An unidentified man impersonating North Korean leader Kim Jong-un appears in front of the North Korean cheerleading squad during a Korea-Japan women’s ice hockey match of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, east of Seoul, on Feb. 14, 2018. He was removed by security officials soon after. (Yonhap)
Chloe Kim is America’s latest Winter Olympic star and this has caused the media to focus on the immigrant past of her father:
Chloe Kim
Seventeen-year-old Chloe Kim made headlines on Tuesday after she won gold at the 2018 Winter Olympics in the women’s snowboard halfpipe final with three incredible runs. And her devoted father has also found himself in the spotlight after his daughter’s spectacular show.
Jong Jin Kim watched from the grandstand at the base of the halfpipe with a sign that read “Go Chloe!” while shouting “American dream!” as his daughter made history.
Jong Jin Kim was an immigrant from South Korea who arrived in South Carolina in 1982 with just $800 to his name, reported CNN. His first job in America was a dishwasher at a fast-food restaurant before he graduated to cashier at a liquor store.
But had Kim’s family attempted to enter the U.S. under the administration of President Donald Trump, it is uncertain whether they would have been permitted.
During his January 31 State of the Union speech, Trump urged Congress to pass legislation that promotes “merit-based immigration,” describing it as a system that “admits people who are skilled, who want to work, who will contribute to our society.” [Newsweek]
You can read more at the link, but clearly Mr. Kim wanted to work and contribute to society. So the crux of the issue becomes he wasn’t a skilled worker when he entered the US. While in the US he studied and became a skilled worker later.
The New York Times has an interesting article published about the unsurprisingly tight controls put on the North Korean cheerleading squad that has been one of the media highlights of the Winter Olympics:
They are under tight control, entering and exiting the arenas staging the world’s biggest sporting event with minders who shield them from any interaction with strangers. In this very public bubble, they have been the source of endless, intense curiosity. And in their sheer numbers and with the surreal scenes they have created, they have garnered a level of attention — in competition venues and in the news media — that would make most Olympic athletes envious.
“This is another part of their charm-and-peace offensive,” said Duyeon Kim, a visiting senior fellow at the Korean Peninsula Future Forum. “If you look at the big numbers, that’s a spectacle.”
For all the scrutiny they have garnered, little is known about the cheerleaders.
On Monday, the squad rode for an hour and a half in eight buses — accompanied by six police cars — from a remote resort at the Inje Speedium, a racetrack complex in Inje County, along the foothills of Mount Sorak.
The cheer squad is occupying 108 condominium units there, with two people sharing a room in most cases, according to Kim Tae-eun, a spokesman for the Inje Speedium. There are 21 North Korean reporters staying in rooms there, too. Most units have two televisions with network and satellite channels available, Kim said.
The cheerleaders have been eating their meals in one of the ballrooms of the adjacent hotel, about 100 meters from their accommodations, Kim said. The women arrived for meals in staggered groups of 30 or so, with two older male chaperones accompanying each group. They enter the ballroom in neat, double-file lines, and when they are finished eating they line up again for the two-minute walk back to their rooms.
Such military precision has been one of the visual hallmarks of their visit this month. At the stadium on Monday, the North Koreans carried identical bags with cheering props, including the white-and-blue unification flag. They wore matching red snowsuits — which swished loudly as they walked in packs — and white sneakers that looked vaguely similar to Adidas. They yelled slogans about unity and sang old Korean folk tunes.
The North Koreans do not make a move without at least one other compatriot and a South Korean government monitor. Trips to the restroom before and after the hockey game, for instance, took place in groups. And the older North Korean men chaperoning the squad who left the stadium during the game for cigarette breaks did so in groups of three. [New York Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but could you imagine the political problem for the Moon administration if one of these cheerleaders was able to defect?
Here is how scholar Michael Madden interprets a recent picture of Kim Jong-un with the North Korean delegation that recently returned from the Winter Olympics:
Hiding the notebooks behind their backs and thus clasping their hands in the Supreme Leader’s presence would be interpreted as highly disrespectful.
On the other hand, there could be a degree of spontaneity. Perhaps, meeting done, the photo session was impromptu and Mr Choe and Mr Ri did not have time to put their notebooks down.
We don’t know if the meeting was lubricated with wine toasts or liquors. Choe Hwi is relaxed and bemused, while Ri Son-gwon (being a former military intelligence officer) almost cracks a smile, in contrast to the fairly tense expression he wore throughout the weekend in the South.
Closer to Mr Kim, we find Kim Yong-nam holding hands with the North Korean leader.
There is an act of respect and deference on Kim Jong-un’s part as he is the one holding Kim Yong-nam’s arm.
On Kim Jong-un’s other side, again in an act of respect, Kim Yo-jong clutches her brother’s arm, like other officials that are subordinate to him. The Supreme Leader, when we look closely at his face, is amused at the whole scene. There is a subtle transparency here. (……)
The recently released photo is intended to show the more relaxed, freewheeling aspects of the North’s top leadership. It softens some of the sharp edges and shows a youthful leader so confident in his role and position in the regime that he is ready to deal with the South. [BBC]
North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un shakes hands with Jang Ryong-sik, chief conductor of the Samjiyon Orchestra which recently performed in the South, in this photo capture from the North’s Korean Central TV on Feb. 13, 2018. The North Korean art troupe had stage two performances during its visit to celebrate South Korea’s hosting of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. (Yonhap)
Unsurprisingly South Korea is hosting the Winter Olympics at an enormous financial cost to the country:
Leave it to Andrew Zimbalist to throw cold water on an even colder Winter Olympics. The Smith College economics professor and long-time Olympics skeptic hopped on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” to spill the beans on the pitfalls of the PyeongChang Games.
