Kotaji 거타지

Moving

2005-08-11T15:08:00.000+01:00

I've finally decided to make the move to the Wordpress version of my site at Blogsome. It's not perfect, but I've basically got things how I want them over there and I'm getting fed up with using Blogger and posting everything twice. So I won't be posting here any more. Hopefully over the next few months I'll get all the archived posts from here moved over there.

Please update your links, blogrolls, RSS feeds etc accordingly.

Pak Noja on Korean Nationalism and the Left

2005-08-10T16:32:00.000+01:00

The talk given by Pak Noja recently at Yonsei University seems to have been quite an event with a thousand-strong audience. A transcript of his talk and the ensuing discussion with chairwoman Kim Ha-yong (who readers of this site may have heard of before) is now available on the Ta Hamkke website.

It would be great to have this in English, but translating the whole thing is a bit beyond the time I can spare at the moment, perhaps we can hope that Pak Noja will provide something in English on this subject sooner or later.

In the meantime I thought I’d just roughly translate a short extract, partly because this topic fits quite well with my recent post on autonomism in Korea and the discussion that followed. Apologies for the somewhat stilted translation. I’ve also had some difficulties with some of the terminology, I’ll try to come back to this and make some improvements at a later stage.

In this extract, after a discussion of the role played by nationalism and French imperialism in Vietnam, Pak turns to North Korea:

For us, one of the most difficult things to talk about is the North Korean revolution. The strength of the influence exerted by the legacy of imperialism and the intellectual inheritance of nationalism on the process of the North Korean revolution is worth thinking about. To some extent, we can talk about this even before the revolution in the North took the extreme form of a one-man dictatorship.

It is a fact that in the 1940s the North looked like a far more advanced and people-oriented society than the South. The fact that a great number of progressive intellectuals migrated to the North in the late 40s shows just how attractive the revolution was. For a considerable proportion of those who went North it would be hard to say that they were communists in the strictest sense of the word. Many intellectuals who were inclined towards nationalism and populism migrated. The land reforms carried out in the North were actually one of the reasons that land reform was achieved in the South at that time. The North Korean reforms provided a model and gave Yi Sŭngman (Syngman Rhee) a sense of crisis: “if we don’t also do this to some extent we will not be able to compete with the North.” So the historical contribution of quite a few aspects of the North Korean revolution can be evaluated positively.

However, already if you look at the series of campaigns that were waged between late 1946 and 1948, there is something about it that smells a bit strange. For example, the ‘Mass Mobilisation Campaign for the Cultivation of National Ideology’ (건국사상총동원교양캠페인) that began in late 1946 was aimed at educating people through a mass mobilisation of the whole nation to cultivate a national ideology. What was the purpose of this movement? According to the words of Kim Il-sung at the time it was “an ideological revolution to create among the workers of the new Democratic Chosŏn a national spirit, customs, morals and militancy.”

What is the meaning of ‘national spirit’ (국민정신) and ‘mass mobilisation’ (총동원)? Mass mobilisation was a phrase that was continuously used during the latter years of Japanese colonialism, and one of the phrases that expressed in the most compressed manner the fascism of the late colonial period. Talk of making people do ideological study through mass mobilisation was a commonplace of this period. Terms like ‘citizen-like spirit’, ‘national spirit’ and ‘spirit’ were actually Japanese words that were first brought to Korea by students returning from study in Japan. But the term ‘national spirit’ was something that was also created within the paradigm of nationalism following the model of Japan. The fact that the term ‘national spirit’ came to be used at that time in the North shows the influence of early nationalist ideology and perhaps also the influence of the Soviet Union, but we cannot eradicate the impression that the North Korean regime just took over a term that had been used as a commonplace in the late colonial period. Although of course at that time it referred to a different nation’s citizens.

Many of the other campaigns carried out in North Korea also had some similarities in their methods to the mass campaigns of the late colonial period, like the ‘Serving the Country behind a Gun Campaign’ (총후보국캠페인). Propagandists were sent out on a mass scale to forcibly mobilise people for education. Those who did not get on with the education programme or had different opinions were made to do self-criticism and undergo ‘ideological reconstruction’ (사상개조). If you look at the campaigns that were carried out in the late colonial period by state organs of ‘ideological cultivation’ like the Taehwasuk [an organisation of pro-Japanese Koreans] the similarity is quite noticeable.

So, when General Kim Il-sung was constructing a nation state, he brought in considerable parts of the apparatus of state control and repression that were taken from the mechanisms of administration of the Japanese imperialists, the very people he had been struggling against up until then. In other words, it is hard to get rid of the sense that the state created by the nationalists in some way inherited a great deal from the imperialist state.

I’d like to make some brief comments on this. Really the question that comes to my mind is: why was it that regimes founded by nationalists (whether or not they called themselves ‘communists’ let’s accept that’s what they were/are) took on much of the ideological and institutional apparatus of their erstwhile oppressors? I think it’s worth considering the possibility that these things were much the same from the point of view of the new rulers (Kim Il-sung, Ho Chi-min or whoever) as the factories that they inherited from the former colonialists. They were setting about creating an independent nation state (or in other terms an ‘independent centre of capital accumulation’). They needed the ideological tools for the job of mass coercion that is required when setting out on the path of primitive accumulation, just as much as they needed the physical tools that would combine with human labour to produce the steel, concrete, petrochemicals and so on.

I suppose what I’m saying is that since nationalism (in the colonial/post-colonial context) ultimately means achieving a capitalist state, it is natural for it to utilise the tools necessary for this job, however brutal they may be. Nationalism ceases to have any really progressive tendencies not long after it comes to power.

Korean books at SOAS 3: Biography of Yŏ Un-hyŏng

2005-08-08T22:34:00.000+01:00

A well-thumbed biography of a Korean nationalist who I've taken a liking to for some reason. Actually I know very little about Yŏ Un-hyŏng, although you can read a short and somewhat hagiographic bio here at the Kimsoft website and a more prosaic one here at Wikipedia. He seems to be one of those figures that every developing nation state of the twentieth century must have had - a not-quite great leader.

In the case of Mong-yang (his pen-name), one of the reasons for this is quite plain: he was a centre nationalist at a time (the mid 1940s) when the Korean peninsula was being polarised in two directions towards the 'left' nationalism of the North and the 'right' nationalism of the South. Perhaps you could say more honestly that Korea was being pulled rapidly in one direction by Soviet imperialism and in the other by US imperialism. Nationalists who didn't really want to rely on either of the new great powers tended to be left high and dry.

During his lifetime Yŏ had been in the mainstream of the Korean nationalist movement, operating in Shanghai, Siberia and Japan. He had earlier founded the New Korea Youth Party, but in 1920 he actually joined Korea's first Communist Party and attended the First Congress of the Toilers of the Far East, where he apparently met Lenin. Later he joined the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and worked for Chiang Kai-shek. According to the Kimsoft biography he was arrested and imprisoned by the Japanese in 1929, although the English Wikipedia entry says that it was the British who arrested him and then handed him over to the Japanese. Interestingly the Korean Wiki entry notes that Yŏ was arrested at Shanghai baseball stadium - I wonder if it still exists?.

At liberation Yŏ emerged as one of the leaders of post-colonial Korea, but the People's Committees and the Korean People's Republic that he helped to form in September 1945 were short-lived and were soon crushed by the US military government (in the North the People's Committees were co-opted by the Soviet/Kim Il-sung regime). During 1946 Yŏ found himself on the left of the nationalist movement but was striving to bring elements of the right and left together in a coalition, working in particular with the main communist leader in the South: Pak Hŏn-yŏng.

One thing that caught my eye about this book was its publication date. It was originally published in 1946, but this edition was reprinted in late July 1947. Yŏ Un-hyŏng had in fact been gunned down at the Hyehwa-dong Rotary in Seoul just a few days before this on July 19, by a hitman thought to have been acting on Syngman Rhee's orders. Here's a description of the assassination from Kimsoft:

When Yo's car slowed down at the Hyehwa-dong intersection, suddenly, a large truck pulled out from behind the police station and blocked Yo's car. Yo's driver pressed on the breaks and the car came to screeching halt, when the assassin jumped on the rear bumper and fired two pistol shots at Yo through the rear window. One bullet hit Yo's back and came out of his stomach and the other went through his heart, killing him instantly. It was one pm.

According to the Kimsoft biography, the hitman was a rightist refugee from North Korea called Han Chi-gŭn. The site also has a whole page discussing the assassination.

By a quirk of fate, a combination of the British and Yŏ's love of sport seem to have been his twin nemeses, getting him into trouble on more than one occasion. First when he was arrested at the baseball stadium in 1929 and then again in July 1946, when he was on his way home to change into a clean shirt before attending a friendly football match between British and Korean teams.

If you want more resources on Mong-yang, there is a Wikipedia entry in Korean and he has his own website, run by his memorial foundation (every dead nationalist must have one of these it seems).

Chinese peasants, back on the stage of world history

2005-08-03T23:56:00.000+01:00

Newsnight last night carried a very good report on rural unrest in China and the way that peasant farmers are fighting back to save their land from the gangster-capitalist property-developers, throwing up high-rises around Chinese cities at a phenomenal rate. This was one of those rare news reports that is truly informative and at the same time moving and even a little inspiring. You can watch the film here (at least for the time-being anyway) and there is a somewhat condensed article on BBC News too.

The massive scale and violence of the struggles that Chinese peasants are waging is quite amazing. They are up against not only bands of hired thugs, often working for state-owned companies, but also the police and corrupt local officials. In some places the uprisings have been on the scale of historical rebellions of Chinese peasants: 100,000 in Sichuan last November, 20,000 in Zhejiang in April.

What is perhaps even more amazing is that Chinese farmers are making documentaries of their struggles and filming their battles with the armies of thugs that come to take their land and demolish their villages. The Newsnight report includes footage from one such battle in Shengyou near Beijing this June. As the narrator comments, it is like watching a medieval Chinese battle scene: a muddy chaos of peasants with bamboo poles and farm tools. Well at least until the gunshots and explosions begin.

Let my [little] people go!

2005-08-02T16:55:00.000+01:00

Kerim of Keywords has a superb post on the 'Oompa-loompanproletariat' which I feel obliged to share. Everything you could ever want to know about the struggle of these small persons for liberation from capitalism and Wonkaism.

Kifaya once again

2005-08-02T11:06:00.000+01:00

Organising protests seems to be the same wherever you are these days: the importance of text.

The BBC has come up trumps today with an good piece on the democracy movement in Egypt and even a photo gallery of activists organising protests.

Utoro

2005-08-01T18:21:00.000+01:00

Oh My News International has a story by David McNeil and Andreas Hippin about a Korean village near Kyoto in Japan, said to be the last community of forced labourers and their descendents who were taken to Japan during the colonial period. It has long been threatened with demolition and clings to survival in the shadow of the bulldozers, in half-way-round-the-world echo of a Palestinian village on the West Bank. Only 230 residents remain, most of them in old age it seems.

The village of Utoro has clearly become something of a nationalist cause celebre in South Korea recently with solidarity movements and even fundraising concerts planned. One interesting aspect though, is that the attitude of the residents seems to lack the overt nationalism of their South Korean supporters. Their attitude is rather one of weary determination and pride in their 'solid' community. You can perhaps see the disconnect between residents and campaigners in this paragraph:

The renewed attention and the possibility that the Utoro plot will be bought by supporters and preserved as a memorial to conscripted Koreans, is welcomed by Gen but he is wary of being used for political purposes. "There are the people who want to continue living here and those who want to preserve the history. We are not especially interested in a museum, but some want to force Japan to pay for one as a way of acknowledging the past."

I might be reading too much into too little here, but I think this says something about the difficulties of imprinting the nationalist narrative onto every issue involving Korea and Japan and their shared history. This issue is also a universal issue, a human rights issue, a class issue. Obviously there is much that has yet to be dealt with in the history of Japanese colonialism, and the racism that it produced (towards Koreans and others) is still an important component of Japanese society. But to my mind, posing an issue like this solely, or even largely in the context of Korean nationalism as the South Korean NGOs seem to do, must act to shut off possibilities for solidarity with Japanese social movements and class-based alliances of Koreans and Japanese.

Support Kifaya

2005-07-30T19:27:00.000+01:00

I've posted before about the democracy movement in Egypt - Kifaya / Enough! - and the solidarity they received from socialists in Korea (some good pictures here). Aljazeera reports today that 15 members of the movement's leadership have been arrested while trying to organise a demonstration. Anyone who wants to support one of the most important democracy movements in the world today should find a way to show solidarity with Kifaya, perhaps by writing to your local egyptian ambassador.

These are matters that concern all of us, especially since repressive governments like that of Mubarak that attempt to stifle all political debate (with the staunch support of the US of course) are one of the major factors in the growth of jihadi movements and support for the politics of desperation that believe the only solution is to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians. If we don't show our support for democracy movements like this (which are actually supported by the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood) it is the violent Islamists that will gain, with the kind of horrific results in seen in Sharm El-Sheikh recently. By coincidence, Jonathan Steele had a comment piece in the Guardian yesterday in which he made a similar point.

UPDATE
An update to my post yesterday. According to a news story on the BBC it seems that the crackdown by the Egyptian government was somewhat more severe than was reported by Al Jazeera. 19 of Kifaya's leaders were arrested and many demonstrators beaten (the story has video too).

Why six party talks are like a cheese sandwich

2005-07-27T23:31:00.000+01:00

I noted that the story about the 'upbeat' beginning to the new round of six party talks (North Korea, South Korea, US, Japan, Russia and China) briefly made it to the top position on the front page of BBC News Online yesterday morning. But the BBC soon realised the error of its ways and remembered that nothing important really ever happens in East Asia, only funny things like hats with umbrellas. Here is the BBC's latest story and also what the Korea Times has to say.

To be honest, I'm not that keen on writing about negotiations between North Korea and the US, because, well perhaps because it's more boring than a processed cheese sandwich. Perhaps also because I don't care much for either side (although I must admit that negotiations are better than what they could be doing to one another). On this occasion though there is something about the talks that has just about prompted me to put finger to keyboard. This is the palpably different atmosphere. I could be wrong but it seems that both sides may be nearing the end of their strange mating dance and be about to do what we've all been waiting for: get it on.

Seems to me that the Bush administration has never really had a solution for the old North Korea problem, but on the other hand was glad of a nice little bit of instability in East Asia (offering legitimation for its protection racket in the region, cf Giovanni Arrighi's article in the latest New Left Review [subscription]). But then along came a problem called Iraq and suddenly it seems like a better idea to get things tidied up at the far end of the Eurasian continent before they get too out of hand.

North Korea on the other hand seems to have been less and less willing to compromise for just the same reason: it knows it has a strong hand. But maybe, just maybe, they feel they've reached a peak and the time is right to cut a deal. With South Korea providing electricity and the US and Japan offering diplomatic normalisation and lashings of cash it certainly seems that the nuclear gambit may have paid off, although I would attribute this as much to 'lucky' timing (ie Iraq) as to the North's skill in brinkmanship.

Well, there you go, a bit of a pointless attempt at geopolitical analysis/speculation, which could very well be a load of bollocks.

Oh, by the way, if you want a better informed analysis of the situation from a left perspective you could check out this piece (in Korean) in the latest issue of Ta Hamkke. It also says that the new round of talks could produce results, but argues that any agreement would probably be pretty meaningless. Besides this, it includes some interesting criticism of the pacifist and pro-North (Juch'eist) sections of the left, all of whom seem to have great hopes in the talks. The author argues instead that power relations in East Asia will be decided elsewhere, principally by what happens in the Middle East.

Korean books 2: North Korean poetry collections

2005-07-21T12:42:00.000+01:00

Just a bit of eye-candy for book-lovers really. These are six poetry collections from North Korea dating from the late fifties to early sixties. I think the prints are really nice and very much of their time, although of course things haven't moved on that much in the DPRK and you can pick up books from only a few years ago that have very similar covers.

One thing that is very noticeable about these books is that apart from the one in the top centre (건설의 나날) they all depict very rural or wild scenes and they have titles like 'The Embrace of the Earth' (대지의품). It is interesting and perhaps surprising to note that at a time of massive industrialisation the nostalgic/romantic fetishisation of nature seems to have been a major theme (ok so I haven't actually read the poems, but there's something to be said for judging a book by its cover). I say surprising because we tend to think of 'communist'/state capitalist countries as fetishising industrialisation itself.

