Author: Peter

Yes, I can say that the Korea election result surprised me. I learned it, or at least the early projections, on the bus on the way back from Paju (Wednesday was a holiday). Most other observers were also surprised.

From my Korean contacts, I sense a new political optimism in the form of breaking the democratic tyranny of the two-party duopoly system.

I have been busy and have no time to do any further in-depth commentary, as I’d like to, and as I will get back to.

Final Score
300 seats allocated (majority: 151+)
122 seats: Saenuri Party [right-wing, so-called, governing] (새누리당)
123 seats: Democratic Party [left-wing, so-called; it and its predecessors have been in opposition for almost all of the history of the Republic of Korea since independence in 1948, both during the military rule period and during the past twenty-five years of quasi-democracy] (I have learned they want to be called “the Minjoo Party of Korea” in English). (더불어민주당).
38 seats: People’s Party [centrist, so-called, but most seats are due to Jeolla region voters punishing their long standy party]. Party leader, Dr. Ahn Cheol-Soo, also easily won re-election.
6 seats: Justice Party [left-wing] (정의당)
11 seats: Independents. Many of these are expelled members of the Saenuri Party.

The big winner, alas, was Ahn Cheol-Soo. He’s got to be a favorite for the presidency now.

Election is tomorrow, Wednesday, and is a holiday. Election day a holiday? What a good idea.

The last I’ve heard is that the left-wing opposition Democratic Party (더불어민주당) is looking like it may lose more seats than expected in its southwest heartland. If it can’t sweep that region, as it usually does, that is a major problem for it. The newly-formed People’s Party (안철수의 국민의당) may take many of their seats.

Given the split opposition, a big net gain by the governing, right-wing Saenuri Party (새누리당) still seems possible. Saenuri has apparently set “200 seats” as their election goal (of 300 total seats to fill), up from the current 150. The opposition to the Saenuri Party seems politically discouraged. Both parties have been marred by pathetic infighting.

Here is a frontpage headline story in the Metro newspaper, translated by me. (Thanks to K. from my Korean class for the newspaper.) It was not so hard to translate, but I am unsure what, if anything, is to be “read between the lines”:

Original Korean:
[사진] 제20대 국회의원 선거를 하루 앞두고 연예인들도 대거 투표 독려에 나서고 있다. 지난 8일 사전 투표를 통해 선거권을 행사한 걸그룹 AOA 멤버설현. /연합뉴스 총선 D-1, 연예인 투표 독려”소중한 안 표 함께 해요” “여러분의 소중한 한 표 꼭 행사하가시길 바랍니다.” 제20대 국회의원 선거가 하루 앞으로 다간온 가운데 연예인들도 대거 투표 독려에 나서 눈길을 끌고 있다. 일부 연예인들은 바쁜 스케줄 속에서 사전 투표로 먼저 소중한 한 표를 행사하며 시민들의 선거 참여를 권했다. 올해 총선 홍보대사로 활동 중인 걸그룹 AOA 맴버 실현은 지난 8일 오후 서울 강남구 청담동 주민센터에서 투표를 했다. 설현은 2014년 6월 제6회 전국동사지방선거 이후 두 번째로 투표에 참여했다. 설현은 이날 “투표할 때마다 설레기도 하고 긴장되기도 한다. 내가 뽑은 서람이 당선될까 기대도 된다”며 “설레는 마음으로 투표했다”고 말했다.

This was in Metro, a free newspaper distributed at subway stations in Seoul (claimed daily readership, 226,000). The article continues by mentioning other entertainers who voted early and/or made similar statements to encourage the apathetic to take part in the civic ritual.

Nothing Seolhyeon said can be read as an endorsement of one party or another. If she has been Gangnam-ized yet, though, she most likely voted for Saenuri. (Her voting precinct is one of the wealthiest in the entire country.)

Why are K-Pop stars, including 21-year-old Seolhyeon, being used as props to promote voting?

Self-Promotion Angle
“Seolhyeon is patriotic; she votes; she cares; she is a good citizen. She also donates money to orphans, holds the door for the elderly, covers her nose when she sneezes, and says her pleases and thank yous, we’ll have you know!” (Sincerely, The Management).

Pro-Opposition Angle
Seolhyeon’s fans are not likely to be Saenuri supporters. Saenuri has low support among those born in the 1980s and 1990s. If she gets thousands more fans to vote and they go many-to-one against Saenuri, that could swing some elections against Saenuri.

Pro-Government Angle
The government has put up “Make Sure You Vote” banners everywhere. Why would the government do this if higher turnout may mean more votes for the opposition?

Voter turnout for National Assembly elections was:
2012: 54%
2008: 46%
2004: 60%
2000: 57%
1996: 64%
1992: 72%
1988: 76%

There is a clear downward trend, here. There may be a fear that low and declining voter turnout could undermine the state’s legitimacy itself. The “Make Sure You Vote” campaign could be a way to reassert the state’s legitimacy.

My “Connection” to Seolhyeon
I admit that I’d never heard the name Seolhyeon (설현) before seeing this article. I have seen her, it seems, in advertisements but I didn’t recognize it to be the same person as in the newspaper photograph above. Seolhyeon is the spokesmodel for the SK Telecom phone company, my classmate in my current Korean class, M.P., tells me.

I also see from Wikipedia that she was born in Bucheon, next to Seoul, and is a graduate of Gyeonggi Art High School (경기예술고등학교). In fact, I lived in Bucheon from 2011-203, and, in fact, I worked just two minutes’ walk from that high school (in a dense urban part of Bucheon New City’s Central District [부천신도시 중동]). Seolhyeon graduated in February 2014, which means she was a student at that school from March 2011 (in accordance with the Korean and Japanese school-year system). I began working in Bucheon in September 2011. I likely passed her on the street many times.

I write this on Tuesday evening, April 5, Korea time. Regular voting begins in this country’s national elections one week from tomorrow morning.

This year, direct elections will be held in 253 constituencies, with a further 47 members allocated proportionally based on party vote totals, for a total of 300 seats.

