Playing tourist (updated)

I'm starting my weekend early by playing tourist. After getting free samples at Dole Plantation and ruining my favorite white tee with plum powder and 파인주스, we have headed to the North Shore for shrimp scampi at Giovanni's Shrimp Truck. 냄새 좋아 ...

UPDATE:
After viewing sea turtles coming ashore at Laniakea Beach (photos forthcoming), we headed for historic Haleiwa for a shave ice at Matsumoto's and then a coconut latte at Coffee Gallery (which closes at 8 p.m. but leaves their wifi-equipped lanai open indefinitely, a cool business model methinks).

This was followed by a delicious ahi (tuna) burrito at Cholo's Homestyle Mexican Restaurant (supposedly the best Mexican food on Oahu, which is a bit like being the best Mexican food in Seoul). While the ahi burrito did not taste like authentic Baja California cuisine, it was still incredibly good (very tender ahi, which tends to dry out when you cook it, which is why I prefer it as sushi).

UPDATE 2:
I should point out that the itinerary was all the work of "M," who is quite adept at figuring out interesting places to go on this island. I don't think it would have occurred to me to spend a leisurely day doing these things without her prodding.

Also, I had no idea Laniakea Beach was such a great site for viewing sea turtles. I had driven by there a number of times on the way to Waimea Bay (which has a great rock for jumping off of, and is a fun place to watch high waves crash during the winter months), but I assumed all the people standing there were just plain old tourists doing plain old touristy things. Is it my fault sea turtles are hard to see from Kamehameha Highway?

The world's fastest growing mobile market

From the San Francisco Chronicle, news of an incredible wireless communications venture: They provide full 3G coverage across the country for just a few bucks a month... with 18,750% growth over the past three years...

Hey, sign me up for service... and call my broker and get me some of them stock!

Oh, wait. It's North Korea.

I guess the leftists at the SFC are getting a jump on welcoming our new Juche-exporting overlords.

Anyway, I'm thinking Orascom's North Korean adventure is a good thing. 300K subscriptions means there is one cell phone for every eighty people, and that number is growing. Simply put, the more subscribers there are, the harder it is for the authorities to monitor communications.

And while most or nearly all the current subscribers are regime loyalists, if events go sour in such a way that it turns people against the dynasty or the party or whatever (as they have done for much of the peasantry), then — boom! — you've got an instant means of communication for the opposition. Indeed, the Egypt-based Orascom may very well be paving the way for North Korea's own version of a popular uprising somewhere down the Jasmine Revolutionary road.

UPDATE:
Cell phones come with texting, so this is as good a place as any to link to my handy-dandy list of North Korean emoticons.

American held in North Korea is identified as kyopo

In a follow-up to this story, we get a report that North Korea has identified the American citizen they are holding.

From the New York Times:

North Korea said Thursday that it had arrested an American citizen, identified as Jun Young Su, in November for an unspecified crime against North Korea and was preparing to indict him, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. North Korea has informed American officials of the arrest, it said.

Earlier I was guessing the detainee, based on past incidents, was a kyopo religious zealot. So now that he's been confirmed to be a kyopo, the question is whether we can check off the religious zealot box.

I can't seem to find it in North Korea's English- or Korean-language news sources, but that may simply be because it hasn't hit their news cycle yet. I'm assuming, for the time being, that "Jun Youn Su" is 전영수. Dang, I hate the space-between-syllables way of writing out Korean names.

Anyway, the China Daily is reporting, through Xinhua, that Mr Jun has "admitted his crime":

The US citizen Jun Young Su detained in Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) recently admitted his crime against DPRK after entering it, the official news agency KCNA reported on Thursday.

Jun Young Su has admitted his crime in the course of investigation conducted by a relevant organ, according to KCNA.

The US side was informed of this through a relevant channel and necessary humanitarian conveniences including consular contact are being provided to him through the Swedish embassy here which looks after US interests, said the report.

