Pearls of witticism from 'Bo the Blogger: Kushibo's Korea blog... Kushibo-e Kibun...
Now with Less kimchi, more nunchi. Random thoughts and commentary (and indiscernibly opaque humor) about selected social, political, economic, and health-related issues of the day affecting "foreans," Koreans, Korea and East Asia, along with the US, especially Hawaii, Orange County and the rest of California, plus anything else that is deemed worthy of discussion. Forza Corea!
South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak paid a surprise visit Friday to islands at the centre of a decades-long territorial dispute with Japan, which recalled its ambassador from Seoul in protest.
Lee was making the first-ever visit by a South Korean president to the rocky volcanic outcrops in the Sea of Japan (East Sea), roughly midway between South Korea and its former colonial ruler Japan.
Disregarding Tokyo's warnings that the visit would strain already prickly relations, Lee toured the main island and shook hands with coastguards as a South Korean flag fluttered in the breeze.
"Dokdo is indeed our territory and a place worth staking our lives to defend. Let's make sure to safeguard it with pride," pool reports quoted him as saying.
TV footage showed him posing for a photo in front of a rock painted with the slogan "ROK (South Korean) territory".
The South has stationed a small coastguard detachment since 1954 on the islands known as Dokdo in Korea and Takeshima in Japan.
The Tokto issue is one that, for a variety of reasons (including many not of South Korea's own making), will simply not go away until either Japan or South Korea (or North Korea) drops their claim or at least stops pushing it.
I am completely in support of the ROK claim to the Tokto Islets (known in Japan as Takeshima and sometimes internationally as Liancourt Rocks) ranging from the historical to the political to the practical*, but in 2005 I complained about the shrill response of Korean leaders to incidents in Japan that had been meant to provoke and should instead have been met with a low-key, ho-hum reply.
No finger-chopping, screaming, claiming Tsushima, etc., will do any good either for the collective Korean psyche or for Korea's position on the issue. In fact, it tends to erode the positive impression Korea™ has cultivated over the past few years.
ROK President Lee Myungbak visits the country of his birth. ROK President Lee Myungbak visits the Tokto Islets, rocky outcrops in the East Sea (Sea of Japan) firmly under South Korea's control since regaining them after liberation.
What works — and this is what I've been saying all along — is acting from a position of strength. Simply put, South Korea firmly has absolute control over the islands and the surrounding territorial waters and it should simply demonstrate that whenever Japan gets uppity with their anachronistic, ahistoric, and politically ill-advised claim.
I advised that South Korea should allow limited tours to the islets, and that's what happened. I have suggested (and it's under consideration) declaring all of Ullŭng-gun County (of which Tokto is a part and which includes all of Ullǔngdo Island) a national park.
And now President Lee Myungbak's visit to Tokto is another example of this. This is something that no Japanese prime minister can do, and it underscores the futility and pettiness of Tokyo's ongoing claim.
Good on you, Mr Lee. But be prepared for at least a little blowback: Tokyo has to do something to appease their political rightists and when they can't do anything in kind then they might be a little desperate.
Over at The Marmot's Hole, The Korean has put together a nice overview of Tuesday's vote for the National Assembly seats, a national poll in which the ruling party did surprisingly well, thanks to Park Geunhye.
The Korean credits Ms Park successfully incorporating bread-and-butter rice-and-kimchi issues that are normally the purview of the parties on the left. And despite President Lee Myungbak's abysmal ratings (you're not a lame-duck ROK president unless you're popularity is less than one in three), it turns out not to have been much a referendum on the Marilyn Manson impersonator.
One wonders how this bodes for the presidential election coming in December. Does this make a Park Geunhye candidacy more likely, and will her success in April be enough to carry her (back) to the Blue House, occupied for nearly two decades by her father.
As I've previously noted, I've been rather busy lately. It's very time-consuming finding stories for the Los Angeles Times weeks or months before they appear in print. Like this one:
For newfound economic bedfellows South Korea and Russia, the biggest question over a proposed natural gas pipeline is a dark twist on the famous line from "Field of Dreams": If you build it, will North Korea mess with it?
South Korea President Lee Myung-bak this week met with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in St. Petersburg to discuss a project to pipe Siberian natural gas to the Korean peninsula.
