World

Thousands of South Koreans poured into the presidential Blue House in leafy northern Seoul on Wednesday, after President Yoon Suk-yeol made good on a campaign promise to return the once-fortified compound to the people.

The building, named for the approximately 150,000 hand-painted blue tiles that adorn its roof, has been home to South Korea’s leaders since 1948, and was largely restricted to the public. 

That has changed since Yoon, a former top prosecutor who was sworn in on Tuesday, refused to move in, saying the hilltop headquarters — on a site once used by former colonial power Japan — fostered an “imperial” presidency and undermine communication with the public. 

Instead, Yoon is working from the 10-storey defence ministry building — an undistinguished office block in downtown Seoul, hastily adorned with the presidential seal.

Critics have slammed the move as a costly waste of time and money, which could also put the country’s security in jeopardy at a time of high tensions with the nuclear-armed North.

But on opening day, South Koreans flocked to the 250,000-square-metre complex, which is flanked by mountains and nestled behind the royal Gyeongbokgung Palace. 

“It is an honour of my life to come here and actually see the presidential office,” Choi Jung-bun, 70, told AFP as she ate a packed lunch by a stream in its garden.

“This is a deeply storied site that conjures up old Korean kings and modern-day presidents. I am sure it will become one of the major tourist attractions.” 

– Back to the people –

According to officials, more than 25,000 people toured the complex on the first day of full opening, having signed up in advance. 

Visitors seemed thrilled to finally be allowed inside, with huge queues in front of the main building as people waited patiently to take photographs.

That was despite the fact that the building itself has not yet been opened to visitors over security concerns, for example over communications equipment that still needs to be removed.

Up to 39,000 visitors per day will be allowed to visit the complex, officials said, during the first phase of the public opening, which runs until May 22.

In the past, the presidential office ran a much smaller tour program that allowed 1,500 visitors per day, with restrictions on many areas. 

However, the changes may not be permanent if the opposition has its way. 

“When the Democratic Party wins the next presidency, we will go back to the Blue House,” former party chairman Song Young-gil said last week in an interview with local media.

But Cho Ok-kyung, a 61-year-old visitor from Bucheon, west of Seoul, said the compound had been returned to the people — and it should stay that way.

“I’d like this place to keep open indefinitely so that future generations can enjoy it too.” 

– Bad feng shui? –

Yoon’s critics have said his desire to move the office was tied to his belief in feng shui, a traditional religious practice which stresses the importance of harmony between humans and nature.

The former prosecutor has been dogged by accusations of ties to a shaman, which he has denied.

The Blue House has long been rumoured to foster bad luck for its residents, given the assassination, impeachment, corruption trials and imprisonment that have befallen South Korean presidents.

Yoon’s vow that he would not spend a single day in the Blue House compound even drew criticism from his predecessor Moon Jae-in, who called the decision “dangerous” amid heightened tensions with North Korea.

“It is hard to understand how the decision was formulated to determine Yoon would not spend a day at the Blue House,” Moon said last month.

The move is also to blame for Yoon’s record-low approval rating of just 41 percent, according to a recent Gallup poll.

Yoon started his term in office with a security briefing in an underground bunker, as he faces an increasingly belligerent Pyongyang. 

North Korea has conducted a record 15 weapons tests since January, including two launches just days before his inauguration.

Veteran Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh, a Palestinian-American who was among the network’s most prominent figures, was shot dead Wednesday as she covered an Israeli army raid in the occupied West Bank. 

The Qatar-based TV channel said Israeli forces shot Abu Aqleh, 51, deliberately and “in cold blood” while she was covering unrest in the Jenin refugee camp. 

Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett however said it was “likely” that Palestinian gunfire killed her. 

Another Al Jazeera journalist, producer Ali al-Samudi, was wounded in the incident, the broadcaster added.

An AFP photographer said Abu Aqleh was wearing a press flak jacket when she was shot. The photographer reported that Israeli forces were firing in the area and then saw Abu Aqleh’s body lying on the ground. 

There were no Palestinian gunmen visible in the area when Abu Aqleh was killed, the AFP photographer added. 

The Israeli army confirmed it had conducted an operation in the camp early Wednesday but firmly denied it had deliberately targeted a reporter. 

The army said there was an exchange of fire between suspects and security forces and that it was “investigating the event and looking into the possibility that journalists were hit by the Palestinian gunmen”.

“The (army) of course does not aim at journalists,” a military official told AFP.

