Category: Uncategorized

The fact that President Trump does not like dealing with President Moon should come as no surprise. The other claim from the governor is that Trump said Koreans were “terrible”:

U.S. President Donald Trump told governors in February that he doesn’t like dealing with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and thinks the South Korean people are “terrible,” Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said Thursday.

Hogan, a Republican, wrote in The Washington Post that Trump had harsh words for South Korea, the birthplace of the governor’s wife, Yumi, during a private dinner sponsored by the Republican Governors Association.

“I don’t remember him mentioning the virus,” Hogan said, “but he talked about how much he respected President Xi Jinping of China; how much he liked playing golf with his buddy ‘Shinzo,’ Prime Minister Abe of Japan; how well he got along with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“Then, the jarring part,” he continued. “Trump said he really didn’t like dealing with President Moon from South Korea. The South Koreans were ‘terrible people,’ he said, and he didn’t know why the United States had been protecting them all these years. ‘They don’t pay us,’ Trump complained.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but if true based on the context it sounds like Trump wasn’t saying Korean in general are “terrible”, but the Koreans in the government are terrible for not paying more the upkeep of the US-ROK alliance.

This is another example of how Korea’s libel laws are used to attack people for political reasons. In this example they were used by the Moon administration to attack a liberal political rival for the Presidency:

Gyeonggi Province Governor Lee Jae-myung will be able to retain his position after the Supreme Court sent his case back to an appeals court, Thursday, which had previously found him guilty of violating the Election Law.

The ruling also cleared the way for Lee to pursue a presidential bid on the ruling Democratic Party of Korea’s (DPK) ticket in 2022.

In a 7-to-5 vote, the court ruled that he had not violated the Election Law. 

“The law can’t punish Lee Jae-myung for disseminating false information (at the debate) unless he actively declared the false claim was a fact. Some of Lee statements in the debate were simply made to deny claims made by his opponent and this cannot be seen as a deliberate act to disseminate false information…,” Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su ― who wrote for the majority ― said during the session which was televised on TV and livestreamed on YouTube. (………..)

The governor was indicted last December for having his older brother forcibly committed to a psychiatric care facility in 2012. The prosecution also claimed he violated the Election Law by lying about the brother in a nationally televised debate with other election candidates in 2018. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but the libel laws were also used to go after his wife as well for posting supposed false information on Twitter. She was previously cleared of the allegations as well. Could you imagine if in the U.S. politicians and their supporters could be charged for libel for giving false information on Twitter and during debates? We would have no politicians left.

Anyway this is just an example of how clever and ruthless the Moon administration was to win the Presidency. ROK Heads may also remember that they got Ban Ki-moon to drop out of the race by using what he called deliberate “fake news” against him. With Ban and Lee out of the race Moon then had a clear path to the Presidency after former President Park’s impeachment.

I think it is safe to say that investigation this will go nowhere:

South Korean prosecutors have begun an investigation into North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s sister and the North’s military chief on charges of blowing up an inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong last month, officials said Thursday.

The unprecedented and symbolic probe into Kim Yo-jong, the sister now serving as the first vice department director of the ruling Workers’ Party’s Central Committee, and Army Gen. Pak Jong-chon, chief of the General Staff of the North Korean army, came after a South Korean lawyer filed a criminal complaint against them over the Kaesong office demolition in mid-June.

Seoul-based lawyer Lee Kyung-jae filed the complaint against the North Korean figures with the Seoul Central District Prosecutors Office on July 8, and the case was assigned to the office’s public investigation division on Monday, according to the officials informed of the case.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

147 remains of ROK Army veterans of the Korean War are finally returning home:

The largest repatriation of remains of South Korean soldiers who fought alongside U.S. troops in the Korean War is being held at 4 p.m. EDT today at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

The soldiers’ remains are being returned to their homeland of South Korea after 67 years away, officials said.

“This, like the past repatriation, is due to the strong and long standing partnership between the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency and [South Korea’s] Ministry of National Defense Agency for KIA Recovery and Identification,” said Lee Tucker, spokesman for the Defense Prisoners of War/Missing in Action Accounting Agency, said. “It is the incredible improvements in technology, advancements in forensic science and the strong partnership between DPAA and MAKRI which led to these identifications.”

Scientists with DPAA and MAKRI have conducted joint forensic investigations and were able to validate these 147 remains as being of South Korean origin, according to a Pentagon statement.

Military Times

You can read more at the link.

Here is some interesting coronavirus statistics from South Korea:

South Korea had released 4,811 fully recovered novel coronavirus patients from hospitals as of Saturday, up 283 from a day earlier, the KCDC said.

It marked the first time the number of cured people exceeded the number of quarantined patients since Jan. 20, when the virus was first detected on South Korean soil.

South Korea’s cure rate for people infected with the virus is 50 percent, an achievement that South Korean officials hailed in their fight against the contagious respiratory illness.

“The 50 percent cure rate is a small achievement that all in our society should celebrate, though we have a long way to go,” Yoon Tae-ho, director-general for public health policy at the Ministry of Health and Welfare, said in a briefing.

South Korea said the number of imported cases out of the 146 newly confirmed patients came to 41 — 25 from Europe, 12 from the United States and Mexico, and four from Thailand.

The KCDC said the number of imported cases came to 363 out of the 9,478 confirmed cases.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the small number of infections brought by people traveling to South Korea is a small number compared to the amount of media reports it has been receiving. It is also good to hear that so many people in South Korea have recovered. Hopefully this trend continues.

It is ironic they are doing this after complaining about Japan putting a quarantine on South Korean travelers when the ROK had the second highest amount of infections behind China:

South Korea will conduct new coronavirus tests on all arrivals from Europe and require them to self-isolate for two weeks as part of ongoing efforts to guard against imported cases of the novel coronavirus, the country’s health authorities said Friday.

The measures, to be effective starting Sunday, are the latest in a series of stepped-up quarantine moves by the country amid growing concerns over a rise in imported virus cases. 

The country will require all returnees from European nations to get tested for the virus, and if a person arrives in South Korea from Europe for a long-term stay, he or she will be required to self-isolate at home for two weeks, even if they test negative for COVID-19, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

If the person has no home in South Korea, they will be sent to an isolation facility, according to Yoon Tae-ho, a senior health ministry official who is in charge of containment measures.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

President Trump is absolutely right about South Korea’s slow start, but I would not say South Korea had a “great number of deaths”. The mortality rate is very low in South Korea:

 U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday that South Korea did a “good job” handling the coronavirus outbreak but also had “tremendous problems” at the start.

Trump made the remark at a White House press briefing as he defended his own administration’s response to the growing outbreak in the United States.

“I noticed a lot of people are talking about South Korea because they’ve done a good job on one side, but on the other side, tremendous problems at the beginning,” he said. “They had tremendous problems and great numbers of death.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but South Korea current has 8,236 positive infections with 75 deaths. That is a .009 mortality rate currently. As long as Americans handle this issue smartly by not getting the elderly and those with compromised immune systems infected the mortality rate should remain low in the U.S. as well.