South Korean President Moon Jae-in said on Thursday that a 2015 agreement with Japan over South Korean “comfort women” forced to work in wartime brothels was seriously flawed after Japan said any attempt to revise it could damage relations.

A South Korean panel set up to investigate the deal concluded on Wednesday that it failed to meet the needs of the thousands of girls and women forced to work in Japan’s military brothels, many of them Korean, euphemistically termed “comfort women” by Japan.

“The agreement cannot solve the comfort women issue,” Moon said, calling the deal a “political agreement that excludes victims and the public” and violates general principles in international society, according to a statement issued by his office.

A Japanese foreign ministry spokeswoman said Japan had conveyed its position to South Korea through diplomatic channels following Moon’s remarks, reiterating Foreign Minister Taro Kono’s comment on Wednesday that any attempt to change the deal would be “unacceptable” and make relations “unmanageable.”

Asked if Moon meant to declare the deal null and void, a spokesman for the South Korean presidency, Park Soo-hyun, said it was “inappropriate” for him to use that term at this point, adding the government would present its “final position.”

Under the 2015 deal, Japan apologized to victims and provided 1 billion yen ($8.8 million) to a fund to help them.

The two governments had agreed the issue would be “irreversibly resolved” if both fulfilled their obligations.

Moon pledged to normalize relations and work toward “future-oriented cooperation” with Japan.

Twenty-three lawmakers have signed a resolution to condemn the violence of Chinese security guards against Korean journalists during President Moon Jae-in's state visit to China last week.

Rep. Khang Hyo-sang of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP) said Thursday he and 22 other LKP lawmakers have asked the National Assembly to adopt the resolution.

After the incident took place, some Chinese government officials said they "sympathized with the seriousness of the case" and "offered consolation to the injured journalists," but they have not apologized for it.

Woman escorted from Starbucks after asking patrons to stop speaking “oriental”

A woman was kicked out of a Starbucks in California for a racially insensitive remark to two college students speaking Korean.

South Korean students were talking at a Starbucks in Walnut Creek, California when a patron approached them after hearing the two speak Korean.

“This is America. Use English only,” said the unnamed woman, who was sitting nearby using a laptop.

The student continued to film the woman as Starbucks employees were asking her to leave.

“I hate it,” the woman says in the video. “If you can sit and be quiet, fine, but I don’t want to hear your language.”

Starbucks employees continue to ask the woman to leave. “They’re welcome to be here, they’re doing nothing wrong. You’re the one that’s causing an issue,” an employee tells her.

Another employee tells her if she doesn’t leave, they will call the police. Three officers later escorted the woman out of the coffee shop. The woman continued to complain about the students speaking Korean as she was forced to leave.

Mr. King Liu (83), the founder of Taiwanese bicycle manufacturer “Giant Bicycles” got the Order of the Rising Sun from Japan.

Mr. Liu started the brand “Giant Bicycles” up in 1981 and brought it up to the global company in his lifetime.

He opened the sale and rental shop on “Setouchi Shimanami Kaido” that linked Hiroshima prefecture and Ehime prefecture in Japan, and it was evaluated that he contributed to local promotion in Japan.

Now he works on “cycling around Lake Biwa” in Shiga and “the reconstruction aid cycling” in the area stricken by the aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

They are because he received technical instruction from the Japanese company at the time of establishment of his business and he thinks he has to repay a deep obligation to Japanese people.

Korean and Taiwanese makers started in joint ventures with Honda Motor Co., Ltd in old days. Soichiro Honda, the founder of Honda Motor Co., Ltd went to Taiwan and Korea for technological assistance.

After a while he got a message from Taiwan. It says, “We became able to produce motorcycles same as Japan. Please come to look!”

After a while he got a message from Korea too. It says, “We became able to produce motorcycles same as Japan. You do not have to come here again.”
The Korean maker began to sell copy products by “Korea brand”.

Koreans sometimes thank Japan personally, but they don't in public. If they do that, they are blamed as betrayer.

In 2014 Korea made a plan to launch five reconnaissance satellites from 2020 to 2021. The implementation has been delayed for more than four years, and on August 25, South Korea's military said it will soon begin a full-fledged project to put five indigenous reconnaissance satellites into operation by 2023.

However, there are no means to detect a sign of the North Korean missile launch for approximately six years until 2023 when this plan is completed. Therefore the military thought the idea "lease" of the reconnaissance satellite of the foreign countries and sounded it out.

As the result, the Korean military got the notices that Israel, Germany and France could not lend it.

The military received a blunt reception from three countries. They said, “Far from the reconnaissance satellite, the lending and the sale of the movies are not possible.”

On October 30, 2017, it is revealed that the Korean Patent Office approved the plural design registrations that resembled the Japanese famous characters and it causes controversy.

According to SBS, the problem is Mr. A’s designs that were registered after examination by the Patent Office.

Mr. A said, “I received inspiration from the masks of Hahoe Folk Village in Korea”, but it resembles “No-Face”, the character in “Spirited Away”, Japanese animated fantasy film produced by Studio Ghibli.

The another character that he said was made from the image of a yellow rabbit” reminds you of “Pikachu” in “Pocket Monster” somehow and some says it resembles “Terriermon” in “Digital Monster”.

