Some Korean university recently visited some USFK facilities not to protest but to learn:
The students were members of the South Korean nonprofit Community Mental Health Volunteers. It consists mainly of undergraduates training for careers in social work. They were drawn from around South Korea — Daegu, Daejon, Gwangju and Seoul.
“Everywhere, they were very impressed,†said host Hyun Jin-hee, a social worker for the U.S. Army at Camp Walker, and president of the CMHV’s Daegu-Gyeongbuk branch.
At the Child Development Center at Camp George, students were impressed with “every single detail, like safety, cleanliness, all the supervision,†Hyun said. “There’s a camera always monitoring the classrooms to make sure they can provide safety and right supervision for the children. Those details gave them an impression about how much we focus on safety and supervision, those concerns, for taking care of children.â€
Here is something I found amusing:
Taegu American School, also at Camp George, struck them with its broad range of extracurricular sports and arts activities and the number of computers and library books available.
“They were like, ‘Wow, they do lots of things other than studying,’†she said.
Yes there is more to high school than studying just like there is more to college in Korea than protesting outside a USFK facility.
The South Korean film industry is getting a taste of what censorship feels like for Hollywood in foreign markets:
The growing boom of South Korean soaps, films and pop songs in neighboring Asian states has had an unexpected and adverse effect on trade, government officials said Friday.
A high-level Vietnamese government official recently threatened to stop broadcasting South Korean television dramas unless the South’s TV networks introduce Vietnamese shows on a more equal basis, according to officials at the Korean Broadcasting Commission (KBC) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
“South Korean soaps are aired on Vietnamese TV channels on a daily basis but Vietnamese TV programs have a scant chance to
be seen by South Koreans,” the unnamed Vietnamese official was quoted as saying.
“We may stop airing Korean programs in Vietnam if the current imbalance is not alleviated.”
China is also getting in on the Hallyu bashing:
Vietnam’s rigid stance appears linked to China’s views on the surging “Korean Wave”, known locally as “hallyu”.
A campaign for opposing hallyu and supporting China’s entertainment industry is reportedly under way in mainland China and Hong Kong under the initiative of international superstar Jackie Chan and movie actor Zhang Guo Li. The two stars’ influence in China is diminishing due to the popularity of rising South Korean stars.
Yes, Korea you have come a long ways. You have your own Korean film bashers now. Maybe that UN law wasn’t such a good idea after all.
The South Korean and Swedish soccer teams tied 2-2 in a friendly held in Seoul:
South Korea did more than enough to suggest new coach Dick Advocaat has them on the right track when they drew 2-2 with Sweden in a friendly in Seoul.
The 2002 World Cup semifinalists took an eighth minute lead through Ahn Jung-whan but Johan Elmander equalized within a minute.
South Korea regained the lead in the 52nd minute through Kim young-chul and the Swedes again drew level six minutes later with a goal from sub Markus Rosenberg.
The Koreans’ early score came when Ahn Jung-whan controlled a Seol Ki-hyeon headed knock-down before rifling a left-footed volley low past Eddie Gustafsson from the edge of the box.
The lead was swiftly wiped out when Johan Elmander played a neat one-two with Niclas Alexandersson before slotting low into the corner of the net past a helpless Lee Woon-jae.
Sweden struggled to cope with the pace and movement of Manchester United’s Park Ji-sung and Tottenham’s Lee Young-pyo in particular and were fortunate to go in level at the break.
I have to agree with the CNN/SI analysis because the South Korean soccer team is playing better. I don’t know if it is because of Coach Advocaat or the great play of the above pictured Park Ji-sung who continues to dominate play. There is still a lot of time between now and the World Cup, but things definitely appear to be improving in Red Devil land.
The mayor of Gwangju Park Gwang-tae is upset that he got the extra security check at the San Francisco airport and had this to say in retaliation:
In a statement on Thursday, Gwangju City said Park and an 18-member group now in the U.S. to drum up investment were put through a thorough security check at San Francisco International Airport on Wednesday morning that lasted an hour and 45 minutes.
After everyone in the mayor’s entourage was subjected to an hour-long search, they were asked to walk through an ion trap mobility spectrometry test machine, while fellow American and Japanese passengers cleared security in about 10 minutes, the statement said.
“When even travelers carrying official passports are insulted like this, it is possible to imagine what kind of treatment ordinary Koreans get,†it quoted Park as saying. He vowed to demand that the U.S. withdraws patriot missiles deployed near Gwangju airport and apologizes for the incident.
The mayor blamed the Korean government’s “submissive attitude†toward the U.S. for the incident. “According to the diplomatic principle of reciprocity, Korea should carry out more thorough security inspections of Americans who come and go in Korea,†he added.
I often hear from Koreans that many people from Gwangju are idiots and commies and these kind of remarks from the mayor only reinforces that stereotype. The San Francisco airport says they were randomly selected for the security check, just like I have been randomly selected for the same security check at that same airport the last time I flew through San Francisco and I am an American citizen. I didn’t complain and moan like this guy. I actually liked the fact they were checking people. Also the fact that it took an hour and forty five minutes to get 18 people inspected is actually pretty good. That is a 6 minutes per person average if one person was checking all of the passengers.
As far as withdrawing the American forces from Gwangju, he would actually be doing them a favor because I’m sure the PATRIOT soldiers would love to go back to Osan and out of the land of the idiot mayor.
Something that continues to annoy me about the Korean media is their relentless pursuit of Korean heroes that some how justifies the superiority of the Korean race. The latest examples of this is the Korean-American who won the election for the mayor of Edison, New Jersey:
The son of a Korean who emigrated to the U.S. to run a dry-cleaning business for 20 years has become the mayor of the U.S. town of Edison, New Jersey.
