Day: August 16, 2023

Aug. 17

1901 — Hansung Electric Co. holds a ceremony to mark the first time that electric lights are turned on in Seoul.

1962 — Prime Minister Jang Myun is arrested without physical detention on anti-revolutionary conspiracy charges.

1964 — South Korea establishes an association of its journalists.

1992 — South Korea opens a liaison office in Hanoi, about four months before the country reestablished its diplomatic ties with Vietnam. South Korea and Vietnam first established their diplomatic relationship in 1956, but the relationship was severed in 1975, when Ho Chi Minh City, then Saigon and the capital of South Vietnam, was captured by the People’s Army of Vietnam, marking the end of the Vietnam War.

2001 — Bang Sang-hoon, president of the daily Chosun Ilbo; Kim Byung-kwan, former honorary chairman of the daily Dong-A Ilbo; and Cho Hee-jun, former chairman of the Kukmin Daily, are arrested on tax evasion charges after a special tax probe into the news organizations. Conservative forces claimed the probe conducted under the Kim Dae-jung administration was a plot to tame news media critical of the government.

2016 — The Seoul government announces the defection of Thae Yong-ho, a minister at North Korea’s embassy in London, who was one of the highest-ranking North Korean diplomats to have defected to the South. The government confirmation reportedly came several days after Thae arrived in Seoul.

2019 — North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency says it tested a “new weapon” under the guidance of leader Kim Jong-un the previous day with the goal of building defense capabilities. The state media did not provide other details, but experts said the North appeared to have test-launched its version of the U.S.’ Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS).

2021 — President Moon Jae-in and his Kazakh counterpart, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, agree to broaden bilateral partnerships in new industries, including those related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, public health and space exploration, during their summit talks in Seoul.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

A pair of buses were detected crossing from the North Korean border city of Sinuiju into China on Wednesday, in a rare move that was apparently made to transport its athletes to an upcoming taekwondo match.

The buses were spotted crossing a railway bridge over the Amnok River from the Chinese border city of Dandong into the North at around 10:15 a.m. (local time) and returning at around 11:20 a.m.

Sources said the North’s rare border crossing into China could be related to the dispatch of its athletes to the ITF Taekwon-Do World Championships, slated for this week in Kazakhstan, though the identities of those on the buses remain unconfirmed.

On Tuesday morning, a bus and a van were also seen crossing the border and returning to Dandong later.

North Korea has imposed border lockdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic since early 2020. Railroad freight traffic between Pyongyang and Beijing resumed in January 2021 after being halted in August the previous year.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

Only 3 percent of juveniles aged 14-18 are criminally punished after committing serious crimes, such as murder and rape, with the rest referred to youth correction institutions and community service programs, court data showed Wednesday.

Rep. Kang Min-kuk of the ruling People Power Party released the Supreme Court data, raising concern that such light punishment hurts judicial justice, ignores victims’ pain, and can be abused as a means to get away with serious crimes.

In South Korea, juvenile offenders aged 10-13 are sentenced to “protective dispositions” designed for reformation, while those aged 14-18 can be punished either with protective dispositions or official punishment such as prison terms.

According to the court data, however, most of the offenders in the older age bracket are also given protective dispositions, such as lectures, community service programs and youth correction institutions. Punishment with protective dispositions leaves no criminal records.

Between 2017 and 2022, a total of 18,084 cases of five major crimes, such as murder, robbery and rape, were committed by juveniles aged 14-18, but only 3.1 percent of them, or 567 cases, received criminal punishment, according to the data.

The rest of the 17,517 cases, or 96.9 percent, were given protective dispositions.

“There are growing concerns the protective disposition system is undermining judicial fairness, as it is effectively used as a means to avoid criminal punishment,” Kang said. “Giving impunity to serious juvenile criminals amounts to ignoring victims’ pain.”

To address this issue, Kang added that he proposed a revision to the Juvenile Act aimed at excluding juvenile offenders charged with murder, robbery, rape, indecent act by compulsion and special violence from being eligible for protective dispositions.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

South Korea’s finance minister said Wednesday the country will extend the tax cut on fuel consumption through October in line with efforts to tackle inflation and ease financial burdens on the public.

The government has been applying a 25 percent discount on the consumption of gasoline, and a 37 percent discount on the consumption of diesel, which was set to expire at the end of this month.

“Through the extension, we plan to ease the burden of rising global oil prices on the public,” Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho said during a meeting with reporters in the central city of Sejong.

“As for the period beyond October, we plan to come up with an additional measure by reviewing the situation then,” Choo added.