Mr. A’s registered designs are manufactured and are sold on the Internet, but Nintendo applied to the Patent Office for an objection about Mr. A’s four designs last month.

The Kakao group running Korean messenger application considers legal action, saying that the company’s character was imitated.

About the designs becoming the problem, the person concerned of the Patent Office said, “They are not 100% same. There is something that we cannot but judge subjectively.”

Kaonashi (2001 Studio Ghibli, Japan)		Mr. A’s (2017 Korea)
Terriermon (1996 Nintendo, Japan)		Mr. A’s (2017 Korea) Its pose is also the same as that of Terriermon.

On November 19, the performance of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra and the Korean pianist Seong-Jin Cho was opened in a concert hall in Seoul.

Soon after the first movement of the piano concerto was over, a machine sound resounded from the seat of the first floor. It was the sound that recorded the performance that was just over.

Berlin Philharmonic orchestra regular conductor Simon Rattle and Seong-Jin Cho had to wait for starting the second movement for a while until the machine sound stopped.

A person concerned with the concert said, “It was a ‘tragic incident’ that the ringtone sounded, but it was a “catastrophe” level that the sound that recorded the performance in secret sounded like that. I was ashamed so that my face became hot.”

There were many audiences who spoke complaints for “under applause” just after the performance or the ostentation-related applause that means they know the music well and the sounds of “cacao talk” that occurred successively during the performance as well as “the reproduction of the recorder”.

In the performance of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra which was the oldest orchestra in the world, the ringtone of the cell-phone continued for approximately 40 seconds in the middle of the performance in 2011.

In 2013, “cherry tree ending” of Korean Boys band “Busker Busker” resounded, while the Seoul City Orchestra played the music.

It was decided that the concert hall started a large-scale campaign of listening manner from next month.

Japanese TBS Drama“Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu”(2016)	Korean tvN Drama“I Beon Saeng eun Cheo eum ra”(2017)

Japanese TBS Drama“Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu”(2016) and Korean tvN Drama“I Beon Saeng eun Cheo eum ra”(2017)

Two stories that the man and woman who did a contract marriage reaches the marriage are same.

The scene where two people of the chief character talk about marriage with in a bus and the scene where co-workers of the company doubt bogus marriage, etc. are same.

Yoon Nan-joong in charge of the script was put under similar suspicion in the past. Talking of her masterpiece KBS 2TV drama “Queen of the Office” (2013), she dramatized the Japanese drama in 2009. After that, she bought copyright.

She was criticized that the KBS 2TV drama “Darpaengi goiwon” televised in 2010 was the plagiarism of the novel “Waseda 3 jo seisyunki” by Japanese writer Hideyuki Takano and the drama “Widaehan gyechunbin” was the plagiarism of the novel “K?ch? Buranko” by Japanese writer Hideo Okuda.(Korea・Ohmy News)

The Korean broadcasting station stated, "It's not a remake or plagiarism" as always.

A 5.4 magnitude earthquake that was South Korea’s second-strongest in decades damaged infrastructure, injured dozens of people and left about 1,500 homeless, officials said Thursday.

No deaths have been reported since the quake rattled the southeastern coastal region around the port city of Pohang on Wednesday afternoon.

As of Thursday morning, 1,536 people had been forced to evacuate their homes and 57 people were injured, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said in a statement.

More than 1,000 houses and dozens of other buildings and cars were damaged or destroyed, and cracks and other damage were found in military facilities, bridges, port facilities and water supply facilities. Media images showed crumbled walls piled on damaged cars, broken windows and cracks in buildings.

The quake also forced the education ministry to put off the university entrance exam for one week because some buildings chosen as test venues had cracks and students in the southeastern region were displaced from their homes and complained of anxieties. The annual test administered by the government is a huge national event in South Korea, where diplomas from top colleges often guarantee better jobs and spouses.

It’s the second-strongest quake in South Korea since the country officially began monitoring them in 1978. The biggest quake occurred in September 2016, when a 5.8 magnitude occurred near the ancient city of Gyeongju, which is close to Pohang. That quake also caused injuries but no deaths.

South Korea’s state-run Korea Meteorological Administration said the epicenter of Wednesday’s quake was inside Pohang while the U.S. Geological Survey said it was centered about 9.3 kilometers (5.8 miles) northwest of the port city. The shaking was felt in Seoul, more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) away.

South Korea has relatively little seismic activity, unlike neighboring Japan.

On 13th, the Korea Tourism Organization announced the result of the questionary survey targeting 1,000 men and women of 18 years or older who went for overseas travel from January to September in this year.

According to the survey, the “Korean level of etiquette” in the overseas travel is 2.75 points on the average (maximum of 10), and it was “lower than normal“. 37.4% of the respondents answered, “Our etiquette is insufficient.” and only 17.6% answered, “Our etiquette is excellent“.

The question : “What is the most shameful action as a Korean at the overseas sightseeing spots?“

Answer :

1. “Making noise at the public places” (19.2%).
2. “Going to brothels and prostituting” (14.9%)
3. “Lack of understanding of the local etiquette manners” (13.7%)
4. “Insolent manners to the local persons in the developing country” (13.4%)

Other answers are, “Carrying away the dishes of the buffet and the hotel equipments” (5.9%), “Not keeping them in a decided order when riding to a vehicle” (5.3%), “Looking down on the local persons and culture” (5.1%), “Eating Korean foods including the kimchi with a special smell in hotels and restaurants” (4.3%) and so on.

