Recommend a blog!

One reader noted that I seem to read a lot of what he/she called "kvetchpatry"-promoting blogs, to which I replied I would love to hear about other good blogs.

So that got me thinking that I should put up a post asking for more such suggestions, something that might be worthy of the esteemed honor of being on the "Blog roll of blogs that list me in their blog roll (plus a few other blogs I like or check out)" or the uber honor of making "Our Daily Breadth."

So if you're holed up on the East Coast because of Hurricane Irene flooding, have at it. Everyone else, too.

...

In other blogs: Hello, Dalai!

Stuff I found that you should read. Go.

• Stafford has a good overview of the Apple privacy case in Korea.

• The Korean has a recap of impressions from his recent trip to South Korea (it might not be walk you're thinking).

• Chris Green of Destination Pyongyang reviews Winter Butterfly.

• Roboseyo goes to SlutWalk Seoul 2011 (it might not be what you're thinking).

• An 18-year-old soldier in USFK was sexually assaulted by a twenty-something Korean man (and may get a harsher punishment because the victim is legally a minor). Korea Beat also has the story.

• The Marmot comments on the Dalai Lama's visit with Obama and how that has pissed off the Chinese. 

• At One Free Korea, Joshua discusses opposition leader and possible presidential candidate Sohn Hakkyu's unrealistic idea of North Korea and South Korea co-hosting the 2018 Pyongchang Winter Olympics. 

By the way, if you have something special that you'd really like highlighted among my seven readers or so, email me a link and I'll consider it when I do this again (I plan to make this a regular feature).

An epic rant (on the difficulty of hiring good teachers)

This is from a comment I left at Brian's site two years ago, but in the interest of taking some of my longer, more informative, and/or more researched comments on other blogs and migrating them to my own, I thought I'd reprint this one here in one glorious post.

It starts in response to one commenter suggesting that Koreans don't want native English-speaking "foreigners" to teach English but would prefer to have Koreans teaching English.

[SoKos] want reliable people to teach English. There are some hard-working, clever, innovative, and enthusiastic native-speaking English teachers in Korea — lots! — but there are also some flaky-assed muther fu¢kers who make the whole lot of you look very, very bad, because when hiring schools look at a résumé it's a frickin' crapshoot as to which ones are going to be the guy or gal who doesn't show up on time, doesn't do lesson plans, comes to work hungover on Monday, takes drugs, puts more energy into weekend private tutoring than his/her visa-sponsored (and legal) job, etc., etc.

In the past, I've been in a position of hiring and taking care of "foreigners," and I've gotten really really fu¢ked over by people who just didn't give a sh¡t about their job. There was one person who was hired for a year-long contract and when she heard it might not be renewed started LYING about why she couldn't come in to work. When I confronted her about it, she said she didn't feel obliged because she wasn't going to get rehired — even though she had another two months on her contract and nobody told her she wasn't getting rehired (she was supposed to, but a final decision was not made because of budgetary constraints).

Or the person who made me drop an entire day's worth of work and skip my own grad school classes because she'd lied to us about getting her visa paperwork done, forcing me to go and grovel to immigration.

Or the person who promised to be at a certain place at a certain time but then called in sick because she was actually hungover. Twice in two weeks.

Or the person who walked out because the money wasn't being paid up front instead of at the end like everyone else was getting, while cussing out my superior because the Koreans were all trying to cheat him.

And that was just last week. ;)

In fact, none of them were Black, as the fellow on the right is supposed to be.

And through all this, the native Koreans I work with are just standing there with a collective bewildered look of "WTF???"

And I and every foreigner working with us — Korean or White or Black — is just wanting to shoot these people because it is THEY that are making Koreans distrust foreign workers in Korea because it is such a crapshoot.

Do none of you work with flaky people like I described? Am I just incredibly unlucky in who we encountered? The experience of others I know says, "No," it's par for the course. I know that for each one of these flakes, there are several more who do a passable job, and at least one or two people who really go the extra mile, but there is an inherent insecurity about which ones will that be.

And THAT — plus the lack of time investment that an outsider has put into getting into his/her position — is why the Kwangju School Board or the Seoul Ministry of Education is loath to entrust a handful of "foreigners" (God, do I hate that word) with greater responsibility and authority.

It has to be negotiated and it has to be earned. Nobody, no organization, is really working on the negotiation part. That's what ATEK should be doing, that's what KOTESOL should be doing. Everybody should be returning English teaching to the professional status it once was. The backpackers and those with a non-invested backpacker mentality/attitude are eroding the profession. Not all of them, but a lot.

