I have successfully been able to teach a few Koreans I know the rules of American football. Though they found the game strange at first they soon actually enjoyed watching football with me and I have in fact successfully converted three people to be Denver Broncos fans. However, watching college football today has really taught me the limits of my ability to teach American football.

Try to explain the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) formula to a Korean. Many Americans much less Koreans can’t figure this thing out. After a long explanation my Korean friend was still confused about the whole thing and wondered why we don’t just have a playoff system? I ended the conversation there because trying to explain the politics and rationale for not having a playoff system would be more difficult then explaining the system itself.

A number of Korean bloggers have been advocating donating money to help the relief efforts in south Asia after the recent tsunami has now killed at least 150,000 people. This number is probably going to continue to rise substantially. The people in south Asia are in desperate need and the American government has now allocated $350 million dollars to help the disaster relief. However, if you want to donate money to help the relief effort, first you should read this article coming out the New York press about fraudulent charities.

While the federal government has made attempts to crack down on charity fraud since September 11, 2001 – the Patriot Act increased the penalty of impersonating a Red Cross member to five years from one – and Internet users have become more savvy, phony charities are trying harder than ever to swindle donors on the Internet.

“It doesn’t surprise me that folks are taking advantage of this tragedy,” said the director of the National Fraud Information Center in Washington, D.C., Susan Grant. “You always see these kinds of things after disasters.”

It is pretty sickening that somebody would establish a false relief site for their own personal profit, but it does not suprise me. We all saw this same thing happen after 9-11 with charities pocketing huge sums of money from donors and spending half the money on the victims and half on “administrative costs.”

That is why I’m a big believer in sending aid such as food and clothes instead of cash. It is to tempting for some people to handle large sums of money. People are less likely to conduct fraudelent activity if no cash is involved. Just do your research before you donate to ensure the aid you are giving is getting to the people who need it.

Aid for the countries devestated by the recent tidal wave disaster is beginning to arrive. Korea has increased its donations to help the victims from $600,000 to $2 million dollars. However, the Korean government continues to face criticism for their response to the disaster.

In this regard, the government should concentrate its efforts on locating Korean casualties in consideration of the agony the families of tourists have been suffering since the disaster struck. In parallel with such efforts, the government should also expand its aid to Asian nations hardest hit. Although the government has announced it will increase the amount of aid from a mere $600,000 to $2 million, the figure is still small in comparison to our status as the world’s 11th largest economy as well as our aim of becoming a major player in Asia’s development. In comparison, Japan has promised to provide $70 million and Australia over $37 million. There are many people, especially among the youth, who worry that the nation will become a laughing stock of the international community because of the stingy level of aid to the devastated countries, whose rehabilitation costs are estimated to reach more than $10 billion.

Along with the expansion of aid, the government needs to send additional rescue and medical teams to the region as quickly as possible, just as Japan and other advanced countries have. It is feared that the death toll in the region, which now stands at around 70,000, will rise to 100,000 because of the outbreak of infectious disease.

If we want to join the ranks of developed countries, we should bear the responsibilities that come with it.

Hopefully, Korea will increase it’s aid and is just getting off to a slow start like everyone else. America’s relief efforts appear to be taking shape with the US military arriving in the region.

The Pentagon has set up a joint task force out of Okinawa, deploying forces to Thailand, Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Among the equipment sent are six C-130 transport planes, nine P-3 air surveillance and rescue planes, an aircraft carrier and several ships with the ability to produce hundreds of thousands of gallons of fresh water each day.

In Washington, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said the aid money needed would end up “in the billions” of dollars, and pledged that the United States would increase its contributions and work with other donors to reach that goal.

It is good the US is finally moving on providing relief aid because the world is watching America and ready to pass snap judgements on it. Here is a great chance to win back some good will from the internationally community that was lost due to the Iraq conflict while also helping people in desperate need. If the US doesn’t seize this opportunity to provide massive aid there are plenty of people in the world most notably international terrorists that will use the lack of an aid response as propaganda against the US to help their own twisted causes. This is a chance to help many of the world’s poor Muslims to recover from such a horrible disaster and the US doesn’t even need tanks and bombs to do it.