Consumer prices, a key gauge of inflation, rose 2.3 percent in July from a year earlier, compared with a 2.7 percent increase in June, according to data from Statistics Korea. It marked the lowest advance since June 2021.

The prices of utility services, however, continued to grow sharply, climbing 21.1 percent over the period, as the state-run Korea Electric Power Corp. raised electricity bills to make up for its snowballing losses. South Korea depends heavily on imports for its energy needs.

The finance minister added a strong U.S. dollar against South Korea’s won is not expected to have a significant impact on the latest trend of a slowdown in consumer prices.

The country is also closely monitoring the latest real estate crisis in China, South Korea’s largest trading partner, and plans to take action if necessary, he added.

“The direct impact of the issue on our financial market and companies is very limited. However, as we maintain close ties with the Chinese economy, it can affect neighboring Asian countries, including South Korea,” Choo said.

Touching on the country’s sluggish exports, Choo said it was notable that outbound shipments have been showing signs of a recovery.

“Normally, exports tend to stay weak in August due to seasonal factors, such as the vacation season. But we anticipate the trade balance to enter on a surplus trend in September, with (exports) posting growth in October,” Choo added.

South Korea’s exports fell for the 10th consecutive month in July due mainly to weak demand for semiconductors, but the country reported a trade surplus for two straight months.

Source: Yonhap News Agency

North Korea said Wednesday an American soldier who ran across the inter-Korean border into the North last month admitted that he “illegally intruded” due to “inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army,” claiming that he has expressed a willingness to seek refuge there or in a third country.

It marked the North’s first public confirmation of the status of Pvt. Travis King, who made an unauthorized crossing of the Military Demarcation Line (MDL) into the North during a tour to the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas on July 18.

“Travis King confessed that he had decided to come over to the DPRK as he harbored ill feeling against inhuman maltreatment and racial discrimination within the U.S. Army,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in an English-language report. DPRK stands for the North’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Citing an interim result of the North’s investigation into King’s border crossing, the KCNA said the U.S. soldier “also expressed his willingness to seek refugee in the DPRK or a third country, saying that he was disillusioned at the unequal American society.”

The KCNA said the country’s soldiers took custody of King after he “deliberately intruded” into the North’s side of the JSA and that an investigation by a “relevant organ” is ongoing.

King’s alleged remarks reported in the North’s state media are impossible to verify.

Shortly after the North’s first confirmation of King’s detention, the U.S. Department of Defense said the alleged comments by King cannot be verified and that it is focused on bringing him back home.

“We cannot verify these alleged comments,” a Pentagon spokesperson told Yonhap News Agency. “The department’s priority is to bring Pvt. King home, and we are working through all available channels to achieve that outcome.”

Observers have said North Korea could seek to use King for its propaganda efforts or as a bargaining chip to demand concessions from Washington as dialogue between the two sides has remained at a standstill since 2019.

“(North Korea) has unveiled a part of its investigation findings without reaching a conclusion,” Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in central Seoul, said. “It appears that (the North) is emphasizing that it holds the key to resolving the issue, and calling on the U.S. to make a wise choice.”

U.S. officials have previously said King “willfully” crossed the MDL “without authorization” and that the North has not made any substantive response to its inquiries over his status.

The U.S.-led U.N. Command, which oversees activities in the DMZ, earlier said it is working with its North Korean counterparts to resolve the incident but has declined to provide details.

King has faced legal trouble after being stationed in South Korea. He was detained in a South Korean prison workshop from May 24 to July 10 after failing to pay a fine for damaging a police patrol car last year.

On Oct. 8, South Korean police apprehended King for suspected violence at a nightclub in western Seoul. He reportedly did not cooperate with police officers demanding his personal information and kicked the door of their vehicle.

King had been set to return to the United States on July 17, where he could have faced additional disciplinary action, but he did not board his flight at Incheon International Airport, west of Seoul, and took part in the JSA tour the next day.

The incident came as tensions have run high due to North Korea’s continued weapons tests, including a Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile launch last month.

Direct diplomatic talks between the U.S. and the North have been stalled since their working-level nuclear talks in Sweden in October 2019 in the wake of the bilateral no-deal summit in Hanoi in February of that year.

The North’s acknowledgement of the incident also came as South Korea and the U.S. plan to kick off a major military exercise next week.

The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise based on an all-out war scenario is set to take place from Monday through Aug. 31, featuring various contingency drills, such as the computer simulation-based command post exercise, concurrent field training and the Ulchi civil defense drills.

Pyongyang has long accused the allies’ drills of being rehearsals for an invasion against it.

Source: Yonhap News Agency