Is North Korea helping Burma go nuclear?

That question is being asked in influential circles. Is there any substance to the idea, or is it more of the pile-on we've been seeing lately? 

Certainly any export of North Korean nuclear technology or weapons — if that is really what is happening — is a game changer, and such a thing should be stopped. That prospect might give impetus for China and Russia to allow the UN sanctions to really work. 

70 million won for baby-swapping mistake

I don't know how I would possibly handle something like this. A mother in Kuri discovered that her sixteen-year-old daughter couldn't possibly be her biological child based on hers and her husband's blood type. The daughter is type-A but the parents are both type-B. 

It turns out that, back in 1992, a nurse in the hospital had accidentally switched the babies. A court has recently ordered the hospital to pay the family 70 million won (about $56,000) for mental suffering. According to the BBC, the court has refused a request for the mother to see the other daughter's records — those of her biological daughter — out of privacy concerns. This is still being sorted out.

What a Hobson's choice facing both families: The daughter you raised is still your daughter, and to reject her for your biological daughter is cruel abandonment. Yet how do you just ignore your own flesh and blood? It would take the most patient and wisest of parents to find a way to jointly be involved in both girls' lives, but sadly such parents are often in short supply.

Wendy Williams and The Wonder Girls bridge Korean-Black divide

[above: The Wonder Girls show off the gun-pointing pose they learned during their stay in New York City, much to the amusement of Wendy and the twins.]

International pop sensations The Wonder Girls have made their American television debut on the Wendy Williams Show. The show will no doubt go into the annals of pop music events, along with the Beatles' appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. 

For her next stop on the "Feel the vibe from here to Asia, dip trip flip fantasia" tour, Wendy Williams will invite the Gosperats (above) and The Bubble Sisters (below).

[HT to Brian in Chŏllanam-do, which is where I get all my The Wonder Girls news]

Cloned sniffer dogs

The Los Angeles Times has a piece on cloned dogs being used at Incheon International Airport. The Labrador retrievers are genetic copies of a successful Canadian sniffer dog, created by Lee Byung-chun, a former colleague of disgraced cloning specialist Hwang Woo-suk.

Seven cloned puppies were born, and six completed the 16-month training program to become sniffer dogs. (The seventh had to drop out of the training program due to injury.) Three of the six Labradors that completed the training program have now reported for duty at South Korea's main airport, Incheon International Airport. The other three are assigned to customs checkpoints in Incheon and two other cities.

As was the case with previous dogs cloned at Seoul National University, the cloned sniffer dogs don't have the most creative of names: All six are named Toppy, a not-terribly-clever amalgam of "tomorrow" and "puppy." ("I'd have thought that would be Tomoppy," was one BBC reporter's comment.)

BBC reporter, keep your day job. 

[above: The biggest problem with cloned dogs is that they all go to the exact same place at once.]

Threat level raised as H1N1 infections officially cross 1000 mark

So says the Korea Times. This means a shift in how the growing epidemic is being tackled:

The government said Tuesday it was upgrading the level to orange, indicating alarm, from yellow, meaning alert, at a Cabinet meeting. The level is comprised of four steps ― blue (attention), yellow (alert), orange (alarm) and red (serious).

"We are seeing an increasing number of patients'' an official from the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs said. "The possibility of mass infection is now growing due to students coming home from overseas study, summer vacation and international events. We concluded that the flu could become a pandemic here in the latter half of this year, with the weather getting colder, so we are hiking the level.''

The current preventive system, which monitors those entering from other nations, will be changed to focus on treatment rather than prevention, it said.

Patients will be isolated at major hospitals nationwide. If the numbers increase, the authorities will isolate only serious patients. Others with minor symptoms will be asked to stay at home and visit hospital for treatment.

The central government will also secure as much vaccine as possible and inoculate infants, children, the elderly, soldiers and quarantine officers from November.

It recommended schools avoid after-hours programs during vacation time and halt them immediately when a patient is confirmed. Private tutoring institutes were also advised to suspend classes when a student is confirmed to have contracted the virus.

As a few in the English-teaching field have mentioned before, hagwons that mix students from a variety of area schools can become nodes of infection, so the authorities should be ready to pounce on them if they have infected students (or teachers). Loss of revenue is an incentive for them to stay open, though the prospect of their school being a Typhoid Mary nexus of a local outbreak could provide a significant disincentive. 

MMA fighter fakes death to avoid community service

Well, that's what this article from the Orange County Register seems to be saying about Ultimate Fighting Championship star Kimo Leopoldo, who has been reported dead from a heart attack at the age of forty-one:

On the same day of his reported death, Leopoldo was sentenced to 10 days of community service and mandatory participation in a drug diversion program, stemming from a February arrest in Tustin for possession of marijuana while wearing a Long Beach police officer jumpsuit.

Two plainclothes detectives found Leopoldo in a Tustin parking lot dressed in the suit, playing with a yo-yo and leaning against a car in which he had been a passenger.

