[Editorial] No distorting facts

A post titled "I want only to fact check" on the Itaewon tragedy went viral on social media and online communities on Monday. It was written anonymously on an online community called "theqoo." The source of the information was not disclosed. It contained six questions and answers to them. For example: “Was the police force deployed this year smaller than that in the past? Yes. Eight hundred officers had been posted at one time in the past. This year it was 200 officer

Nov. 2, 2022

[Editorial] Deadly crush in Itaewon

The Itaewon neighborhood in Seoul, well known for clubs, nightlife and Halloween festivities, turned into a terrible disaster zone late Saturday, as a sudden crowd surge in a narrow alley left 154 people dead and 149 injured as of Monday afternoon. The tragedy took place as thousands of people were packed into the alley, which measures only 4 meters wide and slopes downward. People got pushed and dragged, with victims being crushed or suffocated to death. Rescue efforts were desperately made to

Nov. 1, 2022

[Editorial] Abrupt warning

Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an abrupt warning to South Korea on Thursday. Putin reportedly said that South Korea has decided to supply weapons and ammunition to Ukraine and that this will destroy South Korea-Russia relations. His words came at the 19th annual meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow. But this is not true. South Korea's support for Ukraine has been limited to such materials as helmets and blankets as well as medical supplies and medicines. The South Korean

Oct. 31, 2022

[Editorial] Proliferation of drugs

When Don Spike, a K-pop composer and TV celebrity, was arrested last month on charges of buying and using methamphetamine on multiple occasions, the public was initially shocked to see a fairly familiar figure entangled in a drug case. But more shocking was the scale of the crime involved. When the 45-year-old was apprehended, police confiscated 30 grams of meth, an amount equal to about 1,000 doses. Police referred him to the prosecution early this month. What matters is that Don Spike is not a

Oct. 28, 2022

[Editorial] No free lunch

A special committee of the National Assembly to reform pension systems held its first plenary meeting Tuesday. The ruling and opposition parties had agreed to create the ad hoc committee in July to discuss plans to replenish four fast decreasing public pensions -- the national, government employee, military and teachers’ pensions. The severity of pension problems is too well known. According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare’s fourth forecast of pension reserves, announced in 2

Oct. 27, 2022

[Editorial] Credit crunch

The outlook was rosy in May when a local Legoland theme park opened in Chuncheon, Gangwon Province. Around 2 million visitors were expected to visit the new attraction each year, creating growth momentum and new jobs in the region. As the initial phase of excitement passed, the number of visitors, which hit a peak of 130,000 in May, began to drop to around 100,000 in June and then 70,000 in July. But Legoland’s flash-in-the-pan popularity is nothing compared with what has followed in conne

Oct. 26, 2022

[Editorial] Far-fetched proposal

Lee Jae-myung, the leader of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, proposed last Friday that a special counsel should be appointed to investigate allegations that he gave preference to developers of Daejang-dong, a district in Seongnam, while he was the mayor. He made the proposal as prosecutors were looking into suspicions he received illegal funds for his presidential bid. The prosecution arrested Kim Yong, his close aide and deputy head of the Institute for Democracy, a think tank of

Oct. 25, 2022

[Editorial] No more ‘bloodstained bread’

A wave of protests is raging over the death of a young worker at a bread-making factory run by an affiliate of South Korean bakery giant SPC Group, illustrating the public anger over the negligence and malpractice that were glaringly laid bare. The 23-year old employee was killed Oct. 15 after her upper body was caught in a sauce mixer at the factory of SPL in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province. SPL is owned by Paris Croissant, a firm wholly owned by SPC Group Chairman Heo Young-in and his family. He

Oct. 24, 2022

[Editorial] Rice populism

The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea passed its revision bill to the Grain Management Act unilaterally through the Agriculture, Food, Rural Affairs, Oceans and Fisheries Committee of the National Assembly on Wednesday. The party has a majority of 11 seats in the 19-member committee. The bill makes it compulsory for the government to purchase overproduced rice if rice prices drop more than 5 percent from the average level or if production exceeds expectation by more than 3 percent. Under

Oct. 21, 2022

[Editorial] Dispute over regulations

The aftermath of the worst-ever server outage of Kakao Corp. over the weekend is still reverberating throughout the South Korean business and political sectors, with debates heating up over the scope of regulations for private firms. The fire, which broke out Saturday at the data center in Pangyo, south of Seoul, paralyzed a wide range of mobile services run by Kakao, including the country’s biggest mobile messenger KakaoTalk. The service outage, which lasted for more than 10 hours, caused

