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Monday, January 28, 2008
Tasers Apparently the President-elect is considering introducing tasersto bring down those pesky people who will insist on holding 'illegal' demonstrations. I don't want to advocate all the activities of trade unions and strikers in Korea, who have a tendency to be over-zealous. However, tasers to suppress people exercising their freedom of expression and right to assembly is altogether too much on the part of the police. It almost seems like LMB is purposefully being provocative to see what reactions he gets before he gets into office.
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Saturday, January 26, 2008
Australia Day Today is Australia Day. I understand that most Australians celebrate this having a BBQ (if they are in country). Australians the world over will usually tune into JJJ. I did but fell asleep before the countdown reached number one. In fact I didn't even make it to 50. The day itself involved making a disaster chocolate mousse (inedible). This was a bit strange as I have used the recipe with successful results before. We had champagne and pizza for dinner which was not quite 'traditional' but very enjoyable. We watched Dracula: Ascension followed by Dracula: Legacy (still on at time of writing). I didn't understand the rope netting used in the Ascension movie and particularly disliked the use of silver as a weapon against vampires. Jason London's orange t-shirt in Ascension was a lovely colour. Monday, January 14, 2008
Party Pooper As per the request, or threat as it were, I have updated the link accordingly. Welcome to blogger. New Books It may have passed some people's notice that lately, most of my 'currently reading' books have not had anything to do with Korea (or East Asia). I have been aware for sometime now that my reading of books on Korea/East Asia has been woefully lacking. I decided to remedy this on the weekend. As part of my 'spend more money' resolution, I went to the bookshop determined to stock up on books I should have already read. The trip, sadly, was not very successful. It would appear that the UK public is not very interested in Korea. The choice of books was dismal. I tried Foyles and Blackwells. In the end I only got 'Rogue Regime' by Jasper Becker. I also picked up 'The Rape of Nanking' by Iris Chang and 'Modern Mongolia' (can't remember the author). US, and Washington DC in particular, was great for the wide selection of books on Korea. Wednesday, January 09, 2008
London Underground is Unacceptable The London underground is a decrepit old system of tunnels. Occasionally some trains still run through it. As I noted earlier the tube system makes me nauseous every time I descend into any of the filthy stations. Sometimes the headache is caused by the poor air quality, other times its the excessive cost of the ticket that renders me physically ill. Mostly its a combination of both. This week, I thought I'd brave the cost and the tunnels by buying a weekly travel ticket (a gut-wrenching 30 pounds). Foolishly, I thought that this meant I could catch unlimited trains for a seven day period. This evening I left work around 6:45pm. When I arrived at King's Cross Station (note: KCS is no small station) it was "closed due to overcrowding". Police were blocking the entry. No-one could catch a train because the system couldn't handle a regular work day's going home crowd. I had to take the bus. In case you didn't catch that: the London underground system is unable to handle a regular day's traffic. The worst part was when I arrived home in a state of outrage only to find the standard response by my house share was surprise - surprise this hasn't happened to me earlier. Apparently the subway's systems inability to handle normal day traffic is not such a rare thing. Monday, January 07, 2008
Doing More for North Korean Human Rights This is based on the discussion over at One Free Korea. It started with a report by Anti-Slavery and the comment that this was a rare piece of work from the NGO Community. There has been some discussion on why there are not so many NGOs working on human rights in North Korea. I can't agree with the idea of anti-US leftist groups not wanting to denounce an anti-US regime. Any NGO as anti-US as that is probably not worth paying attention to. I suspect that there are diverse reasons for not taking up human rights in North Korea. The nuclear issue, lack of information (this is less of an excuse these days), and the fact that most NGOs focus on local issues come to mind as probable reasons. At the international level, Anti-Slavery, Human Rights Watch, Christian Solidarity Worldwide and Amnesty International all take up North Korea human rights issues. To suggest that the 'human rights industry' is backing away from this issue, is somewhat unfounded. Human rights in North Korea does not get the kind of media and public attention that it deserves, given the scale of the atrocities. But I would re-iterate the reasons given above and add lack of access to the list. Regions like Darfur where you have do-good celebs popping in like alcoholics to the pub is pretty effective in getting public attention. You can look also at the Congo and other regions in desperate need of worldwide attention and action to see that the scale of human rights atrocities does not guarantee public sympathy. Right-wing groups DO take the lead on human rights in North Korea. But I see little difference between what they do and what left-wing groups would be doing if they took the lead. There host conferences (on week days no less!), hold protests, write letters, lobby governments, etc. Human Rights in North Korea is (or should be) a concern for all of us. The recommendations for bringing about change is, and should be, a matter for debate and discussion. There is no reason why different groups can't be doing different things based on what they think is the right approach.
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