An official portrait of Kim Jong-un?

Mark MacKinnon of The Globe and Mail of Canada suggests this untitled portraint spotted in a Rajin museum by a Canadian tourist might be just that, in which it case it is a sign of the Kim Jong-un cult gaining traction. That we're seeing a Kim Jong-un portrait seems to be supported by a few notable names in the North Korea Watching industry. [HT to OFK commenter jason bastrop]:

If it is him, and a majority of the experts consulted by The Globe and Mail believe that it is, the portrait marks the first glimpse anyone outside North Korea has had of how the regime will sell Kim Jong-un to a people conditioned to believe his father is their infallible Dear Leader and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, an immortal who remains president despite his death in 1994.

It would be laughable, perhaps, if the new propaganda campaign weren’t accompanied by new military recklessness – including last month’s deadly shelling of a South Korean island – intended to give Kim Jong-un, already praised as “the Young General,” victories to claim as his own. [Kushibo's note: I again emphasize my skepticism that there is much "praise" being put on Kim Jong-un at all]

Out of half a dozen North Korea scholars who were sent a copy of the portrait, only one disagreed that the subject was likely Kim Jong-un. The other experts saw it as the launch of a massive propaganda campaign that will attempt to portray the heir apparent as having been sent abroad to learn foreign ways and technologies, while always keeping North Korea and its people in his heart.

Several who saw the portrait noted the physical resemblance (though the heir apparent is much flabbier in recent television footage), as well as a background that looks to be Interlaken, Switzerland, where Kim Jong-un is known to have spent time while studying at the International School of Berne in the late 1990s.

“It’s big news,” said Brian Myers, an expert on North Korea at Dongseo University in South Korea. “It’s hard to be completely certain on the basis of an untitled image alone. … But I cannot imagine a schoolboy outside the Kim family meriting this kind of painting, and it is very similar in mood and layout to depictions of the young Kim Il-sung and the young Kim Jong-il. So I would assume that it is Kim Jong-un although it is not a particularly striking likeness in view of the Kim Jong-un we have seen photographed in the past few months.”

Me? I don't think so (and I see I'm in good company with the likes of Professor Andrei Lankov, the one holdout whom The Globe and Mail interviewed).

And I think folks like Brian Myers — if he really was just shy of "completely certain" and that's not Mr MacKinnon putting enthusiasm in his mouth — ought to rethink where they're sitting on this bandwagon, lest their reputation be sullied by a major fail (and let's face it, Brian Myers has only one set of lenses when it comes to interpreting what's going on in North Korea, one I find wanting when it comes to explaining or predicting a lot of what goes on up there, so there's not a lot of margin for error... sometimes it seems you're only as good as your last success in this business).

In fact, I think that, like so much other "news" about Kim Jong-un's rise to power (read: unsupported speculation and journalistic pipe-dreaming), I think this is uninformed conjecture to fill a void of real information. The kind of void where a Canadian tourist visiting a museum in North Korea probably with display markers in a language he/she doesn't understand can set tongues wagging.

The style of school uniform, especially the hat, is reminiscent of the Japanese colonial era in which Kim Ilsung grew up (the Japanese annexed Korea in 1910 and he was born two years later). And while I have no idea what churches look like in Switzerland, the style of the church in the background here is quite similar to small-foundation brick-and-mortar Christian houses of worship in Korea (both Protestant and Catholic). Pyongyang was, before the Communists took over, known as "the Jerusalem of the East," and Kim Ilsung's own grandfather was a Presbyterian minister and his father a church elder.

The stone work and the railing along the river walk is also found in Korea. And the upward flare of the eaves (is that the right word?) on the house in the background appear more Korean than Swiss.

And think about it: When North Korea has not even acknowledged that Kim Jong-un was educated in the West, why would they glorify it in a painting?

I'll bet if I had a little more time I could find an authorized North Korean portrait of Kim Ilsung as a student dressed not unlike that. In the meantime, note the facial similarity with the Kim Ilsung (checking the door) below.

PBS Newshour gets it wrong on the KORUS FTA

I've made no secret that I love PBS's Newshour and I recommend it as the single best layperson's source of comprehensive, objective, nonpartisan, and dispassionate analysis of the important political, economic, and social issues facing the United States and much of the world (that, Sesame Street, and low-calorie cranberry-walnut muffin recipes is why we should support public broadcasting).