The US has so for offered up to $35 million and plans to allocate more funds which will probably top over $100 million. Then you add in the cost of moving in an aircraft carrier, airplanes, and other ships and the price tag of relief aid has definitely increased. Where people are going wrong though, is that aid is be judged by dollar signs right now, which is the wrong way to judge relief aid.

The aid that is needed now is people getting supplies where they need to go. Governments can buy all the food and water they want, but it is no good if there is not the equipment and man power to get the supplies where they need to go in a timely, and organized manner before disease sets in.
This goes back to what I have discussed before about creating a disaster relief brigade that can rapidly deploy to help people. The US military is making a disaster relief unit right now on the fly using the Marines but why can’t Korea deploy soldiers to help out also. If Korea doesn’t want to spend money they also got man power they can tap into to help out. Especially water purification units that are going to be key to preventing the spread of disease. If Korea wants to be one of the big boys internationally it needs to respond adequately to this disaster. The world’s watching.

Korea is located near an active earthquake zone with nearby Japan the source of many earthquakes. With the recent events in South Asia it made me wonder if Korea is vulnerable to a tsunami and if the government could warn its citizens of a tsunami in enough time for an evacution to take place before it would strike. Just imagine the devestation a tsunami would have in a city like Pusan if no warning was given to the people there.

Here are a couple of great graphics that show how tsunamis are formed.

Could Korea be hit by one of these tidal waves? With a little research I found out that Korea has actually been hit by two tsunami in recent history. One in 1983 and another in 1993. This site offers an in depth analysis of the tsunami that struck the eastern coast of Korea near the ports of Samchuk and Imwon.

Tsunamis generated by earthquakes along the Japanese coast on the possible boundary between the Eurasian and the North American plates have caused significant damages to the Japanese and Russian coasts, and damage to the Korean coast as well. For example, at noon on the 26th May 1983, a huge earthquake occurred in the northern coast of Akita and the accompanying tsunami attacked the eastern coast of Korea, after propagating over the in the Japan (East) Sea. Especially at the Imwon port, the most significant damage; two persons killed and twenty houses damaged, was reported.

With Korea regularly vulnerable to tidal waves, does the government have a system in place to warn citizens of potential danger? Judging by the reaction to the 1993 tsunami it appears Korea does have a good early warning system in place.

In the case of 1993 Okushiri Tsunami , the JMA (Japan Meteorological Agency) processed data in the very quick way and issued tsunami warning within 5 minutes after the quake. However, it was just the propagation time of the first wave to southern tip of Okushiri Island and to Ota Bay on southwestern Hokkaido that left no time for evacuation and for any other preparedness measures.

Tsunami Warning Center in Yuzhni-Sakhalinsk (Russia) issued warning within 20 min for the coast of Primorie, Sakhalin and South Kurile Island. The first wave came to Primorie in about 50 to 70 minutes with maximum observed run-up height of 4 meters.

The Korea Meteorological Administration issued a Tsunami Warning signal 33 minutes following the earthquake origin time putting into mobilization of 7,000 disaster personell. The waves propagated to Korea in approximately 100 min which allowed enough time for preparedness activities to be accomplished.

Korea does have an early warning system in place but the early warning system is dependent on how close the originating earthquake is to the coast line. In the case of the 1993 quake Korea was able to issue an advisory in 33 minutes and the wave struck over an hour later. This was enough time to evacuate the affected areas to prevent casualties.

It is probably safe to assume Korea has an even better system in place by now and should be able to serve up a public advisory in half the time. But it would not matter if the tsunami originated near the Korean coast line and struck the coast in under 15 minutes. This should be warning to people here in Korea that if they feel an earthquake they should immediately take tsunami precautions because the warning may not reach you in time. Judging by past events it is unfortunately a possibility.

