Author: Peter

bookmark_borderPost-267: U.S. General Walker’s Site of Death (1950) in Seoul

Posted on by Peter
On Monday December 29th, 2014, with temperatures in the 40s Fahrenheit, I and an American friend, M.P., hiked up a section of Dobong Mountain (도봉산) in northeast Seoul. We ended near a dramatic high rock outcropping, atop which a few dozen birds were squawking at long length to each other about I cannot imagine what. I was puzzled why these birds hadn’t migrated south. That was afternoon. We’d arrived by train at Dobong Station that morning.

The area around Dobong Station, still within the Seoul city limits (barely), felt more like a backwater country town a hundred miles away than it felt like Seoul.

While we were still near the station, M.P. did a “Hey, let me show you something,” and waved in a particular direction. M.P. had lived in this area before. I followed. We came to a little building housing a bland cell phone shop and a piddling, unremarkable cafe with a typically-ostentatious name (“Cafe Lucile”). I wasn’t impressed. But just then I looked up.It was a museum in honor of a long-forgotten American general killed nearby many years ago. Now I was interested.

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Looking at the near corner of this building, up near the roof, you see a memorial stone. This is it:
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Those are four stars you see, next to a portrait of General Walton Harris Walker, U.S. Army. It was a museum in honor of the general, apparently. I asked M.P. if he’d ever been inside. He hadn’t. I tried opening the door; locked. I tried walking around the back; nothing there. I tried looking in the window. I saw were stairs descending down into blackness. The museum, if that’s what it was, was closed on this Monday late morning.

I commented to M.P. that I was sure that General Walker, who in 1950 frantically led Eighth Army (under which were all U.S. Army units in Korea), did not say the words attributed to him on this plaque verbatim, i.e. “I’m going to keep the korea end of the die here.” This is such a poor translation as to be almost indecipherable if you didn’t know the context. It is a translation into English from Korean from English. (As written: 내가 여기서 죽더라도 끝까지 한국을 지키겠다). I can’t find the original words in English online. I would offer the following as a better translation: “Even if I have to die here, I’ll fight to the end to keep Korea free”.

Nearby, across from the train tracks and not far from Dobong Station, marks his spot of death all those years ago.

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Walker led U.S. Army forces for six months in the war, during the long retreat in June, July, the defensive stand at Busan in August and September, the drive north in September and October after the Incheon Landing, the occupation of North Korea, and he was also on the scene when Chinese intervention escalated the war in late 1950. He was killed in a car accident just as the Chinese were getting ready for their successful attack on Seoul.

Walker was a Texan. Physically, he was short and fat (“stocky”). The author of a book about the Korean War I read compared him to a comedic stock character often seen in old war movies, the local misfit drafted into the army, assigned ill-fitting clothes, whose helmet won’t strap properly; this kind of thing. He may not have looked the soldier, but according to my reading, he was always at the front in the crucial months of summer 1950, often zipping from place to place in his personal propeller plane, always “inspecting” (yelling at) the Americans to stiffen their backbones, to shape up and start fighting for God’s sake; stop retreating. Of course, actions speak louder than words, and General Walker so often showing up at frontline positions must have inspired bravery by example.

bookmark_borderPost-266: “Notorious” Movie (1946)

Posted on by Peter
I watched a 1946 movie directed by Hitchcock called “Notorious”. It presents us with a U.S. plot to infiltrate a group of Germans who had escaped from the fiery end of the Reich in Europe the previous year and had set up shop in Brazil — a kind of safehouse for mid-to-high-level escapees. The safehouse also harbored escaped scientists who were continuing some kind of covert research program interrupted by the defeat in Europe, surrender, and occupation.

The movie is actually a romance story between the lead American agent (Cary Grant) on the case and the German-American young woman (Ingrid Bergman) whom the FBI asks to infiltrate the safehouse.
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Ingrid Bergman’s character’s father had been some kind of fascist agent in the USA who, in the opening scene, is jailed by a U.S. court for treason and soon dies in jail in mysterious circumstances. Through her father, the girl had had contacts with the “international fascist” world but was “pro-American” personally, these two facts being why American intelligence wants to recruit her. Cary Grant becomes her handler, and they fall in love…
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Off to Brazil to infiltrate the safehouse to see what they’re up to. She gets in. Then the dramatic turn: The lead German “Nazi”-in-exile in Brazil (actor: Claude Rains) asks the girl to marry him. They’d known each other years earlier, you see. At the urging of the FBI, so as to gain the trust of the safehouse community, she agrees to marry him. They marry.

A series of events leads the Claude Rains character, the head of the safehouse, to realize that his new wife is an American agent, and he panics. If he admits the fact that he has married an American agent to the other safehouse people, he fears they will kill him. His mother, who is also a resident of the safehouse, persuades him to poison her, and he reluctantly agrees. Sure enough, she is rescued at the last minute by Cary Grant.

So what is the significance of this movie, made almost seventy years ago?

For one thing it is an early example of James Bond. Cary Grant plays James Bond here, many years before James Bond was created. This is a genre that audiences became familiar with as the 20th century rolled on.

A very similar movie could be made today, with one glaring exception (as I see it):

The “Nazis” in this movie (filmed in late 1945 and early 1946), with one or two exceptions among certain lesser characters in the safehouse, are more sympathetic than Nazis whom we would see on screen in a film produced today. This is amazing given that the war had only been over for six months at the time of filming. Certainly the main German exile character (played by Claude Rains) is a sympathetic character. We are shown a human rather than a “Nazi”; a tragic figure with his own struggles in life just like anyone else.

Do I mean to say that Hitchcock was a “fascist sympathizer” himself? Surely not. I think something much more interesting may be going on here: I am reminded again of the newspaper columns by George Orwell in 1945 and 1946 and thereabouts (see also #59), reporting from a ruined Germany. He reported that the Germans were so thoroughly defeated that any more anger at them just seemed superfluously cruel; sadistic. He reported one scene he witnessed in which, months after the surrender, a guard kicked, spat on, and otherwise abused a shackled German SS man, a POW. Orwell pointed to how senseless this seemed. The war is over; their side is totally defeated; what are you doing? Let’s extinguish the flames of war passion and try instead to kindle (rather than strangle the life out of) the long-suppressed spirit of Good Will Toward Men now trying to crawl up out of the ashes, Orwell seemed to say in many of those columns/essays from those years. Maybe Hitchcock, directing “Notorious” about the same time, had a similar idea in mind. In the immediate period after Germany’s surrender, portraying the Germans as unequivocally evil would seem just plain lazy, if nothing else, and Hitchcock could never be lazy.

As it turns out, of course, in recent decades ever-more-histrionic portrayals of Nazis have prevailed in Hollywood. This means that, ironically, movies made in the 2000s and 2010s, sixty and seventy years after the fact, are much more “anti-Nazi” than this movie, “Notorious”, filming of which began six months after the end of the war!

bookmark_borderPost-265: Yuletide 2014 (Thinking about Yule and Christmas)

Posted on by Peter
Yule 2014 has come and gone. I was too busy with work and other things to mark it on these pages as it happened. I write this four days later.

This is the second “Yule” that has passed during the life of this blog so far. (See here for Yule 2013.) Those who know me know why I might be interested in Yule (spelled with a ‘J’ in the Scandinavian and other related languages).

The actual meaning of this word is originally “Winter Solstice”, i.e. the point at which the Sun’s rays, travelling southward for the previous six months, hit their southernmost maximum and then begin to come back north. This is why the day on which the Winter Solstice (Yule) occurs is “the shortest day of the year”. Tide is another old word for “time” or “period”. Yuletide simply means the time around the Yule moment (Solstice).

The exact moment of the “Yule” (Solstice) in 2014 6:03 PM Sunday December 21st 2014 Eastern U.S. Time, or 8:03 AM December 22nd 2014 Korea Time where I still find myself. I was typically very busy in the days leading up to this day, including unexpectedly having the opportunity to help a Syrian student of the Korean language living in the UAE (and now back in the UAE) visit around the Seoul area (more on this later, perhaps). I also worked full-time Monday through Wednesday of this week, back in Ilsan, and had the chance to revisit some old friends. I have no classes of my own till January 7th.

Three days later, Christmas morning, I was at the top of Gyeyang Mountain (계양산) with three others. I don’t know what the ancient Northern Europeans did to celebrate Yule, but trudging up a mountain in the windy cold with the sun rising at our backs seems appropriate. We had a meager meal of chocolate-coated wafers and bottled orange juice at the top. My main activity besides trying to keep warm was trying to decipher the historical sign posted at the top, with more success than usual.

