Reuters on Seoul's status as Global Design Capital for 2010

Reuters has an article on the transformation of the ROK capital from a dreary rock garden of apartment blocks to a more aesthetic mixture of parks and more innovatively conceived residential and business structures:

Long a domain of excessive concrete and drab apartment blocks, Seoul is embarking on perhaps the most ambitious facelift in its 600-year-history, aimed at catapulting it into the top ranks of global cities in terms of architecture and image.

The International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) has praised Seoul's ongoing transformation, naming the city its Global Design Capital for 2010.

But critics wonder at the cost of the change and how much of what distinguishes Seoul will be destined for the wrecking ball.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon, a telegenic politician up for re-election in June and seen as a possible contender in the 2012 presidential race, has staked his fortunes on the design plans he hopes will bring more business and tourism to the city.

"Cities worldwide are entering an era of competition," Oh told Reuters. "We need to have not only the technological and cost competitive edge, but more than anything, the competitive edge in attractiveness."

Under Oh's watch $100 million of the city's budget has been dedicated annually to initiatives such as the Han River Renaissance, which has spruced up the river bisecting the capital with dazzling evening light shows and fountain-spouting bridges.

The project will culminate in the construction of an arts facility on a river islet with a massive symphony hall and opera house, capped with an undulating, photovoltaic-ready roof.

Frankly, this almost certainly means my thirty-year-old Seoul Station-area apartment will be razed and the rise again as a glass and ferro-concrete phoenix. Frankly, I don't mind so much.

Let them eat steak

Reuters has an article on the collaborator restauranteur in New Jersey who has been using his BBQ restaurant as a form of diplomacy with North Koreans stationed at the UN mission in New York City:

New Jersey restaurateur Robert Egan barbecues meat for a living, except when he acts as a self-appointed, unofficial conduit between the United States and North Korea.

In his book "Eating with the Enemy: How I Waged Peace with North Korea from my BBQ Shack in Hackensack," which will be released on April 27, Egan recounts how he forged an unlikely friendship with North Korean diplomats at the United Nations.

For a decade, he courted them with racks of ribs, hunting trips and by making occasional trips to help deliver humanitarian aid to Pyongyang, the capital of the impoverished, reclusive communist state that harbors nuclear ambitions.

"With diplomacy, sometimes everyone takes themselves so seriously," Egan told Reuters during an interview at his restaurant Cubby's BBQ, located a short drive from Midtown Manhattan. "You know, you have to let your hair down every once in a while."

The decor of Cubby's pays tribute to its owner's second life. The walls are lined with framed photographs of Egan, a gregarious, broad-shouldered 52-year-old man with mixed Irish and Italian ancestry, posing with North Korean diplomats and newspaper articles that document their friendship.

"On a local, personal level there was a breakthrough. That's a good thing," said John McCreary, a retired analyst for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and a North Korea expert, who counts Egan as a friend. But McCreary said it was not clear Egan had accomplished more than that.

While it's important to remember that even North Korean government representatives can be regular people, putting this human face on DPRK citizens should never mean putting a mask over the regime's evil, which I fear this may do. I'm also not terribly pleased about people making a buck for their collaborative (?) dealings with the North. At any rate, I can think of two reasons why Mr Egan needs to wash his hands after his barbecues.

Seoul hath no fury like an ajumma scorned

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has a piece on how some of South Korea's ajumma are tired of the negative stereotype so many have of them (including not just a few kyopo and other foreigners):

Kim Yong-sook is fed up and she's not going to take it anymore.

She's weary of women between the ages of 30 and 60 being ridiculed as selfish and unstylish — bossy, gossiping magpies with bad perms who pinch pennies and hog seats on the subway.

They're known as ajumma, a word long applied to married women with children but which in recent years has taken on a pejorative connotation that irks Kim.

Among many South Koreans, it's now often used to conjure an image of homemakers who disdain full-time jobs to while away afternoons on park benches, in coffee shops and at social clubs, bragging about their children and, if they've got the money, go on shopping sprees.

