Sunday, February 26, 2006

New Country; New Look

With time on my hands I decided to spend it working out some features of my newly downloaded photoshop software. The new banner picture is obviously a photo of parliament and Big Ben and was taken by me last Friday. Other notable changes are a return to red for the colour theme of the blog and the departing of my Calvin and Hobbes comic. Calvin remains forever my hero and his absence from my blog in no way represents an absence from my mind. I've also changed the headings in the side bar to tweak the focus of the links more toward blogs rather than information sites - this will be updated as I find blogs that are linkable from these geographic groupings. The groups represent the areas I have lived in - Korea, UK, USA and Australia. These groups also broadly reflect the areas of interest to the blog with Korea taking precedence. And lastly, an attempt to reinstate comments; we'll see how it goes.

Korean Traditional Music


Last Friday night the SOAS in London held a concert of Gayagum guru Hwang Byung Ki. Most of the pieces performed were his own composition and went well beyond the traditional sounds you expect from a gayagum and from the court music style. Quick strumming and deep chords showed that this instrument has a wide range and creates some fantastic sounds.


Tuesday, February 21, 2006

North Korean Academic Writing at its Best

The Nautilus Institue has put up a highly entertaining essay by Kim Myong Chol. This dude is the Director for the Center for Korean-American Peace and noted as an 'unofficial spokesman' for the North. As usual the North has demonstrated their unique ability to make little or no sense and to leave the reader very confused as to what their point was.

The title, "Sanctions on Pyongyang will Backfire" would indicate that the topic was going to touch on US sanctions against North Korea and why they are doomed to backfire. And that would be sorta, kinda right in a murky difficult-to-grasp-the-point way.

For starters, we learn that US sanctions have been imposed on the basis of alleged charges of money-laundering, drug-trafficking and counterfeiting of US dollars" But no evidenc eis given to support their innocence.

The article indicates that while counterfeiting, drug trafficking etc are the public reasons, "the hidden real objective of the sanctions is to keep the North Korean threat alive and continue to justify US arms buildup, including missile defense". Or, is there more to it than that?.

I would summarise the argument of the article as follows: If the sanctions are justification for US arms build-up they won't backfire, they will work. If they are to curb counterfeiting and drug-trafficking they won't work because North Korea doesn't do those things anyway. If the sanctions are to stop nuclear proliferation they will backfire because sanctions for that reason only serves to make the North Koreans angry and more determined than ever to be completely obliterated by the superior US nuclear force.

The whole article is a quick, if nonsensical read but my favourite bit is this:
This is a hackneyed witchhunt employed since ancient times. The feudal lord frames a village woman as a witch, deflecting local criticisms for him toward her, and subsequently keeping control of the village.

The North Korean defense industry is guided by the juche principle, which calls for domestic funding, brains and self-reliance in materials. The principle of juche conflicts with counterfeiting of foreign currency and drug-trafficking to buy foreign materials and equipment needed for the production of nuclear weapons.

The Bush administration's imposition of a financial crackdown on the Far Eastern country is untenable because it is tantamount to denying that juche is the leading idea of the Kim Jong-il government.

Monday, February 13, 2006

Back to Blogging

Its been a whirlwind couple of months. Between December and February I have been from DC to Australia, back to DC, over to Singapore via a day in LA, then to Thailand and now London.

Singapore was no great shakes. I did a few museums including the wonderful Asian Civilisation Museum and went on the
Night Safari. But apart from a few highlights such as those the place was mostly shopping malls.

After Singapore I flew to Bangkok where I met up with a few friends for a ten day vacation. It was exhausting but absolutely fantastic. I got a bit sick of the sight of Buddha but there really are some spectacular statues of the dude. We headed up North to Chiang Mai where we saw more Buddha statues but also went elephant trekkng which was cool. And we also went to Ayutthaya an ancient capital with many large and impressive ruins and more Buddha statues.

Some holiday pics:

Reclining Buddha, Wat Pho, Bangkok
Monk in front of Temple, Chiang Mai
Panda at Chiang Mai Zoo
Buddha's head in a tree
Bangkok
Grand Palace, Bangkok

Currently reading:

"Hell" by Yasutaka Tsutsui