Loose change for December 24, 2009

 Economic news 

• BusinessWeek has a focus on the trip by Hank Greenberg and H. Ross Perot to North Korea, where DPRK officials told them it would welcome investment. (Bloomberg also has it.)
• The Chosun Ilbo notes that half the cell phones sold in America were made in South Korea.
• Seoul apartment prices are up 44.6% over the past three years. 
• South Korean conglomerates are joining the microlending movement. 

 North Korea news and stuff 

• The Associated Press suggests that North Korea is taking a gamble by turning to air smuggling instead of shipping out arms by sea. 
• A joint North-South tour of special industrial zones in Vietnam and China may have backfired as DPRK officials are now looking at higher wages for North Korean employees in Kaesŏng.

 Other Korea-related stuff 

• South Korea is watching for any indication on Friday that Japan may, in its latest textbook guidelines, claim the ROK-controlled Tokto islets in the middle of the East Sea (Sea of Japan).
• In a bid to curb extracurricular English education and the associated costs, the Education Ministry says that starting in 2011, TOEIC and TOEFL test scores, along with awards in academic contests, will not be included in the admissions process. 
• Insult is added to injury as a Tokyo court awards seven elderly South Korean women a non-inflation-adjusted 99 yen in pension for forced labor during World War II. 
• A Japanese baseball team composed of ethnic Koreans has decided the haechi would be a better mascot than the Fighting Turtle Ships. 
• The number of newborns in South Korea has gone up for the first time in twenty months, though the artwork in the following Korea Times graph makes it look like the babies are going to heaven. 

• Kushibo is better educated, richer, but slightly shorter (and probably slightly older) than the perfect potential mate in Korea. Just sayin'. 
• A profile of serial sex offenders in South Korea shows that the "loner" may be an inaccurate picture.
• "Nayŏng," the young victim of a notoriously brutal sexual assault, is seen as having a more positive outlook than before.
• The Korea Herald is focusing on the growing number of immigrant women in need.
• More foreign nationals means more foreign prisoners, so let's open another foreign prison.
• The Ukrainian embassy says that Seoul is exaggerating the severity of the accident where its ambassador was driving drunk. 
• Lax privacy standards make it easy to steal information.
• See if you can make sense of what the Ministry of Education is saying about English education. I think they've designed the article as some sort of confusing reading comprehension passage. 
• Comedian Jung Sunhee has spoken out about overcoming thoughts of suicide that came as she endured the suicide deaths of her husband and her best friend. 
• Hot spots offering free Internet access are coming to Korea's train stations and KTX trains. 
• Here's a focus on the weirdness surrounding a play that has nudity and simulated sex.

 Miscellany 

• The U-Haul van of a military family deploying to South Korea has been recovered.

Kyopo minister in OC arrested for running fake school that issued fraudulent visas

I can't find the link right now, but I've mentioned online such schools, having known people (South Koreans, Taiwanese, and Japanese) who planned to obtain visas this way so they could enter the US to work illegally. From AP via the Washington Post:

A Southern California pastor has been accused by immigration authorities of helping foreigners fraudulently obtain student visas and handing out phony diplomas at a fake graduation ceremony on a campus where they never attended class.

Samuel Chai Cho Oh, 65, surrendered to authorities Tuesday and faces a charge of conspiracy to commit visa fraud for allegedly charging foreigners cash to help get them student visas on the premise they would attend the Christian university he owns in Fullerton.

But more than 100 students from countries including South Korea, Thailand and Japan never took classes at California Union University, which served as a shell for them to stay in the country legally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials said.

"He found a way to circumvent the system," said Joseph Macias, assistant special agent in charge for ICE's office of investigations in Orange County. "His greed and his financial gain won (out) over the visa program."

Disgusting. It's totally unfair to those people — including many from the same countries — who are following the rules.

