Free Republic

Pet owners around the globe are being warned that their frisky felines make also quite effective firestarters, as a new safety review revealed that cats have been responsible for more than 100 house fires in South Korea over the past three years. The Seoul Metropolitan Fire and Disaster Department reported on Thursday that they’d counted a total of 107 incidents of residential cat arson occurring between January 2019 and November 2021... Experts believe cats most likely prompted the fires to spread by switching on electric burners as they wantonly traipsed over touch-sensitive buttons on the surface of a hotplate. Left...

A restaurant that unveiled plans to offer free meals to unvaccinated customers has drawn mixed responses from online commenters in South Korea. A restaurant specializing in abalone located in western Seoul uploaded a post through its official Instagram account saying that it would provide an additional abalone for free if unvaccinated customers place take-out orders, as a way to express its sympathy and help cheer them up. In the photo of the restaurant’s entrance that was posted together with the text, there was a sign saying, “The unvaccinated are not virus carriers.” The post included hashtags such as ‘opposition to...

They have shown up whenever women rallied against sexual violence and gender biases in South Korea. Dozens of young men, mostly dressed in black, taunted the protesters, squealing and chanting, “Thud! Thud!” to imitate the noise they said the “ugly feminist pigs” made when they walked.“Out with man haters!” they shouted. “Feminism is a mental illness!”On the streets, such rallies would be easy to dismiss as the extreme rhetoric of a fringe group. But the anti-feminist sentiments are being amplified online, finding a vast audience that is increasingly imposing its agenda on South Korean society and politics.These male activists have...

Teen environmental activist Greta Thunberg sent a letter revealed on Tuesday to anti-communist Hong Kong protest leader Joshua Wong, a political prisoner under the Chinese regime, in which she expressed “love, support, and strength.” Pro-democracy activist Lee Dae-seon of South Korea shared the letter with Vice, which published it on Tuesday. In addition to wishing Wong a “Merry Christmas,” Thunberg expressed support for his cause, called him a “big hero,” and asserted, “you are never alone.”

A North Korean nan is to be executed for bringing back a copy of Netflix's Squid Game into the country. The smuggler, a student, is said to have returned from China with a digital version of the hit South Korean series stored on a hidden USB flash drive. But after selling copies to several people including fellow students he was caught out by the country's surveillance services. It is understood he will now be executed by firing squad - one of the grim methods by which characters in the series are also killed. It is believed that the arrests took...

U.S. taps 50 million barrels of oil from reserves in an attempt to tamper spiking costs at the gas pump.. resident Biden’s move to tap the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is expected to supply Chinese and Indian oil needs as gas demands have led to global shortages.. The White House said the Department of Energy will release 50 million barrels of oil held in U.S. reserves — 18 million of which have already been congressionally approved for sale. China and India have been actively purchasing U.S. sour crude oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico ... U.S.-produced sour crude oil...

A former Japanese diplomat confessed to taking part in the 1895 assassination of Korean Empress Myeongseong, according to a Korean historian who examined recently discovered letters that provide a fresh account of the brutal slaying. Also known as Queen Min, Myeongseong was the wife of Gojong, the 26th king of Joseon, a Korean dynastic kingdom, and was known as an influential figure in the palace. In one of the letters, the diplomat proclaimed, “We killed the queen,” and went on to detail the circumstances surrounding the assassination. The slaying, known as “the Eulmi Incident” in Korea, involved a group of...

WSJ reports Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is scheduled to make a major “economic announcement” on Tuesday at 5 pm local time concerning new plans for a massive semiconductor plant in Taylor, Texas. South Korean tech giant, Samsung Electronics Co., is doubling down in Texas with another facility, about 30 miles from its manufacturing hub in Austin. The new Taylor facility will cost a whopping $17 billion and create 1,800 jobs. Chip production wouldn’t start until the second half of 2024. WSJ said officials in Taylor incentivized Samsung by giving them “property-tax breaks of up to 92.5% for the first ten...

The move will be part of a coordination by the Energy Department with other major energy consuming nations including China, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom, according to the White House. The White House also said the department will make available releases of 50 million barrels of oil from the reserve in two ways: 18 million barrels will be an acceleration into the next several months of a sale of oil that Congress had previously authorized. 32 million barrels will be an exchange over the next several months, releasing oil that will eventually return to the...

SEOUL – The middle ground between China and the United States is collapsing under South Korea’s feet as it is torn in opposite directions by the two giant economies it seeks to balance between. On the one hand, it is being “requested” to submit detailed information on its flagship industrial sector to the United States – which is also pressuring the country’s number-two memory chipmaker to halt shipments of advanced machinery to China. That move could halt an upgrade to a major DRAM fab, in a sector where large-scale capital investment is crucial. On the other hand, the country’s diesel...

