In what version of reality would it ever be a good idea for Korea to propose the resumption of "scientific whaling"?

Dear Angry Reader: Yes, I know this is a picture of a protest against Japan and not South Korea, but that is part of the point if you will read past this shock-value photo of an anti-whaling demonstration. 

Despite the success of K-pop and the rest of the Korean wave, the warm-and-fuzzy image of South Korea the world now seems to have is still a bit tenuous.

And when the rest of the world sometimes confuses you with neighbors like China (which is bad), North Korea (very, very bad), Japan (mixed bag), or yourself in the past (potentially bad), we're talking tower-of-Jenga-blocks tenuousness.

And it is against that backdrop that I would like whichever Republic of Korea officials are responsible for South Korean proposals at the International Whaling Commission to please reconsider their proposal to resume so-called "scientific hunting" of minke whales.

See, when the BBC is reporting on you being a part of this loathed practice, that's a very bad sign:

South Korea is proposing to hunt whales under regulations permitting scientific research whaling, echoing the programmes of its neighbour, Japan.

Hunting would take place near the Korean coast on minke whales. How many would be caught is unclear.

The South Korean delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) said the research was needed "for the proper assessment of whale stocks".

Many governments at the IWC meeting condemned the Korean announcement.

There are several different stocks, or groups, of minke whales in the region, and one of the them, the so-called J-stock, is severely depleted.

Given that fact, "we believe that scientific whaling on this stock borders on the reckless," New Zealand's delegation head, Gerard van Bohemen said.

But Joon-Suk Kang, the head of the South Korean delegation, said the programme was necessary to answer questions about minke whale stocks that non-lethal research had been unable to solve.

Questions they want to answer: Which minke whale stock is most delicious?

Korea's IWC proposal:
"It's a cookbook!"

Look, I get that down in Ulsan there is a history of whaling supposedly eight thousand years old, but even the froggiest of officials in the deepest of wells must realize that our buddies next door in Japan are hated around the world by many people because they keep trying to pursue "scientific" whaling where the carcasses of these giant sea mammals legally end up on dinner plates because it would be a shame for them to go to waste.

Why, oh why, would you want to drag Korea into that miasma of piss-poor international relations?

Let me put it another way, ROK officials at the IWC. Japan's obstinacy has been on display lately as diplomats and not just right-wing nut jobs try to pressure the United States to remove local memorials to the Comfort Women (brutalized World War II-era sex slaves, for those of you living in a wifi-less cave). Japan's unpleasant combination of boneheadedness and pigheadedness on that issue is exactly how much of the world sees Japan's intransigence on "scientific" whaling (it doesn't help that they kill dolphins in documentaries), and you would basically paint South Korea with the same blood-soaked brush.

Let me put it yet another way: If countries like Great Britain were willing to lead a boycott of the 1988 Seoul Olympiad over consumption of dog meat, do you think South Korea will be able to dodge threats of a similar boycott of the 2018 Pyongchang Winter Olympics? (One of the problems of hosting major international events is that it means your cojones are hanging right out in the open.)

Don't think for a minute that I am the only one who's thought of that. Ditto with campaigns against Hyundai, Kia, Samsung, and LG.

You can't win, ROK. If you strike me down, I shall become
more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

Ultimately you have to ask: Is it worth it? Is reviving or preserving the whaling industry in Ulsan worth the scathing bad press, tarnished national reputation, and potential economic losses that will likely be incurred from this proposal?

Sorry, even though I don't like other countries pushing South Korea around (and I see no small amount of hypocrisy that so many critics of whaling come from the US and the UK which hunted several species nearly to extinction), I have to say no on this one.

See, whaling conjures up notions around the world of brutal murder of not just sentient but highly intelligent creatures and thus it stinks of being morally wrong. And that means adding them to the list of such creatures your country kills for food is indelibly bad for the national image (as well as stinking of being morally wrong).

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Honda Uni-Cub brings us one step roll closer to Wall-E's world

Wall-E, in case you haven't seen it, is a brilliant film of the dystopian future genre in which a rag-tag band of humans find themselves fleeing chaos in a post-apocalyptic world in which anthropomorphic computers and robots are hell-bent on their destruction and/or preventing their return to Earth.

If you have seen Wall-E, you're probably wondering what I was on when I watched it.

Yeah, yeah, it's a kids' film, with an i-Robot-you love story to boot, but it really is about a dystopian future, a post-apocalyptic world filled with destruction, loads and loads of chaos, and anthropomorphic computers and robots, some of which are preventing humankind's return to Earth. And one of them really does seem to be trying to kill the captain (or at least incapacitate him).

