A tale of rescue underscores the sordid situation surrounding refugees hiding in China

In the Los Angeles Times, Seoul correspondent John Glionna tells the story of Krys Lee, a Korean-American writer and daughter of a sometimes abusive pastor, who has sacrificed her money and risked her safety to rescue one Mr Kim, a troubled refugee from North Korea who Ms Lee describes as having been held captive in China by a Korean missionary who had different plans (involving returning to North Korea to proselytize) for Mr Kim.

The story underscores the conflicts between and within the various groups along the underground railroad ferrying people out of North Korea and hiding them in China until they can make it to a foreign diplomatic mission or another country. In many cases, missionaries and religious groups are risking their lives to rescue North Koreans, but there are indeed some bad apples among them.

...

South Korea's prison robots in the LAT

I'm beginning to feel a bit like Aaron Altman, a main character in Broadcast News (a 1987 film about its titular topic; yeah, I'm dating myself, but hey, no one else will — rim shot! ... actually I was a teenager in 1987).

You see, late last month, I highlighted South Korean plans to employ robots in South Korean prisons (in South Korea, prison and schools — same-same). Fast-forward a week later and — bam! — there it is in the Los Angeles Times.

T'is not the first time I've noticed this pattern. I could be full of self-importance, though, but in this case, I think I'm one of the very few in the K-blogosphere who wrote about this.

Back to Altman. He was a news producer, writer, and sometime on-air talking head, but he was upstaged by a pretty-boy former sportscaster who, basically, didn't know much of anything but the network needed him to sound intelligent in front of the camera. With the help of microphones and telephones, etc., etc. (this was 1987, pre-Wikipedia), Aaron Altman basically talked the talking head through a breaking news story.

Sitting in his living room watching the fruits of his labor emerge from the telly, he says to himself, "I say it here, it comes out there."

Okay, okay. You had to be there. And no, I'm not likening John Glionna to a pretty-boy talking head who doesn't know anything (to the contrary, I imagine he's very intelligent and quite homely). But I do feel I'm feeding him ideas. Not that there's anything wrong about that, since he does go and do his homework (though I think mine has more of the snark the story is screaming for).

...

LAT on South Korea's renewed annoyance at Japan

I've already covered it in this post, but John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times brings it to a larger audience than I can:

For two decades, the weekly protest has come as sure as the changing seasons: a handful of graying Korean women picketing Tokyo's embassy here, demanding an apology and compensation for being forced into sexual slavery during Japan's World War II-era occupation.

But soon after a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami last month killed more than 20,000 people and caused nuclear mayhem in Japan, something changed here. The so-called comfort women felt moved to hold another kind of rally: a vigil for Japanese victims.

"We hate the sin but not the people," said Lee Yong-su, 85. "We hope Japan will stand on its feet soon."

Suddenly, there was a sense that a bitter nationalistic rivalry might be replaced by something the Korean peninsula has rarely felt for its former conqueror: empathy.

South Korea was the first country to send a rescue team to the disaster area. The Korean Red Cross has raised $40 million, one of the largest nongovernment contributions to Japan after the quake. The newspaper Chosun Ilbo, which has often been critical of Japan and its policies, raised $10 million. Even the comfort women chipped in $15,000.

Many compared the moment to the brief window after the 9/11 attacks when many hoped that Democrats and Republicans might finally put aside their differences.

That, of course, didn't happen. And in the case of South Korea and Japan, the rapprochement also appears short-lived.

The two countries seem to have fallen back into old habits — like a couple in an abusive relationship where one has lorded over the other. They've gone to counseling, tried all the couples therapies. And just when one spouse is about to forgive the other, another unforgivable event comes to pass. Once again, signals are misread, and the relationship is back at a dysfunctional impasse.

I would emphasize that the South Korean view of Japan is highly dichotomized: among most SoKos, there is a mental separation between individual Japanese and the Japanese government itself. Despite Tokyo continuing to lay claim to territory they grabbed at the beginning of their brutal four-decade rule over Korea, there is still great sympathy and concern for the people of Japan who have been affected by the Tohoku earthquake, the ensuing tsunami, and the on-going nuclear crisis.