The project faces numerous barriers beyond the region’s frigid cold, namely that North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il — whose regime would also be served by the pipeline that runs the length of the nation — could decide to use the project for political leverage, shutting down the flow of gas just to mess with Seoul.
South Korea has good reason to worry. In recent years, it has taken a harder line on sending aid to the starving masses in North Korea until that country ceases provocative acts such as two recent attacks against the South.
Kim, always the political chess player, could use the pipeline for payback of old scores with South Korea. "Look, the gas is flowing. Oops, now it’s not!"
Pyongyang notes that the high-tech pipeline would come equipped with a money spigot that will channel cash directly into Pyongyang vaults whenever the mainline is shut off.
... and again six weeks ago when I described the pipeline as a "win-win" situation:
And by that he means that the Pyongyang regime wins if they cooperate and keep it running, and they win if they go all high-jinks brinksmanship on Seoul by shutting it off.
But seriously, it is good to know that President Lee is soberly considering what all this means. A natural gas pipeline held hostage by the North could be a disaster for the South, causing Seoul to be held hostage to the whims of Kim Jong-il or his son (Ha! Like that will ever happen!) or the ruling junta that takes over after the Dear Leader kicks the bucket.
Is this a good idea? Do we really need a pipeline through frènemy* territory? South Korea makes loads of ships that could make regular runs of natural gas from Vladivostok to Pusan, so why not ship it through the East Sea (Sea of Japan) instead?
* Frènemy: In this case, not friend+enemy, but a portmanteau of frère and enemy, with that italicized word meaning brother. Hence the accent grave [`] in frènemy. Maybe I should write it frèrnemy to avoid any confusion.
I've long said that PBS's Newshour is probably the single best source of news in the United States, and when it came to ROK President Lee Myungbak's visit to Washington DC and Michigan, they have not let me down. If you want to get a useful, objective, and meaningful overview of Lee's trip to the US and what it all means, this is where you'll find it.
The eight-minute piece covers all the bases, from the recently ratified free-trade agreement to the challenges the two close allies face with North Korea. (After you listen to them discuss North Korea, go read this inspiring piece I wrote on what we can do about North Korea.)
As an added bonus, the Korea-US trade relationship is also discussed in the opening of this piece on the politics of job creation in the US.
UPDATE:
Oh, I forgot to editorialize a bit on the way the PBS reporter grossly mispronounces "Cheonan." Anyone who reads this blog knows that I'm an advocate for the McCune-Reischauer system of Romanization that was made official in preparation for the 1988 Seoul Olympics but which was replaced by the current "Revised" Romanization (a throwback to a failed older system) in preparation for the 2002 Korea/Japan World Cup. You can get a taste for some of my reasons in this lengthy comment.
Though many don't care for writing breves over the o and u to get ŏ and ŭ, the eo and eu that have replaced them are far worse options (explained in more detail here). Reading "Cheonan," the reporter (just past the 2:30 mark) as chee-OH-nahn. Did you catch that? She looked at eo and thought it was ee-oh, not uh or the o in son or computer. Instead of 천안 (or even 초난), we got 치오난.
Romanization fail. She seems to get it better a little later when she pronounces the vowels in Yŏnpyŏng-do as just one syllable. She's still off, but I'd say she's closer, and I'm guessing she was reading "Yonpyong" instead of "Yeonpyeong" (I don't pretend to think McCune-Reischauer will, with or without breves, make people magically pronounce the 어 and 으 perfectly correctly every time, but it will be far closer than eo and eu).
I really need to get going on my uber post on the superiority of McCune-Reischauer, especially if they really decide to scrapRevisedRomanization (Brian doesn't agree with me).
The Christian Science Monitornotes the very thing I was about to bring up, that ratification of the FTA by the US Congress is only half of the battle that remained. Now we must get the ROK National Assembly to do the same thing. And as they note, even though everybody's favorite leftist president, the surprisingly pragmatic Roh Moohyun, was in favor of the FTA, many in his party are poised to fight against it:
Estimates of the benefits vary widely, but some analysts in Seoul predict Korean exports to the US will go up 5 or 6 percent and two-way trade might increase by $10 billion – though Korea would still have a highly favorable balance.
