Chinese probe succeeds at lunar landing

But this public relations move backfired when 1.3 billion Chinese television viewers became outraged to find out you actually cannot see the Great Wall of China from the Moon. Beijing reacted by blaming American imperialism and then declaring a no-fly security zone over northern Australia.

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Being a "balancer" is so 2004

I am extremely terrified of Chinese people in Korea.

Over at The Atlantic (HT to Wangkon), Dartmouth Professor Jennifer Lind writes that South Koreans' desire to hedge their bets against China is the real reason politicos have scuttled Japan-born South Korean President Lee Myungbak's eagerness to enter an intelligence-sharing agreement with Tōkyō:

Still, there's something more behind the unraveling of the GSOMIA accord -- South Korean ambivalence about the country's role in the unfolding U.S.-China drama. Several defense and foreign policy analysts in Seoul told me, when I visited recently, that many of their countrymen shied away from GSOMIA because they saw it as part of a U.S.-led security architecture positioned against China. They added that many South Koreans are dismayed that, as they perceive it, the U.S. increasingly sees China as a military threat. A professor at the Korea National Defense University named Lee Byeong-Gu told me, "In particular, signing the GSOMIA agreement is worrying to Koreans in light of the recent U.S. 'pivot' or 'rebalancing' toward Asia, which many people fear represents an increased containment effort toward China. Some South Koreans are calling for their government to sign an intelligence-sharing agreement with Beijing as well as with Tokyo. South Korean legislator Shim Yoon-joe commented that signing such a pact with both Japan and China is important in order "to wipe out the allegation that the Korea-Japan military pact is a stepping stone to trilateral cooperation to check China."

South Korean analysts also emphasized to me that China is their country's top trading partner. As Aidan Foster-Carter put it, "South Korea can hardly afford to be seen as ganging up on the country whose growth largely drives its own." This year marks the tenth anniversary of the normalization of relations between South Korea and China. One researcher at a think tank in Seoul remarked to me that his institute has planned conferences and other events to commemorate the anniversary, and that South Korea's many other foreign policy institutes are all doing the same. At a time when the Americans appear to be orchestrating a coalition to balance against China, South Koreans are celebrating with it a milestone in productive and friendly relations.

Anyone who recalls how badly then-President Roh Moohyun and crew shredded good relations with Japan during 2005's Japan-Korea Friendship Year would scoff at the idea that Seoul doesn't have the cojones to upset Beijing as well during the diplomatic decennial.

And the idea that South Korea doesn't want to tick off its number-one trading partner? Well, I scoff at that. In the United States, top politicians want to burn Olympic uniforms because they were made in China! And yet, Chinese continue to buy American goods and ship their own to the States.

As with the US browbeating the Middle Kingdom, would South Korea's economic relationship with China change much at all were it to strengthen its longstanding military relationship with the Americans? Doubtful. I mean, look at how Beijing already uses South Korea as a whipping boy, egging on its Netizens to attack South Korea for all kinds of surreal and imagined things. Yet they continue to buy South Korea products and ship their own to the ROK.

You see, the other side of that don't-piss-off-China equation is that China needs the rest of the world to buy its stuff (as well as to send it stuff so it can make stuff).

Anyhoo, most observers would agree the primary reason South Korean politicians were up in arms over the miasmic GSOMIA is that it's Japan. And with Japan, there is a heightened sensitivity owing to, I don't know, maybe the sixty years prior to the Korean War. Japan's motives are more cautiously scrutinized, its leaders' utterances more closely parsed, their actions analyzed more carefully, etc., etc. Lee's supposed "secret treaty" with Tōkyō smacked of the 1965 normalization treaty that many South Koreans feel sold a lot of poor folks — including the so-called "Comfort Women" sex slaves — down the Han.

Even though I think South Korea and Japan should be natural allies at this point, not everyone agrees with me, and my cause is not helped by the idiotic right-wingers that think their own country was the victim during World War II and that everything Imperial Japan did in Korea was all for Korea's own good, etc., etc.

Nonetheless, there is some merit to Professor Lind's contention that a lot of South Koreans probably don't want to conspicuously position themselves against China. All except rabid chinboistas (who want the US out because they are actually pro-North Korean) are comfortable with the fact that South Korea is firmly in the US security camp, but some want (à la Roh Moohyun's "balancer of Northeast Asia" comments) for South Korea to use its unique position (i.e., that of not having invaded any of the others or being a threat to any of the others) to play mediator and make Northeast Asia a happy-go-lucky funland (which Autocorrect briefly changed to Finland... hmmm).

Back in the middle of the last decade, I asked a KBS news anchor about Roh's "balancer" declaration, and her remarks back up my suspicions about the real meaning behind the "balancer" comment. Roh wanted to be more Sweden than Switzerland, and if he'd said "mediator" or "hostage negotiator" instead of "balancer," that would have been much clearer (but inexperienced and poorly educated heads-of-state tend toward occasionally odd lexical choices... go figure).

So while I think that Professor Lind's comments have some merit, I think she is making a mountain out of a molehill. Yeah, there was some questioning about how closely South Korea should follow the US when then-President George W. Bush was asking Roh to send ROK troops to Iraq, but that is so ten years ago. There was also a lot of pent-up frustration with the US that was let loose in 2002 and 2003 (when Dubya's "Axis of Evil" comment made a lot of South Koreans fear the US was going to unilaterally attack North Korea and spin the Peninsula into a state of war), so naturally that outdated meme tends to stick.

Do you notice I keep bringing up Roh? Maybe the problem here is that Professor Lind is walking through a time machine on her way to Incheon International Airport. Things are different from a decade earlier, and not just because Lee Myungbak is extremely pro-US or the Iraq War is over, but also because South Koreans have since been scared sh¡tless by Chinese belligerence, including support for North Korea's deadly attacks on the South, Chinese fish pirates attacking and killing South Korea Coast Guardsmen, and Chinese students showing their anger that South Koreans would be so brazen as to criticize China.

In fact, this is what I wrote in the comment section at The Atlantic:

Hear, hear! When I read that "many South Koreans are dismayed that... the U.S. increasingly sees China as a military threat," I can't help but note that many, many South Koreans themselves have come to see China as a belligerent bully.

Chinese students in Korea, organized by their government, waving giant PRC flags and attacking peaceful protestors (on North Korean human rights, Tibet, etc.) in the heart of Seoul went a long way toward burning that connection into people's brains.