Here is the “Yule Plus Three Days” sunrise:

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Sunrise over Gyeyang Mountain (Incheon, South Korea), looking east, December 2014

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In high school, I had a friend, P.S., born in India and who came to the USA at age 2 or so. I liked him because he was smart, knew a lot of things, and could hold a conversation about any topic at length. He went on to go to Mr. Jefferson’s university (University of Virginia), but tragically ended up trapped a in a job he hated in Washington, D.C., the last I know of. Anyway, back in high school, this friend was very interested in the idea that my surname, which is connected to “Yule”, would imply a connection to this ancient Solstice celebration in Northern Europe. Being a Hindu, this would put us in closer “spiritual” kinship, probably he supposed, as Hinduism and the pre-Christian pagan religion(s) of Europe were somewhat connected.

I said I didn’t suppose Scandinavians had an unbroken chain of surname inheritance from pre-Christian times to the present. But the story is more complicated than this and he may be more right than we think:

English-speaking people, centuries ago, decided that Latin words were much more sophisticated than the equivalent words descended from Germanic words (note: “sophisticated”, “equivalent”, and “descended” are all Latin-origin words, as is, ironically, the word “Germanic”!), and this “Yule” is a case of that. The Latin word (Solstice) replaced the Germanic (Yule) in English and so “Yule” fell into disuse. It has held on by vaguely attaching itself to Christmas, which occurs a few days later. This is not coincidental. The early Christian leaders, it seems, chose December 25th to commemorate Jesus’ birthday specifically to placate the Pagans of Europe at the time and their major Yule festival, kind of taking it over. This must be why so many traditional aspects of Christmas seem to just not fit at all if the holiday is ostensibly about Jesus’ birth. Evergreen trees; mistletoe; wreaths; feasting; special kinds of alcohol; the Santa figure; reindeer; elves; snow; travelling to visit family; and a general kind of magical goodwill permeating things for a week or two. These things make more sense in light of the Yule connection.

The Lutheran Church, and maybe others, have a tradition of dawn service on Christmas morning, which seems to me very surely to be a descendant sunrise Yule rituals. In my time in Estonia (Ethnic Estonians are also Lutherans), I recall that some people of my acquaintance at the time were holding a more explicit Solstice festival. Finally, here is a list of translations of “Merry Christmas” in the Scandinavian languages.

bookmark_borderPost-264: Korean English Newspapers Contrasted, Part II (Cases in Point)

Posted on by Peter
#263 was a long comparison of the two English newspapers of South Korea, the (basically) left-wing Times and the (basically) right-wing Herald. (Don’t think that the adjectives that preceded each newspaper title in the preceding sentence give you any full or clear idea about in line with U.S. or other Western politics. Notably, for certain complicated reasons, racialism is more associated with the political Left in Korea. The DPRK regime itself is certainly racialist.)

Somebody arrived at my quiet corner of the Internet here, I presume via a Google search, and left a comment asking for specifics on the broad tendencies I discussed in #263. I had stated in the post that as this is just for my own “entertainment” and kind of a personal reflection on things I’d observed over a long period, I didn’t want to dig through archives to tendentiously and/or pedantically prove everything. Why do it? It would turn into a big research project for which I have no time.

But I’ll do it anyway, in a limited way because he sort of challenged me to. I can use examples from this very week to show that Times is left-wing Herald is right-wing. This will prove to be very easy to do, as you’ll see if you read any more below.

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It so happens that a small, far-left political party was banned on Friday by the South Korean government for being “anti-constitutional” and allegedly supporting North Korea, a criminal offense. This was the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) (통합진보당). It had several of its elected, sitting members of the national legislature jailed after the government implicated them in a supposed “pro-North Korea plot” in 2013.

This was the first time that South Korea has ever banned a political party. That was Friday. Now consider the two newspapers’ lead editorials published the next day, Saturday.

Left-leaning Korea Times chose not talk about the ban handed down the previous day at all (anywhere on the opinion page), but talked instead about the inevitably-related issue of North Korea:

U.S. officials, and their South Korean counterparts for that matter, have always said they are open to dialogue with North Korea ― provided the latter shows “sincerity” by taking preliminary steps toward giving up its nuclear programs. If the Cuban breakthrough is any guide, however, the allies would well do to ease their preconditions somewhat and reopen talks with the isolationist regime in other areas. That is, on condition of Kim Jong-un trying to be at least as open and reformative as Raul Castro, if not the late Deng Xiaoping of China.

South Korea should attempt to be such an arbiter and facilitator, instead of parroting the U.S. tactics on North Korea. This is why we find something missing from the government’s response to the U.S.-Cuban development, which just welcomed it and expressed a willingness to also set up relationship with the Caribbean country.

Seoul should do far more, and better, than that. [Note: “Seoul” appears in the paper copy of the newspaper. In the online archive, this was changed to “the Park Geun-hye administration”.]
[“Korea Times” / December 20th, 2014 editorial]

Take special notice of the bolded parts above. The Times editorialist is calling for South Korea to be (we might say) “soft on North Korea”. A renewal of the Sunshine Policy, the years-long irritant of the South Korean Right which has been mothballed for years.

There is also a not-subtle mockery here of the South Korean right-wing for “parroting the U.S.” This is a nod towards the idea often voiced by the Korean Left that Korea is under threat of “becoming an American colony” (whatever that means). Ultimately, this must draw at least some of its water from the racialist well. “Let’s support our fellow Koreans, not be led around by White outsiders”. They cannot directly say something like that, of course. They walk a fine line.

Now look at the Korea Herald editorial, which waved the “anti-red flag” high and clear.

Demise of radicals
The Constitutional Court’s ruling to disband the leftist Unified Progressive Party was a long-awaited, legitimate move to drive out dangerous radicals disguised as “liberals” from this society.

The court, announcing the result of its yearlong adjudication on a petition filed by the government, ruled Friday that the UPP should be disbanded because its objective and activities violate the basic democratic order protected by the Constitution. 
[…]
But the end of the legal war does not mean that we can lay down our arms against the staunch leftists. The UPP and its loyal supporters will not easily give in to what they call “a ploy to destroy conscientious liberal political forces.”

One more thing we should watch out for is the possibility that the same anachronistic radicals will attempt to regroup and create a surrogate party. Friday’s ruling includes a ban on any such attempt, but we are well aware that the radicals are good at reorganizing themselves.

Never again should they be allowed to attempt to gain a foothold in any sector of this society, not least the parliament.      [December 20th, 2014 editorial, “Korea Herald”]

The Herald editorialist has no time for the view that going around banning political parties is a really dangerous game.

The left-leaning Times, while it didn’t editorialize on the subject on the day after the ban, did report on the ban as its lead story on the front page, using the subheading “Unprecedented ruling on UPP met with hurrahs, fears of McCarthyism“. There is some soft or tacit editorialism within this Times front-page article:

UPP members and its supporters criticized the court ruling, saying it would lead to an ideological witch hunt, similar to McCarthyism experienced in the U.S. during the 1950s. The UPP has almost 30,000 members.
[…]
Friday’s decision was welcomed by many conservatives, while liberals largely condemned it. Members of the UPP staged a protest outside the Constitutional Court to protest the decision. 

Lee Jung-hee, the party chairwoman, said after the ruling that, “Now [the Republic of] Korea is ruled by a dictator.”  “The Constitutional Court, which was created after the pro-democracy movement of the 1980s, has now given up listening to the people,” she added. 

Some people have viewed Friday’s decision with concern, saying it may restrict free speech, especially when it comes to North Korea. A similar question was raised by Korean-American intellectual Shin Eun-mi, who is currently being questioned for travelling to North Korea and speaking publicly about her trips.


The Korea Times addresses this issue directly in an editorial that will appear in the Monday December 22nd edition:

[I]t is undeniable that the verdict [to ban the far-left-wing political party] might compromise our precious democratic values ― freedom of speech and pursuit of diversity. At a time when the party’s platform does not clearly stipulate a violent revolution or the North Korean style of socialism, the ruling might be the result of interpreting the platform out of proportion. That is because of our concern that the break-up of a political party through a court decision could weaken the freedom of political activities and violate democratic values based on party politics.

Most worrisome is that the verdict might deepen the ideological conflict between conservatives and progressives. But given that the Constitutional Court’s ruling is final, it is basic for every member of society to honor it. Rather, our sincere hope is that this can serve as an occasion to let progressive politics flourish if liberals succeed in dampening the time-consuming dispute on “following North Korea” from now on.