The relevant organ is making arrangements to indict him according to the confirmation of the charges against him, the report added.

Jun Young Su was arrested in November 2010.

Reading comprehension question: Did you catch what his crime was? It seems this Xinhua release was penned by the same person at the National Museum of China who explained in detail all about the Cultural Revolution. I'm guessing the crime might be entering the DPRK itself (North Korea is a bit like Norteamérica that way).

The guy issuing a confession must mean Carter is already on his way.

Dirty money

It must be a slow news week, because I keep seeing this news everywhere:

South Korean police have dug up a stash of 11bn won ($10m, £6.2m), most of it buried in a garlic field, reports say.

The money is believed to be the proceeds of an illegal internet gambling operation, for which one of two brothers is already in jail.

Their brother-in-law helped out by burying the cash, and then helped himself to some of it, police said.

When he then accused a landscaper of stealing a chunk of cash, police moved in and unearthed it, they said.

Television footage has shown police pulling out two dozen containers, each brimming with cash.

In addition to the BBC above, you can read the same story at AFP, Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Christian Science Monitor. So to liquor store owner, massage parlor worker, party girl, and suicidal offspring of a Tiger Mother, add Internet gambling ring operator and burier of ill-gotten gains in garlic field to the list of stereotype memes of Koreans. 


Oh, and obligatory dumb joke: No, Mr Lee, that's not the way to make your money grow.

Another American detained in North Korea

Oh, God. Not another one. I hope this man (detained since November?!) isn't another friend of Robert Park — or Robert Park himself (oh, wouldn't that be a hoot?). I can just see a savvy kyopo religious zealot getting legal permission to enter the country under the auspices of conducting business, and then handing out Bibles or "What would Yesunim do?" bumper stickers.

Luckily for him, Jimmy Carter is already on his way to Pyongyang (AFP story here), so his time in the Pyongyang Palazzo may be short-lived.

UPDATE:
If this is something quite different from what Robert Park, Aijalon Gomes, or even Lisa Ling and Euna Lee, I will issue a retraction regarding my snarky suggestions above. But for now, all cases of Americans getting detained in North Korea have involved stupogance and/or a Moses complex.

UPDATE 2 (Thursday, April 14, 1:02 p.m.):
North Korea has released the name of the man they're holding, Jun Young Su. And he has apparently confessed what he did wrong.

The new image of Seoul: girls, drinking, and sannakchi

And, um, red-light districts.

This video of Morgan Webb going to seoul for "Attack of the Show" is a year old, but I only just saw it today (while doing a research on live baby octopus):

Another President Fujimori?

Keiko Fujimori, the thirty-five-year-old daughter of Peru's imprisoned former president, Alberto Fujimori, came in second in the first round of voting in that South American country.

Her opponent is a leftist who promises to redistribute wealth, so there's a good chance that those who voted against Ollanta Humala this time around will rally around Ms Fujimori on June 5. That is, in fact, how her father first one the presidency in the 1990s.

I find Peru's politics interesting for two reasons. First, it demonstrates the relative acceptance of the descendants of East Asian immigrants, particularly from Japan. Second, and more importantly to me, the run-off system employed there provides one viable alternative to South Korea's win-by-plurality system, in which a relatively unpopular candidate can still win if more popular (or less offensive) politicians from different parts of the spectrum fail to decide on a single candidate.

Hear no evil dictators being deposed, see no evil dictators being deposed

China has taken up the challenging of blocking information about the so-called Jasmine Revolution, even going so far as to block Internet searches for those terms. North Korea has a bit of an easier time, since it has a far tighter control over the far fewer percentage of its population that has access to the Internet, which is more like an intranet.

But we GenXers remember a time when pixels and bytes were not the only means by which information flowed. There was television and radio, of course, and the Pyongyang regime has long been on top of that. But there are also those fleshy biological units known as people, and they have been known to pass along uncomfortable facts that undermine faith in their despotic government.