The politics of Internet domains

We've all heard the news that non-Roman characters will soon be used in Internet addresses. It seems that the Russians were major players behind that bid. Says the New York Times:

The Kremlin has long been irritated by the way the United States dominates the Internet, all the way down to the ban on using Cyrillic for Web addresses — even kremlin.ru has to be demeaningly rendered in English. The Russian government, as a result, is taking the lead in a landmark shift occurring around the world to allow domain names in languages with non-Latin alphabets.

Russians themselves, though, do not seem at all eager to follow.

Cut off for decades under Communism, Russians revel in the Internet’s ability to connect them to the world, and they prize the freedom of the Web even as the government has tightened control over major television channels.

But now, computer users are worried that Cyrillic domains will give rise to a hermetic Russian Web, a sort of cyberghetto, and that the push for Cyrillic amounts to a plot by the security services to restrict access to the Internet. Russian companies are also resisting Cyrillic Web addresses, complaining about costs and threats to online security.

“This is one more step toward isolation,” said Aleksei Larin, 31, a construction engineer in Tula, 115 miles south of Moscow. “And since this is a Kremlin project, it is possible that it will lead to the introduction of censorship, which is something that certain officials have long sought.”

It's an interesting discussion, and one might wonder if similar issues are on the horizon for South Korea. Certainly the ROK government is interested in curbing some forms of behavior online, particularly by stripping people of their anonymity, at least when registering for sites.

LAT on landmines in South Korea

[above: Eighty-four-year-old Park Choonyoung, who not only lost her legs to a landmine in 1967, but also later lost a grandson and two sons.]

The Los Angeles Times has a piece on the profusion of land mines in the area along the DMZ, which still present a hazard to local residents. An excerpt:

Countless land mines planted here, she says, have wreaked an incredible personal toll: The petite 84-year-old widow lost two sons and a grandson to explosions after they accidentally detonated mines while walking in the dense woods outside town.

About four decades ago, Park also stepped on a mine in a farm field. Now she limps about on a recently fitted prosthesis that cuts into her swollen flesh, raising raw and bloody welts.

"I'm old now, my withered leg is getting skinnier," she said, wiping away tears as she huddled beneath a blanket on the floor of her one-room hovel. "It's getting so cold. My leg hurts when it's cold."

Just half a mile south of the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea, this isolated farming community of 1,400 residents has become a realm of the walking wounded.

Perhaps tens of thousands of land mines -- menacing reminders of the Korean War half a century ago -- still litter the picturesque valley of birch treesand terraced fields, which is known as "the punch bowl" for its sloping, concave shape.

As I noted here, the ROK government is stepping up efforts for land mine removal, even as land mines within the DMZ are seen as a strategic necessity for slowing down any possible invasion by the North:

In the operations that lasted from April to November, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) mobilized 3,300 personnel to remove mines from a total of 100,000 square meters of land south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), it said in a release. Since starting the operations in 1999, JCS has cleared 65,000 mines.

"It was a rewarding operation as we moved carefully not to disrupt the natural environment of the areas we cleared," Maj. Jeong Heon-min, operation chief, was quoted as saying. Land mines pose a threat to civilians working in remote areas near the DMZ, especially farmers.

JCS said it plans to clear 140,000 square meters of land next year. The areas covered this year included Yeoncheon-gun on the west and Goseong-gun on the east. Both abut the military demarcation line with North Korea.

Much of this new effort is due to a realization that the DMZ-adjacent parts of the country, long seen as undevelopable or unusable because of its dangerous proximity to the North, is now being eyed for development as towns or green areas. But sadly for some, this effort comes years too late.

Daily Kor for December 23, 2009

Some, like The Marmot, are suggesting that indicting the former PM for "just" $50K worth of graft is a bit overboard, considering the amount of graft in the past, but I suppose if you really do plan to get rid of corruption, even $50K is a bit too much. When will the politicians get the message that when their party is no longer in power they will be investigated. So keep your nose clean. Geez, how hard is that to figure out?

