Tag: Koreas

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North Korea’s meals state of affairs is ‘tense,’ Kim Jong Un says

North Korea's food situation is 'tense,' Kim Jong Un says

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un speaks in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 7, 2021, about the first short course for chief secretaries of city and county party committees in Pyongyang, North Korea.

KCNA | via Reuters

North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong Un has reportedly admitted that the food situation in the secret country is worrying amid reports of food shortages and inflated staple prices.

North Korea’s authoritarian leader said the food situation is now “strained” after the country’s agricultural sector “failed to meet its grain production schedule due to typhoon damage last year,” state media reported in Pyongyang.

Speaking at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim said, “Having a good harvest is a militant task that our party and our state must fulfill as the top priority in order to enable people to live stable lives and to successfully advance in building socialist construction “reported the Pyongyang Times.

Comments at the plenary session, which began on Tuesday and lasts all week, mark a rare admission of problems with the communist regime, which traditionally does not publicly admit problems in the country.

In North Korea there are no independent media in which state media serve as the mouthpiece of the regime. Instead, the media extol the virtues and wisdom of Kim Jong Un, the “Supreme Leader” and the Kim Dynasty. All comments from Kim are carefully recorded and reported.

Kim’s comments come amid reports of rising food and staple food prices in North Korea amid the crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and typhoon in 2020. NK News (an independent North Korean news service not based in the country) has reported the price hike, with a source in the country reporting examples of shampoos for $ 200 a bottle and a kilogram of bananas for $ 45 a bottle.

North Korea has few allies in the world and has relied on China (its largest trading partner) for much of its imports, but the closing of its border with China during the pandemic has resulted in food and fuel shortages. North Korea’s agricultural sector has always been vulnerable to the typhoon season in the region and has experienced regular flooding in recent years.

Kim chaired the Labor Party’s plenary session this week, alluding to the economic troubles but insisting that things get better.

Kim said that “the conditions and environment for the revolutionary struggle have deteriorated since the beginning of this year, but the country’s economy as a whole has improved,” the state-run Pyongyang Times reported.

Kim put items on the Central Committee’s agenda, saying “to direct all efforts this year towards agriculture” and to deal with the “protracted nature” of the pandemic, to analyze the “current international situation” and “the issue of stabilization and improving people’s living standards ”. “And the party’s childcare policy is a top priority, state media said.

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World News

Biden Invitations South Korea’s President to White Home in Could

Biden Invites South Korea’s President to White House in May

President Biden will meet with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea in Washington on May 21, the White House said Thursday.

“President Moon’s visit will highlight the iron alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea and the broad and deep relationships between our governments, people and economies,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “President Biden looks forward to working with President Moon to further strengthen our alliance and expand our close working relationship.”

In an interview with the New York Times published last week, Mr. Moon urged Mr. Biden to sit down with North Korea and start negotiations.

Mr Biden’s predecessor, Donald J. Trump, left office without removing a single North Korean nuclear warhead. Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, has resumed weapons testing.

“He hit the bushes and didn’t manage to pull it off,” said Mr. Moon of Mr. Trump’s efforts on North Korea. “The most important starting point for both governments is to have the will to dialogue and to meet face to face early on.”

He also urged the United States to work with China on North Korea and other global issues like climate change. A deterioration in relations between the two countries could jeopardize the denuclearization negotiations, he warned.

Mr Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the White House on April 16 to celebrate the first in-person visit by a foreign leader during his presidency.

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North Korea’s Message to Biden: ‘Chorus From Inflicting a Stink’

North Korea’s Message to Biden: ‘Refrain From Causing a Stink’

SEOUL – North Korea issued its first warning shot against the Biden government on Tuesday, denouncing Washington for conducting joint military exercises with South Korea and for causing “a stink” on the Korean peninsula.

North Korea released its statement hours before Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III began meeting officials in Japan ahead of a trip to South Korea later this week. The visits were intended to strengthen alliances in the region, where the threat of North Korean nuclear weapons and the growing influence of China were seen as major foreign policy challenges.

The statement was the first official comment on the North Korean Biden government.

“We are taking this opportunity to warn the new US administration that is trying hard to give off a powdery smell in our country,” said Kim Yo-jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a statement from the North Korean state Media on Tuesday. “If it wants to sleep in peace for the next four years, it should be better not to cause a smell the first step.”

