Tag: United States

What the U.S. is doing is pushing industries to make a choice between the U.S. or Chinese markets. Korea is trying to find a middle ground which so far the Biden administration does not want to offer them:

Korea Inc. faces an uphill battle as a push in the United States for economic security is taking its toll on companies dependent on China for manufacturing or for the supply of materials and components.    
   
The U.S. is passing laws and enacting executive orders to bring the manufacturing of products important to national interest back to U.S. soil. Chips, batteries, electric vehicles(EV), solar cells and certain biotechnology products are on the list, and China is the main country of concern.    
   
A number of Korean companies have been affected already.  

Hyundai Motor’s EV sales in the U.S. have fallen since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), as its EV models won’t be qualified for the subsidies under the act.    
   
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix are having to rethink their use of China as a major manufacturing base for semiconductors as a number of U.S. rules are making it difficult to transfer key technologies to China, which is the second largest source of memory chips for these companies after Korea.      
   
Korea feels betrayed by its ally and is fighting for workarounds that would allow its companies to continue sourcing heavily from China. It is now engaged in an intense lobbying effort to get the rules watered down or waivers for its companies.  
   
This anniversary special will explore the impact of the U.S.-China tech war on Korean business and map out ways to curtail the damage. It is based on interviews with academics and researchers.    
   
Some argue that the dependence on China needs to be reexamined, while others argue that the Yoon Suk-yeol administration should come up with sizable financial incentives and tax cuts to attract manufacturing facilities for chips and high-tech products to Korea. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Korean-Americans are beginning to have growing political influence:

Young Kim, a Korean-American Republican, won the U.S. House election in a Southern California district on Friday, U.S. media reported. 

The former state lawmaker joined three other politicians of Korean descent elected to the House of Representatives in the Nov. 3 elections.

Kim, 57, was born in South Korea and grew up in Guam. She won 50.6 percent of the vote to beat Democratic incumbent Gil Cisneros by a margin of 1.2 percentage point in the 39th Congressional District anchored in Orange County, reports said. It was a rematch from 2018.

She joined Marilyn Strickland and Michelle Park Steel to become the first Korean-American women to serve Congress in its 230-year history.

Democrat Strickland, former mayor of Tacoma, won the race in Washington’s 10th Congressional District, while Republican Steel claimed the 48th District in Orange County. 

Democrat Andy Kim, a Korean-American man, won the race in New Jersey’s 3rd District.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that Young Kim was project to win the election two years ago to have it taken from her with the mail in ballots.

Today is the big day for the U.S. election:

Koreans with voting rights in the U.S. head to the polls today to cast their ballots in what is considered one of the messiest, most contentious and controversial presidential elections in U.S. history. 

As unpredictable as this election night is expected to be, it is unclear whether Koreans, as a whole, will choose the Democratic or Republican ticket.

”I’ve never struggled this much to make up my mind on who to vote,” said Park Dong-hwan, 56, who owns a laundry business in the suburbs of Seattle. After acquiring U.S. citizenship, this is his third time voting in the U.S. presidential election. 

”I’ve always been a Republican, but I didn’t want to vote for Trump. I really didn’t,” said Park, who still ended up voting for the Republican candidate via mail-in ballot. ”That was my biggest struggle.”

Same goes for Democratic supporter Ji Choi, 34, who is yet to decide which way her vote will go.

”I fundamentally support Democratic policies, but the presidential and vice presidential candidates seem to be much farther left than what I’d like,” she said, adding that she may end up not voting at all. (……..)

”Many of the older Koreans like me, who run a small business, vote for Trump not because we love him as an individual. We’re making the decision based on the Republican party’s economic policies,” said Park Jin-moo, 63, who recently participated in a ”Koreans for Trump” rally held in Los Angeles.

Law enforcement is another issue older Koreans are focusing on. 

”We can’t have riots run loose, but a Biden administration will likely lead to weaker law enforcement, which in turn leaves small business vulnerable to looting,” said Park.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I can definitely understand why a Korean-American with a small business would vote for Trump considering how many of them have had their businesses destroyed or impacted negatively by recent policies from their local governments.

On PBS Frontline this week there is a really good show about the United States’ coronavirus response. Part of the show compares the U.S. to what South Korea did. ROK Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha was heavily featured in the show.

The major difference pointed out which has been discussed before on this blog is how quickly South Korea was able to ramp up the private industry to produce test kits. They did this in a week. The CDC in the United States decided to create their own test kits which were tainted due to poor manufacturing and caused a month long delay in ramping up testing, which it eventually turned to private industry to augment.

You can watch, The Virus: What Went Wrong at the link.

Some Americans may be soon taking a Korean manufactured coronavirus test kit:

Two South Korean companies are expected to ship their coronavirus test kits to the United States by plane this week, a foreign ministry official said Monday, after their products won interim approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. 

