Category: Uncategorized

Suki Kim has an article in the New Yorker that compares the Moon administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak to how the former Park administration responded to the Sewol ferry tragedy:

Three years after Moon campaigned on a promise of governing more effectively during an emergency than Park, the incumbent’s response to one has resembled that of his predecessor. After the ferry disaster, Park blamed the tragedy on the ship’s owner, a founder of a different religious group also considered a cult. After the Park administration issued an arrest warrant for the ferry owner, he went into hiding. Eventually, he was found dead, an apparent suicide. On March 1st, the city of Seoul, whose mayor, like Moon, is a member of the Democratic Party, asked prosecutors to charge Lee Man-hee, the founder of the Shincheonji Church, and the religious group’s other leaders for murder for their alleged role in spreading covid-19. 

The New Yorker

I recommend reading the whole thing at the link.

Look who is in Korea looking for money:

Questions have arisen from capital market observers as former U.S. National Security Adviser John Bolton revisited Korea this week in the capacity of the Rhone Group senior adviser and met with institutional investors here. (………..)

Market observers say Bolton’s latest trip showed the foreign midcap buyout firm has been anxious to utilize Korea’s liquidity for its fundraising.

Foreign news outlets have described Rhone as “low-profile,” because the size of its entire assets under management falls far short of the size of a single buyout fund managed by global PEFs.

Rhone managed assets worth 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) as of the first half of 2019.

The fact that Bolton’s visit was made amid the spread of coronavirus across East Asia is also mentioned as evidence of Rhone’s desperation.

After the virus outbreak, financial firms have canceled their investor roadshows overseas and foreign investors have become reluctant to visit Korea and other East Asian countries.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.

The removal of the spending cap at USFK commissaries in South Korea did not last long due to the black marketeers:

The U.S. military has reimposed monthly commissary purchase limits in South Korea, less than a month after a retiree was banned from bases over black marketing allegations.

The new policy, effective as of Jan. 23, means that commissary shoppers will again be limited to $800 for the main sponsor and $300 for additional family members per month. Anybody who needs to spend more must request an exception from squadron or battalion commanders.

The decision was based on purchasing trends showing that most authorized shoppers stayed “well below” the limits since the purchasing cap was lifted in September, U.S. Forces Korea said Tuesday in announcing the decision on social media.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

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

According to Ambassador Harris timing is running out for a US-ROK cost sharing deal:

Washington has compromised in its demands that South Korea should pay billions of dollars towards US troop presence and it was Seoul’s turn to reciprocate before time ran out, the American ambassador said Thursday.

The two allies are in a security alliance and Washington stations 28,500 troops in South Korea to defend it from the nuclear-armed North, which invaded in 1950.

They are a key part of US forces’ deployment in Asia, but the Trump administration has been insisting Seoul pay more towards their costs.

The initial US demand was around $5 billion a year — a more than fivefold increase on the roughly $900 million paid in 2019 — provoking consternation in Seoul.

The latest round of negotiations concluded without an agreement in Washington on Wednesday.

US negotiators had “adjusted our position, our top line number”, said Ambassador Harry Harris. “We are now waiting for the Korean side to do the same.”

“South Korea as an equal partner in the preservation of peace on the peninsula, and its position as the 12th largest economy in the entire world, can and should do more.”

Time was “of the essence”, he told reporters in a group interview at his residence in the centre of Seoul.

Around 10,000 South Koreans working for United States Forces Korea (USFK) are paid from funds from last year’s deal and when they run out, they will have to be put on furlough, he said. “That notice is going to go out soon.”

AFP

You can read more at the link.

ROK Drop favorite One Free Korea has a great run down on the Wednesday Night Massacre that President Moon executed to stop the investigation into the corruption allegations surrounding his administration:

IF ONLY HE’D MASSACRED THEM ON A SATURDAY NIGHT, the metaphor would have been impeccable. But when South Korea’s President, Moon Jae-in, directs his Justice Minister, Choo Mi-ae, to reassign 32 prosecutors as they closed in on political corruption in his office—four months before elections will decide whether his party will have a majority to pass laws or a supermajority to amend the Constitution—it should have been the biggest news since the impeachment of his predecessor, Park Geun-hye. Last night, the “liberal” “human rights lawyer” may have inflicted a death blow to the rule of law in Korea’s “vibrant democracy.” When a government ceases to be accountable, it ceases to be democratic, because the people are denied the knowledge to govern themselves intelligently.

