News updates..

First, I must apologize for the lack of posts. I have been dealing with personal issues lately that kept me out of the loop for the short bit. Fortunately, there has been some notable events in the last week or so that are worth looking into:

-First the labor ministry has imposed a ban on certain ceremonies that civil servants can do during their official events. Usage of folk labor songs and chants are common at these events which apparently antagonizes the government and people.

-The Korea Railway Workers' Union has voted for a strike.

-Minu, a migrant worker activist from Nepal, has officially been deported from Korea. Minu was deported for his involvement in political activities which non-citizens are restricted from doing under Korean law (though they are fairly vague on what a political activity is). I haven't paid to much attention to migrant worker issues on this blog so far but I am going to try to keep a better eye on it from now on.

-The NHRCK is requesting an investigation on the possibility of police brutality during the Ssangyong occupation.

Now, moving away from labor related news...

-We are all aware of DPRK defectors.. but have you heard of defectors from ROK to the DPRK?

-In more positive news not only has the ROK government came out of the recession, but had the highest quarterly GDP growth since 2002.

-The ROK government will restart the sending aid to DPRK after a series of backdoor talks between President Lee and DPRK officials. Does this mean President Lee is a in-closet Communist?

-There was a few elections this week for some seats in the parliament and to the surprise of a few, the GNP did not do well.

-Probably the biggest news however is that the Constitutional Court has made a ruling on the media bill reforms. While they state that the GNP acted inappropriately and violated the voting rules, they will not overturn the passing of the bills. This ruling is fairly similar to what happened during the Roh impeachment issue where the court ruled that Roh was out of line, but did not throw him out office. As I mentioned in a previous post, this should have been expected.

All around the news today..

-First up, the DPRK has officially announced Kim Jong-il as the "supreme leader" of the DPRK due to his position National Defense Commission. Kim Il Sung is currently the DPRK's eternal president just for random trivia.

-The Korea Times also has this laughably bad editorial by a guy named David Thiessen who proves that racism doesn't exist. His proof? The Bible states that we are all descendants of Adam so there is no race thus racism doesn't exist. The Korea Times generally has pretty decent and balanced editorials, what the hell happened here?

-The Hankyoreh has a short interview with Korean Democracy Government Employees’ Union (KDGEU) head about the merger with the KCTU. Unfortunately the article is really short and for some reason the article isn't sure if he is the leader if the KGEU or KDGEU.

-The Republic of Korea has a new Prime Minister now, Chung Un-chan who I talked about before. His election came with walkout of most of the opposition parties, including the conservative Liberty First Party. Chung is under fire for his switch of positions and ethics problems in his past. Some unity eh?

-A three day reunion between families separated by the South/North divide just ended.

It's official...

After months of controversy and strife, the Grand National Party (GNP) has finally rammed through the media reform bills. These bills will increase the amount of stock private groups an own from TV channels. The major fear that opposition parties and progressive groups have is that these TV stations will be bought out by the major corporations of Korea thus creating a oligarchy of television. It is safe to assume that the Cho-Joong-Dong (the three major conservative newspapers in Korea who dominate 58% of the newspaper market) will take out major stock and thus try to influence the news even further.

Though the bill passed the controversy is far from done. Representatives from the Democratic Party has threatened to resign en masse if this is pushed through and are trying to get an injunction to rule the vote illegal (It was voted on twice and you can only vote once on a bill). I do not know what exactly will happen if the Democratic Party resigned from the National Assembly or if an injunction will work. From my understanding of the Korean law system, this would go under the jurisdiction of the Korean Supreme Court.

Either way if there is one bright side to this event it is the fact that the GNP's reign of power is not going to be very long. This media reform was not exactly popular in the first place among the public, and caused Park Geun-hye (who endorsed these bills when she was GNP chairwoman) on procedural grounds (She didn't end up voting because she was blocked out). Then there is that whole media workers strike as well. The GNP, which did poorly at the last round of elections, is probably going to decline further with Park Geun-hye reaping the benefits.