The fear of a sharp increase in US farm exports, however, was expected to give Korea’s opposition Democratic Party ammunition for protests even though the party supported it while their late leader, Roh Moo-hyun, was president.
The most sensitive issue is the elimination of tariffs on imports of beef and pork. No one forgets the months of rioting in central Seoul in the summer and early fall of 2008 after Lee agreed, at a meeting at Camp David with George W. Bush, to accept American beef imports, banned for the previous five years amid fears of “Mad Cow” disease.
The tariff on beef, now 40 percent, will be lifted by 2026 and the tariff on pork, 25 percent will be eased until it’s lifted in five years.
Nonetheless, the dominant atmosphere in Washington and Seoul was upbeat after all the debate and haggling since the FTA was signed by negotiators from both countries five years ago.
Expect the chinboistas, as usual, to try to whip up anti-Lee and anti-US sentiment in order to torpedo the FTA and cause as much pain and damage to the administration as possible.
Happened today, expected to be signed immediately by President Obama, in time for President Lee Myungbak's visit. Part of a trend of FTAs penned by Republican presidents and then eventually signed by Democratic presidents.
Now if you'll excuse me, I must pore over The Marmot's Hole to find quotes from all the naysayers who said this wouldn't happen.
Bear with me; there's a Korea connection to these two news items to ponder.
First, Apple finally came out with its latest iteration of the iPhone. But instead of the iPhone 5 that was supposed to be teardrop-shaped and wafer thin, run 4G, work as a near-field communications device that could pay for your latte, and fellate you after a hard day at work, they merely got a monstrous speed boost, a far better camera and optics, and a very cool voice-activated assistant named Siri that will help you navigate the phone and find things out (using the Internet) while you're driving.
But since it looks exactly like the iPhone 4, released in June 2010, Apple fanboys and Android users pretending to be Apple fanboys have flooded any and all Mac-related sites and posts with nasty comments about what a disappointment this was. In short, they were disappointed.
And then there's the Occupy Wall Street movement. By design, it has no leader, no list of demands, and no ideology, but they're mad as hell and aren't going to take it anymore. Meanwhile, in another key development, the Obama administration is extremely close to having the free-trade agreement with South Korea ratified.
So here's what I'm wondering. About the first story, just why didn't Apple come up with a wholly different iPhone 5? Sure, the iPhone 4S follows the pattern set with the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3Gs, but those were a year apart, not a year and three months (think of smart years as being like dog years).
Is it possible that Samsung's and Apple's increasingly nastylegalbrouhaha forced Apple to wait on a new phone design and greater capabilities? Did Apple hold back this time around because of fears that Samsung cold take Apple to court if they came out with a new design? Is Apple waiting for resolution of their issues with Samsung (and perhaps a few others) before they come out in full force with a new design and major new features? Are their problems with Samsung forcing them to find a new supplier of some of their components, resulting in a slowdown in the New Products Pipeline?
And then, what about the KORUS free-trade agreement? Obama is going to get Democratic votes for the FTA primarily because he acknowledged that some Americans will lose their jobs even if there is a net gain, and they need job training. For now, the FTA's ratification seems a done deal, also because the less palatable FTAs with Colombia and Panama will be considered separately.
But is it possible that the gathering crowd of malcontents on Wall Street will turn against the Obama White House when the president starts pushing for passage of the FTA? I wonder if this will hold things up, enough that the FTA won't be ratified by the time ROK President Lee Myungbak comes for a visit.
South Korean President Lee Myungbak and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao have decided to meet up with Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan... in Fukushima.
If you were a headman handler tasked with keeping your leader out of harm's way, where's the last place in Japan that you would suggest for a meet-up? Fuk-u Island.
Yes, I get that they want make "a gesture of solidarity over the ongoing nuclear crisis," but I don't know. The word ongoing is what troubles me. This is starting to sound like the premise to a corny SNL cartoon series.
Ah, the beauty of ambiguous language. The title could be wondering if (a) Kim Jong-il's health is deteriorating, (b) the Dear Leader may be heading for a lower latitude, (c) or KJI will be joining OBL in the ninth circle of hell.
The answer is (b), though (a) and (c) remain future possibilities.