For the Kim Jong-il, the take-away message is that if you give up your nukes and play nice the US will invade; he doesn't want the North Korean people's take-away message to be that the only way you'll get rid of a dynastic regime that has ruled with an iron fist for decades with no end in sight is to rise up and start shooting at the rulers' soldiers.

And it is against that backdrop that North Korea has told its worker in war-torn Libya not to come back. Stay where you are.

From Yonhap:

North Korea has ordered its people in Libya not to return home, apparently out of fear that they will spread news of the anti-government uprisings in the African nation, a source said Sunday.

In a letter sent to the North Korean embassy in Libya, Pyongyang ordered its people to "follow the measures of the Libyan government" and not return home, said the source familiar with North Korea affairs.

As AFP notes, Libya and North Korea "have maintained close diplomatic ties." Consequently, there are hundreds of North Koreans in Libya, performing duties as doctors, nurses, and construction workers, as well as in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.

Frankly, if this is the kind of thing Pyongyang is worried about, the North Korean workers may be better off in Libya even as things get out of hand there. Were they to return and the DPRK authorities decided they were a contagion, God only knows how they might be "contained." Perhaps South Korea, the US, and Japan should work on helping the North Koreans find a safer place to go.

The Good, the Bad, and the Difficult-to-Undertand

Now that Jerry Brown is back in Sacramento, Arnold Schwarzenegger is free to return to Hollywood.

And the Korea-related tie-in? He's set to play a border town sheriff in a movie directed by Kim Jee-woon, who directed The Good, the Bad, and the Weird (which I shall make my way through on Netflix sometime this month):

Sources say the actor-turned-governor-turned-returning actor is in advanced negotiations to play a bordertown sheriff in an indie crime thriller titled "The Last Stand." The talks could still fall apart over money issues.

The story is set in motion when a cartel leader breaks out of a courthouse and speeds to the Mexican border. The only thing standing in his way is the sheriff and his inexperienced staff.

The project will be directed for Lionsgate by Jee-Woon Kim, the filmmaker behind the Korean movie "The Good, The Bad, The Weird." The studio hopes to begin shooting in August.

We'll have to see if he's still cut out for action films. Harrison Ford was capable enough in Indiana Jones 4, and Arnie's character need not be a body-building bad boy in order to be believable. In the superb Copland, Sylvester Stallone played it large and came across as very authentic.

After anti-climactic meet-up in Pyongyang, Kim Jong-un is still The Kim Who Wasn't There

These protesters are opposed to Kim Jong-un sporting a tilaka.
Such a third eye would give him incredible insight and power.

It was supposed to be the big one, following the other big one.

While the grand meeting of the DPRK's Korean Workers' Party last fall was supposed to see Kim Jong-un, Dear Leader Kim Jong-il's third son, anointed the next leader of North Korea, what we saw instead was KJU promoted to four-star general (even though he'd never served in the military) and made co-chairman of the powerful military commission. We finally saw his face but there was no coronation or even official acknowledgement to the North Korean people that this "also in attendance" Kim Jong-un was the son of their leader.

But just you wait until next time, we were told. Back in the fall it was too early for both his coming-out party and his consecration as the next leader. Come spring, when they meet again, his ascension will be complete. Just you wait.

Indeed, early this week we had a number of media outlets talking up how this next meeting will see Kim Jong-un officially named successor:

The North Korean leadership will meet on Thursday as reports surface that Kim Jong-Il might be handing his son a powerful government position, according to the Yonhap news agency from South Korea.

Donald Kirk at Asia Times even reported on reports of pre-succession purges:

Word from a cast of sources, official, unofficial, from defectors and others with occasional contacts into the North over Chinese cell phone systems, is that the Kim dynasty is getting rid of anyone who looks vaguely suspicious of the succession process.

Dear Leader Kim Jong-il, now accompanied almost all the time on visits to factories and military units by third son and heir presumptive Kim Jong-eun, is said to be hastening the purge in the run-up to 2012. That's when Kim, father and son, celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth, on April 15, 1912, of the founder of the dynasty, Great Leader Kim Il-sung.