At 58, Kim has empathy for her fellow ajumma, who she insists have too long been misunderstood and ridiculed. Ajumma are not deadbeats, cracks in Korea's economic engine.

"Actually, we're running the nation," says the mother of one, a son. "We've got one foot in the house and one foot in society."

To be fair, like any group, there are almost indubitably some bad apples in the bunch, and if you don't like the stereotypes thrust on your group, the best first step is for you to be the better person you want to be seen as. Most of the ajumma I personally know are actually pretty good people, to be honest. I don't like some of the greed with which some of them make their life decisions, but in the aggregate I think they do more good than harm, much more.

They came for the fingerprints, and I didn't speak up because I had no fingers.

So now when we, as foreign nationals, enter the Republic of Korea, we will have to wait in line to stick our finger on the same spot that a bunch of other people have stuck their fingers, thus increasing your risk of getting SARS, H1N1, cooties, and privacy invasion. You can read about it at The Marmot's Hole, where, the Marmot says, "sounds okay to me," and (more extensively) at Brian's where his followers minions commenters generally fall in line with Brian's agreement with comments like "don't see anything wrong with it," "don't think it's a big deal," "as long as it's not inconvenient," etc.

Now, I'm not accusing anybody in particular of hypocrisy, but considering the outcry about the inconsistently applied provisions for background checks and HIV testing we saw last year, I'm actually surprised at how many people are referring to this as no big deal, at least in terms of privacy.

[Note: No suggestion of hypocrisy should be made toward The Marmot, a consistent law-and-order type who applies similar standards both to his home of birth and his home of residence and whose consistency on this point makes him undeserving of an epithet like "sellout."]

Maybe I'm playing devil's advocate here, but hear me out. ROK nationals are fingerprinted, yes, but it is done so primarily as a form of backing up identification, not as a means of law enforcement. Granted, South Korea can require of foreign nationals what they want and said foreign nationals can simply choose not to come, but if one were so inclined they could make a good argument that the new fingerprinting is about singling out foreign nationals and not ROK nationals as potential criminals.

I would be loath to single out the ROK as an instigator of privacy abuses, as this is a common requirement of foreign visitors and/or residents in many countries nowadays, but if HIV testing or background checks were an invasion of privacy or a way in which foreigners were singled out as potential criminals, how is this any different?

Frankly, I didn't really have a problem with the background checks, even if they weren't applied to everyone right away, nor the HIV testing, since South Korea provides extensive HIV treatment to HIV-positive people and an influx of HIV-positive people could bankrupt that system (I firmly believe we should move on from AIDS as a civil rights issue and start treating it more pragmatically as a public health issue so that we can actually attack it and prevent new cases as much as possible).

Some will accuse me of taking an apparently contrarian view just to stir the pot, but I think I've got some reasonable basis for at least a little concern. While I definitely see the value in fingerprinting as a deterrence to keep out the riffraff (and minimizing riffraff or slacker teachers is in every E2's best interest unless they themselves are a slacker), what do we know about how the information is handled.

Let me explain my slight uptick in devil-advocated paranoia here: Today we got news that a Hawaii Blood Bank computer was stolen that had a $hitload of information about blood donors on it:

The Blood Bank of Hawaii has sent letters to nearly 40,000 blood donors and deferred donors, telling them that a laptop computer containing confidential personal information was stolen in a burglary last month at the agency's Dillingham Boulevard headquarters.

In an April 16 letter to potential donors, chief operating officer Wendy Abe said the data includes names, birth dates, partial Social Security numbers and "minimal donation information."

Holy crap! I'm not pacified by their description of "minimal donation information." If you've ever given blood in the United States, you know how extensively private the questions are that they ask, from where you've traveled, to what diseases you've had, to whether or not you're gay! I'm not gay (though a lot of people seem to think I'm a lesbian), but what if this information got into the wrong hands? If I decided to run for public office in San Francisco or Laguna Beach, I'd have no plausible deniability about my heterosexuality and I could lose votes. Thanks a lot, careless Hawaii Blood Bank securitas.

