While 
For decades, Korean pedestrians were directed to walk on the left side of the sidewalk, road, staircase, etc., a remnant of the Japanese colonial days when everything — including automobile traffic on roadways which the victorious Allies would later change — was oriented that way.
[above: Rebel.]
A majority of these young people, the study says, are sons and daughters of baby boomers, an “echo boom” born after their parents came here to fill plentiful military and aerospace industry jobs, or to flee Rust Belt recession. About 27 percent are children of immigrants who arrived in record numbers from Latin America and Asia in the 1980s, says the study, which analyzed data from the Census Bureau.
Though I was born in California, a slight majority of my age cohort was not.
[above: That's not creepy. Alas, poor Ruppy (ruby + puppy) will never be able to get a good night's sleep. I will forgo jokes about how the photographer should have used a flash.]Those are the typical guidelines for respiratory infections, frequent hand-washing. If you don't have access to soap and water, use an alcohol gel. Covering your cough or your sneeze, that's very important. And if you're sick, if you have a fever and you're sick, and your children are sick, don't go to work and don't go to school.Of course, lots of Koreans go to work even when they are sick, fearing reprisal by management or ostracism from colleagues who have to take up the slack, but hopefully the government making noise about something like this will provide social cover for employers and employees to follow such advice.
And several countries, including China and Russia, have issued a ban on pork products from the United States and Mexico, while U.S. government officials insist that American pork is safe for human consumption.Of course, I don't exactly find US officials the most trustworthy on this point, given that they would basically be forced to say this whether it was true or not. "Safest in the world" and "highest safety standards," said by Obama about US beef, seems to roll off the tongue of government and industry bureaucrats whether it's true or not.
If you've been following political news you may know that comedian, writer, and political talk show host Al Franken (above), most famous for his time with Saturday Night Live, has been declared the winner of last November's election for Minnesota's US Senate seat following a carefully handled recount. He is ahead of former Senator Norm Coleman, who was himself ahead on election night and prior to the recount, by only a few hundred votes. Coleman's appeals mean the matter won't be resolved any sooner than June, possibly later. 
The epidemic continues: Actress Woo Seung-yeon (U Sŭng-yŏn; 우승연) apparently hanged herself. It is believed she committed suicide following depression after failing a number of auditions.
Some musings while looking into information regarding South Korea's decision to beef up (pun... ha ha!) inspections of American and Mexican pork products coming into South Korea as one part of the response to the outbreak of swine flu in the US (also discussed at Brian's). Stepped-up inspections of incoming travelers at Inchon International Airport is another measure.
[above: A pig waste lagoon in Georgia. Trust me: the Skipper, the Professor, Marianne, and Gilligan would get quite ill if they swam in this lagoon. This is where waste from factory-farmed pigs is pooled until it... until it... I don't know what it's supposed to do, but a heavy rain will cause extremely unhealthy runoff into nearby rivers and other farms, which is why pathogens typically found in animal waste are turning up in fruits, vegetables, and legumes.]
Oahu is one-sixth smaller than Cheju-do but with 50% more people. Geographically, thre are considerable similarities, with the interior being less accessible due to higher terrain. (Cheju-do is often billed as "Korea's Hawaii," which I used to snicker at, but having lived here for three years, I would have to say that in terms of what to see and the quality of life, Korea's southernmost province is quite similar to Oahu; not necessarily the rest of Hawaii, but Oahu.)
Although I plan to delve into this in more detail later (I've got a bit of work to do over the next 48 hours), one point I'd like to make right now is that the South Korean government has, over the past few years, deliberately made it easier for foreign spouses to divorce their Korean spouse and still remain in the country.
But I did have occasion to drive a Pontiac as a rental while visiting my family some years back. It was a Pontiac Sunfire convertible, and it was hella fun to drive. Sure, part of that was that fact that it was a convertible, but it was a pretty responsive car. I had fun with it, and for one brief moment, it was in my top three of "cars I would consider buying if I were to move back to Orange County."
While I enjoy my Honda Passport, a fairly rugged small-scale SUV, it's an Oahu car that I wouldn't need on the tamer streets of Orange County. The Passport is great on Honolulu's pothole-riddled streets and its rugged beach lanes, as well as other island locations, but its gas-guzzling tendencies wouldn't play too well for the long drives I would have to make in California (there's only so far you can go on Oahu before you hit the end — it's an island).
