Category: Korea-General Topics

Dr. David Tizzard who has lived in taught in Korea for 20 years recently wrote an article in the Korea Times about how he is a happy immigrant to Korea. Here is how he concluded his article:

In the near twenty years that I’ve been here, I’ve had to do drugs tests and aids tests to get my visa. I’ve had to provide transcripts and fingerprints. I’ve sat in Jongno for hours wondering whether the person the other side of the glass will stamp my document or not. I’ve been kicked out of nightclubs for being a foreigner and found myself unable to register for things online. I’ve typed my name all sorts of ways and yet ultimately failed to sign-up for a variety of offers given to other citizens. And as frustrating as this is, it’s fine with me. The country is slowly changing in its own ways and according to its own history and culture. I hope that it keeps moving at its own speed and in its own direction.

I love Korea. I am thankful for everything that it is. I support gay rights and am open in my alliance with people from these communities, but I don’t demand 50-million Koreans do the same as me right now if they are not ready. I don’t always change my clothes when I get home but I don’t think Korean people have to do this as well. I write a weekly column in the paper and try to observe what’s going on here and communicate it to other people, but I never tell the country what it’s doing wrong or how it should improve. There are far too many imperfections in my own life for me to be able to judge a country as rich and as complex as this and try to improve on everything that it has achieved thus far.

Some people consider themselves expats. Some consider themselves experts, here to change the country and enlighten the people as to their own ways. Some people think of themselves as foreigners. Some, no matter how long they live here, will never learn the language or ingratiate themselves to the people and culture. That’s all good. Everyone gets to define themselves. And for me? Whatever others might say, I consider myself an immigrant. A poor man in another’s country trying to start and raise a family. I don’t ask for anything. I don’t seek to change a culture. I just appreciate the opportunities. And Korea has plenty of that for which I remain grateful.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It appears Indonesia is getting cold feet in regards to boosting their Air Force capabilities with new fighter jets from South Korea:

 Indonesia has proposed reducing its payment for a joint fighter jet development project with South Korea to around one-third of its original amount, sources said Monday, amid concerns over its delayed payments.

Indonesia recently suggested paying only 600 billion won (US$442.3 million) in total for the KF-21 jet project, they said, after originally agreeing to pay about 20 percent of the 8.1 trillion-won program launched in 2015 to build the advanced supersonic fighter by 2026.

Jakarta had initially agreed to pay the sum in return for receiving one prototype model and technology transfers, and producing 48 units in Indonesia, but is said to have proposed reducing the payment amount for fewer technology transfers.

It has so far contributed around 300 billion won to the project and has failed to keep up with payment deadlines, leading to questions over its commitment.

Indonesia is known to have asked South Korea late last year to defer its payment for the project to 2034, but Seoul has maintained its stance that it should be made by the development deadline of 2026.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Being a farmer in South Korea is definitely not a lucrative business and very dependent on subsidies according to this report:

I ask people around me how much money I earn from farming in Korea on average per year. It usually refers to about 30 million won to 60 million won. Maybe it’s because there’s an amount of money I heard from somewhere. That’s roughly correct, as farm household income averaged 46.1 million won in 2022.

However, among them, the actual agricultural income earned from farming is only 9.5 million won. It’s about a fifth. The rest are non-agricultural income (19.2 million won), transfer income (15.2 million won), and non-ordinary income (2.2 million won). In other words, money earned from business or government direct payments or subsidies accounts for 80% of farm income.

Maeil Kyeongchae

You can read more at the link.

None of this should be surprising to people who have lived for a while in South Korea; always check your receipts and make sure the taxi drivers turn on the meter:

Foreign tourists to Korea are least happy with its shopping and taxi riding experience, a Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) report showed Sunday.

The KTO said its Tourist Complaint Center received 902 complaints last year, seeing a significant increase compared to 288 in 2022.

It said the number of complaints decreased between 2020 and 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic but hiked last year as the tourism industry recovered.

Of the complaints, 808 (89.6 percent) were made by foreign visitors.

The highest number of complaints (215) was related to shopping, including price gouging, tax refunds and refund and exchange policies.