If you look closely at the two books to the bottom left you will see, however, that the pastoral scenes do include some form of farm machinery or tractors - clearly a hint at rural progress.

Autonomism in Korea

2005-07-19T23:28:00.000+01:00

Reading conservative or liberal commentators on Korea, expat bloggers, experts or professional journalists, one thing that irritates is the tendency to lump together the Korean left into an amorphous mass of crazed stick-wielding students with a grudge against all things American and bolshie workers and farmers, who probably get paid too much anyway (to be 'globally competitive' that is).

Some of these stereotypes may exist in real life (I dunno), but the Korean left is actually quite a diverse and rapidly changing place. In some ways this is nothing new as anyone who knows about the various factions of the 80s (handily denoted by easy-to-remember abbreviations like NL and PD) will know. But the biggest difference these days is that much of the left is no longer dominated by Stalinism of one form or another as it was 20 years ago. There are social democrats of various stripes, Trotskyists of different hues and, as the title of this post indicates, the current vogue for autonomism is also present on the Korean peninsula.

I thought about making this the first of a series on the 'new' left in Korea, but I'm not sure I can actually come good on the promise of a series, so we'll see what happens. I might write some more on other aspects of the Korean left... and I might not.

The term used for Autonomism in Korean chayulchuûi (자율주의) must be of fairly recent coinage, although I'm not sure whether it reached Korean via Japanese, as many other newish words have done. Another interesting term that is relevant here is tajung (다중/多衆), a term that I've not seen used elsewhere on the left and which is used by the Korean Autonomists to translate Hardt and Negri's concept of the 'multitude' (their alternative to the proletariat as the modern world's revolutionary agency).

Anyway, according to people I've spoken to, the ideas of Autonomism, particularly in its recently revived form championed by Hardt and Negri, John Holloway, the Tute Bianche and the Zapatistas, have gained quite a bit of popularity on Korean campuses. This is perhaps a result of the general crisis of the old Stalinist left (in Korea and around the world) and the turn by quite a bit of the old Korean left toward social democratic politics.

Of course Korea did have a tradition of non-Stalinist revolutionary politics during the colonial period with the Korean anarchism of Sin Ch'ae-ho and others. But since liberation, anarchism or alternative forms of Marxism seem to have had little chance to make any impact on the left. Now, however, there is a Autonomist publishing house called Galmuri with the slogan 'Intellect of the Multitude' (다중지성).

There is also an Autonomist journal called Chayul P'yôngnon - 'The Autonomy Review'. The July issue (no. 13) is recently out, containing articles on subjects ranging from the debate on the left over the European constitution to the work of Giorgio Agamben. Much of it is translations of the work of European Autonomists, but there is also some interesting-looking writing by Koreans, including some debate between Autonomists and socialists like Ch'oe Il-pung.

So there you go, if Autonomism is your thing and you can read Korean, you now know where to go. Just don't let it be said that the Korean left consists of a load of North Korea-loving America-hating bbalgaengidûl.

UPDATE:
Wanted to add some extra information from one of my Korean correspondents who put this in the comment box:
"The [Korean] autonomists also emerged from the disorganisation of the old PD faction. Part of the National Students' Conference (전학협) and the Socialist Party (사회당), particularly the students, became autonomists or other sorts of anarchists... At the moment the PD faction is not only isolated but in an extremely severe state of disintegration, and there are a lot of areas [where the members] are no longer under their control."

Blogger doesn't really seem to do trackbacks, so I'll manually link back to Marmot's link to me here and Budaechigae's here. Thanks for the links guys.

Meanwhile in Korea

2005-07-18T10:00:00.000+01:00

A round up of some recent coverage / bloggage of Korean matters.

Two Koreas continue their excellent coverage of labour issues in South Korea with a post on what looks to be a hot summer season of disputes with the conservative FKTU union federation appearing to take an increasingly militant stance. For Korean readers the latest issue of Ta Hamkke newspaper also has quite a bit on the joint struggle that the two big union confederations are planning to wage this month.

Plans to expand the US Army base at P'yôngt'aek, to make space for troops who are to be redployed from the Yongsan base in central Seoul, seem to have a created another flashpoint and a great deal of resentment among locals. Once again Two Koreas are on the case (this blog is in danger of becoming a list of links to Two Koreas...) providing a very good overview of the way in which this particular site of protest has become a focus for quite a number of different causes (the old-school National Liberation types of the Hanchôngnyôn students, the new anti-war movement, the farmers' movement and of course, local families themselves who will be turfed out with the expansion plans). Oh My News also had their usual excellent picture story on last weekend's protests. And serious protests they were too - as the pictures of students charging police lines with 2-metre wooden poles show.

On the subject of the military, BBC correspondent Charles Scanlon has finally got around to doing something in-depth on the problems in the ROK Army that led to last month's one-man shooting spree that left eight men dead. A decent overview.

The July English edition of Le Monde Diplomatique has an interesting leader on Korea. As the title - 'Korean Blues' - indicates the subject is the mood of pessimism in South Korea, particularly about the economy. The focus is also on Korea's role as something of a pioneer in the field of precarity and flexibilisation:

In no other part of the world is the precarious labour market as advanced as it is here, having been created under the pressures of globalisation.

As the trade union officials explained: “Between the company that submits the original order and the worker who carries it out there are sometimes seven layers of subcontractors. The worker never knows exactly for whom he is working. The responsibilities of the main beneficiary of the production are diluted in a jungle of subcontractors. In the event of problems the occasional worker often has no recourse, because the trade unions for precarious workers are not recognised.”

Good to see a European take on what's going on in Korea.

Finally, news from a couple of weeks ago about the establishment of a new progressive veterans' association in Korea. Traditionally the mainstream Korean Veterans' Association has been a bastion of rightwing retired generals, so the planned new group seems to be making some powerful enemies before it has even got off the ground.

Fake solutions and real ones

2005-07-13T17:32:00.000+01:00

Before I return to East Asian matters I wanted to write something a bit more editorial on the recent bombings in London. I don't really want to address the bombings themselves or the complex issue of the factors that lay behind them as I think this has been done better than I could ever do by some of the commentators I have linked to in previous posts (especially Gary Younge). So I thought I would look briefly at one slightly tangential aspect that interests me.

The issue is one that I've mentioned here before: ID cards. Until the bombings the government's plans to bring in ID cards were definitely on the slippery slope, suffering from spiralling projected costs, rapidly waning public support and about to become victim to a concerted effort by the opposition parties to upset the (much weakened) Labour government's new legislative programme. It will be interesting to see how things pan out, but I suspect that it will be much harder to defeat them now and the government has already moved to use the bombings as justification for ID cards (among a number of other 'necessary measures'). Funnily enough, though, even Home Secretary Charles Clarke in his post-bombing advocacy for ID cards has admitted that they would not have stopped the attacks. He argues rather that "on balance they would help rather than hinder" the investigation of terrorist attacks like this one. This seems like an incredibly weak justification from a government minister who is supposed to be pushing for ID cards. (And it should be noted that it would have been completely irrelevant in the current case as the attackers seem to have been totally unconcerned about concealing their identities and were carrying documents from which the police have been able to identify them easily).

However, I think in a strange way Clarke is actually being considerably more honest that much of the media rhetoric around that repeatedly uses the old cliche about how such bombings are "almost impossible to prevent in a free society like ours." The problems with such a statement are almost too many to unpack. First, it implies that technocratic solutions would be helpful and perhaps even prevent terrorism, but that we cannot implement them as we value our freedoms too much. But this government (like those before it during the 'troubles') has introduced a number of measures already that reduce our freedoms considerably and yet terrorism only seems to have become more likely. More broadly, I think the correlation between the degree of freedom granted to citizens in a particular society and its vulnerability to terrorism is a highly dubious one. In fact I think the correlation could almost be reversed: it seems highly repressive states are particularly good at breeding terrorism against themselves and there really is no way that a population can be 'locked down' to the extent that some people will not be able to commit acts of violence should they have the desire to do so. This is especially true of countries that are brutally occupying a another country - Russia and Israel come to mind straight away, but any number of other cases could be cited. Israel has opted for the ultimate technocratic measure: a massive concrete wall with watchtowers turning the West Bank into a prison, but I doubt that even this can be entirely effective in protecting Israelis.

Of course governments love technocratic solutions (even when they are honest enough to admit that they won't work) because they cannot commit themselves to the real solutions (and technocratic solutions have useful spin-offs too). In a rare moment of clarity, Blair said the other day that we have to tackle the 'roots of terrorism', but we all know that the reality is that he is completely incapable of doing this, tied as he is to Bush's disastrous 'war on terror'. While it goes without saying that security, prevention and (hopefully) justice are necessary when dealing with terrorism, here are a few suggestions for political rather than technocratic solutions to the problem:

Troops out of the Middle East

Self determination for Iraq, Palestine, Kurdistan, Chechniya and Afghanistan

No more military and financial support for regimes that oppress their own or neighbouring peoples, eg: Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia

London at peace

2005-07-12T00:02:00.000+01:00

Some pictures from the last few days in London.

Police stand guard close to a sealed off Tavistock Square, where a bus was blown up last Thursday morning killing at least 13 people.

A sign on a tree near Tavistock Square advertises a peace vigil organised by the Stop the War Coalition on Saturday evening at the peace garden of the nearby Friends Meeting House.

People pack into the peace garden for a minute's silence, after which a wide range of speakers addressed the crowd.

Overhead picture of peace vigil (me perched slightly precariously on high wall).

George Galloway MP addresses the crowd. He was followed by Jeremy Corbyn MP.

Some more good writing in the papers today:

Gary Younge in the Guardian produces an astonishingly good piece, perhaps the best he has ever written (I only say perhaps because I doubt I've read every one of his columns). A small sample:

It is no mystery why those who have backed the war in Iraq would refute this connection. With each and every setback, from the lack of UN endorsement right through to the continuing strength of the insurgency, they go ever deeper into denial. Their sophistry has now mutated into a form of political autism - their ability to engage with the world around them has been severely impaired by their adherence to a flawed and fatal project.

In the same paper Karen Armstrong discusses the terms we should use to describe terrorists.

More interesting letters in the Independent today, where a battle of ideas is clearly raging over the factors behind the London bombings.

Images from Thursday, selected by the Guardian's photo editor.

Korean Studies saved my life

2005-07-11T00:38:00.000+01:00

Perhaps a slightly unserious title for such a serious subject, but a bit of lightheartedness doesn't go amiss at times like this.

Let's just say that if I hadn't been at the AKSE conference in Sheffield last Thursday, it is possible that I would have been on a bus into central London (although coming from the opposite direction to the one that was blown up) , or possibly sitting working in the SOAS library as a bomb went off on a bus less than a hundred metres away, killing at least 13 people.

(Addendum: I've just checked the timing of the bus bombing and it was somewhat earlier than I believed, so to be honest, had I been in London I would probably have been saved from being in the vicinity of the explosion by my innate student laziness and inability to get to the library that early in the morning.)

So strange to think of the many times that I've sat at SOAS listening to the sounds of ambulance sirens, thinking "perhaps this is it now". And then of course when it does finally happen I'm not even in the city. To make it more surreal, of all the places to choose in this city, the bombers go for two targets in the close vicinity of London University and the area of Bloomsbury where I come every day.

My point is that we/I have been expecting this for a long time: really since Blair's involvement in the murderous invasion of Afghanistan and certainly since this government's decision to particpate in the Iraq catastrophe. This, and the strength of the anti-war movement in the UK, will undoubtedly have an effect on the nature of the response from British people toward this horrible terrorist attack. We will have to see how things work themselves out over the next few days and weeks, but there are already signs that people here have a very good understanding of the connections between people suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine etc and now here in Britain.

Fortunately, it seems that everyone I know, has escaped this attack unscathed. But I think the sadness and anger that will be most acute for those most closely affected by this tragedy will also be felt to some extent by huge numbers of people in this diverse and tolerant city.

I hope to post a few pictures tomorrow, but in the meantime, some links on the London bombings:

The Independent's letters page, Friday July 8, 2005.

Raed Jarrar, a man who knows plenty about the innocent civilian victims in Iraq, gets to grips with the real options for solving the problem of terrorism.

Robert Fisk writes on the 'bombing of the Bush-Blair alliance'.

Dilip Hiro in the Independent.

Robin Cook in the Guardian.

Tak has provided a round up of interesting blog coverage on the bombings.

Finally, if you can bear it, the BBC is posting a very impressive, if harrowing, log by a survivor of the blast in the tube train that was travelling from Kings Cross to Russell Square.

Service announcements

2005-07-01T11:11:00.000+01:00

A couple of things: first, blogging may be very light over the next week or so as the AKSE conference has finally arrived (woohoo, a whole week of undiluted Korean studies) and I will be in Sheffield next week, where I hear the internet is almost unheard of. Who knows, perhaps Antti and I will live-blog the proceedings of the conference (but somehow I doubt it).

Second, I've been trying out a new bloghost that uses wordpress software. Wanted to set this up on my own webspace but I'm not enough of a techie to handle it so I'm using the handy blogsome. I'm not sure whether to go with this yet and I've got quite used to blogger. On the other hand wordpress is much nicer to use and has features I've been hankering after like categories (how cool is it that they get picked up straight away by technorati). So I'd be interested to know what people think, should I cut the blogger apron strings? Comments welcome here or there. (Of course that last sentence only works if you're reading this post on blogger... confusing business having two blogs).

Finally, good luck to anyone who's heading up to Scotland to fight the power. Sorry I can't be there.

Korean books at SOAS 1: 'Aeguk tae yonsŏl chip'

2005-06-30T16:32:00.000+01:00

This is the first of what will probably be a series of irregular posts on some interesting old Korean books I've come across in the library at SOAS. By way of explanation, for the last few months I've been toiling away for a few hours a week in a tiny book-filled room in the library trying to get lots of old Korean books onto the computer catalogue. Inevitably a few gems have revealed themselves (at least they're gems to me anyway) and I thought it might be worth blogging them for posterity. I might even expand some of these into slightly longer articles if I feel inclined.

My first choice is probably the most intriguing: a book of speeches published in Keijo (colonial Seoul) in 1940 called Aeguk tae yŏnsŏlchip (愛國大演說集), translating roughly as 'Collection of Great Patriotic Speeches'. The time and place of publication should be a hint that this is no treatise on Korean nationalism. In fact it's a collection of stirring pro-Japanese, pro-war speeches given by (apparently) prominent Korean writers. The editor is Kim Tong-hwan, who appears to have later become an important figure in the North Korean literary scene - a peculiar, but perhaps not completely unique path for a 20th century Korean intellectual.

As you can see from the picture below, much of the front cover has been ripped away, possibly before it came into the posession of SOAS. One can only guess that this was done by an angry Korean reader.

From a glance at the preface and contents (pictures below), some of the main themes appear to be support for the Japanese empire's 'sacred war' (聖戰) in Asia; the idea of Korea and Japan behaving as one body (called naesŏn ilch'e 內鮮一體); and lots of the usual talk about 'our' duty to serve the country etc.

Preface

Contents

Pak No-ja speaking at Yonsei this weekend

2005-06-29T12:02:00.000+01:00

For anyone living in Seoul you have a great opportunity to hear Pak No-ja (aka Vladimir Tikhonov) speak at Yonsei University this weekend. He will be giving a special talk hosted by Ta Hamkke on "Korean nationalism and the left." As the author of 당신들의 대한민국 ["Your Korea"] and most recently 우승優勝 열패劣敗의 신화 ["The Myth of the Survival of the Fittest"] I think we can expect his views to be very interesting and perhaps quite challenging for some leftwing activists in Korea. Details.

Finished: Kim Ha-yŏng on NK economic development

2005-06-29T11:47:00.000+01:00

Finally finished my translation of Kim Ha-yŏng's reply Han Kyu-han on the North Korean economy in the 1950s. All in all a very interesting discussion of the strategies of capital accumulation available in the context of state-led development and the political conflicts that they caused among the North Korean bureaucracy.

part one
part two

Bachelors, barbecues and the new minjung

2005-06-28T11:58:00.000+01:00

Del.icio.us may be one of the best internet ideas of recent times, but it's also a fantastic way to bookmark everthing in sight and then read none of it. So, to force myself to use it more constructively, I present you with a selection from my recent bookmarks on Korea.