I just wish that both sides would stop doing things to poke the other in the eye, because with China rising and North Korea raving, we need to see more things like this.

LAT and Gregg get it wrong (and so does Pyongyang) on any North Korean claim to Yŏnpyŏng-do

In the Los Angeles Times, John Glionna and Ethan Kim write about Yŏnpyŏng-do Island's [Yeonpyeong] history as a hot spot:

Just three miles across -- part military outpost, part civilian fishing village -- Yeonpyeong is the closest South Korean island to North Korea, just a few nautical miles from the barricaded shores of Kim Jong Il's secretive regime.

For half a century, the two sides have skirmished repeatedly over the archipelago, a tug of war that includes everything from sovereignty to the local catch of blue Kumori crab prized by both sides. In 1999 and 2002, the rivals' navies clashed near Yeonpyeong, resulting in numerous casualties.

Well, right there there's a mistake. Several islands nearer to the ROK mainland are close enough to North Korea that you could swim (if you were so inclined). I believe Kanghwa-do [Ganghwa] is the closest, and Kyodong-do [Gyodong] just to the west of that is also practically on top of North Korean territory.

'Bo knows geography (and 'Bo and his future ex-fiancée, in the days before GPS, nearly drove right into a ROK military guard on the northern side of Kanghwa-do one night).

On the map of Yŏnpyŏng-do on the same scale just to the right, note the distance from that island to the North. Not only is it farther to the North Korean mainland, even that tiny islet to the north is farther away than the North Korean mainland is to either Kanghwa-do or Kyodong-do.

But that's not my main beef. It would appear that the LAT reporters and the former US Ambassador to South Korea got it wrong on North Korea's claim to Yŏnpyŏng-do:

The bone of contention is the so-called Northern Limit Line, an invisible boundary established by the United Nations at the cessation of the Korean War.

But North Korea has long rejected that decision, claiming that the maritime border exists farther to the south. Yeonpyeong Island, Pyongyang insists, is part of its territory. A newscaster in North Korea this week again made that point, calling the attack a tactic to protect its island from the south.

"The island is a hot spot -- both sides claim it," said Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul in the George W. Bush administration. "That whole area of the western sea boundary has been very difficult. It's a tough stretch of water, and Yeonpyeong sits right in the middle of it."

Insofar as the DPRK proclaims all of ROK-held territory as its own, it also claims Yŏnpyŏng-do. But as far as the 1953 Korean War Armistice Agreement is concerned, that island is firmly in South Korea's hands:

(b) Within ten (10) days after this armistice agreement becomes effective, withdraw all of their military forces, supplies, and equipment from the rear and the coastal islands and waters of Korea of the other side. If such military forces are not withdrawn within the stated time limit, and there is no mutually agreed and valid reason for the delay, the other side shall have the right to take any action which it deems necessary for the maintenance of security and order. The term "coastal islands", as used above, refers to those islands, which, though occupied by one side at the time when this armistice agreement becomes effective, were controlled by the other side on 24 June 1950; provided, however, that all the islands lying to the north and west of the provincial boundary line between HWANGHAE-DO and KYONGGI-DO shall be under the military control of the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and the Commander of the Chinese People's volunteers, except the island groups of PAENGYONG-DO (37 58' N, 124 40' E), TAECHONG-DO (37 50' N, 124 42' E), SOCHONG-DO (37 46' N, 124 46' E), YONPYONG-DO (37 38' N, 125 40' E), and U-DO (37 36'N, 125 58' E), which shall remain under the military control of the Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command. All the island on the west coast of Korea lying south of the above-mentioned boundary line shall remain under the military control of the Commander-in-Chief, United Nations Command. (See Map 3).

The emphasis, of course, is mine. I wonder if Messieurs Glionna and Kim did not discover this bit of evidence because the "new" Revised Romanization system spells the island in question entirely different from the (much better IMnsHO) McCune-Reischauer-based spelling that prevailed in the past.

In other words, North Korea and China both signed an agreement recognizing Yŏnpyŏng-do as South Korea-controlled territory. They have no legitimate claim to taking it back. None. Zero. Nada. South Korea's ownership is obvious, also, even in maps of the maritime border proposed by North Korea, which rejects the NLL that has formed the de facto border since the war.