It is obvious that North Korea’s anachronistic system cannot be an alternative to the country’s progressive forces. They should emerge as social democrats that can take power by uprooting the cause for controversy over North Korea. [December 22nd, 2014 editorial,‘”Korea Times”]

bookmark_borderPost-263: South Korea’s English-Language Newspapers, Contrasted

Posted on by Peter
There are two English newspapers in South Korea, the Korea Herald and the Korea Times. Both were founded during the Korean War and have drifted all over the place in editorial opinion, focus, target audience, tone, professionalism, and ownership over the decades, or so is my impression.

Below I’ll compare the two, as they exist today, at some length. Both newspapers are totally Korean-owned and almost-totally Korean-staffed, and both probably get a lot more revenue from Koreans who want to practice English in a “live” setting than from people like me (native English-speaking foreigners). A lot of the below should be viewed within this framework.

Within the foreign community in South Korea, both newspapers are influential, moreso than any other Korea-focused, English-language news media, I think. More importantly, though, when the big players in media abroad want to run a news story on something related to Korea, they will often quote one of these papers because they are in English, so the influence of these two newspapers is much bigger than you’d think. In a given month, I expect that many millions “get information” from these Korea Times and/or Korea Herald, indirectly, via material these newspapers originally reported on Korean affairs in English which is then quoted by other media abroad. This  happens, for example, in December 2014 in the Korean Air “nut” fiasco.

Here are my impressions of the two newspapers as they have existed from the late 2000s to the early-to-mid 2010s when I’ve known them and occasionally read them. I base the below on years of off-and-on observation. (Note: On a desktop computer, the two lists should display side by side. On other devices, they probably won’t be side by side, but the numbers will match up for comparison.)

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Korea Times

  1. Politically center-left on socioeconomic issues.
  2. Leans anti-USA or at least anti-USFK (U.S. Focres Korea); tends to highlight stories that make USFK look bad.
  3. Noticeably anti-Japan; Times sponsors a “Dokdo Essay Contest” (Dokdo is an islet that Korea and Japan both claim but which is occupied securely by Korea; the Dokdo issue is a “political whipping boy” used by Korea). Times‘ choice of article titles on any matter related to Japan is generally hostile.
  4. More “racialist” in outlook. This may seem ironic for a foreign-language newspaper, but my impression has been that Times has a significant opposition to the principle of racial foreigners in Korea. Problems caused by racial minorities are played up (especially the transient White minority; in this they are in the mainstream of Korean media) (see also #2). There was one particular reporter for the Times, notorious among Western foreigners, called Kang Shin-Who, whose job title may as well have been “Racial Agitator” as “Reporter”.
  5. Parent company: Hankook Ilbo (a leading South Korean newspaper considered centrist)
  6. No direct international partners but will often reprint editorials from the New York Times and the like under the heading “Overseas Comment”.
  7. American Feel (which may be ironic given much of the above). By this I mean Times tends to feel like a mid-market American paper. (Tellingly, Times called the December 2014 “nut rage” executive “Heather Cho”.)
  8. Simpler writing style. Tends towards general-interest stories. More cartoons and horoscopes. In this way, a little reminiscent of USA Today.
  9. At times it drifts into “tabloid-ism“. I mean to say that a shade of yellow tinges its journalism (and that’s not a racial slur).
  10. Covers cultural affairs to an extent, but has no pretensions of being anything but a simple newspaper. Consider the sprawling one-third-of-a-page it devotes to TV schedules (12 channels) for the day.
  11. Relatively lower reputation among Western foreigners resident in Korea in recent years due to  perceived racial antagonism and biased/slanderous reporting [see #4 and #9].
  12. Seems to have fewer foreigners on staff.
  13. Despite #11 above, Times solicits and will often publish “guest columns” from regular people, and not just pro-Korean puff pieces or “Dokdo Contest” entries, either. I may seem harsh on Times in this rundown, but this is (can be) a distinctly strong point. Its guest columns can be very interesting and a wide range of views are to be had. This is the kind of thing the Internet may put under threat; it is easy to stay within a bubble of people with the same opinions. An old coworker and friend, B., was once published in Times. These guest columns are legitimized by being on the editorial page.
  14. Price: 1,000 Won at the newsstand (90 U.S. cents at current exchange). Home delivery six days a week: 20,000 Won/month ($18.00)
  15. Widely available for sale in central Seoul (wherever foreigners tend to go often, you’ll find this paper sold) and even in Incheon and other cities. In the case of a newsstand or convenience store selling only one English paper, it’s always Times, for some reason.
Korea Herald

  1. Politically center-right.
  2. More pro-USA, at least as the USA relates to South Korean interests (USFK). When it discusses U.S. or other Western domestic politics, this fades away (see #6 below).
  3. Much less anti-Japan. (Tellingly, it editorialized heavily in 2013 for the return of statues stolen from Japan by a Korean crime ring. These were originally stolen by Japanese “pirates” in the 1300s, some said; many argued to never return them; a big issue in 2013.)
  4. Can be seen as neutral on the Race Question within Korea. On the other hand, one of its most frequent editorial subjects is on the need to help the integration of multicultural families and children. Herald seems to call for a multiracial future for Korea (which, de facto, means accepting large numbers of Southeast Asians). This is probably a popular opinion among its core readership but (until very recently, maybe) a truly fringe view in wider Korean society.
  5. Parent company: Chosun Ilbo (a leading conservative daily newspaper)
  6. Partnered with an international network of newspapers including Washington Post and LA Times. Its foreign editorials, borrowed from these partners, are noticeably further to the left than its own pieces on Korean affairs.
  7. More Asian/Korean feel. (Tellingly, they Herald called the December 2014 “nut rage” executive “Cho Hyun-Ah”, in completely traditional East-Asian style including family name first).
  8. Somewhat more high-brow writing style/tone.
  9. It aims to maintain respectability and rarely forays into “yellow journalism”; I would view anything reported by Herald as a little more reliable, ipso facto.
  10. High-quality articles on cultural affairs; its weekend editions are “themed”, with many articles devoted to special matters of cultural interest (art exhibitions, poetry, fashion, architecture, history, language, etc.). Buying a weekend Herald is like buying a little magazine on the subject of that week’s theme. They are well done. You are out of luck if you want a TV listing in English, as Herald only lists three channels, tucked away in about 5% of a page.
  11. Herald‘s reputation among resident foreigners is relatively high.
  12. It seems to have more foreign reporters, and one guy whose job seemed to be to report on matters of interest to the foreigner community, which as far as I know Times did not have.
  13. Despite #11 above, Herald does not regularly publish guest columns from regular people on its editorial page, limiting its editorials to a select group, generally Korean intellectuals who are fluent in English, whom it deems acceptable. This aligns with #8 and #9 above. It does, though, occasionally publish readers’ feedback in special sections on key issues, like “Should the Koreas unify?” and suchlike.
  14. Same prices as the Times.
  15. Widely available but somewhat less easily found for sale at newsstands than Times.

I can also say this: Both Herald and Times now include daily loose-leaf insets for English practice, to appeal to the much larger “English learner” market in Korea. Among other English education goodies, these insets translate recently-published articles and highlight/explain key vocabulary/phrases from them (this might be called “controlled practice” in the ESL ‘biz, whereas reading the general newspaper, which is 100% English with no exceptions, would be “free(r) practice”). Note: I used to do get Herald delivered to my home when I lived in more regular conditions, and for fun I did the “GRE Prep” daily at that time. See post #72 for an example of this.

There is one other comment I can make. Look again at points #5 and #6 above for both Times and Herald, and then back at #1 (among other points). (With the caveat that the above list consists of my own impressions*:) Both newspapers’ stances are to the left of their parent (Korean-language) newspapers. Why is this? This is an interesting thing to consider.

* — I am reasonably sure that anyone familiar with both these newspapers will generally agree with me on most points above, and I am reasonably sure I can prove everything I said above with examples, but that would be a major project and no one is paying me.

Here are the two newspapers’ front pages from this past weekend.

Comment: Times published the “Korean Air nut rage” on its front page with rather humiliating photographs and use of the demeaning phrase “nut rage” (see, perhaps, #9 above). I would see this as reflecting its politics (see #1 above): This story makes South Korean big business, the chaebol system, look bad. Note also the little swipe at Japan (see #3 above) in the teaser to the story on Japan’s election, “Voters ready to give unenthusiastic yes to PM Abe”. Why ‘unenthusiastic’?

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Korea Times of December 13-14, 2014

Here is the same day’s Herald  (called “Weekender” on Saturday-Sundays).