Ms. Kim’s statement was the first indication that North Korea has plans to sway the new administration’s policies by increasing the prospect of renewed tension on the peninsula, analysts said.

“Kim Yo-jong’s statement was a press release to the United States and South Korea,” said Yang Moo-jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. “As senior officials meet in Seoul this week to discuss their North Korea policy, the North warns them to choose wisely between dialogue and confrontation.”

Ms. Kim, who serves as her brother’s spokesperson on North Korea’s relations with Seoul and Washington, devoted most of her statement to criticizing Seoul for pushing ahead with the month’s annual military exercises with the United States, despite her brother’s warnings.

Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin were due to fly to South Korea on Wednesday to meet with President Moon Jae-in and other senior South Korean leaders. Dealing with North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats is high on the agenda. During a meeting with officials in Tokyo, Blinken said the United States would work with allies to achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and that “one element of that is the denuclearization of North Korea.”

The Biden administration has announced that it will undertake a comprehensive review of American policy towards North Korea. Since the collapse of talks with former President Donald J. Trump in 2019, Mr Kim has said there is no point in continuing negotiations unless Washington first offered terms his country could accept. This includes the lifting of sanctions and the ending of US military exercises in the Korean peninsula in exchange for steps towards denuclearization.

The Biden government has tried to reach North Korea through multiple channels for the past few weeks, but Pyongyang has not responded, according to the White House. Analysts said the silence was part of the north’s printing tactics.

“The allies have little time to coordinate their approaches to deterrence, sanctions and engagement,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.

In her statement, Ms. Kim accused South Korea of ​​opting for “March War” and “March Crisis” instead of “March Warmth” by launching joint military exercises that the North has labeled as rehearsals for the invasion.

Under Mr. Trump, Washington and Seoul suspended or scaled back joint military exercises to support diplomacy with Mr. Kim. After three meetings, Mr Trump’s talks with Mr Kim collapsed with no agreement on how to end North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile capabilities.

Still, the United States and South Korea have significantly reduced the scope of this year’s spring military exercise and run it as a computer simulation with little troop movement. South Korea said the exercise had been minimized this year due to the pandemic and a desire to keep the diplomatic dynamic with North Korea alive. She urged the North to become “more flexible” and not create tension, as has often happened in response to the annual exercises.

On Tuesday, Ms. Kim called South Korea’s diplomatic aspirations “ridiculous, cheeky and stupid”. She warned that North-South Korean relations would continue to deteriorate as Seoul crossed a “red line”.

“War exercises and hostilities can never go hand in hand with dialogue and cooperation,” she said. “They will bring a biting wind in the spring days of March that is not expected by everyone.”

She did not elaborate on what the “biting wind” would mean. However, she indicated that North Korea could potentially abolish its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country, saying that the ruling Labor Party organization, which focuses on dialogue with the South, “has no reason to exist”. She also warned that North Korea might consider denouncing a joint North-South Korean military agreement that Mr. Kim and Mr. Moon signed in 2018 during a short-lived rapprochement.

North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office last year, ending the entire official dialogue with Seoul. Speaking at the Congress in January, Mr. Kim warned that the return of inter-Korean relations to a “point of peace and prosperity” would depend on South Korea’s conduct. North Korea has accused Seoul of failing to convince the United States to make concessions for Pyongyang or to improve inter-Korean economic relations, regardless of Washington’s wishes.

After his meetings with Mr. Trump failed to lift the sanctions, Mr. Kim vowed to continue advancing his country’s nuclear capabilities. At the convention, he said North Korea would build new solid fuel ICBMs and make its nuclear warheads lighter and more precise.

Analysts have been watching North Korea closely for the past week to see if it would provoke Washington by conducting missile or other weapons tests before Mr Blinken and Mr Austin arrive in Asia.

So far this has not happened.

“Kim Jong-un’s top priority right now is home. It is focused on business and improving people’s lives,” said Yang, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.

The North Korean economy was devastated by the pandemic. And Mr Kim, who has admitted his economic policy has failed, said he had focused on building a “self-contained” economy in the face of international sanctions.

But even if North Korea didn’t greet Mr. Blinken and Mr. Austin with a missile test, Ms. Kim’s testimony signaled that the country expects the Biden administration to act lightly. North Korea is likely to build up tensions soon for leverage, said Shin Beom-chul, an analyst at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy in Seoul.