The blue line is the NLL, a line that is basically follows the principle of equidistance between DPRK territory and ROK territory. The five outlying islands (서해 5도, Sŏhae-odo) that are firmly under South Korean control (and where ROK civilians live and work) project maritime territory that North Korea wants.

By contrast, North Korea proposes the red line, which follows the principal of equidistance from the Korean mainland, allowing for a corridor of access to each of the ROK islands that are on "North Korea's side" of that line. Note that North Korea's proposal runs completely counter to international norms, nor does it actually control any of the waters it is claiming that are south of the NLL.

North Korea has for some time been pushing the idea that the NLL is unfair and should be reworked. While originally behaving relatively diplomatically in that push, it has at least since the late 1990s been acting out militarily in support of its claim, with occasional NLL crossings and even random shelling of the South Korean side of the NLL.

But this is now a bit of a game changer. I will look for the KCNA report myself (I just don't trust anyone, especially journalists, to tell me what something says unless I read it myself), but if North Korea is suggesting that Yŏnpyŏng-do specifically needs to be liberated, and in light of their apparent threats of a second and third attack, we may have a real mess on our hands. Doing nothing will definitely not be the correct course of action.

Ready for the world

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has an article highlighting South Korea's perpetual protestors and their hope that the global spotlight on Seoul during the G20 summit will shine on them as well:

About 200 organizations have registered to demonstrate during the summit, including labor unions, the physically challenged and former navy commandos who say they plan to set cars and oil tankers on fire nearby.

Few of the organizations have gripes with world leaders, but they aim to grab the international stage to air their grievances with the South Korean government. The commandoes, for instance, want bigger pensions.

Volatile South Korea is often called the Protest Republic. With a population of just under 50 million, it averages 12,000 protests a year, by far the most of any nation in Asia, according to National Police Agency statistics.

Many protests in South Korea feature such theatrical tactics as animal sacrifices, torch burnings, flag-eating, dummy decapitations and feces hurling. Last month, one anti-government protester set himself on fire. Then there was the man who covered himself with bees.

If I were protesting something (and I'm blessed that I have so few things to protest — other than the sucky economy), I'd eschew harming animals or pyromaniacal destruction of others' property and just walk around in a codpiece. They'd call me 주머니맨 and I'd probably make the evening news.

LAT on Chejudo's (actually Marado's) female divers

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has an article on a perennial favorite of the Western media (and South Korean tourism authorities): the haenyŏ (해녀/海女, literally sea women) of the southern island province of Chejudo and its outlying islands.

It is a familiar narrative of an almost matriarchal culture where women have enjoyed a much higher status than their mainland counterparts:

Like six generations of women before her on this treeless speck of land in the East China Sea, the young mother of two is preparing for a dangerous job no man here is allowed to perform: free-diving for minutes at a time to catch abalone and other shellfish.

Kim is learning to join the ranks of the haenyeo, or women of the sea, whose role as ocean hunter-gatherers has long given them special status in a Korean culture dominated by men. These women on a group of islands south of the South Korean mainland have turned tradition on its head.

Get dispatches from Times correspondents around the globe delivered to your inbox with our daily World newsletter. Sign up »

For decades, divers here have groomed their daughters for a life at sea. They teach them how to conserve oxygen to extend their dives and stress the importance of working in groups, like a herd of watchful seals, vigilant against shark attacks, rip currents and marauding motorboats that buzz the surface.

The diving, with its daily hazards and emphasis on teamwork, has molded the women into a cohesive group that has often gathered by the campfire with the day's catch to make decisions about village politics.

I haven't been to southern Chejudo in a few years, and I recall the women looking a bit older than Ms Kim pictured above. It would be nice to know that a younger generation is carrying on this iconic tradition (and making decent money off it).

Ugly Koreans, Ugly Americans

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has discovered Min Byoung-chul. Or at least his readership now has.