Comment: This issue’s theme is architectural design (See #10 above), with at least five full-length articles inside on this subject, among a lot of other cultural stuff; something about translating Korean classics into English, and lots about movies, art exhibitions, music and plays. The “Korean air nut rage” story is tucked away on page 5 with non-humiliating pictures of the CEO and the daughter, and carrying the bland title “Korean Air chairman apologizes” . There is a lot of power in titles. That one gives very little information to the casual glancer, and may even seem positive; after all, isn’t apologizing a good thing? (See #1 above — I interpret this headline as differing in tone from the Times‘ due to the political stances of the papers; this sordid story of nepotism and bullying of subordinates is widely seen as a black mark for the chaebol system, i.e. big business, so left-leaning Times jumped at it while right-leaning Herald played it down; they could not ignore it because it had become such a huge story in the American media).

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Korea Herald of December 13-14, 2014

bookmark_borderPost-262: European Identity Circa 200 AD (and Beyond)

Posted on by Peter
Last week l I finished the enjoyable and informative book I’d mentioned in #252 (The Birth of Classical Europe), a 2,500-year guided tour of Western Civilizational history ending around 400AD.

I felt the authors skirted around a key question, namely what the nature of European/Western identity is. We might expect a book with such a title to address this. We have to make our own inferences. Towards the end of the book, they report a very interesting Latin inscription recently discovered in London, dated to “the late second century AD”.

Num(inibus) Aug(ustorum)
Deo Marti Ca-
mulo Tiberni-
us Celerianus
c(ivis) Bell(ouacus)
moritix
Londiniesium.

To the divine will of the emperors
And to the god Mars Camulus:
Tiberinius
Celerianus
citizen of Beauvais
seafarer
of the Londoners.

These few words say a lot, as the commentary from the authors explain well:
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This dedication was set up by a man carrying a good Roman name: Tibernius Celerianus, a native of Beauvais (ancient Caesaromagus Bellovacorum) in northern Gaul. Celerianus describes himself as a “seafarerer of the Londoners” (moritix Londiniensium), and we should probably understand him to be the agent of a shipping company which transported goods between London and northern Gaul.

It is very striking that Celerianus chose to define himself with the curious term “moritix”. Moritix is not a Latin word at all, but an ancient Celtic term meaning “seafarer”. There is, of course, a perfectly good Latin word meaning exactly the same thing (nauta). Why did Celerianus choose to use the old Celtic word? Was he trying, consciously or unconsciously, to emphasize his local Celtic identity?

The real cultural affiliations of a man like Celerianus are desperately difficult to recover: a native of northern Gaul, with a Roman name; worshiper of a superficially Romanized Celtic deity of his native region, but also of the reigning Roman emperors; capable of setting up a dedicatory inscription in impeccable Latin, but opting for a local Celtic term to describe his profession.

This man, Celerianus, would’ve been born around two hundred years after the Roman conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar. Not even his grandfather’s grandfather would’ve known a politically-independent Celtic state in Gaul.

So let’s say Celerianus retained a Celtic-Gallic ethnic identity. We might also go so far as to say that the authors discuss this inscription as much as they do because Celerianus is a quintessential “European“. This implies that “European” unites two strands of identity and worldview, the ethnic (a set of specific local, related ethnic identities, generally harkening back to a “heroic barbarian past”) within certain political and cultural superstructures and philosophical traditions. This Celerianus personifies it. Seems reasonable.

bookmark_borderPost-261: But Which Twin is the Elder? (A Korean Dilemma)

Posted on by Peter
In the case of twins, which is the elder? Say one is born at  7:00 PM and one at 8:00 PM. If one must be called the older brother, which one is it? Our Korean reading textbook talks about this at long length and declares that it is a point of difference between East and West.

In Korea, who the superior is and who the inferior in any relationship is highly important even for the basic mechanics of how sentences are constructed. It would take a while to fully explain this. I can say the same exact same sentence in lots of different ways, altered depending on my relationship with the listener(s). It means constantly having to evaluate relative positions within a hierarchy, shifting forms as context dictates. I told you it’s complicated.

One layer to this (certainly not the only one) is titles. Koreans will generally always use titles for anyone higher in a hierarchy; many times people don’t even know each other’s names because they just cruise along using titles.

Age is one of the most powerful natural hierarchies in the Korean mind. Here’s how it works:

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If I am born in 2002, then I must and will call my brother born in 2000 by a special title (the term meaning “older brother”, i.e. 형); Meanwhile he calls (must call) me by my name. This applies both to both kin and non-kin. (Existence of another title, say an office title [everyone has a title at the office] will supersede here.)

Don’t think this is an anachronism. Even for those born in the 2000s (that is, school-age children in 2014) the system shows no signs at all of cracks. The children observe it loyally and naturally.

There are lots of problems in logical consistency that occur to me with this system. What if one boy is born January 1st and one December 31st the “previous year”? East Asians traditionally determine age by year of birth (everyone born in the same year is the same age), so even separation in age by one day calls for use a special “older brother” title. Not using the title for an elder sibling would be a serious faux pas; very rude. (Koreans whom I have quizzed about this — “Have you ever called your [elder sibling] by his/her name?” — They generally promptly say “never”. Upon further reflection some will say, “Maybe once or twice when I was very angry”.)

Back to the twins problem. Two twins, one born at 7 PM and one at 8 PM. According to Korean thought, our textbook says, the brother born at 7 PM is the “elder” but that “many European countries” believe that the twin who was born later is the elder. I don’t know of any Europeans who would obsess over this matter. Nor had I ever thought about this problem (of determining elder status between twins) before. I am tempted to insert a “so-called” before the word “problem” in the previous sentence, but far be it from me to be culturally insensitive!

The lesson is that Koreans show a shocking level of commitment to the principle of hierarchy. “Come hell or high water”.

bookmark_borderPost-260: What’s Wrong With This Picture?

Posted on by Peter
A philosopher asks what’s wrong with a picture of teenagers (presumably American) in an art museum who are — Ah, let me just repost the picture:
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A picture taken from the Maverick Philosopher blog

It seems they’d rather stare at frivolous content on tiny screens rather than have a look at these great works of art.

Some will say we can’t blame them; maybe they don’t really like art (that’s okay, isn’t it?); maybe they already looked at the pictures and are resting; and so on. The fact is, though, that these kinds of museums (among other places) were once a kind of hallowed ground, and represented an awe-inspiring experience. One was to treat them reverentially. This would very likely be greatly diminished by widespread and constant use of “mobile devices”.

Most of us (in rich countries) now spend much or most of our waking lives in the “virtual/digital” sphere in some way (see #250); some people have come to cocoon themselves inside the virtual world and hardly “exist” outside it. This is troubling. If the purpose of life is authentic experience, existing in a virtual bubble world may seriously diminish it. The virtual world can be a poor substitute for the real in important ways. It can also enhance it, if done right, but I am not sure how to ensure that or even what it means to do it right.

I resisted getting a smartphone until the very end of 2013 (See #22), which was a real shock to Koreans by 2012 and 2013. I told myself it was because of money, but really I think it was because of philosophical principle. In my nearly nine months in Germany and Estonia in 2007, I somehow existed with no phone at all. Can you believe that? It’s hard to imagine now. I occasionally had to make phone calls and did so using pay phones. Pay phone? Yes. You may remember: Telephones, often in free-standing little booths, in public places. You dropped in coins to make a call…

bookmark_borderPost-259: [Korean] To Each Country Its Own…Alcohol Culture

Posted on by Peter
In September, I wrote something very brief about differing attitudes towards alcohol in different countries. I posted it here as #235. I’ve now expanded the argument into a full essay, directly below. Grade not know yet.

I am not good enough at Korean to write fully-nuanced, coherent, smooth (much less grammar-error-free) arguments. In my translation here I try to preserve the awkward wording.

나라마다 다른 “술문화”

많은 사람들은 나라마다 다른 문화가 있다고 알지만 대표적인 좋은 예는 모릅니다. 밑에 쓴 글에서 미국/한국/이슬람국가의 술문화를 비교하겠습니다.

우 선, 미국에서 온 저는 미국의 술문화에 대한 설명을 하겠습니다. 사실, 미국의 전통문화는 술을 싫어하는 편입니다. 특히, 옛날에는  술을 싫어하는 사람들이 많은 것 같습니다. 여러 주에서는 일요일에 술이 팔리는 것을 법으로 금지합니다. 그리고 밤에 너무 늦게 술이 팔리는 것도 법으로 금지합니다. 또한, 미국에서 술의 세금이 다른 나라에 비해 높습니다. 마지막으로, 미국 경찰은 밖에서 술을 마시는 사람을 보면, 그 사람을 꼭 감옥에 데리고 가야 합니다. 따라서, 미국의 문화는 술에 반대라고 할 수 있습니다.

