I am not sure what rights Korean residents are deprived of in the U.S., but President Yoon says he is concerned about this:
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol (C) meets with a group of South Korean residents in New York on Sept. 20, 2022. Yoon was in the U.S. city to attend the U.N. General Assembly. (Yonhap)
President Yoon Suk-yeol met with Korean residents in New York on Tuesday and promised to ask the U.S. government to ensure their rights and safety.
The banquet, which was held as part of Yoon’s visit to the city to attend the U.N. General Assembly, brought together some 170 Korean residents, including the head of the Korean American Association of Greater New York and business owners.
Yoon said he is proud of their achievements and grateful for their love for their fatherland.
“Our government will do our best so that overseas Koreans can enjoy their proper rights in U.S. society and develop further,” he said during the dinner, where he was joined by first lady Kim Keon-hee.
The ROK President was shown a lot of respect being seated in the front row with Presidents Biden and Macron:
President Yoon Suk-yeol (L) and first lady Kim Keon-hee leave a hotel in London to attend the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II on Sept. 19, 2022. (Yonhap)
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol attended the state funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in London on Monday, one of hundreds of world leaders who gathered here to honor the legacy of Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.
Yoon and first lady Kim Keon-hee attended the funeral service at Westminster Abbey at 11 a.m. They were seated in the 14th row in the section reserved for foreign leaders, behind French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, and in the same row as U.S. President Joe Biden and his wife.
“President Yoon mourned the death of the queen, who demonstrated through practice the solidarity of liberal democratic nations during her 70-year reign,” the presidential office said.
It appears that this typhoon is not going to impact South Korea as much as previously expected, but if it does veer and hit the country, President Yoon is setting himself up for criticism if he is not here when a natural disaster hits:
President Yoon Suk-yeol, center, shakes hands with Minister of the Interior and Safety Lee Sang-min at Seoul Airport in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, before boarding the presidential jet to leave for the U.K., Sunday. First lady Kim Keon-hee is on the right. Yonhap
After forming in the ocean off the Philippines on Sept. 13, Nanmadol developed into a typhoon the following day and started moving north with a “weak” intensity and wind speeds of between 17 m/s and 24 m/s. The intensity grew to very strong on Sunday morning.
President Yoon Suk-yeol told his officials to remain wary of Nanmadol as he stepped on the presidential jet Sunday morning to leave for the U.K., his first stop on a weeklong official trip.
Yoon instructed Interior Minister Lee Sang-min to prepare the country for the approaching typhoon, according to Lee Jae-myeong, the vice-spokesperson of the presidential office.
With much of the country’s essential industrial infrastructure still recovering from the impact of Hinnamnor, including a POSCO steel plant in North Gyeongsang Province, the president ordered the interior minister to “thoroughly prepare for the typhoon at all costs as the country has been under threats from back-to-back natural disasters.”
It is going to be an upcoming week of poor weather across Japan and southern areas of South Korea:
Typhoon Nanmadol, currently passing the waters east of Japan’s Okinawa, is expected to grow stronger Saturday before coming closer to South Korea in the next couple of days, the state weather agency said.
With a central atmospheric pressure of 920 hectopascals and a maximum wind speed of 53 meters per second, this year’s 14th typhoon was passing waters 520 kilometers east of Okinawa at 9 a.m., according to the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA).
Nanmadol, currently a “very strong” typhoon, was forecast to develop into a “super strong” one later in the day.
It will be interesting to see if any big announcements in regards to resolving historical issues between the countries will be announced:
President Yoon Suk-yeol arrives for work at the presidential office in Seoul on Sept. 15, 2022. (Yonhap)
President Yoon Suk-yeol will hold his first-ever summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in New York next week on a trip that will include his attendance at the U.N. General Assembly and a separate meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, his office said Thursday.
