It is kind of surprising that Kakao is not able to dominate the younger social media market in South Korea:
Instagram has emerged as the social media app South Korea’s teens spend the most time on, outpacing KakaoTalk by more than double, data showed Monday.
According to data from mobile marketing and data analysis company IGAWorks, Korea’s smartphone users under 20 spent a total of 94.1 million hours scrolling on Instagram in June, making the app the leading social media platform in popularity for the age group. This figure was nearly double the time they spent on the next most popular app, mobile messenger KakaoTalk, with 48.2 million hours.
Instagram’s popularity is particularly salient in the under-20 age group, given that KakaoTalk is the most used social media app among Korea’s general population.
Another example of the growing trilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia:
The defense chiefs of South Korea, the United States and Japan signed a document on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework (TSCF) on Sunday , Seoul’s defense ministry said, in a move solidifying their continued commitment to three-way security cooperation against North Korean threats.
South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Lloyd Austin and Minoru Kihara, respectively, inked a Memorandum of Cooperation on the framework in Tokyo amid their deepening security cooperation in response to the North’s persistent nuclear and missile threats and growing military alignment with Russia.
This seems like a fair compromise, Japan gets their UNESCO site and South Korea gets a marker explaining the history of Korean forced laborers:
South Korea has given the green light to designate Japan’s gold and silver mines on Sado Island — where an estimated over 1,500 Koreans were forced to work at the end of Japan’s colonial rule — as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Foreign Ministry announced on Friday.
Japan’s ongoing efforts to have the Sado Island Gold Mines recognized have fueled a dispute with South Korea. The controversy revolves around Japan’s deliberate omission of its history regarding the forced mobilization of Koreans during its brutal colonial rule over the peninsula. (….)
An inscription on the World Heritage list typically requires a two-thirds majority vote from the WHC member states. However, it has become customary for the final decision to be reached through consensus, ensuring broader agreement and cooperation among the committee members.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry’s confirmation came hours after Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported that a preliminary agreement had been reached. Under the agreement, Japan will display the history of Korean forced laborers at the site in exchange for South Korea’s consent to the inscription of the Sado Mine complex as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
IOC: Today, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach spoke with the President of the Republic of Korea, Yoon Suk-yeol. In this telephone call, the IOC President apologised sincerely for the mistake in the audio broadcast of the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic…
This just shows how little people in the west know about South Korea to confuse its flag and athletes with North Korea:
The South Korean sports ministry said Saturday it is seeking a meeting with International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach over a gaffe during the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics in which South Korea was incorrectly introduced as North Korea during the parade of athletes.
In a statement, the ministry said Jang Mi-ran, the second vice minister of sports who attended the ceremony in the French capital Friday, has asked the IOC to arrange a meeting with Bach over the incident, and asked the country’s chef de mission, or the top delegate, Jeong Gang-sun, to demand a quick response from the IOC and the local organizing committee.
South Korea best be careful on what foreigners it embraces. It needs foreigners that learn to speak Korean and understands Korean culture and history. If not the country could become less Korean and look more like this and this:
President Yoon Suk Yeol said Thursday that local governments’ cooperation with the state was crucial in encouraging foreign residents to settle here to address the population crisis in South Korea.
At a meeting held in Hongseong-gun, South Chungcheong Province, Yoon, who presided over a meeting with heads of the autonomous governments, said the central and local governments should take preemptive actions to support foreign nationals to settle and work in Korean society, as the country faces a growing shortage in its working-age population.
“We must take preemptive action on the labor shortage in the wake of the fast aging of the population coupled with the low birth rate,” Yoon said before some 100 participants. “The low birth rate issue and the foreign worker issue must be seriously addressed through the collaboration of central and local governments.”
I have always thought this whole transgender restroom issue is quite easy to resolve, have you had your junk chopped off or not? If so you can use the female restroom, if not use the male restroom:
A court has ruled that police advising an LGBTQ+ individual, who was undergoing the process of gender correction and changing their resident registration number, to avoid using public restrooms for a period constitutes an infringement of personal rights.
The court’s decision highlights the illegality of such remarks, noting that they fail to consider the reality faced by LGBTQ+ individuals who often struggle with using public restrooms due to societal scrutiny.
The Seoul Central District Court (presiding judge Chung In-jae) dismissed an appeal and ruled partially in favor of plaintiff A in a damages lawsuit against the state.
Neither party appealed the decision, making it final on July 2. The court awarded 300,000 won ($240) in damages, recognizing a portion of the 3 million won claim.
The greedy doctors in Korea are now vowing to not train medical students in order to stop the government’s plan of increasing the number of doctors in South Korea:
Some medical professors vowed Saturday to boycott training programs for junior doctors in protest of the government’s push for accepting the resignations of striking trainees and the medical school admission quota hikes.
Professors of the radiology department at Catholic University of Korea said in a statement that they will not take part in education and training programs for trainee doctors set to join the course in the second half of this year as long as the government goes ahead with “wrongful policy measures.”
You can read more at the link, but the government is trying to address the doctor shortage, especially in rural areas with an increase in medical students. The doctors however do not want the increase because it means increased competition for their services which ultimately impacts their wallets.