And that's why I recycled the picture above (from here).

But if you don't want to take my word for it, let's ask Beijing how they feel. As if to underscore my point further, China essentially threatened South Korea if it were to go ahead with GSOMIA:

China has many means to influence South Korea. When domestic forces fail to stop Seoul’s unfriendly moves against China, China should implement means to exert pressure on the South Korean government.

China and South Korea are close neighbors, and China is also deeply involved in the Peninsula’s affairs. This determines that the relationship between Beijing and Seoul has to be friendly. If their strategic partnership is ruined, this will bring a lose-lose situation.

And this sentiment — "That's a nice country you've got there, South Korea... it would be a shame if something were to happen to it" — is why I have an ironically titled "Benevolent Big Brother China" label for many of my PRC-related posts. 

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The Great Wall is becoming a great pain in the arse

In the US, the "Culture Wars" are fought over gay marriage, abortion rights, and whether it's okay to pray in class or at football games. In East Asia, the "Culture" part relates to claims over ancient peoples — were the Koguryo folks Korean or Manchurian (and therefore "Chinese")? — and the "war" part has the potential to become the real type if the historical claims spill over into territorial claims.

Against that backdrop, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that some Chinese cultural experts are claiming that the Great Wall of China (and Manchuria and Mongolia and perhaps Korea) is about 2.5 times longer than previously thought — three times the width of the United States — if piles of stones capable of blocking horses are counted:

Zhang Lingmian was collecting walnuts in the countryside north of Beijing last autumn when a friend from a nearby village mentioned a mysterious structure in the mountains that had stumped locals.

The retired cultural heritage official and his friend scampered uphill for two hours, whacking their way through the brambles after the path ran out. At the top of a 2,700-foot-high ridge, they reached a long trail of haphazardly placed rocks.

Zhang says he immediately recognized what villagers called "the strange stones."

"I knew right away it had to be part of the Great Wall of China," Zhang recalled on a recent hike to show off his discovery, about 50 miles from central Beijing.

Although most of the rocks had tumbled down, a few piles reached up to Zhang's chest. "The walls just had to be high enough to keep the barbarians from crossing with their horses," explained Zhang, who says he has been studying the wall for 33 years.

The Great Wall of China may be one of the most recognizable structures on Earth, but it is still in the process of revealing new layers of itself — to cries of disbelief and fury in some quarters. At a time when Beijing is asserting its territorial borders in the South China Sea, the discoveries are not universally applauded.

More to the point for this blog, Korean historians are in an uproar because the supposed Chinese wall stretches all the way to the North Korean border — an area of the People's Republic of China that is not native to the Han Chinese and was once part of the ancient Korean kingdom of Palhae and Koguryo.

Funny that the main part of the Great Wall was intended to keep out the invaders whose territory China now claims as their own in order to justify their cultural (and territorial) designs.

The Not-All-That-Great Wall of China

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The keyboard as a blunt instrument: Rise of the Chinese netizen machinery (plus Peresnorka Watch)

You may recall in February I briefly mentioned the case of Wu Ying (pictured above), a woman of humble origins in China who rose to be one of the richest females in all of China. For the crime of defaulting on $160 million in loans as her business collapsed, she was sentenced to death.

Long-time readers of Monster Island know my Catholic-influenced and logically concluded opposition to the death penalty in virtually all cases (except where a person kept alive continues to kill), but it holds doubly and triply so for those who have been sentenced to capital punishment even though their crime did not actually lead to someone's death.

Ms Wu Ying's case definitely falls into that category, just like those of virtually all the other white-collar criminals in China who've been given the death penalty. Apparently the Chinese netizenry agrees, and in that land where the closes thing to democracy is delivered through the Internet, the government was forced to sit up and take notice:

Wu Ying, once ranked as China’s sixth richest businesswoman, was sentenced to death with a two year reprieve on Monday evening; such sentences are almost always commuted to imprisonment after two years.

The Supreme Court had overturned an original death sentence in April, ordering the High Court in Zhejiang, Ms. Wu’s home province, to reconsider its judgment after a huge public outcry. The case has attracted attention as an example of how the Chinese legal system can be influenced by public sentiment.

“Public opinion played a very important role in this case,” wrote @Heyu Crisis on Sina Weibo, the Twitter-like social media platform, which had registered more than 3.7 million tweets about Wu Ying by Tuesday afternoon. “This case proves once again that the people’s will is truth,” declared another user called @Shishi bear.

Good on you, Shishi bear (no relation). So often we hear in Korea about the rabid anti-Korea bashing of the netizenry, but it's good to see people taking an interest in responsible citizenship.

+ - + - +

In the wake of North Korea's detainment of nearly thirty Chinese fishermen and their vessels, this behavior also channels criticism onto the Beijing leadership for their support of the Pyongyang regime:

Many netizens have criticized the Chinese government's handling of the incident, some even calling Beijing "impotent".

"After such a shameful incident, why doesn't our government demand an explanation from North Korea?" a Weibo user said.

Some have accused Beijing of trying to play down the matter for fear of offending Pyongyang.

"[The government] criticizes Japan, America, the Philippines and Vietnam every day, but dare not utter a word against North Korea," You Yi, a Shenzhen-based commentator, wrote on his microblog.

[I find this idea — that China is afraid to offend North Korea even though it frequently pokes the eyes of Japan, the US, etc. — to be very interesting, sort of a mirror to South Korea's left (and even the right) taking shots at Tokyo and Washington (de facto allies) while avoiding criticism of Beijing and Pyongyang (an economic partner it's trying to woo and a crazy uncle in the attic, respectively).]

The Chinese media is following suit:

hina’s leadership is hitting a rough patch with ally North Korea under its new leader Kim Jong Un, as Beijing finds itself wrong-footed in episodes including Pyongyang’s rocket launch and the murky detention of Chinese fishing boats.

The testy state of China-North Korea affairs became public this week after Chinese media flashed images of the fishing crews, some of the 28 crew members stripped to their longjohns, returning home after 13 days in North Korean custody accused of illegal fishing. The reports quoted the fishermen as saying they were beaten and starved, and the coverage unleashed furious criticism in China’s blogosphere.

“The North Koreans are like bandits and robbers,” China’s Southern Metropolis Weekly newspaper quoted one fisherman as saying Tuesday. The story, shared thousands of times on China’s Sina Weibo social media website, said the hijackers ripped down the Chinese flag on one boat and used it “like a rag.”