“I bought a set of 10 foot masks after viewing the price at 8,000 won in combine, but later realized that I was charged 80,000 won. When I asked for cancellation, the seller told me to come back the next day because the store manager wasn’t present,” a Japanese tourist was quoted as saying by the KTO.

Taxi service was the second-greatest inconvenience for foreign tourists, taking up 18.8 percent of the complaints (170). Problems included overcharging and refusing to turn on meters, drivers not being courteous with customers and deliberately taking longer routes for higher fares.

The Jeju Special Self-Governing Provincial Police Agency said Thursday it caught a taxi driver who tried to charge a Chinese tourist an exorbitant fare for a ride from Jeju International Airport to a hotel near Hamdeok Beach.

The police said the taxi driver received 200,000 won when the taxi fare should have been 23,000 won and ordered him to return 177,000 won.

Complaints concerning accommodations came in third.

Among 142 reported cases, those related to poor facilities and hygiene accounted for 31.7 percent.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the doctor strike is slowly defeating the will of the Korean government to take action against them to get them back to work:

This photo taken April 30, 2024, shows a hospital in Daegu, 237 kilometers southeast of Seoul. (Yonhap)

The government appears to have shelved a plan to take punitive measures against a protracted walkout by trainee doctors and have pulled back slightly from its plan to increase medical school admission quotas amid a standoff with major doctors’ associations, according to officials Sunday.

Still, the doctors’ associations remained adamant over the issue and renewed their call for the government to revisit the medical reform from scratch, despite some signs of an internal split.

During a media briefing last week, Second Vice Health Minister Park Min-soo said the government has decided to grant local universities autonomy in deciding their medical school quota by a range of 50 to 100 percent for the 2025 academic year in a bid to break the monthslong deadlock, according to officials.

Additionally, the government has delayed the suspension of licenses for doctors who have been inactive for months under its “flexible disposition” policy since late March.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The American man who had been protesting around Seoul for years to get the Korean government to return his kidnapped kids did actually get them returned recently:

John Sichi, center, plays with his children at their home in San Francisco, Calif., after they returned to the United States on April 18. Courtesy of John Sichi

American citizen John Sichi was recently reunited with his two children after a years-long journey to retrieve them, following their abduction by his Korean spouse. Sichi’s family, originally based in California, experienced upheaval when his spouse vanished with their children in late 2019 after relocating to Korea.

Now resettled in San Francisco, Sichi and his two children — a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl — are piecing their lives back together and envisioning a future that once seemed lost.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link to find out what he went through to get his kidnapped kids returned to him. I do feel really bad though for the kids, this has to be a shock for them to lose their mother like this. Considering this was a kidnapping case I would doubt the mother would have any visitation rights after what she did.

Some more interesting trails near the Korean DMZ are set to open this month:

Ten peace-themed trails near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), separating the two Koreas, will open to the public in mid-May, the government said Tuesday.

The trails are located across border towns and cities in the provinces of Gyeonggi and Gangwon, as well as the western border island of Gangwha, according to the defense and culture ministries.

The trails are set to open May 13. Visitors can sign up for trips on the government-run website (www.dmzwalk.com) and mobile app Durunubi, according to the ministries.

The DMZ, which is about 250 kilometers long and 4 kilometers wide, is one of the world’s most heavily fortified borders, with the rival Koreas technically in a state of conflict, as the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is amazing that doctors would just cancel appointments like this at the last minute. Who knows how long some of these patients have been waiting for an appointment before they were cancelled:

Some medical professors at the country’s three major hospitals, Seoul National University Hospital, Severance Hospital and Korea University Hospital, suspended surgeries and outpatient clinics on Tuesday for one day, as previously announced, to protest the government’s plan to expand the number of new medical students by 2,000 a year.

The main hall at SNUH’s Cancer Hospital was without medical staff Tuesday, while a number of patients wandered around the ward, having just learned that the doctors wouldn’t be coming in. Some said they hadn’t been told that their appointments would be canceled or postponed; other said they had to wait in long queues, not knowing when their names would be called.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.