The Marmot’s Hole

By SHELTON BUMGARNER
Marmot’s Hole Guest Blogger

At some point this week here in Korea, it occurred to me that we had reached the “tipping point” of the year, and that the next thing we know, we’ll all be waking up on January 1st, 2006 trying to remember what we did the night before.

But before then, we can go back to complaining about the past, not the future. G.I. Korea Blog is annoyed with some signs that were put up in Ansan that blame America for Korea succumbing to the Japanese imperial war machine at a time when the United States had a geopolitical interest in keeping the Philippines safe under its “care.”

As I have stated before, the US was protecting its colonial interests in the Philippines at the time and had no responsibility in defending Korea against Japan. The people that should have been defending Korea at the time, this may shock some of the revisionists, are the Koreans! Koreans have the responsibility of defending their own country. The lack of modernization and internal bickering caused by the ineffective leadership of the king and the corrupt yangban class is what made Korea easy pickings for the Japanese.

Oranckay believes that politics, not making Seoul less congested, was in Korean President Roh Mu-hyun mind when he sought to move the capital to the Chungcheong region.

I thought Roh was insane when as a candidate he started talking about moving the capital. The GNP thought he was nuts as well. Guess what? The Chungcheong region (where the capital was to be moved to) voted for Roh and he won the election as a result. When it came time to vote on the bill to move the capital in the National Assembly, guess what happened? The GNP voted for it. When the GNP then took the very same bill to the Constitutional Court to get it declared unconstitutional a GNP Assembly member from Chungcheong opposed to the move, saying ???we??ll lose the next presidential election, too.??

Asiapundit muses on the likelihood that Korea, along with the rest of Northeast Asia, will adopt a common currency a la Europe.

NKZone has a round robin post regarding the visit of FT reporter Anna Fifield to the “Mass Games” in Pyongyang. Asiapundit also broaches the subject.

Regular “must read” The Lost Nomad gives us yet more proof that not only does soju make you see stuff, sometimes it can be used to appease the stuff you see. Apparently “a 36 year old housewife who suffered from depression” killed herself on a flight to Incheon from Sydney and later soju was brought in to appease her angry spirit.

But two months later, when the same aircraft touched down in Washington D.C., the smoke detector in that bathroom went off. Crew went to check but found no one there. Some of the crew recalled the suicide two months earlier and were scared stiff. Another two months on the crew was assigned to the same plane once again, and they decided to bring some soju — traditional Korean liquor — and sprinkle it in the bathroom to appease the vengeful spirit.

And lastly, we return briefly to the Mass Games, where we see yet again that even folks in the Workers’ Paradise can’t get enough of pizza and coffee.

Also the Hamburger shop run by a Swiss NGO as part of their bakery operation in PY seems to be doing well, I heard that quite often there are Koreans in there munching on pizza and drinking coffee, and next weekend when I will be back in Pyongyang there will be a very large delegation of South Koreans taking part in a golf competition (amongst themselves, no Northern brothers playing) at Taesong Golf course near Nampo.

Writer’s Note: This piece has been corrected.