The most stunning nuggets? That South Korea is staring down a loss north of $10 billion for hosting this year’s international festivities.
“At the end of the day, they spent $13 billion. They’ll get back about $2.5 billion,” Zimbalist said. “The only way you can justify that kind of a terrible balance is if, in the long run, it’s going to promote tourism, promote trade and promote foreign investment.
“There’s no evidence from other Olympics that that might happen.”
That astronomical bill stems, in part, from building scantly used Olympic venues — and not just the $109 million ceremonial stadium in PyeongChang. The organizers also spent untold sums to clear 58,000 trees from a sacred forest on Mount Gariwang, where the Alpine skiing course was subsequently constructed.
Beyond that, South Korea spent billions on infrastructure to connect PyeongChang to the South Korean capital of Seoul. Even with the addition of high-speed rail, the commute still clocks in close to two hours.
Some of these costs might be justifiable if the host country’s citizens were enthusiastic about snow and ice activities. But to hear Zimbalist tell it, “The South Koreans are not very fond of winter sports in general.” [Yahoo Sports]
You can read more at the link, but the article goes on to explain how only 60% of the tickets for the events have been sold showing how little interests locals have in the games. What is even sadder about this economic loss is that the biggest winner of the Winter Olympics has so far been North Korea with their propaganda coup all at the ROK government’s expense.
Below is an excerpt from ROK Drop favorite B.R. Myers who takes on Kim regime apologizers in regards to their recent military parade right before the start of the Olympic Games:
We have also been hearing that the parade of February 8 has nothing to do with the Olympics because a) the restoration of this day for commemorating the KPA’s founding took place in 2015, after a 37-year interval, and b) 2018 marks a “round” year in special need of a big splash. The obvious retort is to ask why the Kim Jong Il regime, for all its militarism, saw no reason to restore the holiday in time for the much “rounder” anniversary in 1998. Besides, in 2015 everyone already knew when and where the 2018 Winter Olympics would take place.
In line with an older tradition of South Korean apologism is the effort of the Unification Minister and other Pyongyang watchers to argue that the parade is no cause for alarm because these displays of resolve and might are merely for “domestic propaganda use,” for “unifying the North Korean people,” or for “maintaining the system.”
This recalls the wishful approach to propaganda with which many foreigners and even German Jews deceived themselves in the first years of the Third Reich. “Anti-Semitism,” they argued, “is too central to the legitimacy and popularity of Nazism for the regime not to profess it constantly in the strongest terms. Were Hitler to give the Judenhetze a rest even for a month or two, the public backlash would be swift and harsh. Yet we aren’t to worry too much, because he can’t possibly intend to act on that nonsense.”
If anything, the South Korean variant is even more irrational. After all, what the Nazis were planning was without precedent, whereas that same North Korean military whose founding is to be celebrated on February 8 once came very close to destroying the Republic of Korea. [B.R. Myers]
You can read the rest at the link, but it is pretty convincing that this parade was organized specifically as a response to the Winter Olympics being hosted in South Korea since it wasn’t celebrated as a holiday until 2015. The regime knew when the Winter Olympics were going to occur and this holiday fit nicely with the timeline. If Park Geun-hye was still president I am sure the parade and rhetoric would have been more threatening to an external audience, however with President Moon in power they toned it down by North Korean standards.
Myers in his article goes on to explain how the regime must continue with bellicose rhetoric and threats domestically especially during a charm offensive like they are doing now with the Olympics. The rhetoric and threats like this parade are used to remind North Koreans that final victory will only come through military strength that will defeat the evil American imperialists and their ROK lackeys.
It is this mentality which after the Olympics is over I suspect at some point the Kim regime will return to provocative behavior. However, instead of blaming the ROK government they will likely try to blame the US in an effort to inflame anti-Americanism in South Korea. The narrative will likely be that the Kim regime has tried to be peaceful and work towards unification during the Winter Olympics timeframe, but the evil American Imperialists continue with their aggressive behavior. This will justify them conducting more nuclear and missile tests.
The earliest flashpoint to promote this narrative will be the Key Resolve military exercise coming up reportedly a month after the Winter Olympics are over. This is assuming the exercise happens with reports that it may be cancelled. Either way the Kim regime wins because both scenarios advance their effort to separate the ROK from the US.
That didn’t take long for joint women’s hockey team to get eliminated:
Goalie Shin So-jung of the unified Korean team (R) looks at the puck after allowing a goal in a women’s preliminary round ice hockey game at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics at the Kwandong Hockey Centre in Gangneung, 240 kilometers east of Seoul, on Feb. 12, 2018. The joint Korean team lost 8-0, suffering a preliminary round exit. (Yonhap)
The joint Korean women’s hockey team was eliminated in the preliminary round at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics on Monday, following its 8-0 loss to Sweden.
Korea suffered its second straight loss in Group B play, at Kwandong Hockey Centre in Gangneung, site of all ice events during the Olympics, two days after falling to Switzerland 8-0. The shots were 50-19 for Sweden.
Korea needed to finish in the top two in Group B to reach the knockout stage. And with the two losses, it won’t get there regardless of the result against Japan in Group B finale on Wednesday, which will also take place at Kwandong.
Sweden, which earlier beat Japan 2-1, and Switzerland have two wins apiece. They’ll clash on Wednesday at Kwandong with the top seed at stake. [Yonhap]
You can read more at the link, but the women’s hockey team was not expected to do much in the Winter Olympics. With that said I have to wonder how much the fact that the North Koreans were added to the the team just a few weeks before the Olympics impacted their play? The team is getting drubbed and has not scored a goal yet.