But the joke's on him: morbid obesity would have done the captain in soon anyway.

And that brings me to my point (yes, I do have one). Honda recently unveiled its answer to the Segway (as if we needed one): a glorified electronic unicycle called the Uni-Cub. They might as well have called it the Uni-Club, because it will figuratively club you to death.

You're probably wondering what I am on now, but bear with me, please. When the Segway was first released, it was hailed for the supposed community-altering aspects it would bring. Instead of jumping in their cars, people would hop on their Segways and zippily go places that were a little too far to walk but too close for the guilt-ridden to drive (yes, there are a few of us).

The idea was that, with more and more people milling about at street level, this would lead to shops, cafés, neighborhood eateries, food kiosks, etc., sprouting like weeds and American cities would become like Seoul, Tōkyō, London, Paris, Roma, Hong Kong, Pusan, Ōsaka, Rio de Janeiro, Amsterdam, Madrid, Barcelona, Cairo, Athens, Brussels, Stockholm, Milano, Firenze, Marseilles, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, or just about every other city in the entire world.

Alas, this utopian future world never materialized. The Segway instead resulted in three major trends: Waikiki tourists getting plowed into by uncaring Honolulu motorists, national park rangers looking utterly ridiculous, and two entire generations conditioned to misspell the perfectly usable word segue.

The Segway was too expensive, too bulky, and it caused presidents to fall on their face. But the Honda Uni-Cub aims to resolve at least one of those issues, since it can even be used indoors. Simply put, you can, if you so desired, never walk anywhere.

And that brings us back to Wall-E's world.

This is technology gone horribly wrong. What is the difference between the top photo and this one just above? Holographic computer screens and about 50 kilos per person.

This is the part of the essay where my public health background kicks in: God made us bipedal for a reason. Walking provides us with salubrious functionality that goes way beyond getting from Point A to Point B. It keeps our blood pumping, it provides just enough stress on our skeleton that it encourages healthy bone replacement, and it helps regulate blood sugar. I run three miles a day, but if you can't run or jog then you should walk.

Even just a walk around the block with your dog, your s.o., and/or your kids or parents would do wonders for your health and longevity that you wouldn't get if you were mostly stationary and sedentary. Those of us in public health simply cannot emphasize that enough (seriously, we can't stop, it's like a genetic flaw or something).

And that leads me to what should by now be an obvious conclusion: Honda's Uni-Cub is part of a plot by the Japanese government to once and for all solve its demographic crisis. If you don't know what I'm talking about, take a look a the charts on this post (a very high-traffic post for this blog, and one of only two in this blog's top ten that don't include scantily clad women). Japan's "population pyramid" is an inverted pyramid, and South Korea is catching up on this trend.

No economist has yet figured out how to maintain high standards of living with a graying population characteristic of an inverted pyramid like this.

Simply put, what had long been considered a "normal" population distribution was a pyramid like the one at right, where it had a large base of young people and it tapered off at the top where all the old people (i.e., retirees) would be. The idea being that those toward the bottom would work and toil (much like the people who built the actual pyramids) and the fruits of their labor would be enough to support the elderly in their old age, as well as the base (which is made up of children who, thanks to Charles Dickens, can no longer be put to work legally).

But years of declining birth rates have meant loads of old people and not enough young workers. We used to have twenty workers per retiree, and soon we'll have just around two because the top is growing faster than future workers are being replaced and the elderly are living to 100 instead of dying a year or so after retirement due to smoking-related illness, preventable infections, public safety problems, or nagging.


Replacement birth rate is about 2.1 children per adult woman (2.0 to replace the woman and the man who impregnated her, presumably her husband or long-term boyfriend, and 0.1 to replace those who die before reproducing or never marry). But countries like South Korea, for example, implemented birth control programs so successful that its birth rate plummeted from something like seven children per woman (not an exaggeration even though it sounds like one) to just 1.2. That's two people being replaced by 1.2 offspring. That is the very definition of a dying society and the reason why Korea is now embracing immigration and its own brand of "multiculturalism" (다문화주의).

The Japanese have the same problem as Korea, but have chosen (so far) to eschew immigration in favor of technological solutions. And by that, I mean robots. Robots will be trained programmed to take care of the elderly and do all the tedious tasks that now require a fully human health care worker. But denial is, like the aforementioned pyramid, a river in Egypt, and this technological fix can only go part of the way.

