Headlines, September 2, 2019

This is EXTRA to today’s Headlines.

Attached hereunder are our text of the Plaque of Citation and samples of the Plaque which the Mayor of the Pyongchang Country and the Publisher-Chairman of The Korea Post media jointly present to the participating Excellencies in the Buckwheat Blossom Festival in Pyeongchang on September 9, 2019.

We would appreciate Your Excellency's examination of the content and selection of one of the Plaques of Citation presented hereunder:

Plaque of Citation

H.E. Wylbur Chisiya Simuusa

Ambassador of the Republic of Zambia

Seoul, the Republic of Korea

This Citation is presented to the Honoree above mentioned in recognition of the unreserved interest and effort made in the promotion of relations, friendship and cooperation between Korea and the country represented by the recipient by attending the 2019 Pyeongchang Buckwheat Festival on September 9, 2019.

Attendance at the Festival by the Honoree will greatly contribute to the enhancement of the understanding of the Korean literature and culture by the countries diplomatically represented in Korea.

Monday September 9, 2019

Mr. Wang-ki Han

The Honorable Mayor _________________

The Pyeongchang County, Gangwon Province

Mr. Lee Kyung-sik

Publisher-Chairman ___________________

The Korea Post media

Very Respetfully Yours

Monday, September 2, 2019

Round-up of important news from major Korean dailies and from international media today

The Korea Post media (www.koreapost.com) in English, (www.koreapost.co.kr) in Korean.

S. Korea, Thailand to hold summit on high-tech industry cooperation

The leaders of South Korea and Thailand will hold summit talks in Bangkok on Monday primarily on working together in response to the fourth industrial revolution. President Moon Jae-in arrived in Bangkok a day earlier, becoming South Korea's first leader to visit the Southeast Asian nation in seven years. He will first attend a welcoming ceremony, hosted by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, to take place at the Government House of Thailand, also known as Thai Ku Fa. They are scheduled to have a summit with a focus on ways to expand and strengthen bilateral partnerships.

Banks' Q2 capital ratio falls on tighter rules

Banks in South Korea saw their financial health deteriorate slightly in the second quarter of this year as tighter credit-risk rules prompted them to set aside more capital for derivatives, data showed Monday. Under the Basel Committee's so-called standardized approach for measuring counterparty credit risk, banks in South Korea are required to tighten their measures for calculating derivatives exposures and set aside more capital against them. The average capital adequacy ratio of 19 commercial and state-run banks stood at 15.34 percent as of the end of June, down 0.07 percentage point from the previous quarter, according to the data from the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS).

S. Korea to remove Japan's trusted trade partner status in Sept.

South Korea is expected to put into effect its decision to drop Japan from a list of trusted trading partners later this month, Seoul's trade ministry said Sunday, amid a growing trade row between the two Asian neighbors. Early this month, the Seoul government decided to revamp the categorization of its trading partners into three groups from the current two, placing Tokyo in the in-between group, in a tit-for-tat measure against Japan's decision to delist South Korea as a preferred trade partner.

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KBS (http://world.kbs.co.kr/english/news/)

Moon to Hold Summit with Thai Prime Minister Monday

President Moon Jae-in arrived in Bangkok Sunday afternoon, kicking off a weeklong tour to Thailand, Myanmar and Laos. Moon will hold summit talks with Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha on Monday to discuss bilateral cooperation in high-tech industries. The two will also attend a ceremony and sign memorandums of understanding and agreements before issuing a joint statement. The president will also meet with Thai veterans who fought alongside South Koreans during the Korean War and express gratitude for their devotion and sacrifice.

Moon Says Justice Minister Nominee Controversy Calls for Review of College Entrance System

President Moon Jae-in on Sunday ordered a review of the country's college entrance system amid allegations that the daughter of his justice minister nominee may have inflated her credentials when applying for universities. Shortly before departing for a three-nation tour to Southeast Asia, Moon reportedly acknowledged to senior ruling bloc officials that there is controversy surrounding the family of nominee Cho Kuk. He went on to say that beyond that controversy lies a requirement to re-examine the college entrance system as a whole.