My attempt to Google Image search appropriate artwork
depicting KJI suffering in Hades has failed.
You'd think it'd be a popular theme.
ROK President Lee Myungbak has said he will invite North Korean strongman Kim Jong-il to a summit if the Dear Leader pledges to give up atomic weapons.
Lee said he would extend an invitation to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to a security meeting next March if the communist government agrees to the condition. The South Korean president will host the summit next year as part of a global initiative championed by President Barack Obama to secure nuclear stockpiles. ...
The North Korean leader told visiting former U.S. President Jimmy Carter last month that he is ready to meet Lee any time and over any issue. The South has resisted talks with North Korea until Kim’s regime shows a “responsible attitude” toward attacks last year that killed 50 South Koreans.
My goodness, that's a lot of ifs. If he gives up nukes... If he's willing to travel to a place where he might encounter angry opposition and he's not in total control of his security... If he's still alive next March (and I think he will be)...
One must also remember that Kim Jong-il goes through more pledges than a horny frat boy at a sorority mixer during Orientation Week. (Too long and too obscure for the meager payoff, I know.)
Frankly, I doubt KJI will actually end up coming to Seoul, but I think Pyongyang will make like he is planning to go up until the very end.
Can you imagine Kim Jong-il being pelted with eggs? His handlers are probably horrified at the prospect. And after what's gone on in Libya, they're horrified by the thought of giving up nukes as well. Let's not also forget that Kim Jong-il getting a whiff of free-wheeling capitalism is not the best way to get him to reform.
And then, if KJI does leave the country, there's always the chance of a brown parade back home.
Occasional Marmot's Hole commenter valkilmerisiceman linked to this video, which seems to me to do a decent job of summing up the leftist position on the recent North Korean crisis.
Just as we see with things like, say, opposition to the FTA, we have a situation where a little information can be a dangerous thing. Like with the above linked UAW action alert, this video is a cherry-picking of data intended to arrive at a pre-determined (and self-serving) conclusion.
Let's start with his description of what the US and South Korea were doing to (in his mind) provoke North Korea. He says:
The United States has 28,000 troops in South Korea and they're there for a specific reason. Most of the US troops are at the border. And the United States, just a few days ago, just yesterday, actually, had war games (what they're called), which is a preparation pretty much for war. War games is letting the country you don't like know that, "we've got the artillery, and at any time we want, we can invade you." That's exactly what war games are. And the United States and South Korea had a joint war games session in the Yellow Sea, and North Korea took it as a threat, which it was, and North Korea, well...
This is fraught with so many wrongheaded assumptions I can't possibly give them all their due, but I'll try to hit the highlights. First, the US troops are not at the border. Even the 2ID (Second Infantry) that is forward deployed is only as far north as Tongduch'ŏn [Dongducheon] and they are being moved south. On a related matter, while the primary role of USFK is to defend against an attack by North Korea, the US military presence in South Korea is instrumental in maintaining peace in Northeast Asia, a region that has been the site of immense volatility up to the Korean War.
Second, the "war games" (actually naval exercises) were not at all about invading North Korea but about defending South Korea's northernmost "Five Islands of the West Sea" (서해 5도) from North Korean attack or invasion, along with the waters south of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto border. Ironically, in shelling Yŏnbyŏng-do's [Yeonbyeong] main island, North Korea has again demonstrated precisely the need for such naval exercises.
This teacher then suggests that North Korea was simply reacting to this threat by, well, shelling Yŏnbyŏng-do. This is a key place where his facile analysis falls apart, for it strips North Korea of any agency in setting its own agenda (agency achieved in part by repeated aggression). What is important to note here is that North Korea is not attacking South Korean ships, waters, and now civilian communities in the region because it feels threatened but because it is trying to bolster the image of the military by pitting it against the enemy, as a justification for the Pyongyang regime's Songun [sŏn•gūn, 선군; "military first"] Policy.
North Korea's sinking of the Ch'ŏnan in March and the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do were only the latest in a string of sometimes deadly attacks and clashes going back to 1999, when North Korea — for the purposes of promoting Songun Policy for domestic consumption — unilaterally declared its own maritime demarcation line that essentially laid claim to much of the South Korea-controlled waters south of the NLL. While the NLL follows principles of equidistance used in determining territorial waters and EEZs, North Korea's proposed line removes South Korea's "Five Islands of the West Sea" from the equation when determining who should control the waters in that part of the Yellow Sea.