First up, yesterday's news that a quarter of rural bachelors in South Korea are marrying women from overseas, a fairly good indicator I would have thought of the ongoing disintegration of Korean rural society. The great majority of men married Chinese women (it doesn't say what proportion were ethnic Koreans - 조선족), followed by women from Vietnam and then Filipina women.

Next we have John Feffer's entertaining article on the restaurant explosion currently taking place in P'yŏngyang (ok that's slightly hyperbolic). Apparently the recent economic reforms have led to a great number of new eateries in the North Korean capital and competition between them is beginning to heat up. A couple of UN workers have even produced a guide to 50 of the best in the city. Here's the passage that blew me away:

On his most recent trip this year to Pyongyang, Randall Ireson lunched at a microbrewery alongside average Pyongyangites in working attire. "The beer was excellent, a dark ale," says the DPRK Assistance Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. "You could make a meal of it. And they served the best cold noodles I've had."

On a more serious note, this article provides a fascinating insight into the way in which the market is taking hold in North Korea and the state is losing much of its control. In my view, this doesn't look like a deliberate strategy on the part of the North Korean ruling class, like the Chinese turn of the early 80s, but rather emergency measures taken by a state that has little economy left to control. A sort of disintegrating state capitalism. Of course, as Feffer points out, those who will win from these changes (as they did in the Soviet transition) will be those sections of the nomenklatura who take advantage of their connections to become 'red capitalists' - oligarchs, robber barons, or whatever you prefer to call them.

Finally, a plug for fellow blogger Jamie at Two Koreas and his excellent piece on the migrant workers' movement in South Korea. He draws parallels between this recent movement and the 'minjung movement' (people's movement) that formed the basis of Korea's labour and democracy movements through the 70s and 80s. Jamie puts the case for migrant workers labouring in the underbelly of the Korean economy being the new excluded, unrecognised group in Korean society:

Though Korean citizens now enjoy a broad range of civil, political, and labor rights and improved standards of living, I’d like to argue that the collective suffering that once defined the life of the minjung today seems to shape the lives of a new group of people in contemporary South Korea. These people are the undocumented foreign workers who now toil in those jobs done by the minjung of the past, in the 3-D (dirty, dangerous, and difficult) industries where, like the minjung, their toil seems endless and their struggles often go unrecognized.

Musical interlude: Callier at the Jazz Cafe

2005-06-27T23:09:00.000+01:00

I saw Terry Callier at the Jazz Cafe last night (which by the way, is probably one of London's best venues). I've been wanting to see him live for quite a while, but wasn't really expecting any great revelations. I was wrong: in real life he has a presence. He is an absolutely mesmerizing singer. A man who can spin out his lyrics (which sometimes, admittedly, have an air of richest fromage) in a way that brings tears to the eyes of grown men (and perhaps even women too).

The tracks from his recent album Lookin' Out were another revelation, rivalling his earlier classic tunes from the 60s and 70s. The lyrics to his cover of Dino Valenti's 'What About Me' particularly burned their way into my mind:

I work in your factory.
I study in your schools.
I fill your penitentiaries.
And your military too!

And I feel the future trembling,
As the word is passed around.
"If you stand up for what you do believe,
Be prepared to be shot down."

Oh.......oh What you gonna do about me?
Oh.......oh What you gonna do about me?

The Guardian has a nice interview with the man who was a computer programmer at Chicago University from 1983 until 1998, when they sacked him after finding out about his double life as a musician.

NK economy in the 1950s: a reply to Han Kyu-han, part two

2005-06-24T18:15:00.000+01:00

Here is the second part of Kim Ha-yông's reply to Han Kyu-han on the North Korean economy in the 1950s.

part one

Contrary to what Han Kyu-han writes, it is difficult to view the August 1956 so-called ‘Factional Incident’ as something that arose as a result of a “severe crisis of capital accumulation.”

The clash over the correct line for economic development that reached its apex at the all-members meeting of the party central committee in August 1956 had already begun in 1953-1954, at the time when the North Korean economy was in its [earliest stages of revival].

The conflict between different economic lines that was revealed in the clash between Kim Il-song and the Soviet/Yenan factions did not [particularly] reflect the situation in North Korea but was actually symptomatic of the limitations of the Stalinist economic model which were revealed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

When Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet bureaucracy rushed into limited reforms aimed at solving the problems that had accumulated during Stalin’s rule. To borrow Tony Cliff’s expression, the Soviet bureaucracy felt the need to move from “the stage of primitive accumulation to mature state capitalism.”

To raise the productivity of the Soviet economy, “while they were focusing capital investment into industry that was already to a certain extent developed, they could not any longer refuse to use a chunk of the remaining resources to raise the standard of living in the Soviet Union.”

However, the situation in North Korea was different. To prepare a new industrial basis, all resources had to be focused on this. Even if it meant starving the peasants and squeezing the workers, it had to be done. There was no leeway for taking into account the living standards of the people.

The person who advocated this point of view was Kim Il-song himself and those that took the side of the post-Stalin Soviet bureaucracy were the Soviet and Yenan factions.

Kim Il-song first began to talk about Juche [주체] in 1955, reflecting the fact that the economic interests of the Soviet Union and North Korea had diverged from one another.

Once Kim Il-song had emerged victorious from the central committee meeting of August 1956, he completely scrapped the five-year plan, which had partially reflected the call for an expansion of investment in the consumer sector. The heavy-industry-first line became all the more clear.

According the ordinance passed by the Supreme People’s Assembly [최고인민회의] for the first five-year plan, of the total sum to be invested in industry, 83 percent would go to heavy industry!

The North Korean bureaucracy was desperate to keep workers’ wages low while speeding up the rate of work. The bureaucracy organised mass meetings of employees and rallies of ‘zealots’ in every factory and enterprise, where workers resolved that they would complete the five-year plan a year and a half or more early.

In any case, the high production targets (set in the state plan) were gradually inflated by the party’s policy of expansion of production and the resolutions of workers to increase production.

The North Korean bureaucracy made good use of the deeply held desire for economic reconstruction among a people who had experienced colonialism and war and who were afraid of renewed war with American imperialism. The drive for growth also gave a considerable number of people the opportunity to improve their social status. The ‘Heroes of Labour’ [노력영웅] who came to prominence in the drive to increase production became factory managers and members of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

On the other hand, the majority of workers could not climb the ladder of social mobility and had to endure the appalling conditions that were the other side of economic growth.

Although strict labour regulations were enforced, workers did not have the right to organise themselves to defend their conditions. The Labour Federations [직업동맹] were organisations of the state that enforced “the duty of competition” rather than collective contracts.

However, it was difficult to ensure economic development beyond a certain level by forcing workers to accept low living standards and tiring work. To raise the productivity of labour, it was necessary to offer workers better consumer goods and holiday time.

The North Korean bureaucrats could not avoid encountering, somewhat later, the same problems that the Soviet bureaucracy had come up against after the death of Stalin. In 1966-67 Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl, Yi Hyo-sun and others pointed out the problems of the extensive [?] growth model and argued for the need to find a way of balancing economic growth and controlling the rate of growth.

This was the period when the seven-year plan failed to achieve its target within the allotted time and the three-year extension started to be used as a countermeasure. They [the critics] insisted that defence spending should be reduced so that attention could be paid to the quality of goods produced rather than just economic output.

The year 1966 [1967?] saw another round of purges within the North Korean bureaucracy [the so-called Kapsan Faction Purge, in which KWP deputy chairman Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl was removed]. Unlike the purges of 1956, this time they did originate in a conflict among the bureaucracy over how to deal with the economic crisis and this reflected the fact that the limitations of Kim Il-song’s ‘more Stalinist than Stalin’ economic model were revealing themselves.

From democracy in Korea to democracy in Egypt

2005-06-23T14:27:00.000+01:00

Some on the Korean left have taken the struggle for democracy in Egypt to heart. From this week's Socialist Worker:

Solidarity with Egypt from South Koreans

On 9 June a diverse group of anti-war and human rights activists gathered in front of the Egytian embassy in Seoul, South Korea to demonstrate against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

People chanted “Down with Mubarak”, “Kifaya!” and “Victory to the Egyptian people’s struggle for democracy”.

It might seem that South Korea is far away from Egypt and that no one here would be interested in what is going on there. This is far from the truth.

When South Koreans hear about Egypt’s Kifaya movement and Mubarak’s desperate attempts to hang on to power, we immediately make a connection to our former military rulers.

We too have seen rulers pushing political “reforms” that are nothing more than shams to maintain control.

Our military rulers also resorted to brutal violence when challenged. A prime example is the Kwangju Massacre in 1980, where citizens of Kwangju city were shot to death by the army.

Rulers all over the world are learning from each other about how to control the people. This is why it is so important that people struggling for democracy build strong international solidarity and also learn from each other.

On behalf of the South Korean anti-war and human rights activists I hope for a great victory for the Egyptian working people fighting for democracy and real change.

CJ Park, All Together, South Korea

Meanwhile, Raed reports on Condi's recent speech in Egypt where she said that the US would now be seeking democracy in the Middle East rather than just stability as it had done in the past. And who was she saying this to? Around "700 invited government officials and academics". Would these be the same government officials who have been busy brutally repressing the Kifaya democracy movement in Egypt? Is this the same government that the Bush administration gives more than a billion dollars a year in military aid and praises for its limited democratic reforms that everyone else believes are designed to smooth the path of succession for Hosni Mubarak's son? (Ring any bells NK watchers?)

The battle lines are clearly drawn between people who want real democracy, whether they are in Korea or Egypt, and the Bush administration, which wants fake democracies that it can easily keep under control:

Abdel Halim Kandil, a member of the opposition group Kifaya, said his organization was boycotting Rice's speech and visit because reformers in Egypt don't want to seek the help of a "big dictator'' against a "small dictator.''

"We believe the U.S. administration is not making a serious effort to support reformers,'' he said.

New Japanese outrage against Korea

2005-06-22T12:43:00.000+01:00

This week's Private Eye (1135) has this clipping from the Yomiuri Shinbun:

Newsweek screwed up. Nearly everyone admits that, including the magazine's editors, who retracted an inadequately sourced report that U.S. inerrogators had flushed a Korean down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay.

I expect imminent outrage from the Korean netizen community, possibly flag burnings.

Flexibilisation: the biggest issue for the Korean left

2005-06-21T00:38:00.000+01:00

For the last few months I've managed to studiously avoid what is almost certainly the major issue of the moment for the South Korean left and the labour movement: the awkward-to-translate problem of 'non-regular' workers (비정규노동자). This is probably because I'm quite lazy and I didn't want to do the research and write something proper about the subject. On the other hand it's not an issue that can be ignored, particularly as the National Assembly is in the process of passing a bill which will worsen conditions for non-regular workers.

Fortunately, Jamie at Two Koreas has come to the rescue with an excellent article on the struggle against 'flexibilisation' (a better translation methinks) in Korea. A taster:

The use of casual and contract workers was greatly expanded after the 1997 monetary crisis when the then President Kim Young-Sam administration passed a series of new labor laws, one of which allowed for companies in specific sectors to hire greater numbers of temporary and contract workers, including during times of labor action, causing an almost overnight rise in the number of temporary staffing agencies.

The KCTU claims that with the introduction of these temporary agencies, exploitation of temporary workers and job insecurity greatly increased. They also claim that under the guise of sub-contracting workers, practices of illegally hiring and laying-off of temporary workers have also become prevalent. [6]

Since the 1997 crisis, employer’s groups have been advocating greater flexibility in using irregular workers. According to the Korea Herald, the current labor minister Kim Dae-Hwan has also promoted further labor market reforms, and has pushed for the implementation of the recent government-initiated bills.

For more intrepid readers, here are some resources in Korean on this subject:

The Democratic Labour Party's special site on non-regular workers.
The KCTU announces today that it and its fellow trade union federation (FKTU) are launching an all-out struggle for the rights of non-regular workers. There's also quite a bit on the subject in English in the April edition of the KCTU's English newsletter.
Ta Hamkke newspaper has been covering the subject very regularly, including on the front page of their most recent edition.

This struggle is really about the most basic level of the confrontation between capital and labour. The question being posed is: can Korean capital take a greater share of surplus value by forcing down wages and conditions? As is the case all over the world, one of the favourite tools in the neo-liberal box for this purpose is the casualisation or flexibilisation of labour. If pushed through successfully, it also has the added bonus of weakening labour organisation, thus providing further opportunities for capital to squeeze more out of workers for less compensation with less resistance.

In fact, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that the future of the Korean left and the labour movement as a whole may rest upon the struggle to organise non-regular workers and defend their rights. Capitalism doesn't stand still - it's a constantly evolving organism and thus the working class itself and the focus of its struggles is also changing. If organisations like the KCTU and the Democratic Labour Party do not respond to these changes, the danger is that their base could narrow drastically and they could find themselves bureaucratised, corrupted or just irrelevant (there are disturbing signs of this already). As I wrote a while ago, this is one of the warnings that comes from the fate of the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and its near complete capitulation to neo-liberalism.

Bathos

2005-06-20T13:14:00.000+01:00

For a bit of fun I've decided to add a flickr badge to my sidebar. Will remove it if it becomes annoying.

NK economy in the 1950s: a reply to Han Kyu-han, part one

2005-06-20T01:29:00.000+01:00

Another excellent writer on North Korea, Kim Ha-yông, has written a reply to the Han Kyu-han article I translated recently, in the latest issue of Ta Hamkke. I realise that not all readers are going to find this subject interesting and may be amused by my obsession with the North Korean economy – but what’s a blog for if not for pursuing your own egocentric, personal interests?

I think that Kim makes some very interesting points, particularly about the North Korean economy in relation to long-term trends in the world economy (this definitely brings to mind Kondratieff). I also feel some obligation to translate this reply as I think it provides some important points to balance areas which were perhaps weak in Han’s analysis. Well, anyway, if you can be bothered to read it you can make your own minds up about who is right on this one. Here’s the first part:

Was the North Korean economy in crisis in the 1950s?
Ta Hamkke 57, June 2005
Kim Ha-yông

I won’t deal with all the detailed facts in [Han Kyu-han’s] article, but limit myself to addressing the big picture: was North Korea’s economy doing well in the 1950s or was it in crisis?

To begin with the conclusion, the decade from 1950-1960 was one of renaissance that saw North Korea create a miracle from the ruins of the Korean War.

In the three-year plan implemented from 1953-1956 the economy recorded a massive average annual growth rate of 41.7 percent – almost world record level – and in the ten years after the Korean War, North Korea maintained an annual average growth rate of 25 percent.

To achieve this sort of growth in the place that, after the Korean War, the US had boasted “would never recover, even if it took 100 years” was astonishing. During the war the majority of the North’s industrial facilities had been destroyed and one million people were killed, including some 400,000-480,000 civilians.

It is true that pursuing rapid economic growth in a small country with few resources and almost no aid produces massive contradictions. But during this period the trend of the North Korean economy was an upward curve.

The reason why I’m bringing up this problem is that I worry that comrade Han Kyu-han’s article almost gives the impression that North Korea is a society that has been in a permanent state of crisis from the 1950s right up until the present. This can be a major obstacle to understanding the character of North Korean society.

The impression that North Korea is a society that has fallen into a state of continuous stagnation is a typical, and prevalent misunderstanding and one that is clearly connected to the idea that the South Korean system is superior to the North Korean one.

However, the important fact that people have quickly forgotten as a result of the famine that North Korea is suffering today is that South Korea could not catch up with the North Korean economy at all until the 1970s. In 1982 North Korea’s average food intake was higher than that of South Korea.

It goes without saying that today the North Korean economy has fallen into a severe crisis, but you have to look at this alongside the fact that the country was able to achieve massive economic growth up until the 1970s.

If you don’t look at this contradictory development, it is easy to fall into the view that the North Korean system is fundamentally inefficient, irrational and different to the capitalist system.

However, far from displaying an inefficiency that makes it fundamentally different to capitalism, the [trend of the] North Korean economy followed the rise and decline of state capitalism in the world economy. In the 1950s the trend toward state capitalism remained marked in the world economy, and North Korea was just one country among a number that created an economic success story through the use of powerful state intervention.

