Displayed in Beijing on Sept. 15, 2014, is the statue of a victim of Japan’s wartime sex slavery. The statue was made by the producer of a Chinese film on those who were forced to serve as sex slaves for front-line Japanese soldiers during World War II. Historians say more than 200,000 women, mostly Koreans, were forced to prostitute during the war. (Yonhap)
I think this is a perfect example of the lack of seriousness many people who advocate for the comfort women actually have towards this issue. Is it really appropriate to dress up, have a gala, and then smile and take pictures with a statue like that representing a horrific issue from World War II? If this girl got heavily criticized for smiling in photo she took while visiting Auschwitz what about these people? You would think that such a statue would be presented at an appropriate location in a solemn ceremony. Instead this appears to be another movie and promotion being pushed by the Chinese government to promote nationalism and anti-Japanese sentiment within the population.
The Global Post takes a look at the massage parlor culture of Korean business:
Not far from glitzy office towers of Seoul are the frenzied hangouts where business is really done: a cacophony of karaoke joints, shady neon-lit parlors, and cluttered barbecue restaurants full of drunken managers ordering their junior staff to pound shots.
To Koreans, the business districts of American cities appear staid, orderly and a bit dull. A shop-worn joke here has it that North America is a “boring heaven” while their country is an “exciting hell.”
No salesman (and the majority are men) gets far here unless he can sing mean, inebriated karaoke and then slug through negotiations the next morning with a thumping headache. South Koreans slam the world’s largest quantity of hard liquor, imbibing 11.2 shots of soju per week, more than twice the average Russian’s vodka consumption (although soju isn’t always as strong).
What happens when this macho after-hours culture goes too far, littering the company tab with payments to prostitutes and hostess clubs? “That’s the business model we depend on. When the Korean men are doing business together, they hang out at these places,” explained the sex industry consultant.
There’s a dark logic to the debauchery.
“When you’re a man and you do something dirty and sinful with your business partner around, you share your secrets, you share trust like brothers. You can always trust your new business partner.” [Global Post]
You can read much more at the link about the different levels of clubs, massage parlors, and karaoke bars that serve as fronts for prostitution to include how many aspiring celebrities work in the high end clubs in hopes of landing a wealthy patron to help their careers.
Two Palestine football players have been booked for investigation on suspicion of sexually harassing a female official at the Asian Games in South Korea, police said Wednesday.
The footballers, whose names were withheld, were suspected of approaching and groping the South Korean woman on Monday in a laundry room in the athletes’ village in Incheon, the host city of this year’s Asiad, they said. [Yonhap]
The Korea Herald is also reporting that a Iranian athlete is accused of groping another Korean women as well:
The Palestinian incident is the second such case at the Asian Games, after an equipment manager for the Iranian men’s football team was charged with sexually harassing a female volunteer at a stadium on Monday. [Korea Herald]
I wonder if the mayor of Incheon will issue a proclamation that citizens of Incheon are scared of Middle Eastern athletes like the mayor Uijongbu recently did towards American soldiers?
This is a horrible accident that happened in Pohang that appears to have been caused by a faulty grenade:
One Marine Corps recruit was killed and another recruit and an instructor were wounded Tuesday when a hand grenade exploded during a training session in this southeastern port city, military sources said.
The accident took place at around 10:20 a.m. at the drill camp of the South Korean Marine Corps when a hand grenade, clutched by a 19-year-old recruit, suddenly exploded.
The explosion severed the recruit’s hand and he was rushed to a nearby hospital but was later pronounced dead there.
Shrapnel from the explosion wounded the other recruit and the instructor, who remain hospitalized in stable condition, according to the sources.
The military immediately said there were no procedural problems in the grenade drill. The moment the military instructor ordered trainees to “fling,” the grenade blew up, it said. [Yonhap]
<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” lang=”en”><p>A scrap from Matthew Miller's all-caps 'confession' / failed application for full 'fellow-traveller' status in DPRK. <a href=”http://t.co/SlgDm6Orzs”>pic.twitter.com/SlgDm6Orzs</a></p>— Adam Cathcart (@adamcathcart) <a href=”https://twitter.com/adamcathcart/status/511459634914144256″>September 15, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Models display the trophy for the Samsung MVP Award at the Incheon Asiad at an event of the Incheon Asian Games Organizing Committee in Incheon, west of Seoul, on Sept. 17, 2014. (Yonhap)
A young American man has been caught trying to swim across a river border into North Korea, a government source said Wednesday.
The man was arrested by Marine sentries at around 11:55 p.m. on Tuesday while he was swimming across the Han River, which borders with North Korea, the source said.
The river cuts through the South Korean capital of Seoul and its adjacent county of Gimpo into the Yellow Sea.
During an interrogation following the arrest, the U.S. citizen of Arabic descent said “I was trying to go to North Korea in order to meet with supreme leader Kim Jong-un,” according to the source. [Yonhap]
It looks like next year there is going to be more attempts to reduce servicemember benefits if another round of sequestration is not repealed in 2016:
An already tough fiscal environment prompting proposed benefit cuts would get far worse if Congress does not repeal another round of sequestration in 2016, a top U.S. Defense Department official warned military spouses and civilians at town meetings here.
“If not, everything is on the table,” said Jessica Wright, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. The uncertainty means it will be difficult to predict funding for child care, family services, traumatic brain injury and other benefits, she said.
Wright is one of a number of DOD officials who have warned of impending cuts that they say will cut the size of the armed forces and take money from necessary equipment upgrades, placing readiness and national security at risk.
In fact, Wright said, the Pentagon’s proposed 2015 budget represents an attempt to reduce benefits to spend the savings on readiness. The budget includes a reduction in the housing allowance, a 1 percent military pay raise, massive cuts to commissary subsidies and potentially increased medical fees. “Quality of life is higher,” she said. “Quality of service is on the skids.”
A proposed change in commissary funding, which the Pentagon says would reduce the savings on groceries from 30 percent to 10 percent of the cost compared with groceries bought on the economy, has proved highly unpopular.
“Why did we want to do that?” she said. “None of us wants to send a servicemember into combat unprepared.’’ [Stars & Stripes]
You have to love how all the cuts are justified by the language of “readiness”. What does bloated, over budget acquisition programs have to do with readiness? Likely what is going on is that the Pentagon is using benefit cuts as leverage to get Congress to repeal the sequestration cuts.
South Korea has proposed a tax hike that would nearly double cigarette prices as the government tries to reduce one of the world’s highest smoking rates among adult males.
The proposal on Thursday was immediately criticised by the main opposition party, highlighting the difficulty in implementing anti-smoking regulations in a country where the health risks associated with smoking are not widely publicised.
The proposal calls for a more than 100 percent tax increase on a pack of cigarettes, which would double current prices that range between $1.9-$2.4 – far less than the $12 per pack that smokers pay in Australia, which recently toughened its anti-smoking laws.
The initiative also suggested banning cigarette advertisements in convenience stores and making graphic warning
labels on cigarette packs mandatory.
KT&G, which sells 60 percent of all cigarettes bought in the country, declined to comment on the tax proposal.
South Koreans are among the heaviest smokers in the world: just under half of all adult males smoke, government data shows, compared to an average of 25.4 percent in the 34 countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. [Al Jazeera]
You can read more at the link, but if this is really about improving public health why isn’t the government also trying to double the price of alcohol as well? I think a strong argument could be made that the affects of alcohol is worse for public health than smoking.