“They will launch short-range conventional missiles first and will likely consider launching an ICBM,” Shin said. “You are pressuring the Biden administration to make concessions while it reviews US policy towards North Korea.”

Lara Jakes contributed to coverage from Tokyo.

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Business

Coupang, South Korea’s Reply to Amazon, Debuts in I.P.O.

Coupang, South Korea's Answer to Amazon, Debuts in I.P.O.

SEOUL, South Korea – The little white vans drive through the streets of South Korea. The uniformed workers send photos of safely delivered packages to impatient customers. Workers can move as fast as the employer promises that the service is called “missile delivery”.

The trucks and operations are owned by Coupang, a start-up founded by a Harvard Business School dropout that rocked shopping in South Korea, an industry long dominated by giant button-down conglomerates. In a country where people are obsessed with “ppalli ppalli” or get things done quickly, Coupang has become a household name by offering next day and even same day and dawn grocery delivery and millions of other items without Surcharge.

The company, sometimes referred to as the Amazon of South Korea, received huge support from Wall Street on Thursday. The company’s shares rose 41 percent from a market price of $ 35 to $ 49.25. The IPO raised $ 4.6 billion and valued the company at around $ 85 billion. This is the second largest American balance sheet for an Asian company after the Alibaba Group of China in 2014.

Coupang may need the money. South Korea’s large conglomerates called Chaebol and others are building their own delivery networks as Coupang plans to expand. There are other issues as well, such as growing concerns about working conditions following the deaths of several warehouse and delivery workers in Coupang, who blamed some relatives and labor activists for overwork and poor work practices.

Coupang is currently South Korea’s largest e-commerce retailer. Its status is further cemented by people stuck at home during the pandemic and people in the country craving for faster delivery.

“I’m not going to go so far as to say that I can’t live without Coupang because there are so many other online shopping opportunities here that are fiercely competitive, and some of them can be as fast as Coupang or cheaper.” said Kim Su-kyeong, a coupang buyer and mother in Seoul. “But Coupang has branded itself so well that the name comes to mind when I think of shopping online.”

Bom Suk Kim, who founded Coupang in 2010, likes to say: “Our mission is to create a world in which customers ask themselves: How have I ever lived without Coupang?”

Kim, 42, ran an unofficial and short-lived Harvard alumni magazine in the United States before returning to his native land to revolutionize the e-commerce industry. Coupang’s rapid growth was driven by a combination of daring entrepreneurship and branding. This includes spending a lot on infrastructure to limit the inconvenience typically associated with online ordering and returns such as cardboard boxes. Rocket Wow Membership Program customers can return a Coupang product by leaving it outside the door with no box or return label.

“It’s not just free – it’s a stress-free experience,” said Mr Kim in an interview on Thursday. “We really tried to get to the extremes that have a really high bar, not to do something incrementally different, but to think about how we can just change the actual framework – the framework.”

The company’s name is a mixture of the English word “coupon” and “pang”, the Korean sound for the jackpot. In an industry where most delivery drivers drive around in nondescript trucks with drab jackets, Coupang’s fleet of full-time drivers – known as Coupang Men but recently renamed Coupang Friends – wear bright uniforms and drive around in branded vehicles exhibited by companies.

“Coupang has grown rapidly by meeting two key customer needs: affordable pricing and fast delivery,” said Ju Yoon-hwang, professor of sales management at Jangan University. “Coupang also offers more goods than its competitors, so consumers believe they can find everything on Coupang.”

Few startups – like Naver, South Korea’s dominant web portal and search engine, and Kakao, the leading messaging app and online bank – have been as successful as Coupang. But Naver and Cocoa are both listed in South Korea. Mr Kim brought Coupang to Wall Street to attract larger investors and a higher valuation that would allow his company to outperform its home rivals.

South Korea is one of the fastest growing e-commerce markets in the world and is expected to be the third largest in the world this year, after only China and the US. According to a market research firm Euromonitor International, the volume, which was valued at $ 128 billion last year, is projected to reach $ 206 billion by 2024.

And it’s great for e-commerce. Around 52 million people live in rural areas, the vast majority of them in densely populated cities. Almost every home has high-speed internet, and people pay taxes and gas bills with smartphones.