But every now and then they do get it wrong, and this "News wrap" piece mentioning the FTA, I feel, was a misrepresentation of what's actually going on:

The U.S. and South Korea have reached agreement on the largest trade deal in more than a decade. The announcement today said the U.S. will lift a tariff on Korean autos over five years. In turn, South Korea will allow imports of thousands of American-made cars. The South Koreans also agreed to lift a heavy tariff on U.S. beef.

Listening to that, someone otherwise uninformed about ROK-US trade might get the impression that prior to now, the import of American-made cars is simply not allowed. In fact, there are loads of American cars on the streets and highways of South Korea — they are imported with an 8% tariff — though they don't do nearly as well as Lexus, Honda, Volkswagen, BMW, and Volvo.

What Kwame Holman should have stated was that the pact would allow each US automaker to export 25,000 cars that do not meet ROK safety standards but do meet US safety standards.

Quoting the Los Angeles Times article about President Obama's praise for the deal:

South Korea would allow the U.S. to lift a 2.5 percent tariff on Korean cars in five years, instead of cutting the tariff right away. Each U.S. automaker could export 25,000 cars to South Korea as long as they met U.S. safety standards; disputes over safety standards had effectively stood as a barrier to U.S. auto exports into Korea. A U.S. tariff on Korean trucks would be phased out and South Korea would eliminate its tariff on U.S. trucks immediately.

Ford and Chrysler have claimed that ROK safety standards amount to a non-tariff trade barrier, even though Japanese, German, and Swedish automakers have had no real trouble meeting them. Detroit, for all practical purposes, wanted special consideration for US-made automobiles: Let American-cars into the South Korean market based not on South Korean laws but on American laws. I can imagine the outcry from Detroit if Hyundai and Kia were to have done the reverse with their cars (although actually, Hyundai and Kia are making most of their cars for the US market in the US).

The idea behind the 25K-per-automaker deal is for Chrysler and Ford to be able to break into the South Korean market without making expensive adjustments for which they don't know if there is going to be a payoff down the road (if the cars meet ROK safety standards, there is no limit).

If the South Korean public decides they want F150s, Mustangs, Escapes, and Equinoxes, then it will be worthwhile for Ford and Chrysler to retool some of their output specifically for the South Korean market, just as South Korean automakers (and everyone else) do for California. (I suppose this benefits GM, as well, but since GM already has a sizable presence in South Korea with ownership of GM Daewoo, it's not exactly the same situation).

All in all, despite Montana's Democratic US Senator Max Baucus being "deeply disappointed" that beef was not addressed, the end result isn't a bad one. I don't like the idea of big, polluting vehicles roaming Seoul streets, but I think the "streamlining" compromise sounds reasonable.

Ben Muse of the Korea-US FTA Blog has more on the details of the re-agreement of the FTA.

Stay classy, Joey.

A few days ago I saw in the Los Angeles Times the story of an eighteen-year-old Korean-American student at USC who had died after suddenly passing out in her dorm room. It caught my eye in part because the woman's name is similar to that of a friend's younger sibling.

While it was not her, the tragedy of the story gripped me nonetheless, and in my head I played out possible scenarios of causation, including alcohol poisoning and the object lessons this. (For the record, the article lists no cause for the death nor any reason to speculate drugs, alcohol, or any other self-inflicted cause; I only thought of that possibility because of empirical knowledge with such outcomes.)

With binge drinking an unfortunately prominent activity in South Korea and among some Koreans outside of South Korea, the K-blogosphere is always ripe for a fresh warning of the signs of alcohol poisoning (see the latter half of this post), so I went back a few days later to check on updates on the story. Still no updates, but in the comments section I found something entirely different that compelled me to write about it anyway.

From commenter "Joey":

this is horrible. I didn't know fan death existed in America too! My heart goes out to her family.

Well, Joey, your heart apparently doesn't go out to her family enough for you to forgo taking a wholly gratuitous dig at South Koreans in an article about their loved one's tragic death. I mean, really, Joey? You're just adding impishly imbecilic insult to unfathomable injury by your glib comment. ("Joey's" comment was only one of eight, so it wouldn't be hard to notice.)