The current National Assembly has only 292 seats filled (Korean Wiki), presumably because of the expulsion and jailing, in 2014, under charges of treason, of several far-left National Assembly members. The Korea Herald, the right-leaning English newspaper, suggested Monday, disapprovingly, that some of the remnants of this far-left party, allegedly pro-North-Korea, have regrouped and are running again in 2016.

Here is the election outlook, according to the Korea Herald, reporting on recent polls:

Likely to Win (“safe seats”)
82 seats: Saenuri Party [새누리당] (right-wing, currently governing with a slim majority and the presidency)
35 seats: Democratic Party [더불어민주당] (left-wing, heirs to the Sunshine Policy but trying hard to “rebrand”)
20 seats: People’s Party [국민의당] recently formed by Ahn Cheol-Soo [안철수] (called “centrist;” populist) (See post-342)
6 seats: Others and Independents
110: Too Close to Call
253: Total Seats to be Elected Directly (plus 47 proportional = 300).

Here is one of the trucks I referred to in post-343, “Waving Back at the Political Noise Trucks.” (This was not the truck I “waved back” at.)

Candidate Park calls himself “The Fool of Songpa” (송파바보 박성수입니다) on his placard, which seems odd. I don’t know what to make of that.

The Fool of Songpa, though, seems likely to lose. I learn from Korean Wiki that Songpa District (송파구) of Seoul, a rather wealthy area, is a stronghold of the conservative Saenuri Party. All three of Songpa District’s current National Assemblymen are Saenuri members. Gangnam District itself is just as solidly Saenuri.

The Democratic machine was clearly weaker in the area. Behold, above, the two-man street-corner operation during prime Saturday politicking hours. The “red team” (Saenuri Party) had a much slicker operation in the neighborhood (See again post-343, at the end, for a further brief account of each side’s politicking tactics as I experienced them in my own small way.)

In Jongno District today, Tuesday, I saw a few more of these sorts of trucks. The one I got the best look at had three people in blue standing in the back, holding a kind of railing, as a driver sped by and one of those in the back jabbered something indecipherable to me, her voice amplified over traffic…

I had occasion to visit an American friend, Z.D., who now lives near Jamsil, southeast Seoul.

The election season is now fully underway (Election Day, April 13) and in Korea that means the “political noise trucks” (as I’ll call them) are out in force. They were on this Saturday afternoon. The infantry was also in the field, political cheering squads on many street corners of large roads. They accosted passersby (the kind of sales pitch I have never understood but which seems to work in East Asia, i.e. the idea that making more noise attracts people rather than repels them).

Sometimes little mini-trucks trucks were stopped at corners and figures in the truck beds thereof shouted at passersby via megaphone to vote for so-and-so. I think sometimes these were the candidates themselves. And then there is the music. This kind of political campaigning all seems gaudy and distasteful to us.

Candidate numbers. All campaign posters have enormous numbers on them to remind people who to support. Too many people have the same family name, or similar names in general, so all candidates are designated numbers within their districts. I even heard one cheer squads shout, “Number One! Number One! Number One!” Why even bother with a name? I have no idea what the man’s name was. I remember “Number One.”

Candidate’s names and numbers, and the noise associated with them, are everywhere. The biggest offenders are the political noise trucks, but I actually find them endearing. I’m just glad that Korean law bans such activity more than two weeks before election day.

Blue is for the left-leaning Democratic Party [더불어민주당], red for the right-wing (and governing majority) Saenuri Party [새누리당].

Blue Experience
One group of blue cheerleaders that day announced their candidate as an “MBC news anchor” (as if that is a legitimate qualification for high office). I observed this blue cheering team for a few minutes, and they observed me, suspiciously, I think. The team was composed of about six middle-aged women in matching blue uniforms. They seemed to go into a set-piece chant on behalf of their candidate whenever someone walked near them, as if the passerby had triggered a motion-sensor light. One of these passersby was my friend Z.D., aforementioned, when he arrived to meet me at Sincheon Station [신천역] in southeast Seoul. Maybe this blue cheering team was bored, because they let this obvious(?) foreigner, a White man, have it. If a war analogy is what we want, it may be the equivalent of a soldier, during a lull, shooting at birds. The chant’s crescendo hit Z.D. right as he noticed what was going on. He was stunned. He wandered over to me. They giggled. I said, “Wow, they actually pitched their guy to you! So does Number Two have your vote now? Did it convince you? ” His reply: “Huh?”

He had been unaware there was an election on.

Red Experience
A few hours later, as we were the sole pedestrians on a particular stretch of road, a truck carrying young women in tight-fitting red uniforms standing in the truckbed rolled by, exciting music blaring. There was more than a touch of “K-Pop” to this effort. Attracted by the loud music, a siren song, before I knew it I found myself looking directly at these women as they were waving at us, mere feet away from us on the road. There were no Koreans around. They waved anyway, and even made eye contact. I waved back and smiled, thinking it all in great fun, if surreal. Why not? To my friend, walking beside me, who hadn’t waved back, I said, “Did you see that? They waved at us! ….And you know what? The truck was covered in red. Those were right-wing women.” [i.e., of the Saenuri Party] at which he laughed. He dismissed the idea that they might have been waving to us specifically. Said he: “Once a wave starts, you’ve got to follow through. There’s no way to stop a wave.”

I do not favor any particular side in Korean domestic politics. I am an outside observer. I am interested in all sides and in understanding what’s going on.

One figure who appeals to me, out of sympathy and curiosity, is Dr. Ahn Cheol-Soo, a famous academic before he entered politics during my time in Korea, not long ago. Ahn has formed a new party called the People’s Party [국민의당], after breaking with the Democratic Party [the latter party is currently called 더불어민주당]. (I commented some more on this break in post-340.)

I am not an Ahn supporter, but I do hope he wins. Maybe that means I am an Ahn supporter.

