Recommendations?

I'm in Seoul until the end of the month, minus a side trip or two out of town. I have planned a long list of what's the same and what's different since I was last "home" (literally), which was three years ago (by far the longest I've been away from Korea since I was a teenager), but I'll do that another time.

In the meantime, I wouldn't mind some recommendations for places to eat, sip beverages, dance, read, or see cool stuff. So far I've been trying to fill my belly with food that is either impossible to find or prohibitively expensive in Honolulu and/or Orange County.

This has included decent samgyŏpsal (though, ironically, I wasn't a fan before), shrimp fried rice with jajang sauce (새우볶음밥) at a nice place not far from Yongsan-gu Ward Office, octopus pibimbap near the Dong-a Ilbo Building, etc. Nothing earth-shattering so far, and I'm on the lookout for some cheap shabu-shabu.

I may start poaching the restaurant suggestions at The Marmot's travelog, though probably not the mŏngmŏngtang.

Absent Yelp in Korea, any suggestions, recommendations, or inspirations? Online or off.

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Mickey Mouse et al visit a real-world Fantasyland

I hope these were just stolen costumes and not actual cast members kidnapped from Orange County, Tokyo, or Orlando and forced to dance for The Prodigious Progeny (i.e., Kim Jong-un).

At any rate, Mickey Mouse appeared in a country whose governance and economic characteristics bear his name. From the Boston Herald:

Performers dressed as Minnie Mouse, Tigger and others danced and pranced as footage from "Snow White," ”Dumbo," ”Beauty and the Beast" and other Disney movies played on a massive backdrop, according to still photos shown on state TV.

The inclusion of characters popular in the West — particularly from the United States, North Korea’s wartime enemy — is a notable change in direction for performances in Pyongyang. Actors and actresses also showed off new wardrobes, including strapless gowns and little black dresses.

In recent years, performances such as the "Arirang" mass games featured performers dressed as panda bears in homage to North Korean ally China.

This appears to be the first time Disney characters have been included in a major performance, though Winnie the Pooh and Mickey Mouse have been popular among children for several years. Backpacks, pencil cases and pajamas imported from China often feature Disney characters, and stories such as "Dumbo" have been translated into Korean for North Korean schoolchildren. However, it is unusual to make such images a central part of a North Korean performance and to publicize it on state TV.

Frankly, Minnie Mouse doesn't do a thing for me. I'd rather see more about the strapless gowns.

Whatever's going on up there (including the likelihood that these were not licensed appearances), it's telling that this kind of thing appears to be happening more and more in the DPRK. Perhaps the Swiss-educated KJU really does aim to bring more western exposure to the North.

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Will 4-D cinema from South Korea save American movie theaters?

This article in the Los Angeles Times is highlighting the "4-D moviegoing experience," which shakes, rattles, sways, and sprays moviegoers so as to add an extra sensory element or two — and perhaps a bit of motion sickness — to an evening at the cinema:

As the giant spaceship crashes into the mysterious planet, the seats inside the movie theater heave back and forth and rumble like an earthquake.

"Back ticklers" in the seats thump as an astronaut dodges fireballs and rolls on the ground. A strobe light flashes and huge fans expel gusts of air reeking of smoke and gunpowder.

"Back ticklers" in the seats thump as an astronaut dodges fireballs and rolls on the ground. A strobe light flashes and huge fans expel gusts of air reeking of smoke and gunpowder.

In the latest bid to attract moviegoers back to multiplexes, where 3-D -- featured in hits such as "The Avengers" and"Men in Black 3"-- is already the norm, technology and entertainment companies are pushing a new system known as 4-D.

At the leading edge of the technology is South Korean conglomerate CJ Group, which operates Asia's largest theater chain and has set up a laboratory near Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to demonstrate and market its 4DX system.

The 4-D experience is wowing fans in South Korea, Thailand and Mexico, where CJ Group has 29 specialty theaters that regularly screen big Hollywood titles such as"Avatar,""Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" and"Prometheus," which featured the crashing spaceship.

Now CJ Group is close to finalizing a deal with a nationwide U.S. chain to create nearly 200 4-D theaters in the next five years, with the first to open this year in Los Angeles, New York and several other major cities.

CJ Group executives say its 4-D venues already draw sellout crowds from Seoul to Mexico City, and they predict that U.S. audiences are ready to shell out an extra $8 for the new movie experience. They say 4-D technology will help reverse the longtime decline in cinema attendance in the U.S.

I have yet to watch a movie in such a theater, but I may try to catch Batman or The Avengers or something while I'm in Seoul, if they're still available. I just hope it's better and smoother than the nascent 4-D technology of the Taejŏn Expo back in 1990-something, which seemed Disney-derivative and a little jerky.

