The ideological war in South Korea has extended to where they cannot even agree on when the country was founded:
President Yoon Suk Yeol has expressed frustration over the recent controversy surrounding when should be South Korea’s national founding day, saying it is an issue that does no good for people’s livelihoods.
The controversy began after Yoon appointed Kim Hyoung-suk, a figure accused of harboring pro-Japanese views, as the new president of the Independence Hall of Korea. Kim’s past remarks alleging South Korea came into being when its government was established in 1948 led to suspicions his appointment was a precursor to designating Aug. 15, 1948, as national foundation day.
The question of when South Korea came into being has long been a subject of ideological debate, with some arguing it was April 11, 1919, when a provisional government was established during Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
“What good is this to the people who are struggling to make ends meet?” Yoon was quoted as recently telling his aides, referring to the controversy.
The main opposition Democratic Party and the Heritage of Korean Independence, a state-funded association of independence fighters and their descendants, have vowed to boycott the Aug. 15 Liberation Day ceremony hosted by the government unless the appointment is withdrawn.
You can read more at the link.
Congratulations to all the athletes from South Korea on having a very successful Olympic Games:
South Korea won a medal in the very first medal event of the Paris Olympics on July 27.
The rest of the team picked it up from there and didn’t look back.
South Korea finished the medal race in eighth place with 13 gold medals, nine silver medals and 10 bronze medals, far exceeding its own and many pundits’ projections. South Korea tied its Summer Games record for most gold medals, equaling the mark from 2008 and 2012.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You can read more at the link.
Another example of the growing trilateral cooperation in Northeast Asia:
The defense chiefs of South Korea, the United States and Japan signed a document on the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework (TSCF) on Sunday , Seoul’s defense ministry said, in a move solidifying their continued commitment to three-way security cooperation against North Korean threats.
South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik and his U.S. and Japanese counterparts, Lloyd Austin and Minoru Kihara, respectively, inked a Memorandum of Cooperation on the framework in Tokyo amid their deepening security cooperation in response to the North’s persistent nuclear and missile threats and growing military alignment with Russia.
You can read more at the link.
This looks pretty suspicious:
South Korean police questioned three Chinese students who used a drone to record panoramic views of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt at Busan in June, a Busan Metropolitan Police officer said Thursday. The three were suspected of illegally recording video of the carrier and South Korean Naval Operations Command on June 23 and June 25, the police officer told Stars and Stripes by phone. The students, who police described as being in their 30s or 40s, were questioned and released but remain under investigation, the officer said.
You can read more at the link.
This seems like a fair compromise, Japan gets their UNESCO site and South Korea gets a marker explaining the history of Korean forced laborers:
South Korea has given the green light to designate Japan’s gold and silver mines on Sado Island — where an estimated over 1,500 Koreans were forced to work at the end of Japan’s colonial rule — as a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Foreign Ministry announced on Friday.
Japan’s ongoing efforts to have the Sado Island Gold Mines recognized have fueled a dispute with South Korea. The controversy revolves around Japan’s deliberate omission of its history regarding the forced mobilization of Koreans during its brutal colonial rule over the peninsula. (….)
An inscription on the World Heritage list typically requires a two-thirds majority vote from the WHC member states. However, it has become customary for the final decision to be reached through consensus, ensuring broader agreement and cooperation among the committee members.
The South Korean Foreign Ministry’s confirmation came hours after Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported that a preliminary agreement had been reached. Under the agreement, Japan will display the history of Korean forced laborers at the site in exchange for South Korea’s consent to the inscription of the Sado Mine complex as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
You can read more at the link.