In the 1970s, the trend toward “globalisation” (세계화) became more influential in world capitalism than the state capitalist [trend], and those countries that stuck to the state capitalist road began to fall behind. North Korean economic growth had begun to slow down in the late 1960s and by the end of the 1970s it had dropped to 3-4 percent [annually].

part two

[Further reading: T. Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia.]

More on Mr Kim

2005-06-17T14:26:00.000+01:00

I had to say a few more words about Kim Woo-chung's return to Korea on Tuesday, particularly since there are some interesting developments in this Korea Times article from yesterday.

First there's the British angle, that I didn't know anything about, but with the reputation of the City, somehow doesn't surprise me. Apparently Kim Woo-chung was stashing his cash here in London in a subsidiary called (imaginatively enough) the British Finance Centre.

Next, there's this amazing nugget:

Investigators disclosed that Kim has worked as an adviser to French rolling stock maker Lohr and received 600,000 euros from the company over the last three years. He also reportedly spent 400,000 euros during his time overseas.

So, let me get his straight, this fugitive from Korean justice, who had allegedly stolen billions of dollars, was working all this time as an advisor to a French train company. And, as if that wasn't enough, he still managed to turn a profit of 200,000 euros while he was on the run. As I said before, this man is the perfect capitalist.

Finally, an amusing manp'yông (political cartoon) from Voice of the People that indicates I wasn't too far from the mark with my flippant comment about kimchi:

Kim, speaking on TV says that he returned because he was homesick and wanted ramyôn (instant noodles), while a victim of the Daewoo collapse sits in his room speechless, eating ramyôn (a sign of poverty).

He's back

2005-06-16T23:57:00.000+01:00

So Kim Woo-chung, [alleged] fraudster extraordinaire, is back in Korea after a few year's sojourn in France, Vietnam and various other rather pleasant places. I note that one other Korea blogger has got there before me, but I thought I could still spin out a few readable lines on this subject.

In case you're wondering what I'm talking about, Kim was the former head of the Daewoo Corporation, one of Korea's largest chaebol until he disappeared in 1999 having embezzled [allegedly] something like $20 billion (and, by the way, the company collapsed).

The BBC covered his return to face the music moderately well (check the picture: he's trying his "ooh, don't hurt me, I'm just a poor little frightened mouse face"), while Korea Times has the latest. Oh My News have the usual quality on-the-spot piece at the airport that we have come to expect from them with excellent pictures like this one:

You can try playing 'where's Kim Woo-chung' if you like. A tip: look for the 白髮.

Actually, I've followed this story since he first disappeared when I was living in Korea back in 1999-2000, so it somehow has personal significance to me (admittedly not as much as someone who worked for Daewoo and lost their job when the whole enterprise went pear-shaped). I even remember that a while back some union or other political organisation sent a team off to France to track him down, without even a hint of success I think. And now he's trundled back all by himself, perhaps because they put too much garlic in the kimchi in France.

To me, someone like Kim Woo-chung is the ultimate capitalist, perfect in every way. He was one of those types that started out polishing other people's boots, rapidly pulled himself up by the bootstraps and then promptly ran off with the booty. Understandably, I suppose, some people are unhappy with his behaviour, but personally I'm fed up with capitalists trying to be 'ethical', it's people like Mr Kim that make capitalism worth criticising.

Anti-Americanism: that much-maligned hobby

2005-06-15T23:07:00.000+01:00

The posts have been backing up in my mind while real life gets in the way. Perhaps other bloggers will know what I'm talking about. So an excuse for a post instead.

Noticed the other day that two of my regular reads both had something on that old bugbear 'anti-Americanism' at about the same time (spooky or what).

First up, Hunjang ûi karûch'im has something on anti-Americanism in the epic novel of postwar Korea T'aebaek Sanmaek by Cho Chôngnae. There is an intelligent comment on the post too.

Then, lo and behold, Raed Jarrar had something on anti-Americanism in Iran. It's interesting to hear some strong anti-anti-Americanism from a leftwing Arab commentator.

It's contrived, I know, but I'm trying...

Looking out of the well

2005-06-10T17:39:00.000+01:00

For readers of Korean:

Oh My News has a very detailed article on the ID card system that the New Labour government is planning to introduce here in the UK. Particularly interesting to me was the table noting that neither Japan or the US have such systems. This is clearly a massive attack on our civil liberties, but a lot of people say "well other European countries have ID cards and you don't see them complaining". To be honest, I didn't find it a major problem to carry an ID card when I was living in Korea. But then ID cards in Korea and European countries don't hold every kind of information under the sun, they're not biometric, they're not fitted with chips that can be scanned from a distance (which may happen with our ones), they don't cost the user hundreds of pounds and in general they're unlikely to be used to target certain parts of the population because of the colour of their skin (as they will be in the UK). You can check out the anti-ID campaign here.

Meanwhile, the latest issue (no. 24) of leftwing journal Radical Review (진보평론) publishes a translation of an article on the Brazilian Workers' Party by one of my fellow SOASians, Alfredo Saad-Filho. "Shattered Dreams: Lula, Neoliberalism and the Twilight of the Brazilian Workers' Party" looks at the decline of the PT as a radical force for change both before and since Lula's election in 2002. Hopefully they'll put the text up on their site at some stage. I think it should be important reading matter for activists in Korea as there are some interesting parallels with the Korean Democratic Labour Party (민노당).

North Korea in the 1950s: Capital accumulation and power struggles, part two

2005-06-07T23:51:00.000+01:00

Part one

In terms of agriculture, forced collectivisation was carried out [during this period]. Immediately after the end of the Korean War, in August 1953, a policy of creating agricultural cooperatives was decided upon. The collectivisation of agriculture would make it far easier to secure both the raw materials and labour that was needed for industrial expansion.

Although in the beginning private ownership rights were formally recognised and when farmers withdrew or were dismissed from the cooperatives, they could receive back their land that had been absorbed into the co-op, when the problem of ownership rights [was discussed] at the 1959 National Conference of Agricultural Cooperatives, the principle of private land ownership was abolished.

The process of collectivisation gave rise to resistance from the peasants. In the early period of collectivisation the rate of subscription to the co-ops was very low. The peasants slaughtered their main means of production: their draught animals. They thought, “well, if it’s not going to be mine anyway it’s better to eat it.” In Hwanghae province the farmers left the cooperative en masse and their actions took the form of an uprising.

The result of this was that even up until the mid 1950s grain production did not recover to the level of the wartime year of 1953.

Although North Korea has long called the South a US colony in its propaganda, after the war Soviet aid made up the largest part of the North Korean economy. Aid money came close to making up 30 percent of North Korean state finances, almost the same as in South Korea. The US provided the basis [and direction] for the South’s economy through aid, and the Soviets of course did the same thing north of the DMZ. “Let’s turn to the Soviet Union and learn from her” became one of the slogans of the time.

But in 1956 the Soviet aid money began to be reduced. To make matters worse, the fragile North Korean economy encountered a severe crisis.

The so-called ‘factional affair’ at the all-members meeting of August 1956, occurred against this sort of background. Differences of opinion were expressed over the speed and direction of accumulation and conflict arose over the way in which workers and peasants should be controlled.

For example, vice premier Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik criticised Kim Il-sŏng, saying, “The heavy industry first policy is causing hardship to the people.” Chairman of the Workers’ Confederation (직업총동맹), Sŏ Hwi argued that “the right of workers to strike” must be guaranteed and called for concessions to be given to the workers. This reflected the fact that despite the Korean War and the strengthened control over them, North Korean workers continued forms of resistance such as walking out of their workplaces and carrying out ‘go slow’ strikes.

However, the opposition faction failed. Kim Il-sŏng’s position within the party was solid. Already, during the Korean War, he had purged Pak Hŏn-yŏng and the rest of the South Korean Workers’ Party (남로당) faction and replaced them with his own supporters.

Pak Yŏng-bin, who was a member of the Soviet faction, recalls the occasion: “When Yun Kong-hŭm made a speech criticising the problem of [Kim Il-sŏng’s] cult of personality, the public gallery erupted into shouts of “get off!” and “bastard!”

Among the opposition faction Yun Kong-hŭm, Sŏ Hwi and others, sensed the personal danger they were in and sought exile in China. Kim Il-sŏng stripped the opposition of their party membership and forced them out of their positions. China and the Soviet Union put pressure on him to reverse this decision and if they had needed to they might have tried to remove him.

However, they had no alternative to Kim Il-sŏng and on top of this the uprisings in Poland and Hungary were once again increasing the pressure on them to maintain their systems. The Soviets did not want the North Korean leadership, which was on the Northeast Asian frontline, directly confronting the Americans, to become unstable.

As soon as Kim Il-sŏng had overcome the political crisis of August and September 1956, he began a wholesale retaliation. The opposition faction was almost completely purged and the system of one-man dictatorship was created.

This political and economic crisis was one of the pressures that made Kim Il-sŏng emphasise [North Korea’s] independence from the Soviet Union and ‘Juche’. The conflict between China and Soviet Union, which began in earnest in 1957, also granted Kim Il-sŏng considerable autonomy.

The response to the reduction of Soviet aid could not fail to express itself in the emphasis on ‘salvation through our own efforts’ (자력갱생) and the ‘will’. But with the limited supply of natural resources and the unstable economic situation, systems of control like the one-man management system and material initiatives like the ‘contract system’ prevented even the settling down of the economy.

The mass mobilisation movements that began in 1958, like the ‘Chollima Movement’, and the system of ‘on-the-spot guidance’ by the leader, reflected these contradictions that were besetting North Korea. And the rapid economic development of this period also harboured the seeds of today’s economic ruin.

North Korean factionalism

2005-06-06T10:44:00.000+01:00

As a supplement to my translation of Han Kyu-han's piece on North Korea in the 1950s, I've just discovered that Andrei Lankov had a recent article in the Korea Times on factions in North Korea. It gives a potted overview of the four main factions among the Korean communists of the late 1940s and early 1950s: 'domestic' (국내파), 'Yanan' (연안파), 'Soviet' (소련파) and '[Manchurian] guerilla' (만주파).

I think Lankov's suggestion that there is something endemic about Korean factionalism is a little misleading (although of course factionalism in various forms has been an important part of Korean history in a number of different contexts). The merit of Han Kyu-han's article (and the series in general) is that he looks at some of the underlying causes behind the factional conflict that lasted into the 1950s. That is, both conflicts over what was the appropriate accumulation strategy in the post-Korean War period, and the tensions caused by international dimension of Korea's division (ie the imperialist rivalry between the US and the USSR) and the North Korean leaderhip's relationship with its sponsor. Ultimately, as in any capitalist society, divisions develop within the ruling class over how to manage the economy and how to relate to the rest of the world, and these divisions are clearly spurred on by economic crises, which are definitely endemic to all capitalist societies.

Kotaji monitoring: McNamara on Today

2005-06-06T00:39:00.000+01:00

Robert McNamara, former cold warrior extraordinaire, a man who actually makes Rumsfeld look slightly less sinister and who starred in the excellent documentary Fog of War (2003), was interviewed on last Friday's edition of the Today programme (BBC morning radio news and interview programme). He bemoaned the recent failure of the talks on the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty and had some especially clear words to say on North Korea:

I've said, I want to repeat [it], there's no acceptable military solution to either the North Korean problem or the Iranian [one]... We must move to effective diplomacy, which we're not... I don't believe there'll be a diplomatic solution to either North Korea or Iran that does not involve US bilateral negotiations, which we have refused to undertake. That's insane.

You can hear the short interview here (Real Audio).

North Korea in the 1950s: Capital accumulation and power struggles, part one

2005-06-04T17:32:00.000+01:00

Time for another translated article from Ta Hamkke newspaper. For the last few months they've been running a series of excellent articles by Han Kyu-han on post-liberation Korea to mark the 60th anniversary of liberation from Japanese colonial rule. I've started, somewhat illogically, with part 9. Hopefully I'll get around to some of the others at some stage, but this one particularly interested me as it covers both factional struggles and the [state capitalist] economy in the 50s. Original here in Ta Hamkke no. 56. Any mistakes in translation are of course my own...

First here's the editor's introduction on the purpose of this series of articles:

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of [Korea's] liberation. During that time the analysis of modern Korean history has been divided on the basis of one's attitude toward the US and the Soviet Union and between those who supported the South Korean regime and those who supported the North Korean regime.
But these [two sides] are just mirror images of one another. This view of history could only present in a distorted form, or give a secondary role to the lives, anger and resistance of ordinary people.
The viewpoint from which we look at Korea's modern history is closely bound up with our approach to the specific incidents that actually occurred. Ta Hamkke will therefore publish a series of articles looking at the main contentious issues in modern Korean history.

North Korea in the 1950s: Capital accumulation and power struggles
Han Kyu-han

In February 1956 the Communist Party of the Soviet Union held its 20th congress where Stalin’s successor Krushchev openly criticised Stalin.

This incident brought a great wave of change to Communist Parties in many different countries. As Chris Harman has pointed out, “Every Communist Party in the world experienced great difficulty maintaining internal discipline.”

The commotion within the ruling class of the Soviet Bloc even gave rise to popular uprisings in Hungary and Poland.

North Korea was no different. Krushchev’s criticism of Stalin’s cult of personality could also be applied to Kim Il-song. In fact, the opposition faction within the North Korean Workers’ Party, centred around the old Yanan and Soviet factions, used the opportunity of the all-members meeting of the party’s central committee in August 1956 to mount a challenge to Kim Il-song.

North Korea’s ‘August Incident’ of 1956 was not a simple power struggle. The August meeting actually revealed the structural contradictions of the position that North Korea was in.

At the time, the North was experiencing a severe crisis of capital accumulation. In fact the country was suffering a double crisis because in addition to the contradictions that are characteristic of a strategy of high speed heavy industrialisation, foreign aid was being curtailed.

The South similarly experienced an accumulation crisis as a result of the reduction of aid from the US and this led to the collapse of Syngman Rhee’s one-party dictatorship triggering the series of events that led subsequently to the dictatorship of Park Chung-hee.

North Korea’s rapid heavy industrialisation strategy was based on the sacrifices of the majority of workers and farmers. The origin of this accumulation strategy was the pressure of military competition with the South.

Completing the transition from a “machinery importing nation to a machinery producing nation” was seen as the “most important condition for guaranteeing the independence of the state.”

This was something that Kim Il-song demanded. In a 1958 speech he said, “We can achieve in the course of two five-year plans what the other Socialist nations have achieved in three five-year plans.”

Superficially at least, North Korea’s economy developed rapidly during this period. During the ten years after the Korean War the country achieved an average of nearly 15 percent [annual] growth.

During the period between 1954 and 1960, investment in heavy industry occupied 80 percent of all investment in industry in North Korea.

The characteristic ways in which capitalism functions – that is the competitive accumulation of capital – also operated in North Korea. It is for this reason that the [North Korea] working class were subjected to superexploitation.

North Korea continued to maintain the harsh labour regulations it had introduced during the Korean War, even after the war had ended. This meant that even though the war was over the ‘wartime labour system’ continued. Workers who left their workplaces voluntarily were subject to strong punishments.

Workers’ control over production was blocked from the beginning and ‘one-man management system’ was introduced. The government also introduced the ‘contract system’ to encourage competition among the workers.

North Korea boasted that workers’ nominal wages had risen rapidly. Workers’ income in 1956 had risen 158 percent as compared to 1953.

But this rise was purely nominal and was meaningless in reality. The reason for this was that the production of consumer goods, which had been sacrificed to the ‘heavy industry first’ line, had been massively curtailed. There were actually no goods to buy with one’s wages. As Kim Yôn-ch’ôl has noted, “It was planned so that the quantity of goods being distributed in many of the workers’ districts could not absorb even 50 percent of the wages of the [industrial] workers and office employees at the local enterprises.”

Part two

Japan's heroic hostage

2005-06-02T23:55:00.000+01:00

Aljazeera keeps up its good reporting on East Asia with a piece from a few days ago by Gavin Blair on the Japanese hostage Akihiko Saito, who was recently found dead in Iraq.

The reporter points up the glaring difference between his glorification in the Japanese media and the vilification of the three hostages who returned to Japan unharmed last year. Akihiko Saito was a private security officer [read: mercenary] whereas the 2004 hostages were NGO workers and a photojournalist. Sort that one out.

