5:50 Time for the fun. I have YTN on the TV and two web pages open, so I should be able to figure out something pretty quick once the polls close. I won’t be able to post much tonight. I have to write on a KT piece this evening.
Of course, other writers on the blog [...]
If your eyes can take the pain, my latest KT piece is a quick review of the major (and some not so major) parties in Wednesday’s National Assembly elections. While I barely mentioned a couple of parties, I felt the need to write a few paragraphs on the “Pro-Park Geun-hye Alliance” (친박연대):
One problem the GNP has to deal [...]
The Donga has an interesting piece on a survey of local government officials. Among the findings, they noted that most local officials were not happy with the results of the previous administration’s ‘balanced regional developement’ policies:
More than half of local government heads flunked former President Roh Moo-hyun’s drive for so-called “balanced national development” policy. 53.7 [...]
I know. I know. All of the readers at the Marmot’s Hole have the same question on their minds: How does a party qualify for the 56 proportional representation (PR) seats in the upcoming National Assembly Election?
Well, stop wondering. Our friends at the National Election Commission have the answer:
Seats of the proportional representative National Assembly [...]
(This is a little old, but I didn’t find it in the Hole. If this has been posted here before, will our Dear Leader please delete it.)
This story from The Japan Times starts out innocently enough:
Yoon, a feisty 32-year-old Korean woman with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, is happy to be living and working in her newly adopted [...]
UPDATE: The deadline for applications has been pushed back to April 7.
ORIGINAL POST: Liberty in North Korea (one of my favorite organizations) has a couple of upcoming projects which might be of interest to some readers. Please note that the deadline for submissions is March 31 (today) but they may take a few late ones [...]
If you ever needed proof that great minds think alike, Joshua at One Free Korea and I both used Monty Python references in pieces published yesterday about the ongoing (and ongoing and….) talks on NK nukes.
Joshua invokes the Dead Parrot Sketch when pointing out part of the problem with the six party talks and the Geneva sideshow in [...]
It seems that President Lee does not see a weaker won as all good news (Reuters):
“Although there is more or less a positive effect, (the weaker won) becomes a threatening factor to corporate management, and especially, appears to cause a sharp rise in consumer prices,” Lee said.
Trying to keep the won weak against the dollar [...]
The great nomination purge that is taking place in the Grand National Party is also affecting folks in the United (for the moment) Democratic Party.
The biggest name to lose his spot was the man, the myth, Rhee In-jae.
Unlike many of the other legislators who lost their spots, he didn’t fall because of corruption. So [...]
I did the introduction to my American government class yesterday. As part of it, I was talking about hegemony. I asked the students something like “was there any country that was politically and culturally dominant in East Asia 500 years ago?”
….. (cricket chirping)
I tried rephrasing the question a few times, but still got nothing. I did a [...]
I kind of dread bring the US presidential election back on board, but that is the topic of my most recent KT piece, specifically:
So, what would Lee Myung-bak do about Michigan and Florida?
Read the rest to find out what I think he would do.
BTW, I ended up using most of the column just to explain [...]
Hey, isn’t it about time for another “he said, he said” moment in the six-party process?
Say no more (AP):
NEW YORK, March 7 (AP) - (Kyodo)—North Korea admitted to sending engineers to military- related and other facilities in Syria during its recent talks with the United States over its nuclear program, diplomatic sources in New York [...]
Say you are a hard-working immigrant from Korea in the D.C. suburbs of northern Viginia and you feel like relaxing with a bit of the old country. What can you do?
Don’t worry. Adam Smith’s invisible hand is here to help you get that old-school jimjilbang experience (Washington Post):
Behind the modest facade of a 1980s-era Fairfax County strip [...]
The open letter has got to be one of the most pretentious exercises in a columnist’s bags of tricks. The whole idea of writing a personal letter to some world leader or another to give him or her advice just drips with self-importance.
So, being the big-head that I am, I naturally had to try one [...]
Everyone’s favorite half-Korean Bean Pole boy is going Hollywood (Korea Times):
Hearthrob actor Daniel Henney, 28, will costar in the new X-men spin-off film “X-men Origins: Wolverine.”
Henney will star as Agent Zero of the Mutant Weapon X program, a mutant who can control electricity and has specialized tracking abilities, according to Twentieth Century Fox Korea.
Lest you you [...]
Writing happy news stories in North Korea is probably the most difficult job in journalism considering the material they have to work with (concentration camps, famine, repression and all that).
However, I could not imagine that even our friends up at (North) Korean Central News Agency would be so desperate for good news that we would see [...]
(UPDATE: Here is the link I forgot to include in the orignial post.)
Entertainer No Hong-chul was attacked by a mentally unstable man yesterday (Korea Times):
According to Gangnam Police Station handling the case, No arrived at his apartment around 8 p.m. after shooting a TV program. The entertainer, who thought Kim was one of his fans waiting [...]
How do Korean voters keep getting stuck with crooks? What is going on with the Grand National Party nominations right now is a good illustration (my Korea Times piece):
The [General Assembly nomination] impasse was resolved last week when the sides agreed that politicians who were convicted, but not sentenced to prison, could run for office [...]
We are all aware that the North Koreans have not followed through on their part of the denuclearization process. In testimony before Congress, Christopher Hill puts part of the blame for that on North Korea’s stone-age infrastructure (Kansas City Star).
North Korea has slowed the dismantling of its nuclear reactor because it hasn’t received the amount [...]
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