Trust, professionalism, seriousness, and dedication are what need to become the stereotypes of this profession. Whining about bad treatment is worthless (after a point). Figure out what you can do about you, or rather, what your group can do about your group.

None of these people is me.

The discussion itself was interesting, and I encourage you to go to Brian's and read the rest. One person suggested that "a lot of it could have been avoided if the organization you were employed by took the time to do interviews and get to know the people you were bringing over." To which I replied:

Interview?! We were supposed to interview them?

Seriously, though, we did interview them. Each and everyone one of them, except for the guy who thought Koreans were cheating him by not paying him up front; he was recommended by someone I knew.

None of these people either.

And that is another problem in the Koreans-versus-foreigner dynamic: there is a tendency whereby Koreans feel responsible if they recommend someone for a job (even to the point of troubleshooting if there is a problem) whereas Westerners would recommend whomever is available, and then assume they're doing you a favor (which they are).

There are loads of exceptions to this (I know plenty of Westerners who act very "Korean" about recommendations for important positions, and I know lots of Koreans who go against the Korean grain on this), but it's a good rule of thumb when it comes to understanding the different POV where Koreans and Westerners might be coming from. ...

Even though interviews are a highly imperfect process, it is better to do them than to not. There are types of people you will weed out in an interview that you wouldn't if you saw them just on paper. But narcissists and charisma men who do well in interviews can also be among the least dedicated to their job and workplace, so that's part of the crapshoot.

Updating "Our Daily Breadth" blog roll

It's time for a little bit of housekeeping. Some of my favorite blogs and/or blogs I find most useful are listed in Our Daily Breadth, in the right-hand column, down there beneath World Famous Posts. Go take a look. I'll wait. I've got Raising Hope on Hulu, so I'm not going anywhere.

Among them are the usual suspects I routinely check out — The Marmot's Hole, ROK Drop, One Free Korea, Brian in Chŏllanam-do, and KoreaBeat — but the list also includes a few others of less renown that are still worth paying attention to. One of them, List of the Day, has absolutely nothing to do with Korea except for an occasional entry in "engrish photo of the day."

But nothing is constant except change, and so Our Daily Breadth must keep up with the times.

Out with the old.
They say change is good, but they're full of crap. Tell me how "a change for the worse" is good, unless we're talking about Kim Jong-il's pancreas screening or someone like that. A couple of really good blogs were lost today, and I'm not happy.

I find it a bit sad to be removing DPRK Studies, but the only post up, from eight months ago, is a message that blog owner Richardson is signing off. He didn't even leave up the old posts (please, if you ever stop blogging, leave the legacy for others to enjoy.... mkay?).

Now I can't say that Richardson and I saw eye to eye on everything — perhaps only a bit less than Joshua at One Free Korea and I do — but I liked the insight and the effort. It was a good blog.

Similarly, I'm a little disappointed to find that Foundatron appears to be having some hiccups. This is a blog that was dedicated to mapping and bicycling by someone in Seoul, and I put it in the Daily Breadth in part to encourage its development. Unfortunately, it appeared for a while that WordPress bots had taken over, and now it seems the owner is in the process of migrating to Google Apps, but for now I have no choice but to remove it — for now.

Also, Korea Pop Wars, by the eminently good guy Mark Russell, will be removed just because it's no longer updated. I will put his new blog, the not-nearly-as-Korea-related Mark Russell's Website, in the lesser blog roll.

Extra! Korea has come back from the grave, so I'm happy to keep that one up there. The Grand Narrative will also remain, even though I don't go there as often as I used to. I like the blog and I think the owner has great insight and everything, but it often tends more toward the salacious than the substantive, and I think it suffers. The "sociological image" series, methinks, has veered away from sociology of the people and is at times more akin to analysis of the advertising industry.

Sure, media images from commercials and pop music do affect what goes on in Korea or any other modern society, but if one were to get most of what they learn from TGN, I think they'd get a skewed picture of what everyday South Koreans are like, perhaps even on matters of dating and sexuality that the owner frequently discusses. Just a gripe, not a criticism; I do like the blog and I'm keeping it in Our Daily Breadth, so that obviously means something.

And Brian in Jeollanam-do stays, even though he's not actually in Chŏllanam-do anymore. He does maintain his blog, and his love of the region (some would say tough love) remains high. He's probably the Honam area's biggest promoter in English, and I say more power to him.

