Daily Kor for Friday, July 1, 2011

And the award for lamest headline of the week goes to the Wall Street Journal, for this one: "South Koreans Still Unbowed" (it's about archery's 2011 World Championships in Torino on Sunday).

And the non-story of the day is North Korea temporarily presiding over the UN's nuclear disarmament body (#4). It's for a term that's just a matter of weeks, determined by well-known system of rotation, but it's being used as a pretext for "getting the US out of the UN" (or getting the UN out of the US). In fact, the UN is an important organization that, though flawed, does a lot of crucial stuff (HT to hoju_saram for link).

If the problem is that a country like the DPRK which has violated UN regulations on nuclear disarmament should not be in charge of the UN organization whose regulations it thumbed its nose at, then go ahead and push for rules that prevent that type of occurrence. This is not the first time this type of thing has happened (I seem to recall Libya chairing a UN group dealing with human rights a few years aback), so let's go solve it. Baby. Bathwater. Throw out. Bad.

Meanwhile, the Joongang Daily is reporting on the AP bureau opening in Pyongyang, which I consider a major story even though it has gotten very little coverage elsewhere.

1. Republican boycott over jobs protection add-on forces US Senate Finance Committee to postpone action on free-trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama (AP via WaPo, WaPo) 
2. Samsung Electronics files complaint with US International Trade Commission, asking the United States to prohibit Apple from importing into United States key products, including the latest iPhone and iPad devices amid an escalating patent dispute (AP via WaPo, WSJ)
3. National Assembly passes disputed judicial reform bill that would give more investigatory powers to police (Yonhap, Joongang Daily)
• President Lee asks prosecutors to "respond maturely" (Yonhap)
• Kushibo's note: ... Or else he'll turn this car around... He really will... Don't make him do it!
4. United Nations is criticized by Republicans in US for North Korea receiving a rotating chairmanship of nuclear disarmament body (Yonhap)
5. Consumer prices rise 4.4 percent in June from a year earlier (Yonhap)
6. Seoul appellate court reduces sentence of Reverend Han Sangryol, pastor who visited North Korea in violation of contentious National Security Law, from five years to three years (AP via WaPo)
• Kushibo's note: Find me one person in Korea who serves their full sentence for anything less than life imprisonment, and I owe you a Coke™
7. South Korea to freeze gasoline prices in July due to inflationary pressures (Bloomberg, Reuters)
8. South Korean striker Ji Dong-Won joins English Premier League club Sunderland (CNN)
9. Protesters against free-trade agreement entertain other demonstrators with new musical detailing their struggle against Lee administration policies, A Korus Line (Yonhap)