The Foreign Ministry hopes Shinzo Abe’s ascension as prime minister will lead to improved ties across the East Sea:
The government expressed hope Wednesday that Japan’s new leader will take a sincere attitude to address the strained relations between the two countries.
Personally, I think it’s just as likely they’ll be missing Koizumi before too long. At any rate, I look forward to plenty of blogging material.
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If anything (gleaning from casual reading of the news over the years), it seems that Koizumi by contrast will prove to have been more moderate than Abe! As long as Roh is still running the show in Korea, I guess we can look forward to lots more fireworks, or “blogging material,” as you pragmatically put it.
If Abe gets his one percent of GDP increase for the SDF, which would effectively double the military budget. Whoooo hooo, let the fun begin.
JiMong: Good catch!
I wonder what the U.S. foreign policy would be if two very strong allies (Japan and Korea) got into it? For that matter, suppose it was Saudi Arabia and Israel…
–Remort
In the current political situation, the strength of the U.S. alliances with Japan and Korea are not even comparable. If Japan and Korea “got into it,” the U.S. would support the stronger ally.
People, the important question here is this:
How does Abe’s hair look? Those are some big hair curlers he has to fill.
Koi has maverick hair.
Seonbi has marvelous got
갓 (hat)???
Yes, Sewing 갓
“선비님의 갓”
고맙소!
I should return the favour…nice Samjokoh (three-legged crow)!
Hmmm…the link doesn’t work. Try again:
http://ai.kaist.ac.kr/iwfhr98/samjokoh.htm
The US was placed in this position in Faulklins war and supported England. We have already answered the question of who would we support in a conflict between
Saudi Arabia and Israel by the arms we sell, or allow each country to have. We would have no choice but to support Japan in a conflict between Korea and Japan.
Thanks Sewing
고맙소 선비님.
고구려 국내성 고분벽화의 일신도에도 나타나있지요.
언제 약주나 한잔 나누지요!^^
Koi has maverick hair.
I’ll confess that I find his full head of longish gray hair sexy. Just the other day, I was walking behind a late 30-something man with long graying hair confined in a ponytail. I would have followed him to his car and asked for his phone number, but he had a kid in tow, and I heard something about “mommy.”
I was amused by a Korean colleague in China, who thought that a graying American staffer in her mid-thirties was born with that color just like people are born with black, brown, blond, or red hair. Apparently, she had never seen a full head of gray on someone who wasn’t old enough to be a grandparent.
a couple of years ago in Melbourne a newspaper seller with East European accent told me “You look like Japanese PM.” with a smile, and I smiled back, but I wasn’t quite sure whether it was meant to be a compliment. Now it’s clearer.
JiMong:
Sure, maybe we could get together some time. Email me: click on my name to go to my blog. My super-duper, spam-resistant email address is in the green box at the bottom of the page.
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