In 2012, this scene means the guy is watching a 4-D movie.
In 1982, it would have just meant there were a bunch of smokers in the theater. 

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Kim Jong-un’s girth isn’t the only thing growing on North Korea

It is quite notable that the DPRK, perhaps with some guidance from Benevolent Big Brother China, scored in 2011 its first economic increase in three years. 

I'll write more on this later, after I take in the glory that is the newly refurbished Dunkin' Donuts in Irate Won. 

bit.ly/N5P3r3

This succinct email was sent from my iPhone. 

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Sure, let's call Obamacare a tax: It's a "freerider tax"

Yep, it's a tax. It's a "freerider tax."Say it with me. Say it often. Spread that phrase until its a household term.

It's a penalty for those who won't get insurance despite the ability to pay for it or, for those with lower incomes, to get it subsidized or free after 2014.

Critics of Obamacare don't like to acknowledge this but the fact is that the uninsured do get lots of medical care, on average. In fact, about two-thirds that of the insured, and it is the insured, the hospitals, and the government that pays for much of that (though not all). And it's not just in terms of unpaid hospital bills that the rest of us suffer: with so many bankruptcies in the United States the result of medical issues, we as consumers are carrying those who are uninsured (as well as those whose insurance coverage falls short when catastrophe hits).

Basically, the two ways to fix this are (1) deny all care — including emergency care — to all people until they pay or show proof of insurance or (2) penalize/tax people who aggregately cost the system lots of money but who don't cover all of their own costs.

Unfortunately, the first method will lead to widespread death and injury, not only to the uninsured, but also to the insured who are delayed when they seek care until they can "show me your papers!"

So of course it's a tax. It's a freerider tax. That's why the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney saw it as a form of personal responsibility.

I'm all for allowing people to avoid paying the tax and uninsured at the same time, if instead they put up a bond of, say, $100,000, that will be used for their medical care, just in case. But let's stop kidding ourselves that these people are not costing the rest of us loads and loads of money.

Even if they all looked like this, freeriders wouldn't be worth
the hundreds of billions of dollars they cost the rest of us.

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In what version of reality would it ever be a good idea for Korea to propose the resumption of "scientific whaling"?

Dear Angry Reader: Yes, I know this is a picture of a protest against Japan and not South Korea, but that is part of the point if you will read past this shock-value photo of an anti-whaling demonstration. 

Despite the success of K-pop and the rest of the Korean wave, the warm-and-fuzzy image of South Korea the world now seems to have is still a bit tenuous.

And when the rest of the world sometimes confuses you with neighbors like China (which is bad), North Korea (very, very bad), Japan (mixed bag), or yourself in the past (potentially bad), we're talking tower-of-Jenga-blocks tenuousness.

And it is against that backdrop that I would like whichever Republic of Korea officials are responsible for South Korean proposals at the International Whaling Commission to please reconsider their proposal to resume so-called "scientific hunting" of minke whales.

See, when the BBC is reporting on you being a part of this loathed practice, that's a very bad sign:

South Korea is proposing to hunt whales under regulations permitting scientific research whaling, echoing the programmes of its neighbour, Japan.

Hunting would take place near the Korean coast on minke whales. How many would be caught is unclear.

The South Korean delegation to the International Whaling Commission (IWC) said the research was needed "for the proper assessment of whale stocks".

Many governments at the IWC meeting condemned the Korean announcement.

There are several different stocks, or groups, of minke whales in the region, and one of the them, the so-called J-stock, is severely depleted.

Given that fact, "we believe that scientific whaling on this stock borders on the reckless," New Zealand's delegation head, Gerard van Bohemen said.

But Joon-Suk Kang, the head of the South Korean delegation, said the programme was necessary to answer questions about minke whale stocks that non-lethal research had been unable to solve.

Questions they want to answer: Which minke whale stock is most delicious?

Korea's IWC proposal:
"It's a cookbook!"

Look, I get that down in Ulsan there is a history of whaling supposedly eight thousand years old, but even the froggiest of officials in the deepest of wells must realize that our buddies next door in Japan are hated around the world by many people because they keep trying to pursue "scientific" whaling where the carcasses of these giant sea mammals legally end up on dinner plates because it would be a shame for them to go to waste.

Why, oh why, would you want to drag Korea into that miasma of piss-poor international relations?

Let me put it another way, ROK officials at the IWC. Japan's obstinacy has been on display lately as diplomats and not just right-wing nut jobs try to pressure the United States to remove local memorials to the Comfort Women (brutalized World War II-era sex slaves, for those of you living in a wifi-less cave). Japan's unpleasant combination of boneheadedness and pigheadedness on that issue is exactly how much of the world sees Japan's intransigence on "scientific" whaling (it doesn't help that they kill dolphins in documentaries), and you would basically paint South Korea with the same blood-soaked brush.