In Canada, this is how we do ddongchim. 
You must understand our culture.

Exposed Waygooks! will also remain, just because it's my blog and I do plan to upgrade it, especially after this summer when I plan to cruise Hongdae and Itaewon looking for oégugin and KoKos acting stupid. Or if someone sends me worthy pics.

In with the new.
But I am happy to add new additions as well. Chris at Destination Pyongyang deserves a spot for his analysis of what's going on in North Korea, a topic dear to me.

I have also recently discovered a blog of sorts that amounts to a robust newsfeed on North Korea where the owner, a peninsula-based gent named Tor, occasionally adds commentary. It's called northkorea.Collected, kinda self-explanatory.

I have also added The Chosun Bimbo, Adam Cathcart's blog, and Eat Your Kimchi to my "Blog roll of blogs that list me in their blog roll." I probably should have done that a long time ago. [UPDATE: I've made a further addition, seoulsuzy's A Seoulful Life, which has a lot of neat little personal tips on things to see and places to go.]

Some have asked me why I don't put such-and-such blog on the list. Well, there are some who go on hysterical rants that make sweeping generalizations about KoKos and their attitudes toward foreign residents while whining over and over again that KoKos make sweeping generalizations about foreign nationals. Sheesh. And then there are some where, owing to past uncalled-for acts that caused personal offense, I don't see myself regularly promoting the blogs of said bloggers, even if I occasionally comment on or even occasionally link to theirs and would share a brew of some kind if the opportunity presented itself.

Room for one more.
If you have a blog and you would like me to consider highlighting it, please drop me a line. Even if it doesn't make the eclectic cut for Our Daily Breadth, there is probably plenty of room in the only-slightly-less-prestigious "Blog roll of blogs that list me in their blog roll."

That is, unless you're doing something illegal, unethical, or overly weird, like koala porn.

Kushibo the Link Whore Pimp's Best of 2010

You'll forgive me if I'm about three weeks behind on my end-of-year/new-year stuff, but one thing I wanted to do is make a few "Best of 2010" lists.

And I thought I'd start with a list of favorites from my favorite blogs, which (in no particular order and not an exhaustive list) include One Free Korea, Brian (formerly) in Chŏllanamdo, The Marmot's Hole, and ROK Drop.

But this is a list not of my favorite posts from my favorite blogs, but a list of favorites from those bloggers themselves. In December I wrote to those bloggers and several others and asked them for just such a list. It's just my way of giving back.

Brian (formerly) in Chŏllanam-do:

• Investigated by Immigration over newspaper contributions, with possible Kang Shin-who involvement

• Haeundae motels

• "Korea, Be Inspired," the new Korea Tourism Organization slogan

• No room for older, experienced teachers at Korea's public schools

• Holy f*****g s**t, look at that shirt

Wangkon of The Marmot's Hole:

• "It's like cabbage crack!"

Joshua Stanton of One Free Korea:

• Capitalist Manifesto (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

Some of my favorites from Monster Island:

• In the Year Two Thousand (Twenty), English robots run amok

• Some Americans angry about Muslims who died at Ground Zero

• The Lisa Ling/Kushibo conversation (here, here, and here)

• The Kim Who Wasn't There (and Barbara Demick admits we don't know what's going on)

• A little AES satire from the Winter Olymipcs (and a little Ohno satire)

• Happy birthday, Mr Secretary-General

• Big changes on Monster Island

• 金 = gold (the article is so-so, but I really liked the headline)

• why does korea

• Kushibo's late-night thoughts on working for Census Bureau

• The one where Kushibo sees Avatar: The Last Airbender

• KAL 858 and the smell test

• Selig Harrison stars in "Lie Another Day"

• Marcus Noland has been visiting Monster Island

• Ban Kimoon doesn't care if you get AIDS

• Kaesŏng: The political experiment that won't die

• Waterworld

• Hyundai settles with family of Ryan Dallas Cook (this is important to me in part because it was a years-long story where I may have played a role)

• And speaking of Kim Jong-un... (a silly post, but the pictures make me laugh)

I realize that's a long list, but I did produce 1145 posts last year.

Anyway, I did ask a few other bloggers for contributions, but I got no response (in all fairness, end of year is a bad time to ask anyone anything). I am happy to entertain additions to this list. 

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

The Metropolitician has lashed out at The Marmot for calling him a "crazy Nigga."

