More stuff along the same lines of what Sonagi and Elgin posted — our Chinese friends got a bit rough yesterday, scaring and otherwise pissing off a good many Koreans.
First, there were the Chinese throwing water bottles, sticks and stones at activists from a North Korean refugee rights group at Olympic Park. One reporter working [...]
The East is red according to China’s Xinhua news agency. A photo essay on the Olympic torch relay in Seoul is filled with images of flag-waving patriots and even a Sinophile laowai. Looks like the Chinese government planned ahead and shipped a container full of 五星红旗 (five star red flag) of all sizes [...]
photo: Yonhap News Agency
The Olympic torch has come and gone through South Korea but not without surprises. The trip through Japan was marked with some outcry from groups that are critical of China’s policies in Tibet but Seoul was an entirely different matter since the most criticism against China’s human rights violations stems from [...]
April 24, 2008 – 12:52 pm
Mongolians in search of the Korean Dream are learning Korean by the ger-load:
English may be the most popular foreign language in Korea, but in Mongolia more people take the Test of Proficiency in Korean (TOPIK) than the TOEFL. The TOPIK is a Korean language proficiency test for non-Koreans, supervised by the Korea Institute of Curriculum [...]
MH reader Zhang Fei posted a comment containing a story of an American injured by an angry mob outside a Carrefour in Hunan Province. The story appears to have been posted originally at the Shanghaiist:
Last night [Editor’s note: Sunday, Apr 20] around 7pm my friend was attacked by a mob of about 150 people [...]
Tough crowd, these Chinese cabbies.
April 17, 2008 – 12:56 pm
From the Chosun Ilbo:
The suspicious death of a Chinese actress and model has shocked both South Korea and China. Tan Jing (Cyworld blog), 24, was found dead at an apartment building in Guangzhou, China earlier this month. Local police initially believed she was a sex worker. The death has caused a stir among South Korean [...]
Check out the photos of a 100-year-old Catholic church in the Tibetan Catholic enclave of Cizhong.
Read the history of this fascinating place while you’re at it, too.
I did not think this would really be the case but it seems the Chinese guys in blue (see here) are actually Chinese Paramilitary and they will be coming to Seoul, with the Olympic torch, after all. Apparently even the chairman of the London 2012 Olympic games described these guys as “thugs”. Wonderful [...]
Samsung is doggedly sponsoring the Olympic Torch relay. I wonder if they will be hit by shrapnel in the wake of the chaos surrounding it.
British Police and Chinese Guards surround the torch — Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
The Olympic Torch relay has moved through England and through much protest, lasting throughout the entire route through England. Due to concerns over the protests, at one point “the flame was rushed onto a double-decker bus decked out with the slogan “Light the [...]
In what will no doubt be declared a national day of mourning in the Philippines, Ramiele Malubay was given the boot from “American Idol.”
(Sorry, but if I’ve got to listen to it on Tony Kornheiser, you can read it here)
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A reputed Japanese right-wing extremist shot himself in the head in front of the Japanese Diet in Tokyo, reports FOX:
The man, who was not immediately identified by police and appeared to be in his 60s, died at a hospital shortly after the shooting. He bore a protest letter to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda calling for [...]
Indigenous Canadian Alden C. Mayfield, formerly a professor at Hallym University, writes in the KT that the real reason the West refuses to move against China for its behavior in Tibet is the West’s own colonial history:
Isn’t it nice to see such nations as Australia, Britain, Canada, the EU, New Zealand, the U.S., and others [...]
Here is a thought to consider:
Gary Hall Jr., who is trying to reach his fourth Olympics in swimming, said the U.S.O.C. (United States Olympic Committee) would send subtle messages about avoiding controversial subjects during athlete media and cultural training for the Games (in China). “It’s discouraged, that’s clearly understood, . . . “The Olympic Games [...]
In Japan Focus, there’s an extract from Arudou Debito and Higuchi Akira newly released book, Handbook for Newcomers, Migrants, and Immigrants to Japan.
Give it a look.
(HT to reader)
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March 29, 2008 – 10:25 am
BBC Radio 4’s Crossing Continents has a report on Korean missionary work in Asia (March 31, 2030 GMT). As per the article on such, some of the more interesting quotes run as such:
. . . many church members in South Korea go a step further, signing up for visits to Korean missions abroad - [...]
Re-education for monks.
Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu led the first high-level central government visit to Tibet since the riots broke out this month. In the face of international criticism of China’s crackdown, he stressed that the government would “fight an active publicity battle” and solicit the help of Communist Party cadres.
His call for broader “patriotic [...]
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 [...]
March 24, 2008 – 12:10 am
The South Korean Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister, Yu Myung Hwan encouraged his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on Friday to seek a peaceful solution to the deadly rioting in Tibet. Yu asked China to allow South Koreans traveling to the country for the Summer Games to enter the nation without visas.
Meanwhile the Chinese Government claims [...]
