Apple Maps app Seoul FAIL

Besides the use of the atrocious "Revised Romanization" system, can you spot the big fat FAIL with the iOS 6 Maps app rendition of our fair capital?

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Arsenic and old rice

Late last month I reported on South Korea's decision to suspend imports of American rice because arsenic was found in the rice supply. Well, now just over two weeks later, Seoul has decided to resume the imports because the levels of arsenic do not appear to pose any significant health risks.

From Reuters:

South Korea has lifted a suspension of U.S. rice imports and sales, made on concerns about possible contamination with arsenic, after a test showed no significant risk for human consumption, the agriculture ministry said on Friday.

South Korea temporarily suspended imports and sales of U.S. rice last month after a U.S. watchdog group urged the United States to set limits for arsenic, a known human carcinogen, in rice.

"The arsenic levels proved not to be critical based upon the Korea Food & Drug Administration's evaluation of the danger, and discussion with an experts' committee," the ministry said in a statement.

The resumption started from Friday.

The statement said that South Korea would consider setting limits for all arsenic levels, including inorganic arsenic, in rice.

In the United States, tests of more than 60 popular products showed most contained some level of arsenic, leading Consumer Reports to urge the government to set limits for the chemical in rice.

South Korea imported 101,490 tonnes of U.S. rice last year, according to the agriculture ministry last month.

Out of this year's planned imports of 90,901 tonnes, the ministry said 30,000 tonnes had been imported before the suspension and stocks of U.S. rice stood at 81,000 tonnes.

Long-time Monster Island readers have seen me trot out my old chinboista post time and time again, but  for you newbies, I'll give the short version: This is one of those issues that, if it appears on their radar, the pro-Pyongyang, anti-Seoul, anti-American leftist propaganda machinery will see as a golden opportunity in their efforts to whip up the populace against Washington and their allies in whatever administration is in the Blue House at the time (à la Mad Cow Disease in 2008 or the deaths of the two middle school girls run over by a USFK vehicle in 2002).

That this is about rice makes it all the more volatile an issue. You see, this staple has always been a very touchy subject with South Korean farmers and their leftist sponsors (ditto in Japan). The forced opening of South Korea's (and Japan's) rice markets almost killed ROK participation in the World Trade Organization and later the ROK-US Free-Trade Agreement. Rice is seen as almost sacred, a bond* between the people in the land, and it was anathema to import far cheaper rice from California that would upend the rice industry in Korea.

(In accordance with this idea, most Koreans have been willing to pay a lot more for Korean rice than imported rice, at least for rice eaten with a meal, if it meant preservation of the Korean rice sector. Ditto with Japanese consumers and homegrown Japanese rice. Cheaper imported rice often ends up being used in processed foods.)

And so now the chinboistas have the prospect that American rice may be killing Korean consumers by arsenic poisoning, and that could be one of those throw-everything-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks issues that actually sticks. With Park Geun-hye poised to win election to the Blue House in December, they are itching for an issue that will galvanize not just the left but the squishy middle as well, enough that it could bring one of the candidates less hostile to the North Korean regime into the Blue House.

As I noted in my chinboista post, the modus operandi is to try whatever works, because every now and then some issue (and it's hard to predict which ones) will resonate not just with leftist sympathizers but with the moderate middle (and some conservatives as well), often because there is some there there**.

And because of that, the Korea Food & Drug Administration's decision to allow arsenic-laced rice into the Korean market will be seen as bowing to Washington, with the Lee Myungbak administration easily painted as putting their pro-US kowtowing ahead of Korean lives. If some clever slogan can be formed with the Korean word for arsenic, piso (비소), it's all over.

And the reason the issue will take off is that, as the Reuters article mentions, the US has been irresponsible at setting appropriate standards on the issue of arsenic in the food. Sadly, if the chinboistas do try to turn this into an exercise in America-bashing, the merits of that argument will be utterly lost on the defenders of the US (especially those who side with the US over Korea no matter what the issue). As usual.

*Shintoburi (身土不二), a "four-character saying" that is also the slogan of the Nonghyup Farmers Cooperative, literally means "the body and the earth are one and the same": body+earth+not+two.

**And there was some there there with Mad Cow Disease, even though the risk was very low. The more salient point was that American beef is typically factory farmed in ways that are hazardous to consumers, be they Americans or Koreans or Japanese or whatever, and the chinboistas were able to latch onto some of those issues to make a scary case that Americans themselves should heed. 

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If The Beverly Hillbillies taught me anything, it's that "Take your shoes off" is supposed to be a welcoming signal to relax and make yourself at home. In the post-9/11 world, "Take your shoes off" signals the under-siege state of affairs we find ourselves in.

When al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists threatened to target planes headed for New York City and Los Angeles on the very day right before Christmas that I was traveling to LAX, I was forced to take off my shoes no less than five times between Seoul and California.

And thanks to one Yongda Huang Harris, you can expect more of the same as you travel from the Land of Morning Calm to the Land of Fear and Loathing. Why? It seems that Mr Harris was wearing a bulletproof vest on his journey to Boston that made its way from Kansai, through Incheon International Airport (the extra e is or excellence), and then onto Los Angeles. He also had a slew of other no-nos that should have sent up red flags.