Ostensibly, Honda's Uni-Cub will be part of this effort to handle the elderly like glazed donuts on the conveyor belt at Krispy Kreme, but I'm pretty sure that they were really designed as part of some darker final robotic solution (my ominous point from several paragraphs up, in case you were wondering just where the hel1 this tangent was going).

Gin-san and Kin-san:
Public Enemy #1

It's pretty clear: Honda's Uni-Cub is part of the government's effort to trim the top of the inverted pyramid by inducing obesity in the Japanese population. Start 'em young... er, youngerish. Give 'em a Uni-Cub at the age of, say fifty, and by the time they reach seventy or so, when their government pensions are kicking in, about half of them will be just like the scooter-lounging humanity in Wall-E. And that means they will kick off at seventy-five instead of ninety-five, thus relieving pressure on the non-retired population.

You think I'm kidding, but I'm deadly serious.

View Honda's propaganda video, if you dare:



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"These buoys and bottles are new... and suspicious"

NBC News on Friday had an interesting story related to the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster that occurred over a year ago.

It seems that significant pieces of debris that were washed out to sea during the tsunami have made their way across the Pacific Ocean. The largest and most notable — and the most hazardous — has been the "ghost ship" that had been drifting toward the North American coastline. The US Coast Guard decided to torpedo it and let it sink in waters 6000 feet (1800 meters) deep.

The ghost ship is fascinating enough (and it's too bad they couldn't sink it in a more favorable location so that it could become an artificial reef and perhaps a diving site), but what got me interested enough to post this was their discussion of the everyday items from Japan that they've noticed coming ashore.

One biologist in Sitka who routinely helps with cleaning up the beaches around Sitka, in the Alaska Panhandle, says they've noticed more and more debris. Quoting NBC's Miguel Almaguer, "These buoys and bottles are new... and suspicious."

Not to make light of their obvious plight, but here's an example of the suspicious stuff from Japan:

Yup. That's a Korean bottle of Minute Maid Fresh juice (looks to be apple). To be fair, they said that Japanese debris washes up on their shore all the time (something about the geography makes it prone to collecting floating garbage) and they would need to verify if this is from last year's tsunami. Hint to NBC News: The Korean bottle probably isn't, but go ahead with the geiger counter anyway.

Sure, it's not entirely implausible that the Korean bottle came from northern Japan. A realistic scenario would be that someone from Japan visited Korea and brought this bottle back on the plane as a beverage or even a souvenir, but my guess is that it actually floated over from Korea.

I've done beach cleanup along northern Oahu long before the tsunami, and it's easy to see Japanese, Korean, and even Chinese goods washed upon the shore and partly buried in the sand. Lest you think it's only East Asians dumping things in the ocean, we see lots of stuff from the US (much of it local, but some of it from the Mainland).

And except for the local stuff, I'm not so sure that these are examples of people carelessly dumping things into the ocean. I remember The Lost Nomad used to put up atrocious pictures of garbage dumped along rivers or reservoirs where he'd fish.

I had assumed that 100% of that had been left by some careless person, like the people who toss their cigarette butts into subway vents, but after experiencing some minor flooding due to torrential rains that are frequent during Korea's changma (rainy season), I've concluded that a large portion, perhaps even the vast majority, comes from garbage and other debris that had been secured being blown away or washed away by heavy rain.

Of course, that doesn't make it any healthier to wildlife or the environment, but at least it restores some of my faith in humanity. That is, until I see a smoker toss a cigarette butt into a subway vent again.

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A blast from the past: South Korea a major source of methamphetamine in the late 1980s

... And presumably for part of the 1990s as well. Back in 1990-something, I remember citing this October 1989 article and looking up the source material for a paper or news article I wrote (probably when I was an undergrad in the 1990s but possibly a grad student in the 2000s).

I ran across it again last week while doing a short paper for a public health biology course on concerns over the rise of methamphetamine in East Asia:

South Korea Seen as Major Source of 'Ice' Narcotic:
Rising use of the potent drug is causing alarm in Hawaii, and Japanese gangs are reported active in the trade

SEOUL — Investigators believe South Korea is a major source of the highly pure crystal methamphetamine that is raising alarm in Hawaii as "ice," a potent, smokable form of the drug that authorities say is already catching on in the U.S. mainland and may rival crack cocaine in popularity.

Indeed, crystal methamphetamine is already the drug of choice in East Asia, where marijuana and cocaine are scarce and heroin is all but unheard of on the street. In Japan, the most lucrative market for methamphetamine, police say they annually arrest more than 20,000 people for using and trafficking in the drug, nearly all of which is smuggled in from Taiwan and South Korea.