Leopoldo was waiting for the driver of the car who went into a pharmacy, defense attorney Victor Hobbs said.

The woman who owned the car disappeared after seeing police outside of the pharmacy.

Detectives then searched the vehicle and found a pipe and a small amount of marijuana.

If you're going to impersonate a cop — and I can't emphasize this enough — lose the effin' yo-yo. Cops hate yo-yos. Everybody knows that!

Anyway, Kimo's plan was as simple as it was brilliant: Fake his death, avoid that pesky ten days of community service and the drug diversion program, and watch on the telly one's Michael Jackson-esque funeral and life celebration, replete with weeping fans, before heading down to a retiree village in Baja California's seaside town of San Felipe to live out one's life under the assumed name of Juanito Burns. At least, that's what I assume he's plotting.

[Note: While there is no Korea connection to this story, Leopoldo's first name is Kim, and the guy has lived in both Orange County and Hawaii, which makes a Kushibo connection. If only he'd also lived in Compton, then it would be like we're the same person, man.]

UPDATE:

Kimo shows up at the Orange County Sheriff's Department to show he is alive and, apparently, will serve his time. Will Michael Jackson be far behind? (I must admit, I was sort of hoping the Gloved One had pulled a fast one.)

Mean Girl

After likening North Korea to a child needing a time-out, Clinton has gone a few years into the future and is sounding more like the leader of a high school clique. Specifically, she's saying she won't talk to North Korea if they both show up to the upcoming ASEAN Regional Forum in Thailand. 

It's all good, I suppose, since her stated objective is to only talk with the NorKs if they come to the party six-party talks. I just hope Clinton and North Korea aren't wearing the same dress, because then all hell would break loose. 

In all seriousness, I respect the idea to try to get North Korea back to the six-party talks, but that will only work if Beijing and Moscow are completely on board with the geopolitical ass-whipping that Pyongyang needs, and I'm not so sure they are. The advantage of direct one-on-one talks is that it's easier to dangle carrots under Pyongyang's nose (diplomatic recognition, etc.) with clear guidelines for how to get them and how to lose them again, without worry of China and Russia undermining that. 

Oh, and did I mention there's nothing we can do about North Korea? 

From the "things that are funny when taken out of context" files

Courtesy of today's Korea Herald:

Try to avoid them all you want, but the ajummas will find you.

Colleges that look like Hogwarts

Yeah, I know the "Harry Potter" books and movies are a major cultural phenomenon, but I wonder if this is taking things too far. The Los Angeles Times has a small piece focusing on American colleges that look like Hogwarts. If you're in too much suspense to even click that link, the five are the University of Chicago (above), Yale University, Kenyon College, Bryn Mawr College, and Cornell University. In the comments section, readers list others. 

In Korea, I'm not even sure if five places of higher education could make the list. Having attended Yonsei, a school with a 125-year tradition (or so), I have experience with the oldish buildings toward the back of the campus, like Yŏnhŭi-gwan (연희관), which give the school a whiff of Ivy League-ishness, but just a whiff. 

Since I attended, in my UCI undergrad years, a university campus that was constructed only four decades ago — and one whose buildings were so modern-looking that they were used in films to look like the future — I appreciated walking around Yonsei's old stone structures, though the brief time I took classes in them, I was not too happy about the oil-burning heaters that could stink up a room if not used properly (GSIS didn't move to Millennium Hall until 2000, a move we all greatly appreciated). Indeed, it was easy to see why the school year was designed around not having students in classrooms during the two coldest months of winter and the hottest months of summer. I think they have since "modernized" the interiors.

Sadly, few of the universities in Korea have a "Hogwarts" look, though Ewha boasts some interesting old structures. So does 600-year-old Sungkyunkwan, but that's so old, it's pre-European. 

For a Hogwarts-like feel, I think the closest one would get is Korea University, which I am always careful to pronounce as Koryŏ University, per its actual spelling [photo source for above]. One thing that is especially nice about KU is that they have done a pretty good job of making sure the new buildings on the main part of campus fit in with that old style, for the most part. An example would be Centennial Hall, below.

Of course, instead of Hogwarts buildings, what would be a far more interesting find would be someone who looks like Hogwarts students, say Hermione but of legal age (Emma Watson is nineteen, old enough to be sent to Vietnam), though I suppose Cho Chang would be a bit easier. 

Time Magazine on the evolution of the dormitory

Time has an interesting photo essay on how dorms in America have changed over the years, and I say that not just because my alma mater, the University of California at Irvine, was mentioned twice. 

Although it lacks a climbing wall like that found at Boston University, UCI has long had some innovative places to stay, including the hippie-led trailer park commune where I lived in my last two years there. I especially like the outdoor fireplace at the newish Vista del Campo Norte, which I think is for grad students and married students: 

Nice. And of course there's the swimming pool, which is de rigueur in master-planned Irvine:

This makes me almost want to quit school in Hawaii and head back to Orange County to continue my studies. The dorm I'm in now, while it commands a nice view of downtown Honolulu and the top portion of Diamond Head, is basically a cement box with few amenities. 