Of course, this isn't the first time we've seen Chinese netizens criticize their government. In late 2010, in the wake of the North Korean attack on Yŏnpyŏng-do, which killed two South Korean civilians and two ROK military personnel, there was open questioning of China's support for the DPRK.

Anger toward North Korea has always been a bit subdued, however, in part because (as I have opined) Chinese are generally ignorant about the evil excesses of the government in North Korea.

But while there is ambivalence back then, the big difference now is that the Chinese netizenry sees their own country as the victim of North Korea's brinkmanship this time around (although I'm not so sure). At One Free Korea, Joshua suggests that their anger toward their own government over a lack of firmness befitting cooked pasta means little, but the fact that they were allowed to express their dismay is itself enlightening:

No, the Chinese government isn’t about to bow to the demands of Weibo commenters, but the other side of this cause-and-effect relationship is interesting. This outrage, as temporary as it’s sure to be, has to be a consequence of a deliberate decision by the Chinese government to make a public issue of this incident. China’s attitude here really isn’t all that different from what you’d expect had the arresting authorities been South Korean — this really seems to be a reflection of China’s insistence on the filial piety of its vassal states. China’s beef isn’t that North Korea is brutal, it’s that North Korea is rebellious.

I completely agree with him that this is largely about Benevolent Big Brother China being upset with its propped-up satellite state. Back in 2008, when protesters lined the route of the Olympic Torch in both Nagano and especially Seoul, Chinese were furious that their fellow Greater Sino-world Co-Prosperity Sphere members would stoop so low as to insult their historic masters. North Korea generally reacting like a junkyard dog has kept it immune from this treatment, but the recent fishermen incident may have been a game-changer.


And we have to wonder in what other ways it is a game-changer. In light of the past behavior of Chinese fish pirates in South Korean waters, I'm of the belief that North Korea may have been acting reasonably in detaining the Chinese (and we'll probably never know), but what was up with North Korean authorities actually going through with the capture and payment plan?

To cut to the chase: Is Kim Jong-un looking for ways to change direction from his father's in an effort to spin North Korea out of China's orbit? From inviting the world to see what could easily be a failed launch, to being upfront with the North Korean people that the celebrated achievement turned out to be a total muck-up, to openly criticizing the way the country has been run (at least on the periphery), we've seen some behavior that is very uncharacteristic of a North Korean leader.

Is the Western-educated Kim Jong-un seeing his country's future with South Korea, the US, and Japan, in some sort of Peresnorka? Is there some serious palace intrigue going on behind the scenes we don't know about, with the fishing boat incident a flare-up in this unseen war? If there really were changes, what would they look like and how would we know?

I don't know the answer, but it is an interesting question. To complicate matters, my readings of the KCNA news reports have chronicled a severe underreporting of Kim Jong-un's activities, which could be a sign of who knows what.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE:
The Chosun Ilbo has an article on "welcome signs" that China's attitude toward North Korea is changing. It offers this advice for Beijing:

If China continues to deal with the North Korean defector issue simply from the perspective of a border treaty it signed with Pyongyang in 1998 and continues to ignore the human rights of defectors, it would seriously undermine Beijing's goal of becoming a global leader. The time has come for China to consider not only relations with long-time ally North Korea, but also to think about the standards that are expected from a leading global power.

Yeah. I'm sure the Chinese will agree. Now where's the "eye rolling" emoticon? (Seriously, one of the big problems South Koreans have in dealing with China is that they are used to their biggest ally, the US, actually responding to bad press and bad impressions, at least some of the time. China, seeing itself as Benevolent Big Brother and the natural leader of a Sinocentric East Asia behind which countries like the Koreas, Japan, Vietnam, etc., will fall in line, simply doesn't give a rat's arse.)

Did Kim Jong-un (inside circle, center back) learn about the virtues of democratic rule and freedom during his years in Switzerland, or did classmates in the back left and front center teach him that choking and other forms of violence are the way to solve conflict?

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Biting the hand that feeds their fish to someone else

North Korea versus China... Who to root for? Or rather, who to root against?

This week we've had that rarest of situations where the Democratic People's Republic of the Kim Dynasty (DPRK) seems to be biting the proverbial hand that feeds them, the People's Republic of Crony Capitalists (PRC).

It seems that the North Koreans have taken over a Chinese fishing vessel and are holding the twenty-nine-member crew ransom until Beijing hands 1.2 million yuan (US$190K) over to Pyongyang. Much of the Western media are depicting this as a case of piracy, casting the Norks as the new Somalis. From the Associated Press:

A North Korean boat hijacked three boats with 29 Chinese fishermen on board and demanded 1.2 million yuan ($190,000) for their release, Chinese media reported Thursday.

It was unclear if a territorial dispute or piracy was behind the incident involving boats from the two communist-led nations. China is the North’s biggest diplomatic ally and source of economic assistance.

The fishing boats were hijacked in a Chinese section of the Yellow Sea on May 8 and moved to North Korean waters, the Beijing News reported. The paper said the North Korean boat was manned by armed men in blue hats and uniforms but didn’t otherwise identify them.

Border police in northeastern China’s coastal Liaoning province told the state newspaper they were in contact with the North Korean captors but declined to comment further.

One might think the AP is itself trying to show how tough it can be when reporting on North Korea, given the scrutiny it's been getting from those critical of the effusive reports from its freshly minted Pyongyang bureau, but a similar pro-Beijing perspective can be found at the Washington Post, AFP, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, The Guardian, etc. Although they're stating that the news is "according to Chinese reports," they're using terms like kidnapped at sea, ransom, and captors.

But just a doggone minute there. Those of us who pay closer attention to China because it's a quick boat ride away may have a different perspective on things, enough that we know it's unwise to accept Beijing's reports prima facie, even if the other party is Pyongyang, whose utterings should never be accepted prima facie.

See, those of us in the ROK know all about the Chinese fish pirates. We're used to reading about Chinese vessels illegally fishing in South Korea's Exclusive Economic Zone in the Yellow Sea or East China Sea and then attacking or even murdering ROK Coast Guard personnel who try to stop them.

To put it bluntly: If this is what Chinese fishing vessels do to the South Koreans in ROK waters or its EEZ, while Beijing fully denies it, why should we believe the Chinese fishermen are innocents when the North Koreans detain their boat? Angered by Pyongyang's plans for missile and nuke tests, and knowing full well how the rest of the world sees North Korea, it would be perfectly natural for Chinese officials to depict those poor Chinese fishermen as victims rather than thieves. The rest of the world is certainly lapping it up.