A former comfort woman Lee Yong-soo was invited to today's dinner, too.

The person concerned of the Chongwadae explained, “It means we want American side to understand our opinion about a comfort woman and a Korea-Japan historical issue”.

The Korean government announced the menu of the welcome dinner party for U. S. President Trump on 7th.

Maybe Tok-do shrimp means Korea wants to appeal to the American side for our will of protection about the Tok-do dominium that Japan insists is false.

A South Korean appeals court on Friday overturned a lower-court acquittal of an author and found her guilty of defaming former “comfort women” in her book.

Park Yu Ha, a professor at Sejong University in Seoul, was also fined 10 million won (about $8,000) for citing false information in her 2013 book “Comfort Women of the Empire”, thereby defaming the honor of the women forced into wartime brothels for the Japanese military.

The Seoul High Court decision followed a January acquittal of the Japanese literature scholar by the Seoul Eastern District Court on the grounds that freedom of expression is a basic right guaranteed by the constitution.

Park plans to appeal Friday's ruling to a higher court.

Prosecutors had sought a three-year prison term for Park. She was indicted in November 2015.

Park has been sued by a group of former comfort women for having disputed the coerciveness of the comfort women system and depicting some of them as “voluntary prostitutes”.

Many comfort women were from the Korean Peninsula, which was under Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945.

※The Seoul Eastern District Court declared her not guilty, because “She did not identify an individual person (former comfort woman) and wrote down only a group in her book. She did not have the intention to defame former ‘comfort women’.”

Restrictions were imposed due to radioactivity risks after the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster

The World Trade Organization (WTO) made a de facto ruling against South Korea in a case lodged by Japan over Seoul’s ban on imports of seafood from the area near the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant.

The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) and Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) reported on Oct. 17 that the full text of the WTO’s dispute resolution panel report on the Japanese seafood import ban ? the equivalent of a first-trial ruling ? had been delivered to Seoul early that morning by way of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). The report, which was hundreds of pages long, reportedly contains recommendations for South Korea to take action to comply with the terms of the WTO agreement as the respondent in the complaint. The content suggests that South Korea has effectively “lost” the case.

In response to increased safety risks from radioactivity in Japanese seafood after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the South Korean government moved in Sept. 2013 to issue a temporary special measure banning imports of seafood caught in eight prefectures near Fukushima. In May 2015, Tokyo lodged a complaint with the WTO, claiming Seoul was “discriminating against” Japanese seafood. After the two sides failed to reach a dialogue-based resolution, a WTO panel with members from Uruguay, France, and Singapore was set up in Feb. 2016 to begin dispute resolution procedures and conduct numerous reviews leading to the final panel report issued on Oct. 17.

On September 27, 2017, Solo debut music of P. O who is a member of K-POP group "BlockB" was targeted for broadcast prohibition in Korean public broadcast station (KBS). It is said that it is caused by the fact that Japanese word was used in the lyric.

It is the P. O's solo debut single "MEN'zNIGHT" that KBS prohibited the broadcast of the music. It became target for sanctions, because that the word "Pica" in the lyric of the song was Japanese-style expression.

In the discussion in KBS, 14 songs received broadcast impropriety judgments. It was said that the rapper Crucial Star's new song "야식 (Midnight Meal)" had a Japanese-style expression.

The dish name called "Tattoritang" in the song became the problem. It is a extremely common Korean dish using chicken. There is an opinion that the part of the lyric "tori" means "chicken" in Japanese.

A suspicion that the logo of 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics plagiarized the logo design of the Cheongju cultural industry promotion foundation happened.

The Organising Committee and the foundation decided to carry out a meeting to discuss the problem.

On the night of September 30, the whole area of the place fell into great confusion because of the crowd and cars that flocked to watch "2017 Seoul International Fireworks Festival".

The sending place was Yeouido island located in the sandbank of Han River flowing through Seoul.

Cars began to form lines several hours before the event and the road was filled with cars of the illegal parking and stopping.

Furthermore, people jumped out from the cars on the road when fireworks began. Though cars ran near the crowd without a break, some ran around in search of a perfect photography point on the expressway and some cars plunged into the car row to cut in if there was a chance.

The situation that had neither such a "security" nor "order" continued more than two hours.

1,500 police officers were placed in whole area of Yeouido island, but were not enough for order maintenance and ensuring safety. Such situation has not changed at all for 15 years since the Fireworks Festival began.

Unfortunately, as events like this attract large crowds, the following morning showed the not-so-beautiful side to the show.

In the area street cleaners faced mounds of garbage haphazardly thrown away by the 1 million-strong crowd that attended the event.

In order to prevent this, Hanwha, who organized the event, had precautionary measures in place on the night of the event; plastic refuse bags were handed out and warnings were issued to only dispose of waste at designated zones. However, it seems the effort largely went ignored.

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before correction		After correction (red parts were added)

The world map is in the official site of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics, but it did not have Japanese Islands and Sakhalin.