Jun Choi on Tuesday won 50.5 percent of votes as Democrat Party candidate in the mayoral election. Choi becomes the first Korean-American to win a mayoral election on the U.S. mainland; former Representative Jay Kim is as one-time mayor of Diamond Bar, California, but he was not elected but handed a rotating appointment. Last year, a second-generation Korean-American, Harry Kim, was elected as mayor in Hawaii.
Running in a hotly contested race, Choi defeated his rival, independent candidate William Stephens, by only 270 votes, taking 12,800 out of 25,400 votes cast.
Mayor Choi’s election win was not a victory for the Korean race because he did not run for election to represent the Korean race. He is a 100% American citizen who wanted to take civic action in his howetown and ran for mayor and won. That is it, end of story. Why is this making international headlines in Korea?
The Korean media picks up and runs these stories because Korea suffers from what I call an inferiority complex. The memories of painful past history still runs deep in Korea thus creating this need to continuously show Korea as being important and developed in the world. This is why the Korean media reports every obscure poll or rankings that has anything to do with Korea. It is this same hunger that causes the media to lay claim to Korean heroes abroad no matter how remotely they are connected to Korea.
The media is not the only ones that panders to this inferiority complex. The public also shows signs of this inferiority complex by the amount of people seeking plastic surgery to look more like western women. Why can’t Korean women be proud of looking Korean?
I know I’m getting into a rant now and maybe I’m way off base but one day I wish Koreans would wake up and realize there is plenty to be proud of right here in Korea without laying claim to the next Michelle Wie abroad because she is already taken; she is an American.
For those interested in all things Buddhist; China is giving South Korea the finger, literally:
A relic believed to be the sacred finger of the Buddha left China for South Korea, where it will be on public display for just over one month, state media said.
The bone, said to be 2,500 years old and normally kept at the Famen Temple in the northwest Chinese city of Xi’an, will stay in South Korea until December 20, the Xinhua news agency reported.
It was previously loaned to Thailand in 1994, Taiwan in 2002 and Hong Kong in 2004, attracting massive crowds of worshippers in each location.
Millions are also expected to turn out in South Korea to see the priceless relic, according to Xinhua.
“This is an important event in the 1,600-year history of friendly relations between the two countries,” said Master Monk Sheng Hui, who is in charge of the finger’s escort while in South Korea.
“1,600 years of friendly relations?” He must of have forgot the numerous wars against China, the subservience and tribute former Korean Kings had to pay towards the Chinese, not to mention the 500,000 Chinese soldiers that charged down the Korean peninsula 55 years ago pro-longing the war and causing the division of the Korean peninsula.
As the APEC summit in Pusan is about the kick off the North Koreans made sure they made their presence known by dispatching to fighter jets to cross the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea:
“The South Korean radar system detected immediately that the North Korean fighter jets had flown across NLL,” a statement from the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said. “The South Korean air force mobilized six fighter jets to force them back into North Korea.”
It said the Northern planes turned back without responding.
A spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said by telephone the South was investigating whether the incident happened during military training or for another reason. North Korea is so short of aviation fuel that its air force pilots get scarcely any operational or training hours aloft.
The North has in the past sought to grab the limelight when South Korea hosts an international event. There was a naval clash in precisely the same disputed area during the 2002 soccer World Cup that South Korea co-hosted with Japan.
“The North Koreans always like to do something to upstage the South,” said Ralph Cossa, head of the Pacific Forum CSIS think tank, by telephone.
“This is the South Koreans’ premier moment to shine so you can almost guarantee the North Koreans will be doing something,” said Cossa, speaking before the fighter incident.
I wonder if they will kill a few South Korean sailors over the course of the APEC summit while their at it?
For those who don’t know yet the Marmot has moved back to his old site and I have since updated my links, but anyway he has a post that links to an interview the Oranckay got to participate in with the lone survivor of the 1996 North Korean spy sub incident:
The guy had been the submarine’s navigator, and had lived on a North Korean naval base since the age of 14. Subsequently he knew very little beyond daily life on the base, and he was unfamiliar even with what the rest of North Korea is like. For example, he didn’t know what money was. He’d never needed any. When the South’s intelligence agency was done interrogating him and it came time to give the poor guy some orientation about South Korean society, one of the questions he asked at the end was how some bills could have more value than others when they’re all the same size. Shouldn’t the paper that you can buy more soju with be bigger?
When I met him we were also in the presence of a lady, yet he frequently reached down and scratched or held his privates. He had a lot of questions for me even though I was there to interpret. Is South Korea so expensive because there are so many foreigners here? Does each star on the American flag representone of the wars it has won? What happens if you don’t have the money to pay for the subway? Do South Korean women like men who wear ties better than those who don’t?
Read the rest on your own but it is an enlightening look into the wonders of Juche.
Kim Jong Il thinks that women shouldn’t wear the pants in the family, literally:
North Korea’s communist government is urging women in the country to wear traditional Korean clothes instead of pants, according to a North Korean monthly magazine.
”Keeping alive our dress style is a very important political issue to adhere to specific national cultural traditions at a time when the U.S. imperialists are maneuvering to spread the rotten bourgeois lifestyle inside North Korea,” the Joson Yeosung [Woman] magazine said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency.
The magazine said exotic dress dampens the revolutionary atmosphere and blurs national sentiment and asked the public to reject clothes that aren’t North Korean style. Instead, it counsels women to wear Hanbok — the brightly colored, loose-fitting dresses that are traditional in the Koreas.
Maybe Kim Jong Il will not start demanding free hanboks from South Korea as well now.