But think about something. North Korea may love brinkmanship, but in recent years it also follows a pattern when it detains foreign nationals. I'm probably going to get flak for saying this, but back when everyone assumed CurrentTV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling were innocent travelers who had been kidnapped from the Chinese border region, I asserted the likelihood that the two Stupogants had actually entered North Korean territory. And I was right. Laura Ling claims that they were nonetheless captured after running back to Chinese territory, but it is highly doubtful that they would have been pursued and captured at all had they not entered North Korea illegally. And all along, the North Korean media was being truthful that the team had violated DPRK borders.

I'm still waiting to see what Pyongyang's Korea Central News Agency says about the Chinese fishing boats. Given the track record of the Chinese fish pirates and the not-so-inscrutible way one can discern fact from fiction in North Korean news media, I will be more inclined to believe that the Chinese had gone into North Korean waters or its EEZ if the North Korean media says they did.

My conclusion also stems in part from the realization that North Korea would have to have cojones the size of beach balls to capture and detain a Chinese fishing boat and then demand restitution unless they had cause.

Nevertheless, one also has to wonder about the Pyongyang regime's end game. As the title here suggests, Beijing is the hand that feeds Pyongyang (to a degree). Maybe this is just a way to let China know that it can never really control North Korea. Despite frequent claims of socialistic brotherhood, the North Koreans aren't particularly fond of the Chinese, regarding them in much the same way as those who made the 19th-century American cartoon below.

Those of us in South Korea are used to the Pyongyang regime b¡tch-slapping its ROK sponsors, so the Norks sticking it to the Chinese really isn't that unsurprising: North Korea's long-term strategy of pitting one economic/military/political power against another has involved begging for alms with one hand and then sucker-punching the benefactor with the other. During the Cold War, when Kim Ilsung was Moscow's and Beijing's headache, it was Russia-versus-China. Now it's a triangulation of Seoul, Beijing, and Washington (and occasionally a rectangulation or that includes Tokyo and/or Moscow).

And maybe China doesn't really have all that much control over North Korea to begin with. It can nudge the DPRK toward reform, it can promote socialism with Chinese characteristics, it can scold North Korea, it can huff and puff, but it's a mistaken calculus if you think that benefits of the PRC-DPRK relationship flow only one way. China wants to maintain its port presence in Rajin/Najin, and if it pisses off the Norks a bit too much, Beijing knows that Pyongyang can kick them out, like they've done or threatened to do to South Korean businesses and developers in Kŭmgangsan National Park or Kaesŏng Industrial Park.

So for now enjoy the show from the sidelines (and wonder just a bit if this is not part of a long-term strategy by Kim Jong-un or his handlers to move away from China and toward South Korea and/or its allies). In the meantime, I'm glad someone is standing up to the Chinese fish pirates. It looks like China is learning they messed with the wrong Korea.

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Pyongyang puts the Ikea in "North Korea missiles"

Remember last year, when their Chinese benefactors sent the North Koreans on a Capital Mystery Tour of the United States so they could learn how a market-driven economy operates? Well, recent news suggests they were especially taken by their trips to a certain Sweden-based do-it-yourself furniture chain.

Thè ëlëtrønícs iŋ Ikea, 
like thìs big sçréèn TV, àre åll fåké. 

You see, it seems that some experts believe that the parade of ICBM missiles and weaponry we've seen at post-missile launch parade in Pyongyang are fake. Like the electronic props you see when you walk through an Ikea showroom.

Now, let's not get ahead of ourselves and start depicting North Korea as a paper tiger. There is, after all, a whole host of artillery that could do an incredible amount of damage if it were to rain down wrath onto Seoul (my home) and its northern suburbs of P'aju, Ilsan, Munsan, etc (which themselves have over a million residents). And let's not forget that our friends in China seem to be surreptitiously helping them out with their missile ventures. (Would a fake Ikea store in China contain real electronics? Ooh, wrap your head around that one!)

Nevertheless, this accusation of missilery fakery has been fodder for late-night comics, including this bit on Conan O'Brien (HT to DA):



That was funny. The Korean used in the Conan bit was amusing, translating “Camera-1” as “카메라 하나” (sort of like "one camera"). And the North Koreans would never refer to themselves as 북한 (Puk'an, the South Korean word for North Korea) and their language as 한국어 (Han•gugǒ, also the South Korean word). North Koreans would say Chŏson and Chosŏnŏ or Chosŏnmal.

Nevertheless that semi-earnest effort on their part just makes it even funnier.

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Is North Korea a real-world "Hunger Games"?

That's the message of an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, whose writer lays out the case here:

Still, the movie turned my stomach — and not because of what I saw on the screen. What flashed through my mind were images of North Korea. There, in a real totalitarian state, children are bred like livestock in labor camps. They are taught to betray their parents. They are worked to death.

The Kim family dynasty — founder Kim Il Sung, his son Kim Jong Il, who died in December, and Kim Jong Un, the third-generation successor — has presided over this human rights catastrophe for more than half a century without provoking much interest, understanding or outrage from the American public.

Make-believe dystopias, it seems, are easier on our eyes and kinder to our conscience. In "The Hunger Games," the evil regime is no match for Katniss Everdeen, played by the well-nourished Jennifer Lawrence. But in North Korea's labor camps, the captives are always hungry and the games are always rigged.

There are about 200,000 inmates in six camps, the largest of which is 31 miles long and 25 miles wide, an area larger than the city of Los Angeles. According to the testimony of camp survivors, prisoners live and die without soap, socks, underwear, toilet paper or sanitary napkins. They are forced to do hard labor while subsisting on a starvation diet of corn, cabbage, salt — and the occasional rat. As they age, they lose their teeth, their gums turn black, their bones weaken and they hunch over at the waist. They usually die of hunger-related illness before turning 50.

Perhaps focusing on a real-world case might make people feel for those who are going through this horror:

I learned about daily life in these camps from Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person known to have been born in one of them and escape to the West. Shin was born in Camp 14 in 1982 after guards selected his mother and father for a "reward marriage" and instructed them to have sex. Shin was 14 when he was forced to watch camp guards hang his mother and shoot his brother.