I've heard a few too many Americans go on and on about the inherent bigotry of Min's observations — some of them Americans who make similarly inherently bigoted statements about Koreans — but I give Mr Min a pass because he's an equal opportunity social critic and his intent is to build bridges of understanding (yeah, I realized how corny that sounded as I typed it).

As in any social or sociological observation, there's always a danger in making broad statements about a group of people, but recognizing them as common (even if not predominant) archetypes may make it more palatable.

John Glionna of the LAT really likes Incheon International Airport

I mean really:

Passengers slumbered on comfy loungers. Others enjoyed free public computers and Internet access, no-charge showers and luggage carts. Some watched a performance of traditional music at a cultural center, or placed bets at a casino.

Wandering the gates were Wal-Mart-style greeters assisting lost souls who didn't speak Korean. There were numerous computer kiosks that, with a swipe of a plane ticket, displayed an easy-to-read map showing a passenger the path and transit time to the gate.

"These are the things that make a traveler feel welcome in a strange land," Kreiser, 44, said. "It's an airport that's extending a hand to say, 'Thanks for coming. We're glad you're here.' "

Located on an island of reclaimed wetlands not far from the site of Gen. Douglas MacArthur's first allied assault in the Korean War, Incheon is the scene of a new offensive: Opened in 2001, the airport has set its sights on becoming Asia's premier air hub, overtaking competitors in Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong.

And by 2020, officials here want to redefine airport services to match those of an average city. On land the size of Manhattan, there are plans to construct a theme park, a yacht marina, designer studios, a fashion runway, a convention center and a hospital complex to capitalize on medical tourism.

I'd live there.

LAT on Kang Cholhwan, exposer of the North

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has a piece on Kang Cholhwan, he of Aquariums of Pyongyang, a book describing his harrowing experiences growing up in North Korea's Yodok prison camp.

The article tells the story of his life in the camp, a story familiar to the book's readers, but the second part gets into his current activities trying to shed light on the North through journalistic means:

In 2000, Kang took a job as an investigative reporter covering North Korea for the Chosun Ilbo newspaper. The work provided a new way to rattle the regime: telling the stories of fellow survivors.

His own experiences led him to feel particular compassion for other defectors. Kang wrote columns and exclusive stories on the failing North Korean economy, human rights abuses and succession scenarios in the eventual death of Kim Jong Il, the country's current strongman.

He interviews defectors who are reluctant to talk, until they learn that Kang is one of them, a battered fighter who has punched his way out of the North.

His fellow escapees have taught him a valuable lesson about his homeland.

"I thought I had been through the hardest time," he said. "After hearing their stories, I now realize something I never thought possible: that the situation there is actually getting worse."

If you haven't read his book, do so as soon as you can. I think I should reread my signed copy. Mr Kang is an affable person, with a smile and demeanor that belies the hell he went through when younger, but it's all right there in the book.

Icing on the cake

Would South Korean fervor about Kim Yuna not exist or simply not be as, well, fervent if there were no Mao Asada or Miki Ando (or even Mirai Nagasu)? Is the existence of Japanese competitors and the prospect of beating them a major factor in Kim Yuna's runaway popularity in South Korea? Without Mao as a rival, would Kim Yuna not have made $8 million last year?

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times seems to think so:

Wearing a sassy black dress, twisting and leaping to a medley of spy thriller songs, the queen of South Korean figure skating is continuing a quest her countrymen hope is no mission impossible:

Not just to win, but to beat the Japanese in the process.

Kim Yuna, the pouting 19-year-old monarch-on-ice, is poised to win South Korea's first Olympic gold medal in figure skating -- a feat that for many countrymen would prove to be a satisfying athletic and political victory over their Asian neighbors.

Because when it comes to sports competitions against Japan, their colonial-era overlords from 1910 to 1945, Koreans wear their fiercest game faces -- whether on a baseball or soccer field, or even within the graceful realm of the figure-skating rink.

"With South Korea versus Japan, it is all about one-sided nationalism," said Shin Kwang-yeong, sociology professor at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. "Of course, Japan's colonization of Korea and emotions between the two countries are instilled in sports.

"It's a phenomenon based on South Korea's group perception about its traumatic history. If you do not win a gold medal, other medals are not satisfying."

