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April 9, 2006

The Death of an Alliance, Part 36: FTA Meets WTF

Move over Weekly World News: Beware of the dragonfly: it may be a bugging robot disguised as a harmless insect. No, the advice does not come from a mental patient convinced the government is spying on his laundry bills: it was one of the security tips issued during last week’s two-day workshop for 120 Korean delegates in the nation’s impending free-trade negotiations with the U.S. The workshop was designed to help delegates guard their negotiation strategies from prying ears when...
Categories An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Diplomacy/Humor/Satire/Korean Politics/Korean Society/NK Economics/U.S. & Korea/Uncategorized/Unintended Humor/WTF?
April 9, 2006

Links of Note

Thanks for the readers who forwarded: The Hines Ward story made the Washington Post. It doesn’t add too much new information, but I do like to see the issue get covered here. Transparency is a mixed blessing for China on the Sujiatun story: It appears the claims by Falun Gong have been at least substantially exaggerated. Initial investigations by researchers for a US congressional committee have identified the site at Sujiatun as a hospital, where it is suspected organ harvesting...
Categories Censorship/China/Human Rights/Korean Society/Media Criticism/WTF?
April 1, 2006

A Brief History of Insincerity

As a young activist, Roh Moo Hyun called for the expulsion of U.S. forces from Korea. As a candidate, Roh Moo-Hyun rhetorically moved his nation from America’s tit to its feet and promised not to “kowtow” to its long-time protector and benefactor. Speaking before the United Nations last September, President Roh Moo Hyun said this before the entire UN General Assembly: The world must completely divest itself of mindsets and vestiges reminiscent of imperialistic tendencies that appear to linger in...
Categories "United" Nations/An Alliance?/Anti-Americanism/Humor/Satire/Korean Politics/Uncategorized/WTF?
March 27, 2006

Brace Yourself for Labor Unrest (Unless You Own Slaves)

The strike season is starting. While still living in Korea, I had the inspiration for a new business model, “Demo Land.”  Your entrance fee of just W30,000 would cover equipment rental (signs, drums, headbands, riot shields, tear gas, fire bombs), bail, and E.R. treatment.  Great fun for those who mainly do it for the entertainment of it all, which seems to be most, with an occasional legitimate grievance to be found in there somewhere.  I’d put it somewhere near Yangjae,...
Categories Human Rights/Humor/Satire/Korean Society/NK Economics
March 1, 2006

Comrade Chung to Visit Kaesong

Must be an election coming . . . . He said he would also ask opposition party leaders to join the trip, and was pushing for a meeting with Kim Jong-il and other senior North Korean leaders.  The Grand National Party dismissed Mr. Chung’s invitation yesterday, calling a trip to North Korea an old-fashioned way for politicians to promote themselves before an election. As OFK alumni already know, Chung has a signed  pact with Satan, and I have the photo...
Categories Appeasement/Human Rights/Humor/Satire/Korean Politics/NK Economics
February 19, 2006

‘Why I Published Those Cartoons’

Fleming Rose, Editor of the Jyllands-Posten, explains.  Meanwhile, there is more fuel for my “paxil in the water” proposal: Attacking a U.S. embassy over Danish cartoons. “God Bless Hitler.”  A German newspaper thinks the message this sends is unclear. Nigerian Muslim mobs burn churches, kill three kids and a priest.  Fifteen dead, total.  What’s most noticeable about all this isn’t the existence of extremism.  It’s the lack of a moderate response. Tigerhawk is through with asymetic sensitivity.  My own feeling...
Categories Terrorism/Iraq/WTF?
February 19, 2006

When Power Comes from the Wire of a Modem

The Washington Post has a fascinating look at how the Internet forced the Chinese government to retreat – partially – in its censorship of the journal “Freezing Point” (previous posts here). Why didn’t Beijing simply follow Mao’s old “barrel of a gun” formula this time? Because the Chinese economy must sustain sufficiently high growth to absorb a flood of excess laborers from rural areas to preserve social stability, which places China between the Scylla of rising dissent and the Charibdis...
Categories Censorship/China/Geopolitics/Human Rights/NK Economics/WTF?
February 17, 2006

Paxil for the Lot of You: Cartoons Don’t Kill, Idiocy Does

[Updated] Not a good week for the idea of peaceful coexistence with the undiagnosed and insane.  It may be time to revisit the subject of secretly medicating city water supplies. “We are a nation that drinks blood, and we know that there is no blood better than the blood of Jews.”  Fortunately, my blood is only half   delicious. “Riots in Pakistan spurred by the publication in Europe of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad spilled over to a South Korean...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Europe/Humor/Satire/Media Criticism/Terrorism/Iraq/WTF?
February 17, 2006

Cartoon Idiocy, Part II

After learning that South Korea was in danger of losing the title for “Hub of Petty Despotism,” President Roh Moo Hyun launched his own cartoon war of sorts this week. No embassies were harmed in this production; the only violence was that done to freedom of the press: President Roh Moo-hyun yesterday filed a second libel suit against the mainstream Chosun Ilbo newspaper, saying a cartoon defamed him by circulating false facts. The cartoon, titled “The lie is detected fast,”...
Categories Censorship/Humor/Satire/Korean Law/Korean Politics/U.S. Law/WTF?
February 15, 2006

NK ‘Spokesman’: We Have ICBMs!

Today’s WTF headline is this piece of work by Kim Myong Chol, North Korea’s unofficial and unmedicated spokesman in Japan.  The real torment of this piece is the difficulty of deciding which of the choicest cuts to serve you: Three factors make North Korea unique. The first is possession of a fleet of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of unleashing retaliatory nuclear strikes on the US mainland. Second, the North Koreans still torment the Americans as a result of their...
Categories Anti-Americanism/Appeasement/Asia/Counterfeiting/Diplomacy/Humor/Satire/Japan & Korea/Six-Party Talks/WTF?
February 15, 2006

Stranger Than Fiction: The Pyongyang Charm School

Everyone is ashamed of something in his past.  High on my own list is the time my brother persuaded me to read “The Charm School,” a Nelson Demille spy novel.  The plot premise was that  Moscow took custody American MIA’s from North Viet Nam to create a “charm school,” an exact replica of an  American  neighborhood, complete with American residents.  The idea was to immerse Soviet sleeper agents into their next work assignments. Unlike some other aspects of life in...
Categories Abductions/Activism/Appeasement/Asia/China/China & Korea/Defectors/Japan/Japan & Korea/North Korea/Southeast Asia/WTF?
February 14, 2006

Kim Jong Chol Reported Sidelined as Successor

Today’s WTF News  comes courtesy of the Donga Ilbo, which reports that Kim Jong Chol, previously named as the likely heir to Kim Jong Il, has been sidelined in the succession struggle. Kim Jong Chul (photo), the 25-year-old second son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his most likely heir, is reportedly suffering from a medical hormone problem, and there is speculation that he may have lost his spot in the country’s succession hierarchy. . . . ....
Categories Kremlinology/North Korea/WTF?
January 5, 2005

Solidarity, anti-Imperialism, and Hot Babes!

Updated 5/28/06; scroll down. Are you a pompous, porcine, undistinguished single guy with delusions of grandeur, a penchant for dressing like an Austin Powers villian, and a vague resemblance to Lou Costello? The Dear Leader offers you a life of relevance, power, profit, petty burglary, more power, and (reportedly) joyous outbursts of song. Even better, he’ll will surround you with hot chicks, and this time, they can’t run away from you! All he asks of you is a willingness to...
Categories North Korea/Unintended Humor/WTF?