· August, 2013

Stories about South Korea from August, 2013

South Korea: 4500 Catholic Leaders Protest Against the Spy Agency Scandal

  30 August 2013

Prominent citizen journalist Media Mongu posted a Youtube video of Catholic leaders denouncing the state spy agency's interference in the presidential election. His description read ‘an unprecedented number of 4502 clergy members have gathered at Sogang University, the alma mater of the current President Park, to release a manifesto that calls on President...

South Koreans Call for Medical Checkups for Rescue Workers Dispatched to Fukushima

  29 August 2013

As it turns out radioactive water leaks at Japan's Fukushima plant are ‘much worse than‘ the authorities are willing to admit, South Koreans call on government to provide regular and thorough medical checkups for 108 Korean rescue workers dispatched to Fukushima immediately after the crisis. An online petition [ko] urging medical care for the...

Charges Dropped for South Korean Indicted for Retweeting North Korean Messages

  24 August 2013

Park Jeong-geun, a photographer/activist who was sentenced to 10 months jail term for satirically re-tweeting messages from a North Korean official account, was found not guilty [ko]. A flurry of tweets congratulating him were sent to Park's Twitter account (@seouldecadence), who tweeted after the verdict [ko] that there is a chance the prosecutor may...

Suspicions Arose Over North Korean Defector-Turned-Lawmaker

  24 August 2013

During a parliamentary hearing on the spy agency election interference scandal, Cho Myung-chul, a ruling party lawmaker famous for being the first North Korean defector to take a senior government post in South Korea, went under fire for making snide and offensive remarks discriminating against people from certain province. More criticisms mount as...

VIDEO: Protests Against South Korea's Spy Agency Held Across North America

  15 August 2013

As protests against South Korea's spy agency's involvement in election gets bigger, overseas Koreans and Americans of Korean descent have joined the movement. This photo montage on the Youtube shows small rallies held in major U.S, cities, such as Washington D.C., New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Arizona and in Canada.

South Korean Textbooks Started to Include Multicultural Families

  14 August 2013

Although South Korea is rapidly turning into a multi-ethnic society, changes in the public notion or institutional preparations still lag behind. The Grand Narrative blog posted on how one Korean elementary textbook addresses multicultural families, along with links displaying how Koreans, who have been taught in school that they are “ethnically homogeneous”, respond...