The Marmot (Robert/Bob) wrote:

I just hope Mike took his pills before reading that. I would hate for this blog to give a fellow blogger an aneurysm. Or a severe case of carpal tunnel, knowing Mike.

To which Metropolitician (Mike) responded:

Sooooo -- over at The Marmot, it's now not just belligerent commenters, but the founder himself, who suggests that I must be crazy (hence, the pill-taking, I assume) because 1) I report that I am regularly harrassed in places such as the subway in Korea, along with dozens of other instances I can cite, as well as countless other people whom I know and 2) he implies that I either bring it upon myself or, alternatively, must be crazy to report it back to others as a pattern. ...

Remember, Robert, YOU brought this shit up, brought my name into this, and implied in front of thousands of readers that I would have an extremely violent reaction and a specific opinion to this topic (which I don't) -- all completely UNSOLICITED by me, out-of-the-blue. Just like your commenters, I'm not only not even talking about any of this within earshot of you people, I'm not even THERE for the conversation -- YET YA'LL KEEP BRINGING ME UP.

My reaction to something like that isn't unreasonable, nor unexpected. I'm not in your grill, nor on your blog, talking about race, violence, or anything else -- I've been wise enough not to even broach any serious topic on your blog, what with the puerile nature of your commenters. Even with that, I've always either linked to or written on your blog respectfully, and spoken of you in the same way. We don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but I thought there was at least respect as colleagues.

So I don't see the need, or how it's at all appropriate to be talking about me going into histrionics, needing to "take my pills," or some such shit, basically making me the unsolicited whipping boy for all that is liberal, related to race, or blackness in your part of the blogosphere. Like the post about the black dude who filmed himself fucking some Korean chick on secret camera, where some commenter started talking about my MOTHER and something to do with the slime or other bodily fluids that your commenters guffawed about me being the result of. And I know you DO sometimes intervene and police your commenters -- just not for unsolicited, disgustingly racist comments. You tacitly approve them, and probably find them as funny as your peanuts gallery apparently does.

Because now, you're apparently participating in the baiting. Because that's what it is when I'm sitting over here eating my fucking oatmeal only to read about how you apparently think, like your readers, that I'm some fucking comic book character who's lost his marbles, is going to go vitriolic batshit over anything touching the subject of race, or is constantly engaging in self-serving name-dropping when YOU people are the only ones bringing either me, or that shit, UP.

I expect as much from your commenters, but not from you. I was pretty goddamn surprised, actually.

So, a very hearty "fuck you" to you, Bob.

Please bear in mind that Metropolitician guest-blogs from time to time on The Marmot's well-known site.

Mike does bring up some valid points, which I deliberately left out here so you'd have to read his words on his blog. But while I think it's valid to point out that the hanbok-wearing White dude that is The Marmot is not regarded the same or treated the same as the 'fronytail-sporting Metropolitician, I'd also like to point out that Metropolitician's experiences in Korea are full of much more drama than most other Black people I've known in Seoul (a group that includes my tenants, my students, my classmates, and a few co-workers).

CORRECTION:
The Marmot didn't actually call Metropolitician the N-word. That was Metropolitician's interpretation, apparently. Metropolitician often hears people saying "Nigger" when they've actually said something else, a point I addressed here a year ago:

There is something inherently problematic about using a simplistic one-to-one correspondence when explaining in one language what someone said in another. I covered this in my "Do you know Ch'usŏk" piece, but I think a more relevant example comes in, say, the outrage about Koreans saying "Nigger."

I have long felt, and The Marmot seems to agree with me, that 검둥이 (kŏm•dung•i) is better represented as "darkie." The word is still insensitive and inappropriate, but it by no means carries the historical baggage — and violence — of nigger. Koreans have not been lynchers of Blacks, they have not legally or physically barred Blacks from marrying Koreans (or anyone else), nor have they enslaved, segregated, red-lined, or systematically and institutionally tried to keep down Blacks. Nigger comes from that violently supremacist mentality, which is far different from the xenophobic race-infused mentality that produces words like 검둥이 (or 흰둥이 for "whiteys"), and that makes it terribly misleading to use them as equivalents when describing racism or attitudes about race.

[Of course, if you're on the receiving end of it, it may be seen as tah-MAY-toh/toh-MAH-toh, but I submit that the latter is far less damaging and much more amenable to change than the former. I also recognize that a WASP WASP-like entity German-Irish Catholic from Long Island (The Marmot) may be the last one to expound on the comparative hurtful usage of 검둥이 or Nigger being hurled at someone, but I'm straight out of Compton, so maybe I've got a little more cred. Just a little.]