In fact, I’m not even sure of what his political policies are. Why I like him, maybe why most of his supporters like him, is that he has nothing to do with the “boss politics” that seem so endemic to the Korea of today. He is also a brilliant man who has shown himself successful in life in previous ventures. I am an advocate of rule by the capable, far preferable to rule by less-capable-but-more-charismatic demagogues (i.e., the problem of democracy).

The latest opinion poll says that Ahn, in his constituency in Seoul, is barely ahead of some guy called Lee Joon-Suk [이준석] of the right-wing (and governing) Saenuri Party [새누리당]. This Lee Joon-Suk apparently has close ties to the President Park Geun-Hye inner circle. He is young, born in 1985, and a graduate of Harvard University. If this Lee Joon-Suk knocks out Ahn, it could be the end of Ahn’s political career…

Here is the newspaper in which I saw this information (Ahn is at bottom left; his main challenger, bottom right).

I had a Korean teacher, a male in his mid 40s, who, based on occasional remarks he made, I came to see was very likely Saenuri supporter. This teacher disparaged Ahn as being inexperienced.

In 2012, Ahn was running for president but withdrew to prevent a splitting of the vote. He allowed establishment Democratic Party figure Moon Jae-In [문재인] to run unopposed against Park Geun-Hye, but Moon lost.

What if Ahn had been the one running head-to-head against Park in Dec. 2012?

Korea’s national election is April 13, 2016 (designated a holiday to promote voting).

I have been translating some of the many political banners I’ve seen in Seoul. Through these translations and analysis based thereupon, I hope to gain some better understanding the election. I am posting these here to discipline my analysis.

Previous posts on Korea Election 2016 here:
Post-338: “The Liars are at it Again”
Post-340: Against the “Sleeping National Assembly”

I remarked in post-340 that many of the political banners that I had photographed and posted have been torn down, perhaps surreptitiously by political opponents. As of March 31st, most were gone.

One banner has remained untouched for weeks. If you understand what it says, you may be surprised by its “survival”:

The upper banner is an incredible contrast with the lower one here. The lower one — “No War! Stop the U.S.-South Korean Joint Military Exercises! Sign a Peace Treaty With North Korea!” — has also disappeared as of this writing.

Here is my translation of the upper banner:

[기독당]
“국방 개혁”
…핵 위협엔 핵 보유가 답…
대한민국 자주국방 최상의 답은 핵무기 보유 입니다.
[기독당]

[The Christian Party]
“National Defense Reform”
…When Dealing with Nuclear Intimidation,
The Answer is Nuclear Armament…
The best way to guarantee the Republic of Korea’s self-sufficiency in national defense is to possess our own nuclear weapons capability.

This apparently new “Christian Party” (기독당, in long form 기독민주당; it proclaims itself in English to be the CDUK, “Christian Democratic Union Korea” [sic]) is led by a Park Du-Shik (박두식), about whom I find nothing online, except that a film actor by that name was born in 1988. Very unlikely the same person.

This call for nuclear armament is actually quite shocking and troubling.

Most would say that this so-called Christian Party is too small to bother worrying about and that nobody who matters is serious about Seoul developing a nuclear weapons arsenal. On the other hand, here is a story from two months ago in which “a right-wing journalist” is quoted calling for nuclear armament.

I have wondered, ever since 2002, while I was in high school (at which time Korea first came into my awareness), why the United States still maintains a military presence in South Korea. A main reason, or the main reason, I have come to see, is that the South Korean government wants them there. A blackmail threat hangs in the air, maybe, in which South Korea would say, “Okay, Uncle Sam, you can unilaterally withdraw. Just, listen, if you do, we can’t promise, you know, that we won’t develop our own nuclear deterrent.” This would be too terrible to contemplate.

So, what of the Christian Party? They won’t win any seats. What, though, of the fact that the banner remains standing while so many others have been torn down? (There is also an identical banner on the other side of the street, visible to all approaching the main gate to Yeongdeungpo Station. I have seen the same banner in other parts of Seoul, too.)

One more thing. Somebody has scrawled graffiti on this banner. You can see it at the top left. The graffiti says, “Obey the Teachings of the Bible!” [성경 말씀에 순종하시오!]. I interpret this to be meant in mocking derision of the banner’s belligerent message…from the self-proclaimed Christian Party. Would Jesus call for nuclear armament? And so on.

“Political commentators have called the current 19th National Assembly [of the Republic of Korea] the worst parliament ever, extremely unproductive and dysfunctional. I will bet my bottom dollar that the 20th Assembly is likely to be even worse.”
—Choi Sung-jin, Korea Times editorial, March 30, 2016

The governing Saenuri party [새누리당] banner I wrote about in post-338 (“The Liars are at it Again”) was replaced, at some point, by the above.

This is the Korean original on the new banner and my translation:

[새누리당]
뛰어라 국회야!
잠자는 국회에서 일하는 국회로

[Saenuri Party]
Get Moving, National Assembly!
Turn our Sleeping National Assembly into a Working One!

This new banner from Saenuri, which I have seen in many other places, seems to be mocking the National Assembly itself, which may seem odd given that Saenuri is the governing party and  controls a majority of the seats (but not a supermajority). This seems to me to be a case, then, of dogwhistling to Saenuri supporters, roughly as follows: “Look, guys, we all know WHO is to blame for the ongoing poor performance of the National Assembly: The opposition. The opposition is to blame. They’re causing problems and making it into a do-nothing body. The solution? You and I both know the solution. Run ’em out. Run the opposition out.”

The Korea Times senior editorialist Choi Sung-jin goes on to say:

“The Saenuri Party is even turning the upcoming election into a ‘judgment of the opposition,’ saying that the MPK [더불어민주당] [the left-wing main opposition party, usually called the Democratic Party] did not cooperate in railroading President Park’s controversial bills into laws. In what sort of democratic country does the chief executive regard the legislative branch as little more than a rubberstamp of the administration, and the governing party calls for voters to punish the political opposition for what it is supposed to do — opposing (a one-sided operation of state affairs by the government and governing party)?”