It really makes me wonder what makes some people tick. What kind of people possess such antagonism toward Koreans that they ignore the humanity of their target group? I was all set to write a post on Internet anonymity in light of this New York Times article, with a requisite nod to this Marmot's Hole post from 2006 that suggests a concomitant problem among South Korean netizens, when along came this object lesson.

In the pantheon of insensitive anonymous drive-bys on the Internet, "Joey's" isn't all that outrageous. It wasn't nearly as egregious as what happened in this post about the brutal rape and murder of a Korean-American woman in Los Angeles, which quickly deteriorated into a maelstrom of bigotry and lewdness which saw long-time troll Mizar outed in the worst of ways (I explain this in more detail here).

But just imagine what these people's families or friends might feel when one of them inevitably runs across this crude response to their cherished one's death. Imagine how you might feel?

Hey, LG! Need a recognized celebrity with a famous face to do an endorsement?

How about Charles Manson? He'll apparently do anything to get his hands on an LG flip phone.

Maybe someone should slip him an iPad and put him on a "Think Different" billboard.

Yee ha! Free Trade Agreement re-agreed!

Good news for President Obama, President Lee, most folks in South Korea, loads of folks in the United States, and me (and probably you, too).

From AP, via WaPo:

The U.S. and South Korea have reached an agreement on a free trade deal sought by the Obama administration to boost American exports and create tens of thousands of U.S. jobs in the largest trade pact in more than a decade.

Negotiators reached a deal on outstanding issues related to the automobile industry, which have been a sticking point in the talks, said a person close to the discussions. The person spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of an official White House announcement.

South Korea is agreeing to allow the U.S. to lift a 2.5 percent tariff on Korean cars in five years, instead of cutting the tariff immediately. The agreement also allows each U.S. automaker to export 25,000 cars to South Korea as long as they meet U.S. federal safety standards and allows the U.S. to continue a 25 percent tariff on trucks for eight years and then phase it out by the 10th year. South Korea would be required to eliminate its 10 perent tariff on U.S. trucks immediately.

The "chicken tax" (the US's anachronistic 25% tariff on imported pickup trucks) still stands, and that could mean no Bongo trucks in Middle America, while the streets of Seoul will be filled with Hillbilly Hummers (aka, the Ford F150). Yee ha, indeed.

And of course, this doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. While Obama will probably have little real problem getting the FTA through a Republican-dominated House of Representatives and a barely Democratic-controlled Senate, President Lee will face the full force of the chinboistas and maybe the dung-flinging farmers (who are not entirely chinboista-sympathetic) when he tries to get it through the National Assembly. After all, their voice is their only veto.

This could get as big as the Mad Cow candlelight madness of 2008. Expect it to get at least as ugly as the protests against the Chile-Korea FTA (which often saw more farmers than chinboista).

More on the FTA agreement having been reached over at The Marmot's Hole, where a lively discussion will no doubt ensue.

Bomb, bomb, bomb... Bomb, bomb Pyongyang

The latest tough-talker in the talking tough parade is Kim Kwanjin, the Minister of Defense-designate, talking tough at his parliamentary confirmation hearings.

From the Los Angeles Times:

President Lee Myung-bak's choice for new defense minister said Friday that South Korean jets will bomb North Korea if Pyongyang stages an attack similar to last week's deadly artillery barrage.

The tough words came as Lee's government suffered intense criticism that the response to the North's Nov. 23 shelling on a South Korean island was weak, and over a stunning revelation that the South's spy chief dismissed information in August indicating North Korea might attack the front-line island.

Lee's nominee, Kim Kwan-jin, told a parliamentary confirmation hearing that North Korean aggression will result in airstrikes. He said South Korea will use all its combat capabilities to retaliate.

"In case the enemy attacks our territory and people again, we will thoroughly retaliate to ensure that the enemy cannot provoke again," Kim said. The hearing is a formality as South Korea's National Assembly does not have the power to reject Lee's appointment.

Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it. Such talk is dangerously cheap, and apparently very easy to come by. Why, take a look at what was said in December last year, months before the Ch'ŏnan was sunk and Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] was shelled:

Tensions have remained high in the Yellow Sea since a brief but intense gunfight on November 10 left a North Korean patrol boat in flames. There were deadly naval gunbattles there in 1999 and 2002.

