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Category: Korean Society

January 1, 2007

2007 Portends a Leaner, Meaner Left

As foreshadowed here previously, the Uri death watch is over. Uri Party chairman Kim Geun-tae and former chairman Chung Dong-young in an emergency meeting on Thursday agreed to create a new party, to be called the People’s Party. In a thinly veiled warning to President Roh to keep his hands off, the two said it will be “autonomous and independent from outside political influence. That finalizes the two ex-Cabinet minister’s break with their former boss. Uri will continue to exist,...

Categories Korean Politics/Korean Society
December 13, 2006

Korean Apartheid Watch

Arnold knew of only one pool in town, but when she went there she was told, ‘No Foreigners Allowed.”’ She asked a Korean co-worker to call for her and explain that she had to swim for health reasons. “I explained about you (doctor’s order) but they said no,” the co-worker wrote in a follow up e-mail. “Foreigner(s) cannot use the pool.”   [link] The article is incorrect when it states that discrimination is legal in Korea.  As I explained in...

Categories Korean Society/UCMJ & SOFA
December 8, 2006

Arrest Galloper, Part 2

Ladies and gentlemen, our long national nightmare is over. We finally have closure in a terrible tragedy in which  innocent Korean  pedestrians were cut down by  a reckless foreigner,  who managed to evade local justice and (the outrage!) face a quickie trial and light punishment  in his home country’s courts.  Remember the protests and the vigils?  No?  Probably because the driver was a drunk South Korean Hyundai Asan  employee, and the victims were North Korean soldiers.  Two were injured, one...

Categories Korean Law/Korean Society/UCMJ & SOFA/Uncategorized
December 6, 2006

Just Wondering…

Does the National Human Rights Commission make a distinction between peaceful protest and violent protest?  On the one hand, it’s pretty obvious that the South Korean government is trying to censor both peaceful and violent opposition to the proposed Free Trade Agreement (and it’s such a dead issue, all you can do is wonder why anyone bothers).  On the other hand, when protestors get through the police blockades, things like this happen.  Another 20 injured today.  Gee, I wonder if...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Law/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
December 6, 2006

South Korea’s ‘Hostile’ Class

Leaving no stone unturned in its quest to emulate North Korean concepts of social justice, South Korea has announced the first official list of 100  Japanese collaborators whose blood, we can suppose,  will hereby stain three generations of class enemies (from way back in 1904, in some cases!).  Just to make sure the new songbun designations become nice and official, the government sent notices to  said descendants.  Depending on whose report you believe, there are either about 400, about 800,...

Categories History/Japan & Korea/Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/WTF?
December 5, 2006

The Cons Are Running the Prison: Why Is S. Korea Subsidizing Violence?

[Updated and bumped up]   To the astonishment of absolutely no one, union goons  affiliated with the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions  are (yet again)  unleashing a wave of  violence: We saw 47 arson and vandalism cases around the nation suspected to have been committed by Korea Cargo Transport Workers’ Union members,” Lee Taek-soon, head of the National Police Agency, said yesterday. “Thirteen cases were reported in North Gyeongsang province, seven in Ulsan and six in Busan.” It would surprise...

Categories Korean Law/Korean Politics/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
November 20, 2006

‘Unlike in the past, it is absurd to call a person unqualified because he was a pro-North leftist.”‘

This is the statement attributed to ruling  Uri Party lawmaker Im Jong-Seok during the confirmation hearing for Lee Jae-Joung, South Korea’s next Minister of Appeasement Unification.  Fine, then.  Is it equally absurd for a civilized democracy to question the fitness of a pro-fascist rightist  for a senior cabinet position?  Does Korea’s left hereby waive all grievances against Park Chung-Hee for his collaboration with Imperial Japan, along with any hereditary claims against his daughter, just in time for next year’s election? ...

Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society
October 29, 2006

DLP Leaders to N. Korea: ‘Say It Aint So!’

[Previous posts on the Il Shim Hue Fifth Column scandal here.  So far, the NIS has accused the ring of controlling violent anti-American protests, trying to infiltrate civic groups, controlling  senior officials of the Democratic Labor Party, and trying to manipulate the Seoul mayoral election.] As bad timing goes, it’s one for the books.  The far-left minor opposition Democratic Labor Party’s leaders  had planned their visit to Pyongyang  some time  ago, before they realized that their party would be at...

Categories Appeasement/Korean Society/The Fifth Column
October 26, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 57: Time to End the Screen Quota

I’m about to go all screedy  about this, but I  can be  brief, because  Robert Koehler has pretty much said everything I’d have said anyway.   I generally write  “DOA” posts after an action by  either  government documents some new low in bilateral relations.  The government isn’t responsible for the content of what Korea’s notoriously militant film industry makes, but it wasn’t responsible for the content of “Yoduk Story,” either.   So on one hand,  fictionalized movies about  No Gun Ri  or formaldehyde...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Korean Society/NK Economics
October 23, 2006

First Act, Last Laugh, Part 2

I have a message  for whomever tried to stop “Yoduk Story” from playing in Seoul:  read, weep, and know that you have failed. “Whomever,” according to producer Jung Sung-San and the daily Chosun Ilbo (which backed YS), is  someone  in the South Korean government.  Eventually, the South Korean government got around to denying this.  Personally, I wasn’t there.  All I can say is that the accusation is  consistent with other things the South Korean government has done to  cover for...

Categories Censorship/Human Rights/Korean Society
October 21, 2006

Fractured Monolith

The quality and quantity of the Daily NK’s reports from inside the North just seem to get better. This week, two new reports fill in gaps in our knowledge about economic and social conditions; both are absolute must-reads. The first is filled with pictures of gritty scenes of daily life in the North. It’s astonishing to see the extent to which the blockade has eroded when pictures like these come out. On this day, the brawl began as 2 young...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Inside NK/Korean Society
October 21, 2006

MUST READ: NYT on Korean Nationalism, North and South

Today, even though it has a highly advanced economy — more than 80 percent of South Koreans have broadband Internet access at home, the highest rate in the world — the country has a nearly provincial relationship to its local heroes, like Ban Ki-moon, the foreign minister who will be the next U.N. secretary general. The most famous South Korean of recent times was Hwang Woo Suk, a scientist who in 2004 and 2005 announced breakthroughs in cloning. At home,...

Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Korean History/Korean Society/U.S. & Korea/WMD
October 19, 2006

Interview: L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director, Mansfield Foundation

Gordon Flake (bio)  is two things that make his opinions interesting and valuable to me.  First, he’s a fluent Korean speaker, and those of us who aren’t are always at some disadvantage to those who do when we are gathering the facts we process into our views.  Second — and Gordon may not agree with this characterization — his views  strike me as classically  liberal. His views are probably more independent and less jaundiced by partisan bias or  ambitions  than...

Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Blogs & Blogging/Famine & Food Aid/Google Earth/Human Rights/Korean Politics/Korean Society/Media Criticism/NK Economics/Proliferation/Refugees/U.S. & Korea/Washington Views
October 1, 2006

La Place Des Miserables: 39.713N, 126.895E

This is one district, called Pyongchang-ri, of the infamous Camp 15, now known worldwide as Yodok. Here, according to survivors, children labor, starve, sicken, and die beside their parents — thousands of them each year. The entire camp is massive, and not all of it is within Google Earth’s high-resolution coverage. This picture gives a partial overview; you can see another photograph of this district here, and more photos here.  Yodok was the place Kang Chol-Hwan documented in “The Aquariums...

Categories Google Earth/Human Rights/Korean Society/The Camps