The Korea Times editorialists are left-leaning, in my experience, and are not likely to ever praise the Saenuri Party. Choi also, though, criticizes the main left-wing party, the Democratic Party (he calls it the MPK [in Korean: 더불어민주당]). This party, in an odd move, has apparently handed over leadership of the party to a right-wing figure. Choi comments:

“The MPK may think its shift to a middle-of-the-road platform will help gather votes, but they could end up ‘losing rabbits at home while running after hares in the mountains’.”

This is a translation of the following Korean proverb: “산토끼를 잡으려다가 집토끼를 놓친다.” I’d never heard it before but I like it.

Finally, Choi also criticizes the attempt by opposition figure Dr. Ahn Cheol-Soo [안철수] to form a new party called the People’s Party [국민의당] after years of shaky relations with the Democratic Party. As I have looked on over the past few years, it has seemed to me that the Democratic Party tried to do something to Dr. Ahn that in Korean is called 왕따시키다, or a group closing ranks against a person, isolating that person with the goal of ruining him/her in the given social dynamic. I have observed this behavior on the job in Korea before, and have even been on the wrong side of it myself, and often hear tales of such from people working in Korean companies. It’s powerful: It enforces group consensus and suppresses challengers while uniting those on the “group” side (“We are all better than this idiot”).

Editorialist Choi predicts Ahn’s new party will undermine the opposition vote. Ahn himself says his supporters would not support the Democratic Party, anyway, and that he represents a new force in politics.

Choi predicts the Saenuri Party will increase its majority and is troubled by this. He raises the specter of Korea as a defacto one-party state with a Saenuri supermajority of two-thirds of the seats.

Postscript / Yeongdeungpo Political Banner Update
Just like its predecessor banner (“The Liars are At It Again”), the banner translated and discussed in this post (“Get Moving, National Assembly!”), too, has disappeared at the busy intersection in front of Yeongdeungpo Station. A few other of the banners seen in post-338 are also gone — Some replaced, some not.

I can only speculate about whether people are maliciously snatching down their opponents’ banners. If so, it’s not surprising, since some of the banners were politically incendiary, including the “Stop the U.S.-R.O.K. Joint Exercises” one, which made the same demand as the North Korean state media. Here is that banner, as it was, until it was removed:

At some point around about late 2012, I found a blog by a German of Croatian birth named Nikola living in Seoul. He was then a Master’s student at Seoul National University and was studying primarily in Korean.. This was really impressive from my perspective, at the time, as I sat in my job at a hagwon in Bucheon. Nikola was also a student of Geography, as I had been. I became a silent reader of his blog in those days, using it as an insight into the life of a student in Korea, something I, at that time, knew nothing about. I also used his blog to practice my German. (I once regarded German as a difficult language but now regard it as any easy language. Korean is a hard language.)

It so happens that on Sunday I met Nikola in person, for the first time, in Seoul, and spent much of the day with him and others at an event. Despite never having seen his picture, I knew it was him from the moment he said his name and his country, recalling the blog (Nimedi.blogspot.com), which is still listed in my browser’s bookmarks, buried somewhere down there. I told him I’d been his reader. He was surprised. He said, “Why didn’t you ever leave a comment?” I replied that German was not my native language, which was pretty inadequate as an answer. He is very close to me in age, perhaps the same age. Nikola is now working at some kind of Green Energy thing. I didn’t get the details on his job. He co-runs another blog called Kojects I’ve also occasionally read, but said his boss is pressuring him to end his Kojects website project. I asked him about TOPIK. He said he’d got Level 6. He said he still feels he is always learning. (I got a Level 4 and have a hard time with the evening news.)

I spoke a minimal amount of German to Nikola, but everyone in the group spoke English to each other and I was happy to do so. In fact, despite his considerable language skills (Croatian, German, Korean all fluent, English is his fourth-best language [I presume]), the language of business at the office, he told me, is….yes, English.

There were several Canadians and a couple of other Germans in the group, one of whom had spent some time in North Korea as a German-Korean translator on official business (I didn’t get the details), which greatly impressed me. I had invited two people, Jared, my longest-running friend in Korea from whom I learned much of what  knew about Korea in the early days; and J.E., an impressive Korean friend with degrees from the California and Cambridge and who has lived abroad a long while. The main figure of the gathering was an editor for the Korea Times, a White Canadian in his late 30s. (He told me there are four foreign native-English-speaker editors who clean up the Korean reporters’ grammar in their original reporting. I think his other general task is to serve as a liaison to the actual living, breathing, English-speaking community in Korea the Korea Times ostensibly serves (though in fact the direct readership is likely to be mainly Koreans).

Towards the end of the day, what was left of the group was: The Canadian Korea Times guy, Nikola, the older German man who’d been north as a translator, my friend J.E. whom I had also invited, and a Polish-Canadian young woman who worked for curriculum development for a hagwon chain — were drinking magkeolli rice wine [막걸리] at some place I’d never seen before in Jongro, the old heart of Seoul. I am not an advocate of alcohol, but I recognize its purpose in alcohol cultures, of which most European cultures definitely are: When the alcohol is out, it is the Germans’ time to shine. That’s the way it is. They told great stories and had fantastic insights on things. The man who had been in North Korea commented something worth putting down here. He said that the differences between North and South have been greatly exaggerated. He had a few examples from his experience.

At another point over the rice wine, the Germans brought up and commented on the story of Renate Hong, an East German woman. I’d never heard the story before. I’ll let Nikola tell the rest of the story, by way of my translation of his post on this subject, from 2013:

The Story of Renate Hong
By Nikola [original German] / January 2nd, 2013
Translated into English by Me / March 2016

Yesterday on Korean television, I saw a rather romantic and tragic story which relates to Germany and North Korea. As a student, Renate fell in love with a North Korean who had been sent to Jena in the German Democratic Republic [East Germany]. They got married and had two sons. The children were even given Korean names in case the family wanted, in the future, to go to North Korea. Then, the husband was ordered back, leaving Renate alone with the children there, without any contact and without the possibility of traveling to North Korea to see her husband. Her story has become known worldwide and there is a documentary in English with the title, “I Hope to See You Again,” which can be seen at Myvideo.