The South's navy expressed regret at its neighbour's announcement [that North Korea would open fire in the "disputed" waters south of the NLL] and pledged it would "sternly" handle any provocations.

"We express grave concern as the threat ... raises unnecessary tension between the Koreas," a statement said late Monday.

"Our military is fully prepared to protect the NLL and it will sternly respond to North Korea's provocations."

Is "thoroughly retaliate" the new "sternly respond"? We're only encouraging further escalation if we talk tough but do nothing.

The link from last year is from the December 22, 2010, Daily Kor, which fell on National Haiku Day, so all the day's headlines were in haiku form. This was the headline from that story:

To the NLL

sails the dauntless ROK* Navy

Defend it, they shall 

* pronounced "rock" for that perfect 5-7-5 structure

Inspired by this very Zen-like circular repetition of the events of the world, here's a haiku for today:

New Min-Def says we,

"will muster more than bluster!"

Just more empty words?

Yeah, yeah, Kushibo. Don't quit your day job.

FTA negotiations: "Cows and cars" is now just cars?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that automobile tariffs are the last remaining sticking point in the renegotiations of the negotiations on the KORUS Free Trade Agreement:

U.S. and South Korean negotiators meeting to revive a stalled trade pact are down to one main sticking point, say people familiar with this week's negotiations—leaving the biggest U.S. free-trade deal in nearly two decades hinging on an economically negligible but politically potent issue.

The deal now comes down to whether South Korea will agree to give the U.S. four or five years to phase out the 2.5% tariff it levies on Korean-built cars, these people say, rather than cutting the tariff immediately, as Seoul has sought.

The article notes that normal currency fluctuations — like when something bad happens in China and then a day or so later when investors realize that South Korea is not in China — can themselves make such a small percentage irrelevant.

And here's an enthusiastic hat tip to Ben Muse and his Korea-US FTA blog, which has been doing a fine job of keeping up with the latest news while I've been preoccupied with schoolwork and Yŏnpyŏng-dong. Always happy to support a fellow Freak Stater.

UPDATE:
And the FTA renegotiations have succeeded!

Kate Bosworth schools America on the tough lives of Korean celebrities

The uber-cute Kate Bosworth is making the rounds, promoting her upcoming cowboys-and-ninja movie The Warrior's Way, in which she stars with Korean heartthrob and Taegŭkki: The Brotherhood of War star Jang Dong-gun [chang tonggŏn, 장동건].

This includes a stop on the show of some woman I've never seen nor heard of, to talk about her co-star who is "the Brad Pitt of Korea*."



The above video is just a teaser, and it's not the most sophisticated of Korean social commentary, but it would explain why we have so few celebrities in South Korea, say, showing off their red mango.

Gotta say, I've liked Kate Bosworth ever since Blue Crush, and she comes across as hella smarter than Jessica Simpson.

* I'm reminded of a line by Lisa Simpson: "Anything that's the 'something of something' isn't really the anything of anything." Not that I'm knocking Jang Dong-gun, whose choice of Romanizing his name — dong gun — is about as phallically powerful a celebrity/newsmaker moniker I've heard since Dick Pound. 

Did ROK military actually kick some butt during Yŏnpyŏng-do attack?

With much of the South Korean public angry that North Korea seems to have gotten away with murder, perhaps it was a good time for the Ministry of Defense to trot out some satellite pictures that painted a less one-sided picture of North Korea's attack on the South Korean island of Yŏnpyŏng-do [Yeonpyeong] last month.

From AFP:

Satellite images indicate North Korea might have suffered considerable casualties when South Korea returned fire after the North shelled its frontline island last week, a lawmaker said Thursday.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) presented to parliament an image taken by the South's own satellite and another one collected by an unidentified foreign commercial satellite.

Kwon Yong-Se, a ruling party lawmaker who chairs the intelligence committee, told reporters after the presentation that about 10 shells landed near the North's military positions on Mudo island.

The South's shells mostly landed between two clusters of barracks about 100 metres (330 feet) apart and some came close to one of the clusters.

"One of the shells hit the rear of the barracks. It is possible to assume considerable casualties occurred," Kwon said.

In light of the fact that the impact circle of the South's indigenous K-9 self-propelled guns is 50 metres, the impact is believed to have been considerable, Kwon said.