A statement from Al Jazeera said: “The Israeli occupation forces assassinated in cold blood Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Palestine.” 

It called on the international community to hold the Israeli forces accountable for their “intentional targeting and killing” of the journalist.

– Joint investigation –

Foreign Minister Yair Lapid said Israel was seeking a “joint pathological investigation into the sad death of journalist Shireen Abu Aqleh”.

“Journalists must be protected in conflict zones and we all have a responsibility to get to the truth,” Lapid added. 

Senior Palestinian Authority official Hussein al-Sheikh said there had been no contact from Israel about any joint probe and held Israel “responsible” for Abu Aqleh’s killing. 

In a sign of her prominence in the West Bank, residents laid flowers on the roadside as the vehicle carrying her body moved towards Nablus, where an autopsy was scheduled before her burial in her native Jerusalem.   

US ambassador to Israel Tomas Nides called for a “thorough investigation” into the killing of the US citizen. 

– ‘Palestinian gunmen’? –

The Israeli premier said: “According to the information we’ve gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians — who were indiscriminately firing at the time — were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist.”

The wounded Al Jazeera producer, Samudi, said there were no Palestinian fighters in the area where Abu Aqleh was shot. 

“If there were resistance fighters, we would not have gone into the area,” he said in testimony posted online.

In recent weeks, the army has stepped up operations in Jenin, a historic flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Several of the suspects blamed for deadly attacks on Israelis in recent weeks were from the area. 

The army said that during its operation in the camp, “massive fire was shot toward Israeli forces by tens of armed Palestinian gunmen”.

People in the camp “also hurled explosive devices toward the soldiers, endangering their lives. The soldiers responded with fire toward the sources of the fire and explosive devices.”

– Rising tensions –

The fatal shooting comes nearly a year after an Israeli air strike destroyed a Gaza building that housed the offices of Al Jazeera and news agency AP.

Israel has said the building also hosted offices used by key members of the Hamas Islamist group, which controls the Israeli-blockaded Gaza strip. 

Tensions have risen in recent months as Israel has grappled with a wave of attacks which has killed at least 18 people since March 22, including an Arab-Israeli police officer and two Ukrainians.

An 18-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli troops during clashes near Ramallah on Wednesday. The army said its forced had used rubber bullets. 

Wednesday’s deaths brought the number of Palestinians killed since March 22 to 31, according to an AFP tally.  

Three Israeli Arabs have died during the same period, according to an AFP tally, among them perpetrators of attacks and those killed by Israeli security forces in West Bank operations.

China’s censors scrambled to wipe out online debate over its zero-Covid strategy on Wednesday after the World Health Organisation (WHO) criticised the country’s hardline approach to crushing the virus.

China is the last major economy glued to a zero-Covid policy and enforces some of the most stringent virus controls anywhere in the world. 

Those restrictions have trapped most of Shanghai’s 25 million people in a lockdown with no clear end date, while Beijing has also gradually corralled many of its residents indoors as it battles its biggest outbreak since the pandemic began.

On Tuesday WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged China to change tack, saying the approach “will not be sustainable” in the face of new fast-spreading variants.

The intervention prompted China’s army of internet censors to race to snuff out his comments. 

Searches for the hashtags “Tedros” and “who” on the popular Weibo social media platform displayed no results, while users of the WeChat app were unable to share an article posted on an official United Nations account.

A social media hashtag about the WHO’s comments, which had been a rallying point for lively online discussion, appeared to have been blocked by mid-morning.

Before they were expunged from the internet, comments had questioned zero-Covid, with one saying “even the WHO’s Tedros has now changed his stance”.

Another wrote: “Will our government listen to the WHO director general’s recommendations?”

Virus controls are causing mounting anger and frustration, especially in Shanghai where residents have raged against seemingly endless lockdowns, spartan quarantine facilities and heavy-handed enforcement.

The city has witnessed repeated protests and violent scuffles with police, rare images which have pinballed across social media before censors can catch up.

The ruling Communist Party says its virus strategy places life before material concerns and has averted the public health crises seen in other nations.

A foreign ministry spokesman brushed off questions about the WHO’s comments on Wednesday, saying Beijing’s policy “can stand the test of history” and was “scientific and effective.”

“We hope that relevant individuals can take an objective and rational view of China’s epidemic prevention and control policies … and refrain from making irresponsible remarks,” Zhao Lijian said at a regular press conference.