Anyway, Joshua (and I) are wondering what is up with the North Korean fishermen who seemed to be defecting but then turned around and asked to be repatriated. Were they afraid of retaliation against their families back in the DPRK and so they had buyer's remorse? Who knows. And who knows what will happen to them, now that they're possibly contaminated.

1. Former Prime Minister Han Myungsook is charged with graft over alleged bribe worth $50,000 (AFP, Joongang Daily)
2. Seven North Korean fishermen whose boated "drifted" into ROK-controlled waters repatriated back to DPRK (Xinhua, Yonhap, Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Daily, People's Daily)
3. South Korea wants six-party denuclearization talks no later than February (AFP)
4. US business leaders who visited Pyongyang say they gave North Korean leader Kim Jong-il a letter saying that the DPRK must give up its nuclear ambitions if it wants foreign investment (AP via WaPo)
• US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice says North Korea is feeling the pressure of sanctions (AP via WaPo)
• North Korea reportedly bans use of foreign currency by foreigners and DPRK citizens (Chosun Ilbo)
5. Ruling and main opposition parties agree to postpone deliberations on ROK military's Afghanistan deployment until February (Donga Ilbo)
6. Hyundai Motors sees its first strike-free year since 1994 (Donga Ilbo, Joongang Daily)
7. Teacher evaluation system to be implemented at schools nationwide starting in March (Donga Ilbo)
8. So-called "anchor babies" to be denied dual citizenship (Korea Times)
9. Citing Big Brother-like surveillance, rewarding of those on lists of "approved" citizenry, leadership by a graying and corpulent man in a funny suit who forces undersized workers to toil in freezing, round-the-clock factories, and ominous threats that the authorities will "come to town" in the middle of the night, North Korea watchers conclude that Santa Claus mythology is based on DPRK's Kim Dynasty (Chicago Tribune)

Loose change for December 23, 2009

 Economic news 

• Morgan Stanley says Korean banks may be more willing to finance acquisitions in 2010. 
• Seoul apartment prices rose 23.7 percent in the first three quarters of 2009.
• US military top brass are seriously concerned about North Korea having hacked into OPLAN 5027.
• Woo hoo for travelers: Korean Air and Asiana Air have recorded no accidental deaths in the past decade.
• Tariffs on forty-six goods will be lowered to help out consumers.

 North Korea news and stuff 

• The Chosun Ilbo is coming to a conclusion I did earlier, that the recent currency revaluation there could lead to regime-threatening chaos.
• The final destination of the weapons from North Korea that were intercepted in North Korea still remains a mystery. Indeed, it has become all things to all people: No matter what country you want to the US to hold something against (say, Iran), there's a sure bet someone is speculating that Axis of Evil Level One North Korea was sending weapons there. Meanwhile, the paper trail indicates that the company that chartered the flight was set up in Hong Kong in November. 
• A Fox News comedienne ponders what Barry Obama wrote in his letter to Jong-il. 
• US Special Envoy for Human Rights Peter King will visit Seoul.

 Other Korea-related stuff 

• After a successful season as a relief hitter has raised his profile, Park Chanho may leave Phillies if a good contract deal doesn't come through.
• The Joongang Daily writes about the efforts by the Education Ministry to expand public education's English education as a way to curb extracurricular education costs.
• The Joongang Daily has a focus on haejangguk, a hearty (and popular) anti-hangover remedy. The best way to stop a hangover, however, remains not getting sh¡t-faced in the first place.
• Song Hyegyo is going to star in Wong Karwai's next film.
• Freon and halon gases to be banned starting in 2010.

 Miscellany 

• Conversant in a language other than English? The US Census Bureau may need you in 2010.
• Citing things like North Korea, Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post thinks that the twenty-teen decade will be even more of a "decade from hell" than the Zeroes were. 
• Life sucks for a family being deployed from North Dakota to South Korea whose belongings were all stolen en route to the ROK. Including their Christmas presents. 
• The FBI has released its files on Michael Jackson. Why were they watching Michael Jackson? I have no idea. Maybe they liked his videos and they just couldn't get enough.
• The Chosun Ilbo has an op-ed on the need to re-examine speed limits.
• The Joongang Daily talks about how serializing a novel is being used to promote its sales.