As I've mentioned before, Asano Kenichi of Doshisha University called the treatment of the three 2004 hostages a 'media bludgeoning'. Something of a contrast with the latest hostage who was working for a British security firm and was a veteran of the Foreign Legion. Nonetheless, the Japanese media found this far more acceptable:

...the media has been keen to establish the distinction between professionals such as Saito or the SDF, and "misguided do-gooders" such as the three taken hostage last year.

The Sankei newspaper, in an editorial about Saito, said: "This is very different from previous abduction cases as Mr Saito is a trained professional with much experience."

To be honest, Aljazeera might be part of the mainstream media, but its English website is providing some of the sort of journalism that we should be hoping for from the non-mainstream media. Journalism that is questioning, rigourous but not afraid to be partisan (of course the mainstream media is partisan it just tries to pretend it's not by hiding behind the ideology of 'balance').

"A hen strutting around in the White House, crowing arrogantly"

2005-06-01T16:04:00.000+01:00

This is priceless. The North Korean government tries satire and actually does something worthwhile for once (although they had to spoil it by being just a tad sexist).

Actually the reaction of the good 'ole reactionary Chosun Ilbo is even more priceless:
The sketch, it observed sarcastically, was littered with "gems of totalitarian wit".
The paper accused the radio station of attacking Ms Rice "in
terms that more enlightened societies would consider manifestly sexist".
An enlightened, feminist Chosun Ilbo? Well I never.

The First Chinese Materialist, part four

2005-06-01T08:24:00.000+01:00

While the first two sections are purely philosophical, the next two enter into the realms of religion and mythology. The style matches the content. Instead of sharp, clear, and concise definitions, we find the habitual indulgence in “historical” quotations from the classics. It was customary in the tracts of the time to prove everything by biblical sayings. The Buddhists themselves were fond of relying on biblical authority as a heavy defense weapon against their Confucian opponents. Section 3 (questions 25-27) treats of the like quality of spiritual power in the holy sages of antiquity, the argument being conducted in somewhat unconvincing metaphors. Finally, in the fourth section (questions 28-30), Fan Chen attempts to come to grips with the problem of the relation between human and supernatural beings, a problem that arises from the double meaning of shen: “soul” or “spirit,” and “spirits” in the sense of supernatural beings. But he gives confused and evasive answers to the opponent’s questions, the opponent having meanwhile been converted to the belief in the mortality of the soul. On the one hand Fan argues that the ancestral cult has a merely educative value – a point of view that comes very close to Confucianism in its original form – and uses the same arguments as Wang Ch’ung against ghost stories about evil spirits, while on the other he acknowledges the existence of dark spirits and only denies the possibility of men changing into spirits. This is the contradiction – whether conscious or unconscious is an open question – upon which Fan’s materialism founders.

The last section is no longer a discussion. The opening question on the application of the mortality theory is merely a prelude to the great peroration on the harmfulness of Buddhism. Fan Chen here expounds his own beliefs, which combine Taoist naturalism and Confucian social views. He states his preference for the well-being and happiness of the human family on earth over salvation in the next world. To be contented with one’s lot and resigned to one’s fate are what maintain the upper and lower parts of society in a permanent state of balance.

Source: Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, (Yale university Press, 1964) pp262-3.

Part one
Part two
Part three

"Hanin" newspapers, Korean Chinese food and George Galloway

2005-05-30T23:21:00.000+01:00

Now and then I like to peruse the pages of one of our local free Korean-language rags (yes, London has quite a few of these already, perhaps three, maybe even four). To be absolutely honest, the thing I like about them most, and probably the reason I pick one up at all from the Korean supermarket, is the pages and pages of colourful and rather mouthwatering adverts for Korean restaurants (in amongst all the ones for English schools, hairdressers and travel agents). As an aside, I was quite surprised to find an advert in the latest issue for a Korean-style Chinese restaurant called Chinggisû K'an ("런던 최고의 한국식 중국식당"), complete with rather unappetising looking picture of plates of Tangsuyuk and Map'a tubu and a wonderfully stereotyped cartoon Chinese man.

Where was I? Ah, the even more surprising find in this latest edition of Hanin News (linguistic question: why are Koreans always saram / 사람 in Korea but reduced to in / 인 when they live abroad?) was an article on George Galloway. I have to admit I have a close personal interest here as I campaigned for George's recent election to the seat of Bethnal Green & Bow in London's East End on an anti-war platform. Since his election victory against the Labour Party machine on May 5th, Galloway has become even more famous internationally by taking on the US Senate committee that had accused him of taking oil from Saddam Hussein, and by all accounts (even those written by his enemies) winning hands down. I'm always interested in how British politics is seen abroad and particularly the view of my homeland in Korea (well what there is of a view, beyond believing everyone here is a 'gentleman'). But try as I might, I couldn't find any reaction in the Korean press to Galloway's victory or his performance at the US senate (I think there must have been something, but I'm not picking it up on my web radar - aka Google).

Anyway, the anonymous author of the piece in Hanin News (not online unfortunately) paints a very sympathetic picture of Galloway, focusing on the way in which he has been hounded and witchhunted by the British press for daring to stand up to the British state at a time of (illegal) war. The article is in a section called "Reading British Culture" (영국문화읽기) and it interests me that the author has chosen to use the example of Galloway and the treatment he has received as a way of understanding the conservative mainstream press in Britain. Very sensibly he (she?) reserves most fire for the Sun newspaper - possibly Murdoch's most vicious, foul, disgusting, vitriolic, filthy far-right rag. And also, funnily enough, generally supportive of Tony Blair's Labour government.

Some brief roughly-translated extracts:

In April 2003 the Sun newspaper attacked Galloway day after day calling him a traitor and printing a headline story "We're proud to hate you George!" Observing the attitude of reports in the British press at the time, I couldn't help but have my doubts about the democratic press.
...
The attitude of the Sun cannot be compared to any of the domestic [Korean] media, and even under the Yusin Constitution [Park Chung-hee's dictatorial regime of the 1970s] media opinion did not take this sort of extreme and highly emotional attitude toward those who broke the [emergency] laws.

There is one other Korean I know of who has taken an interest in the story of George Galloway - Pak Noja, who wrote a Hankyoreh column a couple of years ago on him, during the height of the anti-war movement. If I manage to find a link to that piece, I'll post it, but right now I'm too infuriated with the Hankyoreh website to keep looking for it.

The First Chinese Materialist, part three

2005-05-28T20:03:00.000+01:00

It was only after the introduction of Buddhism to China that men became concerned with the problem of the immortality of the soul. When that happened, complicated theories requiring a high degree of training in speculative thought were simplified into religious doctrines of salvation, the metaphysical idea of a chain of being was popularised into the moral doctrines of reincarnation, and the void of Buddhist epistemology was solidified into a concrete heaven. The “Pure Land” school founded by Hui-yuan was the chief example of the trend toward religious beliefs that would harmonize both with existing popular beliefs and with the religious needs of the great mass of the common people, while at the same time answering to the pessimistic escapist mood of the ruling classes. This trend reduced the abstruse theories of the Mahayana to their lowest common denominator: salvation. It was against this popular form of Buddhism encouraged by the court that Fan Chen set out to do battle.

His short tract is written in dialogue form – a form that had already been adopted by Mou Tzu, the first apologist for Buddhism in China, and that had been in favour since the fourth century. Fan Chen asks himself the kind of questions that any average Buddhist of the time might have asked, and replies in the capacity of “host” to the questions put by the “guest” (these being the descriptions of the debating partners given in the Chinese text). The thirty-one questions fall into five sections.

The first section (questions 1-13) contains metaphors concerning the problem of the relations between the body and the soul, for which a materialistic, monist solution is found. The materialist view, strongly reminiscent of Lucretius, is summed up in the thesis: “The body is the soul’s material basis; the soul is the functioning of the body.” Fan Chen meets his imaginary opponent’s arid, mechanistic way of thinking with dialectical arguments stressing developmental factors. In the second section (questions 14-24), the problem of the soul as function is viewed from another angle. The opponent asks about the location of the soul, and Fan Chen replies according to the deep-rooted convictions of his time. The heart had always been regarded by the Chinese as the seat of thought, in just the same way as Aristotle held that the central psycho-physical organ was not the brain, but the heart. The argument here, however, depends upon a differentiation between thought on the one hand, and feeling and perception on the other. Like the ancient philosophers, Fan Chen did not distinguish between perceptio and sensatio. This results in his arriving at a solution with a very modern ring to it: thought is differentiated from feeling only by degree of intensity.

Source: Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, (Yale university Press, 1964) pp261-2.

Message from Anwar

2005-05-27T17:39:00.000+01:00

For those of you who are interested in this and can read Korean to some extent, the latest issue of Ta Hamkke newspaper (#56) has an article on union leader Anwar Hossein's detention by the Korean immigration authorities (아노아르 이주노동자노조 위원장을 석방하라!) and a message from the man himself.

[My arrest] was meant wholly as a warning sign. The government is not trying to clamp down on me personally but to repress the migrant workers' union [...]

The First Chinese Materialist, part two

2005-05-26T11:31:00.000+01:00

The Shen-mieh lun was a tract written by Fan Chen during the time when he was engaged in the debates at the court of Prince Hsiao Tzu-liang, in answer to the pressing need for an effective theoretical weapon against Buddhism. The intention behind the tract is made quite clear by Fan Chen himself in the last paragraph, in which he discusses the application of the theory he has been expounding. The very title contained an unmistakable attack. Two surviving essays of the time are entitled “On the Immortality of the Soul” (Shen pu-mieh lun) – one by the celebrated founder of the lotus school, Hui-yuan (333-416), the other by a certain Cheng Tao-tzu.[1] So the Shen-mieh lun, “Essay on the Extinction of the Soul,” maintaining that the spirit did not survive and the human soul was not immortal, was to some extent an answer to them.

Until the spread of Buddhist thought in the Middle Ages, the problem of immortality had never played as great a role in Chinese philosophy as it did in the West. The practical Chinese mind, concerned with the things of the world, was inclined to dismiss the question as unimportant. Confucius had given the agnostic position its classic formulation in the often quoted passage in the Analects: “While you do not know life, how can you know about death?”[2] This attitude went very well with ostentatious funeral ceremonies, with ritualistic display as an end in itself. Mo Ti was the only person to preach survival after death, and he did so precisely because of his opposition to the wasteful extravagance of Confucian funeral customs, which would be rendered entirely unnecessary by the existence of a life beyond the grave. To the Taoists, life and death were merely transitional states of being. Chuang Tzu’s metaphor of the firewood coming to an end while the fire mysteriously goes on burning was susceptible to several interpretations. The Buddhists saw in it (at a much later date it is true) a belief in immortality, but probably Chuang Tzu himself would have repudiated this with an ironic and forgiving smile. Prior to Fan Chen, the only person to argue consistently against a belief in immortality was the skeptic Wang Ch’ung (27-97).

Source: Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, (Yale university Press, 1964) pp260-1.

[1] Hung-ming chi 5.

[2] Lun-yu XI, 11.

Victory for Kodae students

2005-05-25T16:17:00.000+01:00

I see that Alex Callinicos (of York University, SWP and Anticapitalist Manifesto fame) last week expressed his support for the Korea University students facing punishment for their involvement in the demo that humiliated Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee. He was speaking at a meeting during his recent visit to Korea and opened his speech by saying:

I want to express my warmest solidarity to the students of Korea University. Because it is extremely important today to actively confront and resist big corporations like Samsung who want to control the whole world.*

The latest issue of the Ta Hamkke newspaper celebrates what they claim is a 'David and Goliath' victory for the students, reporting that the University authorities decided yesterday to completely drop their plans to punish the students involved.

*God knows what he actually said, but that is my loose back-translation from Korean at least.

The First Chinese Materialist, part one

2005-05-24T22:38:00.000+01:00

I've decided to follow the lead of one or two blogs that I like, such as Far Outliers, and post a series of extracts from a book that interests me.

The piece in question is an essay by Etienne Balazs, the brilliant Hungarian historian of China who was born a century ago this year. It is entitled 'The First Chinese Materialist' and was originally written in 1932, not long after he had completed his doctorate. It forms one chapter in the collection of his articles entitled Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, published in 1964, the year after his death. The subject of this essay is one where a number of my personal interests intersect: East Asian history, materialist philosophy, Buddhism and, to an extent, twentieth century historiography of the 'East'. One interesting fact to bear in mind is that Balazs was clearly a great materialist historian himself, having written the first Western work on Chinese economic history and drawing much inspiration from Marx and Weber.

The First Chinese Materialist

The history of Buddhist thought has made remarkable advances during the last two centuries. There has been a fundamental change of view on the importance of the Mahāyāna, and the outlines of Chinese Buddhism are gradually becoming clearer. But the interconnections are lost because the total picture still exists in a vacuum. Buddhism is still regarded as an isolated phenomenon, a thing in itself detached from the historical circumstances in which it arose and unrelated to outside events. At the most, cursory treatment is given to its inner development, to questions such as the proliferation of sects and the increasing sophistication of basic tenets. Yet if historical circumstances are not taken into account, the beginnings of Indian Buddhism are as incomprehensible as are its spread and further development on Chinese soil. And when I urge that “history” should be taken into account, I do not mean a mere listing of names, bibliographies, translations, and commentaries. Unless it is recognised that a struggle was taking place between the upholders of two opposing world views, the ideas of the protagonists will remain colourless and devoid of significance.

The fifth century was decisively important for the spread of Buddhism in China: China was at that time not only partitioned, but also torn by social contradictions and innumerable and unbridgeable differences of opinion, and full of a desperate longing for salvation. There were two centres of Buddhism, which were at the same time the two political centres of the country, divided as it was between the Northern and the Southern dynasties, and they had an ever-widening circle of influence, like two stones dropped into the waters of the Chinese sea of thought. This was a period of adaptation. The foreign words were feverishly transcribed, and the unfamiliar thoughts busily assimilated to Chinese traditional ways of thinking. When Buddhist ideas were expressed, they were larded with thousands of quotations from the classics and steeped in analogies, in order to make them more palatable to minds brought up on a mixture of Confucianism and Taoism. But it was also a period of ideological battles and terminological disputes, of endless discussions and debates. The propaganda activities of Indian missionaries and Chinese monks brought a breath of fresh air into Chinese ways of thinking, and in the fight against this new world view, Chinese minds became more agile, more flexible, more elastic.

Behind these lively intellectual battles can be discerned the emerging campaign conducted by the Chinese bureaucracy – mainly Confucianist – against monasticism and the growing temporal power of the church. Ever louder became the accusations made against Buddhism: that it was antisocial, unproductive and parasitical, and prevented the people from carrying out their economic tasks. The condition of the peasantry and the political power of the state were the issues at stake.[1]

It was this hostile attitude toward Buddhism that gave rise to one of the most interesting works produced by medieval Chinese philosophy: the materialist tract Shen-mieh lun, the complete text of which is preserved in the biography of Fan Chen in the annals of the Liang dynasty.

[1] To cite one example among many, in Wei, in 506, the Censor Yang Ku wrote a memorial saying that vague and fruitless theoretical discussions about agriculture must cease, and unprofitable expenditure on Buddhist monks must be curtailed; see Tzu-chih t’ung-chien 146.7b.

Source: Etienne Balazs, Chinese Civilization and Bureaucracy, (Yale university Press, 1964) pp255-6.

The deadly Japanese 'work ethic'

2005-05-23T23:17:00.000+01:00

A story about the aftermath of the recent train disaster in Japan that claimed 106 lives caught my eye recently. It seems that it is Japan Rail employees who are taking the brunt of public anger over the disaster and are now having to be provided with counselling to help them cope with the harassment:

Last week a female member of staff was knocked to the ground on a station platform.

In another incident, a driver was attacked in his cab by two men, and death threats have been left on drivers' windows.

The number of physical and verbal assaults has risen to a point where the railway unions have set up telephone help lines to counsel frightened staff.

When asked about this, few people said they supported the attacks, but few seemed surprised by them either.

One young man told the BBC that the attackers were simply looking for someone to blame for the crash.

He said it was normal for the entire workforce to be tainted by company mistakes.