Analysts here see a parallel between the current purge and that conducted by Kim Jong-il after his father's death on July 8, 1994. "They executed people when Kim Jong-il took over," said an academic contact here. "They always have to conduct a purge when there's a change in power."

But like so much of the news about The Kim Who Wasn't There, this turned out to be a whole lot of nothing:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s youngest son and heir-apparent wasn’t mentioned in a list of new Cabinet members today, signaling that the dynastic transfer of power isn’t likely to happen soon.

Kim Jong Un, thought to be in his late 20s, was given his first posts within the ruling Workers’ Party in September, paving the way to become North Korea’s next leader. His name didn’t feature, though, in government appointments approved at a parliamentary meeting, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. The Supreme People’s Assembly did agree on next year’s budget and a new security minister.

A funny thing about how they worded this. The KCNA didn't say, "Kim Jong-un's name didn't appear on the list." Rather, they simply release the list and say nothing bout Kim Jong-un or any of the other dozens of names. The way the above is worded, it sounds like the KCNA is focusing on KJU as much as South Korea, Japan, and the West are, but in fact they are not.

The BBC also carried the story:

A rare session of North Korea's parliament, seen as an opportunity to reveal more about political succession, has failed to mention leader Kim Jong-il or a son tipped to replace him.

Observers had been looking for clues that the son, Kim Jong-un, would lead a smooth transition as his father ails.

But state media made no mention of either man.

The rubber-stamp Supreme People's Assembly agreed to "remarkably increase" production.

Analysts of North Korea's opaque politics had thought he would be appointed to the National Defence Commission.

However, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) did not mention whether Kim Jong-il or his 28-year-old son attended the session, nor did it include the younger Kim in its mention of appointments.

I have been sounding the horn since last year that the Kim Jong-un ascension is much ado about nothing, and some media outlets have finally come around. But the others are still beholden to that idea, and now that Kim Jong-un didn't get promoted at all apparently, they're scrambling for an excuse or altering their story to save face:

“Not getting elected to a government post doesn’t threaten Kim Jong Un’s status as the next leader,” said Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “It just means that Kim Jong Il is confident of his health conditions to remain leader and that he will take the time he needs to raise a successor.”

All right then. What's probably going on is that Kim Jong-il wants his son to be his successor — family dynasty and all — but there's palpable opposition to (a) continuing what is becoming increasingly clear is a failed regime and (b) putting the country in the hands of an inexperienced dictator.

And there may be pounding at the gate soon. The populace itself is seriously disgruntled, first from losing their life savings in the Great Currency Obliteration of 2009, and now from the prospect of immense hunger.

The death of Kim Jong-il is the chance they've been waiting for, methinks, and while they'd like to secure their own comfort and safety, the purges have made it increasingly clear that that's not the way to achieve those goals. Supporting his third soon would be more of the same, or worse.

I shall repeat for those who came late, but what's going on here is that the speculative media in South Korea, the US, Europe, and Japan, seeking to fill a gaping chasm where information should be but isn't, has been talking up the succession of North Korea. In the meantime, they have utterly ignored the real story, which is that China is pushing for North Korea to follow Chinese-style reforms so that North Korea can be integrated into China's Manchurian northeast (and its ports used for Manchurian goods).

UPDATE:
Chris Green at Destination Pyongyang, while apparently co-opting my The Kim Who Wasn't There™ sobriquet for Kim Jong-un, has some insightful thoughts on why Kim Jong-un will may not be able to take his father's path to power.

Obama news from the Aloha State

For starters, a state appeals court here in Hawaii has reaffirmed the denial of a request to inspect and review President Barack Hussein Obama’s birth certificate that would prove (or disprove) that he was born here in Honolulu:

In a 3-0 vote, the Hawaii Intermediate Court of Appeals upheld a 2009 ruling by then-state Circuit Judge Eden Elizabeth Hifo, who dismissed the lawsuit by a man identified as “Dr. Robert V. Justice,” who represented himself. He listed a Beverly Hills, Calif., address on his court papers.

