Category: Korea-Business

This is about the sanest comments I have heard about the Great Kimchi Crisis of 2005 between Korea and China:

He even said he liked kimchi:

China’s Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing has downplayed a growing trade rift with South Korea over the import of Chinese kimchi, saying he had no fear of eating the spicy cabbage dish loved by Koreans. “Three days ago when I was in Pyongyang, the capital of the DPRK (North Korea), I had very good kimchi, it was delicious,” Li told journalists.

“Two days ago in the capital of the Republic of Korea, Seoul, I had very good kimchi as well and the day before yesterday, when we were talking about the Middle East issue on the question of Syria at the United Nations (in New York) … I ordered kimchi.”

I doubt this will stop the Great Kimchi Crisis because of the domestical political reasons behind it in Korea, but at least someone is speaking sanely on this issue.

Unsurprisingly South Korean Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, one of North Korea’s useful idiots, has sided with North Korea over the current controversy between Hyundai and North Korea’s joint tourism projects:

Unification Minister Chung Dong-young met with Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun on Sunday to discuss a spat between the company and North Korea over a tourism project Hyundai Asan operates in the Kumgang Mountains.
A source connected to the matter said Wednesday the two discussed North Korean demands to reinstate Hyundai Asan vice chairman Kim Yoon-kyu, who was ousted over corruption charges, but the differences in opinion were wide. That suggests Chung asked for the disgraced executive to be reinstated.

It was the following day that Hyun posted a statement on the Hyundai Asan homepage saying that Kim had been removed due to corruption and rejected calls to reinstate the man who had for many years coordinated the tourism projects with the North.

I am beginning to like Chairwoman Hyun more and more. It is about time someone stood up to the Norks and blew off Chung.

It appears that the Hyundai tours to different North Korean locations may end:

Hyundai Group chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun on Monday publicly rejected a North Korean demand to reinstate Kim Yoon-kyu, the disgraced vice chairman of Hyundai Asan who had dealt with the North for many years in arranging their joint tourism projects. “I now seem to stand at a crossroads of whether to continue or quit our North Korea projects,” she said. Since Hyundai’s ouster of Kim, Pyongyang has applied pressure on the group by slashing the quota for the Asan’s Kumgang Mountains tours and blanking requests for negotiations on stalled projects to Kaesong and Mt. Baekdu. When Hyun visited the Kumgang Mountains, she says, authorities forced her to open her handbag, a gesture she interpreted as contempt, and she concluded, I’ll choose honest conscience rather than opportunistic servility.”

It is standard practice in inter-Korean economic cooperation to put up with Pyongyang’s demented behavior. That makes Hyun’s statement all the more significant. Her resolve not to allow North Korean pressure to meddle in her corporation’s managerial rights is the natural choice for a top executive, but in the reality of inter-Korean relations things rarely take their natural course.

I think this is great that someone is finally taking a stand and not kissing the North Koreans butts continuously. The Korean government can learn something from Chairwoman Hyun Jeong-eun. It is going to be interesting to see how this plays out.

The Japan Times is reporting that the Korean fishermen who were caught fishing in Japanese waters and were boarded by the Japanese Coast Guard, are accusing the Japanese Coast Guard of using excessive force.

Tokyo on Friday dismissed accusations that Japan Coast Guardsmen used excessive force when they boarded a South Korean boat suspected of poaching and roughed up one of its crew members.
“I think they acted correctly,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura said when asked if the coast guardsmen had acted unreasonably.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that a member of the fishing boat crew was hospitalized with injuries after he was beaten by Japanese authorities during the confrontation Wednesday.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said the coast guardsmen smashed the glass window on the door to the boat’s wheelhouse after the crew refused to unlock it and shut off the engine.

The order to cut the engine was a “necessary and minimum measure,” Hosoda said. “When the crew resisted, they got into a scuffle.”

South Korean patrol boats were summoned from off the southern city of Ulsan early Wednesday when Japanese patrol boats entered South Korean waters in pursuit of the fishing boat they said had been operating 8 km inside Japanese territorial waters.

The 77-ton eel boat Singpung-ho had refused JCG orders to stop and sailed off with two Japan Coast Guardsmen still on board. Japanese authorities contacted the South Korean Coast Guard, which helped stop the boat.

The similarities between this case and the 2002 subway incident continue. Make accusations of abuse and have pictures taken of you in the hospital to appeal to Korean nationalism to make it look like the big bad foreigners in this case the Japanese are beating down the Koreans again. A proven formula for getting out of trouble.

I would think that breaking the window of the boat to get the Captain to stop the boat would be reasonable since the boat was escaping with the Japanese Coast Guardsmen still on board. Plus when they did get in the cabin I’m sure the Captain wasn’t to helpful and resisted stopping the boat thus leading to the injuries he received. If he would of stopped the boat like he was directed he could of avoided any alledged injuries. He couldn’t do that though because then he would of been caught in Japanese waters.

So it was better to run with the coast guardsmen on board and get back into Korean waters where he knew nothing would happen to him and he could appeal to Korean nationalism against the Japanese, go to the hospital, claim abuse, and I bet he yelled “Dokto is Korea’s” at some point too for added emphasis of his innocence. I hope they make him pay the illegal fishing fine but that is about as likely as someone being arrested in the 2002 subway abduction.

UPDATE: Go check out Jeff’s site for some more info and clips from this car show and judge for yourself if it is specifically anti-Korean or not.
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Why do Koreans get so worked up about something like this? A British car show, Top Gear, that satires many automobiles poked some fun at Korean cars.

An industry official said that the program was relentlessly provocative, with presenters claiming that Korean cars were cheap because they were built with inferior materials and parts. At one point, viewers were recommended to opt for a two-year-old Volkswagen Golf instead of a new Korean model if they wanted to buy a cheap car.

The program hosts even brought a refrigerator on wheels into the studio, remarking that this was how cars were made in Korea.

On hearing the news, Korean carmakers such as Hyundai, whose “Getz” (Click) suffered concentrated derision at the hands of the program’s hosts, rapidly contacted their UK offices to confirm what was said and ascertain what the program’s intentions were.

In the case of Hyundai, Korea’s flagship carmaker, the firm was perplexed after it received a report on the matter from its UK branch, which played down the report by descibing the program as a purely entertainment-based show – more intent on making viewers laugh than conveying the facts.

The program doesn’t always pick on Korean cars either:

“The program dealt with our Tiburon and the Lexus SC430 during a recent broadcast, praising the Tiburon as the best sports car under US$100,000 [W104.1 million] while seriously deriding the Lexus.

“Despite this, not one famous foreign carmaker that has been slated on the program, including Lexus, has ever responded with a lawsuit or anything of that nature,” he added.

So Korea chill out I’m sure they have picked on American cars at some point to if they have picked on a quality car like a Lexus. No need to have candle light vigils and send the hackers to hit their website, or claim this is an insult to national pride. How about Korea make their own car show satire and make fun of Jaguars if that will make everyone feel better. Has anyone from Britian seen this show? I’m curious about what other cars they have picked on.