한국과 미국의 “술문화”를 비교하면 한국문화가 술을 더 좋아한다고 할 수 있습니다. 한국은 술에 반대하는 법이 별로 없는 것 같습니다. 예를 들면 한국에서는 24시간 동안  술을  쉽게 살 수 있습니다. 또한 술을 자주 마시는 한국사람들이 미국사람들보다 많은 것 같습니다. 많은 한국 회사원들은 “회식”에서 술을 많이 마신다고 합니다. 미국에서는 그 관습이 없습니다. 미국사람들은 한국의 술이 관계가 있는 회식문화를 알면 놀랍니다.

반대로, 이슬람 국가에서는 술을 법으로 늘 금지합니다. 이스람 종교 때문입니다. 전통적인 이슬람교인 나라에서는 “술문화”가 없다고 볼 수 있습니다. 그래서 우리는 이슬람 교인 사람들이 “회식”할 때 뭘 할지 궁금할 수 있습니다!
Each Country Has its Own Alcohol Culture

Although a lot of people know that each country’s culture differs, they don’t know any representative examples. In the below essay, I will compare American, South Korean, and Islamic alcohol-drinking cultures.

First, as I am from the USA I can explain about U.S. alcohol culture. In fact, American traditional culture tends to dislike alcohol. It seems that, especially in the past, there were many people who disliked it. In some states, alcohol sales are banned by law on Sundays. Also, sale of alcohol in the late evening is banned. Furthermore, in the USA taxes on alcohol are high compared other countries’. Finally, in the USA the police have to take people whom they see drinking alcohol in public to jail. Accordingly, we can say that American culture is “against alcohol”.

If we compare American and South Korean “alcohol culture”, we can say that Koreans like alcohol more. In South Korea, there seem to be almost no laws against alcohol. For example, in South Korea people can buy alcohol 24 hours a day easily. Furthermore, it seems to me there are more heavy drinkers among Koreans than among Americans. In many Korean companies, drinking with coworkers is common. In the USA, we don’t have this custom. If Americans learn about this alcohol-drinking culture in Korean companies, they will be surprised.

On the other hand, in Islamic countries, alcohol is always banned by law. It is because of the Islamic religion. Traditional Islamic countries have no “alcohol culture”. Therefore, we might wonder what the Muslims do during outings with coworkers after work!

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See also:

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bookmark_borderPost-258: Pearl Harbor from the Japanese Perspective

Posted on by Peter
I was sent this article today from a relative:
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So Japan’s official museums don’t treat the famous attack on December 7th as something shameful, a sucker punch (there was no declaration of war). We ought not be too surprised. Who wants to depict their own history that way?

Our historical memory of Pearl Harbor is something like this: “The sneaky Japs attacked us without any shred of provocation at all just because we were there; Imperial Japan was so irrationally hyper-aggressive that they would attack anyone, given half a chance”.

From my reading (especially a book or two on this subject by historian John Toland), the Imperial Japanese government in 1941, though definitely aggressive, was not irrational.

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The Roosevelt government had recently organized a trade embargo against Japan (to protest Japanese aggression in China). Resource shortages would soon begin to bite, slowing everything down, especially a potentially devastating oil embargo. What do you call a modern army without oil? Useless.

There were long debates about this in Tokyo throughout 1941. The hawks said that the embargo meant Japan, already at war in China, had no choice but to secure resource-rich Southeast Asia — Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines (British, Dutch, and American possessions, respectively, at the time) — to retain access to raw materials and keep things rolling. The Europeans could not be expected to fight, given the situation in Europe at the time.

During the debates in Tokyo, the doves pointed out that war against any European possessions in Southeast Asia would very likely mean war with the USA, and certainly so in the wider-envisioned campaign which included conquest of the Philippines. So the choice was: Prepare for war with the USA, or begin to rein in the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” project (Japan’s decades-in-the-making plan to unite East Asia under Japanese leadership; i.e. Japanese imperialism and its network of puppet states, satellites, and allies-to-varying-degrees).

The hawk lobby in Tokyo won the argument, of course, and so Pearl Harbor went ahead. Even the hawks conceded that a long war with the USA would be impossible to win, given the USA’s size and potential in war, so they planned a sneak attack to weaken the U.S. Navy, conduct a quick and efficient war in Southeast Asia, and try for a settled peace.

Malaysia and the Philippines were also invaded on the same day as Pearl Harbor, and Indonesia the next week. British Singapore surrendered within two months; oil-producing Dutch Indonesia fell within three months; and in the Philippines, the main body of American troops surrendered within four months at Bataan. This wider view of things can explain how Japanese might see Pearl Harbor as “just another battle”, as the article’s title has it.

The Japanese totally underestimated American resolve to win the war, once it was begun, of course.

See also:
Post #23: “On Iwo Jima Isle / At Iwo Jima Memorial“
Post #24: “High on the Hill Suribachi“

bookmark_borderPost-257: [Korean] “Our Second Winter Vacation”: Recollection of the Blizzard of ’96

Posted on by Peter
Those of us born before 1990 or so and who lived in the northeastern USA at the time will remember it.

The Blizzard of ’96.

I was reminded of it in the first three days of December 2014, as snow gently fell on us in the Seoul region. I wrote the below in Korean on the third consecutive day of snow. I post here a revised version (after some corrections) and a translation to English.

겨울에 대한 추억: “2차겨울 방학”
어렸을 때 겨울에 대한 추억이 오늘 생겼다.

미국에서 태어나고 살았던 나는 1996년 2월에 초등학생이었습니다. 그때, 공부하고 있었던 우리에게 “2차 겨울방학”이 갑자기 생겼다. 어떻게 할 수 있었을까? 눈이 참 많이 내렸기 때문이다. 즉, 눈이 100cm이상 오던데 정말 많았지 않았니? 보통 우리는 크리스마스에 방학이 1-2주일 동안 있는데, 2월에 있으니까 이것은 “2차, 1995-6 겨을 방학”라고 할 수 있다.

우리 도시의 길들은 빠르게 눈이 쌓였다. 눈이 너무 많기 때문에 “학교버스”가 동네마다 들어갈 수 없었고. 그럼으로 학생들이 학교에 가지 말라고 했다. 뭐니뭐니해도, 학생의 안전이 제일 중요한다고 생각 한다. 그래서, 모든 학교들은 일주일 동안 수업을 취소하기로 했다. 눈이 너무 많이 왔기 때문이다. 그때는 우리가 얼마나 기뼜는지 모른다! “눈의 천국”이라는 말 밖에 놀랐었다. 눈사람 만들기 뿐만 아니라, 재미있는 썰매타기도 많이 할 수 있었다. 공부는…하지 않았다.

하지만 한국에 수업이 위에 설명했던 취소되는 일이 별로 없는 것 같다. “학교버스”가 없는 것이 그런 이유라고 할 수 있다. 또한, 한국에 눈이 심한 것이 아니다. 한국은 수도권에 2014년12월1~3일에 눈이 왔지만 교통이나 대한 문제가 별로 없는 것 같았다!

Winter Recollection: “Winter Vacation, Round Two”
Today I was reminded of a pleasant winter memory from my childhood.

I was born in the USA and was in elementary school there in February 1996. At that time, we students suddenly got a “second winter vacation”. How could it have happened? Because a whole lot of snow fell. Actually, more than three feet of snow fell, which we have to say is a lot. Normally, we got 1-2 weeks of vacation at Christmas time, but this was February, so we can call it “1995-6 Winter Vacation, Round Two”.

Snow quickly piled up on our city’s streets. School buses could not go into any neighborhoods because of the snow. Therefore, students were told not to go to school. Students’ safety is, after all, thought to be the most important thing. All the schools decided to cancel classes for a week because of the snow. What joyful news this was to us students! We played outside in the “winter wonderland”. We not only made snowmen but also could enjoy a lot of sledding. As for studying…we didn’t do any of that.

In South Korea, though, it seems to me that there are almost no days on which school is cancelled like this. We might say that the reason for this is that Korea has no school buses. Additionally, in Korea snow is not a serious problem. In South Korea’s capital area from December 1st to 3rd, 2014, snow fell but there seemed to be almost no disruptions at all to transportation or such things.

bookmark_borderPost-256: Like Bitcoins in the Bank (In Which I Enter the “Bitcoin” World)

Posted on by Peter
The words you are now reading were written by a “Bitcoin” owner. By which I mean me. It happened in Gangnam, Seoul on Saturday December 6th. I’ll relate the story here.

Bitcoin is a “digital currency” not tied to any government or bank. I wrote about Bitcoin way back in #28 (“Bitcoin Buyer“) and #30 (“Bitcoin Remorse“). It’s an interesting idea but I’d never bought any until today.