It's a nonstarter and Pyongyang knows that, but it gives them continuous opportunity to push the envelope and create enough trouble to engineer (for domestic consumption) an enemy encroaching on North Korea's sovereignty that will bolster domestic support and justify their hold on power, while being low-key enough that it won't likely trigger a devastating wider war which would almost certainly mean the end of the DPRK.
The teacher fails to recognize that when making his argument about negotiations, the bulk of which is also problematic. "The United States could settle this in an hour if it wanted to," he tells us. In a nutshell, he is saying, the US is at fault for the North Korean crisis because President Obama, like his predecessor President George W. Bush, has refused to negotiate with North Korea. Under President Bill Clinton, there were negotiations and things were just fine, but without direct talks, like now under President Obama and ROK President Lee Myungbak, things just fall apart.
This is fraught with error. For starters, North Korea did engage in clashes with South Korea in this region during the Clinton administration when the two sides were talking. These attacks occurred under Sunshine Policy when Kim Daejung and Roh Moohyun were president. They occurred not because of the existence or lack of negotiations, but because North Korea gains politically at home and economically from its neighbors by engaging in such brinksmanship.
Negotiation and Sunshine Policy had their place and may again in the future. But North Korea was hell-bent on the prestige and power of getting a nuclear weapon since the first Bush administration. The original Six Party Talks and Agreed Framework slowed down their progress (I believe Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo were working from the idea that buying time was the best option as Pyongyang would eventually collapse or make Chinese-style political and economic reforms), but did not eliminate North Korea's nuclear program. Engaging with North Korea economically and politically did not stop the attacks in the Yellow Sea.
So when Presidents Obama and Lee decide that it's time for the US and South Korea to stop being schmucks, this failure to communicate is not the cause of the confrontation but rather a response to it.
The U.S. and South Korea have reached an agreement on a free trade deal sought by the Obama administration to boost American exports and create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs in the largest trade pact in more than a decade.
Negotiators reached a deal on outstanding issues related to the automobile industry, which have been a sticking point in the talks, said a person close to the discussions. The person spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of an official White House announcement.
South Korea is agreeing to allow the U.S. to lift a 2.5 percent tariff on Korean cars in five years, instead of cutting the tariff immediately. The agreement also allows each U.S. automaker to export 25,000 cars to South Korea as long as they meet U.S. federal safety standards and allows the U.S. to continue a 25 percent tariff on trucks for eight years and then phase it out by the 10th year. South Korea would be required to eliminate its 10 perent tariff on U.S. trucks immediately.
The "chicken tax" (the US's anachronistic 25% tariff on imported pickup trucks) still stands, and that could mean no Bongo trucks in Middle America, while the streets of Seoul will be filled with Hillbilly Hummers (aka, the Ford F150). Yee ha, indeed.
And of course, this doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. While Obama will probably have little real problem getting the FTA through a Republican-dominated House of Representatives and a barely Democratic-controlled Senate, President Lee will face the full force of the chinboistas and maybe the dung-flinging farmers (who are not entirely chinboista-sympathetic) when he tries to get it through the National Assembly. After all, their voice is their only veto.
This could get as big as the Mad Cow candlelight madness of 2008. Expect it to get at least as ugly as the protests against the Chile-Korea FTA (which often saw more farmers than chinboista).
More on the FTA agreement having been reached over at The Marmot's Hole, where a lively discussion will no doubt ensue.
ROK President Lee Myungbak gave a rousing speech to the nation on Monday. It outlined past aggressions by North Korea that went unanswered, discussed why the Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] attack on civilians marked a dangerous turn, and vowed to fully retaliate if the North repeats this kind of provocation.
He made clear that South Korea will steadfastly defend the so-called Sŏhae-odo [서해5도], the "five islands of the West Sea," which skirt North Korea's southwestern coast. While acknowledging that many South Koreans had doubts about the facts surrounding the sinking of the Ch'ŏnan in March, he hoped the shelling of Yŏnpyŏng-do would remove doubts about North Korean aggression in the Yellow Sea.