It is the English version page that introduces "Dream Programme" that provides youths aged 11 to 15 with the opportunity to train in skiing and ice sports.

The map includes the main islands such as Cuba, Madagascar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Indonesia, but Japanese Islands and Russian Sakhalin were cut off.

Korea received protest from the Japanese Government, and at about the midday of September 27, Japanese Islands and Sakhalin were added to the map.

But only the added parts are slightly unnatural because the method of drawing maps is different.

Kim Yonte (54), a taxi driver in Seoul City visited the Seoul central police station and reported a misplace of a white cloth bag at 7:30 a.m. on 24th. The bag had 217 pieces of ten-thousand yen bills and Japanese passport and clothing.

Kim picked up four slightly intoxicated Japanese visitors at about 11:30 on the afternoon of 23rd of the day before.

Afterwards Kim picked up another visitor immediately, but after dropping the visitor he noticed that there was the white bag in his car. He was surprised to open the bag with large sum of money and thought that he must look for the visitor early.

Two hours later after Kim reported the bag to the police station, the owners of the bag, Japanese man (45) who engaged in clothing wholesale trade came over to the police station. The man said, "I am left general affairs to and I had the fund, but I caused the loss accident and could not sleep. I don't remember the taxi number" and he received message "money was found" after being waiting at the Myondong police box.

The man who was going to lose large sum of money bowed his head and thanked Kim.

The living of Kim is not rich, and 2,170,000 yen is large sum of money equal to the incomes for two or three years for the Kim family. However, he talked plainly, "it is not my money, so a desire cannot occur to me. I think that it is right to live honestly even if poor.

For many Vietnamese, 30 April 1975 marked a joyous day after 20 years of death and destruction at the hands of both indigenous and foreign fighters.

But for a significant number of children fathered as a result of rape by South Korean soldiers, it was the start of a living hell.

Mr Nhat recalled: “Before April 1975, I had been treated well by the South Korean troops who lived on the base near my home in Phu Yen Province, central Vietnam. I was still too young to have any real sense of my identity and hadn’t yet questioned my mother about why I looked different to other Vietnamese children.”

“But when the Communists declared victory, everything changed for me. Suddenly, I knew I was dangerously different.”

A period of painful bullying ensued in school. Mr Nhat said: “I was bullied repeatedly. The other children kept asking who my father was and called him a 'dog'. I just kept suffering in silence.

I was 18 when my mother finally sat me down and told me she had been raped by Korean soldiers - not once but three times. My two sisters are also mixed blood or Lai Dai Han as we are known in Vietnam.”

The story of South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War is largely untold.

Around 300,000 troops joined American forces in 1964. South Korea’s contingent was bigger than that of Australia or New Zealand - second only to the US military. Troops were largely concentrated in Vietnam’s Central Province.

South Korean troops were not alone in their exploitation of civilian women but their country has never acknowledged the allegations or taken steps to investigate.

Mrs Ngai was 24 and still a virgin when she was first raped. “A South Korean commander from a nearby base appeared in my room and started hugging me. I froze. I felt petrified. He started touching my body and then raped me. My parents told me to abort the child so I tried to do it with medicine but it didn’t work. Sometime after, I gave birth to a little girl. I thought about committing suicide but somehow I found a way to carry on.”

Catching her breath between sobs, she explained: “The father of my first-born child returned to South Korea but sent another soldier to my house on the pretence of checking up on the baby. Once again, this man moved towards me holding me tightly before pulling me down to the ground and raping me on the floor. He later returned to Korea too and I gave birth again to another daughter. I cried every day.”

Incredibly, Mrs Ngai was raped a third time the following year by yet another Korean solider who had been briefed on her whereabouts by departing colleagues.

The event in commemoration of "Battle of Myeongnyang" where General Yi Sun-sin overthrew Japanese water forces was held in Korea on September 11, 2017, but a lot of mistakes were found in the display items of the pavilion that was opened free during the event period.

The pavilion opened in March of this year.

By viewing for about one hour, mistakes such as wrong explanations, typographical errors and English translation errors were found a lot. The pavilion left the mistakes as they were since the opening more than five months, though you can easily find them in this way.

In the exhibits that explain the flying distances of the navel guns that Korean naval forces used, one explanation writes "1.8km" and the other writes "1km".

About the time when the ebb tide turned into the flood tide and that acted in favor of Korean naval forces, one writes "12:21 a.m." and the other writes "12:21 p.m."

The omitted letters are often found in the parts translated into English based on the Hangul Alphabets.

The weapon "explosive shell" that Korean naval forces used is translated into English with "Bigeokjinconnoe", but two alphabets of "y" and "h" fall out. "Bigyeokjinchonnoe" is correct.

They translated "전선 (戦船)" as "attleship", but "battleship" is correct and "b" falls out.

A person concerned in the pavilion explained, "A mistake has never been pointed out until today".

A cultural asset from Korea’s Joseon dynasty, stolen some 20 years ago and later held by a now-deceased Japanese collector, has been returned to South Korea.

The epitaph on porcelain of a high-ranking official of the dynasty who lived in the 14th and 15th centuries was donated last month to the National Museum of Korea in Seoul by the collector's family.