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Bitcoin ATM (Insert cash, get bitcoins, or convert Bitcoins into cash)

I bought 0.0232339 BTC (Bitcoins) for 10,000 South Korean Won, cash, via a Bitcoin ATM machine. One Bitcoin (1.00 BTC) was being sold for 430,000 Korean Won (USD $384) at the time of my transaction. This is up from $60 in April 2013.

My two-hundredeths-and-some of a Bitcoin were uploaded to my newly-created virtual Bitcoin account on the Internet, accessible via phone or computer.

The occasion for my purchase was a meeting by Bitcoin enthusiasts in Seoul. I was invited by my friend N.R. from California. It was a small group, a mix (by my impression) of “tech-oriented” Western expatriates conceptually fascinated by Bitcoin, and crafty Koreans looking for a business opportunity.

Unexpectedly to me, two young, garrulous Iranians were present, with whom I spoke a lot. One is trying to establish Bitcoin in Iran. He helped me set up my account.

The nearby cafe accepted Bitcoin payments so was a natural testing ground for my new Bitcoins.

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My newly-created “Bitcoin wallet” was not quite working yet, and/or the cafe’s Wifi was shaky. After some frustration from the girl working at the cafe, the Iranian Bitcoin enthusiast stepped in paid for my coffee with his own Bitcoins, ending the experiment. The coffee cost 0.0102 Bitcoins, or 4,300 Korean Won at today’s exchange rate (USD $3.83).

We were puzzled about why my new account wasn’t working for sending or receiving payments (yet). Eventually it wiggled its way into working. I transferred 0.0001 Bitcoins [USD 4 cents] to N.R. from California, who’d invited me. It was my first ever transaction.

Realizing my account was now active, I transferred the Iranian back the money for the coffee. Both of these transactions were instantaneous, using my phone to scan a kind of bar-code on the other person’s phone, entering the amount to transfer to him, entering my password, and hitting “send”. So simple. I could likewise transfer Bitcoins to anyone in the world nearly instantly if I simply knew the person’s account number. This bypasses the entire need for the complication and aggravation with banks or other money-sending services (which always take their cut).

Bitcoin has certain serious problems, though, most seriously that its exchange rate has wildly fluctuated over the past two years, spiking and crashing. The first “spike and crash” was in April 2013, which is when I wrote posts #28 and #30, but this was nothing compared to the much bigger spike and crash coming later that year. Here is the exchange rate in USD to the present day:

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It’s a wild world. There is also a possibility of hacking, I suppose, which is one of my main philosophical objections. Investing in Bitcoin seems like playing at a casino.

One way or another, my Bitcoin wallet’s balance stands at 0.013 BTC (something near USD $5.00).

bookmark_borderPost-255: DokiDoki Postbox

Posted on by Peter
My favorite subtype of student at the Korean language program at which I study is definitely the Singaporean. (I might also say the Japanese, but I know only one so it fails to qualify as a subtype.) I perceive the Singaporeans to possess  optimism, humorousness, and openness, even though they study hard they seem basically relaxed, unlike some of the Chinese. It also helps that we can communicate freely, as their English is as native level as my own.

A few days ago, two of the Singaporeans (H.P.G. [Level 4] and T.S.S. [Level 3]) were crowded ’round a phone in the hallway in-between classes. I peered over a shoulder. It was “DokiDoki Postbox” out of Japan; a phone app.

What is Doki Doki Postbox? I didn’t know but soon learned and got on board.

The premise is simple. You write a “postcard” — a short, text-only message — which, once sent, is delivered to a totally unknown recipient (randomized by computer algorithm within the program’s database of anonymous accounts). You have no way to identify each other once (if) contact is established, except by nationality (displayed as  a flag) and gender. Once contact is established, you can continue the exchange of  “postcards” with the same person until he or she stops responding. You may send only one postcard at a time and must wait for a reply. If the other person breaks contact by not responding to your postcard, you lose all possibility of contacting that person ever again.

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There is an exciting edge to this. It is like an Internet Age equivalent of “a message in a bottle set adrift at sea”, but semi-instantaneous. It also re-creates some of the feel of the very early Internet of the 1990s, when conversations were limited to basic text. I remember many hours peering over my cousin B.W.’s shoulder in Connecticut in the mid-1990s, amazed that he was talking (via modem) late into the night with people around the country. It was a kind of magic to me.

Here is what this program looks like (screenshots from my phone). As mentioned, you can choose only two parameters for your postcard recipient: (1) “World” (outside my country) or “Local” (my country); (2) “Any Gender / Male / Female”.
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Here is a series of “postcards” exchanged between me (the initiator) and a Korean male unknown to me.
Original Korean Conversation
Me: 오. 하이. 요즘 잘 지내고 있죠?
Korean: 아      니      요
Me: 왜 그래요. 설명해 주세요.
Korean: 잘지낼 여유가 없음.
Me: 잘 지내고 할 수 있는 방법이 필요하죠. 내 생각으로…치킨, 삼겹살, 등.
Korean: ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ 운동할래요 걍.
Translation into English
Me: Oh, hi. You’ve been well lately, I hope?
Korean: N-o-p-e
Me: What do you mean? Please explain this.
Korean: I’ve been too busy to relax.
Me: We all need ways to enjoy life, don’t we. My opinion…fried chicken, grilled pork, etc.
Korean: Hahaha. I’ll just play some sports.

The space of time between each of these “postcards” was a few hours.

He didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t a Korean native speaker. Other exchanges I’ve played around with resulted in Koreans promptly saying things I could not decipher so I stopped responding to them. Koreans are big into slang.

One of my “world” postcards ended up being delivered to an American female. My country flag displays as South Korea, so I decided to have some fun. I wrote: “Can you tell me a good USA food?” Her answer: “McDonald’s”.

bookmark_borderPost-254: Iraq’s Hollow Army (Or, Why Don’t they Just Partition Already?)

Posted on by Peter
The Iraqi Army revealed itself to be almost completely useless this year, as a relatively small Islamic revolutionary group, ISIS, easily captured city after city. Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest, fell almost without resistance. ISIS now has a de-facto Islamic fundamentalist state, sliced out of the Syria/Iraq chaos. (The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was vaguely sold to average Americans as being to prevent exactly this. Yet ISIS types were efficiently and thoroughly suppressed by Arab fascist Saddam Hussein, so overthrowing him was probably a big….can I say it?).

How pathetic is the Iraqi state’s army? It had 15 divisions, each of 20,000-some men (on paper), but experience shows it may as well have had no army at all. ISIS captured Mosul with an assault force a fraction of the size of one Iraqi Army division (allegedly under 2,000 fighters). This week, the Iraqi government has finally admitted that its army is full of fake soldiers. This has been pointed out many times by the excellent Middle East journalist Patrick Cockburn whom I have followed for much of this year.

Iraq’s 50,000 Ghost Soldiers
By Patrick Cockburn [The Independent, UK]

The Iraqi army has long been notorious for being wholly corrupt with officers invariably paying for their jobs in order to make money either through drawing the salaries of non-existent soldiers or through various other scams. One Iraqi politician told The Independent a year ago that Iraqi officers “are not soldiers, they are investors”. In the years before the defeat of the army in Mosul in June by a much smaller force from Isis, Iraqi units never conducted training exercises. At the time of Isis’s Mosul offensive, government forces in Mosul were meant to total 60,000 soldiers and federal police but the real figure was probably closer to 20,000.

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“Ghost” soldiers may never have existed and just be fictitious names added to the roster, or they may once have existed but been killed or deserted without this being officially noted. In either case, the officer in a unit would keep receiving the salary, though he would have to share it with his superiors. Another scam is for soldiers to kick back part of their salary to their officer in return for staying at home or holding another job but never going near a barracks. Mr Abadi’s figure of 50,000 is probably only a modest estimate of the numbers of Iraqi soldiers who play no military role.

[…] [T]he Iraqi government might be paying for a battalion with a nominal strength of 600 men, but which in fact had only 200 soldiers. Profits would be shared between officers and commercial companies supposedly supplying the army.

Another source of earnings for officers are checkpoints on the roads which act like customs barriers on national frontiers. All goods being transported have to pay a tariff and this will again go into the pockets of the officer corps. These will have paid highly for promotion, with the bribe for becoming a colonel $200,000 (£127,000) and a divisional commander $2m. This money would usually be borrowed and paid back out of earnings.

When fighting began in Anbar province at the start of this year as Isis seized territory, Iraqi army units often found that the supply system was so corrupt and dysfunctional that they did not receive enough food or even ammunition.

[From “Iraq’s 50,000 Ghost Soldiers” by Patrick Cockburn, Middle East corespondent for The independent (UK)]

It sounds like the Iraqi Army (so called) was a kind of giant pyramid scheme, or something close to one. This is simply disgraceful. I am led to conclude that Iraq ought to be partitioned if this is the way that state is going to run things. Syria could also be part of a wider partition. That might settle things down over there.