Um, anyway, I just find the whole thing curious. Devil's advocate mode off.

[Note: This post is an expanded version of this comment.]

And this will be my next phone

If the iPhone prototype found in some café proves to be genuine, then this will likely be my next phone. In fact, I've been waiting for the next round of iPhone to come out this summer to replace my nearly two-year-old iPhone 3G, which works fine and everything, but is a little slow now and lacks some of the nifty features that this "protoype" has.

I like the high-resolution screen and the video capability. After all, I've got little nephews and nieces, as well as elderly relatives who say sitcom-level outrageous things.

Sorry, Samsung projector phone.

Well, at least they said "please."

Daily Kor for April 21, 2010

North Korea's preparing for a third nuclear test, supposedly. And I say let 'em! Then taunt them that we thought that was just a bunch of TNT detonated in a mine shaft, so they'll detonate another one to prove us wrong. Lather, rinse, repeat, and eventually all their nukes will be gone. I should be president.

1. North Korea reportedly preparing for third nuclear test (Reuters, Bloomberg)
• ROK Foreign Minister dismisses report (Reuters, AFP, Bloomberg)
• Washington reportedly skeptical (Yonhap)
2. South Korea arrests two alleged North Korean spies plotting to kill high-ranking DPRK defector Hwang Jang-yop (AFP, Yonhap, Joongang Daily)
3. Europe-bound flights from Korea partly resume (Yonhap, Korea Times)
• Cancellations continue for fifth day (Yonhap)
• Reports of disgruntled passengers stuck in Inchon
4. ROK Foreign Minister says restarting six-party talks will be difficult if North Korea responsible for Chonan sinking (UPI, Xinhua, Yonhap)
• South Korea steps up investigation of ship's sinking (Yonhap)
5. North Korea ends inspection of Kaesŏng Industrial Park (Yonhap, Joongang Daily)
• Seoul asks Pyongyang to withdraw asset freeze and resume dialogue (Yonhap)
6. Inspired by success of Wall of Jews, North Korean finance minister plans Wall of North Koreans: "When it comes down to it, we're also the Chōsen People" (Reuters)

Loose change for April 21, 2010

 Economic and business news 

• President Lee has ordered his cabinet to look seriously into the prospect of a PRC-ROK FTA (story also here). I can't wait until there's a Seoul-Taipei agreement so I can refer to it as ROK-ROC. 

 North Korea news and stuff 

• The North Korean and South African national soccer teams will hold a friendly in Johannesburg this Thursday.

 Other Korea-related stuff 

• The BBC gives its own take on Oh Eunsun and her over-8000 peaks attempt.
• Former PM Han Myungsook will declare her candidacy for the Seoul mayorship today.

 Americana and miscellany 

• The militia movement will be packing heat on the Potomac, being the first to bring guns to a demonstration at a national park. 

Tensions "boil over" for European travelers stuck in Inchon

I think it's the fake European food at the airport that has driven them over the edge. Anyway, this snippet from an AP article was in today's USA Today:

Tensions boiled over among frustrated passengers at Incheon International Airport in South Korea, where 30 people blocked a Korean Air ticketing counter and demanded officials arrange travel to anywhere in Europe after hearing about the test flights.

"We need a flight, we need a time," Thierry Loison, who has been stuck at the airport since Friday on the way back to France, told Korean Air officials. "We were like animals this morning."

Frankly, I don't know which side to sympathize with. I mean, it's not like IIA created the volcano or made the decision to postpone the flights. The best they can do is make sure that the non-Korean-speaking transit passengers are able to be housed and fed without being price-gouged, and that shouldn't be too hard with the E-Mart and LotteMart in the business complex near the airport or in Airport Town Square a few kilometers to the east. Right now I'm seeing reports of basic amenities, but I'm not sure that's enough.

And the more freebies they can give, the better. Portable cots (if they even have those), blankets, food vouchers, free showers, free laundry service, etc. If IIA left these transit passengers scrambling on their own (which doesn't seem likely, but nevertheless possible), then they do deserve criticism.