The item was taken to Japan in 1998 after being stolen by the Korean trafficking organization from the South Korean city of Gwangju. It later came into possession of collector Takashi Todoroki, who did not know it was stolen.

They use toilet paper at a dining table.
The toilet paper is used for wiping buttocks in a restroom, not for dining tables.

There are many people vomiting a sputum.
I hear a sound to vomit a sputum in the workplace every five minutes.

The Korean men often make up.
It is good to put a thin coat of cream on a face to hide fatigue, but further make-up is strange.

Korean "impatience" culture
When he was putting down all the articles to calculate and confirming them in supermarket, he was urged to do in a hurry.

Young people do cosmetic surgical treatment willingly.
40s - 60s middle-ages have cosmetic surgical treatment to regain beauty in their youth. Amazingly, Koreans in its twenties, sometimes the teens do so.

When Koreans eat food, they give noisy sounds.
Foreigners cannot understand why Koreans make such a sound.

Three-po generation, "five-po generation", "seven-po generation"
"Three-po generation" means 20-30 generations who abandon love, marriage and childbirth for the economic reasons. "Five" adds my home and human relations to three above. "Seven" adds hope and dream to the five.

The penalty for the murder is too light.
The person who commits the murder spends in the prison for one year or two and comes out.

FIFA World Cup Asian Qualifying match Korea Rep vs Iran was performed at Seoul World Cup stadium on August 31. Players of the two teams engaged in“the desperate struggle” with turf that became rough in many places. Whenever players moved in this game, turf and soil were turned up.

The Seoul facilities management public corporation published a press release with the title“We will improve the turf for the match with Iran on a large scale” on August 17. It wrote,“We will change a quarter of the ground area to the new turf”.

However, the result was miserable. The turf already began to be turned up when players warmed up before the game start. Some said“It's just like moles dug it”.

Generally, it takes approximately one month to one and a half months for turf to take roots.

But it takes two months or more in the high temperature and humid environment like now. You could expect this situation, because the turf improvement work in the Seoul World Cup stadium started on August 19 and the game was held 12 days later. If you plan the turf improvement work, it is necessary to begin it in the end of June at the latest.

Lee, the billionaire son of Samsung's ailing chairman, was sentenced to five years in prison on Friday, well short of the 12-year sentence prosecutors had sought.

He was found guilty of bribing Park in exchange for government support for a merger that helped him tighten control over Samsung. The 49-year-old executive, who is also known as Jay Y. Lee, has been the de facto leader of Samsung since his ailing father was left incapacitated by a 2014 heart attack.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday praised North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for a "wise" decision not to fire missiles toward the U.S. Pacific territory of Guam

"Kim Jong Un of North Korea made a very wise and well reasoned decision", Trump wrote on Twitter.

"The alternative would have been both catastrophic and unacceptable!"

It is important at first to ask whether “being moved forcibly, 200,000 people and sex slave” are facts or forgeries.

The issue of “comfort women” Korea insists on includes three cores concerned. They are “being moved forcibly, 200,000 people, sex slave”, but there are no objective evidences that support three at all. It is mainly only the claim that women who insist they were “comfort women” victims and anti-Japan group appeal for.

Nevertheless Japan carried out multiple apology and compensation in consideration of the human rights of people who insisted that they were “comfort women” victims.

For all apology and compensation, Koreans are not able to be satisfied with them. Without objective evidences, they diffuse “comfort women” problem to the world and criticize Japan obstinately by the resolutions, the criticism statements and statues of “comfort women” in the third countries such as the United Nations or the United States.

If Korea acts like that in the state that the minimum objective evidence was secured, it can be understood to some extent. However, I cannot but consider that it is abnormal to act like that in the state that there is no objective evidence at all.

Rather if you watch the objective informations and documents that gradually appear, you find only the records that indicate that “comfort women” s in those days are just prostitutes.

You can see that “comfort women” earned, shopped and remitted money to their hometowns. Anyone can understand immediately in common-sense that it is impossible to claim that “comfort women” are the sex slave.

I think that it is not important if we remove statues of “comfort women” or not, but it is important to investigate if “comfort women” -related contents (being moved forcibly, 200,000 people and sex slave) that we know so far are the truth or the forgery.

This is the problem that is important rather for the future in Korea regardless of Japan. If “being moved forcibly, 200,000 people and sex slave” are forged contents, 50 million Koreans have been deceived during the past dozens of years, and it concludes they were only manipulated by “made anger”.

I think that it will be necessary someday by all means to investigate the core case of the issue of “comfort women”, in order to restore pride of the Korea race and to study the truth properly.

If the forgery creates anger, invites various kinds of confusion and wastes the strength of our nation, it is a vicious crime more than the world general brutal crimes.

August 15 is “the National Liberation Day of Korea” that is the anniversary of the birth of South Korea to celebrate that Korea was released from colonial rule by Japan.

Kim Yeon-koung, the captain of the Korean national team of women's volleyball put a tape on the logo of her shoes of the Japanese sports brand and participated in the game of the 19th Asian Women's Volleyball Championship. “Viva! independence of great Korea” was written on the tape.

Her office said, “because the maker of her shoes enters into a sponsorship contract with Kim, there was no help for it”.

Passengers aboard a train on Subway Line No. 8 in Seoul on Tuesday had a hair-raising ride, with a malfunctioning door wide open for seven stops. There were no casualties.

