IA on soccer diplomacy, Infidel on Maemi, Oranckay on hypocritical fascists, Ian on emigration to Canada, and so much more!
- Kevin at IA takes Prof. Moon Jong-in to task for this rather questionable quote in the NYT:
“If they can defeat the Americans, they can enhance national pride in North Korea and they can have an impact on diplomatic negotiations,” Moon Jung In, dean of international relations at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, said in an interview there.
“They can affect U.S. sentiment, that the North Koreans are not monsters.”
Now, I’ve met Prof. Moon a couple of times - invited him to speak at Kyung Hee University’s GIP when I was head of the student council there - he’s a very level-headed, plain-spoken, and immensely confident scholar for whom I have tremendous respect (I’d have more for him if he wasn’t a Terp). That being said, I find comments like this disappointing - soccer matches (that Americans don’t watch) will, in no way, shape or form influence how events play out on the peninsula in the coming months. As Kevin rightly points out:
I have to ask, what the fuck is with Koreans believing that sporting events have any practical impact on peace, prosperity, diplomacy, or politics? Do they believe that the ping-pong diplomacy of the early 70’s was the rule rather than the exception? Have opinions of the South Korean diplomatic corps sunk so low that they’d rather invest hope in meaningless athletic events than face the continual disappointment of seeing their own diplomats slapped around by the Norks time after time?
The only thing I can really add to Kevin’s assessment is that I’m not really sure South Korean officials really believe that these things are helping; this South Korean administration, and the one immediately preceding it, have invested a tremendous amount of political capital into their respective policies of engagement with the North. It’s important for them to maintain at least the illusion that those policies are bringing results - to acknowledge otherwise would be to admit that the policy had been mistaken from the start. And given the way things have worked out, that would be tantamount to political suicide. Hence, the grasping at straws, anything that would make the Sunshine Policy appear to be something other than the colossal failure that it is.
- The Oranckay almost makes me ashamed to be a rightist:
It’s really sad that many of those in Korea, Japan, and the US who are the most vocal in protesting human rights abuses in North Korea were at best silent about the same in the South when it mattered most, and back when a “stronger” US-Korea alliance meant the US had more influence in affairs here.
This is an excellent point, unfortunately - many of the most vocal anti-North Korean voices come from mouths belonging to people just one step removed from fascism. That’s not to take anything away from what those voices might be saying, or to gloss over the fact that a number of those voices that clamored for “human rights” in South Korea during the 70s and 80s are at best silent when it comes to unimaginably worse violations in North Korea (i.e. it was former human rights lawyer Noh Mu-hyeon who ordered his diplomats to sit out April’s United Nations Human Rights Commission vote on condemning North Korea’s human rights violations). But hypocricy is hypocrisy, regardless of ideological persuasion.
- Mike Ferrin of Seeing Eye Blog links to his most recent column in the Joongang Ilbo, “Closing Time at Helios.” And check out his post on Miya-ri’s Apartheid Sex Industry.
- The Big Hominid discusses North Korea’s watery bowels.
- The Infidel expresses his displeasure on the post-Maemi clean-up effort (and he should know, living in Pusan):
I am appalled by the South Korean government’s reaction to this crisis, but not surprised. Not only did it take 24 hours for power to return to my district, but, aside from a few traffic cops (whom I’m shocked were even obeyed), I have seen no clean-up effort. President Roh might be touring and the prime minister holding meetings, but debris is still laying in gutters and buildings need repair. The one element I discern in the dailies, with the notable exception of the KT, is a fatalistic, depressive reaction to the typhoon, coupled with a disgusting opportunistic attempt to drag in other issues, like the current WTo talks. The Dong-a even made the recovery effort sound like a self-help campaign.
- Ian Ross discusses, among other things, his Chusok, Typhoon Maemi, and Korean immigration to Canada:
I will link to a couple of Canada specific articles however. Most curious to Canadian interests are the recent spate of “Immigration Packages to Canada” on Korean home-shopping networks. The story I linked to was the original event but it’s success has caused it to be repeated. Basically, it seems the companies involved, starting with Hyundai Home Shopping Network, are selling emmigration to Canadian. Thousands of Koreans have scooped up these exhorbantly priced packages with the hope of becoming citizens of Manitoba, of all places. Now it’s obvious that the Canadian government has absolutely nothing to do with this. The figures quoted by the company as immigration statistics are out of date by several years, according to a friend of mine researching this on her end, from Manitoba.
What they are *actually* selling is immigration counseling (more clear in the second story), but seemingly under the guise of virtually guaranteed immigration (a promise they certainly can’t make). The price tag for this counseling service runs into the tens of thousands of dollars which many average citizens are happily forking over to these snakes. What bugs me is that when the truth comes out, I can assure you that no one will be blaming Hyundai. Koreans will lose millions of dollars out of this and many of these people are doing this because they have been hit hard by the downturn in the economy already, and are putting the last of their savings into a perceived overseas parachute.
He also puts up a nice photo of Pusan’s T’aejongdae.
