Lee

Dec. 19 (Asia Today) — President Lee Jae-myung said Friday that while North Korea’s “hostile two-state” line may reflect current realities, South Korea must “return to our proper place” and work to restore channels for contact, dialogue and cooperation.

Speaking at a joint work report by the Foreign Ministry and the Unification Ministry at the Government Complex Seoul, Lee pointed to what he described as an unprecedented buildup along the inter-Korean boundary.

“For the first time since the 1950s war, North Korea has erected triple fences along the entire demarcation line, severed bridges, cut off roads and built retaining walls,” Lee said. He added that North Korea may have acted out of concern that the South could invade, but said it was regrettable and appeared tied to “strategic desires.”

Lee said the moves could be part of Pyongyang’s strategy, but argued South Korea must respond with patience and sustained effort to improve what he described as a situation in which the North “fundamentally refuses contact itself.”

“As I’ve said before, we must find even the smallest opening,” Lee said. “We need to communicate, engage in dialogue, cooperate and pursue a path of coexistence and mutual prosperity between the North and South.”

He said there is currently “not even a needle’s eye of an opening,” repeating that the situation is “truly not easy.”

Lee also appeared to criticize the previous administration’s approach to North Korea, saying “one could call it a kind of karma.” He added that if a strategy contributed to the current impasse, “then we must change it now.”

Lee said the government should make proactive efforts to ease tensions and create conditions for trust to emerge, adding that the Unification Ministry should now take a leading role.

“It is certainly not an easy task, but it is equally clear that it is not something we should give up on,” he said.

– Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

L.os Angeles City Councilmember John Lee is facing a steep fine for his notorious 2017 trip to Las Vegas, with the city’s Ethics Commission saying he must pay $138,424 in a case involving pricey meals and expensive nightclub “bottle service.”

On Wednesday, the commission decided 4 to 0 that Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley, committed two counts of violating the city’s gift law and three counts of violating a law requiring that such gifts be disclosed to the public.

By a 3-1 vote, the panel found that Lee violated five additional counts of misusing his city position or helping his boss at the time — Councilmember Mitchell Englander — misuse his position. After that, the commission voted unanimously to levy the maximum financial penalty, as recommended by city ethics investigators.

The commission went much further than an administrative law judge, who, after a multiday hearing, concluded that Lee violated five of 10 counts and recommended a fine of nearly $44,000.

Commission President Manjusha Kulkarni argued for the maximum fine, saying it would discourage others from violating ethics laws. She said Lee directly benefited from his decision not to report the gifts — which came from three men who sought business with City Hall — on his economic disclosure forms.

Lee, by failing to report those gifts, gained an unfair advantage during his 2019 and 2020 election campaigns, both of which he won by small margins, Kulkarni said.

“There was a concealment effort made there in order to win those two elections,” she said.

Commissioner Aryeh Cohen voted against the five additional ethics counts, saying he wasn’t convinced that the gift information would have made a difference. Last year, after city investigators accused Lee of violating gift laws, he won reelection handily.

“Voters knew, and he won by a larger margin” than in 2019 or 2020, Cohen said. “So I don’t think that that was a misuse of a position or gaining benefit from it.”

Brian Hildreth, an attorney representing Lee, had argued for a maximum fine of $10,000. Appearing before the commission, he said city investigators incorrectly calculated the value of the gifts and failed to take into account how much Lee had actually consumed at the food and drink venues.

Lee, in a statement, vowed to keep fighting the charges, calling the case “wasteful and political.” An appeal would need to be filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

“Today is but one step in the process of fighting these baseless charges,” he said. “I look forward to finally having an opportunity to have this matter adjudicated in a fair and impartial setting.”

The Lee case revolves around gifts — mostly meals and alcohol but also hotel stays, transportation and $1,000 in gambling chips — provided by the three businessmen: Andy Wang, who peddled Italian cabinets, “smart home” technology and facial recognition software; architect and developer Chris Pak; and lobbyist Michael Bai.

Lee, while working as Englander’s chief of staff, flew with his boss and several others — including Wang and Bai — to Las Vegas in 2017. Englander resigned from office the following year, after being contacted by FBI agents about the trip.

In 2020, federal prosecutors accused Englander of accepting $15,000 in cash from Wang, lying to FBI agents and obstructing their investigation. He eventually pleaded guilty to a single count of providing false information to the FBI and was sentenced to 14 months in prison.

In 2023, Englander agreed to pay $79,830 to settle an Ethics Commission case focused on his own gift law violations. That same year, the commission filed a case against Lee, saying he violated the gift law not just in Vegas but also at restaurants in downtown L.A. and Koreatown.

Lee repeatedly denied the allegations and argued that the statute of limitations had run out. The commission responded by scheduling a multiday hearing, held in June before Administrative Law Judge Ji-Lan Zang.