Kukkiwon, also known as World Taekwondo Headquarters, and home of the World Taekwondo Academy, has awarded former U.S. President Donald Trump a 9th Dan Black belt - the highest level attainable by professional martial artists. The president of Kukkiwon, Lee Dong-seop, went to visit Trump at his home in Mar-a-lago in Palm Beach, Florida this weekend to give him a taekwondo and the coveted black belt. 'I heard that the Donald Trump is highly interested in taekwondo,' Lee said....

The origins of a family of languages including modern Japanese, Korean, Turkish and Mongolian date back some 9,000 years to millet farmers that inhabited northeastern China, a study found after evaluating linguistic, genetic and archaeological evidence... Millet was an important early crop as hunter-gatherers transitioned to an agricultural lifestyle.There are 98 Transeurasian languages. Among these are Korean and Japanese as well as various Turkic languages including Turkish in parts of Europe, Anatolia, Central Asia and Siberia; various Mongolic languages including Mongolian in Central and Northeast Asia; and various Tungusic languages in Manchuria and Siberia.This language family's beginnings were traced to...

A US diplomat fled into the Yongsan Garrison after allegedly hitting a taxi from behind while driving in Seoul earlier this week and has since been refusing to cooperate with a police investigation, officials said on Thursday. The diplomat, whose identity is not known, was suspected of rear-ending the taxi's bumper while changing lanes near the Namsan No. 3 tunnel in central Seoul at 5.35 p.m. Wednesday, but left the site without stopping to deal with the accident, reports Yonhap News Agency. The taxi's driver chased the diplomat's car to Yongsan Garrison Gate 3. Police also arrived at the gate...

In the last few years alone, South Korea shocked the world with “Parasite,” the first foreign language film to win best picture at the Academy Awards. It has one of the biggest, if not the biggest, band in the world with BTS. Netflix has introduced 80 Korean movies and TV shows in the last few years, far more than it had imagined when it started its service in South Korea in 2016, according to the company. Three of the 10 most popular TV shows on Netflix as of Monday were South Korean. South Korea has long chafed at its lack...

For Netflix, Squid Game, which cost just US$21.4 million (S$29 million) to produce, has given it a subscriber boom, pushed up its share price and is set to create an outsized windfall of almost US$900 million. Media watchers said the global hit marked the latest, if not the biggest pop culture export so far from South Korea, whose TV shows, films and pop music have been making waves beyond the country for at least two decades. Notable K-drama hits over the years include Winter Sonata in the early 2000s...Idol groups like Girls’ Generation began breaking out of Asia by the...

British media reported that China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile in August, and its performance caught U.S. intelligence services by surprise. However, a military expert raises questions on the authenticity of the sources.The Financial Times, a British media, on Oct. 17 exclusively cited five anonymous sources as saying that the Chinese Communist military launched a rocket carrying a hypersonic glide vehicle that flew in low orbital space and then cruised to its target. “The test showed that China had made astounding progress on hypersonic weapons and was far more advanced than U.S. officials realized.”Xia Luoshan, a military commentator and host...

SEOUL Oct. 19 (Yonhap) North Korea fired an unidentified projectile toward the East Sea on Tuesday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said , in a move that may dampen Seoul's push to resume dialogue. The details on the launch were not immediately available...

With just seven months left before he steps down as president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in and his government remain committed to their long-held dream of reuniting the two halves of the Korean Peninsula into a single nation. And, with Germany as one of the very few countries with recent experience of a similar amalgamation of two states, Unification Minister Lee In-young is traveling to Europe to discuss what can be learned from the events leading up to German reunification in 1990 and subsequent developments. Analysts suggest Moon and Lee have been “frustrated” by the failure to advance their agenda...

I look for you in the garden, But its your soul I seek, To find my heart inside yours hidden safe and deep, So warm, pure and true of virtue and fire, Rising up in you with love for others to inspire, A giving out of heart, An eternal spark, An ember of my love, Warming my beloved, So take the warmth I give, To others so they can live, With me inside as you, This is what I desire you to do, Be the bearer of my love, My pure and holy dove,

On this date in 1950, an unfortunate military engineer was shot by the South Korean government for trying to obey his orders. As North Korea overran South Korea in the opening months of the Korean War, it put the government in Seoul to flight. A predictably chaotic situation attended South Korea’s evacuation of its capital in the summer of 1950, with Korean and American agents frantically destroying anything of potential value to the invading army. Among the things mooted for destruction were the bridges crossing the Han River south of Seoul, and in the confusion of the evacuation, some bridges...