In his legal brief to the appeals court, Justice wrote the inspection of the birth certificate will “ensure the health and safety of all 300 million of us by making sure that our military and our nuclear and chemical arsenals are still under our control and not in the control of any one of our enemies.”

The appeals court said Justice sought the review under the state open-records law requiring the disclosure of documents based on a showing of “compelling circumstances affecting the health or safety of any individual.”

A win for Obama. A win in part because it will make the birthers keep outing themselves as nutters, with Donald Trump doubling as their leader and Exhibit A.

A loss for Obama? His golfing buddy and school chum has been arrested for prostitution:

A regular Hawaii golfing buddy and Punahou School friend of President Barack Obama was among four people arrested Monday night during a prostitution sting operation in Kakaako by Honolulu police.

Waialua resident Robert Richard “Bobby” Titcomb, 49, was arrested at South and Pohukaina streets at 9:40 p.m. Monday.

Titcomb was charged with prostitution and released after posting $500 bail at 11 p.m. The offense is a petty misdemeanor that carries a $500 fine. People convicted may also face probation, community service or up to 30 days in jail.

The area is close to a massive homeless shelter, which makes me think Barry's bud was slumming it, so to speak. Kinda dumb, when the authorities have been cracking down on homelessness in a big way, scrutinizing anyone who isn't in the shelter.

I did not take this photo.
I am too chicken.

Really, if you're going to go to a prostitute in Honolulu, just head to Waikiki. They're easy to find, walking along main streets and mingling with the tourists, and apparently they don't try all that hard to cover up what they're doing.

In fact, one of the funniest things I've ever seen in Honolulu was when I was walking back to my car from the Apple Store at the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center. There was a woman, obviously selling her services, talking very loudly to a man that appeared to be a middle-aged Japanese or Korean tourist, yelling for all to hear, "No, I told you, I don't accept credit cards!"

Should you or should you not get a Mac in Korea?

Over at seoul space, Erik Cornelius, a self-described "Mac fanboy," provides a nice overview about the reasons to use — or not — a Macintosh in Korea.

Like Mr Cornelius, even though I love Macs for myself, I don't necessarily recommend that everyone should get them.

In addition to the considerations he lays out, a lot of it has to do with whether or not you have knowledgeable people around you who use one or the other. That makes a huge difference.

The slow death of ActiveX and the rise of Apple-friendly iPhones in South Korea may negate some of the reasons not to get a Mac in Korea, but for now, there are some good reasons to join the Windows-using Borg. Back when I set up an office for my fledgling company in the early 2000s, I did have to supply the office with one XP-running computer for those Windows-only programs (HWP in particular) that we couldn't avoid. It was an "Orange" computer, which led us to jokingly referring to the office set up as Apples and Oranges.

Power to the (Iraqi) people!

A consortium of South Korea's industrial heavy hitters has secured a $3.125 billion contract to build twenty-five power plants in Iraq:

The consortium includes major South Korean industrial firms such Hyundai Heavy Industries Co., STX Heavy Industries Co. Ltd, Doosan Heavy Industries and LG, Mussab Al Mudaris said.

The deal, which was signed by Iraqi Electricity Minister Raad Shalal in Baghdad Wednesday, would include installing 25 power plants in various parts of Iraq with total production of 2,500 megawatts, Mr. Mudaris said. The power stations should be up and running by the summer of 2012, he added.

It's a win-win, I suppose, aimed at curbing the rolling brownouts that still occur (?) in that war-ravaged country, while South Korea gets a bit of quid pro quo for sending a fairly large contingent of soldiers (the third largest in the coalition, after the US and the UK) who helped improve infrastructure in the north, mostly out of harm's way (which was the only way South Korea's then-president Roh Moohyun would go along).