During those proceedings, Lee said he made a good faith effort to pay his own way and, in some cases, declined to eat during meals. For example, he testified that he did not remember eating during the meetings at Yxta Cocina Mexicana and Water Grill, both in downtown L.A.

Zang, in her written report to the commission, called those denials “not credible,” saying it “strains credulity” to believe that he would join the group at those restaurants without eating any food.

During the Las Vegas trip, Lee stayed at the Aria hotel, went to Blossom restaurant and spent an evening with the group at Hakkasan Nightclub.

At Blossom, Wang ordered a dinner worth nearly $2,500 that included shark fin soup, Peking duck and Kobe beef. Lee testified over the summer that he arrived at the restaurant in time for a dessert of bird’s nest soup, tasting it and deciding he did not like it.

At Hakkasan Nightclub later that night, Wang purchased three rounds of bottle service for the group for around $8,000 apiece, while Pak purchased a fourth round for $8,418.75.

Lee said he gave Wang $300 in cash as reimbursement for his drinks, withdrawing money from an ATM. Hildreth, his attorney, told the commission that drinks were served to a large number of nightclubgoers.

“The testimony and the evidence suggests that dozens and dozens of people were joining Councilmember Lee and others,” he said.

Kulkarni, before the vote, said she was especially troubled that Lee, after being contacted by FBI agents in 2017, sent Wang a backdated check for $442 to reimburse him for some of the Vegas trip. That act on its own, she said, constituted “a very serious offense.”

“That is not a mistake that one does. That is an affirmative act,” she said.

Hildreth said his client wrote a reimbursement check right away but that it was lost, necessitating a second, backdated check. He also noted that Lee cooperated with federal law enforcement and city ethics investigators.

“He sat for two interviews with the FBI,” Hildreth said. “That’s not something that deserves a punitive penalty.”

Los Angeles City Councilman John Lee repeatedly violated the city’s gift laws in 2016 and 2017, accepting freebies during a lavish trip to Las Vegas and at multiple restaurants in L.A., a judge said in a filing released Friday.

In a 59-page proposed decision, Administrative Law Judge Ji-Lan Zang concluded that Lee committed two counts of violating a law governing the size of gifts a city official can receive and three counts of violating a law requiring that such gifts be publicly disclosed.

Zang recommended a $43,730 penalty for Lee, who represents the northwest San Fernando Valley and was chief of staff to then-City Councilmember Mitchell Englander at the time of the alleged violations. However, the judge did not agree with allegations by city ethics investigators that Lee misused his position or helped Englander misuse his position.

In 2020, federal prosecutors accused Englander of accepting $15,000 in cash from businessman Andy Wang, lying to FBI agents and obstructing their investigation into the 2017 Vegas trip. Englander ultimately pleaded guilty to a single count of providing false information to the FBI and was sentenced to 14 months in prison.

The five-member Los Angeles City Ethics Commission is scheduled to make a determination on Wednesday, deciding both the number of violations Lee committed and any financial penalties to impose on him.

The commission has the power to accept or reject Zang’s recommendations. Ethics investigators have recommended that the commission take a more punitive approach by fining Lee about $138,000 and holding him responsible for all 10 counts.

The Lee case revolves around gifts — mostly food and alcohol but also hotel stays, transportation and $1,000 in gambling chips — provided by three men who have sought to do business with City Hall: Wang, who peddled Italian cabinets, “smart home” technology and facial recognition software; architect and developer Chris Pak; and lobbyist Michael Bai.

The judge issued her report six months after a multi-day hearing on the allegations against Lee, who replaced Englander on the council in 2019.

During those proceedings, Lee denied that he improperly accepted gifts, saying he made a good faith effort to pay his own way and, in some cases, declined to eat during meals. For example, he testified that he did not remember eating during his meetings at Yxta and Water Grill, both of which are in downtown L.A.

Zang, in her report, called those denials “not credible,” describing his testimony as “evasive and self contradictory.” She said Lee’s testimony also was in conflict with information he gave the FBI during its investigation into Englander, as well as testimony from other witnesses.

“It strains credulity to believe that [Lee] would join Englander, Bai, and Wang for lunch at Yxta and dinner at Water Grill without eating any food during the meals,” she wrote.

Ethics investigators have accused Lee of receiving an assortment of gifts during the 2017 Vegas trip with Englander and several others. Lee and a group of friends stayed at the Aria hotel and spent an evening at the Hakkasan Nightclub, according to the city’s allegations.

At the hotel restaurant, Blossom, Wang ordered a dinner worth nearly $2,500 for the group, which included Englander, Lee and several others, sending out servings of shark fin soup, Peking duck and Kobe beef, according to the judge’s summary of events.

