korea Intern Resident Association (KIRA). (………………..)
“A Level 3 upgrade is by no means an easy decision to make. Daily life would come to a stop, jobs would collapse, and we would have to suffer through a truly enormous economic setback. We could even see a collapse of the healthcare system.
Hankyoreh
If President Moon is so concerned about his doomsday scenario then why doesn’t he scrap his medical reform plan? Additionally Moon in the article also hinted at putting more journalists and protesters in jail that don’t agree with his administration:
”Moon further hinted at plans for a stern response toward obstruction of disease prevention efforts and the spreading of fake news, which he referred to as “antisocial criminal acts.”“No religious freedom, no freedom of assembly, no freedom of expression can be proclaimed if it means causing such enormous harm to the South Korean public,” he declared, adding that he would “clearly establish the strict fairness of public authorities.”
You can read more at the link.
Another Korean journalist has been sent jail:
Sung Sang-hoon (성상훈), a journalist who runs the Global Defense News (글로벌디펜스뉴스) YouTube channel and website, was arrested and jailed on May 13, 2020.
His “crime” was saying the Chinese man, who fell over and died in early February in front of a public health clinic, may have died of Coronavirus. The suppression of YouTubers and journalists already began under the Moon administration, including demonetizing many of them, but some expect it will get worse, especially since the ruling party has won by a landslide in the April 2020 general election, which is itself a huge controversy in South Korea. While many YouTubers are covering the election fraud issue extensively, the mainstream media hardly prints or broadcasts this issue.
East Asia Research Center
I recommend reading the whole article at the link, but essentially Sung was jailed because he questioned whether a Korean-Chinese man who fell over and died in front of a clinic had coronavirus. He was trying to make the point that the Chinese brought the coronavirus to South Korea which the Moon administration has made efforts to deny.
Because of his statement he was sued for libel by the Pyeongtaek mayor who is part of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea. So like other journalists sued with libel laws he was arrested and jailed.
Could you imagine what the reaction in the media around the world would be if President Trump started jailing journalists, yet the international media has had zero interest in journalists being jailed in South Korea.
I find it interesting that the Moon administration allows journalists that print facts to be arrested and languish in jail, but union allies that break the law they allow to go free:
Kim Myeong-hwan, the leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, a militant labor umbrella group, was released on bail Thursday, a week after being arrested on charges of masterminding assaults on police during outdoor rallies.
The Seoul Southern District Court approved Kim’s release on a bail of 100 million won ($86,360) but attached a condition under which he should only stay in his residence.
Kim was also ordered to obtain court approval before moving out of his residence or going on an overseas trip and to comply with a summons from the court.
The same court issued an arrest warrant last Friday for Kim, who was accused of overseeing violent illegal acts during KCTU members’ four protest rallies in front of the National Assembly compound on May 21 last year, as well as March 27 and April 2 and 3 this year.
During the protest rallies, labor activists knocked down parts of the fence surrounding the National Assembly in Seoul’s Yeouido, assaulted police officers, destroyed police equipment and attempted to force their way into the compound illegally to block the passage of labor bills, including those calling for extending statutory flextime from three to six months to minimize side effects of the government’s mandatory 52-hour workweek policy.
Korea Herald
You can read more at the link, but the KCTU who is well known for their violence, pro-Kim regime stance, and anti-Americanism vowed to launch massive protests against the Moon administration if Kim was not released. Sure enough Kim is released while journalists languish in jail.
You would think with such a discrepancy the international media would be all over this, but very few are reporting on this.
Conservative journalists were thrown in jail for libel even though they reported true information, and a presidential aide is convicted of corruption and is sentenced to jail, and yet is able to walk around a free man:
A court on Thursday handed down a six-year prison term to a former senior secretary to President Moon Jae-in over a corruption case related to a gaming industry body, and one year in jail, suspended for two years, for abuse of power.
