Daily Kor for November 17, 2009: Yellow Sea journalism

President Lee really, really, really wants you to believe it's business as usual, which is why the DPRK vessel Kŭmbit sailed into port in South Korea and dumped its load of silica. Meanwhile, he admonished the press not to make a big deal out of North Korean activities in the Yellow Sea.

Other than that, we have more good news on the economic front: things are ticking higher and higher while other things are getting stabler and stabler. I, for one, am happy for the strengthening of the KRW, since my propaganda efforts are remunerated in Sejongs, not Benjamins.

Meanwhile, the Pusan fire continues to make headlines. President Lee has joined his prime minister in offering condolences. Heck, we might see, à la the collapse of Sŏngsu-daegyo and the Sampoong Department Store, some real change come out of this. Let's hope so.

1. ROK President Lee Myungbak urges South Korean media not to overreact to movements by North Korean media in the Yellow Sea (Xinhua); arrival of silica-laden North Korean cargo ship indicates business-as-usual trade (Korea Times)
2. ROK President Lee sends letter of condolence to Japanese PM Hatoyama over death of Japanese tourists in Pusan (Korea Herald); police revise number of Japanese victims downward from eight to seven (Korea Herald)
3. Bank of Korea asks US Federal Reserve to extend their $30 billion swap agreement set up as a safety net (Reuters)
4. South Korea joins sustainable fishing pact (Korea Herald)
5. South Korean department store sales growth at fourteen-month high (Reuters, Bloomberg)
6. KRW jump 0.5% to a fourteen-month high of 1154.50 won to the US dollar (WSJ)
7. Report says South Koreans remain the third biggest source of foreign students at US colleges and universities, behind Chinese and Indian students (Yonhap)
8. Inter-Korean trade grows for the second straight month in October to $172.6 million, up 5.9% from the same time one year ago (Yonhap)
9. Primary opposition Democratic Party announces it will oppose ROK troop dispatch to Afghanistan (Joongang Daily)
10. Worker at Kaesŏng inter-Korean industrial complex becomes first to be infected with H1N1 "swine flu" (Korea Times, Korea Herald)
11. OECD report indicates that South Korea recorded a fall in unit labor costs in second quarter of 2009, a sign of falling average wages (Yonhap)
12. US Commerce Department says American exports to North Korea declined dramatically in the first seven months of 2009 due to UN sanctions (Yonhap)
13. ROK National Pension Service to buy Sydney's Aurora Place office tower for US$655 million (Bloomberg)
14. Seoul chooses an aggressive greenhouse emissions reduction target of 30% less than what would be expected in 2020 (Yonhap, WSJ, Reuters, AP via WaPo, Bloomberg, Korea Times, Korea Herald, Joongang Daily)
15. Finance Ministry says trade surplus could fall as much as 75% in 2010 (Joongang Daily, Korea Herald)
16. Seoul to provide financial assistance to struggling South Korean firms doing business in the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex (Joongang Daily)
17. North Korea revealed to be angry online troll in Cleveland (Reuters)