Methamphetamine abuse is booming in South Korea, too. The Seoul government has vowed to crack down on the epidemic before it gets out of control, but the illicit trade in the drug has evaded Asian authorities for decades.

Crystal methamphetamine has been widely used in the United States for many years in its conventional, powdered form, popularly known as "speed" or "meth" and usually taken by injection, snorted or ingested. Notorious as a favorite drug of motorcycle gangs, experts say its abuse has been rising among the general population in Southern California in recent years, supplied by hundreds of local laboratories.

Ordinary methamphetamine is simple enough to prepare that there is little reason to import it from abroad. Signs are now emerging, however, that a pure grade of methamphetamine cooked in clandestine laboratories in South Korea and other parts of Asia is finding its way at least as far as Hawaii. There, a Filipino youth gang called the "Hawaii Brothers" initially popularized the drug in its "ice," or rock form, and sparked a boom in abuse, according to investigators.

Late last month, South Korean authorities announced the uncovering of a major drug ring that had produced more than a quarter ton of methamphetamine since 1987 and in July allegedly delivered 22 pounds, with a street value estimated as high as $750,000, to a former U.S. serviceman and his wife in Honolulu.

Although Vietnamese couriers were intercepted earlier this year bringing into Hawaii small quantities of methamphetamine believed to have originated in Hong Kong and Taiwan, law enforcement authorities have yet to catch anyone in the act of smuggling the drug from South Korea.

Capt. Henry Lau of the Honolulu Police Department's narcotics division said informants have told investigators that a good deal of the "ice" is coming from South Korea, however. The fact that no major laboratories have been discovered on the islands also points to imports, he said.

"We believe our crystal meth, or the knowledge of how to make it, is coming from Korea," Lau said in a telephone interview.

Yoo Chang Jong, chief of the narcotics division of the Public Prosecutor's Office, which enforces South Korea's drug laws, said a recent surge in overseas tourism by South Koreans is believed to have provided a screen for drug couriers. The Seoul government lifted passport restrictions in January, and foreign travel was up 72% in the first eight months of this year.

Yoo speaks of a "white triangle" for Asian methamphetamine trade: After police cracked down on production in Japan in the 1960s, Japanese criminal gangs relocated their illegal laboratories to South Korea and later to Taiwan, where it is cooked and smuggled back to Japan to feed the habits of tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of addicts.

Lately, however, the pattern has been changing, Yoo said. Tighter border controls have resulted in the diversion of much of the South Korean methamphetamine to the domestic market, resulting in a rapidly growing drug abuse problem. Methamphetamine arrests ballooned from 417 cases in 1984 to 3,208 last year, Yoo said.

"The government feels there is a crisis situation in Korea," said Yoo, whose staff will increase from 59 to 256 investigators by December.

The methamphetamine trade also has spread to Southeast Asia, where Japanese gangsters, known as yakuza , whose ranks include many ethnic Koreans, are increasingly active, as well as to the United States, Yoo said.

"Now it includes Hawaii and perhaps California too," Yoo said. "Only quite recently have investigators recognized the change of flow."

A woman identified as Lee Jin Suk, 54, confessed to delivering 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of methamphetamine to a "Mr. and Mrs. Alexander" in Honolulu in July, Yoo said. Lee, said by prosecutors to be the wife of a former National Assembly member, was among 23 people arrested last month in the largest drug operation ever prosecuted in South Korea.

Think how far the meth epidemic has become in the US since then, and how its primary source seems to be local production instead of imports.

Nowadays, interestingly, it is North Korea that is a rising threat for methamphetamine trafficking. There is a connection, no doubt, with Japan being one of the nexuses.

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Korea-Japan underwater tunnel?

I've written about it before, this idea of an undersea tunnel connecting South Korea's Pusan or Kŏjedo to Japan's Kyushu via Tsushima Island, several times in the past. It intrigues me.

Well, apparently it also intrigues the folks at the Chosun Ilbo (who usually only get intrigued by pictures of nude or scantily clad women).

They write that such a grand undertaking would take ten to fifteen years to construct and cost 110 to 120 trillion won. Trillion as in cho (조), a number you rarely ever get a chance to use (lop off three of the zeroes to see how much it would be in dollars). We could see this happening around the year 2020 (but don't expect too many English teachers to be helping out).

(HT to The Marmot and his Twitter feed)

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Fall back!