This is particularly unfortunate for the JR drivers, who, according to a recent story on the TUC's health and safety website 'Hazards,' are subject to humiliating 're-education' sessions if their trains run late. This sort of pressure from management is thought to be a likely cause of the recent deadly crash. Here's the whole article:

Japan: Union blames rail firm 'humiliation' for tragedy
Union members in Japan have placed the blame for last week’s massive train crash that claimed 106 lives squarely on the railway company, saying under pressure workers face humiliating penalties for slight delays. 'The accident is a result of JR West's corporate stance of prioritising operations and high-pressure management that uses terror to force employees to follow orders,' said Osamu Yomono, vice-president of the Japan Confederation of Railway Workers' Unions. Japanese trains are renowned for their punctuality, with JR West and other operators running timetables down to every 15 seconds. But it takes its toll in terms of stress on drivers, with punishment including 'nikkin kyoiku' - dayshift education. That means re-training sessions for those responsible for delays or overrunning stops. The sessions often include making drivers write reports all day long on topics such as how to improve themselves or chores such as weeding, which the union says is humiliating. A 44-year-old train driver of JR West hanged himself in September 2001 after he spent three days in retraining for being 50 seconds late when departing from a station. There have been allegations that the 23-year-old crash driver Ryujiro Takami, who had only 11 months' experience and who had gone through re-education, was speeding after falling 1½ minutes late due to overrunning a station.

While it appears that the failures behind the disaster may be traceable back to company management, the ideology of 'company responsibility' (kigyo sekinin 企業責任, Kr. kiôp ch'aegim) means that all employees have to share in the responsibility, no matter how distant their connection might be to the tragic events. In fact, the reality seems to be that it is only the people who are least responsible for this disaster who are being harassed as they are the recognisable people on the frontline. Management may have done the public bowing bit, but they do not have to confront the public every working day.

All this reminded me of an article I read last year on ZNet by a Shin Sugok, a Korean living in Japan (Kr. Chaeil kyop'o 在日僑胞, J. Zainichi). He talked about the tendency of Japanese society to bully the weak, citing the cases of the families of people abducted by North Korea, the Japanese taken hostage in Iraq last year and more generally minorities living in Japan like the Zainichi Koreans:

Recently, there seems to be a growing trend for the public to direct its anger and hatred at the socially weak rather than at the powerful such as government leaders and major corporations.
...
I think this trend clearly shows a fundamental dimension of "the masses" in Japanese society. As long as wretched people in weak positions put up with their misery, society tends to show sympathy and compassion. But once such people become vocal and raise objections against the government or businesses that caused them harm, the masses make an about-face and criticize them for making excessive demands and showing insufficient gratitude.

I'm not sure I agree with all of Shin's reasoning, but there does seem to be quite a bit of truth in this characterisation of the Japanese 'masses'. Clearly the rightwing stranglehold on politics and the media is one factor - something that allows people in Japan little outlet for their frustrations apart from toward basically powerless individuals (see my previous post on Japanese media critic Asano Kenichi). Behind this though, the deeper roots of this problem are the lack of collective struggle in Japan. The unions were destroyed in the 80s and have not recovered since. Add to this the lack of the sort of civil society movements that have been the hallmark of South Korean society over the last 20 years and the inexorable shift to the centre right of the supposedly 'left' opposition parties of the Socialists and Communists and you have a recipe for disaster.

Of course I'm sure those who actually participate in such acts of bullying, racism and harassment are only a small minority of the Japanese people, but until the rest of the Japanese people begin to oppose such actions collectively they are going to be a very powerful minority and the best allies Koizumi and the Japanese corporate elite could wish for.

Update on Anwar Hossein

2005-05-22T20:06:00.000+01:00

The Korea Times today has a long and quite fair piece on the detention of the leader of the newly-formed migrant workers' union in Korea, Anwar Hossein. The union is planning to file a complaint with the International Labour Organisation (not sure how much help this will be as Korean unions must do this all the time to no avail). They are also getting support it seems from local NGOs and human rights organisations like Sarangbang. It is good to see that such organisations as well as the KCTU are getting involved and understanding the nature of the problem. As Park Seok-jin of Sarangbang puts it:

"For so many foreign workers here, they have no choice but to be illegal aliens because of the shortsighted employment policy for migrant workers in Korea, which just focused on meeting short-term employment needs. Hossin is one of those victims and we demand the government release him as soon as possible.’’

It was pointed out by Kevin Gray of Newcastle University in a paper presented at our recent SOAS Korean Studies Conference that in the past the groups providing support to migrant workers had generally been of a religious (mostly Protestant) colouration. They have generally been supportive of the government's new system of registration and basically seem only to want to ameliorate the conditions of migrant workers in South Korea rather than assert the fundamental human rights of the workers or accept their long-term right to live and work in Korea, let alone struggle collectively for better pay and conditions.

Update, Monday 23 May:
Jamie of Two Koreas informs me of a link to a petition for the release of Anwar Hossein.

Okinotori uri ddang!

2005-05-19T13:41:00.000+01:00

This is really a public service announcement for all those people who bang on about the Koreans and their irrational obsession over some rocks in the Stroke Sea* and how the much more 'civilised' Japanese have moved beyond trifling nationalistic matters and into the post-modern sunset of peace and universal love.

Japan's favourite rightwing loon Tokyo Governor Shintaro Ishihara has decided to stir things up by making a visit to some coral reefs claimed by Japan and China. OK, so you say, that's remarkably similar to what some Korean nationalists get up. But, hang on a minute, because this makes the whole Tokto thing look strangely sane:

It will take Governor Ishihara two days to get there across the Pacific Ocean and when he arrives, he and his entourage will not have much to see, because only a patch of rock the size of a tennis court remains above water at high tide.

...

Japan has spent hundreds of millions of dollars fortifying the islands with concrete, to prevent them being completely washed away.

In addition, 122 Japanese citizens have also registered Okinotori as their place of origin, although there is no evidence anyone has ever managed to live there.

Now a wealthy Japanese foundation is funding research into making the coral grow a lot faster, in the hope that a few decades from now Okinotori may look more convincingly like islands and not just rocks - as China describes them now.

"Hundreds of millions of dollars..." the mind boggles. Why don't they just take a leaf out of Dubai's book and build themselves some completely new islands. I mean, they could put them anywhere they like. Personally I'd go for somewhere in the Caribbean.

*The sea formerly known as the East Sea stroke Sea of Japan.

Kwangju 25: International press

2005-05-18T17:21:00.000+01:00

The 25th anniversary of the Kwangju Uprising won't get that much coverage in the international press, but a few places have remembered to mark it.

The BBC has a probing piece entitled Lingering Legacy of Korean Massacre.

Meanwhile Reuters has this rather perfunctory article, which will no doubt be reproduced just about everywhere.

And there's also a column strongly critical of US involvement by Juan Gonzalez in the (famously leftwing) New York Daily Post.

Kwangju anniversary

2005-05-17T08:07:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the Kwangju Uprising, or at least of the day in May 1980 when demonstrations against the military dictatorship began in the city in Korea's Chôlla Province. By May 21 the demonstrators had liberated the city and driven out the paratroopers sent to crush them. The free city of Kwangju only lasted a few days, until the early hours of May 27 when it was retaken by government troops. The number of dead is still unknown, but is certainly in the hundreds.

To mark the anniversary Far Outliers is posting a series of fascinating extracts from Linda Lewis's Laying Claim to the Memory of May:

1. Linda Lewis on Contested Memories of the Kwangju Uprising
2. Kwangju: "Tienanmen before CNN and the fax"
3. Escape from Kwangju
4. Confucian Sanctification of Rebellion in Kwangju

Meanwhile, over at Dogstew they already have a post up about Kwangju and a speaking tour of North America to mark the occasion (not much use to me unfortunately...), plus some discussion underneath.

Tim Shorrock, the journalist who helped to reveal the US government's role in the Kwangju tragedy, also has some stuff on his blog about the anniversary, hopefully he'll post more soon. If you want to read his original scoop from the mid-nineties, you can here, with follow-up here.

'Two Koreas' on migrant workers

2005-05-16T11:22:00.000+01:00

I've just discovered an excellent new collective blog on social movements in Korea: Two Koreas.

And whaddyaknow, they have a great in-depth piece up about migrant workers in Korea which puts my post below in the shade somewhat. Check it out for yourself.

It is quite clear that the Korean government (of former human rights lawyer Roh Moo-hyun) is attempting to smash the migrant workers' union. I'm sure they'd appreciate some solidarity. You can post messages of support at their bulletin board.

Seoul's migrant worker crackdown and human rights

2005-05-15T22:43:00.000+01:00

Back again...

I was inspired to post something about the situation of migrant workers in Korea a few weeks ago, but events have conspired to prevent me from posting very much at all. Anyway, it may be a bit old, but I'll draw your attention now to this Korea Times piece about violations of human rights by the Immigration Bureau. I'm sure this news won't surprise many of Korea's migrant workers, who have been suffering under the government's crackdown on 'illegals' for over a year now:

The National Human Rights Commission advised the Immigration Bureau correct its enforcement activities after reviewing complaints from migrant workers who complained of poor treatment by immigration officials.

A migrant worker from Uzbekistan had said in the complaint filed in January that an official at the Pusan Immigration Bureau beat him, breaking his ribs, while taking him in handcuffs to the office.

This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that Hankyoreh columnist Pak No-ja recently found himself threatened with a lawsuit by the Immigration Bureau for writing a column entitled "'Anti-Korean Group'? That must be the Immigration Bureau." The reference in the title is to the Korean government's recent attempts to whip up some anti-migrant worker feelings by stoking up fears of terrorism and calling migrant workers who fight back against the crackdown 'anti-Korean'. Obviously the Immigration Bureau is a little bit too touchy to take a jibe like this, and now we know the reason why. Pak No-ja and Hankyoreh have since settled the matter by printing an apology for the 'inappropriate expressions', but quite rightly they have not apologised for the content of the allegations against the Bureau, which have turned out to be true.

Migrant workers in the Seoul-Inch'on area now have their own union, the Equality Trade Union - Migrant Branch, affiliated with the KCTU (I think). Of course, they are receiving some special attention from the government and have had numerous leading members deported. Last week their leader Anwar Hossein was arrested in Seoul.

In some connected news, Marmot reports a recent round-up of illegal workers in Korea, although this time the targets were not the usual Bangladeshis or Nepalis working in the unskilled sector, but rather foreigners of the pink-skinned variety working in jobs such as advertising!

Korea University Ruckus

2005-05-08T14:14:00.000+01:00

Apologies for prolonged absence. Been busy helping to win an election. For more commentary on the British general election I'll direct you elsewhere.

Meanwhile a few things I wanted to blog have passed me by, so I'll try to catch up on some of them, starting with this:

All hell broke loose last week when head of Samsung, Korea's most powerful corporation, went to Korea University (one of the country's top three universities) to receive an honorary philosophy degree. The Kodae students, known since time immemorial for their fiery reaction to anything smelling too strongly of capital, held a rather successful demonstration that was able to strip the Lee Kun-hee of some of his dignity by forcing a change of venue (from the intended 'Samsung Hall' which he had partially paid for no less) and making him scuttle out of the backdoor of the building. Oh My News, as always, was on the scene to provide some excellent pictures. There's something on the debacle in English at Korea Times and they have the usual finger-wagging conservative editorial too, which makes good use of that favourite word 'irrational'. (It's quite irrational just how much this word gets used in newspaper editorials.)

Of course, this led to something of a conservative backlash against the students at Kodae, but strangely enough it also seems to have caused quite a few commentators to point fingers of blame at the big corporations themselves (chaebol) for being so corrupt and useless at PR. Another interesting outcome is that because the demo seems to have been organised by socialist group Ta Hamkke, this has focused some attention on them and they even get a mention in this Korea Times article. In response, Ta Hamkke have produced a special edition of their paper, defending the actions of the students, which you can find here. They even have a couple of translated articles in English on their newly revamped English website.

It seems that the student protestors have a hit a deep vein of well-deserved dislike and distrust toward Korea's glorious business leaders, but of course this is not something unique to Korea by any means.

Protestors hold up a mock degree certificate reading "Doctor of Labour Repression"

Of cars and arms

2005-05-01T20:59:00.000+01:00

What's the connection between the British General Election, the closure of a car plant in the Midlands and East Asian geopolitics? Well, the answer's not that hard really... arms sales to China.

This month's issue of Socialist Review has a quality analysis of the collapse of Rover cars - with the loss of at least 5000 jobs - by the excellent Walrus. It seems that the strategic considerations of the Bush administration played an important role in bringing an end to over a hundred years of carmaking at Longbridge when the Chinese government got upset at Britain's US-inspired stance against lifting the EU arms embargo.

Last and by no means least is the geopolitical background to the whole Rover debacle. According to former Labour members of the European Parliament, Ken Coates and Henry McCubbin, New Labour's 'blind allegiance to Washington' is one of the prime reasons for the collapse of the Rover deal. Why? Because, on the say-so of George W Bush, the British government is preventing the European Union from lifting its embargo on arms sales to China. Condoleezza Rice has made it clear to all and sundry that the US regards the Pacific as its backyard and the EU should keep its nose out. As a result, the Chinese are none too happy with this interference. And Labour's moves at EU level appear to have more or less coincided with the Chinese authorities writing to the British government to say that a deal on Rover was now unlikely.

According to the two Labour stalwarts Coates and McCubbin, Blair's role in all of this has enraged the Chinese government, and in a letter to the Financial Times they explained that 'it is no coincidence that by 22 March, the UK Department of Trade and Industry had received the letter from SAIC calling the whole deal into question'. All the rest, they say, 'is an attempt at cover-up and distortion, to hide where the true problem lies'. And where would that be? 'It lies with the relationship between the venal leadership of the Labour Party and the right wing administration in Washington. This disaster is entirely of the making of Mr Blair and Mr Straw and the workers are what they would otherwise call collateral damage.'

This is something I've posted on before- but it appears that previous commentary to the effect that the UK was prepared to go against Washington on this one was wrong. Or just possibly this reflects one major point of difference between Tony Blair and chancellor Gordon Brown (among many I'm sure). Of course Blair was always going to go with his Texan buddy, whatever the cost to the UK economy. The complexity and interconnectedness of the political and economic in the capitalist system are certainly mind-boggling at times. But I'm sure this thought is not the one that's keeping the ex-Rover workers awake at night.

Leupp on China-Japan conflict

2005-04-29T19:09:00.000+01:00

Check out Gary Leupp on the China-Japan conflict at Counterpunch. Haven't had a chance to do more than skim it myself yet, but his stuff on East Asia is always essential reading as far as I'm concerned.

Asked and answered

2005-04-28T08:57:00.000+01:00

Random questions, not so random answers...

Q: Who forged the infamous 'Niger documents' that made Blair look so silly?

A: Michael Ledeen (allegedly - via Juan Cole)

[Wikipedia also has a good entry on the wonderfully named 'Yellowcake Forgery' which repeats the same allegation about the rather over-excitable Neo-con. Funny how things take their time to unravel... but unravel they always do in the end. The legal 'advice' given to Blair in March 2003 being another good example.]

Q: How many Filipinos work on US bases in Iraq?
A: 6000

[This is despite the fact that the Philippine government has apparently banned its citizens from working there. This is also despite the fact that there is an unemployment rate somewhere in the region of 70% in Iraq. For comparison, there are some 12,000 Korean civilian workers on US bases in South Korea, or there were until the US started cutting back.]

'Why is Japan provoking its neighbours?' pt II

2005-04-26T14:12:00.000+01:00

Here's the rest of Kim Yong-uk's article on Japan and East Asian geopolitics as promised a few days ago. The first part is here.

The problem is that the level of military forces that are needed to guarantee this sort of security is not something that can be built up overnight. Even when it comes to holding China in check, Japan still needs the help of the United States.

However, with America’s feet tied in the Middle East, and as China develops into a major power and modernises its military, Japan’s ruling class is feeling impatient.

The rightwing politicians are coming to the fore in the context of these pressures. They are putting forward one measure after another aimed at overcoming the political restrictions imposed by Article 9 of Japan’s Peace Constitution.

But it will be no easy task for Japan to become the leading regional power let alone the leading world power.