There was also an article in Spiegel from 2007, in FAZ, and in Deutsche Welle. In the last article, the severity of the summons back home and the consequences for Renate’s love are illustrated:

350 students and graduates had to leave overnight. Renate’s love was one of them. He had to leave his five-months-pregnant wife and his small son. Renate Hong and another friend pleaded with the Foreign Office for help — without success. The answer was: “There is nothing we can do. There are diplomatic implications.” Renate Hong found out, eventually, that her husband had been sent to the chemical factory at Hamhung [North Korea]. For three years, Hong Ok Guen sent her letters and tried find a way to be reunited with her and the children. Then, total silence.

After 46 years, in 2007, she received a letter from him, and in 2008 she visited North Korea with her two sons. There, she did, in fact, meet her husband, who had since remarried, and the two sons met their half-sister for the first time. A family photo of the reunited can be seen here [below]. The documentary I saw was very up-to-date; it had scenes from last September: In 2012, the husband wrote that his health was not good and that he would love to see Renate and his sons one more time. Before the preparations could be finalized, another letter arrived from the North. It wasn’t from the husband but from the Red Cross. Unfortunately, he had died. Renate and her sons went on with the trip anyway and she visited the grave of her spouse. By this point, my girlfriend, her mother, and I were all teary-eyed. It was very moving. Her story represents the stories of those many relationships not originating in political systems and ideologies but, rather, destroyed by them.

[Original in German]

South Korea’s National Assembly (국회) elections are coming up in April 2016. The last time, in April 2012, the “right-wing” Saenuri (New Frontier) Party won a majority of seats, foreshadowing the narrow victory by the same party in the presidential race in December 2012.

My impression is that the Saenuri Party (formerly called the Grand National Party, 한나라당) is differentiated from the main opposition Democratic Party (now called 더불어민주당) by being more strongly anti-North-Korea (i.e. more confrontationalist), more pro-U.S., and more in favor of a closed society at home. The Saenuri Party is mainly descended from General Park Chung-Hee’s Republican Party (공화당), and his daughter is now president.

Official campaigning is not allowed till March 31, which, in practice, means no teams of campaigners in matching uniforms chanting via louspeaker systems in public places, and no “noise trucks” blaring “Vote For So-and-So! Vote for So-and-So!” etc. Yes, campaigning in Korea is not much like campaigning in the USA. I find it all fascinating but most foreigners (and I presume Koreans) seem to resent the disruption of daily life and the added noise. The restriction on campaigning does not include political banners, which are everywhere.

Below is one banner I found from the right-wing Saenuri Party which I can translate and upon which I can comment.

First, it should be said that the opposition parties are making South Korea’s new Anti-Terror Law (테러방지법) a main issue of political attack. The Anti-Terror Law was passed in early March 2016, unilaterally by the ruling party, with no votes from the opposition. In fact, it was reported that no opposition National Assembly members were even present at the vote — All had boycotted the session in protest over the proposed law and over the government’s refusal to negotiate). Some question how different things really are from the 1970s in Korea (except for the society being much wealthier). Events like this….

Original Text of the Banner and My Translation

광우병 천안함 이젠 테러방지법도 왜곡
‘그들이 또’ 국민을 속이고 있습니다
[새누리당]

They lied about Mad Cow Disease,
They lied about the Sinking of the Cheonan,
And now they’re lying about the Anti-Terror Law.
They’re at it again. They’re up to their old tricks.
[New Frontier (Saenuri) Party]

South Korean politics is characterized by occasional political-frenzies during which it is difficult to figure out what’s truly going on. I remember, in 2011-2012, the political frenzy over the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Act (한미자유무역협정, usually called “한미FTA”). I remember the angry diatribes in public places, via megaphone, denouncing the Free Trade Act. The MERS Crisis of last year was another such incident, in a way,  but is now long forgotten. The Sewol Disaster was another, the year before that. There are many others. (None of these had much or anything to do with North Korea, fearmongering about which is so prominent in the U.S. media.)

The Anti-Terror Law seems, from what I understand of it, to be a kind of Internet-Age (and “Terror Age”) update to the notorious National Security Act (국가보안법). The National Security Act allows for the imprisonment of those the government alleges they are “anti-state” without having committed any specific offense, a troubling concept to the democratic mind. Something around a hundred South Koreans a year continue to be charged and convicted under this law, even in the 2010s. This is soft political suppression in action. The high-profile banning of a small far-left political party in late 2014 and the jailing of some of its leadership may have used this law to justify the banning, I’m not sure.

Anyway, the red-and-white political banner above refers to two more such “frenzies” and the banner implies that “they” (the Left generally, presumably) “lied” about each.

(“Lie 1”). Mad Cow Disease (광우병). U.S. beef was banned for five years in South Korea during the left-wing government of Roh Moo-Hyun, 2003-2008. I interpret the U.S. beef ban to have been a proxy for the political impossibility of removing U.S. troops. It was claimed that U.S. beef was infected with Mad Cow disease, and quite a lot of people seemed to believe it, despite no Americans having died of Mad Cow disease. Even today, it is uncommon to see U.S. beef served in restaurants. For years, into the mid-2010s, the Lotteria fast food chain had a slogan on its burger wrappers in Korea, “Clean and Safe Australian Beef” (Americans, if they knew about the insinuation being made, would be hurt, like a friend insulting you behind your back). In response to this frenzy, all restaurants had to publicly notify customers on the origin of their meat products. I’ve only seen U.S. beef served in a restaurant once. It became common in grocery stores, though, after the lifting of the ban when a right-wing president came to power in 2008.