Yonhap News
Jun Byung-hun, an ex-presidential aide for political affairs and a former lawmaker, has been suspected of forcing two home shopping channels — Lotte Home Shopping and GS Home Shopping — and telecom company KT to donate 550 million won (US$514,260) between 2014 and 2017 to the Korea e-Sports Association, over which he practically held control. But he was not taken into custody after the ruling.
The Seoul Central Court also slapped him with a fine of 350 million won and an overdraft fee of 25 million won.
The court did not issue a warrant to arrest him as it judged that “it is appropriate for him to appeal to a higher court and solve the dispute (with the prosecution) without detention.”
“His criminal responsibility is grave,” the court said in its verdict, adding that Jun damaged the fairness and integrity of parliament by accepting bribes from companies related to his parliamentary activities.
You can read more at the link.
This is an example of leftists defending leftists using these so called research groups. This group in Sweden claims autocracy is returning to Korea though Yoon replaced the left wing Moon administration that sent two prior conservative Presidents and numerous journalists to jail. I guess in the leftist world view sending political rivals and journalists to jail is a sign of democracy. Will this group upgrade South Korea’s democracy ranking if Yoon follows the lead of the leftists and sends his political rivals and journalists to jail?:
Korea has experienced a “downward slope” in its democratic process since President Yoon Suk Yeol took office, according to a Sweden-based political science research institute. The regression is attributed to the government’s measures to penalize figures associated with the previous administration, its assaults on gender equality, and its undermining of freedom of expression.
The Democracy Report 2024 released Thursday by the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Institute at the University of Gothenburg stated that Korea scored 0.6 on the Liberal Democracy Index (LDI) and ranked 47th among 179 countries in the world for its level of democracy.
Korea Times
You can read more at the link.
This guy is lucky he only got fined because there were conservative journalists thrown in jail after their libel suits:
Rhyu Si-min, a former health minister and an influential liberal commentator, was sentenced to a fine of 5 million won (US$4,000) by a court Thursday for defamatory comments made years ago about Minister of Justice Han Dong-hoon.
The Seoul Western District Court handed out the monetary penalty after convicting Rhyu of defaming Han by making false remarks about him in public between 2019 and 2020 when the minister was serving as a senior prosecutor.
Rhyu, who formerly headed a foundation memorializing late former President Roh Moo-hyun, was indicted in May last year for alleging on his YouTube channel in December 2019 and in a media interview in July 2020 that a prosecution department led by Han at that time illegally accessed his personal bank account and that of the memorial foundation sometime between late November and early December 2019.
Han, picked last month by President Yoon Suk-yeol as his administration’s first justice minister, was serving as head of the Supreme Prosecutors Office’s Anti-Corruption & Organized Crimes Department when Rhyu alleged the illegal account accesses occurred.
“(Han) appears to have suffered considerable psychological pain from the defendant’s remarks, as he was recognized as a prosecutor who abused his investigative power for an unjust purpose,” the Seoul court said, noting Rhyu may have considerable influence in the formation of public opinion, particularly as a YouTuber with more than 1 million subscribers.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
The scandal involving President Moon Jae-in’s wife’s wardrobe has finally come to light, but the journalist that first began to document improprieties of the first lady was riddled with lawsuits from the Blue House for doing so:
It all began with a column published on June 11, 2019, in local newspaper the Joongang Ilbo, which pitted veteran journalist Nam Jeong-ho against the presidential office in a legal battle that lasted for two years.
Korea Times via a reader tip
In his column titled “First Lady Kim Jung-sook’s Bucket List?” he cautiously but unequivocally alleges that the first lady had made the most of the official overseas trips taken with her husband, President Moon Jae-in, as opportunities to explore some of the world’s renowned cultural heritage sites and museums on taxpayers’ money.
Nam said he was overwhelmed by what happened to him afterwards. He first received a letter from the presidential office urging him and his company to print corrections according to unusually lengthy and detailed guidelines. He ignored a letter from LKB & Partners, one of the nation’s top law firms which was representing the first lady. Weeks later they sued him, after the two sides failed to reach an agreement arranged by the Press Arbitration Committee.