To make this Korea-related, while Korean universities have made considerable strides in attracting students from abroad, they will have to come up with more innovative housing options if they want to keep that flow coming. 

Korean universities are decidedly unfriendly in terms of student housing: Small, crowded, utilitarian dorms remain the norm for the provincial students who have no relatives with whom to stay in the Seoul area; students from the capital are usually expected to live at home and commute.

The UCI trailer park with the $100/month rent that included water and electricity, by the way, has been paved over for a parking lot.

Nothing can be done about North Korea

Though I really don't care much for much of Jonah Goldberg's facile arguments about stuff in general, one can read through this piece on how saying "never again" about places like North Korea is meaningless and get a profound sense that nothing will change North Korea except North Korea itself.

Invading them and using military might to push out their leadership didn't work (China intervened), undermining them politically and economically didn't work (the Soviet Union and China intervened), smothering them with kindness didn't work, nudging them toward a market economy hasn't worked (China intervened), and so far a return to a hard-line stance hasn't done anything. 

The regime is still in power. They still thumb their nose at what Washington, Seoul, Tokyo, Europe, and even Beijing want, and this will go on for some time. 

Let's say "never again" to theories about how to topple or change North Korea. Nothing will work until the current regime is gone or fundamentally changed from within. Maybe that change will come with a regime shake-up when Kim Jong-il dies, if not sooner, but maybe it won't. 

And that means we can do little more than contain their toxicity to within their borders. 

Kushibo officially throws up his hands. 

This doesn't mean that every effort shouldn't be made with Beijing to get humane treatment for North Korean refugees outside North Korea, but I fear that there is, for now, nothing that can be done for those inside. 

I hate this feeling. It makes me sick.

The Poker-8 call foul on police conduct

I don't know how I missed this article in the Korea Herald two weeks ago, but it mentions the claims by the Poker-8 that they were abused by the police:

Foreign nationals booked for illegal gambling have raised complaints about the investigation into them by police.

Police say they caught eight foreign nationals gambling illegally in an apartment in Itaewon-dong and following further investigation and questioning, five more were booked without detention. One man was detained.

Two of the suspects tested positive for marijuana, but suspects say none was smoked at the apartment and none was reported found there.

However, the accused say that the police entered the building by force and threatened them with physical violence.

One of those booked said that two officers had to physically restrain another from attacking her boyfriend.

"When we first entered the office area, I sat down on a desk. The same officer that pushed me earlier came up from behind me and pushed me hard so that I fell off the desk," she added.

She also said that the police officer used aggressive tactics to influence her statement.

"I added, at the end of my statement, details about the unfair physical and verbal abuse which I mentioned previously. When the officer read what I wrote, he yelled at me, told me that I had to change my statement, and tore it up," she said. "I feel that I was forced to omit relevant information from my statement."

The suspects also say that seven out of the eight originally booked were told they had tested positive for marijuana, although five insist that such a result was not possible.

To be honest, the second paragraph and the last bit sounds like the same self-servingly deceptive stuff we've heard from them, (e.g., one of the arrestees' comment that "poker was allegedly being played"): They don't out right deny that they'd smoked marijuana in Korea recently, only that none had smoked at the apartment and no marijuana was found there, as if that technicality will help them wiggle out of the charge borne by the drug test.

Nevertheless, good on them (and the Korea Herald) for taking public their claims of police misconduct. If the accusations are true and not some exaggeration or misrepresentation, that certainly warrants some attention. Some serious attention, even if they are guilty of the charges.

But even if they're not accurate, it's one of those things that, due to the age-old adage that South Korean authorities often care — perhaps excessively — about foreign impressions, might lead to changes in police behavior, at least when dealing with foreign suspects. We've already seen that in some cases there is concern of certain tactics "violating human rights," even with "third-world" residents in Korea.

Clinton to give North Korea a time-out

That's right, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has likened Pyongyang's leadership to "unruly children." 

And knowing the Dear Leader's fondness for aging blondes, I think he may take her up on any offer for North Korea to drop its nuclear weapons program in exchange for direct talks, just so he can get a spankin'. He been a bad, bad boy. 

For those of you readers eating dinner right this moment, my apologies for the following mental image, but I'm pretty sure that as Kim Jong-il is reading this post (according to SiteMeter, someone from Pyongyang visits Monster Island every day), he's probably already got his belt loosened and he's dropping his Dear Leaderhosen, so he can practice sticking out his tushy in front of the giant mirror on the west wall of the Chamber of Enlightened Brilliance. 

Tip for Hillary: Stroke damage probably means he has more feeling in his right buttock. Use that information as you see fit.