Category: Korea-General Topics

With another fire, this is making me wonder if Korean building owners will start banning EVs from being parked in parking garages?:

Firefighters work to extinguish a blaze that broke out from an EV car in a parking lot in South Chungcheong. [NEWS1]

Yet another EV-related blaze broke out in Geumsan County, South Chungcheong, following a Mercedes-Benz EV explosion in an underground parking lot in Incheon a week ago. 
  
The police have identified the vehicle involved as a Kia EV6 model. 
  
Residents reported flames in a parking lot to police and fire stations around 5 a.m. on Tuesday. Fire authorities dispatched 35 firefighters and 12 apparatuses, including some fire trucks, to extinguish the blaze. It was brought under control after an hour and 37 minutes, with no reported casualties. 
  
The fire department took measures to prevent the flames from spreading to nearby vehicles and moved the EV out of the parking garage during the firefighting process to minimize additional damage. 
  
“I parked and plugged in the charger around 7 p.m. the previous day,” said the vehicle’s owner, a man in his 50s.

Joong Ang Ilbo via a reader tip

You can read more at the link, but great job by the firefighters for putting out the fire before it spread to other vehicles in the parking garage.

Since all the commandos are dead this apology is only meaningful to their surviving family members:

South Korean commandos who died as they escaped from Silmido — an uninhabited island where they were being trained to kill then-North Korean leader Kim Il-sung — are due to receive an apology from the country’s defense chief for the first time in 53 years.

In August 1971, the 24 commandos of South Korea’s secret killer squad fled the island in protest of poor treatment, after over three years of training to infiltrate North Korea and capture its leader.

On their way out of Silmido, they killed the island’s guards, hijacked a bus to Seoul after reaching the mainland with a boat. Most of them were shot dead or committed suicide with hand grenades during a clash with the military police. Four survivors were executed.

Along with the apology, the South Korean military said it would recover the remains of the four who were executed for a proper burial, planned to be carried out later this year.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link and Silmido is a pretty good South Korean movie to watch as well that dramatizes this incident.

Korean authorities better get ready to respond to more of these fires as electric vehicles become more numerous:

An electric Mercedes-Benz sedan had been parked in an underground apartment garage for nearly three days before exploding on its own and catching fire, police officials said Monday.

The mysterious fire gutted the parking lot on the first basement level of an apartment building in Incheon, west of Seoul, and ravaged 40 nearby vehicles last Thursday. About 100 other cars also sustained less serious damage.

More than 20 residents were sent to hospitals for smoke inhalation before the fire was fully extinguished more than eight hours after it started. Heavy smoke made it difficult for firefighters to enter the parking lot. 

Security camera footage showed smoke billowing from the vehicle before it suddenly exploded and burst into flames.

According to police findings, the car’s owner in his 40s parked the vehicle on the evening of last Monday, and it remained untouched until it exploded in the early morning of last Thursday. 

After examining security camera footage, police confirmed that no external shock was inflicted on the vehicle while it was parked during the period.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

This is a huge compromise of sensitive information by the NIS. The article doesn’t say how high ranking this civilian employee is, but you would think the list of ROK operatives abroad would be a tightly controlled secret that only a few people would have access to:

A civilian employee in South Korea’s military intelligence command was arrested for allegedly leaking military secrets, the Defense Ministry said, as local media speculated the information was about South Korean spies operating abroad and that it may have been sent to North Korea. A military court issued a warrant Tuesday to arrest the employee in the Korea Defense Intelligence Command for alleged leaks of confidential military information, the Defense Ministry said in a brief statement.

It said it won’t disclose details of the employee’s criminal allegations because an investigation was underway. South Korean media reported the employee gave a Chinese national thousands of confidential documents including those on the intelligence command’s list of agents operating in foreign countries with disguised names and jobs. The reports said the leaked documents have the real names and ages of those secret agents and where they are stationed. It was unclear why the employee allegedly handed over the information to the Chinese.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

How can the KCTU claim to represent the best interests of Korean workers if they are advocating for foreign illegal immigrants who broke the law to take jobs from Koreans?:

The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), one of the country’s two major umbrella labor unions with more than 1 million members, is moving to embrace undocumented foreigners here in an attempt to broaden its coalition, labor officials said.

During an event hosted by the KCTU at its headquarters in Seoul on July 25, senior officials discussed ways to strengthen the rights of “all migrant workers.” They said there should be a fundamental reform of the government system of handling the migrant laborers who work here without valid visas. Abolishing the deportation policy targeting such people and giving them the right to stay were among the ideas suggested and advocated at the event.

Korea Times

Here is twisted logic on this from the KCTU:

The spokesman’s comment comes after Udaya Rai, head of a migrant workers’ union under the KCTU, said at the KCTU event that the government should abandon its policy of cracking down on undocumented migrant workers.

“The policy of cracking down on and deporting undocumented immigrants begets countless of human rights violations and stirs up anxiety and fear,” he said. “Exploitation and violence are justified just because they are undocumented. There should be a policy to give them the right to stay in order to end this vicious circle.”

You can read more at the link, but should authorities not arrest bank robbers because it stirs “anxiety and fear” in these criminals as well? If you commit criminal activity you should be arrested and illegal immigration is a crime. If the KCTU doesn’t like the fact it is a crime then change the law to have open borders where anyone can come in and take Korean jobs. Good luck with getting the Korean public to support that.

This is a good deal for Japan, they get to sell the Patriot missiles to the U.S. and maintain their charade of not providing aid to Ukraine:

Japan will begin selling domestically produced missiles to the United States in a bid to bolster U.S. weapon supplies in the region. The U.S. will purchase approximately $19.6 million worth of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 interceptors, or PAC-3 missiles, the Japanese Defense Ministry’s agency for acquisition, technology and logistics said in a Sunday news release. The number of missiles included in the deal was not disclosed. (….)

“By providing Japanese-made PAC-3 missiles to the United States, Japan can indirectly assist Ukraine with much-needed air-defense systems, but without provoking a public backlash,” Brown told Stars and Stripes by email Wednesday.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

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.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.