A sociologist at my alma mater (UCI) has analyzed the stated preferences at Yahoo! Personals to analyze who dates whom: specifically, what races date what races. Her conclusion:Among daters with stated racial preferences, White men are more likely to exclude Blacks as possible dates, While white women are more likely to exclude Asians.Though her interest is more related to "full social incorporation" that may be precluded by racial exclusion, she does delve into speculation about why certain groups tend to favor one type and reject another:
Stereotypical images of masculinity and femininity shape dating choices and continue to be perpetuated in the mass media. The hyper-feminine image of Asian American women contrasts greatly with that of Asian men, who are often portrayed as asexual.Asexual Asian men? We need more Korean tough guys on TV! Calling CBI Agent Kimball Cho!
(I could also have gone with this retort: "Contrast? The media portrays both Asian women and Asian men as hyper-feminine." But that would have been too incendiary.)
No, it's the Koreans, with their 1 in 8 "international marriages" that is just an elaborate smoke screen providing cover for their deep and wide racial animosity. Insrutable bastards!The onetime human rights lawyer and judge is the third South Korean president since 1995 to face a corruption probe after leaving office. He is suspected of soliciting $6 million in bribes from a shoemaking magnate that were allegedly paid to his wife and son.No worries, Mr Roh. I abandoned your mercurial ass in 2005. And I'm pretty sure that much of the rest of South Korea did so about that time, too.
Roh, 62, has acknowledged that his wife accepted $1 million from footwear manufacturer Park Yeon-cha but denied involvement in any influence-peddling. He has characterized the $5 million his son received from Park as an investment loan.
The former president was summoned to meet with prosecutors on Thursday. Recent postings on his website suggest he is already appealing for public sympathy.
"What I have to do now is bow to the nation and apologize," wrote Roh, who served as president between 2003 and 2008. "From now on, the name Roh cannot be a symbol of the values you pursue. I'm no longer qualified to speak about democracy and justice…You should abandon me."
South Korea, for its part, handles things much like these California counties: the pay-as-you-go system allows for that. Illegals cannot get into Korea's national health insurance scheme, but standard health care is relatively cheap even when paid completely out of pocket. Unlike California, Texas, New York, and Florida, collectively home to some five million illegals, Korea's population of undocumented workers is less likely to set up house and stay for the long-term, though this, too, is changing.
Something about the USS Arizona inspires me to take lots of pictures of Old Glory.
But back to the US, where the media is all abuzz over the "undercover" videos made by one Lila Rose, a twenty-year-old student at UCLA. Ms Rose has been crisscrossing the country, clandestinely videotaping her encounters with workers at Planned Parenthood (an organization noted for doling out guidance and information on obtaining abortions to any female who walks in its doors), while posing as a pregnant thirteen- or fourteen-year-old, depending on the laws of the state she's when she videotapes the encounter.If not reading or shopping, most Japanese probably lose themselves in fantasy sites, video games or other escapes. Fantasizing is quite human of course, but when the fantasies are delivered pre-formed without the active work of the imagination, there is cause for concern. Young people especially need face-to-face time with real live human beings, not just with uploaded photos and lines of text. If not learned and practiced, the social skills of intuition, empathy and body language, all with their unique Japanese patterns, may start to fade away.Sounds a bit like editorials coming out of Korea from time to time.
China is tied to its autocratic neighbor through a panoply of interests. Since the Korean War, it considers North Korea as a buffer state, and up to today, it seeks to defend the status quo. The baseline is that China still has a 1961 defense treaty with its neighbor and that any intervention by third countries will force it to either respond or lose the confidence of other traditional allies in Asia.There's more to it than just that, so it's a good read. It certainly sheds light on some of the rants I've been making for the better part of this decade.
To some extent, it is thus history that binds them together, but more important is the existence of a harmful security dilemma. Rivalry with other powers like the United States, Japan and Russia inhibits Beijing to effectively tackle nontraditional security threats for the long haul, because pressure once again might undermine its regional influence in the short term. A worst-case scenario would be a peaceful regime change that allows Japan and the U.S. to move in. Equally troublesome would be unification with South Korea, as this would again require Japanese support, and might bring about a more self-determined Korea with economic and political ambitions that could challenge China's growing influence in Northeast Asia.