He made clear he wanted to unify the country in their resolve to defend the Republic of Korea.
Fellow citizens,
North Korea's provocation this time was entirely different and unprecedented in nature. Since the end of the Korean War, the North has perpetrated numerous provocations, but it has never launched a direct attack onto our territory before. Making matters worse, it indiscriminately shelled the island where some 1,400 residents are peacefully living.
A military attack against civilians is strictly prohibited even in time of war; it is a crime against humanity.
Only a few meters away from where shells landed, there is a school where classes were going on. I am outraged by the ruthlessness of the North Korean regime, which is even indifferent to the lives of little children.
Countries around the world are joining us in denouncing North Korea.
We have thus far tolerated provocations by the North time and again. On January 21, 1968, North Korean commandos infiltrated into Seoul with the intent of killing the President. A bomb explosion in Rangoon, Burma, set off by North Korean agents, killed many high-ranking South Korean Government officials who were accompanying the President. The North has already tried and failed twice to kill the South Korean head of state. North Korean agents blew up a civilian airplane in 1987, taking the lives of 115 passengers.
South Korea nonetheless endured these continual provocations because we entertained a slight hope that the North would change course someday and an unwavering commitment to peace on the Korean Peninsula. Over the past 20 years, therefore, South Korea has striven to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue through dialogue and collaboration while at the same time providing unstinted humanitarian assistance.
North Korea, on the other hand, responded with a series of provocative acts, including the development of a nuclear program, the sinking of the Navy corvette Cheonan by an explosion and the shelling of Yeonpyeongdo.
At long last, we came to a realization that it no longer makes sense for us to anticipate that the North would abandon its nuclear program or its policy of brinkmanship on its own. The South Korean people now unequivocally understand that prolonged endurance and tolerance will spawn nothing but more serious provocations.
Those who have so far supported the North Korean regime might now see its true colors.
It was an excellent speech that said everything it needed to say. But, as The Marmot notes, he said many of these things this past spring in regards to North Korea's sinking of the Ch'ŏnan. Worse, he might even be inviting North Korea to test this resolve. And then, if South Korea again responds by doing nothing, this could be a speech that will live in infamy.
US President Barack Hussein ObamaOh Hanma has arrived in Seoul. South Korean and US trade negotiators had hoped to have finished hammering out mutually acceptable revisions to the already signed FTA (signed by former US President George W. Bush and former ROK President Roh Moohyun) that they could push through their respective national legislatures.
As Mr. Obama and Mr. Lee prepared for a face-to-face meeting, negotiators were working furiously to resolve last minute-sticking points concerning South Korean imports of American beef and automobiles.
People monitoring the negotiations say that if the deal is sealed, it will be the result of the direct talks between the two leaders. Mr. Obama and Mr. Lee have scheduled a joint news conference for midday Thursday in Seoul. For Mr. Obama — who is trying to reframe his presidency around improving the American economy and who has made the doubling of exports a centerpiece of his agenda — walking away without an agreement could prove to be an embarrassment.
I'm still optimistic, and the truth is I thought it might come to this: A face-to-face meeting being where the compromises are ultimately made. Both presidents want this (for the most part), and it would be good (overall) for both countries.
While the U.S. offer was greeted positively by most of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi pointedly suggested that smaller nations are not considered the equal of larger ones, stating, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”
... South Korea has got to realize that it needs to work on restrengthening its economic ties with the US (and Japan, Europe, Taiwan, India, etc.).
UPDATE:
The Los Angeles Times is reporting on the press conference between Obama and Lee, suggesting that the chance to work out a face-to-face deal between the two leaders is gone, though Obama says he is hoping for an agreement within the next few weeks. Cows and cars are the holdups once again, apparently. I wonder if the Republican leadership could just pass it through the House come January, and then try doing the same in the Senate as soon as they get three or four Democratic senators on board (three would require a Senate tiebreaker by Vice President Biden).
Japan has agreed to return 1,205 volumes of priceless Korean texts including a collection of Chosun Dynasty royal protocols seized during its occupation of the peninsula between 1910 and 1945. Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan and his Japanese counterpart Seiji Maehara agreed to the deal in a phone conversation Monday evening, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.