According to Seoul Metro, the train left Bokjeong Station in Songpa district at around 1:15 p.m. The fourth door of the first car was not shut due to a substance that had blocked it from closing.

The train reached its final stop, Moran Station, with the door still open.

The maintenance staff member had attempted to fix the problem as the train was moving, but could not set it right before the train reached its final destination.

On June 15, South Korean film director Ryoo Seung-Wan announced the completion of a film titled “The Battleship Island” at a press conference in Seoul.

The film is explained as depicting “Koreans' desperate efforts to escape coal mines on Japan's Hashima Island where they were sent after forcibly requisitioned.”

Ryoo explained that he produced the film to express the “pains of forcible requisition” while challenging to “the maximum that can be produced in Korean films today” and adding “cinematic imagination.”

Unreasonable story on Suddeutsche Zeitung

Despite the fact that the island had nothing to do with “forcible requisition of Koreans” or “slavery treatment,” South Korea has continued propaganda linking the island to “coercive recruitment,” “slave labor” and “cruel death.” As a result, unreasonable media reports have been made, including a story on the online edition of Germany's Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper dated July 6, 2015.

The story reported,

(1) Laborers subjected to coercive recruitment were abused on Hashima Island.

(2) During the World War II, Japanese workers were moved to safe places while only Chinese and Korean forced laborers were made to work.

(3) More than 1,000 Chinese and Korean forced laborers died on the island.

(4) Their bodies were abandoned into the sea or dead mines.

Angered by this unfounded story, former Hashima residents created the “Association of Hashima Residents Pursuing True History” on January 23 this year, making a protest against the story. They in their 80s or 90s had lived on the island until 1974 when it became uninhabited because of the closure of coal mines.

The former Hashima residents sent a protest to the German newspaper, noting that Koreans, both living alone and with families, acted as Japanese citizens and lived in harmony with Japanese in the same community; that Korean women wore the Chimageogori traditional dress and performed ethnic dances pleasantly; that Korean and Japanese children studied together at school; and that given the small size of Hashima and the residential environment there, it was absolutely impossible to do inhumane acts like the abuse of Koreans without Japanese women's or children's knowledge living on the island.

The German newspaper's first, second and fourth counts represented extremely heinous lies. If the third count were true, a quarter of total Hashima population at that time should have died. On the island, even one person's death was mourned by all others on the island.

The Association asked the German newspaper to give the ground for the claim that more than 1,000 forced laborers died, calling on the newspaper to carry a correction within a month. There has been no response from the newspaper.

A South Korean court on Tuesday ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to pay compensation over forced labor by two women during World War II.

In the latest ruling concerning such practices during the Japanese rule of the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945, the Gwangju District Court directed Mitsubishi to pay 85-year-old Kim Yong-ok and a family member of the late Choi Jong-rye a total of around 123.20 million won (just over 12 million yen).

A string of district courts have ruled in favor of those forced to work for Japanese firms following a landmark May 2012 decision by South Korea’s Supreme Court.

Reversing previous court decisions, the top court ruled that the right of former forced workers and their families to seek withheld wages and compensation was not invalidated by a 1965 Japan-South Korea agreement that Tokyo claims settled all postwar compensation claims, prompting plaintiffs to seek damages in South Korea.

Japan maintains that all individual compensation claims were settled with that treaty, under which South Korea and Japan normalized their relations. Mitsubishi Heavy has argued in the past in court in South Korea that the plaintiffs’ claims should be rejected on this basis.

On August 8, the Nara Prefectural Police announced that a graffiti of Hangul Alphabet was found in the national treasure, Hokke-do in World Heritage Todai-ji Temple. The police is checking it on the suspicion of violation of "Cultural Properties Protection Act".

According to the police, the graffiti was on the side of the handrail (railing) of the Hokkedo. The staff of Todai-ji Temple found it in the morning August 8. The police will check the video of neighboring security cameras.

It is told that the Hokke-do was built from 740 to 747. It is the oldest wooden building in Todai-ji Temple. The front part was built in the Kamakura era.

On August 3, the Korean A-bomb victims and the seconds sued the U. S. Government for apology and compensation over A-bombing on Hiroshima at the Taegu district court.

Contents of the requests

1. The U. S. government accepts responsibility that the A-bombing "was an illegal act".
2. The U. S. government releases the information about the A-bomb victims and apologizes to them.
3. The U. S. government examines the actual state of A-bomb victims, establishes a foundation for damage recovery and makes reparation for damages.

They also sue three U. S. companies that produced the B-29 bomber Enola Gay or engaged in the nuclear material production concerning A-bomb development.

The criminal cases that occurred in the trains and the station yards were beyond 1,600 in total last year in Korea and it was the most since Korea had started counting in 1987.

In 1987 the number of the outbreak of the railroad criminal cases were 521. It had continued increasing afterwards, and exceeded 1,000 cases (1,040) for the first time in 2011.

The number of sex assaults was 566 (34.1%). This was the most. It occurred 1.6 times a day.

The number of thefts was 318 (19.1%, ). The number of injuries or assaults was 214 (12.9%,). Murder 1, robbery 1, arson 3.