... no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.Ouch. Harsh words, and a good reason why people should pay attention to things written about Korea. Hint. Hint.
According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.
Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.
They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.
The process was “a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,” a former C.I.A. official said.
In terms of reverence, Kamehameha is like the Sejong Taewang of
Hawaii. Or Sejong is the Kamehameha of Korea. Either or.
Today Kushibo1 went to Hanauma Bay with a novice swimmer, so Kushibo1 didn't get to go out and see the sea turtles. Plus the water was cold. This has been a chilly winter by Hawaii standards.
Still, I'll bet you wish you were here. And why is Kushibo blogging in the third person? Maybe TheKorean is ghost-blogging as Kushibo1.
Back to work.
CB has a one-hour-free dealie, but in true Hawaii fashion, one hour
can turn into two or three.
I hope it's at least two, because I'm presently "in class,"
participating in my online health econ course.
All the while using my iPhone to send pictures and post on my blog.
What's cool is that this puts me one step closer to my dream of
lecturing on Korean society and health issues from the veranda of my
Tuscan villa.
Ciao!
As I wrote at Brian's website, such people as Haydn complains about — man whores, essentially — really do exist. I'd like to think that people who are serious about their work far outnumber the people who came for whoring, but I don't think it comes anywhere near being the dominant personality type and to write about it in the KT is, well, mindless drivel. The KT needs to do a complete housecleaning and do away with the high school newspaper twaddle.To make matters worse, family dysfunction, divorce, single-parent households, homosexuality, crime, drug use and other anti-social behavior are increasing in many western nations ― even Australia and Britain.Gay people — even in Australia and the UK? Divorced people, too? Maybe they're getting divorced so they can be gay.
I like this picture. Very smart-looking, as in 멋있다, and I wouldn't mind having such a portrait of myself made. In fact, I think someone could make some serious coin doing Chosŏn-style portraits of folks in the modern era.
When I first bought a laptop I paid some serious coin to get the entire Grollier's Encyclopedia on CD. In fact, when I got a bigger hard drive, I saved the CD contents so I could access it whenever I wanted. It was great, in those pre-Encarta and pre-Wikipedia days, before Korea had wi-fi access everywhere, to be able to get solid info on the fly. Now it seems so quaint but back then it was very high-tech. I suppose someday my iPhone with its 3G connectivity will seem oh-so outmoded as well.The east coast of Korea is steep and rock-bound, with deep water and a tidal rise and fall of 1 to 2 ft. The west coast is often low and shelving, and abounds in mud-banks, and the tidal rise and fall is from 20 to 36 ft. Korean harbours, except two or three which are closed by drift ice for some weeks in winter, are ice-free. Among them are Port Shestakov, Port Lazarev, and Won-san (Gensan), in Broughton Bay (Named after William Robert Broughton (1762-1821), an English navigator who explored these seas in 1795-1798); Fusan, Ma-san-po, at the mouth of the Nak-tong, on the south coast; Mok-po, Chin-nampo, near the mouth of the Tai-dong; and Chemulpo, near the mouth of the Han, the port of the capital and the sea terminus of the first Korean railway on the west coast.Yeah, Koreans were naming their bays after British explorers. Right.
Korea is distinctly mountainous, and has no plains deserving the name. In the north there are mountain groups with definite centres, the most notable being Paik-tu San or Pei-shan (8700 ft.) which contains the sources of the Yalu and Tumen. From these groups a lofty range runs southwards, dividing the empire into two unequal parts. On its east, between it and the coast, which it follows at a moderate distance, is a fertile strip difficult of access, and on the west it throws off so many lateral ranges and spurs, as to break up the country into a chaos of corrugated and precipitous hills and steep-sided valleys, each with a rapid perennial stream. Farther south this axial range, which includes the Diamond Mountain group, falls away towards the sea in treeless spurs and small and often infertile levels.
[above: Oil field in Kurdistan. Very, very messy.]