(“Lie 2”). The Cheonan (천안함 침몰 사건) was a South Korean Navy vessel sunk with 46 lives lost in March 2010, two years into the administration of “confrontationalist” South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak (Saenuri Party). The international consensus seems to be that North Korea sunk the ship deliberately for its own reasons that aren’t worth going into here. Conspiracy theories were around at the time purporting that North Korea did not attack and sink the vessel as alleged, alleging a coverup. These insinuations had some success in the popular mind. Only “68 percent of South Koreans trusted the government’s report that Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean submersible” in a 2011 poll (Wiki)..

(“Lie 3”). The Anti-Terror Law (테러방지법). Discussed above. Critics seem to be saying that the Anti-Terror Law is going to be used to “scale up” the state apparatus for suppressing political activity and speech. The Anti-Terror Law specifically allows, its critics say, for the government to actively monitor all online communications, comprehensively, without a warrant, including the enormous database of KakaoTalk, the national chat app, which almost all Koreans use. A Korean-American acquaintance of mine, resident of Seoul for almost twenty years, recommended me to use a certain Russian chat app instead, “Because the government can’t access the database; it’s in Russia.”

Some more shots of the area around the Saenuri banner (“The Liars are at it Again”) . Across the street is Yeongdeungpo Station (영등포역) in Seoul. The exact same banner is visible lower right below:

Below is the same scene from the other side of the street. Note the red banner in the lower-right:

Several other political banners are to be seen here. One from a left-wing party saying, “Stop the Anti-Terror Law = Surveillance of the Citizenry Law!” (테러방지법 = 국민감시법 반대!)

Maybe even more interesting is the banner proclaiming “No War! Stop the US-ROK joint military exercises; Sign a peace treaty (formally ending the Korean War)!” (전쟁은 안된다! 한미합동군사훈련 중단하고 평화협정 체결하라!). The level of speech used here is the low form (반말 banmal), as you speak to someone whom you do not need to show respect towards. The red-and-white Saenuri Party banner (“Liars at it Again”) above is in a much more formal form (존댓말). This is because it is not addressing the “liars” but authoritatively asserting that they are liars. Saenuri, in its banner, is addressing its own support base and so uses a formal form to project an air of dignity.

Here is one more shot of the Saenuri banner, with a feel for how dense Yeongdeungpo is directly behind it. I failed to capture the magnitude of the Times Square Shopping Center, off to the left in the below and the size of a large stadium.

One more banner from Saenuri is across the street, sort of directly under the LOTTE sign in one of the above photos.

새해에는 경제먼저 민생먼저
[새누리당]

In the New Year: Economy First, Livelihoods First
[New Frontier (Saenuri) Party]

As the main parties have the same rhetoric on economics, this particular banner is boring.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, I was living in Bucheon. Near my building were two banners next to each other, one from the Saenuri Party and one from the Democratic Party. I was amused greatly that the two banners had the exact same slogan on them, down to the exact same words. It was something about building a society based on 복지(welfare payments). The U.S. Republican Party, in many ways comparable to the Saenuri Party, would never use such slogans promising “more welfare.”

Another thing I remember about the 2012 race was the Democratic candidate Moon Jae-In (문재인), whose name I had great fun with, in middle school classes at the hagwon, because it sounds like “Problem Man” (문제인)… The problem for him was that he lost.

Three short poems by Roh-Hae Park (박노해) translated here by me for the first time ever (as far as I know). All are taken from here.

See also:
Post-#333: Introducing Roh-Hae Park
Post-#334: The Path to Greatness
Post-#335: Spring in Kashmir
Post-#336: Encountering a Stone

 A poem and my translation.

This one is from an Internet collection we might translate as “Roh-Hae Park’s Reading Material for Those on the Move” (박노해의걷는독서). I am not sure if this is something official or put together by his fans. It is clearly designed to be “Internet meme” material (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook…) as this website makes clear. There are many more such poems there. These poems are meant to be consumed by native Korean speakers in the (literal) blink of an eye.

See Also:
Post-#333: Introducing Roh-Hae Park
Post-#334: The Path to Greatness…
Post-#335: Spring in Kashmir

Below is a third poem by Roh-Hae Park (박노해) I have translated into English from his Korean original.

This one is paired with a photograph the poet took. Both are displayed at his current exhibition in Seoul.

The optimistic imagery of the first lines here are a surprise because Kashmir is known as a place of acrimony and war.

There is nothing in the poem directly about the Kashmir conflict or the political situation as such. The closest is the second-to-last line. The poem takes no side between India and Pakistan, of course. The second-to-last and last lines might be read as a call for Kashmiri independence as a solution to the problem, but that is just one possible reading.

India and Pakistan both claim Kashmir, each controls a separate part, and there is occasional fighting, often stoked by foreign Jihadis. Up to 70,000 have been killed in the past twenty-five years there. I see several parallels in recent Europe. Northern Ireland and the various civil wars of ex-Yugoslavia. Perhaps eastern Ukraine today.

There are some historical parallels between Kashmir and Korea, too, though Kashmir is much more a plaything of foreign powers than even Korea ever was. Another main difference is that there is no parallel in Korea to the flow of foreign Jihadis into Kashmir.

Speaking of this, I remember seeing an interview with John Walker Lindh, White convert to Islam, Taliban Army veteran, and the most well-known “all-American case of treason” of this era (called “the American Taliban”). Lindh said that he had had occasion to once meet Osama bin Laden personally, in Afghanistan, in early 2001. He said that the latter had advised him to choose one of three places to pursue Jihad. These were: Chechnya, northern Afghanistan, and Kashmir. Lindh ended up with the Taliban Regular Army in Afghanistan, which, after Sept. 11, 2001, was suddenly at war with the United States. Rounded up by U.S. forces, he was put in a temporary prison at a place called Masar-i-Sharif, a place from which he jumped to worldwide fame/infamy after speaking to guards in a flawless American accent, claiming to be an American, asking for repatriation. He is currently a federal prison inmate. If he had chosen Kashmir and was captured, I wonder what would’ve become of him…

Google says it appears several hundred times in (the original) Korean online, but as best as I can tell it is the first time that a translation appears in English.