Lee testified that he arrived at the restaurant in time for a dessert of bird’s nest soup, tasting it and deciding he did not like it, the judge said in her filing.

At Hakkasan later that night, Wang purchased three rounds of bottle service for the group for around $8,000 apiece, while Pak paid for a fourth round at a cost of $8,418.75.

“Each round of bottle service was served with fanfare, as female VIP hostesses brought bottles of alcohol to the table with flashing lights,” the judge wrote.

That night, at least 20 other club patrons went to Wang’s booth and drank alcohol at the table, according to the judge’s filing.

Lee was never charged by federal prosecutors and has said he was unaware of wrongdoing by Englander. In a filing submitted last week, his attorneys said that investigators incorrectly calculated the value of the gifts, including the bottles of alcohol, whose contents were distributed among many people.

Lee gave Wang $300 in cash as reimbursement for his drinks, withdrawing money from an ATM in Las Vegas to cover those expenses, his lawyers said.

In their reply to the city, Lee’s attorneys contend that the statute of limitations has expired on the city ethics counts. They have also pushed back on the recommendation from city ethics investigators that Lee pay a $138,000 penalty.

“Such inflated numbers are not grounded in reason, have no basis in the record, no support in the governing law, and no place in a fair and impartial enforcement system,” they wrote in their filing.

Englander previously agreed to pay $79,830 to settle a similar Ethics Commission case over the gifts he received.

Ethics investigators have accused Lee of committing 10 counts of violating city laws — two counts of accepting gifts in excess of the legal limit, three counts of failing to report those gifts on his public disclosure forms, four counts of misusing his position and one count of aiding and abetting Englander’s misuse of his position.

In 2016, the legal limit on gifts to city officials was $460 per donor. The following year, it was $470.

In Englander’s 2020 federal indictment, Lee was mentioned not by name, but instead referred to as “City Staffer B.” Despite his legal troubles, he won reelection in 2024.

I genuinely love a good facial — the ritual of it, the permission to lie still for 90 minutes, the way my skin looks afterward. I’m the person who books facials on vacation, who will try whatever’s trending this month, who drives to San Gabriel for a treatment a TikToker described as “gua sha on steroids.” So, yes, I was willing to pay $430 to have someone’s fingers in my mouth if it meant potential jaw realignment. Even if it meant a tuning fork was somehow involved.

The service is offered in a cozy Beverly Hills storefront by Sonia Vargas, the aesthetician and owner of Sonia Vargas Skin. While I dubbed it the tuning fork facial in my brain, Vargas bills it as the “Restructuring & Rebalancing Facial.” The 90-minute, $430 treatment promises to physically restructure your face.

Vargas said that she left fashion design eight years ago for facial massage training in techniques like craniosacral work (gentle manipulation of the skull and spine), manual lymphatic work and TMJ release. She told me the treatment has become popular with different types of clients. “It just depends on the face, the person, what they need and their budget,” Vargas said.

Some come weekly when dealing with acute TMJ issues, while others book quarterly maintenance appointments or schedule sessions before weddings when they want what Vargas calls a “natural lift.” She’s had clients come after jaw surgery who get treatments twice a week for months, others dealing with bad filler or Botox who needed intensive work to break down adhesions.

Sonia Vargas performs a lymphatic drainage massage.

The room was like many I’d been in for facials, dim, with low music playing and a bed taking up much of the space. But this one had a special addition of LED lights and ‘chakra-aligning’ gemstones that Vargas claimed pulsed at 4 hertz — a frequency she said that’s meant to help the immune system.

First came the familiar parts. The tingle of glycolic acid, the pain of extractions, the warm towels heating my skin. Then Vargas performed myofascial release methods with the precision of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. Her fingers moved across my face like a pianist working through complicated scales as she tackled lymphatic drainage and the loosening of my jaw — a pleasurable experience that wasn’t uncomfortable even once.

As she continued working, the gradual lifting of my facial muscles began to accumulate into something noticeable. My face felt suspended in what seemed like a permanent knowing smile, as if I’d heard a particularly good joke no one else got.

After examining my jaw, Vargas suggested I add the TMJ release, a $90 addition to the base treatment. What followed was surprisingly gentle intraoral work, also known as buccal massage. I’d seen aggressive videos online, where aestheticians appear to be trying to extract someone’s skeleton through their mouth, but this was very peaceful in comparison. Her gloved fingers worked along my jawline from inside my mouth, breaking the silence to note my left side was significantly tighter, working more slowly there. I hadn’t mentioned the growing asymmetry I’d been noticing in photos or that I’d been meaning to ask my dentist about it.