"How to Make the 갈옷. Part 5: Final" at The Sonagi Consortium

White Rice finishes his series on how to make traditional brown karot (갈옷; aka garot) worn by Chejudoers of yesteryear. Very stylish.

Follow THIS LINK for the post by White Rice.

Follow THIS LINK to write for The Sonagi Consortium.

NYT on Korea's obsession with height

Choe Sanghun of the New York Times has a piece on the lengths (wholly unintended pun) that some South Korean parents will go to make their kids taller. An excerpt:

With acupuncture needles trembling from the corners of her mouth like cat’s whiskers, Moon Bo-in, 5, whined with fear. But the doctor, wearing a yellow gown patterned with cartoon characters, poked more needles into her wrists and scalp.

“It’s O.K., dear,” said her mother, Seo Hye-kyong. “It will help make you pretty and tall. It will make you Cinderella.”

A growing conviction that tallness is crucial to success has prompted South Korean parents to try all manner of approaches to increase their children’s height, spawning hundreds of “growth clinics” that offer growth hormone shots, Eastern herbal medicine and special exercises to ensure that young clients will be the ones looking down, not the ones looked down upon.

“In our society, it’s all about looks,” said Ms. Seo, 35. “I’m afraid my daughter is shorter than her peers. I don’t want her to be ridiculed and lose self-confidence because of her height.”

Ms. Seo spends $770 a month on treatments for her daughter and her 4-year-old son at one such clinic, Hamsoa, which has 50 branches across the country, where the protocol includes acupuncture, aromatherapy and a twice-a-day tonic that contains deer antler, ginseng and other medicinal herbs.

The danger with these articles is that, while pointing out a trend that is interesting and possibly significant, they tend to exaggerate how widespread a phenomenon is. An article in the Los Angeles Times a few years back on tongue-snipping for better pronunciation, for example, took on a life all its own.

While there are no doubt parents who have the means to pump growth hormone into their kids or have their bones fractured and spread slightly apart so that they will end up slightly taller each time, the vast, vast, vast majority cannot or do not do this. Rather, South Koreans are getting taller on average with changes in diet and what-not.

Now what someone needs to do (and if this hasn't been done by the time I'm finished with grad school, I suppose I can do it) is get obsessive parents to realize the connection exercise and adequate sleep have with proper growth. "Four hours succeed, five hours fail" is a recipe for a short, angry kid.

No offense, Anonymous #23.

Loose change for December 22, 2009: now haiku-free

 Economic news 

• Senior citizens over the age of 65 have increased by 40% in the past six years, but their medical expenditures have increased 300%. 
• The Bank of Korea is revamping its statistics, using 2005 as a base year instead of 1970, because a lot has changed since 1970.
• Hyundai Motors union agrees to a wage freeze this year, with no strike.
• One-member households (that's me!) make up one-fifth of all households in South Korea. 
• A report by the Ministry for Health, Welfare, Family Affairs, and Muggle Relations says that one newborn will generate 1.2 billion won in his/her lifetime.

 North Korea news and stuff 

•  Production at the Kaesŏng Industrial Complex rose in October. 

 Other Korea-related stuff 

• Bickering may doom the Korean-American research center to be set up at UC Riverside and named after Colonel Young-oak Kim.
• Here's an Orange County Register article on the high-safety Korean-made railway cars being imported by Metrolink.
• South Korea is being invited for the first time to a NATO meeting, owing to it being part of the coalition in Afghanistan.
• Budget carrier Jin Air is launching its first international flight, to Bangkok. 
• According to a survey, South Korean social life revolves too much around close friends and family at the expense of wider social movements. Another survey says South Koreans take too many surveys.
• With 57.1% of cancer patients surviving beyond five years, the South Korean health ministry says this is the highest in the world. It's nice to see Korea is number one at things other than sidewalk-based motorcycle-on-pedestrian auto accidents and spitters per square kilometer.
• The government is launching a presidential panel aimed at social cohesion, headed by former PM and acting president, Goh Kun. 
• A study finds that unemployed men (i.e., those who can't use work as an excuse for not doing housework) don't do much housework.
• Half of all South Koreans plan to travel abroad in 2010. Half of all Americans may go to another state.
• Seoul Metro will operate the new light-rail between Pusan and Kimhae starting in April 2011. 
• President Lee Myungbak says that public transportation is the key to fighting climate change.