Years later, in interviews for a book about his life, Shin told me he was responsible for these executions. He had memorized camp rule No. 1: "Any witness to an attempted escape who fails to report it will be shot immediately." After overhearing his mother and brother discussing escape, he betrayed his family in order to save his life, please his jailers and earn extra food. His snitching, though, did him no good. He was tortured for suspected involvement in the escape and received no extra food.

The writer suggests that we read books and watch films like Hunger Games because we enjoy the fantasy but can't stomach the same in reality:

As for "The Hunger Games," my daughter liked the movie and can't wait for the sequels, which means that I will be buying more tickets and that I am in no position to judge others for spending money on escapist fantasy. But it breaks my heart that even as we root for the survival of the fictional Katniss, we do not know enough — or care enough — to raise our collective voice and demand that North Korea stop breeding, starving and enslaving labor-camp children.

I, for one, am glad that people are waking up to the egregious treatment of so many North Koreans at the hands of their "leadership." At the same time, however, I hope they also are alerted to China's role in perpetuating that murderous regime. If Beijing starts to feel like they are hurt more by their patronage than helped, they might actually try to change things.

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Obama in Seoul for nuclear summit

His major task will be reminding skeptical naysayers why it's okay for the United States to have nukes but not North Korea and Iran.

From CNN:

President Barack Obama arrived in South Korea on Sunday for a three-day trip centered on an international nuclear security summit in Seoul.

He flew into Seoul, where he is expected to hold a bilateral meeting with his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak.

Top officials from 54 countries, including China and Russia, will attend the summit meeting on Monday and Tuesday.

But its message of international cooperation has been overshadowed by North Korea's announcement last week that it is planning to carry out a rocket-powered satellite launch in April.

South Korea has said it considers the satellite launch an attempt to develop a nuclear-armed missile, while the United States has warned the move would jeopardize a food-aid agreement reached with Pyongyang in early March.

President Lee has already said he will use the summit to drum up international support against the actions of his northern neighbor.

North Korea says it has a right to a peaceful space program and has invited international space experts and journalists to witness the launch.

Nuclear non-proliferation is a major reason (but by no means the sole reason) for continued US military support of South Korea and Japan, two countries which have foregone their building their own nuclear arsenal in exchange for a robust alliance with the United States.

Hemming in a virally expansionist China is another major reason, but even China doesn't want North Korea to get nukes because (a) it makes it more likely that historical adversary Japan will get them and (b) rogue nukes could end up in the hands of Muslim separatists along China's western frontier. Ditto with Russia on Pyongyang having nukes.

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Would most Chinese oppose their government on North Korean policies?

If they knew about them, that is (a big if). Judging by this pice in this post in Tea Leaf Nation, perhaps the answer is yes (HT to commenter Jeremy at OFK):

A strong majority of netizens on Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter, alternately begged and demanded that China’s government let the North Korean defectors stay, or at least not repatriate them to a “hell” that means “certain death.” @而而特退热 commented, “I saw a video of North Korea; how scary.” Voicing a common sentiment, @复活的愤怒小马 wrote, “These people will be shot as soon as they are repatriated; how can you take your disdain for human life to this level?”

Such brave viewpoints — the post starts with one netizen calling it "international murder" — are in sharp contrast with China's official view. As Beijing walks the fine line between maintaining a tight grip and not squeezing so hard that they turn the people against them, one wonders how this issue will turn out, or if it will soften Beijing's actions against North Korea defectors in the future.

I'm not holding my breath.

Today, by the way, is March 1, a national holiday called March First Movement Day (depending on how you translate it), though some like me prefer to call it Independence Day. See here for a rundown on what it means. Given the overbearing role China has been taking toward South Korea, and its control of North Korea as a virtual vassal state, today might not be a bad day to go and demonstrate downtown. The weather's nice.

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Will this get their attention?

A member of the National Assembly who has been staging a hunger strike in front of the Chinese embassy says she will do so until death unless China ends its policy of repatriating North Korean refugees back to the DPRK:

Park Sun-Young, from the conservative opposition Liberty Forward party, said she wants "fundamental change" in China's policy of sending back the North Koreans rather than treating them as refugees.

"Either they change the policy or I die, as I have no intention of stopping (the fast)," Park told AFP in a weak voice.

Activists and Seoul lawmakers say about 30 North Koreans who recently fled to China will soon be sent back. They face harsh punishment or even death in their homeland, according to protesters.

Park appeared fatigued but still took part in a rally -- the latest in a series -- outside the embassy Monday.

The 55-year-old legislator, clad in thick sweaters against the sub-zero night temperatures, is living in a tent outside a church in front of the embassy. ...

A Seoul parliamentary committee last Friday criticised China's policy of repatriating the refugees as economic migrants and urged it to follow international rules.

The resolution followed media reports that nine North Koreans have already been sent back despite pleas from Seoul.

"This isn't a problem just between China and Korea. It is a worldwide issue, a matter of human rights that citizens all over the world must see and mend together," Park said.

Normally, I would think such an act is futile: Hunger strikes might work within a country to get the government to change its action or risk negative local and global press (and whatever consequences that brings), but it's harder to make it work against another country.

However, this being in the global news day after day might eventually cause it to seep through the Great Firewall of China, and more and more Chinese will start wondering what this is all about. One thing I've noticed from my discussions with students from Mainland China here in Hawaii is how utterly ignorant they are of China's policies vis-à-vis North Korean refugees. So in this case, the hunger strike might prove a very useful educational tool.

And now I should call one of my Beijing journalist friends and point her toward this story.

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Why do South Koreans protest against the US and Japan, but not China and North Korea?

This is a good question, asked recently at One Free Korea and echoed at ROK Drop, in the wake of China sending back nine North Korea defectors to the DPRK, where their fate is almost certainly imprisonment, torture, and even death.

I will polish the following up sometime later, but for now the following is the response I left at ROK Drop.

Anger toward China has been growing as Beijing becomes more brazen against South Korea, to the point where South Koreans no longer feel they have to go along to get along with China because even going along isn't working; China is clearly intent on making South Korea its whipping boy and a proxy for anger against the state. Consequently, there are more and more protests against China, commensurate with the brazenness of the acts and the perception that China is a bad actor.

That said, if the tendency of protesting against the US and Japan but not against China and North Korea holds true, it's for several reasons.