Abandoning zero-Covid and allowing Omicron to rip across the country could result in 1.6 million deaths, according to a paper published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature by researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University.

Health officials have said vaccination rates are low among the elderly and warn rural health facilities risk collapse under an Omicron surge. 

On Monday, vice-premier Sun Chunlan reminded disease control officials of the political imperatives attached to zero-Covid.

It is necessary to “create the conditions for the victorious convening of the 20th Party Congress”, she said, according to state news agency Xinhua.

The twice-a-decade conclave scheduled for later this year is expected to see President Xi Jinping secure an unprecedented third consecutive term as the leader of the world’s number two economy.

Discussing Beijing’s zero-Covid strategy on Tuesday, Tedros said WHO experts “don’t think that it’s sustainable, considering the behaviour of the virus now and what we anticipate in the future”.

Hu Xijin, the influential former editor of Chinese state tabloid Global Times, slammed the comments in a message to his 24 million Weibo followers, saying “in the end, the WHO’s attitude isn’t important”.

Cambodian fishermen on the Mekong River got a shock when they inadvertently hooked an endangered giant freshwater stingray four metres long and weighing 180 kilos, scientists said on Wednesday.

The female leviathan, one of Southeast Asia’s largest and rarest species of fish, was caught by accident last week in Stung Treng province when it swallowed a smaller fish that had taken a baited hook.

An international team of experts on the US-funded Wonders of the Mekong project worked with the fishermen to unhook the ray before weighing and measuring it and returning it unharmed to the river.

The giant Mekong is a crucial habitat for a vast array of species large and small, but project leader Zeb Hogan, a fish biologist from the University of Nevada, said the river’s underwater ecosystem was poorly understood.

“They are unseen worlds, underappreciated and out of sight,” he said in a statement issued by his university.

More than 1,000 fish species call the Mekong home and the stingray is not the only giant lurking in the muddy waters — the giant catfish and giant barb also reach up to three metres long and 270 kilos in weight.

The study group said in the statement that the remote location where the ray was caught has pools up to 80 metres deep and could harbour even bigger specimens.

But they also warned that underwater video footage showed plastic waste even in the deepest stretches of the Mekong, along with “ghost nets” — abandoned by fishers but still able to snare fish. 

Environmentalists have long voiced concerns about dam building along the Mekong River that will destroy fish stocks

The famous waterway starts in China and twists south through parts of Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia and Vietnam, feeding 60 million people through its basin and tributaries.

A Hong Kong court ruled on Wednesday that prosecutors could label organisers of the city’s annual Tiananmen vigil “foreign agents” without having to reveal who the group is accused of working for.

The decision was made on national security grounds but those being prosecuted argue that the precedent-setting ruling makes it harder to prepare their defence ahead of trial.

For three decades, the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance held vigils commemorating victims of China’s deadly 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

Those commemorations have been driven underground since Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong following democracy protests three years ago.

Authorities charged the alliance with “incitement to subversion”, a national security offence, and ordered it to turn over years of data about its membership, finances and overseas ties.

Police arrested five alliance leaders, including vice chair Chow Hang-tung, last year after they openly defied the order to surrender information.

As basis for their data demand, police accused the alliance of working as a “foreign agent” — rhetoric that matches Beijing’s stance that the Tiananmen protests were instigated by foreign forces rather than being a popular movement.

Pre-trial hearings under Hong Kong’s national security law are often shrouded in secrecy and covered by strict reporting restrictions. 

But this week’s hearing was a rare session held in open court.

Chow, a barrister who is representing herself, and other defence lawyers asked prosecutors to identify who they are accused of working with. 

But magistrate Peter Law on Wednesday said prosecutors can redact details of ongoing police investigations in documents provided to the defence.

“To have a full disclosure of all the documents will definitely be a real risk of serious prejudice to an important public interest, i.e. national security,” Law said.

Prosecutors applied for public interest immunity -– a feature of common law usually invoked to protect sensitive information such as the identities of undercover officers.

Albert Wong, a defence barrister, said disclosure was necessary because the court will need to determine at trial whether the alliance was in fact a foreign agent.

Wong warned police could “put a blank label of foreign agent to anybody” without having to back the claim up.

But Magistrate Law ultimately sided with the prosecution and allowed them to redact their evidence.

Three Alliance defendants, including Chow, will go on trial on July 13, which coincides with the fifth anniversary of the death of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Tiananmen activist Liu Xiaobo.

Two others have already pleaded guilty.