But archives containing the official seal of the Chosun dynasty court library and royal texts recording lectures by former kings will not be returned due to ongoing disputes over when and how they were spirited to Japan.
I guess this is one advantage of having a more friendly-minded approach to Japan's leadership (and vice-versa), sort of like what we used to have.
It may also be a fringe benefit of having a president who was born in Japan.
An illustrated text titled The Protocols of the Office of Royal Seals, kept in Japan's Imperial Household Agency describes how to make the seal of the state of the Chosun Dynasty. "Royal seal?" you ask. "That looks more like a turtle."
That's the only way to explain him announcing a larger role for the South Korean military just days after I recommended that very thing (in response to the UK cutting its own military budget and thus its military role on the world stage).
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said Tuesday his military will try to play a bigger role in global security and peace as part of efforts to repay the international community for its help in the fight against the North Korean invasion six decades ago.
“The military of the Republic of Korea should further develop into ‘international armed forces’ to contribute to world security and peace,” Lee said in a televised speech to commemorate the recapturing of Seoul from North Korea by U.N. allied forces on Sept. 28, 1950.
I wonder if that will put the claims of the "Why is Korea so ungrateful?" crowd to rest? Eh, probably not.
In an interview with BBC during his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last week, Lee said, “I can’t say for sure it [the summit] will be held soon but I think I can meet [Kim Jong-il] within this year,” according to an audio file unofficially released by BBC to the Korean Broadcasting System. However, when his interview remarks were written down for an official press release from the Blue House, the quote had been slightly watered-down by Kim Eun-hye, spokeswoman for the Blue House, to read, “There is no reason for me not to meet him even within this year.”
As controversy surrounding this remark grew, Kim apologized to the president. She also apologized to Blue House journalists and said that the press release was tweaked because “the President was extremely tired during the [BBC] interview” and that due to his condition, the interview didn’t go as smoothly as expected. She said she was extra cautious because his remarks could have large ramifications.
Jet lag? He could have blamed his English skills.
As is often the case, the competing English-language dailies have a slightly different take, with the Korea Timesemphasizing that "there has been no attempt to arrange an inter-Korean summit."
Frankly, I don't mind if there's a summit, just as long as President Lee leaves his checkbook* at home.
* People in South Korea don't actually carry checkbooks, since there's no "checks" in the way that people from North America know them, so this expression is meant figuratively. I mean, he can't just write out "Pay to the order of Kim Jong-il" and then write out all those zeroes. Ah, but wouldn't it be funny if he did, and then he wrote an up arrow pointing to "DPRK" in small letters just before the word "won." Oh, what a prank to pay the Dear Leader in worthless North Korean currency. Ha ha, suckah! You're not playing with Roh Moohyun no more! Ah, but my plan is foiled, because people in South Korea don't actually carry checkbooks.
New York Times Korea correspondent Choe Sang-hun has a piece on Lee Myungbak's grand plan (not to be confused with Grand Bargain™) to remake South Korea's four longest rivers. An excerpt:
Last month, on a gravelly embankment near this town, President Lee Myung-bak inaugurated an ambitious, and controversial, public works project that will make him either famous or infamous long after his five-year term ends in 2013 and could even determine who succeeds him.
Mr. Lee, a former chief executive of Hyundai Construction nicknamed “The Bulldozer” for his penchant for massive engineering schemes, says the 22.2 trillion won, or $19.1 billion, program to remake South Korea’s four longest rivers will generate thousands of jobs, improve water supply and quality and prevent flooding, while providing a model for environmentally sound development.
Under the “Four Major Rivers Restoration Project,” engineers have begun work to remake the Han, Nakdong, Kum and Youngsan rivers, some of which were heavily polluted during the country’s rapid industrialization.
For three years they will dredge river bottoms. They will build dikes, reservoirs and hydroelectric power stations. When the work is done, according to the government blueprint, these rivers will “come alive” with tourists, sailboats and water sports enthusiasts. Sixteen artistically designed dams will straddle the rivers, creating pristine lakes bordered by “wetland parks.” A 1,700-kilometer, or 1,050-mile, network of bicycle trails will run along the rivers.