First, it is the North-sympathizing chinboista fringe that is behind many of the protests, which leads to regular protests about anything against the US, as well as a coordinated boots-on-the-ground effort in the case of something big (like killing nine South Koreans) regarding the US, South Korea, the ROK government, or a major corporation (they are also anti-corporate and anti-ROK government, in addition to anti-US and anti-Japan).

Second, for mainstream Koreans, there is a perception that the United States and, to a lesser degree, Japan are "supposed to be on our side" and thus held to a different (usually higher) standard. South Koreans will protest against Japanese textbooks watering down the occupation but not against Chinese textbooks that claim South Korea invaded the North on June 25, 1950.

Finally, there had been a perception, related to the second one, that protesting against China or North Korea was futile. Not so with the US and Japan, since they are ostensibly both allies and the ROK government can be persuaded vis-à-vis its relationship with Washington and Tokyo.

This last point is largely changing, however, as the aforementioned anger toward China grows.

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RE-UPDATED: Shots fired at Chinese consulate in Los Angeles

You just know this place is filled with lead paint.

UPDATE 2:
AFP is reporting that the person arrested was not Korean but, in fact, a Chinese-born activist:

A Chinese-born activist has been booked for attempted murder over a shooting at China's consulate in Los Angeles after a human rights protest there, police said Friday.

Jeff Baoliang Zhang, a 67-year-old originally from Shanghai, turned himself in to police a few hours after Thursday's shooting, which left a number of bullet holes in the front of the diplomatic building.

"A lone gunman fired several shots at the local Chinese consulate after participating in a protest at the location earlier in the day," the Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement.

"Acting independently from the other protesters, he opened fire on the consulate building and then drove away in his car."

The LAPD said it appeared the suspect was acting alone.

So the possibility I mentioned turned out not to be the case. And for that, I'm glad. It would be very, very, very bad if South Koreans or Korean-Americans are avenging someone's death by attacking or trying to kill random people who have nothing to do with the murder.

Don't get me wrong, the ROK Coast Guard and the ROK Navy need to use adequate force to patrol and protect South Korean waters and South Korean people, but shooting up the consulate has nothing to do with that. We must take the high road, and I'm glad we can still do that.

UPDATE 1:

LAlate.com is reporting that the person who turned himself in is "a 65-year-old Chinese man with grey or white hair." Frankly, I don't know if they wrote Chinese because they know his specific ethnicity or if they are assuming so because the police description was of an "Asian" man and there have been ongoing protests involving mostly Chinese people. Having been in journalism for a while, I'm skeptical: we hope it would be the former but it is, more often than not, something like the latter.

I'm not saying I'm right, that it is a Korean angered by the Coast Guardsman's murder; I think it is equally possible that it's a Falun Gong protester or even a random drive-by. But the timing with the recent Korean-Chinese tension makes it quite a coincidence. Frankly, though, despite having written this post, I'm hoping it's not a kyopo or KoKo.

ORIGINAL POST:
Though I haven't seen the person identified yet, reports are saying a white-haired Asian in his 50s or 60s is being sought was arrested after turning himself in (for earlier pre-arrest reports, see here, here, here, and here). He had apparently been protesting in front of the building before shooting at a consulate security guard named Cipriano Gutierrez. Nine shots were reportedly fired.

Given the escalation of tension* between Beijing and Seoul over the murder of a ROK Coast Guardsman by Chinese fish pirates, including something being fired at the ROK embassy in Beijing and someone trying to ram the PRC embassy in Seoul with his car, one can't help but wonder if this is related to all that.

Seriously, if this is the case, this is getting out of hand. China has behaved badly when it comes to this whole issue of Chinese boats behaving violently when they're caught illegally fishing in ROK waters or the South Korean EEZ, but none of that warrants shooting at the consulate. The folks at the PRC consulate in L.A. have nothing to do with any of this.

* Tensions include a Chinese protester peeing on a flag, though I'm not convinced that wasn't just a coincidence that the flag happened to be where he was peeing. I mean, in Seoul there are flags everywhere, and that's exactly where Chinese pee. Ha ha! I keed! I keed! I keed because I love... to keed!

South Koreans protesting in front of Chinese embassy in Seoul.
Their signs read, "Forget Dorothy... Surrender Toto!"
There, no one can accuse me of not providing
equal time on the whole national mockery thing. 

...

Seoul showing some backbone with Beijing on repatriation of North Korean refugees?

It is appalling that Beijing continues to round up North Korean refugees inside China and return them to North Korea, knowing full well they will almost certainly be imprisoned, likely tortured, and possibly even executed. As much as we can criticize China for its own abysmal human rights record, even the PRC authorities (in most cases) wouldn't be as harsh as the DPRK is to its own citizens. And it's no surprise that Chinese netizens are  generally blissfully unaware of their own government's complicity.

So it's refreshing to read news like this that keeps the story on the front burner and makes it harder for Xinhua and other Chinese news services to ignore or obscure the issue:

South Korea's top official in charge of relations with North Korea on Tuesday asked China to quickly send North Korean defectors to South Korea.

Tens of thousands of North Korean defectors are believed to be hiding in China, hoping to travel to Thailand or other Southeast Asian countries before resettling in South Korea.

Unification Minister Yu Woo-ik sought cooperation from Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi to ensure that "North Korean defectors can quickly come to South Korea based on their free will."

As Pyongyang's key ally, China does not recognize North Korean defectors and repatriates them back to their homeland, where they could face harsh punishment and even execution, according to defectors and activists.

Still, Beijing has allowed defectors in high-profile cases to leave for South Korea in an apparent move to avoid international criticism.

Yang told Yu that China will handle defectors in accordance with domestic and international laws as well as humanitarian principles.

The comments come as a stream of North Koreans continues to cross the border into China for eventual defections to South Korea, home to more than 22,700 North Korean defectors, according to defectors and activists.

Like any country, China has the right to round up those who enter the country illegally and expel them. But the case of Korean refugees is not so simple, given not only that these are people escaping famine and oppression, but also that there is a second country that counts them as their citizens and is willing to take them (i.e., South Korea).

There is no excuse for China to repatriate North Korean refugees to North Korea.

...

Chinese leadership remembers it's communist, cracks down on dissent and singing contests

If you've been reading posts like this, this, this, or this on my blog over the past few years, then news of China cracking down on inconvenient opinions should come as no surprise:

Whether spooked by popular uprisings worldwide, a coming leadership transition at home or their own citizens’ increasingly provocative tastes, Communist leaders are proposing new limits on media and Internet freedoms that include some of the most restrictive measures in years.

