Local media reports Democratic Party lawmaker Kim Nam-kuk had previously co-sponsored a bill seeking to defer taxation on crypto profits.

South Korea’s financial watchdog has reported to local prosecutors a series of crypto transactions by an opposition party lawmaker, which has sparked domestic outrage over a potential conflict of interest.

Rep. Kim Nam-kuk of the Democratic Party of Korea allegedly withdrew 800,000 WEMIX tokens from late February to early March in 2022, and the transactions were reported to the Financial Services Commission’s Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), according to CoinDesk Korea. Kim’s WEMIX holdings stood at 6 billion won ($4.5 million) between January and February 2022.

The FIU classified the withdrawals as suspicious transactions and reported them to the prosecutor’s office, the report said.

South Korea implemented global standard-setter FATF’s travel rule on March 25, 2021, shortly after Kim reportedly made his withdrawals. The travel rule requires exchanges to collect personal data on transactions and report them to authorities when they exceed a certain threshold.

Kim said that he did not cash out his tokens and did not violate any laws, according to the report. There is no reporting requirement for virtual assets in South Korea’s Public Service Ethics Act.

WEMIX was delisted from major exchanges in South Korea last year for allegedly reporting inaccurate circulation supply figures. Its issuing company WeMade unsuccessfully challenged the delisting in court.

Kim had co-sponsored an amendment to the Income Tax Act in July 2021, which included a provision to defer taxation on virtual assets, reported CoinDesk Korea.

South Korea postponed plans to tax income from crypto as well as income from the “transfer or lending” of virtual assets to 2025.

Related

Source: Vietnam Insider

North Korea has suspended plans to increase military pressure against South Korea, after weeks of rapidly deteriorating ties which included blowing up a joint liaison office used for talks between the two sides.

The decision comes following a meeting between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the central military commission on Tuesday, which “took stock of the prevailing situation,” according to North Korean media Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

Possible military plans included the North deploying units into the Mount Kumgang tourist area and the Kaesong Industrial Zone, which borders the South, and setting up police posts that had previously been withdrawn from the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two countries “to strengthen the guard over the front line,” according to previous reports in KCNA.
No reason was given for the apparent pull back.

The North had signaled its initial plans to increase military pressure after a group of defectors in the South used balloons to send anti-North Korean leaflets north of the DMZ.

North Korea claimed the leaflets violated the deal Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in struck in 2018 at their first summit, when both leaders agreed to cease “all hostile acts and eliminating their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets” along their shared border.

On Monday night, a defectors’ group in South Korea sent a further 500,000 leaflets about “the truth of the Korean War” into the North.

The group said it also sent 500 booklets about “successful South Korea,” 2,000 American one-dollar bills and 1,000 SD cards, using the 20 balloons.

In retaliation to the initial leaflet drop, North Korea cut communication lines with the South and blew up the joint liaison office, which is located in the town of Kaesong just north of the DMZ.

While the office had been shut because of coronavirus and South Korean staff had not been in the building since — the destruction was symbolic as the office was meant to facilitate dialogue between the two countries.

As well as threatening increased military pressure, the Korean People’s Army reinstalled loudspeakers at the border and indicated it would launch a propaganda campaign of its own by sending millions of leaflets into the South.

While the North has framed its actions over the past few weeks as retaliatory, Pyongyang has for months voiced displeasure that its diplomacy with South Korea and the United States has not yielded relief from sanctions crippling the North Korean economy.

Talks between the countries had stalled in the months after three inter-Korean summits in 2018. And experts say it’s possible North Korea is using the current standoff to manufacture a crisis in order to gain leverage in any future negotiations, a play it has employed previously in diplomatic talks.

By Helen Regan and Luke Henderson, CNN | Yoonjung Seo, Jake Kwon and Joshua Berlinger contributed reporting.

South Korea is undergoing a second wave of the coronavirus, the country’s health authority has said.