Britney does her part to get the word out.

Still busy. And unlike most of the rest of the United States, we in the Aloha State did not get an extra hour to sleep in, do our work, or otherwise procrastinate by watching the Hulu.

When I was living in Seoul nearly full time, daylight saving(s) time, mostly meant one thing: Every fall my mother would go from calling me at three o'clock in the morning to calling me at four o'clock in the morning, and every spring she would switch back to three o'clock.

Hillary Clinton once wondered how then-Senator Barack Obama would handle the 3 a.m. phone call. Kushibo handled it by groggily telling his mum to please learn the difference between a.m. and p.m. The "seventeen hours' difference" thing threw her off; I told her to just guess what time it was seven/eight hours ago and then add a day, and that's where I am.

Anyway, with the rest of the nation switching back to standard time, it will make it a little easier to call the East Coast of the US: They're now five hours ahead instead of six, and that means there's a larger window of time to do business with them after I get up in the morning.

It is sort of weird that out here in Hawaii, we're closer in time to Korea and Japan (essentially five hours' difference) than New York City, Washington DC, and the rest of the I-95 corridor for over half the year.

Anyway, fall back, as of 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, November 6 (the first Sunday in November). You won't need to spring forward (and give that hour back) until 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, March 11, 2012 (the second Sunday in March).

By the way, as I've reported before (here, here, and here), there has been some consideration given to Korea going on DST for half the year, but it is very unlikely to happen unless Japan agrees to do so as well. Unless the three parts of the United States closest to Korea and Japan and where Koreans and Japanese are likely to travel — Guam, Saipan, and Hawaii — also go on daylight saving time, it seems less likely it will happen.

Hawaii, incidentally, has given mulling over going on Daylight Losing Time.

above: Adjusting for Daylight Saving Time in England.
(recycled not-all-that-funny-the-first-time gag from here)

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"It's a foreigner... Run for your lives!"

After a discussion with "M" (who is from Kansai) about how average Japanese are nearly petrified to talk with gaijin in English (an issue that came up in relation to The Black Guy on the Bus™), I directed her to this video, which I originally saw at Roboseyo's site (it's also at Popular Gusts).



Yup, she says. That's Japan.

I will say, though, that I don't know which is worse, having the locals run from you (e.g., Korea, Japan) or have them angrily and loudly tell you to speak English, dammit! (e.g., the United State of America).

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A little segue into trains...

I like trains. I enjoy the romance of arriving at train stations and the thrill of smooth travel through the countryside.

And in Japan, the warning sound for people at railway crossings, if you hear it while in the passing train itself, sounds like the shreik-shreik-shreik sound accompanying Norman stabbing someone in the shower in the movie Psycho, but that's not what this utterly pointless post is about.



HT to LOTD. While getting the embed code for the train, I ran across this other short film from Japan. Clever in its premise but even more pointless than the first.

Enjoy the weekend! I'll be watching the University of Hawaii football season opener today. In Hawaii we have no pro football, basketball, or baseball teams, so the UH's football and basketball games are our proxy. Everyone on the island gets into it, even if they've never set foot on the Manoa campus. I'll send pictures of the rickety stadium, which, to tie this in with the original theme of the post, looks like it was put together with rusted railway track.

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I guess they don't realize how tough the job market is out there

Well, to our left we have Seoul Mayor Oh Sehoon resigning after failing to muster together enough votes or voters for his egalitarianism-versus-fiscal prudence school lunch referendum. Effective immediately. This was done as promised after Mayor Oh got only one in four Seoulites to vote when he'd promised to quit if it were less than one in three.

And the to our right we have Japanese PM Naoto Kan resigning, echoing the words of Andy Warhol that in the future everyone in Japan will be prime minister for fifteen minutes. Kan's resignation was also to fulfill a promise, which makes me think it sorta sucks that the only politicians we can trust at their word are the ones leaving office.

What does this all mean? My guess is that Oh and Kan have been planning to run away together for sometime. Really, that's the only plausible explanation.

Anyway, I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I didn't follow Oh's policies in our fair city while he's been mayor quite as much as I should have, even though they probably have a profound effect on the vector* of my humble-but-takai apartment's market value. Kan, on the other hand, was someone well known for trying to make nice with South Korea and other victims of Imperial Japan's aggression, so I'm a little sad to see him go for that reason.

Also, his departure means I won't have many more opportunities to run this:

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

* That's direction and magnitude, in case you've forgotten middle school math, as in will it go up or down and by how much.