Picture from the 1993 tsunami

UPDATE: Go check out Jeff’s site for some more info and clips from this car show and judge for yourself if it is specifically anti-Korean or not.
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Why do Koreans get so worked up about something like this? A British car show, Top Gear, that satires many automobiles poked some fun at Korean cars.

An industry official said that the program was relentlessly provocative, with presenters claiming that Korean cars were cheap because they were built with inferior materials and parts. At one point, viewers were recommended to opt for a two-year-old Volkswagen Golf instead of a new Korean model if they wanted to buy a cheap car.

The program hosts even brought a refrigerator on wheels into the studio, remarking that this was how cars were made in Korea.

On hearing the news, Korean carmakers such as Hyundai, whose “Getz” (Click) suffered concentrated derision at the hands of the program’s hosts, rapidly contacted their UK offices to confirm what was said and ascertain what the program’s intentions were.

In the case of Hyundai, Korea’s flagship carmaker, the firm was perplexed after it received a report on the matter from its UK branch, which played down the report by descibing the program as a purely entertainment-based show – more intent on making viewers laugh than conveying the facts.

The program doesn’t always pick on Korean cars either:

“The program dealt with our Tiburon and the Lexus SC430 during a recent broadcast, praising the Tiburon as the best sports car under US$100,000 [W104.1 million] while seriously deriding the Lexus.

“Despite this, not one famous foreign carmaker that has been slated on the program, including Lexus, has ever responded with a lawsuit or anything of that nature,” he added.

So Korea chill out I’m sure they have picked on American cars at some point to if they have picked on a quality car like a Lexus. No need to have candle light vigils and send the hackers to hit their website, or claim this is an insult to national pride. How about Korea make their own car show satire and make fun of Jaguars if that will make everyone feel better. Has anyone from Britian seen this show? I’m curious about what other cars they have picked on.

Fascinating article in the Asia Times, from Andrei Lankov, about Russian and North Korea relations over the last 50 years. When the Russians, the masters of propaganda are laughing at you that is pretty sad.

Back in the 1970s, when I was a teenager in the then Soviet Union in my native Leningrad, many barbershops stocked copies of Korea magazine, a lavishly illustrated North Korean propaganda monthly. What was such a publication doing in the barbershops? The answer, I suspect, would be quite embarrassing for its editors: it was subscribed to in order to amuse the patrons who were waiting for a haircut.

The magazine was heavily subsidized by Pyongyang, so its annual subscription rate was dirt-cheap while its content was both bizarre and funny. Thus the magazine, which was published to inspire worldwide love and admiration for the Great Leader and his son and successor, the Dear Leader, was often (I would say from my experience, in most cases) subscribed to by people who saw it as a laughingstock and opened its pages only to make fun of the Great Men. The North Korean propaganda appeared very weird to the Russians – not least because it looked like a grossly exaggerated version of their own official propaganda. The grotesquely bad Russian translation of the texts also provided unintended comical effects.

This remarkable magazine is warmly remembered by ex-Soviet people of middle age, many of whom still can easily quote more weird sentences from memory. Sets of this venerable monthly are kept by some Russian families, and there are even a couple of Russian websites where sarcastic webmasters have collected particularly bizarre and/or comical quotations from Korean propaganda materials.

It appears North Korea’s earlier propaganda did more harm than good with their Soviet sponsors which has led to today’s comical reception of North Korean propaganda in Russia.

Soon after the end of the Korean War, references to North Korea nearly disappeared from the Soviet press. This silence had political explanations: from the late 1950s, Kim Il-sung was building his “juche-style” Stalinism while the original Stalinism was being dismantled in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). Moscow was unhappy about such developments, but was unwilling to express its disapproval openly since critical statements would have led to further deterioration of its already strained relations with Pyongyang. The government-controlled press could write neither bad nor good things about North Korea. Thus newspapers largely remained silent and only occasionally published something positive about, say, a new Pyongyang stadium.

In spite of this official blackout, rumors about North Korea circulated widely among educated Soviet people. They were aware of Kim Il-sung’s deification, police omnipresence, and strained relations with Moscow. To a large extent, the North Koreans damaged their own standing by flooding the USSR with exceptionally bad propaganda, the above-mentioned Korea monthly being the most notorious.