“The first wave was from March to April as well as February to March,” Jeong Eun-kyeong, head of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), said on Monday, according to Reuters.

“Then we see that the second wave which was triggered by the May holiday has been going on,” he said, referring to the Children’s Day national holiday on May 5.

Seventeen new cases were reported on Monday, following the discovery of 67 new cases on Saturday and 48 new cases on Sunday.

“We originally predicted that the second wave to emerge in fall or winter,” Jeong said during the same speech, according to the Yonhap news agency.

“Our forecast turned out to be wrong. As long as people having close contact with others, we believe that infections will continue.”

Seoul, the capital, has seen the largest rise in cases.

South Korean soldiers seen at a ceremony for soldiers killed during the 1950-53 Korean War at the National Cemetery in Daejeon on June 19, 2020. Getty

The mayor of Seoul, Park Won-soon, said on Monday that “if Seoul gets penetrated [by the virus], the entire Republic of Korea gets penetrated,” according to The Associated Press (AP).

The city’s second wave can be attributed to people taking public transport again, he said, adding that scientists were predicting that South Korea could see 800 new cases a day if transmission isn’t slowed.

Park said he may reimpose social-distancing measures in the city if the average number of new cases per day goes above 30 over the next three days, and if the city’s hospitals go past 70% bed occupancy.

Jeong, the KCDC director, said on Monday that people can take off their masks during the hot weather, as long as they remain two meters from others.

After China, South Korea was one of the first countries to experience a major outbreak back in February.

But unlike China, the country never implemented large-scale lockdowns, relying instead on an impressive tracking and testing mission. South Korea quickly controlled its outbreak and was lauded around the world as a model for coronavirus control.

A spike in cases in late May prompted authorities to reimpose some restrictions, closing down museums and parks for a fortnight. It also forced hundreds of schools to delay or reverse reopening.

As of Monday, there have been 12,438 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in South Korea. Two hundred and eighty people have died.

Do you have a personal experience with the coronavirus you’d like to share? Or a tip on how your town or community is handling the pandemic? Please email editor@asiainsiders.net and tell us your story.

@ Business Insider

Lufthansa German Airlines said Tuesday it will resume flights to South Korea later this month, as the new coronavirus outbreak appears to have passed its peak.

Lufthansa will offer three flights a week from Incheon to Munich starting on June 24, as European countries plan to ease entry restrictions on incoming passengers from June 15, the company said in a statement.

“Lufthansa will do its best to strengthen and supplement its European and continental air networks to meet the needs of Korean travelers, while also making sure customers travel safely,” Alejandro Arias, Lufthansa general manager of Korea, said in the statement.

The company said the resumption of flights to Frankfurt depends on market conditions.

Lufthansa suspended all flights on its routes from Incheon to Munich and Frankfurt in mid-March in response to a sharp decline in air travel demand amid virus fears.

Among European carriers, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is the only airline that has continued to offer flights between South Korea and the Netherlands.

KLM has provided flights from Incheon to Amsterdam, though it reduced the number of flights amid the COVID-19 pandemic. On Tuesday, it increased the number of flights on the Incheon-Amsterdam route to five from three a week, a company spokeswoman said by phone.

Air France and Finland’s state-owned airline Finnair plan to resume flights to Korea in July. Other European carriers, such as British Airways, Turkish Airlines, and Polish Airlines, have yet to announce plans to restart services to Korea. (Yonhap)

South Korean football team FC Seoul has apologized after fans accused the club of using sex dolls to fill empty stands at its second game of the K League season.

On Sunday, the club played at home against Gwangju in South Korea’s top football championship, which was due to start on February 29 but was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Fans were barred from the ground as part of measures to prevent the spread of infection, but those watching online noticed something off-color about the mannequins drafted in to fill the stands.

Human fans were banned from the stadium to prevent the spread of coronavirus.

Some of the figures were holding signs for a company that makes sex dolls, and fans pointed out that they looked like adult dolls rather than mannequins.