Bear that in mind as you read Los Angeles Times Seoul correspondent John Glionna's piece on the brother-in-law of ailing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Jang Song-taek (장성택/張成澤; chang sŏngt'aek), whose daughter Jang Keum-song (장금성) committed suicide in Paris while studying there, reportedly when she refused to return to North Korea as ordered because of her unapproved love with somebody in Paris.He is an enigma from the world's most secretive state, a behind-the-scenes political operative known mostly as a trusted brother-in-law to North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il.Jang was the hardliner reportedly in charge of things after KJI had his stroke, and he supposedly "took the opportunity to crush any dissent."
But Jang Song Taek has recently emerged as a decisive player in the drama of who might succeed the ailing 67-year-old Kim in a country that remains defiant in the face of international pressure to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.
Looking weak following a suspected stroke in August, Kim last week publicly anointed Jang as his second in charge, analysts say, naming him to the powerful National Defense Commission.
Pyongyang watchers are divided about the move's significance. Some say Jang could assume power if Kim dies or is incapacitated, while others insist he would merely become the regime's caretaker, ensuring an orderly succession of power to one of Kim's three sons.So I'm going to make a prediction or two. First, the Dear Leader's not going anywhere. Yeah, he probably had a stroke in August, but if he's up and walking around like he has, he's out of the woods. He has survived the stroke; having had a stroke makes it clear that you're at high risk for another stroke, but it's not like cancer where the same stroke might come back on you.
Frankly, I think people are too premature about that, talking about how weak he is, how emaciated, how he's got one foot in the grave. I don't think such people have a whole lot of experience with stroke survivors. The guy is walking around and talking and smiling. Kirk freakin' Douglas had a much more severe stroke at the age of eighty, and thirteen years later he's still around, at ninety-three. The picture above is from two years ago during a Reuters interview.
There's an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times that Joshua of One Free Korea might enjoy for its emphasis on punishing Pyongyang by punching them in the pocketbook. It's penned by Juan Carlos Zarate, a former Bush-43 Treasury Department official and NSA deputy adviser.It remains to be seen how far countries such as China and Russia will actually go in tightening sanctions. But the U.S. should ensure that the condemnation has meaning by taking decisive action with or without the Security Council.That's more than just the gist, it's over a third of the editorial.
We know what works: leveraging smart financial power to pressure North Korea and disrupt the regime's continued proliferation and illicit financial activity.
In September 2005, as part of a strategic pressure campaign, the Treasury Department ordered U.S. financial institutions to close correspondent accounts for a private bank in Macau -- Banco Delta Asia. This bank was facilitating money laundering, proliferation and counterfeiting on behalf of the North Korean regime.
The regulation cut the bank off from the U.S. financial system. More important, the unilateral regulation unleashed the global financial furies against North Korea. Banks in China, Asia and Europe stopped doing business with North Korea, denying it access to the international financial system. North Korean bank accounts were closed, its transnational commercial transactions were canceled, and officials' financial activities were carefully scrutinized.
This hurt Pyongyang. The North Korean regime scrambled to regain access to money and accounts around the world while trying to undo the official damage done to its reputation in the international financial community. Key state actors, including China, had no incentive to block the full effect of the market reaction. On the contrary, they did not want their banks or financial reputations caught up in the taint of North Korea's illicit financial activity.
Now I'm not just thinking out loud here; I'm genuinely asking for information here because I'm not exactly a rocket scientist. First, what is the evidence, what is the slam-dunk case that this was a test launch of a weaponized missile? And by slam dunk I don't mean "Saddam Hussein has WMDs" slam dunk; I mean actual facts and evidence.You know that on March 26th they said very explicitly that if even one word of criticism of their missile launch came out of the United Nations, they would discontinue the six-party negotiating process on nuclear weapons, which it started in 2005.This is not true. North Korea never said they were launching a missile; they've insisted they were launching a satellite with a rocket. Everything else Mr Harrison said may be true, but it looks like North Korea is acknowledging that they were test launching a missile, an admission they did not make.
But wait a minute, wouldn't Pyongyang benefit just the same if they were able to put a satellite into orbit? They would gain considerable prestige, both domestically and internationally, but with the added benefit of not being such a pariah. And making Washington look like a belligerent fearmonger would earn the North Korean regime some respect and street cred in many parts of the world.