The two firms and another company have signed contracts with the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to export their test kits after they won pre-emergency use authorization from the FDA.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The articles blaming foreigners for spreading coronavirus in South Korea has expanded to include the United States now:

As of Monday, the number of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpassed 33,400, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the third largest in the world after China and Italy. 

“As the number of virus patients increases quickly in the United States, health authorities should conduct virus tests on all arrivals from North America,” said Kim Woo-joo, a professor of infectious medicine at Korea University Guro Hospital.

Experts warned that the number of imported cases involving U.S. travelers could increase. Of the 14 new imported cases reported on Monday, eight of them were from the United States. 

Doctors said that arrivals from the United States should also be quarantined for two weeks even if they test negative for the virus because of the virus’ incubation period and possible asymptomatic carriers.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I have noticed more articles in the U.S. media highlighting South Korea’s success testing for the coronavirus:

Dr. Ogan Gurel, who got his medical degree from Columbia in New York and moved to Seoul 10 years ago, cites drive-by testing as one of “a panoply of measures” designed to stop the virus from overwhelming this country of 51 million people.

“There is no silver bullet,” says Gurel, who teaches medicine and provides scientific advice. “Individually, people might suffer, but in aggregate they end up with qualitative stabilization.” That is to say, for the overall population the disease is brought under control.

The proof is in the numbers showing new cases in South Korea decreasing steadily–just 110 on Thursday, the lowest in more than two weeks, while 177 were declared cured and sent home. All told, the number of cases totals 7,979, but the general feeling sense is the worst is over.

“Korea is setting a good example for the U.S.,” said Jang Sung-eun, who still rides the subways to work every day while many of her colleagues try to work from home. “They say we Koreans are rather effective in dealing with the problem.”

Such guarded optimism reflects a discernible shift in national mood from the near-panic that engulfed the country after the virus was discovered to be emanating from a church in the city of Daegu, 170 miles southeast of Seoul. The church was one of dozens run by the secretive Shincheonji sect, whose leader, Lee Man-hee, has proclaimed himself the embodiment of Jesus Christ.

“There was some resistance among them to testing,” says Gurel, but by now almost all the sect’s 230,000 members have been checked. Most of those suffering from the disease were members of the church or caught the virus from members who may have passed it on through two or three others, who in turn transmitted it to still more contacts.

Korean self-discipline and community cohesiveness explain much of the success in coming to terms with an illness that remains almost out of control elsewhere.

Daily Beast

You can read more at the link, but these articles don’t mention how travel from China was not restricted which helped the spread of the virus in South Korea. Likewise it took time for South Korea to get their testing and quarantine strategy in place after the initial shock of the mass infections in Daegu.

The U.S. is now experiencing the initial shock Koreans felt last month and now authorities are scrambling to implement their own testing and quarantine strategy. There is definitely best practices that can be learned from South Korea, but they will have to be adapted to deal with a far larger & diverse population, spread out over a huge landmass, with different privacy laws.

This idea first implemented in South Korea just make a lot of sense for a variety of reasons if there are enough test kits to support it:

U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday introduced drive-through tests as part of efforts to fight the coronavirus, a week after he questioned the effectiveness of the method widely used in South Korea.

Trump made the announcement during a White House press conference at which he declared a national emergency to fight the growing outbreak in the United States.

“We’ve been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals,” he said. “The goal is for individuals to be able to drive up and be swabbed without having to leave your car.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Some further good news for South Korea is that President Trump is not putting any new restrictions on the country and instead focusing on Europe:

The United States may “re-evaluate” its travel warning for Korea and consider an early lifting of restrictions as the new coronavirus situation in the country improves, U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday.

Trump announced in a national address that the United States will be suspending most travel from Europe for 30 days starting Friday at midnight, to protect against the coronavirus pandemic. The entry ban excludes Britain and also exempts U.S. citizens and permanent residents.  

“At the same time, we are monitoring the situation in China and in South Korea,” said Trump. “And, as their situation improves, we will re-evaluate the restrictions and warnings that are currently in place for a possible early opening.”  

The U.S. State Department has a travel advisory of Level 4, the highest in its four-tier system, urging Americans not to travel to Daegu, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in Korea. It has a Level 3 alert for the rest of Korea, urging Americans to “reconsider” visits to the country. Korea has in place in its airports a multi-tiered health screening of individuals flying to the United States, as requested by the Trump administration.  

Trump said in his speech that the European Union “failed to take the same precautions and restrict travel from China and other hot spots” and that as a result, “a large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe.” 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but members of the Korean government instead of making racist comments about U.S. Ambassador Harry Harris should instead be thanking him because he probably made the recommendation to not add any travel restrictions on Korea.