“Honestly, if you saw the mannequins you should have thought they were strange,” wrote one fan on Instagram.

Others were incredulous that no one at the club had noticed the issue.

“The female mannequin dressed in a white short sleeve t-shirt, the breast excessively stood out, and the nipples were protruding, but you didn’t know they were an adult product?” wrote another fan on Instagram. “You are kidding me.”

The club published an apology online.

In response, the club issued an apology on Instagram and Facebook.

“Regarding the cheer mannequins that were installed during the game on the 17th, we sincerely apologize for causing deep concern to the fans,” the statement said.

FC Seoul explained that although the dolls were made to look like real people, rather than conventional mannequins, it had checked they were “not at all related to adult products” before agreeing to install them, and had been told they would be mannequins of the kind commonly used to model clothes.

Staff “went through the confirmation process that they were not adult products several times,” said the statement, and didn’t notice that an ad for adult products was visible on the day of the game.

“This is our fault without excuse,” said the club. “Regardless of the reason, we apologize again for causing great concern to the fans who love and cheer for FC Seoul.”

CNN has attempted to contact the club for further comment.

The South Korean K League is one of just a handful of football leagues still functioning after the world game was largely shut down by the pandemic.

Germany’s Bundesliga also restarted this weekend, with teams playing in empty stadiums.

Other leagues are grappling with the question of restarting competitions that were postponed.

Some football authorities, including those in France, have decided to cancel the 2019/2020 season.

However, the UK’s Premier League, Spain’s La Liga and Italy’s Serie A are still considering their options.

@ CNN

South Korean health authorities said on Thursday they would revise their practice of publicising the travel routes of coronavirus patients due to fears of a backlash against people who attended nightclubs at the centre of a new outbreak.

After weeks of nearly no new domestic coronavirus cases, South Korea has seen a new spike in infections centred around nightclubs and bars in some of Seoul’s most popular nightlife neighbourhoods.

Investigators have struggled to find around 2,000 people wanted for testing, an effort complicated by public criticism of the clubgoers, as well as concerns about discrimination as several of the clubs cater to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community.

While clubs and bars were required to log the names and contact phone numbers for all visitors as a condition of reopening, much of the information turned out to be incomplete or false, officials said.

That has left officials combing through cellphone location data and CCTV footage to try to identify some customers, while publicly pleading for people to come forward and be tested.

Officials say they understand some individuals may fear social stigmatisation, and have promised to try to reduce the amount of information usually released about confirmed patients.

South Korea has typically released information like a patient’s age, gender, and places visited immediately before testing positive, as well as in some cases, patients’ last names and general occupations.

About 2,500 people are still being sought by officials.

“In the long-term war with COVID-19, stigma and discrimination will only hide patients and create a favourable condition for this virus,” Kwon Jun-wook, deputy director of the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said at a briefing. “Avoiding a test because of fears of social bias and criticism can damage our entire community.”

In response to the privacy concerns, health authorities have expanded anonymous testing nationwide, Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip said at a meeting of health authorities on Thursday, according to his office.

“In addition, we plan to revise the guidelines to prevent excessive disclosure of a patient’s travel itinerary.”

People who ignore calls to be tested can face a fine of up to 2 million won ($1,630), health ministry official Yoon Tae-ho told a briefing.

NEIGHBOURHOOD TAKES A HIT
South Korea reported 29 new cases as of midnight Wednesday, bringing the country’s total to 10,991 with 260 deaths.

Of those new cases, 20 were linked to the outbreak from the clubs in Seoul’s Itaewon neighbourhood. A total of 133 cases have been linked to that outbreak, including clubgoers as well as secondary infections in family members, coworkers, and students.

The streets in Itaewon were unusually quiet on Thursday. Some shops had signs announcing temporary closures, and the entrances to some bars and karaoke clubs bore notices from the Seoul municipal government informing on the city’s reinstated ban on large gatherings at such businesses.