And speaking of my childhood back in Compton, I don't recall anyone at our "playground where black folks go" saying, "Don't start no shit, won't be none." Not that it isn't good advice. (Seriously, I do find it amusing when Metropolitician uses TV versions of Black people in an attempt to wrap himself in street cred; I don't think Metropolitician would have lasted long in my old neighborhood.)

Whither Korean Rum Diary?

It might surprise some of you that I enjoyed wandering over to Korean Rum Diary from time to time. Though I never met the man behind KRD, he seemed an alright chap to me, a bit of a diamond in the rough who was putting finger to keyboard to vent his frustrations about Korea.

So it was a bit dismaying to see that KRD decided to pack up the blog when he left South Korea sometime this past month. There were a lot of interesting posts and comments that no one can access now, and that's too bad. There isn't even an email address through which I can contact him to ask these questions.

And this gets into the philosophical problem about what to do when one no longer is able to or wants to continue a blog. Is it right to just delete it, to treat it as if it never existed? Frankly, I think that's a bit unfair to readers, especially those who took the time to leave comments. While they (we) know the risks of leaving a comment on someone else's blog, the blog owner should consider that he/she is eradicating others' words as well.

I've seen this blog shutdown with quite a few that I enjoyed or commented frequently on. Jodi's Asia Pages was one (actually, she shut down her Blogspot blog and then later turned her Wordpress blog into a "protected" blog), while Richardson's DPRK Studies has a "signing off" sign on it.

By contrast, blogs like Plunge Pontificates live on despite years of inactivity (and if you read here, you'll know why I'm glad the blog continues).

I suspect Jodi may have started to feel antsy that some nasty detractors were using some of her less-than-positive posts against her in her professional realm, but I don't see the point in Richardson's case. There were some excellent posts there that will only be accessible if the Wayback Machine gods are aligned just right. As for Korean Rum Diary, I have no idea why he pulled all the pictures off the wall.

So erstwhile K-bloggers, what's up with that? Any chance you'll let us stroll down memory lane again?

He is not the droid you're looking for

Whoops! According to matt of Popular Gusts, it turns out the Mr Lee in the now infamous Itaewon-is-a-modern-day-Sodom-and-possibly-Gomorrah online "news" article, is not the Mr Lee who founded Anti-English Spectrum and is the scourge of the NEST universe.

But that doesn't make this message any less valid, as past activities speak for themselves.

A good read from Metropolitician

I sometimes get on Metropolitician's case for being a drama queen with something of a chip on his shoulder, but he has some very good insights that make his site worth a look every now and then (which, coincidentally, is how often he updates it).

This post in particular is one I would like to direct you all to. It's a very good reminder that we all could use a mental check every so often to ensure we're learning before speaking, and that we may not know as much as we think we do:

Oftentimes, these conversations reek with cultural condescension and outright ethnocentric arrogance. Does some noob fresh off the plane and here less than three months really think that such revelations have never occurred to Korean reformers, government officials, or specialists in education, such as teachers or principals, or to the students themselves? Take, for example, our own screwed up education system in the United States. In the final analysis, the major source of disparities between school districts and individual schools has to do with the division of resources from property taxes. Why don't we just "fix" these things and get on with it? What the hell is America's problem? The solution is "obvious," right? ...

In the end, it's quite arrogant to assume, as a foreigner and a newbie, that after 2 weeks of thinking about the subject, all social problems would be solved if people just thought like you. It's also arrogant to keep stubborn and unwavering opinions without having done much thinking about the subject, nor any background reading, anything. You just sit there at the bar with your beer and have the answer.

Isn't that what we often get on Koreans' case for?

It's something I have said and would say again, but when he does it, no one would accuse him of apologism. (Actually, I encounter Europeans, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Koreans engaging in the same such behavior I see so many anglophones doing back in Korea, which is all the more reason I see the message as very universally apt.)

In other blogs (April 25, 2010 edition)

• The Korean addresses the new Arizona law that allows the police to stop anyone they suspect of being an illegal alien, a law many fear will target primarily Hispanic- and Asian-looking people for racial profiling, with some serious consequences if you don't have ID on hand. 

