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There is a new “Force” in Republican politics that involves two newly elected Korean-American congresswomen:

Beyond the initial four members in the Force, there’s also California GOP Reps.-elect Young Kim and Michelle Steel, Korean immigrants who have been friends for decades and speak on the trail. Steel frequently points to the suffering their families endured under communist regimes.

They all belong to a high-profile freshman class that includes a record-breaking number of women and minorities for the House GOP. And with their diverse backgrounds and already-impressive Twitter followings, the Force could have an outsize impact as Republicans look to take back the House in 2022 — particularly as some are itching to do battle directly with the Squad. (…………)

But the incoming Republicans say they want to put a personal face on their ideological fight. Steel talks about how her parents escaped Korea and relocated to Japan and said she sees how it is easy to take freedom for granted in the U.S.

Politico

You can read more at the link, but I am not sure what communism that Representative Steele and Kim were fleeing from in South Korea. I could not find which year she immigrated, but she got married in California in 1981 which means she immigrated before then likely in the 70’s. This would put her family immigrating to the U.S. during the Park Chung-hee era. Young Kim immigrated to the U.S. in 1975 which was also during the Park Chung-hee era.

Park was a quasi-dictator, but was stringently anti-communist so saying their families suffered under communism is a stretch to me. They suffered indirectly from the provocations from North Korea and the resulting limits on political freedom enacted by the Park regime. However, unless their families were political dissidents, it is more likely their families immigrated to the U.S. for economic reasons. Another possibility is that the reporter just doesn’t know what they are writing about and just assumed South Korea was communist back then.

This is actually a positive that has come out of the COVID pandemic because I have personally seen some Koreans spend outrageous amounts of money on weddings. COVID now gives them an excuse to not invite so many people and thus save money:

A 29-year-old man recently got married in a five-star hotel wedding hall. Because of the government’s social distancing guidelines, he couldn’t invite more than 50 guests.    
   
According to the man, he hadn’t ever thought of having a wedding ceremony at a hotel due to the cost. Then he realized it only costs about 5 million won ($4,400) to have a wedding in a hotel with about 40 guests—which is the same price as a wedding hall ceremony with the usual number of guests.    
   
“I never thought about having a wedding ceremony at a hotel, but ever since I did it, I’ve been recommending it to others,” he said.      
   
Koreans who are forced to cut back on ceremonies and overseas honeymoons due to the pandemic are splurging in other ways.    
   
As small weddings—which host about 100 guests or fewer—become popular among Koreans, luxury hotels have been enjoying strong demand for their wedding halls.    
   
According to Statistics Korea, some 126,367 couples tied the knot between January and July. While the figure is the lowest number of marriages for any January-to-July period since the statistics agency started compiling data in 1981, the number of marriages held at five-star hotels has increased dramatically.  
   
Lotte Hotel Seoul said the number of weddings it held in its wedding hall jumped 20 percent between January to September compared to the same period a year earlier. The number of small weddings spiked more than 100 percent.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Of all the things to criticize the WHO over this is by far the least important. How boring of a life you must have to troll websites to look for a reason to feign outrage over Dokdo:

The World Health Organization (WHO) has yet to add the easternmost islets of Dokdo to a map of Korea on its official website, despite repeated calls from civic activists and citizens here, according to the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea (VANK) Tuesday. VANK is a civic diplomacy organization with more than 120,000 members.

In the ‘countries’ section of the website, the health organization provides brief information about each member state including a map. The map of South Korea is missing some of its territories including Dokdo and nearby Ulleung Island in the East Sea. 

However, the islands are included in the map of Japan, which some believe gives the impression that they are Japan’s territory. The country has been making repeated territorial claims on Dokdo, over which Korea claims sovereignty.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but no one who goes to the WHO website would think that Dokdo is owned by Japan based on these maps. Hardly anyone outside of Korea knows where or what Dokdo is. It is pretty clear whoever put the website together just zoomed in the map on South Korea because it is so small. Japan on the other hand is much larger and the map was zoomed out to picture it.

This would be the equivalent of an American being upset because the Farallón de Pájaros island was not included on a map of the United States.

It appears that the lockdown measures South Korea implemented on Seoul is slowly reducing coronavirus infections:

South Korea’s daily new coronavirus cases stayed below 100 for the second consecutive day Monday in what could be a sign of a slowdown in new infections, but the continued high number of untraceable cases and sporadic clusters pose challenges to the country’s virus fight.

The country added 70 more COVID-19 cases, including 55 local infections, raising the total caseload to 23,045, according to the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA).

On Sunday, the number of daily new infections fell below 100 for the first time in 38 days at 82.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the lockdown measures are going to continue for an additional week because of the fear that the upcoming Chuseok holiday will cause the virus to spread.

Today is the 19th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. This is usually a day of solemn memorials, but in South Korea back in 2005 it was used as day to bash Americans and try to topple the statue of General MacArthur at Jayu Park. Let’s hope we never see such outrageous anti-American behavior ever again in South Korea. 

To all my American readers, I hope you have a great Labor Day weekend.

This shouldn’t be surprising news to anyone following the US-ROK cost sharing negotiations:

The Pentagon has offered the White House options to reduce American troop levels in South Korea, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the paper said the options were presented in March following a broader review of options for withdrawing troops from around the world, including in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia.

The White House requested the review last fall, and by December, the Pentagon had come up with broad ideas, it said.

No decision has yet been made to reduce the number of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea from the current 28,500, according to the WSJ.

Yonhap

You can read more at link, but President Trump has already reduced U.S. troop levels in Germany over cost sharing issues and he has been having the same monetary disagreements with South Korea. This report I suspect was leaked to the Wall Street Journal in order to pressure the Korean side that Trump is serious about USFK troop withdrawals.

However, this all may be playing out as Korean President Moon Jae-in wants it to play out. Moon is a very skilled politician that needs to keep the Korean right at bay and public anxiety down.  If he openly advocated for a USFK withdrawal, that would give the South Korean right an issue to strongly attack him with and cause much public anxiety after decades of security guarantees provided by US forces.  

This is why President Moon has been saying all the right things that USFK should remain, to include claiming Kim Jong-un understands this as well. However, if troop withdrawals do happen he has political cover to not be blamed for it by claiming President Trump’s monetary demands were unreasonable which is a position likely a majority of Koreans believe.

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.