South Korea had a vibrant delivery culture long before the arrival of e-commerce. Families called to have their food delivered around the clock. Dry cleaning workers climbed stairs in residential buildings to deliver freshly pressed clothing. Motorcycle couriers brought documents, flowers and so on from one district to another.

Coupang’s first competitors were eBay-style marketplaces where customers found sellers. The deliveries were made by logistics companies that had contracts with independent couriers. Deliveries can take several days.

When Coupang started its “rocket delivery service” in 2014, it sparked a price and delivery war. Since then, the company has built up its own network of logistics centers. According to the company, 70 percent of the population live within seven miles of a Coupang logistics center. The company uses machine learning to predict demand and store goods in warehouses. It also operates its own fleet of 15,000 full-time Coupang Friend couriers.

In 2020, the company doubled its workforce to 50,000, making it South Korea’s third largest employer in the private sector. 50,000 more jobs are to be created by 2025.

Analysts said Coupang borrowed from Amazon’s Playbook in trying to become a dominant market power before turning a profit. The company’s revenue nearly doubled to $ 12 billion last year. However, the huge investments in the logistics network made possible by funding from foreign investors such as the Japanese SoftBank and the Vision Fund have continued to be in the red. Annual net loss rose to $ 1 billion in 2018, before decreasing to $ 475 million last year.

“The picture is pretty clear about the strength of the business,” said Mr. Kim. Although the company has not given a timeline for when it could turn a profit, he said Coupang will “continue to be able to finance itself” and “be aggressive about reinvestments”.

Coupang Eats, a food delivery service, and Coupang Play, a video streaming app, were recently launched. However, unlike Amazon, Coupang doesn’t have other companies like cloud computing that can easily generate the money needed for big expansions. And rivals are tough.

Some of the chaebol, the family-run conglomerates that dominate the economy, are expanding their e-commerce businesses, particularly Lotte and Shinsegae, which run the largest department store and mall chains in the country. So does Naver, who is already an e-commerce giant.

As competition intensifies, super-fast delivery is quickly becoming the new norm, which weakens the novelty of the Coupang missile delivery service.

Coupang has also undergone a review of its labor practices. Former coupang workers and labor activists accuse the company of exploiting its warehouse workers in a frenzied rush to process orders as quickly as possible.

As the number of workers doubled, the number of people suffering from work-related injuries or illnesses in Coupang and its camps rose from 515 in 2019 to 982 in 2020, according to government figures.

“Coupang is an inhumane company that treats its workers like slaves or machine parts and squeezes them to the last drop,” said Park Mi-sook, whose son Jang Deok-joon died of a heart attack shortly after returning in October from a night shift in a coupang warehouse. His death was deemed a work-related incident and Coupang has since apologized.

Coupang has denied mistreating its workers. In the past year alone, the company invested $ 443 million in automating its warehouse and increased the number of warehouse workers by 78 percent to 28,400 to make employees more efficient and reduce workload.

“What made Coupang’s missile delivery possible was its massive employment and investment,” the company said in a statement.

And it’s still an indispensable service for busy South Koreans.

In a letter to prospective investors, Mr. Kim shared an example of a typical Coupang shopper: a working mom who realizes late at night that she forgot to go shopping and then places an order online through Coupang.

“When she opens her eyes, it’s like Christmas morning,” wrote Mr. Kim. “The order is waiting at your doorstep.”

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He Calls Himself ‘North Korea’s Poet Laureate.’ Two Girls Name Him a Rapist.

He Calls Himself ‘North Korea’s Poet Laureate.’ Two Women Call Him a Rapist.

SEOUL, South Korea – He has taught at European universities and has appeared on the cover of a UK magazine. His book has been translated into a dozen languages. He was once a guest on CNN.

Jang Jin-sung is one of the most internationally recognized defectors from North Korea. His 2014 memoir, “Dear Leader,” delighted readers with first-hand statements about a private party held by former North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and claims of what it was like to be one of the few “Poet Prize Winners” chosen to write propaganda about the Kim family.

But two women say his heroic escape story from the authoritarian country has hidden a secret. Both of them accused Mr. Jang of raping her in South Korea after he defected and they said he used his celebrity status to pursue them.

A woman, a North Korean defector, has filed a lawsuit accusing both Mr. Jang and one of his associates of rape and other sex crimes. The other woman made allegations in interviews with the New York Times and other media outlets in South Korea this week. She did not file a formal complaint with the police against Mr. Jang, saying her main intention was to show solidarity with the other woman.

