Kathreb

Friday, September 26, 2003

New Political Circumstances

Wow! I stop paying attention for a couple of measly weeks and what happens? The ruling party factions finally stop their in-fighting and break up the party. Enter the new People's Participatory and Unity Party. Although from first glance it seems the party has neither people participation (support) or unity as evidenced by Roh's crushing defeat is appointing a new BAI chief.

The Financial Times also takes a look at the issue in terms of Roh's ability to rule with such weak backing from the National Assembly, his party (and former MDP members) and from the people. He now has less than 30% support.

The FT also cites (my former professor from my old school) Juang Hoon, professor of politics at Chung Ang University

"The past week has demonstrated the weakness of Korea's fragmented party system and the president's lack of power in parliament,".

It will be interesting to note the next nomination process. The recent history of the Prime Minister appointment of lame duck president Kim Dae-Jung toward the end of his rule comes to mind in this cirucumstance.

Also, I read that Australia and Korea have agreed to set up an anti-dumping committee. Probably won't hear anymore about that but if anyone hears how this goes I would be interested to know its progress.

Entertainment News
And in some sad entertainment news I read that Robert Palmer has died of a heart attack at age 54 - way too young.

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Friday, September 19, 2003

I arrived! Haven't had time to do the usual news search and may not have time for a few more days yet. So I have no (un)informative comment to make about Korea. In the meantime,

initial things I've noticed:
1. Grass and trees here seem to grow out of the earth as if it is natural for them to do so
2. The sky is blue and clouds are white
3. The sun generates heat
4. There are stars in the sky at night and moon actually 'shines'
5. Convenience stores are not as conveniently located as in Korea
6. Americans have loud voices and nice cars
7. There are no (full length) mirrors in the buildings or cafes

I haven't left campus yet so that is all I can comment on. Its wierd being an international student but looking like everyone else.

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Saturday, September 13, 2003

WTO Protests

In a book about Korea, (maybe "The Koreans" by Michael Breen but I can't remember exactly) there was a story about a foreign correspondent reporting on a protest in Korea. The story goes that on seeing a Korean protest group cut off their pinky fingers as part of the protest he reportedly said something like "at that moment I knew for the first time what it meant to be a foreign correspondent because that act was fucking foreign". I was reminded of that story when I read this absurdity.

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Saturday, September 06, 2003

The above picture is apparently the North Koreans celebrating the re-election of Kim Jong-Il as party leader. Cathartidae mentions this issue if you are interested. I just put liked the picture.

"The Greatest Threat in the World to Regional and Global Peace"
Former president Jimmy Carter and has again voiced his ideas about the North Korean crisis. Travelling to Japan and China with the Carter Organisation. The article says that

Carter accused the Bush administration of aggravating tensions between the United States and North Korea, which he called a "paranoid nation."

I think its a little rich to say that US has aggravated tensions against a country which has pulled out of the non-prolifternation agreement, kicked out inspectors, re-started its nuke program and during a meeting to work out what it would take to get them to destroy their nuke program they threatened to test their nukes.

While I do agree with the premise that both sides were responsible for failing to carry out the Agreed Framework I am inclined to think that even if you congratulated the Norths for building nukes and sent them your own best scientists to help out they would accuse US of sending spys to dismantle the country and could thereby be accused of 'aggravating tensions'.

Unemployed Bum
Today is the last day of work. I showed up with a box of doughnuts and muffins as a treat for my office and went around all the offices and shake hands with all my ex-colleagues. The Director-General gave me a lovely traditional Korean box for a going away gift. This has been the longest job I have ever held down so its a little strange to be leaving but at the same time, the time is right to move on and the job was only ever supposed to serve as experience to take me onto the next stage. Hopefully the unemployed bum stage will only be temporary.

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Friday, September 05, 2003

South Korea's Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade has been talking it up in Washington DC, and laughing it up if the piccy is anything to go by. Perhaps part of the good humor can be attributed to reputed success by the State Department to get Bush to be a little less hard-line. US is almost as unpredictable as North Korea these days. Although this may just be a temporary matter since

Mr. Armitage and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell proposed the new strategy to Mr. Bush last month. Several officials said that it was further nurtured without the involvement of many of the aides to Donald H. Rumsfeld, the secretary of defense, who have sought to limit the offers to North Korea.

"It helped that a lot of them were on vacation, or thinking about Iraq," one of the architects of the new approach said today.