First, despite the general rightward shift, the Japanese government still has to be conscious of hostile domestic public opinion. The “Report on security and war capability” also noted “Because of the ‘pacifism’ created by the sense of guilt that followed the Second World War, the idea of tackling a threat through the concerted efforts of the citizens is seen as a taboo.”

In the second half of 2003 when the bill for dispatching Japanese Self Defence Force troops to Iraq was being debated in the Diet, popular opinion shifted suddenly towards being anti-war and anti-troop dispatch.

At the time of the hostage incident in 2004 too Koizumi seemed to have overcome the crisis by instigating a disgusting witch hunt against the released hostages, but the Liberal Democratic Party was defeated in the local elections which followed immediately after. Of course this opposition has the weakness of being extremely fluid, but the Japanese ruling class continuously has to be cautious.

Second, there is the problem of the “anti-Japanese sentiment” of neighbouring Asian countries. Japan has invested a considerable amount of capital in Asia, particularly in China and China is also Japan’s principal export market.

As large-scale anti-Japanese demonstrations continue in China the Japanese government is at a loss as to what to do. That section of Japanese capitalists who have investments in China are calling for a solution to be found. This sort of conflict can also help to stimulate public opinion in favour of restraining the militarisation of Japan.

Finally, there is no guarantee that the US will always be happy to support Japan’s moves toward becoming the hegemonic regional power and the discord this is causing in East Asia.

The question of whether the US can continue to maintain its hegemony in East Asia after the Cold War is closely connected with the question of whether South Korea and Japan will remain the two countries at the core of America’s alliance in the region.

The US does not want Japan to go too far in provoking Korea, as it is at the moment. So it is mistaken to claim that the current controversy around Tokto is part of a plot engineered by the US.

It is difficult to guess in advance in what way the power conflicts in East Asia will develop. Even if the rulers of these countries make hypocritical compromises with one another, their competitive relations will continue to exist and they will continue to stockpile weapons aimed at each other.

[South Korean President] Roh Moo-hyun’s conception of Korea as the “Northeast Asian Balancer” reflects the position of a South Korean state that has no choice but to walk a tightrope through the region’s precarious order.

In fact, his strategy might sound splendid in words, but its substance is contradictory. The Roh Moo-hyun government opposes the expansion of the US military presence in Korea because it is conscious of China, but at the same time it has no intention yet of coming out from under the US security umbrella.

So the Chinese ambassador was able to say, “Frankly, I do not understand the meaning of the statement ‘Korea is the [Northeast Asian] balancer.’” It seems that the real meaning of Roh Moo-hyun’s phrase – that Korea will have to walk a tightrope – was not apparent. He thinks that Roh will remain on America’s rope, tipping the balance this way and that.

This sort of tightrope walking might be a very flexible response, but actually the danger is that it will satisfy no one.

The 'Western Yulgok' 5000 won note

2005-04-24T22:32:00.000+01:00

Been a bit busy of late (there's an election on here in case you didn't know).

Spotted this article on the 5000 won note (worth about £3) the other day on Oh My News. One of those novelty stories that probably has a serious underbelly (if such a thing is possible). I think the peg for this story was the fact that the Korean government is going to introduce a new 5000 won note because the current ones are being couterfeited to such an extent.

The 5000 won notes have featured famous Korean Confucian philosopher Yulgok Yi I (1536-1584) since the 1970s. But apparently, the design before the previous one became known as the 'Western Yulgok' because the portrait of the philospher appearing on the note looked remarkably like a person of the round-eyed, large-proboscis persuasion who just happened to be wearing a sixteenth century Korean official's hat and coat.

The explanation for this is that apparently these notes were made by the British company De La Rue (as are those of about 150 countries according to their website) and the designer who adapted the original portrait of Yulgok was for some reason incapable of reproducing an East Asian looking face. Resorting to that hackneyed phraseology beloved by certain sorts of Korean writers, the author of the article says that the designer managed to produce a portrait of Yulgok that was 'totally incompatible with our sentiments'. I think I'd rather say that the designer was just a rubbish artist.

Apparently the 'Western Yulgok' (top image) notes only lasted until 1977 when the current note was brought in (bottom).

Next time I'm in Korea I might try to lay my hands on one of these novelty notes.

'Why is Japan provoking its neighbours?' pt I

2005-04-20T22:33:00.000+01:00

I promised that I would post a translation of Kim Yong-uk's excellent article on Japan and East Asian geopolitics from the latest issue of Ta Hamkke. So here it is, well the first half anyway:

Why is Japan provoking its neighbours?
Kim Yong-uk
Ta Hamkke no. 53

The Japanese state is currently making East Asia’s instability more severe. Japan is also having territorial disputes with the majority of its neighbours – Russia, China, South Korea and so on.

In addition it is carrying out a strengthening of its defence forces. This year it has launched a major procurement programme for military equipment, such as aircraft carriers and midair refuelling aircraft, which go beyond weapons of self defence and are required when attacking the territory of an enemy nation.

While arming the country in this way, the leaders of Japan have been constantly using the threat of North Korea and China as an excuse.

But in the early nineties, even before the threat from China appeared, Japan’s average annual military spending was already the second in the world.

One of the factors behind Japan’s militarisation is the movement of the country’s mainstream politics towards the right. For almost 40 years from the mid-1950s Japanese politics has been controlled by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party, but the Socialist Party and the Communist Party played a restraining role.

However, this configuration was broken by the economic crisis of the 1990s and the rightward drift of the Socialist and Communist Parties. In this context, when Koizumi came to power in 2001, the rightward shift of the whole political sphere was accelerated.

In fact, Koizumi and Abe Shinzo, the general secretary of the Liberal Democratic Party, and others have been called the Japanese Neocons. They are leading the drive to revise the Japanese constitution and carry out the policy of remilitarisation.

The support of the US is also playing a considerable role in the country’s militarisation. But it is a miscalculation to think that Japan’s increase in military expenditure has only come about because the US wants it.

Japan has felt the need for increased military spending since the 1970s. The opportunity to start this in earnest came with the end of the Cold War and, particularly, with the Gulf War of 1990-91.

Although Japan contributed some $13 billion to the Gulf war, it continued to be excluded from rights over Middle East oil. The majority of Japan’s ruling class was shocked by this and felt that they had to strengthen the country’s military power.

These moves for hegemony were mainly directed toward Asia. Already by the early 1970s Japan had overtaken the US to become the largest investor in the region. The ‘stability’ of the adjacent region is also one of the necessary basic conditions for Japan to stretch toward becoming a hegemonic state.

But Japan’s ambitions are not limited to East Asia. A preparatory document for the December 2004 “Outline of a new defence plan” entitled “Report on security and war capability”, published in October 2004, makes this clear:

“Japan’s current prosperity is founded on global interdependence. But if one looks at this the other way around, it means that disturbances that arise in other parts of the world can weaken Japan.

“Because Japan relies on other countries for the majority of its energy and resources, if the region that encompasses the Middle East, Southwest Asia, Southeast Asia and Northeast Asia becomes unstable or traffic through shipping routes becomes impossible the consequences could be massive.”

Part II

Those unlikely North Korean monarchists

2005-04-18T22:40:00.000+01:00

I've always been slightly confused by the North Korean government's fondness for royalty. The Lonely Planet guide to Korea (1997 edition, p400) notes in its section on things to buy in North Korea:

You might enjoy the stamps featuring North Korea's version of the space shuttle, but even more bizarre are the stamps proudly displaying the British royal family. Just why Charles and Diana are more popular in North Korea than in the UK awaits some scholarly resarch.

I suppose hereditary leaders are not exactly a foreign concept in the North.

The whales size each other up

2005-04-17T23:07:00.001+01:00

Tensions between China and Japan seem to continue rumbling along over textbooks, gas exploration rights and so on, but it is clear that the underlying issue is the shape of Northeast Asian geopolitics in the coming decades. One indication of how important this story is being seen around the world is the fact that it has been the top story on BBC News Online all weekend. I've been meaning to translate at least some of Kim Yong-uk's excellent analysis of Japan's current manoeuvering in the latest issue of Ta Hamkke but haven't had time yet. In the meantime, there's a very interesting piece in Asia Times Online, which places the Chinese government very firmly behind the current anti-Japanese protests in Shenzhen, Shanghai and elsewhere.

Besides giving some evidence on how the government has backed and manipulated the protests, the author puts forward some possible reasons for 'why and why now?':

To be systematic about it, there seem to be three possibilities: 1) the government wants to divert attention from pressing domestic problems; 2) Communist Party factional issues are fought out in a strange arena; 3) Beijing wants leverage to stoke up nationalist fervor for international gain.

He concludes, correctly I think, that both nationalist distraction from domestic issues and international leverage are playing a role. There is no doubt that China is beginning to assert itself as a regional (and potentially global) economic and geo-political power. Of course, this does not mean that the anger many ordinary Chinese people are expressing does not have rational grounds (in history and present developments related to Japan) or that this anger that is being manipulated by the Chinese government is not genuine.

As the whales start what looks like a long and titanic battle, it is no wonder that the shrimp is groping desperately for some new policy that can miraculously 'balance' the demands of bitterly opposed competing powers.

Tokto stirs debate on the Korean left

2005-04-13T22:53:00.000+01:00

The Korean socialist newspaper Ta Hamkke was inaccessible for a couple of weeks for some reason so I've got quite a bit of catching up to do. The latest issue has a section on the 'changing imperialist powers in northeast asia.' With articles like 'Why is Japan winding up its neighbours?' (일본은 왜 인접국들을 자극하는가?) it looks like it'll be good reading.

The last issue (no. 52) had some very interesting pieces about the debates that the Tokto issue stirred on the left. I'd really like to translate some of this stuff, but I'm not sure I'll have time. If you can read Korean there's a good article by Chông Chin-hûi entitled 'Tokto, Imperialism and Resistance' as well as a letter about whether it is chauvinistic to burn the Japanese flag.

To put it very briefly, Chông Chin-hûi's piece is a critique of people she calls 'abstract internationalists' (추상적 국제주의자들) and autonomists (not sure whether this is the correct translation of 자유주의자들 in this context) who have strongly criticised the role of the Democratic Labour Party (민노당) in leading protests over Tokto. They have called the actions of the party chauvinistic and argued that it could lose its reputation as a progressive party. Chông however, argues that they are wrong and that the nationalistic response of Koreans to the Tokto issue is not necessarily rightwing or something that will benefit the Korean ruling class. The article also contains passing criticism of Han Kyu-han's article on the history of Tokto from last year that I've quoted from before, which is closer to the 'abstract internationalist' view.

From the perspective of an outsider, one of the interesting things is that this sort of debate can occur on the Korean left. Now there is not only a debate between the nationalist left and the internationalist left over how to respond to this sort of issue, but also between internationalists and those who take a more extreme anti-nationalist position.

Sell out

2005-04-12T00:31:00.000+01:00

I'm very sad to hear that one of my childhood heroes has sold out. I suppose this is what happens when you get into your mid-thirties.

"We are not putting him on a diet, and we would never take the position of no sugar," said Dr Rosemarie T Truglio, the show's vice president of research and education. "We're teaching him moderation."

"The most cosmopolitan place on earth"

2005-04-11T23:23:00.000+01:00

I've finally got my hands on a copy of the Guardian's brilliant supplement on multicultural London: "London: the world in one city. A special celebration of the most cosmopolitan place on earth," which was published in the January 21 edition. You can look at it online, but unfortunately the huge colour map of 'ethnic concentrations' and the maps of ethnic and religious population densities don't work so well in pdf form (unless you have a very large colour printer). Aside from the obvious things (Edgeware Road is a Lebanese/Arab concentration; Brixton is Jamaican; Brick Lane is Bangladeshi; Elephant and Castle is Columbian/Ecuadorian), the big map taught me all sorts of things about my own city that I would never have known. For example, that Balham High Street is Polish, Chessington is Tamil, Hanger Hill is both Japanese and Iranian, and Chichele Road is Baltic/East European.

Among the articles in the supplement, there's a nice, if somewhat unrevealing, piece on London's Koreatown: New Malden. There's definitely still something very new and slightly transient about the London Korean community as this comment from an interviewee makes clear:

"We are looked upon as a very unusual community," she says, "because we don't really open up to other communities in the borough." Language, it seems, is the main enemy. "Even though I've been here so long, I still have problems," admits Ree, who is so English that she takes a box of PG Tips with her when she visits Korea.

If you want a bit of a feel of what it's like round my way, check out this piece on the West African community of Peckham.

While I'm on the subject of markets...

2005-04-11T23:03:00.000+01:00

A footnote to my earlier post: I think markets are some of the best bits of London and I've just discovered that Wikipedia has the makings of quite a good guide to London markets. Here’s a picture of my local market, just up the road in Walworth, packed into a narrow street called East Street (East Lane to the locals for some reason) running between Walworth Road and the Old Kent Road. The building you can just see on the near right is on the site of an older building where Charlie Chaplin was born in 1889 (the anniversary of his birth is next Saturday).

Five-day markets

2005-04-09T19:41:00.000+01:00

The Korea Times had a piece a couple of days ago on Korea’s ‘five-day markets’ (오일장) which are markets (as you may have guessed) that are held every five days. It was interesting to hear that these still exist in modern Korea so long after the society which created them and needed them met with its demise.

As the article points out, these markets first arose after the Japanese invasions of the peninsula in the late 16^th century, usually regarded by historians as something of a watershed in the history of the Chosôn dynasty. The point of this system, as far as I remember, was that the markets were always within a days' walk of each other and farmers or traders (pobusang perhaps) could circulate around them, tramping from one to the next, presumably covering five different markets every five days.

This reminds me of the (very) famous Korean short story 'When the Buckwheat Blooms' (메밀꽃필무렵) by Kasan Yi Hyosôk, in which a band of peddlers make an overnight journey from one village market to the next. There was an English translation in the Autumn 1999 issue of Koreana (not online yet unfortunately) and it shouldn't be too hard to find in Korean, I would guess that it's probably in a lot of high school Korean textbooks. Here's an extract from the beginning (translated by Bruce and Ju Chan Fulton):

Every peddler who made the rounds of the countryside markets knew that business was never any good in the summer. And on this particular day, the marketplace in Pongp'yông was already deserted, though the sun was still high in the sky; its heat, seeping under the awnings of the peddlers' stalls, was enough to sear your spine. Most of the villagers had gone home, and you couldn't stay open forever just to do business with the farmhands who would have been happy to swap a bundle of firewood for a bottle of kerosene or some fish. The swarms of flies had become a nuisance, and the local boys were as pesky as gnats.
"Shall we call it a day?" ventured Hô Saengwon, a left-handed man with a pockmarked face, to his fellow dry-goods peddler Cho Sôndal.
"Sounds good to me. We've never done well here in Pongp'yông. We'll have to make a bundle tomorrow in Taehwa."
"And we'll have to walk all night to get there," said Hô.
"I don't mind - we'll have the moon to light the way."

Korean troops Leaving Irbil?

2005-04-08T17:06:00.000+01:00

How did I miss this story yesterday (via Raed)? First Ukraine, then Italy, then Bulgaria, then the UK, now we hear that Korea may also be pulling (at least some) of its troops out of Iraq in the near future.

Can this be put in the context of President Roh's new 'Korea is the new Northeast Asia power balancer' line? Or is he just desperate to get the troops out of there, since they have now served their purpose of demonstrating loyalty to Bush?

More on the Japanese media

2005-04-08T12:35:00.000+01:00

An article on Oh My News yesterday, originally from the Financial Times no less, provides some more detail on the subject of my earlier post concerning Asano Kenichi on the Japanese media. The last couple of paragraphs are particularly striking on the international dimensions (the whole thing's worth reading, so don't be lazy...).

In short, Japan's fourth estate has a giant pro-government sign on the lawn. Its lack of independence weakens democracy in the world's second largest economy and the impunity with which Japan's government manipulates it undermines press freedom globally. Indeed, the west's recent reporting scandals suggest its media are drifting more towards the Japanese model than the other way round.
While the European Union protests against Japan's press club system and Asian countries decry Japan's nationalist propaganda and historical amnesia, the Bush administration lauds Japan as a success story of democratic nation building. But Japanese propagandizing will continue and spread unless the U.S. demonstrates its commitment to promoting democracy, and press freedom applies not just in Lebanon, Iraq or Russia but everywhere else, including Japan.

