If I had to choose between the Korean kimchi cure for the avian flu virus or the Japanese antidote I think I would definitely prefer the Japanese remedy:

I kid you not! The Kirin Brewery has apparently discovered or developed avian flu antibodies to protect humans from the flu…

The antibody proved effective in fighting avian influenza, including H5N1 strains, according to Gemini Science Inc., a U.S. unit of Kirin, which reported the findings at a meeting of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Washington. The antibody proved effective in experiments with mice, the company said.

Why can’t beer cure all viruses?

Hat Tip: Asiapundit

Here is a true Korea Finder for you. Maybe in the future I will do another Japan Finder, but for now I have decided to get back to doing Korea Finders. So where in Korea is this picture located?

According to Nomad hell does in fact freeze over.

Most of the Korean protesters that assaulted policemen and destroyed property in Hong Kong are going to be released:

Some 838 Korean anti-globalization protesters arrested in violent protests against the WTO Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong were let off with a caution on Monday afternoon. Twelve people remain in custody while police investigate whether they instigated the violence.
Vice Foreign Minister Lee Kyu-hyung arrived in Hong Kong on Monday and met with the territory’s top interior official and the chief of police. He apologized for the violent protests and asked authorities for lenience. The Hong Kong officials reportedly told him the matter would be dealt with judicially. The ministry said Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon plans to call Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang.

Meanwhile, a Foreign Ministry official said Hong Kong in all detained 1,001 Korean protestors, a lot more than the 600 or so reported a day earlier. The 151 women among them were released on Sunday night. The remaining 12 are likely to be indicted.

If these rioters were Hong Kong citizens I wonder if they would have been let off the hook with just a caution? At least 12 of riot organizers are going to be indicted. That is still more than what happens to these rioters here in Korea.

The military is now trying a new approach to preventing black marketing in Korea:

U.S. military officials here are using homeland security technology to crack down on a different sort of crime: black marketing.

The technology is so precise that it can spot the shopper who occasionally buys one or two packages of hot dogs but never remembers the buns. It can find the childless person who routinely buys baby food and formula. It can pick out the retired officer who just happens to cash out in the same checkout lane — manned by the same cashier — during every shopping excursion.

This may sound like a good idea but the professional black marketers aided by their AAFES accomplices will find a way around it. This computer program also doesn’t take into account all the merchandise that magically disappears at the port.

The only way to stop black marketing is for the Korean authorities to shut down the black markets. In the downtown Uijongbu market for example you can pretty much buy everything from the CRC commissary there. Some of the items still have the AAFES price tags on them. Why doesn’t someone arrest these people? If black marketers don’t have a market to sell the items to that might actually leave some meat on the shelves for service members. This computer program is only going to prevent a drop in the bucket of the real problem, the black markets themselves.

The Hong Kong authorities have finally decided they have had enough of the Korean protesters disrupting the WTO summit in Hong Kong. Is it any wonder that the Hong Kong police arrested them when they committed actions like this:

Altogether 1,400 South Korean activists took part in the protests against the opening of agricultural markets near Hong Kong’s Wan Chai that turned violent when protesters attempted to overturn police vehicles at around 5:30 p.m. Half an hour later, protesters armed with iron pipes wrested from police barricades faced off with police near the Hong Kong Convention Center, where the WTO meet was held. Seventeen policemen and 67 protesters were injured in the clashes.

Where did they get the iron pipes? Was that part of their carry on luggage? Anyway, destroying property and injuring policemen may be okay in Korea, but Hong Kong has taken a stand against it:

Some 600 Korean farmers and trade union activists were arrested on Sunday after all-night violent protests in Hong Kong during the WTO Ministerial Meeting there. Hong Kong police used tear gas for the first time since anti-British riots in 1967, and used armored vehicles to stop the rioters. It was the first mass arrest of Koreans abroad.

I say good for Hong Kong and hope these protesters meet Chinese justice. However, the Korean Foreign Ministry is trying to get these protesters off the hook:

Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said it began contacting the Hong Kong authorities to seek a “smooth” settlement of the case.

“It is very regrettable for the rallies to turn violent and that many were arrested. There are concerns (South Korea’s) image will be tainted worldwide, including in Hong Kong,” a ministry official said, requesting anonymity.

The ministry plans to ask Hong Kong not to refer the detained Korean protesters to a court, he said.