Meanwhile, opinion surveys show more South Koreans oppose Mr. Lee’s river project than support it. Critics say it will prove an environmental disaster and waste public funding better applied to education and social welfare. They charge that this is simply a repackaging of Mr. Lee’s earlier dream of linking the Han and Nakdong rivers to create a “Grand Korean Waterway” across the nation, a proposal he abandoned in the face of widespread opposition.
Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about this. It's an odd thing coming at a time when some folks in the western US are considering dismantling some of their dams. And I'd certainly rather not see this submerge some of Korea's more pristine canyons, like we nearly saw with the Tonggang River about ten years ago. In other words, Korea does not need Three Gorges Lite.
On the other hand, Korea does have a problem with flooding, and maybe better flood control is in order. Much of the litter along Korea's riverbanks, I believe, was not deposited there but was washed to that point — often after it was appropriately deposited in garbage bags or trash bins — by rain and floodwaters (it's easy to see how this happens on Oahu as well). And flooding, of course, causes death and destruction that often creates more environmental degradation.
But is this a case of destroying the village in order to save it? What will happen if the bottoms are dredged? Will this destroy a largely intact ecosystem, or will it clear the way for one? Will it be done slowly and carefully enough that flora and fauna will be able to move downstream when construction is in a certain area, and then regrow back upstream when the construction is done?
Frankly, I'd like to see an agenda-free and objective assessment of the project before I solidify my support or opposition. Right now all I have is questions.
You'd better watch out (North Korea), you'd better not cry (chinboistas)... You'd better not pout (Korea business leaders pushing for ratification of the FTA), I'm telling you why... O~bama is coming to town!
For the first time since President George W. Bush took office in 2001, we have a US president and a ROK president who are mostly sort of on the same page. And this comes at a time when Tokyo is the ally that's giving Washington a headache. Interesting things afoot.
As the first few links suggest, North Korea and the FTA will be dominant subjects. Maybe for the first time in a while, USFK won't be a hot topic. And that's prolly a good thing.
Meanwhile we have no progress on the cause of the fire in Pusan, with one more death coming from that. The captain of the North Korean tanker was apparently killed, but for some reason this topic just isn't playing out in the K-blogs. If it doesn't involve boobies or evil hagwons, people just aren't interested.
US President Obama arrives in Seoul for summit with ROK President Lee Myungbak (LAT, UPI, CNN, Yonhap)
Obama vows to pass KORUS FTA sometime in 2010 (links here)
Obama and Lee seek to accentuate the positives of improving ROK-US relationship (AP via WaPo)
Democratic Congressman Sander Levin from Michigan says South Korea demand "major changes" to FTA for it to pass (Bloomberg)
ROK business organizations call for swift approval of FTA (Yonhap)
Eighteen more fatalities bring South Korea's H1N1 death toll up to eighty-two; total includes 69 "high-risk" patients (Korea Times, Yonhap, Korea Herald)
Death toll from fire at indoor shooting range in Pusan rises to eleven as a fourth South Korean succumbs to severe burns (UPI, Yonhap); police still unable to ascertain cause of blaze (Korea Times)
North Korean captain of hijacked chemical tanker carrying crew of 28 from DPRK reportedly dead from gunshot wounds sustained in attack (links here)
South Korea rules out imminent resumption of North Korea tours (Yonhap, Korea Herald)
Apple passes final hurdles for South Korean sales of iPhone in the near future (links here)
Sale of a controlling stake in Daewoo Engineering & Construction draws three unidentified bidders (Reuter via Forbes)
Japan denies Asahi Shimbun report that PM Yukio Hatoyama is planning a trip to North Korea to discuss nuclear disarmament and abducted Japanese (Bloomberg)
Rice farmers rally for resumption of food aid to North Korea (Korea Times)
Labor Ministry report says women empowerment still unacceptably low; salary of female workers stands at 70% that of male workers (Korea Times)
National Tax Service launches crackdown on offshore tax evaders (Korea Times)
South Korea loses to Serbia, 0-1, in World Cup warm-up in West London (ESPN)
US President Obama issues abject apology to Japanese Emperor for America using embargoes to force resource-poor Japan into war; the truth of modern Japanese history is now restored (Sankei Shimbun)
