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Category: WTF?

May 28, 2006

News Flash: Kim Jong Il and Hitler Share a Fan Club

Continuing with our Nazi theme, a member of the Korean “Friendship” Association has registered his disagreement with my criticism of that group by illustrating the ease with which the extreme left and the extreme right accomodate to each other’s ideas (as if Mussolini’s conversion from Communism to Fascism weren’t evidence enough). For extra fun, there’s a photo lineup! I must say that the KFA has great potential for more material like this.

Categories Humor/Satire/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 28, 2006

The Dictator on My Bar Napkin

Two recent news stories again raise the one of the most difficult questions free societies face: what role should governments play in limiting the expression of views that are tasteless, offensive, or which might even be lies designed to strip that society of its freedom? Let’s begin with some context. If the first casualty of prosperity is taste, a corollary to this rule is that the depth of affliction is proportional to the speed with which a society achieves prosperity....

Categories Anti-Americanism/Censorship/Democracy/History/Korean Education/Korean Society/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 17, 2006

The UniFiction Church Choir

Progress at Last! The last seven years of the Sunshine policy have finally secured a legacy Roh can campaign on. Goodbye “sea of fire,” hello, “deluge of fire!” I’d like to see those neocon skeptics deny that “deluge” beats “sea” any day of the week! This from the lovable North Korean site “Within Our Race” (a rough translation). ================ Who Stopped My Peace Train? My money is on this not being the last obstacle that bars the path of Kim...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/China/China & Korea/Diplomacy/Europe/Human Rights/Humor/Satire/Japan/Japan & Korea/Korean Education/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/U.S. Military/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 12, 2006

Balance This!

[T]he Foreign Ministry’s special envoy on international security, Moon Chung-in, in a phone interview with the Chosun Ilbo elaborated on remarks a day earlier that Roh “is losing patience with U.S. President George W. Bush. Today, my friends, I write to you from a city living in fear. As our President, George W. Bush, sits in the White House nibbling compulsively at the bleeding tendrils where there were fingernails just a day ago, a cunning tiger holds court from his...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Diplomacy/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/WTF?
May 9, 2006

In a Word, ‘Predictable’

Who haven’t we heard from yet? The Korean Teachers’ Union, which infamously celebrated 9/11 in [a] video for Busan schoolkids before the last APEC summit. I can hardly wait. — The Korea Liberator, April 10, 2006 “Hollywood movies like “˜Spider-Man’ and “˜Batman’ will dominate our movie industry and we will be brainwashed by American ideology.” — Actor Choi Man-Shik, brainwashing public high school kids at a KTU-sponsored harangue. The reception, overall, was mixed.

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Society/NK Economics/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WTF?
May 5, 2006

Had Enough Tokdo Yet?

Time Asia does a spot-on summary, if you can bear it. According to a report by Peter Beck, the Northeast Asia project director for the International Crisis Group, “One would be hard pressed to find a single Korean over the age of five willing to admit that control of Dokdo does not matter.” By contrast, says Hideshi Takesada, a professor of Korean politics at Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies, “most people in Japan have no knowledge of the issue,”...

Categories Japan & Korea/Korean Politics/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 13, 2006

Links of Interest

* The United States wants South Korea to join it in imposing sanctions against North Korean shipping. South Korea will not agree, though the move would be almost exclusively symbolic. * LiNK will hold a fund-raising happy hour at the K Street Lounge, 1301 K St. NW, Washington, DC, on April 20th at 6 p.m. Join us as LiNK DC hosts the K Street Lounge Happy Hour! With free first drinks, we promise a great time networking with like professionals...

Categories Activism/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Korean Law/Korean Society/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/WTF?
April 9, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 36: FTA Meets WTF

Move over Weekly World News: Beware of the dragonfly: it may be a bugging robot disguised as a harmless insect. No, the advice does not come from a mental patient convinced the government is spying on his laundry bills: it was one of the security tips issued during last week’s two-day workshop for 120 Korean delegates in the nation’s impending free-trade negotiations with the U.S. The workshop was designed to help delegates guard their negotiation strategies from prying ears when...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Diplomacy/Humor/Satire/Korean Politics/Korean Society/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 9, 2006

Links of Note

Thanks for the readers who forwarded: The Hines Ward story made the Washington Post. It doesn’t add too much new information, but I do like to see the issue get covered here. Transparency is a mixed blessing for China on the Sujiatun story: It appears the claims by Falun Gong have been at least substantially exaggerated. Initial investigations by researchers for a US congressional committee have identified the site at Sujiatun as a hospital, where it is suspected organ harvesting...

Categories Censorship/China/Human Rights/Korean Society/Media Criticism/WTF?
April 1, 2006

A Brief History of Insincerity

As a young activist, Roh Moo Hyun called for the expulsion of U.S. forces from Korea. As a candidate, Roh Moo-Hyun rhetorically moved his nation from America’s tit to its feet and promised not to “kowtow” to its long-time protector and benefactor. Speaking before the United Nations last September, President Roh Moo Hyun said this before the entire UN General Assembly: The world must completely divest itself of mindsets and vestiges reminiscent of imperialistic tendencies that appear to linger in...

Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Humor/Satire/Korean Politics/Uncategorized/WTF?
February 19, 2006

‘Why I Published Those Cartoons’

Fleming Rose, Editor of the Jyllands-Posten, explains.  Meanwhile, there is more fuel for my “paxil in the water” proposal: Attacking a U.S. embassy over Danish cartoons. “God Bless Hitler.”  A German newspaper thinks the message this sends is unclear. Nigerian Muslim mobs burn churches, kill three kids and a priest.  Fifteen dead, total.  What’s most noticeable about all this isn’t the existence of extremism.  It’s the lack of a moderate response. Tigerhawk is through with asymetic sensitivity.  My own feeling...

Categories Terrorism/Iraq/WTF?
February 19, 2006

When Power Comes from the Wire of a Modem

The Washington Post has a fascinating look at how the Internet forced the Chinese government to retreat – partially – in its censorship of the journal “Freezing Point” (previous posts here). Why didn’t Beijing simply follow Mao’s old “barrel of a gun” formula this time? Because the Chinese economy must sustain sufficiently high growth to absorb a flood of excess laborers from rural areas to preserve social stability, which places China between the Scylla of rising dissent and the Charibdis...

Categories Censorship/China/Geopolitics/Human Rights/NK Economics/WTF?