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1. Sonia Vargas wraps a warm towel around Jackie Snow’s face. 2. Sonia Vargas applies a cleanser. (Kayla Bartkowski / Los Angeles Times)

The tuning fork came last, with Vargas pressing it against various points on my face. It was supposedly vibrating at something called Schumann resonance, 93.96 hertz, she later explained, a frequency that allegedly helps with immune function and chronic pain. It mostly felt like what it was: a cold piece of metal against my skin, vibrating. Unlike the dramatic muscle work that had come before, this was neutral, a bit anticlimactic.

The treatment incorporates elements that straddle the line between established practice and less proven ideas. The lymphatic drainage component has solid scientific backing, according to Dr. Ivy Lee, a board-certified dermatologist at the Comprehensive Dermatology Center of Pasadena. “The scientific evidence really comes from the breast cancer literature,” Lee said, referring to post-surgical lymphedema treatment. For healthy clients seeking wellness treatments, the benefits are mostly limited to temporary swelling reduction.

Sonia Vargas places a vibrating tuning fork on Jackie Snow’s face.

The vibrational therapy occupies murkier territory. Lee pointed to small studies suggesting vibration might improve microcirculation and skin temperature temporarily. But research that exists varies wildly in frequency, duration and methodology. “We don’t know the optimal dosing of this,” she said. “We don’t have an optimal protocol of what vibration frequency, where you apply it and then how long you apply it.”

The traditional elements of the facial have clear benefits, Lee confirmed. As for the rest, she saw no potential for harm, and in our high-stress world, that might be what matters most.

“Anything that can help us have that little moment where we can center ourselves does help,” she said. “Chronic elevated levels of cortisol are not good for us.”

When it comes to the claims about restructuring and facial rebalancing, the medical community is skeptical. “There is no evidence-based medicine to support any of the claims,” said Dr. Lisa Chipps, a Beverly Hills dermatologist who reviewed the treatment details. While she acknowledged that practitioners might be able to feel differences in muscle tension — as Vargas did with my jaw — changing or correcting those imbalances is another matter entirely.

Still, Chipps noted what both dermatologists emphasized: There’s no evidence these treatments cause harm. “If it makes people feel good, there’s nothing wrong with it,” she said. For some, she suggested, it might be like actors doing exercises before an audition. If it helps them feel their best, why not?

Vargas views the face as connected to the entire body’s fascia system, which is either revolutionary bodywork or expensive fiction, depending on who you ask. When I mentioned breaking my little toe while surfing three years ago had impacted my back and now maybe all the way up to my jaw, she agreed it was possible. “The back of your neck and your shoulders are so tight,” Vargas told me. “When you get certain injuries, you think it’s only there, but it actually affects everything.”

My skin looked great for days afterward, glowy and lifted. Whether that came from the lymphatic drainage or the fascia work, the tuning fork or just 90 minutes of focused attention, I couldn’t say. In a city where everyone’s stressed and most people’s jaws are clenched without even knowing it, the result felt worth it. And while Vargas clearly believes in the deeper bodywork, she hasn’t lost sight of the basics.

“I’m still an aesthetician,” Vargas said. “I want your skin to look good.”

MUSIC fans are just realising the age of singer Brenda Lee when she recorded her famous Christmas song.

Festive favourite Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree was released in 1958 and featured in Home Alone, one of the biggest movies of the 90s. 

Written by Johnny Marks, the rockabilly track Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree was recorded by Brenda in 1958 when the singer was just 13.

To this day, it remains popular and has been recorded by everyone from John Travolta to Justin Bieber.

The single entered the UK singles chart at Number 30 in its first week in November 1962, according to the Official Charts Company.

It climbed into the Top 10 and earned its original peak of Number 6 a month later.

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Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree secured its place as a festive classic after it was featured in the much-loved 1990 Christmas movie Home Alone.

In the memorable scene, Kevin McCallister – played by Macauley Kulkin – deterred would-be burglars from robbing his home by throwing a pretend Christmas party to make the house appear occupied. 

Yet when one TikToker posted a video of the song and asked what age people thought the singer was, many were stunned to discover it was recorded when Brenda was just a teenager.

One person wrote: “She sounds middle aged.”

Another fan replied: “Wait, I’m just finding this out too.”

A third person added: “Whaaattt?! I looked it up and still have a hard time believing it.”

A fourth person wrote: “Not even my dad knew and he’’s 60.”

Others who have covered Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree include teenybop heroes Hanson and Cliff Richard. 

In 1987, Kim Wilde and Mel Smith released a version of the song for Comic Relief. 

In a 2019 interview, Brenda Lee – known by her nickname Little Miss Dynamite – said that she had no knowledge as to why Marks wanted her specifically to sing it.

She told The Tennessean: “I had not had a lot of success in records, but for some reason he heard me and wanted me to do it. And I did.”