The meeting with Kishida will mark the first summit between the two countries in nearly three years since the last meeting in December 2019 and raises hope for improving relations frayed badly over wartime forced labor and other issues related to Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.
It seems to me that the mask mandates should be limited to places with high risk individuals such as nursing homes and hospitals:
A sign posted in a cafe in Jung District, Seoul, May 3, reads that customers are required to wear a face mask. Newsis
After nearly two years since the indoor mask mandate was first implemented in Korea, experts are debating whether the government should review lifting the requirement, as a number of countries have lifted or eased the mandate.
To help curb the spread of the coronavirus, the government required mask wearing both outdoors and indoors starting from Oct. 13, 2020. The outdoor mask mandate was lifted on May 2 of this year, as the number of new infections showed a downward trend after the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 wave peaked in March.
But the requirement to wear masks in indoor spaces such as offices, cafes, hospitals and public transportation has remained in place, with violators subject to a fine of 100,000 won ($72).
However, now that other countries such as Denmark and Singapore, along with states in the U.S., have removed or eased the mask requirement for indoor spaces, some are urging the Korean government to make similar adjustments.
“Ultimately, the indoor mask mandate, as well as the mandatory self-isolation rule for virus carriers should be scrapped,” said Jung Jae-hun, a professor of preventive medicine at Gachon Medical School. “There could be differing views (among experts and authorities) on when would be the right time to remove the measures, but Korea is at a stage to begin discussions on it.”
Considering that the vaccine does not prevent someone from getting COVID, the news that many people now no longer want the vaccine should not come as a surprise:
A person receives his fourth shot of the COVID-19 vaccine at a local clinic in Seongdong District, Seoul, July 18. Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han
Nearly 10 million soon-to-expire COVID-19 vaccine doses are likely to be discarded in Korea amid waning demand, in sharp contrast to the early days of the national vaccination campaign when the country grappled with a scarce supply.
According to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), as of Monday, there are a total of 14,208,000 stockpiled vaccine doses. They include 8.3 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 2.7 million doses of Moderna, 1.98 million doses of Johnson & Johnson, 671,000 doses of Novavax and 609,000 doses of the SKYCovione, the country’s first domestically developed vaccine by SK Bioscience.
Considering that about 100,000 shots are being administered per week, at the current pace, about 10 million doses are likely to go to waste by the end of this year with their expiration dates approaching. The shelf life of COVID-19 vaccines is usually between six months to a year.
You would think all these people would have something better to do then make a fool of themselves over this issue:
A group of conservative activists and an anti-Japanese group opposing wartime sex slaves clash at a rally held near the Statue of Peace in central Seoul on Sept. 12, 2022. (Yonhap)
Scuffles plagued the site of a statue of a girl symbolizing victims of Japan’s wartime sexual slavery Sunday night as members of a right-wing organization raided the site and clashed with anti-Japanese activists guarding the statue.
The four-hour melee happened as members of New Freedom Solidarity held a surprise rally near the statue in central Seoul around 10 p.m. Sunday, demanding the breakup of a civic organization established to help victims of the sexual enslavement of Korean women during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.
Clashes continued past midnight as the leader of the right-wing organization attempted to force his way near the statue and anti-Japanese activists tried to keep him away. One protester was taken to the hospital for exhaustion.
An anti-Japanese activist was also taken into custody for pushing a police officer at the scene.
Although police separated the two sides with police lines, they continued to clash with loudspeakers and caused inconvenience to people nearby before the conservative group finally left the area at around 2:10 a.m. Monday.
I feel for anyone that has to battle Chuseok traffic. I have had to do it once before and I said never again:
Most highways and roads were clogged with heavy traffic early Sunday, as people were traveling back home on the third day of the four-day Chuseok holiday.
Chuseok, the Korean autumn harvest celebration, is one of the country’s biggest traditional holidays and serves as a chance for family members to get together. Chuseok is celebrated on Aug. 15 in the lunar calendar, which fell on Saturday this year.