Oct. 20, 2022

[Editorial] Trace smuggled money

The prosecution raided the headquarters and several affiliates of Ssangbangwool Group on Monday. The group allegedly handed dollar bills worth tens or thousands of millions of won to each of about 60 employees and made them take flights to China in 2019 with the money. When a Korean takes foreign currency in excess of $10,000 out of the country, he or she must declare it to customs, but the Ssangbangwool employees did not. They are said to have concealed dollar bills inside books, cosmetic cases

Oct. 19, 2022

[Editorial] Perils of the wired nation

Kakao Corp., which runs the country’s biggest mobile messenger KakaoTalk, suffered its worst-ever server outage over the weekend, which paralyzed messaging and other mobile services, illustrating the immense danger that could hit a tightly interconnected society when things go wrong. KakaoTalk’s text, photo and video message services were disrupted after a fire broke out at the data center in Pangyo, just south of Seoul, at 3:30 p.m. Saturday. The blaze at the Pangyo data center, ope

Oct. 18, 2022

[Editorial] Time to answer

The results of an inspection by the Board of Audit and Inspection into the incident in which a South Korean was killed by North Korean soldiers in the West Sea are shocking. The government didn't even attempt to rescue Lee Dae-jun, an employee of the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, after knowing that he was found in the North Korean naval territory. The Korea Coast Guard received a report 51 minutes past noon on Sept. 21, 2020, that he went missing from a ministry fishery guidance ship.

Oct. 17, 2022

[Editorial] Impact of higher rates

The Bank of Korea raised its benchmark interest rate by 50 basis points to 3 percent on Wednesday. The eighth hike since August last year sent the rate to the 3 percent range for the first time in 10 years. The so-called “big-step” rate increase came as the central bank had few other alternatives in the face of stubbornly high inflation and the local currency’s slide against the US dollar that could put extra upward pressure on import prices. South Korea’s consumer prices

Oct. 14, 2022

[Editorial] Going against innovation

These days it is common practice to use online property platforms to get easy access to information on a vast amount of available apartments, houses and other property listings. Landlords can lease homes via online platforms accessible by potential tenants no matter where they are. Then a law which will stunt this trendy mode of business is looming on the horizon. Kim Byung-wook, a National Assembly member of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, proposed a bill to revise the Realtors A

Oct. 13, 2022

[Editorial] Irrelevant dispute

In South Korea, calling something “pro-Japanese” carries a highly negative connotation, as it brings back the image of the treacherous Koreans who had cooperated with imperial Japan, which occupied the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945. Lee Jae-myung, chairman of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea, stirred up a hornet’s nest Friday by branding the joint drill on the East Sea involving South Korea, the US and Japan as a “pro-Japanese act and pro-Japanese national

Oct. 12, 2022

[Editorial] Green pandemonium

The previous administration under President Moon Jae-in pushed an unreasonable nuclear phase-out policy and expanded renewable energy hastily. Irregularities suspected of being committed under the pretext of environment-friendliness are now coming into light. According to Yun Chang-hyun, a National Assembly member of the ruling People Power Party, the Office for Government Policy Coordination of Prime Minister’s Secretariat under the Moon administration probed solar and other power generat

Oct. 11, 2022

[Editorial] Perfect storm

South Korea’s economic indicators keep turning red but policymakers have been slow to come up with a convincing strategy to tackle the mounting problems. Instead, they are repeating the same mantra that the country is outside the approaching storm. Optimists, including government officials, hold the view that the country is not engulfed by a fiery economic crisis -- at least for now -- and is relatively well prepared for possible shocks. But pessimists argue that there are plenty of signs

Oct. 10, 2022

[Editorial] Substantial response

The South Korean military and United States Forces Korea each fired two ground-to-ground missiles into the eastern sea of South Korea on Wednesday, a day after North Korea launched an intermediate-range ballistic missile. The Army Tactical Missile System missiles hit mock targets precisely and the drill demonstrated the two allies’ combined deterrence capability, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said. On Tuesday, about 10 hours after the North fired the IRBM, the air forces of Sou

Oct. 7, 2022

[Editorial] Too many political footballs

The Yoon Suk-yeol administration’s first parliamentary audit is quickly sinking into an abrasive political battlefield where unproductive wrangling between rival parties obscures the real issues that matter to the public and the country. Although people tend to pin little hope on the parliamentary inspection, which started Tuesday and is scheduled to run through Oct. 24, what played out on the first day at the National Assembly was still disappointing. In fact, South Korean lawmakers are n

Oct. 6, 2022