One proposal, from a thinktank based at Columbia University, partitions Syria and Iraq into four new states: a Sunni-Arab state, a Shia-Arab state, a Kurd state, and an Alawite-Christian state. Why not? Here is their proposal:

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Partition proposal from Columbia University’s “School of International and Public Affairs, Gulf/2000 Project” (link)

Or for only Iraq, here is another proposal I find (this from 2010, before Syria sank into civil war):
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This makes a lot of sense to me.

bookmark_borderPost-253: [Korean] Christmas Tree at the DMZ

Posted on by Peter
Here is something else I wrote originally in Korean. English translation by me just now. It’s from the news today.
북한정부가 크리스마스트리를 싫어한다면서요?

오늘 “코리아헤럴드”라고 하는 신문에 따르면, 어떤 한국 (“남한”) 기독교인 협회가 비무장지대(DMZ)에서 정말 큰 크리스마스트리를 만들기로 했어요. 올해에는 한국 정치가 그렇게 해도 괜찮다고 해요. 기독교협회가 트리를 준비해서 어느 비무장지대근처에 있는 높은 산의 정상에서, 북한사람들이 트리가 보일 수 있게 트리를 놓을 거래요.

북한정부는 이 뉴스 때문에 다시 귀찮아 질걸요…

I Heard that North Korea Doesn’t Like Christmas Trees…

Today, according to the newspaper called the “Korea Herald”, a South Korean Christian group has decided to build a really big tree at the DMZ. This year, the Korean government has said that doing so is alright. The Christian group will get the tree ready and will set it up on the summit of a high hill near the DMZ, so that it will be visible to North Koreans.

I bet the North Korean government is going to become annoyed again, about this…

bookmark_borderPost-252: Western Civilization’s Long-Forgotten Catastrophe (circa 1200 BC)

Posted on by Peter
We tend to think of “history” and “progress” as synonyms. But….A few weeks ago, I borrowed a book from my friend Jared, on his recommendation. The title is The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine. Chapter Two deals with the period 1100-800 BC. Therein I find this:

[T]he archaeology paints a depressing picture of the Greek world in the centuries after the fall of the Mycenaean palaces [circa 1200 BC]. Overall, the number of inhabited places in mainland Greece fell by two-thirds in the twelfth, and by another two-thirds in the eleventh century. This was the low point, and recovery then began: settlement numbers doubled in the tenth century, and doubled again in the ninth-eighth centuries.

Of course, settlement numbers on their own mean nothing: the crucial variable is settlement size. […] [I]n fact, the scale of settlements in the early Iron Age [i.e., circa 1100-800 BC] is generally smaller than that in the periods on either side. […] Not only did the number of settlements fall, but the places themselves were less complex than what had gone before.
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This points to a civilizational catastrophe for early Western Civilization, the scale of which is enormous, of “Old Testament” proportions (and it is contemporaneous with Old Testament times).

Let me try to present the data in a simpler way:

Number of Inhabited Places in Mainland Greece
(Mid-1200s BC=100 [arbitrary; for easy comparison])
1200 BC: 100
1100 BC: 33
1000 BC: 10
900 BC : 20
700 BC : 40.

During the long decline, the remaining settlements were smaller-scale, so we have to magnify the drop even more in real terms. If the settlements were half as dense at the 1000 BC nadir as before the long decline began, that implies a 95% population drop from 1200 BC to 1000 BC in mainland Greece, a cradle of Western Civilization. Other cultures in the region fared similarly. Political, economic, and cultural collapse. The authors say that literacy came grinding to a halt in these centuries; writing was all but lost; we find no monuments at all from these centuries.

There are always people around warning about impending collapse but few are ever listened to and even fewer are ever right. One such man I know of today who has a substantial following is John Michael Greer. He is one of the most prominent Peak Oil theorists. He writes something called the Archdruid Report. I have read some of his writings. He writes well but I don’t know what to think of his grand thesis, that industrial civilization is slowly coming to an end, with perhaps a population fall-off similar to the one described above in ancient Greece coming to us in this century. This is too radical an idea to easily believe. (I am likewise sure that the same was said by Greek intellectuals in the late Bronze Age, in the 1200s BC, when someone tried to point to signs of coming decline, whatever those may have been.)

The amazing thing is that nobody knows why things fell apart so dramatically starting around 1200 BC. The authors reject an old theory that it was caused by pressure from seaborne raiders. They say that while raiding did increase at this time, it was the effect, not the cause, of the civilizational decline. They start talking about internal social and political problems within the states affected, and soon their explanation bogs down in the muck and leaves the reader unsatisfied. They don’t offer any kind of firm explanation for the “collapse”. It remains a mystery.

“The worst disaster in ancient history”

— Historian Robert Drews on the Mediterranean world decline beginning ca. 1200 BC

bookmark_borderPost-251: [Korean] Election 2014 in the USA

Posted on by Peter
Here’s  something I wrote in November 2014 after the U.S. election. As in post-250, it is a Korean original that includes some corrections from native speakers (from a website called Lang-8 in which people get writing corrections from each other). I translated it into English just now.
미국 투표, 2014
미국에서 온 저는 정치에 관심이 있어서 최근의 정치 뉴스에 대해서 좀 쓰겠습니다.

지난 화요일(2014.11.4)에 미국에서 투표를 한 후에 가장 많은 결과를 알아볼 수 있었는데, 당일 밤에 아직 결과를 알 수 없었던 선거도 있었다. 그럼 Lang-8 회원 중에도 미국경치에 관심이 있는 사람이 좀 있을을테니 결과에 대해 설명하겠습니다.

수요일 아침에 일어나자마자 미국 투표결과를 확인해봤다. 여러 웹사이트들에 따르면 미국 공화당 (Republican Party)가 쉽게 이겼다. 앞으로 U.S. Senate이라고 하는 미국의 국회에서는 공화당이 의석 53개를 획득했는데 아직 모른 결과 하나도 있지만 공화당 이기겠다고 해서 의석 54개가 있을 것이다. 또한 무소속 입후보자 한 명이 공화당에 들고 싶다고 말했다. 따라서 투표를 이겼던 미국의 공화당은 55 의석이 생긴다고 한다. Senate에는 의석이 100 개가 있어서, 결국 공화당이 “대정당”이 됐다.

투표 하기 전에 공화당이 의석 46 개만 있어서 “결정적인 승리”라고 했다.

미국에서도 외국에서도 정치에 관심이 있는 사람들은 왜 미국사람들이 그렇게 투표를 했냐고 하고 있다. 오바마가 인기가 없다고 한다. 그렇다. 사실은, 오바마는 외국에 비해서 미국에서 인기가 적은 편이다.
 
U.S. Election, 2014
As I am from the USA and I follow politics, I will write a little bit about the latest political news.

On this past Tuesday (Nov. 4th, 2014) in the USA there were elections. Most of the results are now known, but late into the night some results were still not known yet. Well, as there may be some Lang-8 members interested in U.S. politics, I’ll explain about the results.

On Wednesday morning, as soon as I woke up, I checked the USA’s election results. According to various websites, the Republican Party easily won. The Republicans won 53 seats for sure, and one result is still not known but it is said that the Republicans will probably win it, too. Also, an independent senator has said he wants to join the Republicans [this didn’t happen]. Consequently, the Republicans, having won the election, will now control 55 [actually 54] Senate seats. As there are 100 seats in the Senate, the Republicans are the new majority party.

Before the election, the Republicans had only 46 seats, so people are calling this a “decisive victory”.

People interested in politics, inside and outside the USA, are asking why the Americans voted as they did. It is said that Obama is not popular. It’s true. To be honest, Obama has always tended to less popular in the USA than abroad.

bookmark_borderPost-250: [Korean] Where are the Non-Smart-Phone-Using People?

Posted on by Peter
I wrote the below in Korean two weeks ago and posted it to an online forum where people exchange corrections. Some Koreans corrected a few errors. An English translation is next to it (on PC) or below it (mobile devices).
스마트폰을 쓰지 않는 사람이 어디에 있을까?
자, 오늘 아침에 대한민국의 수도권 지하철을 타고 가고 있을 때는 다른 승객들을 볼 수 있었지만 앉아 있던 승객들은 나를 볼 수 없는 것 같았어요.무슨 작고 밝은 스크린 때문이에요.

우리 기차에 앉아 있던 승객들은 24명이었는데, 그때 꼭 23명이 스마트폰을 보기만 (96%) 했어요. “스마트폰 중독”이 있는 대한민국인은 많다고 하죠?