Let me put it yet another way: If countries like Great Britain were willing to lead a boycott of the 1988 Seoul Olympiad over consumption of dog meat, do you think South Korea will be able to dodge threats of a similar boycott of the 2018 Pyongchang Winter Olympics? (One of the problems of hosting major international events is that it means your cojones are hanging right out in the open.)

Don't think for a minute that I am the only one who's thought of that. Ditto with campaigns against Hyundai, Kia, Samsung, and LG.

You can't win, ROK. If you strike me down, I shall become
more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

Ultimately you have to ask: Is it worth it? Is reviving or preserving the whaling industry in Ulsan worth the scathing bad press, tarnished national reputation, and potential economic losses that will likely be incurred from this proposal?

Sorry, even though I don't like other countries pushing South Korea around (and I see no small amount of hypocrisy that so many critics of whaling come from the US and the UK which hunted several species nearly to extinction), I have to say no on this one.

See, whaling conjures up notions around the world of brutal murder of not just sentient but highly intelligent creatures and thus it stinks of being morally wrong. And that means adding them to the list of such creatures your country kills for food is indelibly bad for the national image (as well as stinking of being morally wrong).

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Ads from the past

The Ilmin Gallery, at the site of the old Dong-a Ilbo Building near the start of the Ch'ŏnggyech'ŏn Stream, is hosting a stylized retrospective of advertising in Korea, going back to the 1890s.

I've lived in Seoul off and on since I was a teenager, and the stuff they had from the recently past decades certainly were a literal walk down memory lane.

It's fun to see how memes have changed but which themes have endured. One can even glean some of the messages focused on at The Grand Narrative, though there's not quite the heavy focus on skin and S-lines.

The venue itself is an interesting place, a tardy nod to historic preservation of Japanese Occupation Era buildings in a way that turns decades-old structures into useful museum spaces rather than simply being under-utilized museum pieces themselves.

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The more things change...

... the more some people are unhappy.

Not sure if these people were more in danger from the wave, the torrential rain that dumped Heaven's fury on them a short while later, or the hundreds of police in riot gear just outside the frame.

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Korean wave?

I suspect that I'm not the first to comment on this, but it's striking how much the new City Hall Annex looks like a giant wave about to crash onto the old City Hall built during the days of Imperial Japanese rule.

And it looks like the person in the lower right is running for her life. Maybe people who see in this design a tsunami will criticize Korea's cultural insensitivity, as some did regarding a certain misinterpreted city in the clouds.

UPDATE:
Yesterday I had tea at an oldie-time tabang-looking shop in the basement of the Press Building with a friend who works with the mayor. She says most City Hall employees she knows do not like the new building. Yes, they were mocking it in pretty much the same way I was, but they have other more practical complaints as well. And maybe they should start calling it 씨나미청.

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Ungrateful Koreans?

That's a meme that exists only because some willfully ignore stuff like this kind of random photo exhibition in front of the Donga Ilbo and deliberately interpret chinboista rants as if they represent all (which is, of course, the intent of the anti-American and pro-Pyongyang leftist chinboistas).

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Irate won

This is what Apple iOS5 tries to keep autocorrecting Itaewon into.

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South Korea to open Sejong City, the controversial new mini-capital

This is something the late Roh Moohyun had promised in order to get Ch'ungch'ŏng votes, and after a lot of hemming and hawing and Supreme Court overruling, it is now a dream coming true:

After a decade of wrangling, South Korea is set to inaugurate a new mini-capital seen by supporters as a developmental triumph and by critics as a classic pork-barrel project.

Sejong City will by 2015 house 16 ministries or agencies and 20 central government offices currently located in or near Seoul. More than 10,000 civil servants will work there when construction is completed.

The stated aim is to rebalance national development, in a country where Seoul and its satellite cities house almost half the population and account for almost half national output.

The new city, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Seoul, will formally open Sunday, with an inauguration ceremony Monday to be led by Prime Minister Kim Hwang-Sik.

But some 10 state bodies including the president's office, the foreign ministry, the defence ministry and parliament will stay in Seoul.

Kim himself will commute from Seoul for a while even after his office relocates to Sejong City in September. Critics say the split government will lead to wasted travelling hours and inefficiency.

The new city covers 465 square kilometres (186 square miles). A total of 22.5 trillion won (US$19.4 billion) -- including 8.5 trillion won in state funds -- is being spent on infrastructure, government buildings and homes for incoming residents.