“There were a lot of clients heading to Itaewon even up until last week,” Choi Seok-soo, a longtime taxi driver, told Reuters. “People would go there at 10, 11 p.m. – until 1 a.m. in the morning on weekends. But since the outbreak, no one wants to go there.”

Kim Chang-hyun, who runs an antique shop in Itaewon, said the business situation is the worst he’s seen in decades.

“I’ve been working here for the last 33 years and have endured the IMF crisis and the financial crisis,” Kim said. “But the situation now is worse than it was back then.”

The cluster of infections in Itaewon and other nightlife spots came as the country was easing social distancing guidelines, and the cases led to public criticism of both the clubgoers as well as health officials who allowed the clubs to reopen.

“I think the authorities missed these venues,” said Kim Dong-hyun, president of Korean Society of Epidemiology. “They had grounds to suspend operations of the facilities earlier, but it’s unclear why they didn’t.”

Reporting by Sangmi Cha and Josh Smith; Additional reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Editing by Stephen Coates & Simon Cameron-Moore @ Reuters

The United Nations chief said he hopes many countries in the world will follow the “remarkable example” of South Korea, which he said has been “extremely successful” in addressing the coronavirus pandemic and is planning to tackle climate change in its recovery from COVID-19.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres pointed to Thursday’s announcement “that there was no new case in the Republic of Korea,” the country’s official name.

Related: South Korea’s virus-hit economy suffered the worst contraction since 2008

At the same time, he said, South Korea has presented plans for “a very ambitious green deal” for its recovery from the pandemic, including a ban on new coal-fired plants and a reduction of emissions from existing coal-fired plants.

“We hope that this example of the Republic of Korea will be followed by many other countries in the world,” Guterres said at a news conference.

The Koreas Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement early Thursday that four cases in the previous 24 hours, all imported, took the country’s total to 10,765, with 247 deaths and 9,059 recoveries.

South Korea’s caseload has been slowing in recent weeks after it recorded hundreds of new cases every day between late February and early March. It has subsequently relaxed some of its social distancing guidelines and is expected to ease up on more restrictions in the coming days if the downward trend continues.

South Korea had its first confirmed coronavirus case Jan. 20, the same day as the United States.

But unlike the U.S., officials there used a test focused on the same gene targets as the World Health Organization’s recommended test, according to the website of a test manufacturer. The government then quickly allowed private sector labs to produce it.

As a result, a nation with less than one-sixth the population of the United States mobilized to test more than 20,000 people a day. South Korea also instituted drive-through testing centers, allowing quicker identification of those who were infected but might not be displaying symptoms, thus slowing the emergence of new cases to a more manageable level.

By comparison, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to develop its own test, focusing on three gene targets distinct from what the WHO used. The test was reportedly flawed and according to CDC data only 472 patients had been tested nationwide on Feb. 29, with just 22 cases confirmed.

The result was that while South Korea was able to manage its caseload, the rate of U.S. infections soared.

Guterres said recovery from the pandemic “needs to go hand-in-hand with climate action,” just as South Korea is doing now.

He called on governments to ensure that spending to revitalize their economies gives priority to the creation of “green jobs” and use of low-carbon energy sources.

“Taxpayers’ money should not be used to subsidize fossil fuels or bail out polluting, carbon-intensive industries,” the U.N. chief said. “Now is the time to put a price on carbon and for polluters to pay for their pollution.”

Reporting by EDITH M. LEDERER @ AP

South Korean officials are calling for caution amid reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may be ill or is being isolated because of coronavirus concerns, emphasising that they have detected no unusual movements in North Korea.

At a closed door forum on Sunday, South Korea’s Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul, who oversees engagement with the North, said the government has the intelligence capabilities to say with confidence that there was no indications of anything unusual.

Rumours and speculation over the North Korean leader’s health began after he made no public appearance at a key state holiday on April 15, and has since remained out of sight.