미국 지하철에 있는 스마트폰 습관 비교할 수 있어서 다음 단락부터 쓸게요.

미국큰 도시에도 지하철이 있기는 하지만 2014년에도 미국을 여행하는 어느 서울에서 온 한국인은 미국의 지하철 열차에 들어가자마자 놀라는 것이 있을 수도 있어요: 미국 지하철에 있는 승객들 중에 “종이”신문을 읽는 사람이 많고 “종이”책을 읽는 사람이 많군요! 스마트폰을 쓰는 지하철 승객보다 “종이”를 쓰는 손님이 거의 3배나 있던데요…!

Where are the Non-Smart-Phone-Using People?
Well now, today in the morning, as I was riding in the Seoul area’s subway system, I could see the other passengers, but the others, seated, could not see me, it seemed. This was because of some small, bright screens.

There were 24 seated passengers in our train car, and at that time a full 23 of them (96%) were only looking at their smartphones. They do say that in the Republic of Korea, there are a lot of “smartphone addicts”, don’t they.

In the USA, smartphone use in the subway is very different, so let me write about it next.

In big cities in the USA, we have subways too, but even in 2014 now, a Korean from Seoul who enters a subway car will immediately be surprised by something: A lot of the subway passengers in the USA will be reading “paper” newspapers and “paper” books! As I recall, something like three times as many people use “paper” in the subway [in the USA] as use smartphones….!

bookmark_borderPost-249: Uneventful Thanksgiving 2014 (And, How to Say ‘Turkey’ in Korean)

Posted on by Peter
Thanksgiving Day 2014 passed for me without any indication whatsoever that it was a holiday. That’s because it isn’t a holiday where I am (not counting the U.S. military bases).

On the plus side, I figured out the amusing meaning of the Korean word for “turkey”:

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Read More
Turkey is not common at all in East Asia. Most Asians seem to have never tried it.

English? Chinese? No. No.
Strangely, even though the bird is native to North America, there is a Korean word for “turkey” that is neither a Chinese loan nor an English loan (by which I mean a Koreanization of our word “turkey”; it would sound something like “tuh-kee”). The Korean word for turkey is “칠면조” (Cheel-myuhn-cho). A Chinese of my acquaintance tells me that the Chinese word for turkey sounds something like “Hwoh-Jee”, which is not close to the Korean.

The Meaning
From comparing the Chinese characters, I see that “칠” in the Korean word above means “seven” (i.e. the Chinese-Korean number 7) and the “면” means “faces” (either literal or metaphorical, as in a “a two-faced man”). My next guess was that Koreans got this word from Japanese.

I asked good old Mr. Google about seven-faced birds and he pointed me here: “Japanese turkeys have seven faces“.  So, there we have it: In Japanese and Korean, the bird we call “the turkey” is called “the seven-faced bird”. A website called Hiker’s Notebook claims that this odd name “is based the belief that the turkey changes its facial expression in concert with its emotional state.“

Word History Speculation
I’m going to speculate that the Americans introduced turkey to Japan sometime after Admiral Peary opened the country in the 1850s, and when Japan started to exert economic, political, military, and cultural pressure on then-long-stagnant, increasingly-backwards Korea, from around the 1880s, this word (among many others) came with it. This seems to be a reasonable guess.

The Future of the Word for ‘Turkey’ in Korean
Knowing what I know of how Koreans are, though, I hereby predict that if turkey ever becomes popular in Korea, the  English loan (“tuh-kee”) will quickly grow in popularity and either replace the old Japanese loan totally or find a way to co-exist with it. This has happened with chicken. The Korean word is “닭” (dahk) but often you’ll see “치킨” (chee-keen). The English loan (chee-keen), though, usually refers only to “fried chicken”. The pure-Korean word still exists for other forms of chicken.

I’ll be eating a Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend with some good people I know.
Picture

By Rockwell

bookmark_borderPost-248: Thinking About Germany and “The Left” Party

Posted on by Peter
In Post-246 (“Here Comes Bodo Ramelow“) I revisited my time in Germany in 2007, a subject about which I think I’ve rarely written on these pages. One of the things that impressed me there was the myriad of active political and quasi-political movements whirling around. If you read #246, you can see a slice of this.

I’ve been thinking more about the election result I mentioned in #246, in Thuringia (a German state formerly of East Germany), a place I passed through a time or two or three. The results of their recent state election:

* 28 seats were won by Die Linke (successor of the East German Communist Party) [31% of seats]
[…] [T]he Linke “neo-Communists” are a majority of [the new] ruling coalition, so it’s only fair that their guy, Bodo, becomes the formal leader.

“Die Linke” (English: The Left), which is the reformed Communist Party, won nearly one-in-three seats in this eastern-German state’s legislature. By the way, here is the top banner on the website of party’s Berlin chapter:
Picture

From website of the Linke party (die-linke-berlin.de), as of this writing

(It’s Herren Marx und Engels. These are life-size statues, put up during the Communist era, and still stand in central Berlin. I passed right by them many-a-time. They are in a big open square which is generally deserted.)

Those in the east voting for Linke are generally older people who actually lived as adults under the Communist East German government. Is this, then, a partial vindication of that system and its government?

Maybe. But hear this:

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Read More
I passed through eastern German cities, towns, and villages at various times while over there. Political posters are often highly visible in Germany, including in small towns. The Linke posters across eastern Germany, I noted with interest, were adorned with pictures of smiling, white-haired retirees and suchlike, with bland promises about securing pensions and that kind of thing. Far from radical. I also observed the people in these places, the places where one-in-three may vote for this party. The average age seemed quite high; the average “radicalism”, quite low. The people I observed in these smaller towns reminded me of my own grandparents; they kept up their traditions (such as they were), took pride in their towns,  maintained their households, and lived with quiet dignity, as older people do. It slowly dawned on me that this “communist” party was actually kept afloat by…conservatives.

Maybe this is a window into the nature of political thought itself. These east(ern) German voters in their 50s, 60s, 70s who are voting Linke into the 2010s are not “left-wing extremists”. Suggesting so is a bit silly. They are basically conservative people.

This leads me to ask: What is a conservative? If we hold all else equal, maybe a conservative is one who wants [thinks he wants] whatever system existed, say, forty years ago (or some such number of years ago; the recent past), regardless of what that system was, whether it was considered left or right or whatever at the time.

The Linke party itself is actually radical at its core, at its top, and at its (youth) fringes. (I concluded this at the time.) Its eastern voter base may be ‘conservative’, but West Germans who embrace this party may have to be called radicals.

Thus I realized that we can speak of a secondary base of this party — smaller but noisier — in the form of belligerently left-wing youth prone to masked-mayhem and violence, the type that Europeans will know as “Antifas”, and their less-belligerent sympaticos. Their material was highly visible in most parts of Berlin (they don’t call it “Red Berlin” for nothing). But not in all parts. “Ganz im Osten” (as I called it — “in the deep east”) of that city they faced hostile territory and they knew it, or so I gathered. This territory belonged to the infamous Rechtsradikaler (radical right). I noticed this difference in political “turf” starkly over one particular night (and a long night it was). I, along with G.S., an American friend also studying in Germany at the time, walked clear across most of Berlin. It was ambitious, but we did it. (We started near Ostkreuz or Lichtenberg [which is definitely “deeply east”] at 10 PM or so, and ended west of the Westkreuz train station — on foot the whole way. It took us over eight hours. I don’t know whose idea this was, but it sounds like something I’d propose. We arrived past dawn at his apartment in the west [where I was staying for the time being while I sorted out a new place to live].)

Anyway, about the Linke Party. I think we can say Linke is “two parties” that have joined together for convenience’s sake — one is a party for nostalgic ‘conservative’ east-Germans in or near retirement age (see above), and the other a party of and for the angrily radical left. Without the former, the party gets no voters and is stuck in the electoral ghetto (Linke has almost no representation anywhere in West Germany due to the 5%-threshold rule). Without the latter, the party lacks for energy, sags under the weight of political lethargy, and may not have survived to the present day. This was my opinion as an outside observer.

Here is an official document of the party I’ve been discussing, Die Linke (or, in English, “The Left”):
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An official document of the party Die Linke in Germany,
successor to the East German Communist Party

The leaflet is all about “fighting fascism” (whatever that means in this day and age), which is a major theme of Linke material, just as it was for the Communist East German ruling party. As a matter of fact, the Communist Party, in its day, called the Berlin Wall the “Anti-Fascist Protective Barrier”(antifaschistischer Schutzwall). Likewise, one of the “Antifa” slogans I recall from Germany is: “Deutsche Polizisten schützen die Faschisten” (German police protect the fascists).