DP Condemns Ultra-right Japanese Lawmaker's Call for Waging War to Regain Dokdo

South Korea's ruling Democratic Party(DP) on Sunday condemned a Japanese lawmaker for suggesting that war was the only way for Japan to “regain” the Dokdo islets from South Korea. In a tweet posted Saturday, Hodaka Maruyama of the fringe “The Party to Protect the People from NHK” suggested the need for Japan to bring about war to take the East Sea islets. Maruyama had earlier in May made similarly bombastic suggestions regarding some Kiril Islands that both Japan and Russia claim as their own. His comments on Dokdo came the same day as a visit to the islets by a group of South Korean lawmakers.

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Yonhap (http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr)

S. Korea to remove Japan's trusted trade partner status in Sept.

S. Korea, Thailand to hold summit on high-tech industry cooperation

Banks' Q2 capital ratio falls on tighter rules

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The Korea Herald (http://www.koreaherald.com)

Blame game between US, Korea adds to nuke talks uncertainty

The US and North Korea still hope to take steps toward resuming their stalled denuclearization talks but their critical rhetoric reveals distrust and difficulties in arranging a working-level meeting. On Saturday, North Korean First Vice Foreign Minister Choe Son-hui, one of Pyongyang’s top officials leading the denuclearization negotiations with the US, said that Pyongyang’s hopes for nuclear talks with Washington are fading. She pointed to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent comments depicting the country’s rocket launches as “rogue.”

Removal of Japan from whitelist to take effect this month

South Korea is on track toward excluding Japan from its export control whitelist this month, in a tit-for-tat response to Tokyo’s earlier decision to remove Seoul from its list of preferred trading partners. According to the Industry Ministry on Sunday, the government is set to complete its public opinion-gathering process Tuesday, a necessary step before it can make a public announcement and implement the change to the nation’s export control system. On Aug. 12, the Industry Ministry announced that Korea would drop Japan as a preferred trading partner in September in response to Tokyo’s earlier decision to exclude Seoul from its whitelist.

'S. Korean authorities uncooperative in probe into defection of NK waitresses'

The mass defection by North Korean restaurant workers in 2016 may have been orchestrated by South Korean authorities for political reasons, according to two lawyers from an international fact-finding committee. Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific Secretary-General Jun Sasamoto and Vice President Niloufer Bhagwat spoke to The Korea Herald on Friday morning in Myeong-dong, Seoul, before departing for Beijing on Saturday en route to Pyongyang. Sasamoto and Bhagwat were in Seoul from Sunday to Friday on a fact-finding mission to investigate allegations of state-orchestrated human rights violations in the highly publicized North Korean defection case from three years ago.

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The Korea Times (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr)

'Japan should swiftly restore ties with S. Korea'

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should restore relations with South Korea immediately in order to tackle his priority issues such as the repatriation of Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea and establishing diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Pyongyang, according to former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. "Japanese PM Shinzo Abe cannot resolve the issue of Japanese abductees by North Korean spies and establish diplomatic relations with North Korea," unless he improves the Seoul-Tokyo relationship, Hatoyama, who served in the post between 2009 and 2010, said during an exclusive interview with The Korea Times. He was visiting Seoul to participate in the DMZ International Forum on the Peace Economy where he gave a speech about Seoul-Tokyo relations.

Seoul set to remove Japan from 'whitelist' this month

Korea will drop Japan from its "whitelist" of trusted trade partners by the end of this month in the latest move to counter Tokyo's export restrictions on high-tech materials and removal of Korea from Japan's own whitelist, according to the trade ministry, Sunday. The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy said it would put into effect the revision to its export control scheme for strategic items this month. The revised scheme contains details on downgrading Japan status on Korea's 29-country whitelist. The trade ministry is gathering feedback from the public via the citizen participation legislation center until Tuesday.

'Seoul-Tokyo conflict a bane to US, boon to China'

Ongoing disputes centering on trade and security policies between South Korea and Japan, the key U.S. allies in Northeast Asia, are putting the U.S. leadership in a difficult position in its competition with China for regional hegemony, according to international relations professors who visited Seoul last week. They were attending the first World Congress of Security Studies hosted by Korea National Defense University's Research Institute for National Security Affairs which brought hundreds of scholars and students to the MND Convention run by the Ministry of National Defense in central Seoul on Aug. 26 and 27 to share diverse views on security in East Asia.