It appears that the Hong Kong police have different ideas:

Hong Kong police officials said they would prosecute the Korean protesters according to Hong Kong’s ordinance. The law hands out prison terms of up to five years to those engaged in unauthorized demonstrations and up to 14 years to those who damage facilities during protests.

I say give them jail time and those responsible for injuring policemen and destroying property should get even more jail time. Just deporting them back to Korea will not stop this activity from happening again. It will only encourage it. Just look at the property damage and serious injuries protesters within South Korea continue to cause.

Only in Korea would people be so concerned about video game game safety that ranks right up there with Fan Death in terms of total deaths inflicted on the Korean population. I think the Korean government could save more lives by instituting a campaign for public traffic safety than promoting ways to prevent video game inflicted death.

Andrei Lankov has another great piece about curent events in North Korea:

However, more sinister scenarios are being discussed in Seoul these days. There are growing worries that Chinese involvement will not be limited to just shipping trainloads of grain and fertilizer to prevent the North Korean government from collapsing. More direct involvement in the event of a crisis is possible, up to the point of installing a pro-Chinese government in Pyongyang, according to some observers. These fears are not necessarily paranoid: if anything, South Korean public opinion is rather pro-Chinese these days.

The existence of prosperous and democratic South Korea means that a complete collapse of the North Korean system will probably lead to a German-style unification. If this were to happen, the people who run the North now will have no chance of keeping their privileges, and perhaps have reasons to worry about their lives.

The question I am wondering is South Korea willing to go to war against China if the Chinese annex North Korea after a regime collapse. It might be a good thing to keep the Uncle Sam on your good side if you are concerned this might happen.

Hat tip: Marmot

Korea has had a recent wiretapping scandal and now America has it’s own wiretapping scandal, or should we consider it a necessary provision to prevent future terrorist attacks in America? I have been wondering how the US media and their Democratic allies would down play the recent success of the Iraqi elections and today I got my answer. After the election that drew an amazing 70% turn out, I figured the Democrats would complain about 30% of the population being disenfranchised voters in order to down play the election. Instead they were even more clever.

They launched a story about domestic spying that was uncovered over a year ago by the New York Times. They have been holding on to this story for over a year and have been waiting for the right moment to drop it. The NY Times alleges that they held on to the story this long at the urging of the Bush administration, but now they just happen to publish this story right after the Iraqi election and the upcoming vote to renew the Patriot Act. Coincidence, I think not. With so much success and buzz coming from the Iraqi elections the media and their Democratic allies needed something to cloud the buzz and change the subject; so they launched this story. Plus it puts the supporters of the Patriot Act in a difficult position to vote for the continuation of the act.

What is sad is that the media is implying that the wiretapping is illegal when in fact it is legal and President Bush followed all the appropriate guidelines for domestic spying:

The official said that, since October 2001, the program has been renewed more than three dozen times. Each time, the White House counsel and the attorney general certified the lawfulness of the program, the official said. Bush then signed the authorizations.

“The president has authorized NSA to fully use its resources ¿ let me underscore this now ¿ consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution to defend the United States and its citizens,” the official said, adding that congressional leaders have also been briefed more than a dozen times.

The Bush administration did not break the law and the NY Times article did not even say the Bush administration broke the law. The US President can authorize the domestic wiretapping only if a threat of a catastrophic terrorist attack is possible. Bush authorized the wiretapping in October of 2001 right after 9/11. I would say the risk of another terrorist attack was very high and the President responded accordingly. Plus he informed the Senate Intelligence Committee which is headed by a democrat Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) which did nothing to stop the domestic spying. How come Senator Rockefeller’s name and the Democrats responsibility in this issue is not spread all over the news?

Before you become concerned about the NSA listening in on your conversations with your significant other keep in mind that the NSA was only spying on suspected terrorists making phone calls or e-mails abroad not internally within America. Warrants were issued for phone calls and e-mails that were made domestically:

The surveillance, disclosed in Friday’s New York Times, is said to allow the agency to monitor international calls and e-mail messages of people inside the United States. But the paper said the agency would still seek warrants to snoop on purely domestic communications ¿ for example, Americans’ calls between New York and California.

So basically if you aren’t making phone calls to suspected terrorists in let’s say Egypt you don’t need to worry about the NSA wiretapping your conversation.