But I wonder how much of this is the irate rantings of people who are lashing out about the gross inconvenience and cost of being stranded for Lord knows how long, perhaps to the point of being unreasonable. These are test flights, not regular flights, and they still don't know who is going to fly from where, and there a new cloud of ash is wafting toward Mainland Europe.

That said, Korean Air and any other airline with its transit passengers stuck in Inchon should try the best they can to take the high road and get these folks as close to home as possible. It's just good business, and the kind of thing you'd expect from a place trying to be recognized as the world's best airport.

Here's an idea: Maybe anglophone foreigners and KoKos alike could organize as volunteers to take the stranded travelers on day trips into the city, to give them something to do and hopefully see this delay as an extension of their vacation. Could someone back in Korea right now alert Seoul City Hall and Incheon International Airport to this idea? I'll even let you take credit for it.

UPDATE:
I forgot Brian did a lengthy post on this.

My 420 post, one day late, sort of

It's April 20 here in Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, even if it's already April 21 in this blog's cyber home, UTC+9. I have nothing really to say about pot-smoking in the Aloha State or the Golden State, but this is apparently a big day for some people, and already I've been getting hits from people Googling, say, UCI + 420 + party + marijuana.

Such a gathering sounds exciting, but all that search gets them from me is this post on the prospect of a ballot proposition to legalize marijuana, which will be on the November ballot (the Los Angeles Times is against legalization — for now).

That's not really enough to prompt me to devote an entire 420 post, but two days ago I discovered the Netflix's online offerings now include seasons 4 and 5 of "Weeds," a very witty and cleverly written program about a suburban widow who sells pot — and gets in way over her head — to make ends meet. While the theme of the show seems sympathetic to relaxing or eliminating marijuana prohibition, its comic portrayals of drug use are interspersed with caveats about the dangers of stronger drugs, as well as subtle admonishments about the paranoia and stupid behavior that comes with pot use itself.

Meanwhile on the incoherent list of things remotely related to this day, my The Sonagi Consortium post on Hurley's car included a link to the revival of Cheech & Chong, the "Get It Legal Tour." I, for one, am excited about this exercise in democracy and social experimentation, even if I still have a slight bit of ambivalence about legalization. I'm also looking forward to seeing how "Weeds" deals with the prospect of legalization, now that I see that Season 6 will begin airing in August (I had thought it was canceled after the fifth season).

And now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch episode 4 of season 4 while I enjoy my macadamia-vanilla coffee. This show is pretty much the extent of my involvement with pot.

I would like to be president some day so, no, I have not smoked marijuana. I ate a brownie once, at a party in college. It was intense, kind of indescribable, actually. I felt like I was floating. Turns out there wasn't any pot in the brownie. It was just an insanely good brownie.*

* Stolen from "Parks & Recreation"

A tale of two Vatican Cities

Writing in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff has a nice op-ed on the two Catholic Churches that seem to exist today, and how the stodgy, male-dominated one that gives us ham-handed scandal could learn from the other:

Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.

This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.

This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.

So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference.

It’s high time for the Vatican to take inspiration from that sublime — even divine — side of the Catholic Church, from those church workers whose magnificence lies not in their vestments, but in their selflessness. They’re enough to make the Virgin Mary smile.

This dovetails nicely with my own views and certain important aspects of my own faith, exemplified nicely by the second chapter of the Book of James, and I think it can apply to many Protestant sects as well, especially those that are bogged down by their focus on rules not outlined in the Bible itself.

North Korea to be led by Andrew Lloyd Webber

That's what I'd be thinking if I were a North Korean peasant and I read how Kim Jong-un's primary skills are songwriting and setting up fireworks displays. And if I knew who Andrew Lloyd Webber was.

"Hurley's car" at The Sonagi Consortium

I have finally gotten around to writing my first post at The Sonagi Consortium. It's a little something about the car driven by Hugo "Hurley" Reyes on "Lost."

Follow THIS LINK for my post.

Follow THIS LINK to write for The Sonagi Consortium.