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Tweet of the Day: Tropical Storm Threat to South Korea

https://twitter.com/SouthKoreaDaily/status/630435412230586368

Picture of the Day: North Korean School Bus

The local school bus: Kids stack on top of one another for transit.  [Business Insider]

Tweet of the Day: PLA’s New Reconnaissance Vehicle

Picture of the Day: ROK Army Adds Taeguki to Uniform

Taegeukgi on uniforms to mark 70th anniv. of Korea's liberation

A group of Army soldiers attends a ceremony in Pocheon, Gyeonggi Province, north of Seoul, on Aug. 4, 2015, to have a patch of the Korean national flag, or Taegeukgi, attached to their uniforms. The Defense Ministry has instructed the Army to attach the flag to the uniforms of all military soldiers starting this month as part of efforts to raise their patriotism and mark the 70th anniversary on Aug. 15 of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s colonization. (Yonhap)

Picture of the Day: All Smiles at the DMZ

In the Demilitarized Zone, soldiers are more than happy to take photos and crack a smile. This is a far cry from the scare tactics and intimidation used on the South Korean side. This is almost certainly on purpose, possibly a passive-aggressive way to make a mockery of the precautions on the South.  [Business Insider]

ROK Drop Open Thread – August 9, 2015

Please leave anything you want to discuss in the comments section.

Open Thread

North Korea to Create Their Own Timezone; Is Seoul Next?

You expect something wacky like creating your own timezone from the North Koreans, but the fact that politicians in South Korea want to inconvenience their own citizens just to stick it to Japan is even wackier in my opinion:

interkorean flag

North Korea is its own world in many ways. Now, it is getting its own time zone to match.State news agency, KCNA, has announced that North Korea will set its clocks back by 30 minutes to “Pyongyang time” on August 15–the 70th anniversary of liberation from Japan.That will reset the time to GMT+08:30, as it was before Japanese colonization.

“The wicked Japanese imperialists committed such unpardonable crimes as depriving Korea of even its standard time while mercilessly trampling down its land with 5 000 year-long history and culture and pursuing the unheard-of policy of obliterating the Korean nation,” KCNA reported on Friday.North Koreans already have their own calendar. Instead of counting from the birth of Christ, they count from the birth of founding leader, Kim Il Sung. Kim was born in 1912 — known in North Korea as Juche 1, making this year Juche 104.The new time will put Pyongyang half an hour behind Tokyo and Seoul.  (………………….)

South Korea has made similar moves in the past. Its time zone was set at GMT+08:30 — the new Pyongyang time — between 1954 and 1961.There have been proposals to move it back again over the past few years — most recently in 2013.Defector-turned-ruling-party politician, Cho Myung-chol, introduced a bill in parliament to make the change.He told CNN resetting the time zone is part of regaining South Korea’s sovereignty and getting rid of the remaining vestiges of Japanese imperialism.  [CNN via reader tip]

You can read more at the link.

Tweet of the Day: Rebuilding Hiroshima

Picture of the Day: Pray for Good Grades

Praying for good results on college entrance exam

Parents of college aspirants take part in a Buddhist prayer at the main hall of Jogye Temple in Seoul on Aug. 4, 2015, to wish for their high scores on the state-administered annual scholastic aptitude test in November. The crucial test is seen as a deciding factor in an applicant’s choice of college and subsequent career. (Yonhap)

Were Samsung Cartoons Really Anti-Semitic?

Here is an interesting read in regards to the anti-Semitism accusations lobbied against South Korea in the battle over control of Samsung last month.  The article provides some context on why Samsung published the cartoons and maybe they were not so anti-Semitic after all:

The predominantly Jewish-owned and operated Elliot Associates has a wealth of self-interest in preventing the Lee family from consolidating its control over the Samsung conglomerate. As racial outsiders, however, Singer’s firm were forced into several tactical measures in their 52-day attempt to thwart the merger. First came lawsuits.  When those failed, Singer and his associates then postured themselves as defending Korean interests, starting a Korean language website and arguing that their position was really just in aid of helping domestic Korean shareholders. This variation on the familiar theme of Jewish crypsis was quite unsuccessful. The Lee family went on the offensive immediately and, unlike many Westerners, were not shy in drawing attention to the Jewish nature of Singer’s interference and the sordid and intensely parasitic nature of his fund’s other ventures.

‘Because of Elliot Associates, Congo suffered even more hardship.’

The Lee offensive started with a series of cartoons posted on the Samsung website. Most singled out the manner in which Elliot Associates has enjoyed its remarkable growth by focussing on the purchase of national debts from struggling countries at a fraction of their worth, before using ruthless legal measures to sue those countries for values far exceeding the original debt. On its most basic level, the practice is really just the same as Jewish involvement in medieval tax farming. On the older practice, Salo Baron writes in Economic History of the Jews that Jewish speculators would pay a lump sum to the treasury before mercilessly turning on the peasantry to obtain “considerable surpluses … if need be, by ruthless methods.”[2] The activities of Elliot Associates are really the same speculation in debt, except here the trade in usury is practiced on a global scale with the feudal peasants of old now replaced with whole nations. The above cartoon refers to the specific activities of Elliot Associates in Congo where it originally bought $32.6 million in sovereign debt incurred by that country for the knockdown price of under $20 million. In 2002 and 2003, a British court (tactically chosen) forced the Congolese government to settle for an estimated $90 million, which included that all-important interest and fees. Elliot Associates rapidly became known as the quintessential “Vulture Fund.”   (…………..)

n the end, the Lee strategy, based on drawing attention to the alien and exploitative nature of Elliot Associates, was overwhelmingly effective. Before a crucial shareholder vote on the Lee’s planned merger, Samsung Securities CEO Yoon Yong-am, said: “We should score a victory by a big margin in the first battle in order take the upper hand in a looming war against Elliott, and keep other speculative hedge funds from taking short-term gains in the domestic market.” When the vote finally took place a few days ago, a conclusive 69.5% of Samsung shareholders voted in favor of the Lee proposal, leaving Elliot licking its wounds and complaining about the ‘patriotic marketing’ of those behind the merger.

Jewish difficulties in penetrating close-knit Far Eastern monopolies, many of which are open in their belief that Jews are capable and ruthless opponents in business, thus persist. East Asians are seemingly aware that giving Jewish businessmen an inch will normally lead to non-Jews losing a mile. It is this honest grappling with the facts that kept Daniel Loeb off the board at Sony, and prevented Elliot Associates from making even slight gains at Samsung.  [The Occidental Observer]

You can read more at the link.