By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger
Hump day was a big day for news this week as Japanese Emperor Akihito made a surprise visit to a memorial in Saipan honoring Korean deaths there during World War II. Oranckay speculated on why the Emperor might do such a thing:
One might imagine two possible reasons why he chose not to let the world know he would visit the Korean memorial, and indeed both could have been a factor. According to the Guardian, some in Japan?????s Imperial Household Agency opposed the emperor?????s visit to Saipan altogether, but ???relented when the emperor expressed a strong desire to go.???? One Korean story quotes the agency as saying the decision was made to visit the Korean memorial only a day in advance and that even the Japanese consulate was unaware of what was going to happen. Then there is the issue of the island?????s Korean residents association, which earlier had demanded that the Japanese emperor visit the memorial but (quite naturally) ???found the Japanese consulate on the island unresponsive,???? among other things. You can imagine the many Koreans, some welcoming but some there in protest, who would have been waiting had it been part of his official itinerary.
Later in the week, U.S. President George W. Bush signed an executive order tightening the screws on companies “suspected of colluding in proliferation [ of WMD].” The Joongang Ilbo goes on to say that:
A bank and two trading companies in North Korea were cited in a new executive order issued by U.S. President George W. Bush as part of his administration’s broad attempt to stem the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
The White House announced the order aimed at freezing the assets of citizens and companies suspected of colluding in proliferation.
Along with a Syrian research agency and three Iranian companies, North Korea’s Korea Mining Development Trading Corp., Korea Ryongbong General Corp. and Tanchon Commercial Bank, all of Pyongyang, were listed as targets of the order.
The U.S. government has previously taken action against at least one of the three North Korean firms. It was not immediately clear if they had assets in the United States.
The measures are unlikely to affect North Korea directly because there are virtually no business relations between the United States and North Korea. But other foreign companies, particularly South Korean and Chinese firms with assets in the United States, could be affected.
In lighter news, the messy story of the Gaettongnyeo and her pooping pooch continued to generate interest.
This week’s Quote of the Week comes from Norbert Vollertsen of The American Enterprise:
The authors in this issue of The American Enterprise paint a sometimes terrifying picture of North Korea. Kim Jong Il?????s mad regime has never formally renounced its pledge to swallow up the southern half of the Korean peninsula, even if it takes a devastating conventional war to do it. And its recent nuclear announcements have given citizens of Tokyo???possibly even Los Angeles???cause for serious concern.
It?????s clear the United States and the world have to do something to end, or at least control, this potential nuclear nightmare. But the real problem of North Korea goes beyond the crazy bluster of its leaders, the appeasement of the South Koreans, the lack of cooperation from China, and the other subjects discussed on pages 36-45. There?????s a human element that sometimes gets lost in the Washington debates. Very few Westerners understand what life is really like for the average North Korean, because the country?????s dictatorship keeps all conduits of information and trade sealed as tight as a drum.
6 Comments
The English translations in the gaeddongnyeo article are useful for those who have followed it, though a source link for the witness’s account would be handy, as would some Korea-specific commentary. There’s been a lot of commentary in the (English language) Korean press on the incident and “cyber terror” in general, leading to this unsurprising announcement today: ‘Ban on Web aliases set for October’. If there’s one thing Korean cyberspace needs more of, it’s regulation.
more regulation?? even if that was the right thing to do… how?
the laughable thing about this is the “50 minute panel discussion” held to decide the matter. it’s a typical korean knee-jerk reaction pattern. some social problem crops up, it grabs media attention, and some government officials get on their horse and charge towards a solution.
then later, upon the further reflection they should have taken before making their decision, they realize that the solution doesn’t really do anything.
the naver guy is pissed off because he knows that forcing people to reveal their names on his service will only push them to another service that exists or will be created to fill the demand.
Maybe the sarcasm in the last sentence of my post isn’t clear enough. At any rate. onsidering you have to register with certain sites using your resident number, making that necessary for posting comments doesn’t seem far fetched, though I’m not sure how long it takes to register at these sites now. Is there an online database of resident numbers which makes registering a quick process, or is it done via a third party who checks, making it take much longer? I think if it becomes unwieldy and annoying to post, then a lot of people won’t. Still, considering the nature and importance of ‘life on the itnernet’ here, if any country is going figure to out ways to make such registration fast and effortless, it’ll likely be Korea.
And I agree that these problems that arise are often dealt with without enough reflection, in order to make it look like something is being done about it. Sometimes, even the most pointless of some of these internet scandals leads to some sort of legal consequence - English spectrum-gate has lead to many more crackdowns on foreigners teaching English illegally (a friend told me how her co-worker was busted a few weeks ago - immigration raided a large apartment building in Gangnam and swept through it, catching 15 foreigners teaching morning private lessons. And that’s just one raid). There was an article called ‘Power of Netizens’ over at the Donga Ilbo site, which looked at how netizen opinion may have affected government decisions in the past (saying about 50% of measures that went against netizen opinion were revoked). I wonder if netizen opinion will affect this decision…
…typical korean knee-jerk reaction…
unfortunately, Koreans have no monopoly on this knee-jerk reaction pattern. i am not arguing that this is the brightest way to go about it, but let’s drop this Korean this, Korean that, shall we?
“let’s drop this korean this, korean that, shall we?”
no. i didn’t even come close to saying that they have a monopoly on it. nor did i imply it. it’s just a useful way of looking at things.
the most infamous case would be the impeachment last year. it doesn’t fit the pattern i mentioned in my post above but it does show you how a lack of institutional memory in their political system works for them. contrast with the impeachment of clinton a few years back. the House didn’t just up and decide to do it one day. it took at least a year of thinking, debating, lawyering, etc…, not to mention the whole starr investigation. but the koreans just up and did it on a whim without barely a thought to the consequence.
or, look at the government’s strange efforts to control the housing bubble in kangnam over the last year. without doing an exhaustive search, i’d say they changed their policy on that at least 5 times in a six month period! tax, don’t tax, maybe tax, tax, etc.. now, at least one major credit agency (fitch) is publicly asking what the hell the government is up to, pointing to the fact that the housing “bubble” is far from serious and very local. there are some very smart people in the korean government. is it that they can’t figure it out?… or are they still plagued by some kind of 8282 mentality that makes them think they have to jump into action everytime someone catches the whiff of some problem somewhere?
then again, you might ask, isn’t the korean knee-jerk approach better than a Canadian do-nothing approach?
Very nice site. I found you hunting around for some information I wanted, and felt obliged to register myself just to say nice work. Dangerous question, but as you have an enormous list of blogs in your sidebar, and I’m a bit short on time lately, would you be willing to point out a few that you think are especially good for cultural commentary? In the meantime, feel free to look mine over and see if it fits in your asia bloglist. Thanks.