President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol had an unscheduled meeting with Sung Kim, the U.S. special representative for North Korea, Tuesday, and expressed his strong determination to coordinate with the United States on North Korea's mounting threats, according to his transition team, Wednesday. Yoon had dinner with the American envoy at the residence of Vice National Assembly Speaker Rep. Chung Jin-suk in Seoul, according to the transition committee. Chung, a longtime friend of Kim, arranged the gathering that lasted more than two hours. Rep. Cho Tae-yong of the main opposition People Power Party and former Vice Foreign Minister also accompanied them.
Many of us take democracy for granted, believing it to be the natural state of man or the logical progress of all and every society and culture around the world. Such beliefs, however, do not always conform to reality.
In advance of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration, President Joe Biden lamented the challenges of political polarization for advancing his agenda. In noting the near universal Republican opposition to the majority of his agenda and the lack of a Republican platform for governing that might allow room for compromise, Biden asked rhetorically, "I wonder what would be the Republican platform right now. What do you think?"
The National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) said Wednesday that it has decided to conduct an investigation into a group assault by four middle school students of a girl originally from Mongolia. "We concluded that we need to look thoroughly into whether the school and the regional education office took proper initial measures in the case, whether the school's disciplinary process for student violence was appropriate, as well as into allegations that the police did not take proper measures during the investigation and failed to protect the victim," the commission said in a press release.
As we approach the end of the second year of the pandemic, the world faces renewed uncertainty from the Omicron variant of COVID-19. However, now that South Korea has fully vaccinated 80 percent of its population against the coronavirus there is an opportunity for it to play a larger role in ending the pandemic.