One might assume that as soon as the vacation is over Mr Bush may be swayed back to his original hardline stance.

The Economist has come out with a piece adovocating that

America therefore needs to set out a workable sequence of verifiable steps to be taken. And since it understandably refuses to reward North Korea economically for giving up weapons it never should have had, others, including South Korea and Japan, could offer incentives to make any deal stick.

As for Mr Kim, he needs persuading that holding on to his nuclear weapons, far from protecting his regime, will threaten its downfall. China and Russia should stop blocking moves to take his treaty-breaking to the UN Security Council. China supplies North Korea with most of its fuel and much else. It has been reluctant to flip off the taps for fear of destabilising its prickly neighbour. But the wider damage Mr Kim is doing gives China reason to get tougher. For if diplomacy fails to disarm North Korea, only force will be left.

I concur.

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Tuesday, September 02, 2003

Strikes

The truckers are striking, while workers from GM Daewoo have gotten a rise, not to mention Kia and Hyundai all of which have now successfully striked to win large pay rises. But Time aptly points out strikes during a period of economic downturn are only goin to make the country's economic situation worse. The article also notes that,

Foreign investment in South Korea has plunged by more than a third since 1999, partly due to strike fatigue. "Korea is losing its competitive edge," warns Sunny Yi, a management consultant at Bain & Co. "Unions are making things worse."

. In fact, FDI has reportedlydropped from $15.22 billion in 2000 to $9.1 in 2002 and is only$2.66 billion in the first half of this year. On a side note, the decline in FDI in the article is partly attributed to the state regulations imposed by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry, and Energy, the same ministry which is also being praised for leading the nation to its fifth monthly trade surplus in a row.

Negotiations with the North
Former Pesident Jimmy Carter has writes about the known stubborness of North Korea with a couple of good examples of their past tenacious behaviour. However, he emphasises the need to patience and diplomacy as the answer to solving the dispute.

There must be verifiable assurances that prevent North Korea from becoming a threatening nuclear power, with a firm commitment that the U.S. will not attack a peaceful North Korea. This is a time for sustained and flexible diplomacy between our two governments, to give peace and economic progress a chance within a nuclear-free Korean peninsula.

Although, from reading the article I got more of a sense that any solution is only going to be temporary given that every other 'solution' has only led to a cycle of crisis-agreement-failure of agreement-crisis.

Trust Us, we're the government
The Korean Government, those soles of integrity and honesty, have decided they have had enough of the press who insist on publicising government bribery scandals, slush funds, gifts, pictures of fist fights and other assorted negative spins relating to their works and decided to launch their own internet news service at taxpayers expense.

Depends on your perspective
But on the issue of press spin stories and objectivity, I found two editorials regarding a police bashing incident. The Chosun tells us

An incident has occurred in which the police tried to stop some drunk men from fighting each other, then called in backup to beat on the guys en masse for around five minutes because the drunk men had bitten and struck the police who had first arrived. This scene, in which the police lost all reason and let loose the violence, was caught on surveillance cameras, leaving the police with utterly no excuse for themselves.

Meanwhile, the Korea Herald reads

the president's policy of a "kinder and gentler" administration, along with his forfeiture of power, seems to have created serious confusion at police departments with officers unable to enforce their authority to a desensitized public. [noting that] Last Sunday, two police officers were sent to the scene of a brawl at an outdoor drinking cart in eastern Seoul, but were subsequently beaten by the brawlers with their uniforms being ripped off after trying to break up the altercation. The scene was handled thereafter when two more policemen showed up as reinforcements.

Maybe the police should follow the example of the Blue House and set up their own internet news site to gives us their spin on what happened.

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Monday, September 01, 2003

For Sale: One custom-made Hexagonal Table

The first - and perhaps last - six-way talks have come to an inconclusive and vague ending. Early diplomatic parlance such as "positive start" or "early stages" gave way to the news that North Korea wants to test its nukes out. Some optimists are still saying that this is just the beginning and talks should proceed but it seems that even though the group agreed to meet again, they didn't set a time and now the North are saying there is no point to meet again. They could be right.

New Look Kathreb
As a complete dodo-head when it comes to all things computer it has taken an inordinate amount of time to make some alterations to my website. But since September marks the month that I leave Korea I felt a change to my website was in order to help reflect the changes in my life. I leave this country, which has been home these past five years (six if we count my first sojourn to the nation in 1996) to go to America (land of apple pie).