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Chosun Ilbo (http://english.chosun.com)

1 in 4 Young People Can't Afford to Save

A quarter of young people have zero savings, a poll suggests. According to the poll of 2,500 young men and women aged between 15-34 years conducted by the Korea Labor Institute last month, some 574, or 23 percent, of them are saving no money each month. This is also true for the 1,391 respondents in their 20s. Some 391, or 23 percent, said they have no savings, probably because it takes a long time for them to find jobs and many of them end up landing only jobs that earn less than W2 million a month (US$1=W1,210).

Half of High School Dropouts Are Out of Work

Some 47 percent of Koreans in their early 20s who dropped out of high school are unemployed and have not received any form of job training, a study suggests. According to the study by the National Youth Policy Institute in early this month, 28,000 out of 60,000 people between 20 and 24 who dropped out of high school are unemployed. That is more than three times the jobless rate of 14 percent among all people in that age group.Unemployment among high school dropouts between 25 and 29 also stood at 40 percent, which is twice as high as the overall jobless rate in that age group.

More Women Buy Hair-Loss Products

Women are becoming a new customer base in the market for hair-loss remedies. According to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service, women make up 45 percent of people suffering from hair loss in Korea. Women tend to worry about their hair thinning rather than receding in a male balding pattern. Products that purport to help them include helmets that emit laser into the scalp, and although they cost between W690,000 and W970,000, sales in the first half of this year increased by more than four times compared to a year ago (US$1=W1,210).

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HanKyoReh Shinmun (http://english.hani.co.kr)

Moon hopes that Kim Jong-un will attend S. Korea-ASEAN summit in Busan in November

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has voiced his hope that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will attend a commemorative summit between South Korea and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that will be held in Busan in November. Moon made the remarks in a written interview that was published in the Bangkok Post, an English-language newspaper in Thailand on Aug. 30, prior to a trip that will take him through Thailand, Myanmar, and Laos on Sept. 1-6.

Could terminating GSOMIA result in S. Korea paying US$5 billion to US for defense cost-sharing?

Following Seoul’s decision to terminate its intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, the US has repeatedly expressed its “regret” and “disappointment” over that decision. The only way to mollify the US, many figures say, is to permit a major increase in South Korea’s contribution to the cost of stationing American troops on the Korean Peninsula. After patching over their historical disputes with the comfort women agreement in 2015, South Korea and Japan concluded the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) in 2016, with enthusiastic persuasion, and arm-twisting, by the US. GSOMIA was an edifice that the US built to achieve trilateral cooperation between South Korea, the US, and Japan, with the purpose of countering China.

“Nurture the seeds of peace while healing the suffering from Vietnam War massacres”

Thanh Thao, a 73-year-old regarded as one of Vietnam’s greatest poets, had this to say on Aug. 11 about Lee Jong-hyeong, the 64-year-old president of the Jeju Writers’ Association. His remarks came during the evening of a “Jeju-Quang Ngai Poetry Recital Night” event held in the central Vietnamese city of Quang Ngai. It was a fitting appellation for Thanh, who received a “Best Writer” award from the Vietnam Writers’ Association for his 1979 poetry collection “The Footprints Passing a Meadow,” to give to another poet who won last year’s May 18 Literature Award with his own collection “Names That Have Passed Before the Flowers.”.

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The Dong-A Ilbo (http://english.donga.com/)

Combined Forces Command in Yongsan to be relocated by the end of 2021

he ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), practically the last-standing U.S. military base in Yongsan, Seoul, will be relocated to the Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek by the end of 2021. The CFC’s relocation was agreed during the bilateral defense ministers’ talks in June but its specific timing has yet to be announced.The South Korean presidential office held a meeting of the National Security Council standing meeting last month and decided to request the U.S. military for the early return of the U.S. military base in South Korea.

Hong Kong opinion leaders oppose emergency legislation

On Saturday night when pro-democracy protesters clashed with the police paralyzing traffic in Hong Kong, Johnny Lau, former Hong Kong journalist based in Beijing, said in an interview with The Dong-A Ilbo that Hong Kong government officials had complained that their opinions go unheard as Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam is doing nothing to resolve the issue. Even if there are different views within the government, officials are not being able to disclose them, he added.