Nam compares his legal battle against Cheong Wa Dae to a showdown akin to David and Goliath.
“I felt pressure (when I looked at the sender of the thick package of documents because I knew who they were),” Nam said in a phone interview with The Korea Times on Monday. “There were lots of naysayers around me and they encouraged me to do what Cheong Wa Dae asked me to do. They said Cheong Wa Dae would mobilize all the resources it could to win the battle.”
You can read more at the link, but Mr. Nam should consider himself lucky that he wasn’t thrown in jail like other Korean journalists critical of President Moon.
For anyone that thinks Democrats and Republicans are irresponsible spenders, this guy may have the craziest presidential platform I have seen yet:
Pompously clad in a Joseon-era general’s suit of armor, a longsword in hand, Huh Kyung-young, honorary chief of a little known political party, showed up on horseback at an historic battlefield site northwest of Seoul in August to declare his presidential bid in yet another bout of his unique political gimmickry.
Enacting the Joseon army’s heroic victory over invading Japanese forces at Haengju Fortress in one of the major Imjin War battles (1592-1598), the 71-year-old made a spectacle by playing the role of a national hero who slices the enemies to death and saves the country, in front of journalists and supporters.
He then changed into a sleek business suit and glided back to the audience in his famous Rolls Royce to declare his campaign pledge to run in the 2022 presidential election, solemn-faced throughout the whole event.
The pledges blatantly included a one-shot payment of 100 million won (US$85,258) to everyone aged 18 and above in emergency livelihood assistance upon his presidential victory, along with 1.5 million won in “public dividends” every month.
Huh also promised to give a newlywed couple 100 million won each as a subsidy, plus another 200 million won as a no-interest loan to help them buy a home. Giving birth will bring in another 50 million won per baby, he promised.
Huh said he will do away with 90 percent of the state penitentiary facilities, adopt a system to levy fines proportional to offenders’ wealth and collect “anti-tax evasion taxes” to bankroll his splurge of subsidies if he becomes president.
“Our nation is the world’s 10th-strongest economy, but the level of people’s lives is in 100th place. This attests to the fact that the country is not short on money, but it has a lot of thieves,” he rashly claimed.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but it only gets wackier about Huh Kyung-young. He even went to jail before for lying about being engaged to former President Park Geun-hye.
It will be interesting to see if this frigate ends up doing the same maritime DMZ duty as its predecessor:
South Korea on Tuesday held a ceremony launching a new frigate named after a warship torpedoed by North Korea in 2010, the Navy and state arms procurement agency said.
The ceremony for the 2,800-ton frigate, Cheonan, took place at the shipyard of Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. in Ulsan, some 410 kilometers southeast of Seoul, as the Navy still has potent memories of the North’s deadly attack.
The 1,200-ton corvette Cheonan sank near the Northern Limit Line, a de facto western inter-Korean sea border, in March 2010, after a North Korean midget submarine fired a torpedo at it, killing 46 sailors.
The unveiling of the Cheonan carried a symbolic meaning for the survivors of the attack and bereaved families who have wished to see the new warship named after the ill-fated corvette and commissioned to fulfill its unfinished mission of safeguarding the maritime border.
Yonhap
However the prior Captain of the Cheonan did not attend the ceremony for this reason:
Striking a sour note, Choi Won-il, the captain of the corvette at the time of the sinking, said he would not attend the event in protest over the state-run communications standards panel’s recent decision not to take issue with social media video clips raising conspiracy theories behind the cause of the sinking.
Choi does have a point because the Moon administration has been busy throwing conservative journalists in jail for so called “fake news”, but will not take action against fake news in regards to the sinking of the Cheonan. This is likely because they don’t want to upset the Kim regime which is behind a lot of the misinformation put out about the sinking of the Cheonan.
You can read more at the link.