Here is the most comical and most disturbing excerpt from the article:

From around 1970, more daring journalists even made hints at more sensitive topics – such as Kim’s personality cult or lingering militarism. The hints had to be subtle, but when a Soviet television audience of the late 1970s saw how North Korean kindergarten kids enthusiastically performed a dance called “My Heavy Machine-Gun”, the bizarreness of the situation was for everybody to see. No doubt such an effect was intended by the producers of that documentary.

Interestingly enough Russians appear not to care to much about human rights. This probably has to do a lot with Russia’s history of gulags and the current war in Chechnya. You cannot promote human rights when you are committing human rights violations yourself.

It’s worth noticing that the human-rights issue does not play a major role in Russian foreign policy. A period of idealistic enthusiasm in the early 1990s proved to be short, so few people in Russia take seriously statements about human rights. Neither the Russian government nor the Russian public shows any enthusiasm for crusades in the name of human rights in distant lands. It is well known that North Korea is notorious for its disregard for human rights, but Russians could not care less. Their position is simple: first, it is North Korea’s internal affair; second, if North Koreans themselves live under such a regime, who are we to pass judgments on their behalf?

Apparently North Korea’s propaganda has worked on a few people in Russia because Kim Jong Il still has a few admirers there. I’m sure if they actually lived in North Korea they wouldn’t be admiring him to much.

And there are of course people who are sincere admirers of the Kims’ regime, even if their numbers are small. For some Russian leftists, the regime is seen as a living example of communist resilience. They did not question the right of the government to starve half a million or a million people to stay in power. They either deny the facts (half a million dead? Washington’s propaganda, of course!) or present the deaths as voluntary sacrifices made by the patriotic Korean people. But actually Korean domestic politics is not very important to the Russian Pyongyang-worshippers: it is the “anti-imperialist” stance of North Korea that really matters for the Russian left.

Fortunately, the general Russian public is still skeptical of the North Korean regime and does not harbor many illusions about its true nature. But nobody in Russia wants to build policy on the basis of ideology these days. Russians have had enough of ideology over the past century, so now they prefer interests, pure and simple. And to remind themselves of the past, many people still look through old, slightly yellowed pages of Korea monthly.

I have been impressed with Dr Andrei Lankov writings in regards to North Korea. He really knows his stuff and provides valuable insights into the hermit kingdom. He contributes often to North Korea Zone which I encourage everyone to check out.

This propaganda picture looks like it could be a PTA meeting with mortars

My Christmas was quite outstanding with me getting a new computer for Christmas. This computer is 2.8 ghz Gateway computer with 512mb of ram, 80gb hard drive, 17 inch flat screen monitor, and a 128mb graphics card. What is really nice is that the computer and the monitor are combined in a very space efficient design that frees up a lot of desk space. You can also see my 160mb external hard drive adjacent to the computer. These external hard drives are awesome and definitely worth purchasing. All my files and games from my old computer I can continue to use by hooking this external hard drive to my new computer. A 160gb external hard drive will run you from $150-$180 depending on the brand.

The best thing about this new computer is that I picked it up for $843! My wife wanted to buy a computer for me for Christmas so we priced this same computer just two weeks ago at the Camp Casey PX and it was $1399. We almost bought the computer then but we decided to wait until we checked out Camp Stanley’s PX in Uijongbu. They had a special sale going on for the same computer for $843 last week. I asked the sales person if he was sure this was the correct price and he said yes. So that made our decision easy and we bought it. I have definitely learned through experience that if you shop around for major purchases at the PX’s here in Korea you can usually find some great deals. Shopping around this time save me over $550 this Christmas.

Look how thin the entire computer is.

According to Yonhap News, Kim Jong Il has no plans to invade South Korea.

SEOUL, Dec. 25 (Yonhap) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has disavowed having any plan to invade South Korea, claiming that it is in fact South Korea which plots to invade the North, a North Korean report said Saturday.