Park became a professional photographer following his release from prison. Another of his photos at the current exhibition in Seoul:

I did not see the exhibition. A friend did. Here is one of Mr. Park’s photographs:

Since last updating these pages, I returned to Korea (early March 2016), by way of Canada. I’m here again as part of a bigger plan that will begin in fall 2016. More on this another time.

In February 2016, I began an ambitious translation project from German to English that I hope to finish someday. Around the same time, I moved this site to Yule-Tide.com, the third name change since the site began about three years ago (Yuletyde.com should still work but redirect to the new URL). (The top banner still says Yuletyde but that should change, sooner or later, if I can remember how I made it…)

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In other news, I discovered that someone has translated* my post-#263, “Korea’s English Language Newspapers Contrasted” from my original English into Korean, with thousands of views. I have some familiarity with these two “native” English newspapers; both have nearly-all-Korean staffs but original content in English so have better reporting on Korean affairs in English, in certain ways, than any foreign media generally can. A lot of foreign media base stories on Korea Times and Korea Herald originals, I’ve noticed. I had never seen a comprehensive comparison of the two before my post written over a year ago. The two newspapers continue to be sold and read.

* — The Korean who translated my comparison was writing on the Korean discussion board oeker.net. He says he “roughly” translated it. In fact, there is no way to translate natural English written at a high level to natural Korean, except roughly. Even members of the same language family cannot smoothly fit one onto the other without some roughness in translation. That’s just the way it is. I have read his translation and found it faithful.

Here is his translation with his own introductory and concluding remarks. He says that he found almost no comparison of the two Korean English-language newspapers except my post. (I might translate this back into English in full at a future date):

I’ll be traveling through the eastern USA for most of the two weeks starting Monday January 4th. The holiday season being over means it’s just in in time to get much cheaper rates on transportation and lodging.

First stop, New York City and vicinity. Then south to North Carolina to visit my uncle and aunt, then down through Georgia and maybe into Florida, then back to Virginia, possibly by way of Atlanta where I also have “people” I may try to track down. I haven’t sorted out all the details yet.

Amtrak’s Palmetto Line will take me from Washington to North Carolina. (This line’s northern terminus: New York City Penn Station. Southern terminus: Savannah, Georgia.) Another line, apparently called the Silver Service line, partly overlaps Palmetto and continues down to Miami, Florida by way of Jacksonville and Orlando. Map of both, red markers indicating stops:

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To be honest, I wish the USA had more train service. There seems to be only one southbound train a day on Palmetto, for instance.

There is an idea out there that air travel has already peaked as the dominant form of long-range travel, and that we are in the early ascending stages of Maglev train technology (magnet based trains). A professor I had, Dr. T.L., made the case for this to us around 2008. Eight years later and so far no sign that I’m aware of. I rode one of the world’s only functional Maglev trains in Shanghai, China. It went only from the airport to a suburban subway station where you had to transfer to the regular system. A total prestige project.

Many consider train travel to be a metaphor for the American spirit, somehow, which is why it’s so prominent in American folk music. (Below are four Youtubes of songs of the sort I mean. As they may go down in the future, here are the artists and song title: Willie Nelson, “City of New Orleans;” Hank Snow, “Wreck of the Old ’97;” Johnny Cash, “Wabash Cannonball;” Boxcar Willie, “Orange Blossom Special.”)

This last song (Orange Blossom Special) is in honor of a train called the Orange Blossom Special, a predecessor to the very one I’ll be on. The Orange Blossom Special ran from New York to Florida. It was a luxury train line that operated from the 1920s to 1950s, now long forgotten but in its time the primo way to travel. Long-distance car travel was difficult and unpleasant until the 1950s. The song is originally from the 1930s and incorporates harmonica to imitate the sound of a steam engine.

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I’ve also, occasionally, had people say  “Netherlands,” right next door to Niedersachsen (Both have the word nether in their names [the old-Germanic word nether survives on the margins of English, too] which means “low,” hence “The Low Countries.”) In terms of ancestral stock, Netherlands and northwestern Germans are close. This map of the frequency of my particular Y-chromosome group [R1b-U106] (originally from post-223) reinforces all this:

The consistent accuracy, in general, of these guesses, by strangers, constitutes “poor man’s proof” that ethnicity is a valid concept at some level. Some today like to mock or discard it but do so at their own peril. I mean, here I am, someone in the USA for generations, and they can still identify me to the correct ancestral region of Europe with total accuracy, essentially. Draw your conclusions.

There is also this. I hardly recall any case at all in Germany of someone in public speaking to me in English straight away. Always German. This was not the case for other White Americans I knew. I recall one American friend, B.A. We attended the same university in the USA, even, but met in Germany. He was what in physical anthropology is called the Atlantid type (that black-haired British Isles type). That sort of face is rare in Germany, the sign of a likely foreigner, probably an English-speaking one. I recall that when Germans saw B.A., they tended to use English. Not always, but sometimes. Then there was the case of the girl who spoke to me in German and asked whether I was showing B.A. around Germany! She said something like “It’s lucky he has you to show him around.” She thought I was a native German. (I think I have related this story on these pages before.) In fact, we were both foreigners and had similar levels of German; mine was better, but not by that much. (There was also the case of I.S., a Polish friend, whose German was much better than mine. In her time there in the 2000s, she said Germans would ask her “Sind Sie aus dem Osten?” or “Are you from the East?”).

Germans are very nice and will very often address someone whom they believe to be a native English speaker in English, even in Germany. In many other countries, language of address in public can be a more delicate matter with “political” implications. Estonia was such a country. Kazakhstan was. Malaysia is. In a very different way, Korea is, too.

Hearing “You look like [such-and-such nationality]” from Europeans was flattering. It meant, or so I presumed, that they accepted me as one of them, as one of the European family after all. There is power in this.

​Here is a scene some of my ancestors will have known:

Thanks for reading.

This year, 2015, was the first Christmas that I was in the USA since 2010, and only the third of the past ten years. It’s good to be in the USA, but it’s good to be abroad, too. 