The most striking instance occurred Tuesday, when the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television ordered 34 major satellite television stations to limit themselves to no more than two 90-minute entertainment shows each per week, and collectively 10 nationwide. They are also being ordered to broadcast two hours of state-approved news every evening and to disregard audience ratings in their programming decisions. The ministry said the measures, to go into effect on Jan. 1, were aimed at rooting out “excessive entertainment and vulgar tendencies.”

So China's rediscovering its communist inner self. Of course, those of us who have been paying attention are not at all surprised. It's those in the US — mostly Obama bashers — who unblushingly say that the government is less onerous in China than in America and thus a better place to do business that may be surprised.

Interestingly, it is folks like me — contrarians who like to pick things apart — who are on their $hitlist:

The restrictions arrived as party leaders signaled new curbs on China’s short-message, Twitter-like microblogs, an Internet sensation that has mushroomed in less than two years into a major — and difficult to control — source of whistle-blowing. Microbloggers, some of whom have attracted millions of followers, have been exposing scandals and official malfeasance, including an attempted cover-up of a recent high-speed rail accident, with astonishing speed and popularity.

On Wednesday, the Communist Party’s Central Committee called in a report on its annual meeting for an “Internet management system” that would strictly regulate social network and instant-message systems, and punish those who spread “harmful information.” The focus of the meeting, held this month, was on culture and ideology.

Analysts and employees inside the private companies that manage the microblogs say party officials are pressing for increasingly strict and swift censorship of unapproved opinions.

And how are they going to solve this dilemma? It appears they're going to take a page out of the South Korean handbook:

Perhaps most telling, the authorities are discussing requiring microbloggers to register accounts with their real names and identification numbers instead of the anonymous handles now in wide use.

Although China’s most famous bloggers tend to use their own names, requiring everyone to do so would make online whistle-blowing and criticism of officialdom — two public services not easily duplicated elsewhere — considerably riskier.

Of course, there's a big difference between the PRC and the ROK: I can say just about whatever the heck I want to in South Korea, short of praising North Korea's leadership (like that is going to happen), and I face little fear of being harassed, fined, imprisoned, deported, or inconvenienced in any real way. Sure, the laws are not 100% transparent, but the parameters are reasonably clear and Grand Canyon-wide.

Sigh. This is not a good thing. China needs whistleblowers for the misdeeds of local and national politicos and corporations. It is going in a dangerous new direction at breakneck speed, where the more rich and/or more powerful are running the show to the detriment of the hoi polloi. Um, didn't they have a revolution against that kind of thing?

And when those moneyed interests put pollution into the air and water that end up coming toward South Korea, it's something we have an interest in as well.

...

Obama Fried Chicken

He's not a Colonel, but he is the Commander. Go here for the latest, logical, and, in hindsight, pretty darned predictable use of Obama's visage in China.

No doubt, since Beijing demanded a South Korean shop owner to take down an "offensive" sign that incorporated an image of Tiananmen Square but without the accompanying portrait of Mao Zedong (who was replaced by a dog), we should expect the same thing when the State Department asks nicely that the President's likeness not be used in this way.

...

AFP video: "North Korea seeks foreign help for controversial resort" at Mt Kumgangsan

It's all in the video, which focuses a lot more on English-speaking Malaysian tourists walking around and looking at things than it does offering any news that would support the title they offered up.



Well, I guess they do have Kim Kwang-yun, director of the Mt Kŭmgangsan International Tourism Leadership Bureau, giving some sort of pitch to the Malaysians, starting at 1:47. But we don't hear him say much, as the AFP video editor seems to be afflicted with ADD. I'm guessing Mr Kim had offered a free trip if the Malaysians agreed to hear a pitch on Kŭmgangsan time-shares.

And who wouldn't want to invest in a North Korean tourism project? After all, it's only on rare occasion that the North Korean soldiers who patrol the place shoot and kill your customers, and the infrastructure is already there, built by and then stolen from the previous investors, so all you have to do is come (and bring hard currency)!

For something more solidly newsy, we have AP instead of AFP, in a separate article, saying North Korea is "looking to China" in a "drive to boost trade and investment":

Chinese travel agents, potential investors and foreign journalists recently traveled into the North to get a look at the special economic zone Pyongyang is promoting in Rason. It lies in the far northeastern tip of North Korea, 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) from Pyongyang, but will be about an hour’s drive from China once the road is completed. ...

The market, a 13-year-old experiment in small-scale capitalism, has been so successful that the Chinese managing company, the Tianyu Group, is planning to expand the jam-packed 54,000-square-foot (5,000-square-meter) market to 320,000 square feet (30,000 square meters), Tianyu vice director Zheng Zhexi said.

The AP article is heavily focused on construction of the Chinese highway to North Korea's Rasŏn/Rajin industrial port development, which is a key part of incorporating North Korea into China's Northeastern Provinces, part of what I call the Manchurianization of North Korea.

Back to the video above. The AFP short film does offer a taste of why the Malaysians have come to this part of North Korea: secrecy. Several of them state that they're curious about secretive North Korea because they want to figure out why it's so secret. I guess if I were from a country billed as "truly Asia," then I'd be darned uncomfortable if I didn't know what all the other Asians were up to. 

And maybe North Korea really can rescue Kŭmgangsan with foreign tourists. Stick an affordable ski resort up there, make sure skiing accidents outnumber shooting incidents, and cash-carrying nouveau-riche Southeast Asians will come in droves (that sounds disparaging to the newly rich SE Asians, but I don't' mean it as such; good on them for starting to do well).

And in the end, if Pyongyang decides that it can rescue rural North Korea by replacing South Koreans with Southeast Asians, they're simply copying what Seoul has been doing for years in rural South Korea.  

...

Starbucks plans a double shot

[source]

Still short of their goal of having a franchise in every South Korean living room, Starbucks has announced plans to nearly double its presence in the Republic over the next five years. If all goes as planned, we will have 700 shops in South Korea by 2016, up from the current 370.

At the same time, they're planning to triple their presence in China. Just great. The last thing we need is Chinese Netizens who are angry and suffering from insomnia.

...

Well, I wouldn't trust whomever was trying to swallow up my country, either.

Ah, Wikileaks, the gift that keeps on giving us leakage.