A tidal change in Korean politics has led to Korea Post scrapping plans for stamps marking the 100th birthday of strongman Park Chung-hee.

Korea Post said Wednesday a committee of academics and professional philatelists put the issue to a vote, and eight opposed it while only three were still in favor. One abstained.

The same committee voted last year to issue the stamp. But at the time Park Geun-hye, his daughter, was still president and untainted by the corruption scandal that brought her down.

Park senior came to power in a putsch in 1963 and was assassinated by his own secret service chief in 1979.

Some Minjoo Party lawmakers and progressive groups opposed the stamps from the start, saying they would tend to deify a deeply controversial politician.

No Korean president has ever been commemorated with a stamp since most ended their tenure in disgrace.

Proponents of the Park Chung-hee stamps argued the public should accept moves to commemorate those who contributed to Korea's development, regardless of political differences.

On July 16, 2017 the House of inspection in Korea said, Defense Acquisition Program Administration made the Korean model helicopter "Srion" a force without solving various problems including body design faults and engine abnormality by the freezing phenomenon, etc.

The suspicions that KAI (Korea Aerospace Industries) got excessive gains of tens of billions won (10 billion won = approximately 10 million dollar), and that Defense Acquisition Program Administration made srion a force forcibly though it did not meet the standard and protected KAI that had the deficiency in the design and development are investigated.

According to the result given in last March, srion had the structural problems such as freezing phenomena over its acceptable level in engine inlet ports.

However, Defense Acquisition Program Administration approved delivery of goods from KAI that made srion.

A defense business agency accepted KAI that wanted to solve the future problems after producing srion and making it a force, without solving the problems.

Kim Moo-sung, a member of the Diet said, "Our President watched the movie "Pandora", was impressed and shed tears, and decided de-nuclear power generation".

Pandora is a fiction movie.

Four scenes are "really impossible."

For example, Cracks happened to the nuclear reactor coolant valve that is designed to be able to tolerate magnitude 7 without tsunami damage.

A hydrogen explosion was caused in the reactor building that had the fivefold walls structure that should be farther severe than Fukushima first Nuclear Power Plant.

Korean experts said about the work, "The movie just applied the nuclear plant accident in Fukushima to Korea", "The possibility the same accident as the movie happens in Korean nuclear power generation is zero".

A home delivery specialty store has over 10 of telephones for receptionists, and provides more than 50 kinds of menus.

Yellow oil attaches to the wall of the kitchen stickily and spider nests form on the ceiling.

Some ingredients expired.

The kitchen of another home delivery specialty store is far from cleanliness. The wall surface is black and dirty, and the pans that have cooked foods are put on the floor directly.

The entrance keeps open. You cannot deny that contaminants mix with the foods".

The interviewed shops excused themselves severally. They said, "There cannot be dining rooms that don't violate rules on the hygiene." "We clean our room at any time, but cannot do it every day." "Nobody intends to clean it because our lives are difficult."

There are many home delivery specialty stores where hygiene management becomes negligent, because customers do not come to the stores directly. It is estimated that the number of the home delivery specialty stores where cooking process and sanitation cannot be confirmed is 250,000.

A bus accident on the Gyeongbu Expressway near Seoul involving eight vehicles killed two and injured 16 on Sunday.

The bus driver told police he dozed off while driving.

A bus carrying three passengers was driving on the Gyeongbu Expressway, in a middle lane of a five-lane highway on Sunday afternoon.

Black box footage from the bus obtained by police shows the bus crashing into a white car ahead of it at around 2:40 pm, and then hitting at least two more cars ahead of it before coming to a halt in the far right lane of the highway.

A total of eight vehicles were involved in the accident, which took place on a section of the highway in Wonji-dong, Seocho District, southern Seoul.

The white vehicle was crushed by the bus and its two occupants, a couple aged 58 and 56, died on the spot.

The 16 injured are being treated at a hospital.

The bus driver, a 51-year-old surnamed Kim, told police he had dozed off. “There are no skid marks on the road, which rules out the possibility that the accident happened because the bus skidded in the rain.”

Authorities are inspecting black box footage from the bus and other vehicles to determine the exact cause of the accident.

It is the same as the sightseeing bus accident at Bongpyeong tunnel in the Yeongdong Expressway, that caused 42 casualties in last July.

Four people died by dozing driving of the express bus at Dunnae tunnel in Yeongdong Expressway in this May.

Two cases were caused by the drivers' dozing.

Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) that ran Korean railroad remodeled the top train into the public train in order to increase the seats of rapid transit railway KTX. But it ignored the security rule and the procedure.

On July 6, 2017, the Korean Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport (MOLIT) clarified that it gave the termination order for KORAIL, saying that a safety rule was not observed in the process of the remodeling old-model KTX by KORAIL.

A person concerned with MOLIT said, "KORAIL remodeled the seats that could have influences on the security of the train without the approval of the MOLIT".

About this illegal remodeling, the experts said, "KTX is designed generally considering loads accompanied with the seats. So if loads change by halfway remodeling, safety may decrease" or "We cannot understand that a public enterprise illegally remodeled KTX where several hundred people get on".