I attended several Christmas Eve services with family. One was at the Swedish Lutheran church in Washington, D.C. (whose existence I was unaware of; my father had apparently been before. They hold worship service in Swedish on the first Sunday of each month). It was actually a combined Christmas Eve service of the Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Danish churches of Washington D.C., and the Icelandic Church Abroad. In fact, it was Swedish led and used their space. The limits of egalitarianism: One of the churches’ names does have to come at the top of the program (see below)…

I appreciated this service. It reminded me of Estonia (the closest I’ve yet gotten to Scandinavia), which is another Lutheran country except that it was, for some reason, about 70 Fahrenheit [20 C] out that day.

A clearer view of the sign taken in spring (found online):

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Back to photos I took that Christmas Eve:

Some photos I find online of the service, via SvenskaKyrkan.se:

Below are two pages of the program, the front page and one of the interior pages.

Everything alternated between different Scandinavian languages but there was just as much English as anything, including the introductory remarks by the man whom I took to be the main pastor (a Swede). I originally suspected that this was for the benefit of people like me. More likely, though, now that I think about it, is that the Scandinavians prefer speaking in English to each other over picking one of their closely-related languages (which would be possible, except for the Finns). In other words, a Swede could speak to a Norwegian in Swedish and the latter would get it fine, I think, but to ensure smooth relations, neutral English is preferred. Or so I’ve heard. I regrettably lack enough experience with real Scandinavians to confirm it.

As to what the languages sounded like. Knowledge of German helps with Scandinavian, but I don’t think I could really understand anything I heard, though I could get much more from the written text.

In Swedish:
          Var Fader, du som ar i himeln.
          Lat ditt namn bli helgat
          Our Father, who art in heaven
          ​Hallowed be thy name

Himmel [Swedish: himeln] means “Sky” and “Heaven” in German. “Heilig” [Swedish: helgat] means “sacred” or “holy” in German. The other words are all quite close to English. Given some context and cultural awareness, I think I could basically understand this Lord’s Prayer in Swedish and the others (except Finnish) in written form. 

There were several musical performances. The most unique was a man playing a long alphorn-like instrument. I learn it is called neverlur in Norwegian and näverlur in Swedish (näver means birch and lur means trumpet). It was the first time I’d seen this instrument. The one the man played was even longer than this one that I find online:

It must’ve been heavy. He picked it up like an oversize Olympic pole vaulter’s pole, carefully wobbled it into place — suspended in mid air — using the combined sheer forces of his arms and his will, and knocked out the sound.

​It seems that some version of this instrument goes back to the Northern European Bronze Age in the centuries around 1000 BC.

I happen to have come to stop by John Redin’s grave several times over the past ten years. It is in an old family cemetery near Interstate 66, behind a church and easily accessible by one of Arlington’s bike trails, which is how I came to pass by so many times. (More on the cemetery.)

The rear-right-most grave below is John Redin’s.

In many ways, John Redin was no one special, and, in fact, I suspect that this post may be the most ever written about him in one place, at least after his lifetime, though I’d be glad to learn I am wrong about that. Hundreds were already living in Arlington by the time he will have arrived, but anyway John Redin was an early Arlingtonian, and that’s reason enough to remember him.

A new informational sign in memory of John Redin was erected as part of a 2013 eagle scout project. (See below.)

The new sign will definitely draw many more visitors up from the bike trail, and the proof of such is already to be seen. The flags by his grave were not there in the 2000s, as I recall (when I first read the faded words on the gravestone), nor in 2011, when I think I last stopped by. A fair number of coins, a lollipop, and some other candy in a wrapper were all left there this time. This for a man no one knows. He’s been waiting a long while for that kind of attention…

What can we reasonably suppose about his origin? We know his regiment was raised in southern Virginia (mustered into Continental Army service February 1776 at Williamsburg). This strongly suggests that southern Virginia is where Redin originally lived after emigrating from England, which further suggests that he came to Virginia as an indentured servant (because had he been free in those days, and not bound by a term of indenture in some trade, presumably he would have gone to the frontier for free land, and not stuck around eastern Virginia).

John Redin’s regiment was at Valley Forge in the winter of 1777-1778, the low point for the American rebels, when one in six American soldiers died of cold, disease, or malnutrition, others became too sick or weak to fight, and many others deserted and went home. The 6th Virginia regiment entered Valley Forge with 237 men and left the next spring with 88, a 63% loss of strength without so much as an actual battle.

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The regiment was apparently dissolved in May 1779, and those staying in Continental Army service attached to other Virginia regiments. That John Redin is listed as being in the 6th Virginia suggests he enlisted before that.

The entire small cemetery, fenced off:

Below: The bike trail. Down the way (not visible here) is a turnoff to the cemetery. On the right: I-66 and the Metro rail tracks, approaching Ballston Station in the direction of sight here.

The new sign:

The older sign (church in the background):

According to the Arlington, Virginia Historical Society, the earliest marked gravesite that survives to the present in Arlington is that of a member of the Ball family, buried in 1766. The Ball family was one of the original pioneer-settler families of Arlington, arriving in 1742 (135 years after John Smith first set foot in Arlington, in 1607, soon thereafter to be taken prisoner by local Indians). The original Ball pioneers arrived before even the founding of the town of Alexandria as a port serving the tobacco trade (1749). (An early member of the Alexander family, I think, was the first large landowner in what is now Arlington and Alexandria, the latter city a namesake of this family.)

Some Ball descendants were running a tavern and store at what is now Glebe Rd and Wilson Blvd by 1800, which gave the local community the name “Ball’s Crossroads;” later “Ball’s Town;” finally “Ballston,” the neighborhood name that survives today. Redin is buried only a mile or so west of the old Ball’s Tavern and General Store.

John Redin will likely have known many members of the Ball family, as there were so few families in Arlington in those days, nothing like the 230,000 living in Arlington today (up to 320,000 during business hours, I hear), many of whom are high-income transients.

Where are the descendants of John Redin today? According to this, no one named Redin was listed as a resident of Virginia in the 2000 census.