I actually found this one quite encouraging: North Korea's Dear Leader apparently doesn't trust Beijing as far as he can throw them (despite his handing over the northernmost reaches of the DPRK to the Chinese).

From AFP:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il expressed distrust of his country's major economic prop China during a 2009 meeting with a visiting South Korean businesswoman, according to a US diplomatic cable.

The cable released by anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks summarises a meeting between the US ambassador in Seoul and Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jung-Eun, who had recently returned from a meeting in Pyongyang with the leader.

The cable dated August 28, 2009 quoted Hyun as saying Kim had made a comment about "not trusting" China, without elaborating.

That's nice to know, as I'm quite worried about a desperate regime in Pyongyang handing over the country bit by bit, in order to stay afloat.

The Wikileaks documents revealed some other interesting things as well:

Kim also complained that Seoul's unification ministry tasked with handling cross-border relations had "lost the driver's seat" to the foreign ministry, which he asserted did not understand North Korea. ...

Discussing relations with the United States, he told Hyun he had altered some parts of the Arirang festival to "fit American tastes".

Arirang involves tens of thousands of performers in mass games and artistic performances that praise the communist regime and the ruling dynasty.

The leader reportedly told Hyun he had cut out a sketch depicting a missile launch because he had heard Americans did not like it.

"He had also been advised that South Koreans did not like to see so many soldiers in the performance, so now more students were included," the cable says.

However, Kim described relations with Japan as "far worse than ever before" and Hyun was told separately by a senior official that the leader had ordered Japanese cars banned from Pyongyang's streets.

Wow, so KJI does care what the public thinks. Just not the public in his own country.

...

These shoes were made for walkin'...

... and that's just what they'll do.

Courtesy of The Marmot's Hole, we have news of a Chinese team brawling with Georgetown's basketball team at a goodwill exhibition game.

Remind you of anything?

It seems kicking-in-anger is the thing to do when things don't go your way. Or maybe "kick some butt" was today's idiom in English class. The humanity!

Chinese officials force reporters covering Biden speech out the door

You'd think that if you found a group of people who actually want to hear a Joe Biden speech, you should let them sit through to the end.

But if you're Chinese officials and you're afraid that the Vice President of the United States might say something frank, candid, and a little bit biting about your country, maybe you don't want people in the room who buy the proverbial ink by the proverbial barrel.

Or maybe they were afraid Joltin' Joe was about to call his Chinese counterpart "articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy."

From the Los Angeles Times:

Xi spoke first, calling Biden's visit a "major event" in the U.S.-China relationship and expressing his desire to work with America "to promote development of relations between our great nations."

Then Biden spoke, starting with a reference to his first visit to China in 1979, when he saw "the great wonders" of the nation. He spoke of his admiration for the Chinese people and the "great sweep of history." And to Xi, he spoke of the importance of developing a close personal relationship, one of "openness and candor," and stated his belief that foreign policy "is more than just formal visits, it's establishing relationships and trust."

"It is my fond hope that our personal relationship will continue to grow," Biden said to Xi, who is widely expected to be the next Chinese president.

It was right about this time that a near-brawl was breaking out about a hundred feet away from the diplomatic exchanges in the Eastern Hall of the Great Hall of the People.

Only minutes into Biden's remarks, Chinese officials had begun to direct reporters toward the exits. Most reporters and the vice president's staff objected, saying it was important to cover the entirety of Biden's opening statement, as had been the agreement between officials beforehand.

A Chinese press aide said Biden was going on far too long for their liking. But in fact, including the consecutive translation of his comments from English to Chinese, Biden spoke only two or three minutes longer than Xi had.

Soon the stern shooing turned into forceful shoving. As reporters tried to stand their ground, Chinese officials locked arms and pushed forward in a show of overwhelming force. Soon enough Biden did finish, but reporters had difficulty hearing the entire thing because of the fisticuffs.

This is one of the things that makes me so uneasy about China: it is a big and powerful country that tries so very, very hard to remove uncomfortable facts and discourse from the public sphere, often replacing it with its own pre-approved distraction or diversion.

From SARS to the treatment of Uighurs to Joe Biden potentially making a speech where he would call for more press freedom or human rights in North Korea, China's ally, Beijing has great fear over the public knowing what's really being said or done. As we've seen with SARS itself, it is an unsustainable situation that threatens to collapse in on itself. Sadly, though, my thoughts and opinions probably reach very few Chinese, as Blogger (this blog's platform) is still blocked in China, I believe.

Meanwhile, Biden is getting no love on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, either. At Real Clear Politics, Richard Benedetto makes the case that for jettisoning Joe in favor of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

In contrast, Biden flopped on the one high-profile task Obama gave him this year -- negotiate a budget-deficit deal with Democrats and Republicans in Congress. The Biden-led talks came to an abrupt end in June when Republicans walked out.

All this is not lost on the public. The Gallup Poll puts Clinton’s favorability with the American people at 66 percent. The last Gallup measure for Biden put him at 42 percent.

Moreover, with the growing possibility that a woman -- Rep. Michele Bachmann -- could be on the Republican ticket either in the first or second slot (more likely the latter), Clinton would provide a formidable counter that an all-male ticket would not. Democrats would love to pit Clinton’s political and experiential skills against those of Bachmann. It’s a matchup they believe they would win going away.

On top of all that, Clinton has a large, spirited and loyal following among Democrats and many independents. Biden does not. The vice president only brings Delaware and its three electoral votes to the fold. And Delaware is a heavily Democratic state that would probably vote for Obama whether Biden is on the ticket or not.

Clinton, however, could shore up flagging Obama support in critical swing states such as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Florida, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Iowa, states the president must carry to win a second term. Without them he’s a goner, and he knows it.

And I would like to see Clinton go up against Bachmann in a VP debate. We can see once and for all who pulls off the Crazy Eyes look better.

My, that was terrible. No national print media would ever do that to Hillary, would they?

Oh, my. That's just horrible. It sure puts the latest engineered outrage over the Bachmann Newsweek "Queen of Rage" cover into perspective a bit. Of course, Bachmann's outraged supporters somehow missed this and many other depictions of Hillary Clinton as having crazy eyes herself, as they largely happened before the Republicans insist the world began, on January 20, 2009.

By the way, I'm not so sure how the above photo of Ms Bachmann is so dramatically different from this one at left, which I snagged directly from the Congresswoman's own Bachmann-for-President website.

(This post was brought to you by Stream of Consciousness™.)