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Hyundai in for a rough summer?

Hyundai and Kia are riding high, but Reuters is suggesting that the potential for labor strife may rear its ugly head this month and possibly lead to work stoppages and production slowdowns:

Hyundai's labour union, South Korea's largest, wants a 7.2 percent increase on average in basic salary and a bonus payment equivalent to eight months pay. It also wants preferential treatment for children of its long-time employees when they seek employment by Hyundai.

Last year, Hyundai, which reported record profits, agreed on a wage deal that included a 4.87 percent rise in base salary, performance bonuses amounting to the equivalent of three months salary plus a 5 million won ($4,624) payment, as well as offering 30 Hyundai shares to each employee.

NON-WAGE COMPLICATIONS. Apart from the wage talks, this year's negotiations add a fresh twist. Under a new labour law, Hyundai and its union have been locking horns over cutting the number of full-time paid union organisers and altering a work shift system, the two most contentious issues for the auto industry as a whole.

President Lee's pro-business government implemented a law in July last year that requires employers to limit the number of full-time paid unionists and Hyundai is demanding the union cut the number of full-time unionists to 24, or just one-tenth of the current 235, a call flatly rejected by the union.

Its sister company Kia last year agreed with the union to pay wages to only 21 full-time unionists from the previous 234, putting pressure on Hyundai to agree to a similar deal.

When the unionists themselves see their livelihood threatened, who knows how bad things could get.

With a combined ten percent of US market share, Hyundai and Kia are doing very well right now due to a number of factors — boosts in quality and improvements in style, competitive pricing, greater and more positive brand recognition, and even Japanese automakers' own troubles getting vehicles to the marketplace since the Tohoku disaster earlier this spring — and it would be a shame to squander the strong position the two companies find themselves in.

Japanese PM Naoto Kan offers to resign to foil no-confidence vote

Things are looking up
for Mr Kan. Not.

What Andy Warhol meant to say was that in the future, everyone in Japan will be prime minister for fifteen minutes.

From the Japan Times:

Prime Minister Naoto Kan survived a no-confidence motion Thursday after suddenly announcing his intention to resign once disaster-hit Tohoku is back on its feet and the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 power plant is safely under control.

Kan's abrupt announcement barely prevented the ruling Democratic Party of Japan from falling apart, as dozens of members close to DPJ heavyweight and Kan rival Ichiro Ozawa refused to vote against Kan.

Kan survived easily by a vote of 293 to 152 in the 480-seat chamber, which included 15 DPJ and 15 opposition abstentions.

Although the public nature of the Kan-Ozawa feud has apparently been settled by Kan's announcement, the internal conflict is likely to drag on as the two sides jockey to get one of their own voted in as prime minister.

Naoto Kan was not the favorite of any one of my Japanese friends, but it was really bad luck for him that the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis happened on his watch, even though there was nothing he did to cause all the problems and precious little he could have done to mitigate the results.

I have no real opinion about him one way or the other, except that he and his party seemed interested in fostering good relations with South Korea, by standing behind Seoul and also by not making Yasukuni visits.

My only regret is that I won't be able to reuse this photo and accompanying caption anymore:

Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

US senators want to halt USFK's move to Pyongtaek?

From AFP:

The US military is also looking to consolidate dozens of bases around South Korea into two hubs -- Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers (45 miles) south of Seoul, and Daegu, 300 kilometers (180 miles) southeast of the capital.

The move would allow US forces to leave their huge Yongsan base in Seoul, which was set up for the 1950-53 Korean War but now lies in the heart of the developed and densely populated city, leading to frictions with residents.

But the senators called for a halt, saying there was not enough clarity on who would pick up rising costs at Pyeongtaek where the US military wants to start shifting troops next year.

The senators also questioned the Pentagon's plan to allow more of the 28,500 US troops based in South Korea to bring families.

"There is an inherent contradiction in planning to increase the number of US military family members in South Korea when there is the real potential that a destabilizing security situation in North Korea could unfold rapidly and unpredictably," Webb said.

Honestly, this sounds a bit like some senators are shooting their mouth off because they have to say something.

If one values a US military presence in South Korea (and I definitely am one of them) then they have to go somewhere. But keeping them smack in the middle of the capital is no longer tenable. The move to Pyongtaek has been in motion and it will probably end up costing more in political capital and actual money if it were halted now.

As for Japan, I'm not as certain of the situation there, but I do think it is important for stability in the region for US Forces Japan to maintain a strong presence. They do not need to all be on Okinawa, but moving them all to Guam, a tiny island whose inhabitants are also chafing from the US military dominating much of the territory, is almost a nonstarter.