The NSA requested these powers after 9/11 because some of the Al-Qaida hijackers based in San Diego communicated with their superiors abroad through phone and e-mail and the federal authorities were forced by law to not monitor such conversations. If the NSA had picked up on these phone calls and e-mails from San Diego before 9/11 the whole tragedy could have been prevented.

Intelligence officials are even saying that the wiretapping powers prevented one publicized terrorist attack to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge:

Iyman Faris, a/k/a Mohammad Rauf, 34, of Columbus, Ohio, was charged in a two-count criminal information filed under seal in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Virginia, on May 1, 2003. Faris pleaded guilty to the charges in the criminal information on the same day. The charges and plea agreement were unsealed today.

In court documents accompanying the plea agreement, Faris admitted casing a New York City bridge for al Qaeda, and researching and providing information to al Qaeda regarding the tools necessary for possible attacks on U.S. targets.

This guy pleaded guilty to organizing an Al-Qaida terrorist attack and was caught due to the NSA’s ability to wiretap. What I find interesting about this, is that the same people now complaining about civil liberties violations would be the same people criticizing the Bush administration if they did nto prevent this thwarted terrorist attack on the Brooklyn Bridge. We know that the powers given to the NSA prevented one terrorist attack, but how many other attacks were foiled that we don’t know about?

However, playing politics and selling books is more important than national security. That is right this is also about selling books. The author of the NY Times article is releasing a book next month and the article is an actual excerpt from the book. How can any reasonable person think that this the release of this article is not based on politics and selling books? How can this all be a coincidence?

Some may remember the recent wiretapping scandal that happened here in Korea. This scandal involved the Korean CIA wiretapping for political reasons. There has been no evidence that any of the wiretapping done by the Bush Administration was done for political purposes. There is no evidence that Bush was wiretapping John Kerry for example. The wiretapping was done for national security yet opponents to the wiretapping are opposed due to political reasons not civil liberties.

This article has already had the effect of delaying the passage of the Patriot Act that the Democrats are currently filibustering plus no one is talking about the Iraqi elections anymore. It is amazing to me that a big chunk of the media and a political party wants the US to lose the war in Iraq and set conditions for another terrorist attack in America in order to return to power politically.

With all this said, if you are still worried about losing your civil liberties, remember the only civil liberty you are losing is your right to communicate freely with terrorists. I don’t know about you, but this is one right I don’t mind giving up.

South Korean farmers have rioted today in Hong Kong in response to the WTO meeting there. The farmers are rioting because of the WTO attempt to open the South Korean rice market:

Many South Korean farmers are desperate to have their view against globalization and imports heard at the WTO.

They are opposed lower trade barriers for agricultural imports, which they claim would flood the South Korean market with cheap rice and force many of the country’s farmers out of business. It is a view shared by many anti-globalization groups in other countries.

South Korean demonstrators in Hong Kong attempted to break through a barrier marking the designated protest zone, CNN Senior Asia Correspondent Mike Chinoy reported.

When they failed, the group of about 1,000 to 1,500 split into smaller groups of about a dozen and spread out over several square blocks in a cat-and-mouse game with police, then reassembled closer to the exhibition center where talks are being held and began to push forward.

Police holding riot shields and wearing gas masks tried pepper spray and fire hoses to keep the demonstrators back, then fired tear-gas canisters — a nearly unheard-of tactic in normally civilized Hong Kong.

These tactics should be very familiar for people who follow events in Korea. However, according Hong Kong based blog Simon World that has been providing great coverage of the WTO protests these tactics are being criticized by other peaceful protesters in Hong Kong:

Protesters are complaining of being upstaged by South Korean demonstrators, a leading international activist says. Protesters who had not taken part in demonstrations with the Koreans had complained of “grandstanding” to the detriment of other causes, she said.

I am all for freedom of speech and the right to protest, but I strongly believe that protesters do not have the right to harm policemen or destroy property. This tactic is commonly used here in Korea and now is being exported to Hong Kong.

I have to question why Hong Kong authorities do not arrest the South Korean protesters? Here is a hint when a South Korean shows up at the airport with his red bandanna and flags I would assume he is not on a business trip. At least I haven’t seen any bamboo poles yet.

Just for the record I actually support the rice farmers but not their tactics. IMHO I think that every WTO country should be able to protect two industries vital to national security which for South Korea the rice industry would be one.