From AP, via The San Francisco Chronicle:

South Korean security officials screened a man with a bulletproof vest before he got on a flight to Los Angeles, but they never detected a banned smoke grenade concealed in his checked luggage with a cache of knives, handcuffs, a gas mask and other weapons, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Yongda Huang Harris and his carry-on luggage were thoroughly searched, but authorities found nothing suspicious and he boarded the flight, said a Homeland Security official briefed on the investigation. The official was not authorized to discuss the case publicly and spoke with the Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Harris, 28, was arrested in Los Angeles last week during a stopover on a trip from Japan after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers noticed the bulletproof vest. A search of Harris' checked luggage uncovered the smoke grenade and an array of suspicious items, including leg irons, body bags, a hatchet, billy clubs, a collapsible baton, duct tape and a biohazard suit.

U.S. officials were working with South Korean authorities to determine how the grenade slipped through screening.

Harris is not cooperating with federal officials who are trying to determine why he was headed to Boston with the cache of weapons, authorities said. The smoke grenade was X-rayed by police bomb squad officers, who said the device fell into a category that is prohibited on board passenger aircraft.

The official South Korean response, after looking up "barn door, closing after horse has escaped" in the emergency response binder, will be to tighten security for all flights headed to the US of A. And that means we all get that extra probing. Thanks, Mr Harris.

I'm guessing that the ROK and Japanese authorities were unaware that the smoke grenade was a prohibited item, even though they've had the good sense, say, to specifically check my jar of coins (which they ultimately allowed) as well as the collection of matchbooks my friend who collects matchbooks tried to get onto her flight (which they didn't allow).

I suppose I should probably also speculate on just what the heck Mr Harris had planned with all those weapons and stuff. Frankly, it looked like he planned to disappear a person or two. Or maybe I've just been watching to much Dexter.

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I'll see your missiles and raise you some intercontinental projectiles

Just as we get news that the United States is allowing South Korea to develop longer ranges for its missiles, so that it can hit far more points in North Korea, Pyongyang has turned around and announced that they have missiles they can hit the US mainland.

The only silver lining I can see to this is that if they can hit Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, or Las Vegas, they're less tempted to trying it Honolulu.

http://m.guardiannews.com/world/2012/oct/09/north-korea-missiles-reach-us?cat=world&type=article

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Four Corners fail

Besides my own inadvertent misspelling of Arizona, I can name at least two things that are a big fat FAIL in this Apple maps app rendition of Four Corners, where New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, and Arizona meet.

(And I only decided to look it up today while I was watching a season four episode of Breaking Bad.)

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Untitled

Tensions are high along the DMZ after a North Korean soldier killed two of his officers and then defected. 

While I'm always happy to see North Koreans make it across the border, I do have mixed feelings about them killing people in order to get there. Perhaps his DPRK superiors were people who deserve that kind of treatment, but how would we really know?

Here's an excerpt from CBS News:

A North Korean soldier killed two of his officers Saturday and defected to South Korea across the countries' heavily armed border in a rare crossing that prompted South Korean troops to immediately beef up their border patrol, officials said.

The soldier shot his platoon and company commanders before crossing the western side of the Demilitarized Zone at around noon, a Defense Ministry official said, citing the soldier's statement after he was taken into custody by South Korean border guards.

http://m.cbsnews.com/storysynopsis.rbml?pageType=world&url=http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57527320/n-korean-soldier-kills-2-officers-defects/&catid=57527320

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Comrade Kim goes dying

The Washington Post has a nice story on a film about a curious type of people who left Japan to go to North Korea.

It's something I will certainly try to catch either at the Honolulu international film Festival, if it comes here, or eventually on Netflix.

http://m.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movie-casts-light-on-family-torn-by-repatriation-program-run-by-north-korea-and-japan/2012/10/06/37072c12-0f95-11e2-ba6c-07bd866eb71a_story.html

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Gangnam Style: Longer than Jesus

Someone at the HuffPo sat down and calculated how much time has been "wasted" by watching the "moronic" GS a total of 280 million times. 

		We Have Watched 2,100 Years of 'Gangnam Style'
	News Flash: People are wasting a lot of time online. No, really, it's true. While this may not be news to some of you (especially anyone with a "FarmVille" account), the sheer magnitude of the amount of wasted time may surprise even the most jaded among you.

 

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Offensive?

The HuffPo says I'm supposed to see a swastika but I'm not so sure I do. 

  

		OFFENSIVE? Disney Star Steps Out In Controversial T-Shirt
	Watch your back, MIley. There's a new former Disney star stirring controversy.

 

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Revisionists marching Japan back to a dangerous place

I shall fisk this later, but naturalized Japanese citizen Arudou Debito, temporarily residing right here on Oahu, has penned a piece in the Japan Times that ties Japan's claims on Tokto and Senkaku to maltreatment of foreigners in Japan. Part of a grand and anachronistic movement to bring Japan back to the bad old days of dangerous nationalism.


http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20121002ad.html


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OC's Angels on the brink of elimination

My beloved Angels are probably not going to make it to the play-offs this year. At this point their odds look only slightly better than that of Romney taking Hawaii. 

From the OC Register:

"Their only hope now is to go to Seattle, sweep the Mariners, hope the Rangers go to Oakland and sweep the A's while the Rays lose at least once in the next three days to the Orioles — and then they would have to play a tiebreaker in Oakland on Thursday (or untangle a three-way tie with the A's and Rays)."

Of course, if they pull this off, it will be one for the record books.

http://angels.ocregister.com/2012/09/30/angels-on-the-brink-of-elimination-after-dh-split/125731/

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Gangnam contagion

I found this on a random iPhone 5 on display at the Kahala Mall Apple Store.

Korean Invasion

Will the craziness never end? Now we get news, from the BBC, that Korean rapper Psy (voice recognition writes it as "sigh") of Gangnam Style fame has topped the UK charts.

This is off-the-dial fame unlikely we've seen since Far East Movement came at us with "Like a Cheese Stick."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-19779970