 Miscellany 

• Loads of dinosaurs are waiting to be discovered in rich layers of sediment across an area spreading from Mongolia to the Korean Peninsula.
• In exchange for $1.2 billion in aid, Cambodia has returned twenty Uighur asylum-seekers to China.

Daily Kor for December 22, 2009: National Haiku Day

In honor of today being National Haiku Day (in the US that is; every day is Haiku Day in Japan), all of today's stories will be presented in haiku. I apologize in advance if it appears I'm treating any of the following stories in a glib manner, but this is a plan I hatched around Thanksgiving, and I'm writing this intro on November 28 without any idea what December 22's news stories would be, and I'm sticking to it no matter what.

Weapons to Iran?
Tehran insists it's not true!
What a conundrum
(Reuters, UPI)

To the NLL
sails the dauntless ROK* Navy
Defend it, they shall
(AFP, People's Daily)
* pronounced "rock" for that perfect 5-7-5 structure

Violent iPhone apps
South Korea says "let's rate!"
But Apple is coy
(Korea Herald)

North Korea's foe
super tuberculosis
vanquished by the South
(Xinhua)

Seven from the North
come in a rickety boat
perhaps they're safe now
(AFP)

Morning Calm travelers
congregate as eight million
lots of tourist bucks
(Xinhua, Yonhap)

Nuclear slyness
The IAEA cares not
for this is the South
(Asia Times op-ed)

We survived oh-nine
But in the future looms doom
A crisis in '10?
(Reuters)

Look up to the sky
Next year another space launch
may be in the cards
(Xinhua)

The summit may fail
for Lee Myungbak remembers
those held since the war
(AFP)

The dollar gains strength
and the won further weakens
Kushibo is pissed
(WSJ)

Military lines
improved and renovated
to help North and South
(CNBC, Yonhap)

A difficult task

writing all news in haiku

I'm sick of this now

Loose change for December 21, 2009

 Economic news 

• Expect a flood of English teachers from Ireland as Seoul and Dublin get ready to pen a final agreement on "working holiday" visas allowing for up to one year worth of work and travel.
• The Ministry of Strategy and Finance (geez, what is up with these goofily wordy ministry names?) will help consumers by posting online the prices of twenty staple items at various major retail outlets.
• The Korea Herald talks about ways to improve the real estate market. 

 North Korea news and stuff 

• Kim Daejoong at the Chosun Ilbo talks about why South Korea should not assist North Korea in its economic crisis.
• An American professor visiting the North says that academic exchanges are the way to thaw relations.
• North Korea is showing off brand-spankin'-new apartments in Pyongyang which are part of the drive to build 100,000 new homes by 2012.

 Other Korea-related stuff 

• An aging population means an increase in the number of people diagnosed with cancer in 2007. 
• Prosectors plan to get tougher on diplomats' legal misconduct (story also here). 
• Two hundred scholars have picked "side road, winding road" (旁岐曲逕) as the Chinese idiom of the year. 
• South Kyŏngsang Province, Ulsan, and Pusan plan to expand aid to multicultural families.
• The Korea Times has a focus on the online cyber-detectives who make it their business to track down celebrities caught up in scandal. Note the eleven-year-old Mac 500-something used in the picture. Weird.
• The Joongang Daily has a focus on the son of a refugee from Congo, who is getting his bearings living in Korea. 
• Will wi-fi equipped phones that allow users to bypass "traditional" cell phone calling spell the end of cellular telecom companies?