Jang, 49, denied the allegations, saying he never raped the North Korean defector and that his relationship with the second wife was consensual. The employee has also denied the allegations and countered the North Korean woman for defamation. Mr. Jang has threatened to counter her as well and has already sued the television company that first reported her allegations against him.

This case is now being tried in court. The two lawsuits filed by the North Korean woman will be investigated by the police, who will then decide on the prosecution. The authorities are also examining the counterclaim by Mr. Jang’s employee.

A number of prominent South Korean men have been convicted of sexual assault in recent years when the country’s #MeToo movement took root. It has helped uncover what experts consider to be ubiquitous sexual exploitation across the country. The dangers can be particularly pronounced among North Korean women, who may have little recourse due to their deserter circumstances.

In 2016, Mr. Jang ran a website in South Korea called New Focus International that specialized in North Korean news. That year he suggested an interview with Sung Sel-hyang, a little-known defector from North Korea who ran an online children’s clothing store while studying in Seoul.

Ms. Sung said she was both surprised and grateful for the attention. But she said she never was featured on Mr. Jang’s website.

Instead, Ms. Sung alleged in a lawsuit that when she first met Mr. Jang in 2016, he made her drunk and asked his South Korean co-worker to take her home. Ms. Sung claims that the man took her to his own home and raped her.

In a separate lawsuit, Ms. Sung said that Mr. Jang raped her in a hotel room in Seoul a month later. According to the legal records, when she tried to resist, he used a photo of her naked in bed taken by Mr. Jang’s staff without her knowledge and threatened to upload the picture to her school’s website.

Ms. Sung said in the legal filing that Mr. Jang continued to use the photo as blackmail and raped her three more times over the course of several months. He also offered it to two South Korean men whose friendship or financial support he had cultivated depending on the suit.

“I was ashamed of what happened to me and I thought no one would support me,” Ms. Sung, 32, said in an interview. “He was such a powerful figure to me that I thought I had no chance of fighting him.”

She had been in touch with Mr. Jang over the years but decided to check in last month for a television appearance on the South Korean television broadcaster MBC. She then filed a lawsuit against Mr. Jang and his co-worker and asked the police to open a formal investigation.

MBC was the first to broadcast the allegations against Mr. Jang. Since then, he has posted statements on Facebook and YouTube in which he vehemently denies the allegations and “urged all North Korean defectors to report me to the police if I have sexually assaulted them.”

A native of South Korea, Kang Haeryun, 32, spoke this week and said that Mr. Jang raped her while she was working as an editor for his website in 2014.

“I tried to suppress my traumatic memories for six years, but I decided to come out and show solidarity with Sung Sel-hyang because we rape survivors have to fight together,” Ms. Kang said in an interview. .

Ms. Kang said the alleged rape took place in the home of a friend of Mr. Kang’s on November 18, 2014, about two years before the #MeToo movement began in South Korea. She confided in two friends what happened shortly after, she said. The two friends confirmed in interviews with The Times that she did.

“She said he had come across her and she said ‘no’ but he kept walking,” said Hahna Yoon, one of the friends. “I said this is rape. Another friend, Kim Hyeon-kyeong, said that Ms. Kang told her that Mr. Jang sexually assaulted her and that it made her leave her job.

Ms. Kang said it took her years to realize she was a victim and that she never went to the police because she initially felt powerless in the face of Mr. Jang’s fame and later became self-loathing.

Mr. Jang denied the rape of Ms. Kang and said in an interview that his relationship with her was consensual.

Although she has no intention of filing a lawsuit against Mr. Jang because of the likelihood of a protracted legal battle, Ms. Kang said she was ready to be questioned by the police as part of her investigation. Your motive for reporting in an interview is to support Ms. Sung.

While South Korean women have attempted to hold sexual predators accountable in recent years, the plight of female North Korean defectors has been less public.

Around 72 percent of the 33,700 North Korean defectors who fled to the south are women, according to the government. Many fall victim on their dangerous journey. Even after arriving in the south, they remain vulnerable to sexual violence, especially from other defectors, human rights experts said.

Defectors usually socialize in their own close community, where victims of sexual violence are pressured to remain silent, said Jeon Su-mi, an advocate for defectors who are victims of sex crimes. .