• And on a roll, The Korean handily deals with the Lousy Korea blog fiasco in the comments section of Korean Rum Diary (here, here, and here). While no one deserves threats of injury or death for what they write (and I'd really like to see some of what was we're talking about before I totally sign off on that, as it appears that some other threats in the NSET universe may not have been genuine), the site itself was an exercise in hate speech masquerading as free speech and there should be no surprise that it attracted equally stupid and hateful response.

• Extra! Korea has written a well thought-out list of possible future scenarios of conflict in Northeast Asia in the context of whether the US military presence should remain in South Korea.

• Ampontan addresses the lawsuit against President Lee (dismissed, but apparently being appealed), saying that Lee should be impeached for asking Japan's then-PM Fukuda Yasuo to wait a bit for the Ministry of Education to release guidelines for junior high school textbooks saying that Tokto is Japanese territory. 

In other blogs (April 18, 2010 edition)

• Joshua at One Free Korea has a must-read overview of the options in front of the South Korean government as it decides what to do if North Korea is responsible for the sinking of the Chonan, especially if we want to avoid a wider war. I had thought about quoting part of it here, but the entire thing deserves a read.

• Justin Nalepa has a travelogue on the Ch'ujado Islands, around which a ROK military helicopter crashed recently while searching for submarines.

• Writing about OC denizen Kyle Nachreiner, Marmot at The Marmot's Hole is stealing my Orange County Crime Story of the Day idea, with an update to the infamous (if you're from OC) gang rape case perpetrated and videotaped by the sons of friends of our county sheriff.
  
  Here's his post ("And the Worst Person in the World Award Goes To…"), and here's my post from June 2006, where I mentioned it as a reason for not voting to re-elect the guy (who later was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison on corruption charges). My reasoning back in 2006:
  
  
  

  For some reason in Orange County our sheriff and coroner are the same person. That should make for interesting plot lines when they start to make CSI: Orange County. This was actually the race that was getting the most press because of the scandal in which the incumbent, Michael Carona (Carona the Coroner...nice ring to it) and his cronies found themselves. Both opponents focused on this, and one of them demanded that Carona resign.
  
  Essentially, both of the challengers were running on a platform of not allowing their friend's son to rape 16-year-old girls.
  
  Carona said in his bio/platform that "residents of Orange County are safer today than they were eight years ago" when he took office. I know I'm safer, but that may be because I live in Korea.
  
  One of his opponents, Bill Hunt, says that violent crime in sheriff-patrolled areas (i.e., areas not part of some city plus areas where policing is contracted out to the OC Sheriff's Department) skyrocketed 30% (he doesn't say from when...could be from 1850 when we achieved statehood, or 1890, when OC broke off from L.A. County) and homicides have increased 26%.

In other blogs (April 9, 2010 edition)

Dear Reader, if you have a particularly interesting post you'd like me to highlight, feel free to email me with a link so I can take a look.

• One Free Korea has an excellent roundup of the latest news on the sinking of the Chonan, following the interviews of the sailors who were on board. 

• Korean Rum Diary has a surprisingly substantive (and frank) discussion about the merits and demerits of legalized prostitution, triggered by a statistic that one in five South Korean men go to prostitutes four times a month. I was trying to find the cited survey from the Korean Institute of Criminology (where one of my former professors works), but no luck.

• Asian Correspondent lists the top ten international universities in Northeast Asia (which includes tropical Hong Kong). It's nice to know that my graduate alma mater made the list, though I don't know the source of the list or its authority.

• ROK Drop brings us the story of decorated Army flight surgeon Lt Col Terrence Lakin, who says he will not comply with orders to deploy to Afghanistan until President Obama releases his birth certificate.

In other blogs (April 5, 2010 edition)

• At Gusts of Popular Feeling, matt talks about a bridge collapse at Olympic Park. Seriously, when I first saw the heading for this one in the "Our Daily Breadth" column at right, I thought he was doing a flashback post on something from the 1990s. Yikes.

• I'm way late on this one, but at Discovering Korea Matt has a nice piece on Sŏnyudo Island (Seonyudo), the park in the middle of the Han River, near Yanghwa-daegyo Bridge.

• Brian (formerly) in Chŏllanamdo talks frankly about his run-in with Immigration over his earnings while writing for the Korea Times, especially the prospect that a very unethical journalist was behind it.

• Though it's a few days old now, Joshua at One Free Korea gives a good overview of what we know and what is possibly true about the sinking of the Chonan. 

• Robert at The Marmot's Hole introduces "38 North," a new blog-like entity on North Korea by the US-Korea Institute at SAIS.