 Miscellany 

• Andy Isaacson of the New York Times takes a journey to the Pamir Valley, "the crossroads of history."

Daily Kor for December 21, 2009: Firing zone

This is really late because I got tasked with taking a young relative to see the movie Avatar this afternoon. It's a very interesting movie in its usage of a new form of 3D; I'm not sure if the "RealD" is what got me motion sick, or if it was sitting in the fourth row.

Anyway, to me the big story is North Korea stepping up its opposition — even through military might — to the NLL (Northern Limit Line). This is a line whose existence may not follow international norms — to South Korea's unfair benefit. This could get a lot uglier.

Today's edition, too, wasn't exactly a "quick-and-dirty" edition, but it was done in some haste. Now if you'll excuse me, I must get back to the theater so I can see how the movie ends.

1. North Korea declares the disputed waters around the contentious Northern Limit Line in Yellow Sea a "firing zone" (AP via NYT, Bloomberg, Yonhap, Korea Herald)
2. South Korea to resume aid that would be used to help North Korean children (Yonhap)
3. Documents indicate that plane carrying weapons from North Korea that was detained in Thailand was eventually headed for Iran (WSJ, AFP)
4. Report by Yonhap says two Koreans are far apart over summit conditions (AP via WaPo)
5. Seoul to push ahead with plans to consolidate army, navy, and air force academies (Xinhua)
6. South Korean military says it has removed 1300 landmines in rural area bordering North Korea (Yonhap)
7. Hyang-iram Temple, known as "sunrise temple" for its popularity as a viewing site of the first sunrise of the new year, burns to the ground (Joongang Daily, Korea Times)
8. Education Ministry plans to give admissions disadvantage to college applicants who say they had private tutoring (Joongang Daily)
9. US President Barack Obama's halo captured on film; mainstream media argues it may be messianic aura (AFP)

Saving St. Elijah's

The New York Times has a story that may seem familiar to some who have followed or studied the presence the US military in South Korea since liberation or the Korean War: This one follows the soldiers who first damaged (first accidentally and then deliberately) the site of an Iraqi Catholic church and monastery built from the 500s, and the soldiers who decided the right thing to do was to restore the important ancient site before they leave.

When the 101st Airborne Division captured this base back in 2003, an American tank blasted the turret off a T-72 tank, catapulting it into the side of St. Elijah’s Monastery.

The force buckled a wall of mortar and stone that had stood for more than 1,000 years here in one of the earliest redoubts of Christianity. Such is the tragedy of war.

The division then made the site a garrison and painted its emblem on the stucco above the low door to the monastery’s chapel. The insignia remained there until a chaplain contemplated the righteousness of having “Screaming Eagles” adorn a house of God.

“That’s not right,” the chaplain said, as the story goes.

Thus began the accidental American stewardship of St. Elijah’s, an ancient site of Christian worship and martyrdom now stuck in the middle of a sprawling military base just south of Mosul, in northern Iraq.

Now, in one small act of preservation, and perhaps penance, the Americans hope to restore St. Elijah’s. Army engineers have drawn up plans to shore up the roof and walls of its main sanctuary — believed to have been built in the 11th century — before the last American troops leave the monastery to an uncertain fate.

“We get so close sometimes, but we don’t finish,” Master Sgt. Howard C. Miller said, referring to the unfinished business that increasingly consumes the American military as a deadline for withdrawal nears. “I’d really like to see this through.”

The story focuses on their efforts, including "the world's oldest recycling program." It also discusses how this base provides soldiers a small chance to learn something about the rich history of the country they occupy and reside in.

Who knows how this ancient Christian site will be treated in a land where two competing versions of Islam already go at each other (Catholics are slightly more than one percent of the Iraqi population). To wit, the story says that the Iraqi Republican Guard who used the nearby base until they were ousted in 2003, used the monastery's cistern as a latrine.