To my knowledge, North Korea has given no indication of whether it suffered any casualties or damage whatsoever, so a lot of this seems speculative.

And while indiscriminate shelling of barracks may not have been the most strategic of responses (or the most ethical, I suppose), it would (if true) send a message to the Pyongyang regime that they cannot emerge from such brazen attacks unscathed.

And that would be serious if they actually cared about the little people even in their own country.

No World Cup in South Korea in 2022

"The way things are going, we're not even sure they'll still be there," said FIFA.

Ah, just kidding. But FIFA did take a look at South Korea's bid, with its message that a Korea World Cup in 2022 could reduce regional tensions, and they decided it would be easier to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Qatar got the 2022 games, making it the first time the games will be hosted in the Middle East.

From Bloomberg:

Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup, overcoming concerns about high temperatures and lack of infrastructure to become the first Arab country to hold the most-watched sporting event.

Soccer ruling body FIFA announced the decision in Zurich today. The U.S., Australia, Japan and South Korea were the unsuccessful candidates. Russia was chosen to host the 2018 edition. The U.S. estimates that the tournament is worth $5 billion to the hosts.

Qatar, projected by the International Monetary Fund to have the world’s fastest-growing economy this year, plans to more than double the number of hotel rooms, build nine stadiums and refurbish three others and construct a rail and metro network for the tournament.

“It will probably be the fastest-growing economy in the world for a sustained period,” said Akber Khan, a director at Al Rayan Investment in Doha. The World Cup “will significantly accelerate massive infrastructure building in Qatar.”

Well, of course it will. Because a country with 1/30th population of South Korea probably doesn't have all those soccer stadiums in the desert left over from any previous global sporting event. Maybe they'll share with the neighbors, like Korea did with Japan in 2002.

Seriously, though, it will be nice to see the potential for regional cooperation at work in that volatile part of the world.

Pets left on Yŏnpyŏng-do being tended by animal welfare groups

I thought this Reuters story was kinda touching:

Hungry dogs and cats roaming the streets of the remote South Korean island shelled by North Korea last week, some of them injured, are being fed and tended to by animal welfare groups. ...

Most of the 1,600 residents of mountainous Yeonpyeong have fled, leaving their pets behind, but animal welfare groups have taken them food and administered first aid.

"We helped dogs with serious cuts from shell splinters," Park So-yeon, a member of Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE), told broadcaster YTN Tuesday.

"We also saved dogs with broken legs and little dogs attacked by other stray dogs."

Television footage showed a dog snapping eagerly at food on a street scattered with shattered glass and lined with damaged buildings. Others ate from bowls set inside doghouses.

Island residents said there were an estimated 200 dogs and cats on the island. Animal welfare workers said they had helped about 50 dogs and 10 cats so far.

"If you abandon dogs, and they produce puppies without peoples' care, they will become wild dogs. Then you will have to cope with a social problem with many stray dogs all around Yeonpyeong," said Jo Hee-kyong, head of the Korean Society for Animal Freedom.

While I have no doubt that some of the dogs on Yŏnpyŏng-do are poorly treated by North American standards (e.g., tied on short leashes, not getting out to walk, or even whacked on the head occasionally by inconsiderate owners), there has been a sea change in terms of attitudes toward pets. The fact that they're trying to rescue cats underscores that very point (not only because the animal rights folks are concerned about cats, but especially that there are people on the island who own them — the traditional folklore about cats sucking up the souls of recently departed people made them to freaky for most people to keep as pets up until recently).

This dog is okay; it's just sunning itself. Seriously.

World Cups

In a sign that maybe we're not really going to war with North Korea, Paraguayan model Larissa Riquelme (see here and here) has flown all the way to Seoul to go on three dates with three lucky men. [HT to KB]

"I traveled all the way across the Pacific and all I got was
sexually harassed by some stupid ajŏshi dropping a cell phone down
this lousy shirt."

I'm theorizing that this woman's immense popularity may stem from English-challenged Netizens imagining that "Riquel" in Riquelme refers to something nasty she's asking to have done to herself.

"Riquel me, baby! Riquel me hard!" Well, it makes sense in my head.

US-ROK naval exercises end; War profiteers complain drills were anticlimactic

Okay, we've apparently averted another war. At least for the next few weeks or so, when the ROK and US are thinking of planning some more exercises.