I like the name "Sejong City," but I thought they should call it Komnaru (곰나루), the pure Korean for the Chinese characters in the region's name. But I'm weird.

Anyway, what are the over-under odds for how long it takes this new capital to become a cesspool of corruption and a den of iniquity?

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Obamacare prevails in Supreme Court(and Kushibo was never worried a bit)

"Sweet!" and sourpuss

So I was still in Honolulu when the announcement came that the Supreme Court had ruled mostly in favor of the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), although now I'm on a Hawaiian Airlines plane bound for Fukuoka. [NOTE: I actually posted this using the free wi-fi at Fukuoka Airport.]

Not only am I pleased Obamacare was upheld, but I am also pleased by the logic behind the ruling. Unlike the opponents of Obamacare who oppose it basically because it's Obama's, I don't see any reason why the Federal government — which already runs a mandatory national program like Medicare — shouldn't be constitutionally permitted to regulate the health care market (which not only crosses state lines but eventually includes virtually everyone, which undermines the "compelling commerce" argument).

But I was sympathetic to those who feared encroachment by the Feds: maybe it is a scary thing if the government can compel you to buy something you might not have bought otherwise (even if you should). There are two things about that, however. First, no one was actually compelled to buy anything: you could in fact opt out and simply pay a fee/fine/tax/whatever-you-want-to-call-it to cover your share of the aggregate cost incurred by those who cannot or will not insure themselves.

Second, and more important to Obamacare's critics who worried about a slippery slope of Federal power, SCOTUS's majority decision did not in fact rule that way: this decision does not provide precedence for the government compelling you to buy something. Not even for a "special" case like health care.

Instead, they did something that I had thought they should: they decided that the fee was a tax (which Congress has the power to levy) even though the tax (on those who refuse to get health insurance) was not called a "tax" for political reasons ("the health plan won't raise your taxes!"). It's the Supreme Court philosophy of "if it quacks like a duck" recorded in Acme International versus Scrooge McDuck (1959), and some other ruling about a company town functioning as a real town whose name now escapes me.

[UPDATE: The ruling I was thinking of was Marsh v Alabama, where the Supreme Court ruled ruled that a state trespassing statute (dealing with private property) could not be used to prevent the distribution of religious materials on the sidewalks of the privately owned company town of Chickasaw because the privately owned town essentially had all the trappings and functions of a typical town, where they would be considered public space. In other words, the Court determined that although it was not defined as "public" it essentially acted as "public" and therefore, as far as Constitutional rights and principles were concerned, it should be considered "public." In the current National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius that saw Obamacare pass Constitutional muster, I see the Court having done the same thing: determining that the "penalty" had all the trappings and functions of a tax even though it was not called a "tax" and therefore, as far as Constitutional rights and principles were concerned, should be considered a "tax."]

Constitutionally this is a win for those who were genuinely concerned about expansion of Federal power into your pocketbook. For those who were opposed to the ACA just because they don't like the commie Muslin "knee grow," well screw them with a garden hoe anyway.

Moreover, the one part of the ACA they should possibly have struck down was in fact overturned, the part about forcing the States to participate in Obamacare by threatening to withhold all Medicaid funds. I call this the "cojones-in-a-vice-grip ruling" because I didn't go to law school and I don't know the actual name.

Now, if you're still bummed out about having to buy insurance, you still have two options. Number one: Don't buy insurance. Just pay the fine that will help cover costs when you end up in the ER or you inadvertently become a vector who makes others sick (the movie Contagion still gives me chills).

Number two: Get your State to come up with a plan that covers as many or more people than Obamacare. You see, the critics didn't like to mention that any State can opt out (Hawaiei does).

As someone in the public health field, I'm excited. Not only does Obamacare target rising costs by addressing market failure quirks of the health care field, it also incentivizes preventive care. Ounces of prevention are generally cheaper than pounds of cure, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

Obamacare is not perfect. I think we need a public option to keep insurance providers in line and I think it is utterly foolish to not allow illegal residents to even buy into the insurance plans on their own. As things move along, it will require tweaks and fixes, and it would be best if Republicans and Democrats could come together, leave ideology at the door, and hammer out effective solutions. The core of the ACA, after all, was a conservative plan set forth by the Heritage Foundation. Like it or not, the GOP has a stake in its success.

I am now optimistic about the future. The United States has joined the ranks of the rest of the advanced world, including South Korea and Japan. "M," a public health student from Kansai, says this decision restored her faith in America. I think we will start to see a lot of health indicators change for the better.

In fact, I will make a bold prediction: a few decades from now, we will see members of the 2040s equivalent of the Tea Party holding up picket signs that read, "Keep the government's hands off my Obamacare!"

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