Prominent male defectors – former high-ranking officials, North Korean prison camp survivors, writers and activists among them – are having a tremendous impact on this community, Ms. Jeon said. Some use their status to sexually abuse female defectors, especially those who have just arrived.

“I saw these men groping young women defectors over dinner and dinner and later taking them to motels for a so-called ‘second round’,” she said. .

Ms. Sung said her mother died when she was five years old and that she sold hats in the market until she and her grandmother fled North Korea in 2006. Her dream of starting a new life in the south has become a nightmare meeting with Mr. Jang. She said she burned herself with cigarettes out of desperation.

But Ms. Sung also said that a businessman Mr. Jang introduced to her last fall had become one of her biggest supporters, that the two fell in love, and that he encouraged her decision to come forward.

Mr. Jang accused the man of manipulating Ms. Sung into making false statements, called himself a “matchmaker” and said the allegations against him were “a scam”.

“She asked me to introduce her to a rich South Korean man,” he said, referring to Ms. Sung. “I’m not a sex criminal.”

Mr. Jang is best known in South Korea for his heartbreaking poem, “I’m Selling My Daughter for 100 Won,” about a North Korean mother trying to find a new family for her daughter before she dies of cancer.

Although Mr. Jang is one of North Korea’s most famous defectors, there has been relatively little public scrutiny in his biography. In the English version of “Dear Leader”, for example, Mr. Jang describes himself as a North Korean “Poet Laureate”, but other defectors have for years privately doubted that he ever held such a title.

This week, Mr. Jang admitted that he had never been a North Korean poet award winner, but that his poems had been praised by Kim Jong-il. “I never said with my own mouth that I was a North Korean poet award winner,” he said, contradicting his own memories.

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Business

Jay Y. Lee, Chief of South Korea’s Samsung Empire, Is Despatched to Jail

Jay Y. Lee, Chief of South Korea's Samsung Empire, Is Sent to Prison

SEOUL, South Korea – The Seoul Supreme Court sentenced Samsung’s top leader Lee Jae-yong to two and a half years in prison on Monday for bribing former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Mr. Lee’s case can still go to the Supreme Court if either Mr. Lee or the prosecution wants to take it there. In South Korea, the Supreme Court can either approve a lower court ruling on a case or send it back for retrial. It cannot override the judgment of a lower court.

When Mr. Lee’s case first reached the Supreme Court in 2019, the court returned it to the Seoul Supreme Court for retrial, stating that it had the amount of bribes Mr. Lee gave to Ms. Park and her secret confidante Choi Soon- paid, underestimated. sil while Mrs. Park was in power. The amount was supposed to be 8.6 billion won ($ 7.8 million), not 3.6 billion as the lower court found.

In its ruling on Monday, the Seoul Supreme Court accepted 8.6 billion won as the correct amount as instructed by the Supreme Court. The decision to do so meant that it was far from settled, that the Supreme Court would approve the verdict should the case end there again.

Mr. Lee has already spent a year in prison after being arrested in 2017 in connection with the prosecutor’s bribery case. He is now expected to spend only a year and a half in prison, which takes away the day-to-day running of one of the world’s most valuable technology giants.

After the court issued its verdict on Monday, Mr. Lee was immediately arrested in the courtroom so that he could serve his time.

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Health

‘Every Day Is Vital’: South Korea’s 11th-Hour Battle with Covid

‘Each Day Is Critical’: South Korea’s 11th-Hour Battle with Covid

SEOUL, South Korea – Intensive care beds are unavailable in several provinces in South Korea to treat the rapidly increasing number of Covid-19 patients. As of Monday, the government confirmed that only 42 beds were available nationwide. There were just six in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half the country’s population and the majority of recent infections. If you

The recent explosion of coronavirus cases in South Korea has put the country at risk in ways it has not seen since the pandemic began. When cases cannot be brought under control and the burden on hospitals continues to worsen, the government can, for the first time, impose Level 3 restrictions, which are the highest level of socially distant rules before a lockdown in South Korea.

In a country that was a role model for the rest of the world for most of the year, a silent fear has spread. The streets of Seoul are getting emptier every day. Supermarkets have reported brisk sales of instant noodles and meal sets. Restaurant owners are concerned that they will be forced to close their doors to customers who only order takeout.