And medals are sweeter if snatched from a Japanese competitor.

I know I'm swimming against the current of K-blog public opinion here, but I think Mr Glionna is betraying a facile inspection that is so common in anglophone analysis of Korea as to be cliché: If some issue or incident involving Korea can be even remotely connected with Japan, then Korea's longstanding han must be a major factor if not primary cause of whatever that is.

True, the loudest voices among the netizenry may bring up such things — whether it's the much maligned Apolo Ohno being half-Japanese or the President of Korea being someone trying to make nice with Japan and who was born in Japan and lived there for five years — but for the general population, I submit, the Japan factor is merely icing on the cake if it's something being considered at all.

Let's go back to my original questions: Would Kim Yuna be loved any less, would she be any less possible or any less rich, if she had no Japanese competitors? I submit that the answer is a resounding no. There is no small dose of national(istic) pride in support for her — she is going to get a gold for our country and serve as a shining example of Korean skill, ingenuity, and coolness — but that patriotic passion would be there whether her primary opponent were Japanese or Jamaican, American or Armenia, Chinese or Chilean, North Korean or South African.

Let me demonstrate. Imagine that through a series of small miracles that the Korean national team were able to make it into the group of 16 at the World Cup in South Africa. Then through a series of luck and more miracles, into the final eight, then the final four, and eventually we see South Korea in the actual final game of the World Cup.

Anyone in South Korea in 2002 knows that the ROK would be going so crazy over this that the manufacturing base would virtually shut down for two weeks and the entire country would be a giant party zone full of hyped up people going nuts with the prospect of being the best team in the world in soccer. The entire country would be on edge like never before with each pass in the final game, with screams resonating across the peninsula with each near miss. The screams following a goal by Korea, Republic of would be deafening.

Okay, now imagine the final game is, through other miracles, being played against Japan. Would the anticipation and anxiety be greater? Probably some, but replace Japan with Brazil and there would still be national insanity. In 2002, no matches were played against Japan, but the country was still at a fever pitch.

Icing on the cake. But not the cake.

So while the Korea-versus-Japan aspect would be an additional element, it would be a superfluous element. And it's sloppy and lazy for anglophone reporters to use it as a standby. Let me use another illustration: let's imagine that there were a lot of public gloating in South Korea about Toyota's woes instead of the subdued response in which a lot of people worry that Hyundai and Kia are in a there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I kinda situation (and I have no doubt some people are gloating, as they are in the US as well).

It would be easy for Mr Glionna or some K-bloggers to attribute that sentiment not just to national pride about Hyundai and Kia not having such problems (anymore), but to this stick-it-to-former-colonizer attitude that, in their minds, always prevails. And people would read that and nod their heads in agreement, going, "Yeah, South Koreans really hate the Japanese."

But here, where in actuality there isn't much of such gloating at all, we don't see a soul-searching discussion of why South Koreans aren't hating on the Japanese when they have the perfect opportunity to do so. Because that would mean dismantling this facile notion and putting its parts in a museum somewhere.

A few paragraphs back, I mentioned people who bash President Lee Myungbak for his pro-Japan geopolitical stance by pointing out that he was born in Japan (Osaka, to be precise). Yes, there really are such people (Google 이명박+일본놈 or some such), but they do not represent the norm at all. In fact, President Lee's Japanese-ness rarely is brought up in criticism. Yet it would be right there for Mr Glionna or K-bloggers to again talk up South Korea's eternal hatred of Japan if President Lee ever were the target of many South Koreans' wrath over something Japan-related.

Would it be that hard to spell it kyopo instead?

In the latest in their series on clichés about South Korea, the Los Angeles Times tackles the notion of how kyopo (ethnic Koreans not living in Korea) are caught between two worlds, being Korean and not Korean at the same time, and often held to impossible standards. An excerpt:

After graduating in 2008 from the University of Wisconsin with a triple major -- journalism, history and political science -- she became one of many ethnic Koreans raised abroad who return to explore their heritage.

Some come to earn money and brush up on their Korean or to please their parents. Babe took a job teaching English to learn about her roots.