Related: South Korean currency tumbles as unconfirmed reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seriously ill

South Korea media last week reported that Kim may have undergone cardiovascular surgery or was in isolation to avoid exposure to the new coronavirus.

Unification minister Kim cast doubt on the report of surgery, arguing that the hospital mentioned did not have the capabilities for such an operation.

Still, Yoon Sang-hyun, chairman of the foreign and unification committee in South Korea’s National Assembly, told a gathering of experts on Monday that Kim Jong Un’s absence from the public eye suggests “he has not been working as normally”.

“There has not been any report showing he’s making policy decisions as usual since April 11, which leads us to assume that he is either sick or being isolated because of coronavirus concerns,” Yoon said.

North Korea has said it has no confirmed cases of the new coronavirus, but some international experts have cast doubts on that claim.

On Monday, North Korean state media once again showed no new photos of Kim nor reported on his whereabouts.

However, they did carry reports that he had sent a message of gratitude to workers building a tourist resort in Wonsan, an area where some South Korean media reports have said Kim may be staying.

“Our government position is firm,” Moon Chung-in, the top foreign policy adviser to South Korean President Moon Jae-in, said in comments to news outlets in the United States.

“Kim Jong Un is alive and well. He has been staying in the Wonsan area since April 13. No suspicious movements have so far been detected.”

Satellite images from last week showed a special train possibly belonging to Kim at Wonsan, lending weight to those reports, according to 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea monitoring project.

Though the group said it was probably the North Korean leader’s personal train, Reuters has not been able to confirm that independently, or whether he was in Wonsan.

A spokeswoman for the Unification Ministry said on Monday she had nothing to confirm when asked about reports that Kim was in Wonsan.

Last week China dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signalled in terms of Kim’s health.

On Friday a South Korean source told Reuters their intelligence was that Kim Jong Un was alive and would likely make an appearance soon.

Experts have cautioned that Kim has disappeared from state media coverage before, and that gathering accurate information in North Korea is notoriously difficult.

North Korea’s state media last reported on Kim’s whereabouts when he presided over a meeting on April 11.

Kim, believed to be 36, vanished from state media for more than a month in 2014 and North Korean state TV later showed him walking with a limp.

Reporting by Josh Smith, Sangmi Cha, and Hyonhee Shin, Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Michael Perry @ Reuter

South Korea has lowered coronavirus infections through strict moves, but its export-driven economy has been hit hard.

The coronavirus pandemic has pushed South Korea’s economy into its biggest contraction since 2008 in the first quarter, as self-isolation measures hit consumption and global trade slumped.

Finance minister Hong Nam-ki said in a policy meeting Asia’s fourth-largest economy should brace for a bigger shock from the second quarter as demand from its biggest trading partners plummets.

Related: South Korean currency tumbles as unconfirmed reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is seriously ill

South Korea’s virus containment measures are being closely watched by governments elsewhere as it has managed to bring down infections without the kinds of heavy shutdowns seen in other jurisdictions.

However, the pandemic’s hit to global trade has left the export-reliant economy under extreme pressure.

Gross domestic product decreased by a seasonally adjusted 1.4 percent in the first quarter from three months earlier, preliminary central bank data showed on Thursday, a slightly smaller decline than the 1.5 percent contraction seen in a Reuters news agency poll and reversing 1.3 percent growth in the fourth quarter.

Highlighting the challenges in domestic demand, private consumption shrank 6.4 percent on-quarter to mark the worst reading since a 13.8-percent contraction in the first quarter of 1998, during the Asia financial crisis.

“The economy is likely to contract for at least another quarter as hard times will continue for exports,” Moon Jung-hui, an economist at KB Bank said.

“Consumption will improve especially on increased fiscal expenditure, but exports of key items including petrochemical products will suffer.”

Since late January, the economy has been paralysed by self-isolation measures across the country, which kept businesses and shops closed and workers stuck at home.