And now the virus is even harder to contain.

“Unlike in the past, this time around, the virus seems to be popping up everywhere and no place is safe,” said Myeong Hae-kyung, a head nurse at Yeungnam University Medical Center in Daegu who served on the front lines when the city was the epicenter of the city first coronavirus outbreak in the country earlier this year.

“In the last few days my life has only switched between hospital and home. I’m scared of going anywhere, ”she said.

This wave focuses on hospitals in South Korea. The country’s goal is to have hospital beds available to patients within one day of being diagnosed with the disease.

However, as of Sunday, 368 patients were waiting at home in the Seoul metropolitan area to be assigned to beds. Last week, a patient died at home in Seoul while waiting for a hospital bed. Another died at home in Seoul on Sunday.

The number of intensive care patients tripled this month to 274 on Monday. At the weekend, South Korea reported more than 1,000 new Covid-19 patients for five consecutive days, a record.

“We must secure hospital beds for seriously ill patients as if we were waging a war,” Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun said on Sunday. “Every day is critical.”

The rise in infections has created a bottleneck as health officials struggle to allocate a limited number of beds to patients. The government has ordered state and private general hospitals to convert at least one percent of their licensed beds to treat critically ill Covid patients.

Updated

Dec. Dec. 22, 2020 at 5:18 am ET

Health officials expect the bottleneck to decrease significantly in the coming week as more beds become available. The success of the effort will help determine whether the government increases social distancing restrictions to level 3, below which more than 2 million additional businesses would close or dramatically curtail their operations.

“As you can see, people don’t come in,” said Lee Jeong-ae, a restaurant owner in north Seoul, as she pointed to empty tables in her restaurant. “People who suffer most from social distancing are small business owners like us.”

Ms. Lee sells fish soups, fried pork, and other Korean dishes. She recently began preparing for new restrictions by addressing bulk orders for plastic containers, as restaurants like hers are only allowed to sell take-away under Level 3 guidelines.

The Seoul metropolitan area is still below level 2.5, schools, gyms, karaoke rooms, bars and other high risk facilities are closed. Restaurants, cinemas, hairdressing salons and many other shops remain open but must close before 9 p.m.

As of Monday, South Korea has reported 698 deaths in 50,591 cases. The aggressive campaign to “test, track and treat” patients has kept death rates comparatively low. But epidemiologists have urged the government to put level 3 restrictions in place before it’s too late.

Unlike previous waves of the virus with large clusters that officials could target and track, the most recent wave has spread across numerous small clusters in nursing homes, churches, prisons, saunas, and small private gatherings, making it difficult to contain.

Dr. Eom Joong-sik, who treats Covid-19 patients at Gachon University’s Gil Hospital in Incheon, a populous port city west of Seoul, said the current problems were due to the government, despite its reputation as a leader in being the EU could not plan ahead pandemic.

“Experts had already warned that if there was a wave in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is home to half the country’s population, hospital beds could become scarce and the government would have to develop a plan for this scenario,” said Dr. Eom. “Right now, not only are we struggling to secure hospital beds in the metropolitan area, but we’re also struggling to move patients to hospitals as we see hundreds of new patients every day.”

President Moon Jae-in, proud of his administration’s strategy of keeping as much of the economy going while fighting the pandemic, was reluctant to approve Level 3. Instead, the government has stepped up its testing and isolation campaigns and gradually introduced new social distancing rules.

67,000 people were tested for the virus every day over the past week, ten times more than in October. In Seoul and the surrounding cities, the government has added 134 temporary test stations to encourage people to get free tests even when they have no symptoms, in hopes of “preventively” isolating asymptomatic cases.

As part of the government’s efforts to stop people from spreading the disease over Christmas and New Years, birthday parties and other private gatherings of five or more people will be banned in the Seoul metropolitan area from Wednesday.

An annual Christmas Eve gathering around a Christmas tree in Seoul City Hall Square has been canceled. Large churches have put up their usual Christmas decorations but appear abandoned as prayer services with more than 20 people have been banned. The United Christian Churches of Korea have urged believers to celebrate the holidays at home by sharing Christmas carols with friends on social media.

“We will prepare carefully to introduce Level 3 if necessary,” said Son Young-rae, a health ministry spokesman. “But we hope the government and the people can work together to control the wave without going there.”