Tampa Bay's Choi Ji-man hits his 30th homer in Major League

Choi Ji-man of the Tampa Bay Rays has become the fourth Korean national to hit the 30th career homer in the Major League Baseball. As the first batter in the bottom of the second inning, Choi hit a solo homer at a home game against the Cleveland Indians, which took place at Tropicana Field in Florida on Saturday. It was his 13th homer in this season.The 28-year-old hit a total of 17 homeruns from 2016 to last year. The new tally makes Choi the fourth Korean national who has achieved the 30th homer mark in the Big League after Choo Shin-soo’s 209, Kang Jung-ho’s 46, and Choi Hee-seop’s 40.

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The KyungHyang Shinmun (http://english.khan.co.kr/)

"Illegal Solicitation to Succeed Management of Samsung" 5 Billion Won Added to Bribes by Lee Jae-yong

The Supreme Court ruled that there was a scheme to have Lee Jae-yong (51), vice chairman of Samsung Electronics succeed the management of the group and that Lee made an illegal solicitation concerning his succession of management to former President Park Geun-hye (67) in the trial of Park and Lee. The court also recognized the three horses that Samsung gave to the “secret heavyweight” Choi Soon-sil (63) as bribes. On August 29, the Supreme Court overruled the lower court’s decision, which sentenced Lee to two years and six months in prison with a four year's suspension of the sentence, and returned the case back to the Seoul High Court.

President Moon, "Changing Words and Distorting History.... Japan Is Not Honest"

On August 29, the anniversary of the "day of national shame" or the beginning of Japanese occupation of Korea, President Moon Jae-in presided over an extraordinary cabinet meeting to deliberate next year's budget proposal. During the meeting, he also said, "The attitude of the Japanese government is very regrettable, but we are capable of overcoming this situation." Senior Japanese officials including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe repeatedly attacked South Korea as a country they could not trust, and the president launched a counterattack claiming that it was Japan that was not being honest.

Kim Hyun-chong, "The One Rewriting History Is Japan"

The government criticized Japan saying, "It is Japan that is rewriting history," after Japan went ahead and excluded South Korea from the list of "white countries," allowed a simpler export procedure, on August 28 as it had notified. "The ball has been tossed to Japan," the government said, adding, "We hope to see Japan grab the hand that we have extended," and once again urged Japan to resolve the disputes between the two countries in a diplomatic manner.

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Maeil Business News Korea ( http://www.pulsenews.co.kr/)

BOK holds rate steady but sees room for rate cuts amid deflationary pressure

Although the policy rate is just one cut away from an all-time low, the Korean central bank has room to aid the economy grappling with trade challenges and deflationary risks, its chief said Friday. Unlike central banks of the United States, Europe and Japan with internationally trading currencies that are capable of pushing the interest rate to zero and sub-zero territory, there is a limit on how far the Korean bank can push its rate, Lee Ju-yeol, governor of Bank of Korea (BOK), told reporters Friday after the policy meeting sat out on a rate action for August, leaving two meetings left in the year.

Japan approves first hydrogen fluoride exports to Korea since trade embargoes

Japan on Thursday has permitted shipment of hydrogen fluoride to South Korea for the first time since it put three chemicals going into wafer fabrication for chips and displays on case-by-case scrutiny if they are headed to a Korean entity from early July.An official from the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy confirmed that Tokyo gave the go-ahead to a Japanese company seeking to ship hydrogen fluoride, a type of gas used to clean chips, to Samsung Electronics. The volume reportedly would be sufficient to back chips process for one or two months, he added.

Korea’s OTC market balloons nearly 30% over the last five years

South Korea’s over-the-counter market K-OTC where unlisted company shares trade expanded by nearly 30 percent over the last five years as it proved its service as a stepping stone to mainstream bourses of Kospi and junior Kosdaq. According to the Korea Financial Investment Association on Thursday, the total market capitalization of the K-OTC reached 15.31 trillion won ($12.67 billion) as of Aug. 23, up 29.1 percent from five years ago when the market opened. The figure is 43.6 percent higher, compared to 10.66 trillion won at the end of 2016.

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