How about this for a proposal? Much of Japan is losing population, with many parts of the countryside emptying out as people move to the cities for economic opportunities or the elderly die off. Maybe it would be a boon to one or more of these areas if the bases formerly on Okinawa moved nearby. The land is there and there might be some folks who want jobs close to home.

Of course, my plan might be just as full of crap as Senator Webb's.

Miki Ando defeats Kim Yuna (UPDATED)

Japan's darling of skating Miki Ando, showing her disdain for all the South Koreans who donated tens of millions of dollars to help the victims of the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, defeated the reigning ice queen Kim Yuna at the Figure Skating World Championship in Moscow.

"I was skating for Japan," Ms Ando said. And we all know exactly what that means.

Miki Ando throws up a little in her mouth when asked
by a reporter what she thinks of Korea.

Seriously, though, mucho congratulations to Ms Ando, who is an incredible skater. The friendly rivalry between Kim Yuna and the top Japanese skaters (to include Mao Asada) makes it all the more interesting to watch (and yeah, it is interesting). I'll go on record as saying it's a little less fun if Kim Yuna wins every time.

Moreover, this kind of thing might be enough to lift the spirits of a lot of people in Japan. The Tohoku tragedy was a nightmare in the middle of a malaise, something that is palpable when talking to young and old from Japan, and I so want for Japanese to rise up and see a bright future on the horizon.

UPDATE:
Kim Yuna has announced through her agent that she will donate the $27,000 prize money from her silver medal finish to UNICEF's relief efforts in Japan. Class act all the way.

South Korea's per capita GDP near that of Japan?

Well, yes and no. No if you count just regular old GDP, whereby Japan's is twice that of South Korea's (which is slight over twenty grand). But if you're talking about purchasing power parity (PPP), then yes, South Korea's is only about ten percent smaller than Japan's:

According to the Bank of Korea on Wednesday, Korea's per-capita GDP in 2010 was around US$20,500, but its per-capital GDP based on the purchasing power parity was estimated at $30,286.

The PPP is the currency conversion rate that eliminates the differences in price levels between countries. The reason why Korea's PPP-based GDP is larger than its actual per-capita GDP is because public utility fees and other consumer prices are cheaper than in advanced countries.

The gap with Japan is narrowing. Japan's PPP-based per-capita GDP in 2010 was $33,828, around $3,500 higher than Korea and ranking 20th in the world, one notch ahead of Korea. Luxembourg ranks first with some $80,000 and the U.S. fourth with $47,000.

But without considering consumer prices, Japan's per-capita GDP is $42,325, according to an IMF estimate, more than twice Korea's.

This is not a new phenomenon, but it's important to take note of when South Korea's nominal GDP goes up or down based on the fickle exchange rate. Simply put, your $20K per capita GDP in South Korea can go an awful long way... as long as you keep the money in South Korea.

Are Korea's domestic airliners vulnerable to "short-haul fatigue"?

I don't know how well publicized the news has been about the Southwest Airlines jet that ended up with a hole in it due to metal fatigue, but it has a lot of people in the US freaked out.

We've been hearing a lot about speculation that the nature of short-haul flights — far more frequent "cycles" of take-off and landing with the concomitant pressurizing and depressurizing than with long-haul flights having the same "mileage" — may have heavily contributed to the "rupture" and that makes people worried:

Southwest Airlines' older aircraft plus its famously efficient short-haul operations — requiring planes to fly an average of six times a day — probably contributed to the fuselage rupture that forced a jetliner carrying 118 passengers to make an emergency landing in Arizona last week.

Aviation experts said the aluminum skin of the 15-year-old Boeing 737-300 could have become fatigued from the stress of daily landings and takeoffs as well as frequent changes in cabin pressure.

Six flights a day? Does that not sound like a Seoul-to-Cheju milk runner? The first thing that occurred to me was that that situation — frequent short-haul flights covering a distance of hundreds, not thousands, of kilometers — perfectly characterized the domestic operations of South Korea's local carriers, Asiana, Korean Air, and a handful of discount start-ups. Ditto with domestic carriers in next-door Japan (as well as operators between most Korean and Japanese destinations).

Sure enough, there are others who thought the exact same thing:

South Korea's government also ordered Asiana Airlines and its affiliated budget carrier, Air Busan, to conduct safety inspections of their Boeing 737 fleets, reports the Korea Times.