One Free Korea

I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link which lays out all the corruption allegations and what the Moon administration is doing to cover up each one of them before April’s National Assembly elections.

People protested and demanded impeachment of the prior President Park Geun-hye for far less then this.

Even without a denuclearization deal it appears that President Trump is going to continue to try and keep a friendly relationship with Kim Jong-un:

U.S. President Donald Trump has congratulated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on his birthday, South Korea’s top presidential security adviser said Friday after returning from his trip to Washington, D.C.

Chung Eui-yong, head of Cheong Wa Dae’s national security office, had a brief meeting with Trump at the White House during the three-day visit.

Trump had some congratulatory words for Kim on the occasion of his Jan. 8 birthday and asked President Moon Jae-in to deliver the message, according to the Cheong Wa Dae official.

“As far as I know, the message was conveyed to North Korea yesterday in an appropriate manner,” Chung told reporters at Incheon International Airport.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the election meddling investigation in Ulsan that has been linked back to the Blue House:

Prosecutors raided the Ulsan government office on Saturday amid rising allegations that the city’s vice mayor colluded with the presidential office to help the president’s close friend in the 2018 mayoral election.

The raid of Ulsan Metropolitan City Hall, some 400 kilometers southeast of the capital city, came amid suspicions that Song Byung-gi, Ulsan’s vice mayor for economic affairs, conspired with several presidential aides to influence the city’s mayoral poll last year.

Prosecutors also suspect that the presidential office and the ruling Democratic Party intervened in establishing campaign pledges for the incumbent mayor.

The vice mayor is suspected of tipping off the presidential office to bribery allegations involving ex-Ulsan Mayor Kim Gi-hyeon’s confidants, which led to investigations ahead of the 2018 election.

Kim, who was seeking reelection as mayor in June 2018 as a candidate of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, lost the race to current mayor Song Cheol-ho of the ruling Democratic Party, a longtime friend of President Moon Jae-in.

Kim claimed publicly that the Ulsan Metropolitan Police Agency deliberately raided his office a few months ahead of the election, with Cheong Wa Dae behind the move.

Yonhap

With the Blue House installing their new Justice Minister I guess we will see how long this investigation in Ulsan is allowed to continue.

It has been nearly a decade since these bases were closed and they have finally been handed over to the South Korean government:

The United States on Wednesday returned four of its military bases in South Korea in a decision to end a yearslong delay caused by differences on decontamination procedures and to allay worries over the adverse impact of the delay on regional development schemes.

South Korea and the U.S. also initiated the long-awaited return process for the Yongsan Garrison in central Seoul, once home to the headquarters of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), to ensure that a mega project to establish a national park there proceeds as scheduled.

The four returned bases are Camps Eagle and Long in Wonju, 130 kilometers east of Seoul; parcels of Camp Market in Bupyeong, just west of the capital; and the Shea Range parcel at Camp Hovey in Dongducheon, just north of Seoul. They were already closed between 2009 and 2011.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but USFK made no concessions on the environmental clean up concerns that South Korea keeps making. The article speculates that the environmental clean up costs for the U.S. bases may be something they try to tie to the ongoing cost sharing negotiations.

A strategy they could use is that the cleanup of the closed out U.S. bases costs X amount of money to the ROK government and thus should lower the amount of money that the U.S. government is saying Seoul should pay each year.

It appears that South Korea has been conquered by all things Frozen:

Retailers are rolling out a variety of “Frozen”-themed merchandise for fans of all ages, as Korean moviegoers join the worldwide frenzy over Disney’s latest release “Frozen 2,” according to industry officials Tuesday.

According to the Korean Film Council (KOFIC), the latest Disney film has attracted 4.79 million viewers in Korea as of Monday, just five days after its opening here. 

Along with the movie’s soaring popularity, sales of Frozen-themed products are going up. 

7-Eleven rolled out “Frozen” character figures, capsule toys, snow globe DIY kits, Lego sets and sticker books. 

Korea Times

You can read more at the link.