Similar points

1. Same uniformed high school girls stand in a classroom or on the roof of the school, and dance there with the same choreography in a group.
2. Water gushes out of the roof.
3. General design.
4. High school girls' position.
5. They do the dance of the same choreography in a group and sing a dream and hope.
6. General atmosphere and camera angle.
7. Music.

CF of the Japanese famous drinking water	School song of "Idol school" (Korea・Mnet )

Mnet side said as always that this was not plagiarism.

On June 7, Chung Sye-kyun, chairperson of the Korean Diet visited Japan and talked together with Tadamori Oshima, Speaker of the House of Representatives on 8th. Chung demanded Japanese tourists visit to 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang and said, "If there are a few Japanese tourists then, I will let no Korean go to the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020 ".

He pointed out that Korean economic conditions were not good and he requested, "Because Japan has good economy, Japan should simplify a visa for Korean and recruit Korean youth in Japanese companies".

According to the person concerned with Ministry of Foreign Affairs, afterwards Chung did the demand against the Japanese side beforehand. It was far from international common sense.

The Japan side prepared two chairs of the same type for Chung, because his side requested "We hope that Korean chairperson's chair is same as that of Japanese prime minister".

The person concerned with Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, "Korean embassy also phoned undersecretary Shinsuke Sugiyama and requested that. It was incomprehensible."

President Trump doesn’t like the Korean media either after they piled into the Oval Office on Friday during his sitdown with South Korean President Moon Jae-in and crashed into a couch, damaged a table and nearly knocked over a lamp.

The White House press pool, including a large contingent of Korean media, was larger than usual, and the Secret Service even had to ask the Koreans to stop running as they entered the room.

But there was a lot of jostling as the Korean journalists, unfamiliar with the Oval Office, worked their way around the two chairs where the presidents were seated to find a good spot to set up.

A sofa got bumped and was moved and a lamp on a nearby table was almost knocked over before White House aide Keith Schiller caught it before it fell.

“You are getting worse,” an annoyed-looking Trump said to the room of reporters. “You knocked over a table.”

But then he turned to his South Korean counterpart and said, “It’s actually a very friendly press, don’t let them get you, although we just lost a table.”

The U. S. Embassy in Seoul lodged a protest with the South Korean government over a rally demanding the withdrawal of a U. S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery here, according to diplomatic sources, Wednesday.

In a letter sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the U. S. Embassy claimed that allowing the anti-THAAD protesters to surround the embassy building in downtown Seoul was "problematic."

The embassy cited the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which specifies a host country's obligation to protect the premises of diplomatic missions.

Over 2,000 protesters from 90 civic and labor groups jointly held a rally against THAAD, Saturday. They surrounded the embassy in a circle for about 19 minutes while the police maintained a minimum level of security.

This was the first major anti-U. S. rally since Moon Jae-in took office in May.

According to Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan (MAFF), 90% or more of the strawberry cultivation area in Korea cultivates strawberry developed based on Japanese kinds.

"Tochiotome" that Tochigi prefecture developed and "Red pearl", "Akihime", etc that Japanese farmers developed were took out into Korea without any permission, and Korea crossbred them and developed the kinds called the "Solhyang", "Mehyang" and "Kumhyang". Their export to each Asian country is prosperous, too and exceeds Japanese kinds.

MAFF thinks that if Japanese kinds had not flowed out into Korea, Korean kinds would not have been developed and exported.

MAFF calculated the amount of loss, assuming that strawberry that Japan should be able to export was replaced by products in Korea.

It estimated the amount of loss of Japan for five years was up to 22 billion yen. The Japanese export of strawberry was 1,100 million yen last year. It is 5,500 million yen in five years. So the amount of loss is approximately 4 times of that.

If Japanese farmers had been able to register the kinds, they would have got 1,600 million yen a year as royalty. Korea has the variety registration system, but the strawberry was out of registration until 2012, and so Japanese side was not able to register the kinds before the outflow.

Because Japanese farmers could not register the kinds, they could not demand suspension of the cultivation and the disposal of Korean products.

Tochiotome	Red pearl	Akihime	⇒	Solhyang	Mehyang	Kumhyang
			⇒	crossbreeding of Red pearl & Akihime	crossbreeding of Akihime & Tochinomine (parent of Tochiotome)	crossbreeding of Tochiotome & Akihime

On May 19, 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping had a talk with Lee Hae-chan who visited China as a special envoy of Korean President Moon Jae-in. But China was impolite to the envoy in the layout of the seats.

China took the formality such as the business meeting that Xi Jinping led the meeting. China did not take an equal position.

Tongyeong city in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea had set up the solar street lights on the road where it was difficult to pull electricity since last year. However, the people who stole the batteries of the solar street lights appeared one after another, and the business was called off.

The solar street lights are installed in the road along the shore in Tongyeong, but many batteries are pulled by someone.

It is dangerous because it is dark and quiet at night and it is difficult to pull electricity. So the solar street lights were installed. However, it cannot play role because of damages by thefts. It is considered that the stolen batteries are used for illumination when they do fishing in the night.

KimJinho, the staff of construction administration in Tongyeong explained, "We have some limit to maintain, repair and manage them. What we can do is only to pray for the conscience of people who used them.

Tongyeong had advanced the plan to expand the setting range of the solar street lights, but decided to stop it because of a series of damages by thefts.