What she found was a culture quite unlike that in the United States. And though she appreciates the sense of community extended to returning ethnic Koreans, at times she still felt like a stranger.

"I think that Korean culture is beautiful in the sense that they are so strongly committed to one another, but they are also community-oriented to a fault," she said. "They don't allow people to be individuals as much as I think is necessary."

In South Korea, returnees such as Babe are known as gyopo.

The term connotes "our Koreans who happen to be living overseas in another country," said David Kang, a second-generation Korean American and director of Korean studies at USC.

He emphasized the tribal focus of the word: "It's this very atavistic view of Koreans as our blood overseas, almost."

For some ethnic Koreans who come here, the term gyopo has carried a negative connotation, singling them out. But most accept it as a practical label.

The article also tackles the downside of the double standard that many kyopo encounter:

But gyopo who look Korean but behave in a "non-Korean" way may be a target of discrimination.

Kang also pointed out Koreans' tolerance for most other foreigners' behavior: "If you're white, you can get away with almost anything."

Babe acknowledged that she often misses out on some of the perks enjoyed by her non-Korean peers. South Koreans often will offer directions to confused foreigners, not presumed kinsmen.

Looking Korean has affected her employment opportunities as well.

Many English teaching positions posted on the Internet include "no gyopo" clauses. "They don't fully understand that speaking and appearance are not really related," she said of employers.

I'm not so sure if Whites would agree that they can get away with almost anything. A kyopo male with a Korean female won't warrant a second glance, but a White male with a Korean female might invite double-takes, staring, or worse. Indeed, perhaps it's a grass-is-greener thing at work here: many Whites long for the racial transparency they enjoyed back home, while a great many kyopo see the newfound racial inclusion as a burden — a huge distraction from the benefits of racial transparency they'd find in Korea.

And really, kyopo is such a more accurate rendering of 교포 than gyopo, which would be more like 꾜포, if there were such a thing. Bring back McCune-Reischauer, for all our sakes!

Here is what your enemy looks like

The Los Angeles Times, sticking to its tactic of writing up lengthy pieces on topics that were news two or three months ago (I kid! I kid!), now brings us: Anti-English Spectrum.

Ah, but what a scoop they have, because they actually have a picture of the arch-nemesis of English teachers on the peninsula, Yie Eun-woong:

Hmm... he doesn't look like he's pasty and sickly from living in his mother's basement and living off of ramyŏn and choco-pies. But those girls on the left are just walking by without paying any attention to him, and maybe they're off to meet their English-teacher boyfriends, so that could be the source of his ire.

Anyway, here's an excerpt:

Yie, a slender 40-year-old who owns a temporary employment agency, says he is only attempting to weed out troublemakers who have no business teaching students in South Korea, or anywhere else.

The volunteer manager of a controversial group known as the Anti-English Spectrum, Yie investigates complaints by South Korean parents, often teaming up with authorities, and turns over information from his efforts for possible prosecution.

Outraged teachers groups call Yie an instigator and a stalker.

Yie waves off the criticism. "It's not stalking, it's following," he said. "There's no law against that."

Since its founding in 2005, critics say, Yie's group has waged an invective-filled nationalistic campaign against the 20,000 foreign-born English teachers in South Korea.

On their website and through fliers, members have spread rumors of a foreign English teacher crime wave. They have alleged that some teachers are knowingly spreading AIDS, speculation that has been reported in the Korean press.

As one might expect, ATEK also makes an appearance in the story, which also mentions the death threat alleged to have been made by an anti-English Spectrum member:

In November, the president of the teachers group received anonymous e-mails threatening his life and accusing him of committing sex crimes.

"I have organized the KEK (Kill White in Korea)," one e-mail read in part. "We will start to kill and hit [foreigners] from this Christmas. Don't make a fuss. . . . Just get out."

Yie acknowledges that he has been questioned by investigators but denies any involvement in the threats of violence.

"To be honest," he said, "a lot of our group members believe the teachers made this all up."

Which reminds me, while on vacation, now that Christmas has passed, I forgot to put up my post about the English teacher death count. Anybody got a handle on the post-Yuletide carnage numbers?