South Korea has largely managed to bring the outbreak under control and has recently reported daily new cases of about 10. Total cases were at 10,702 as of midnight on Wednesday.

The government on Sunday began relaxing some social-distancing rules but the economy is spiralling towards its first technical recession since 2003, defined as two straight quarters of decline, as the pandemic stymies an export recovery.

Thursday’s data showed exports declined 2 percent from the fourth quarter, while construction investment and capital investment rose 1.3 percent and 0.2 percent, respectively.

Exports for the first 20 days of April plunged nearly 27 percent year-on-year and shipments are set to shrink further over the coming months as top trading partners such as Europe and the United States remain in lockdowns.

Park Yang-su, a director-general at the Bank of Korea, told a news briefing that the economy faces an uphill battle to revive growth and the trajectory “depends on the severity of weakness in global demand and domestic demand.”

From a year earlier, the economy grew 1.3 percent in the first quarter, slowing from 2.3 percent growth in the fourth quarter and compared with 0.6 percent seen in the poll.

Investors worry that a slump in the Chinese economy could severely dent global growth and demand for key South Korean exports items, including memory chips and petrochemical products.

China last week posted its first gross domestic product (GDP) contraction since quarterly records began in 1992 as the coronavirus shut down its factory and retail sectors.

The pressure on South Korea’s economy is expected to persist over the coming months, with economists in a Reuters poll expecting GDP to shrink 0.1 percent this year. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) sees an even bigger 1.2 percent contraction.

By REUTERS

Job losses across Asia Pacific could double due to the coronavirus pandemic — and some of these jobs may not come back for a while, S&P Global warned.

“Unemployment rates across Asia-Pacific could rise by well over 3 percentage points, twice as large as the average recession,” said S&P’s Asia Pacific Chief Economist Shaun Roache in a report Monday.

The services industries are among the first to feel the impact of those lockdowns, but that very sector is also what’s driving job creation in countries like Japan and South Korea, the ratings giant said.

“Jobs are at the core of the current economic crisis,” said Roache. ”Measures designed to limit viral spread are striking at the heart of the engine of job creation across Asia-Pacific — the service sector.”

“Service sector activities often require human-to-human contact while mitigation policies aim at social distancing. The clash of these two is obvious,” he wrote.

Unemployment rates

Based on projected reduced growth of about 7.5 percentage points, S&P laid out the impact on job losses among major countries in the region.

These are the estimated increase in unemployment rates at their peak, about four quarters after the growth decline:

• Australia: More than 3 percentage points.
• Japan: More than 2 percentage points.
• South Korea: More than 4 percentage points.
• New Zealand: Close to 3 percentage points.
• Thailand: Less than 1 percentage point.

“Given the way the services sector is being hit by social-distancing measures, it’s plausible that, for every percentage point fall in growth in Asia-Pacific, the rise in unemployment could be larger now than in previous cycles,” the report said.

Among nine major economies in Asia-Pacific, the largest increases in unemployment rates on average were seen in Australia, Hong Kong and New Zealand, according to S&P, which analyzed official data from those countries going back to 1980.

“In every economy except Singapore, (job) busts happen much more quickly than (job) recoveries,” it said. “In fact, busts tend to last about six to eight quarters while recoveries take about eight to 10 quarters (or two to three years). This gap is especially high in Australia, Hong Kong, and (South) Korea.”

More than 50% work in services

The services sector has become the “most important” employer across the region, S&P’s Roache said. Out of every 100 workers in Asia-Pacific, 55 on average work in services, he said. In contrast, just 14 of the 100 work in the industrial sector.

Across the region — especially in China and other emerging markets — agricultural jobs have “disappeared.” But, rather than moving mostly to factories, those workers have instead gone to hotels, restaurants and malls, the report said.

The hospitality sector’s share of China’s total employment growth has been five times larger than that of factories over the past 20 years, it added.

Reporting by Weizhen Tan @ CNBC