The Kyunghyang Shinmun reports that civic groups are upset that the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) has selected Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to launch the Arirang 3 satellite into space, accusing the state of giving a pass to a corporation with a war criminal past.
The civic groups, which include Korean survivors of the atomic bombs and women drafted to labor in wartime Japanese factories, called Mitsubishi Heavy Industries an “irresponsible corporation that denies responsibility even though [Koreans] were harmed in the atomic bombings after it dragged off about 3,000 Korean youths in a forced mobilisation.” They said awarding Mitsubishi the contract hurt national pride and ran counter to the spirit of the Constitution, which holds world peace as one of its major values.
It should be pointed out that said groups have been fighting a decade-long legal battle to get restitution from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries for what transpired during the war.
Arirang 3 will be carried into space in August 2011. KARI selected Mitsubishi Heavy Industries over Eurockot, a Russo-German venture. According to a KARI official, Mitsubishi’s offer was about half the price of Eurockot’s.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
Yeah, it’s a shame they picked Japan because, you know, Russia and Germany behaved much better than Japan during the 40′s.
Any word on when the civic groups plan to protest Daewoo, one of the seven companies involved in the KARI program, and one that happens to be currently supplying arms to the Burmese military Junta?
Just asking.
Is this the ‘homemade’ satellite?
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/biz/2008/10/123_32918.html
Here we go again with the wheeling out of the old occupation victims. I actually feel sorry for the victims more that they are being used as a propaganda tool than anything else.
Good for KARI for picking what was the best, cheap, and yet reliable option. Or maybe the whiners wanted them to pick Sampoong Department Store designers for national pride?
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries makes everything from refrigerators to fighter planes to wind turbines – why wouldn’t they offer an Asian brother a good price? They want the business, too. Yes, they have a naughty history, but there are very few zaibatsu/chaebol/major industrial company that don’t.
Still, MHI has never made a formal apology?
they should’ve protested Hyundai Pony manufacturing, then.
would they rather pay Russia instead? I think 20 people died in a Russian nuke sub.
Korea to Japan is like Canada is to United States, except it’s not that porous, and Japan won’t accept Koreans immigrating at will, and Koreans probably won’t go back to Korea for FREE healthcare.
Which makes me think of US FREE nursing home care for all senior citizens. All tax paying US senior citizens. For some really odd reason, every person that I tell that they are going from this hospital to a nursing home, becomes quite upset and vigilant against nursing homes. They say that’s where they’ll probably die, so they don’t want it. I wonder if Obama’s healthcare plan plans to be of significantly higher quality than the current Nursing home for all. In my opinion, those 24 hr care CRNA’s are paid dirt cheap, so they’re not really doing 24 hr care. They’ll leave you in the same position for 3 days, and you’ll get a bed sore, get infected, and die.
i have a great idea. Fuck the book shelving in the library. People don’t read books. They borrow dvds and cd’s.
All aspiring high school teenagers should be enlisted in the New Obamamerica Youth, and be forced to “volunteer” in local nursing homes.
They will turn over the bed ridden, every hour. They will clean the ddong, the oh-jum, and clean up the senior citizen. This will decrease time for illicit drug use and underage pregnancy. And, they will be glad to know they are contributing to their free healthcare in America, and their roots. College students will be enrolled on Friday and Saturday evenings. After a while, they will all vote Republican.
I thought talk of the wjk killfile was just a joke. Is there really a way to cleanse my telecommunications apparatuses of this dreck???
“Good for KARI for picking what was the best, cheap, and yet reliable option.”
I agree. In the Aerospace Industry efficiency is the most important. To be able to trim the bill can mean the difference between getting into space or keeping everything in the hangar. I can’t believe they are so bullheaded and grudgful not to see that. If they had their way, while the rest of humankind are zipping around space in their warp drive starships Koreans will be sitting on our asses because some parts were made in Japan.
Arirang3 satellite. Is it possible here to name something after anything but that or King buggering Sejong?
#3,
I didn’t even know people had garages in Korea. LOL.
I think you are referring to the illegal technology transfer to Burma that was secretly condoned by the Roh administration. It only makes one wonder just what files and information has been buried by Roh’s deliberate theft of the Blue House archives from his tenure and the subsequent destruction of the original material.
hey, dogbertt,
http://www.sungnyemun.org/downloads/nowjk.user.js
just curious. I think you are an irreligious German Jew from California? Let me just ask. Why are you so racist against non-whites?
“Korea to Japan is like Canada is to United States, except it’s not that porous, and Japan won’t accept Koreans immigrating at will, and Koreans probably won’t go back to Korea for FREE healthcare.”
As to be expected from wjk, a terrible comparison. Canada and the United States are good friends and allies. Korea and Japan? Canada and the United States are G8 nations. Korea? Canada and the United States have free trade. Korea and Japan? Does Korea send 85% to 90% of its exports to the United States? Canada is rich in natural resources. Korea? Canada and the United States are truly multicultural. Korea and Japan? The United States is the world’s military superpower. Japan? The United States has anywhere from 9 to 10 times Canada’s population. Japan has about 2.5 times the population of S. Korea. As for immigration, you also don’t know what you’re talking about. There is no “immigration at will” between the United States and Canada, and if a Canadian becomes a non-resident, health care is no longer free.
You’re batting .300. Not bad for a Mets fan.
Not voting for Obama doesn’t make me a racist.
Dogbertt speaks on the need to re-educate the brown people:
” Perhaps instead of just granting student visas to Koreans and allowing them to congregate in Korean-exclusive groupings once in America, our government could provide a more directed program to visiting Korean students that may cause them to critically re-evaluate their knee-jerk anti-Americanism.”
… on correct immigration policies:
” Real Americans figured out manned flight, so it’s a bit arrogant of you to disparage them, especially when such things were not even imagined by your grandfather and his generation of Koreans.
And amen to bringing into the U.S. those super-intelligent German and Jewish scientists who were, moreover, culturally compatible with real Americans, as you term them…
“… although it hurts your pride as an ethnic Korean, I have to reject your false assertion that all immigrants to the U.S. are equal”
“…I favor moderate, planned population growth with some thought toward demographic realities.”
…on white cultural and technological superiority:
” Now, all cultures are not on a level playing field. Koreans, for example, in 5000 years, had not come up with anything Americans (or others) hadn’t already. It’s clear what Einstein and Von Braun brought to the table … could Koreans have brought the same? Could Somalians? Could Papuans? Could Albanians? No.”
…on aeronautics:
” Maybe the Wright Brothers in turn had been inspired by the secret treatises on flight by King Sejong, perhaps? LOL”
…on good and bad Indians:
” It’s not even about good or bad — it’s about having to draw a line. For example, there are over one billion people living in India. We can guess that at least half are “good” and of those, _at least_ half would emigrate to America tomorrow, if given the chance.
Now that would be a lot of “good” people in the U.S., but it would double our population overnight, put too much stress on resources, and reduce our quality of life in myriad ways. We have to draw a line.
I’m not even getting into ethnic and cultural dissimilarities: I used India as an example because of its huge population living in poverty who would like to emigrate.”
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