Radio Pyongyang carried Kim’s remarks in a commentary, denouncing the South’s plan to increase its self-defense capabilities. The broadcaster did not provide details, including when and where Kim made such remarks.

Boy, I feel so much better now that I can count on Kim Jong Il’s word that he won’t ever invade South Korea.

One of the urban legends any new GI in Korea hears about is that if you contract the “black syphyllis” you will not be allowed to leave Korea and will be put on a island. I always thought this urban legend was fiction but it appears there is actually a grain of truth to it.

Christmas on Sorokdo Island isn’t about standard holiday festivities where family members gather and lavish gifts on each other, and exchange visits with well-wishing neighbors and friends.

This tiny deer-shaped island off the southern tip of the peninsula has long been a sanctuary for people with a disease once considered taboo; Hansen’s disease or, as it is more widely known, leprosy.

What is really interesting about the island is that the residents cannot leave due to their illness but tourists are allowed on it.

The island was quarantined for decades, but parts of it opened to the public in 1986 to help show people from the outside world the illness is not a social taboo.

Entering the island now after a 10-minute ferry ride from the mainland is possible for regular tourists, who are permitted to venture a third of the way into the island’s hilly areas where Sohn and others like her live.

Sorokdo is full of deer of all colors which run freely in the hills. It is extraordinarily picturesque, with wide green expanses and many varieties of trees and flowers in a park in the center.

The New York Times today is reporting that the Korean government has begun a crackdown on brokers for North Korean refugees. The government believes the brokers located in China are extorting money from the desperate North Korean refugees.

South Korea says it plans to crack down on people who demand money for organizing mass defections of North Koreans desperate to leave their country. But human rights groups worry that the move is aimed at appeasing North Korea and China – North Korea’s last major ally and the way-station for many North Korean intending to defect.

These so-called brokers – often ethnic Koreans in China, South Korean entrepreneurs or North Korean defectors in the South – select defectors from the tens of thousands of North Koreans who flee North Korea and hide in northeastern China. They then help the North Koreans to force their way into foreign embassies in Beijing and other Asian capitals, in the hopes that they will eventually be allowed to travel to South Korea.

Nearly 83 percent of the 1,850 North Koreans who reached South Korea this year came with the help of these brokers, who received an average of $3,800 per person, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said. As the trickle of defectors from North Korea has swelled into a torrent in recent years, the debate over the brokers has intensified.

They say that their motives are to promote human rights, helping people escape North Korea’s totalitarian government. But some critics say that they appear to be driven by profit rather than compassion. China calls them human traffickers and sentences them to prison, while North Korea accuses South Korea and the United States of kidnapping its people.

Some defectors have complained that the brokers charge too much for their services – and in some cases hold their families for ransom. Some of the brokers also abandon the escapees after being paid.

To stop the brokers the Korean government is planning on preventing the brokers from being allowed to leave Korea and also reduce the amount of relocation compensation that is paid to North Korean refugees from $26,600 per person to $9,500. Many brokers use the relocation money to pay for their fees. I cannot say I am an expert in regards to these brokers but I’m sure some of them probably are dirty, but for some reason I feel the Korean government is probably just using this as a convenient excuse to stop the flow of refugees from North Korea.

If the South Korean government cared for human rights at all, they would try to assist these people themselves. This would eliminate the need for brokers or NGO’s to fill this current need. I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to happen though. Plus reducing the relocation allowance will not stop people from wanting to come to South Korea. $9,500 is still going to sound like a fortune to someone who is starving.

I think the best way to get any action out of the Korean government would be to shame them into action. I hope people will keep publishing stories from the defectors. The Chosun Ilbo recently ran this story about some North Korean defectors trying to make their way to a Southeastern Asian country in order to get to South Korea. This group of North Koreans traveled 8000 kilometers over the course of a month to make it to the country which is presumably Vietnam to get passage to Korea. Isn’t something that countries like Mongolia and Vietnam are doing more for North Korean human rights than South Korea?