Neither operates Boeing 737-300s. But Asiana has two Boeing 737-400 planes, and Air Busan has three Boeing 737-400s and 737-500s.

"Our two 737-400 aircraft are only 14 years-old. Given the fact that commercial airplanes normally retire after 30 years in operation, our planes are fairly new. We have been making all-out efforts to keep our planes in good shape," an Asiana Airlines spokesman told the newspaper.

That's good to know, but it rattles the public that this kind of thing is being discovered and diligently addressed only after a serious incident occurred. If I'd been on a short-haul flight from, say, Seoul to Fukuoka and I suddenly got an instant skylight above my seat, I might be booking passage on seagoing vessels for the rest of my natural days.

The real reason airlines want you to turn off your electronics
before flight is that you might snap embarrassing pictures
of their planes falling apart before your very eyes.

Hawaiian economy hurting as Japanese tourists stay home

With the devastating Tohoku earthquake and the ensuing tsunami, even those Japanese from other parts of the country are opting to stay home. And as much as people feel terrible about that tragedy, officials in Hawaii — as well as the general population that works in tourism — are fretting about the blow to the local economy here.

This has highlighted a need to attract tourists from elsewhere, including South Korea (from which flights have recently been expanded).

From the Honolulu Star Advertiser:

Hawaii's tourism industry took hits by the Kobe earthquake in 1995, the swine flu epidemic in 2009 and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., but this month's disaster could surpass them after a blow that occurred during what continues to be recovery from a worldwide recession. Japanese visitors to Hawaii numbered 1.2 million last year, down by 1 million from 1996.

The Hawaii Tourism Authority expects April will be the peak of the shortfall. It plans to launch a marketing campaign in Japan after helping in the disaster recovery effort.

David Uchiyama, HTA vice president of brand management, told the Star-Advertiser's Allison Schaefers that it will concentrate on new business from North America, Oceania, Korea and China to offset the shortfall in Japan market.

A special marketing program will be aimed at secondary cities such as Portland, Ore., Dallas, San Diego, Sacramento and Phoenix, according to John Monahan, president and chief executive officer of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau.

Much of the emphasis in marketing has been on Japan, the third-largest tourism source outside the western and eastern U.S., and for good reason. Beyond the sheer numbers of visitors, Japanese tourists spend an average of $274 a day on food, hotels and shopping, while visitors from western mainland states average $146.

Similarly, Japan is hurting from an expected downturn in tourists to their country (which is something South Korea is perhaps setting itself up to take advantage of by easing visa rules to the ROK).

Putting the 이 in UAE

While President Lee could be in Japan (where he was born, by the way) or at least in South Korea, helping coordinate ROK assistance to earthquake- and tsunami-ravaged Japan, he's checking on the troops in the United Arab Emirates [HT to RokDrop for the photo].

Well, at least he didn't do the "I love" heart thingy with the troops.

Heart-warming tweets from a beleaguered Japan

Here. There's a lot of people showing a lot of love and caring.

[Hat tip to "M," whose family is all okay.]

Person finder for Japanese earthquake area;South Korea provides assistance to Japan

Google has set up a "Person Finder" whereby you can look for persons in the affected area or offer information about the whereabouts of people there.

It's available in Japanese, Korean, English, and Chinese. I don't know how effective it is, though.

This comes at a time when Yonhap reports that some 130 South Korea citizens are still unaccounted for in Miyagi Prefecture, hardest hit by the earthquake.

The US State Department is offering ways to find out about specific individuals. For any American citizen living in South Korea, Japan, or elsewhere, this is a good time to consider informing the US Embassy in that country of your location.

Meanwhile, South Korea stands ready to help Japan out at this difficult time. President Lee, who was born in Osaka, has pledged that South Korea "will do its utmost" to provide assistance:

South Korea said Saturday its rescue workers and military cargo planes were ready to fly to Japan to help the neighboring country hit by the most powerful earthquake it has ever recorded.

A team of 120 relief workers, medical personnel and three military transport planes were ready to depart for Japan, awaiting a request from the Japanese government, officials at Seoul's Foreign Ministry said.

A smaller group of rescue workers and their rescue dogs has already arrived in Japan.

The Japanese media has been taking note of South Korea's and other countries' contributions.

Donate to the Red Cross to help the victims of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami

The US link is here. They accept credit cards and even Amazon Payments, so no matter what country you're in, it should work.

The English-language site for donations to the Korean Red Cross is here. It allows you to donate by your bank account if you don't have a credit card number.