In particular, the authors look at Japan's cozy system of press clubs where reporters are spoon-fed 'stories' by official institutions. The press clubs are something I also remember clearly from my rather limited experience of working at Korean newspapers. Basically a lot of journalists I met were paid to sit around in the press rooms of whatever ministry/government office/national headquarters they were reporting on and then write a story on the press release of the day. Of course they did get more juicy stories, but they usually came after an evening spent drinking with the officials of the office in question.But as Asano Kenichi pointed out in his lecture, those days are over in Korea (in theory at least). One of President Roh's early reforms was to ablolish the press club system and open up access to government to a much broader range of media. This New York Times article (reproduced, slightly confusingly by The Seoul Times) gives a good overview of the changes.

제국주의 맹아론

2005-04-07T22:13:00.000+01:00

This caused a chuckle: Chinese premier Wen Jiabao said at the recent Asia Cooperation meeting in Islamabad that Asia should not fear a strong China and that "China will never seek hegemony." What was that thing about nothing being true until it’s been officially denied?

Budding imperialist rule no. 1: Seek hegemony
Budding imperialist rule no. 2: Deny that you are seeking hegemony

Another cycle begins at Naksansa

2005-04-06T09:48:00.000+01:00

Sad news that the important Buddhist temple of Naksansa on the west coast of Korea was razed to the ground in a forest fire yesterday. The temple dates back to the Silla dynasty (?-935AD) and the greatest loss seems to have been its fifteenth century bronze bell. The BBC has a good picture gallery. The story has also been well blogged (Oranckay, Hunjangûi Karûch'im) particularly by Gangwon Notes, which has an excellent eyewitness report with lots of pictures. Oh My News is, of course, also on the case with good reportage and pictures.

The bell pavilion (?) at Naksansa burns

A monk stands beside the remains of the ritual hall

The irony of this story is that the fire occurred on Korea's annual Tree-planting Day (식목날) or Arbor Day if you want to Americanise. Hankyoreh even has an editorial on the subject, suggesting that perhaps the day should be changed to a time of year when the risk of fire is not so great - people have suggested that it's currently possible that more trees are lost on April 5 than are actually planted.

From an historical point of view I find our reactions to this sort of disaster interesting. The BBC notes that the temple was 1,300 years old and I've mentioned above that it dated from the Silla period. Of course, this is all true in one sense, but I doubt there was anything at the site that actually dated from 1,300 years ago apart from the stone pagoda, which funnily enough, is still standing. As this article in the Korea Times points out, the current Naksan Temple was in fact built in the 1950s after it was destroyed in the Korean War (along with much of Korea's physical heritage). The fact is that the repeated razing of buildings was a feature of all societies before the modern era and this was particularly true of East Asia, where wooden buildings predominated. Look at the record of Naksansa outlined in the KT:

The temple was earlier destroyed by fire during the Mongolian invasion of the 13^th century.

During the Choson period (1392-1910) the temple was repeatedly reconstructed and expanded by royal order in 1467, 1469, 1631 and 1643.
The present facilities were constructed in 1953 after the buildings were again destroyed during the 1950-53 Korean War.

So the temple has burned down at least twice before and had been reconstructed on numerous occasions. We also know from historical records that the centre of Seoul burned down every few decades during the Chosôn dynasty and the history of Edo (premodern Tokyo) is no different. My experience of visiting Buddhist temples around Korea is that you soon have to discard the conception that the absolute age of the buildings standing in front of you is what matters - a great many have been reconstructed in the last 50 years, or at most in the last couple of hundred years. Rather, the important thing is the (still living) tradition that they represent and the fact that their repeated destruction and reconstruction is an integral part of their history.

Google monster

2005-04-05T09:34:00.000+01:00

Taking my lead from Lenin's Tomb, Pandora's Blog and Hunjangûi Karûch'im I thought I would be just a little bit lazy and post something on recent google searches that have wound their way towards my blog.

The Tokto island dispute is obviously catching someone's imagination out there in the English-speaking web world because I've been getting a large number of people arriving after searching for either 'Tokto' or 'Takeshima'. This made me wonder just how many hits I would have got if I'd used the more common spelling of Dokdo, or even Tokdo, or possibly Dokto. And what would happen if I tried to fit all these different spellings into just one post...

Now for the bizarre ones:
Someone got here because they wanted to know Kimchi consumption per capita, while someone else was curious about clay wellbing, whatever the hell that is. Starcraft worker split demonstration sounds particularly intriguing, but I'm none the wiser as to what the searcher was after.

Multipolar linguistics in a unipolar world

2005-04-04T23:26:00.000+01:00

A post about language and language learning as it's something that interests me.

Happened to be perusing Le Monde Diplomatique and came across this article (you can tell I'm a cheapskate as it's one of the freebies) on building mutual comprehension between speakers of Romance languages (ie French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Romanian). I have to say this is an idea that really appeals to me. The idea seems to break through the old orthodoxy of 'learning a language'; that is, slogging away at a single language (the boundaries of languages are of course somewhat undefined anyway) and 'mastering' it. Instead, suggest the advocates of the mutual comprehension approach, we can attempt to master a whole group of related languages at the same time, at least to the level of reading and listening with comprehension.

As the author points out, this approach has long been in place in the Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark) and I've witnessed this myself, when Swedes and Norwegians speak to each other in their own languages without a hint of difficulty in understanding each other. Of course the apparent greater differences between the Romance languages might make it a bit more tricky in this case, but it seems that research shows it is possible. Actually, the depressing side of this is that it appears to leave us English speakers doomed to rely on the fact that most of the world either speaks English or would like to. If circumstances were different, I suppose it might be conceivable to propose a German-English-Dutch mutual comprehension community.

But there's also something that disturbs me about this article (and I suspect would disturb me even more about Bernard Cassen's piece on the same subject in this issue, if only I could be bothered to pay for it). This is the fluffy post-modern cultural nationalism and essentialism that lurks in the background of this article, which is published in a magazine of supposedly leftwing commentary.

First we have the comment that these are:

...countries that belong to a language family and have interests and cultural features in common.

A fairly inocuous comment, but one that probably needs to be questioned. Do Romanians and Portuguese really have more in common culturally than Parisians and Londoners? What about the huge cultural divides inside some of these countries, that between northern and southern Italy being perhaps the most obvious example?

OK, maybe I'm reading too much into a simple article here, but I worry that there is a tendency among some parts of the European left to see the world in terms of a mirror image of that favourite of the US (and sometimes British) right: 'Anglo-Saxon culture and values'. So, instead we have 'Romance culture', reflecting everything desirible and non-American about Europe. A sort of new post-nationalist nationalism for the era of the EU.

Things get worse when we get to the last sentence of the article:

In European and international politics, this new way of learning might encourage multi-polarity and linguistic diversity in a stand against the domination of a single hyperpower and a single language.

I was actually having a conversation the other day with a Korean friend about the possibility of a multipolar world and the current fascination in Europe, particularly in France, with this idea. I commented that two or three or four hegemonic imperialisms didn't strike me as particularly better than one. And an adjunct of this argument is the idea that the US really is a rogue hyperpower that can only be brought under control by another, no doubt more civilised, superpower. In reality, recent events have shown that the US is a lot weaker than it may appear at first glance.

What is disturbing about all this is the fact that the left as well as the right are buying into it. Calling for linguistic diversity is one thing, but allying this call with one for multi-polarity is quite misguided to my mind. We should be fighting not for a world with multi-poles but for one without poles (except the Slavic kind) at all.

Linkity link (pobusang and the future of Korean Studies)

2005-04-02T01:34:00.000+01:00

Busy busy, so a couple of links in place of something more substantial.

I think this could qualify as a plug for myself masquerading as a plug for someone else's blog, but here goes anyway: I've been having an interesting discussion at Hunjangûi Karûch'im about the nature and historical significance of the pobusang or 'back and pack' peddlers of Chosôn dynasty Korea. Of course, this sort of thing is probably not at all interesting to 99.9 percent of people out there, but just in case the commercial history of premodern East Asia is the thing that floats your boat...

Meanwhile, [otherwise] has a good post on the trials and tribulations of Korean Studies as a subject in general and in particular on the situation in the UK where it looks as though SOAS might be the only institution teaching it before long.

North Koreans catch the 'English Disease'

2005-03-30T23:38:00.000+01:00

Finally back in the real world after a surreal little holiday. Seems as though the real world has unthoughtfully provided a lot of stuff for me to catch up on while I've been disconnected from the Matrix.

I won't bother catching up on what's been going on because the latest news is more interesting: riots have erupted in P'yôngyang during and after a World Cup qualifying football match between North Korea and Iran. Apparently the crowd of 60,000, almost all supporting North Korea naturally, became upset at refereeing decisions and started throwing missiles at the pitch. The violence continued after the match (2-0 to Iran) when crowds prevented the Iranian players from boarding their coach. (See BBC and Reuters reports)

It might be going a bit far to read too much into this incident, but it does raise a few thoughts in my mind. First, this show of rampant, violent nationalism gives credence to the idea that the 'regime changers' find impossible to believe: that many North Koreans are proud of their country. Dogstew had something on this topic recently, and although I don't agree with everything they say, I think the central point is valid: it is possible for large numbers of ordinary people to support a totalitarian regime (particularly, I would add, when the country is, or is perceived to be, under constant military threat). Iraq should have been an instructive lesson for the Neo-cons and their followers (a Mr Blair comes to mind) who consistently believed the tales they were told by Iraqi defectors about how the US would be welcomed with open arms when it invaded and there would be no resistance. Former British cabinet minister Robin Cook made this point in a comment piece just last week (via DML). But the Neo-cons and regime-changers just don't seem to get it: living under a horrible, repressive regime does not automatically mean that you will support US intervention, especially when you know what happened the last time.

Of course any 'popular support' that exists for a regime like that of Kim Jong-il must be highly unstable and contradictory. So while it doesn't surprise me that many North Koreans would be highly nationalistic and anti-US - especially considering the history of conflict between the two countries - this does not necessarily guarantee that they will always support Kim Jong-il's regime, or that they themselves do not have contradictory feelings. Nationalist sentiment could easily spill over into wider protests giving vent to underlying frustrations with the government at home (which no doubt do exist in North Korea).

This brings me to my second thought, which concerns the echoes of the anti-American protests in Beijing at the time of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. At first it seemed that the Chinese authorities were quite happy to see spontaneous anti-American demonstrations on the streets, but they quickly became very worried and had to crack down on them, blocking off the entire embassy district of the city. Assuming that conspiracy theorists are wrong and this was not some massive government-orchestrated exercise in whipping up nationalist feelings, then I would have thought that the North Korean regime is rather worried by what happened in the stadium today.

UPDATE, 1st April:
For you information, here's how the North Korean media reported the football match. It's interesting to be honest that they go as far as to say that the spectators "vigorously protested":

Football Match Held between DPRK and Iranian Teams
Pyongyang, March 31 (KCNA) -- A football match between the DPRK and the Iranian teams belonging to the group B of the 2006 World Cup Asian regional qualifier took place in Pyongyang on Wednesday. The Iranian team won the game 2:0.
At the end of the match all the spectators were angered and vigorously protested the wrong refereeing by the Syrian referee and linesmen.

Joy of statistics

2005-03-24T00:03:00.000Z

Remember that book I was coveting a few days ago? Well, thanks to a certain person, I've got my paws on a copy. Want to know the per capita GDP of Peru in 1914 in '1990 international Geary-Khamis dollars'? Or Ghanaian gold production for the 16th century in millions of 'fine ounces'? Or the year to year percentage change in per capita GDP in the former USSR in 1992? Or even possibly Japan's share of world population in 1000AD? No, I thought you probably weren't that interested... But just in case you change your mind the answers are at the bottom of this post.

I'm away over Easter so no posting for a few days. Should be back on line next Tuesday, fresh of mind and body (possibly).

927
2.700
-15%
2.8%

Asano Kenichi on the Japanese mainstream media

2005-03-21T23:54:00.000Z

We had a very good seminar last week at SOAS, given by Kenichi Asano, professor of journalism at Doshisha University in Kyoto. If I said that this guy is a leftwing Japanese academic, it would probably be a bit of an understatement. You can probably get a good idea of where he's coming from from the title of his talk: "The Japanese Mainstream Media's Colonialist Stance toward North Korea and its Propagandist Role in Iraq."

Anyway, he was really very good and gave an excellent, if rather depressing, overview of the state of the Japanese media. In many ways what he said brought out parallels with the situation in the US where an obedient media has (in general) played cheerleader to George Bush and the neo-conservatives in the war on terror. Here's an extract from his paper to give you a flavour:

In many ways the conundrum known as the Japanese press is encapsulated well in the example of Japan's relationship with the Democratic People's Replublic of Korea. Wherever the Japanese government goes, the Japanese news media usually follows close behind, more like a well-trained poodle on a leash than a fierce watchdog at the gate of a strong, independent press.

As Asano pointed out, as well as its equivalents of Fox and CNN, Japan also its own neo-conservatives in the form of people like far-right politicians like Shinzo Abe (deputy secretary general of the Liberal Democratic Party). And to make matters even worse, in the last few years even the Asahi Shimbun newspaper, which had always portrayed itself as Japan's 'liberal' daily has swerved drastically to the right. So that the 'neo-cons' and Asahi were united in playing the whole North Korean kidnapping thing for all it was worth, with the newspaper apparently even criticising President Roh quite strongly when he made a link between the abductee issue and Japan's failure to come to terms with its colonial past.

Although the focus was on North Korea, Asano also took up the question of the Japanese media's coverage of the troop deployment to Samawah in Iraq. He pointed out not only that this coverage has been extremely restricted and basically acted as the propaganda arm of the Japanese government, but that the press has also gone on the attack against people who threaten the government's position. He describes the case of the three Japanese hostages who were released in Iraq last year and then berated by politicians and newspapers when they returned home as a 'media bludgeoning'.

My question to professor Asano concerned the political environment in which this sort of thing can occur. Of course we have to look back at Japan's history and understand the compromised form of democracy that has been established there since World War II, but what about the current situation? It is easy in this sort of analysis of the media just to become hopeless and believe that the press is falling into the hands of rightwing governments and their rich allies all over the world and that everyone will be brainwashed into falling in line with whatever governments want to do. But this isn't a one way process by any means - what about the left, social movements, anti-war campaigns, the unions, what about the forces that counterbalance a move to the right? In the UK and Europe in general it has not been possible for the media across the board to support the war and propagandise for it (in Germany the government itself was not able to support the Iraq war) because the anti-war movements have been so strong and the 'ideological field' (as leninology characteristically put it) has been shaped by them. In the UK you had two major broadsheet newspapers and one tabloid coming out firmly against the war and producing some very good journalism in the process.

So this is a very long way of coming around to the question that I asked Prof. Asano: what is the current state of civil society movements and the anti-war movement in particular in Japan. As might be guessed, his reply was not hugely encouraging: things are pretty awful in general and the anti-war movement has been weak. However, he's seems to be one of those irrepressibly optimistic people who thinks that the bottom is a good place to be because you can only go up. And he's planning to do his part in encouraging the development of independent media in Japan:

Every democratic society counts on a healthy, skeptical press to be a check against the excesses of government, but in Japan today, that kind of press does not exist.
Japan, however, need not look very far for a solution: One lies just accross the Sea of Japan / East Sea on the Korean Peninsula. The rise of independent media movements worldwide are changing the face of the 'one-way dialogue' that corporate news has become, and nowhere is that positive change more exemplified than in the Seoul-based news outlet known as Oh My News, said to be the largest online independent news service on the web... I am happy to say that we are thinking of creating a Japanese-translated version of Oh My News on the web and hope someday soon to publish original Japanese news stories on it as well... it is up to the Japanese public to take the matter into its own hands and start creating its own independent news media. That time, for Japan, is now.

If you're interested, you can find Kenichi Asano's homepage here and some articles in English by him here.

London-Seoul-Tokyo March 19/20 protest round up

2005-03-20T22:24:00.000Z

The London anti-occupation demo yesterday was excellent, big, lively, colourful, young, old, noisy and above all... sunny. Nothing like marching on a warm sunny spring day to raise the spirits a bit. There were at least 100,000 people there and for me it was definitely the best anti-war demo since the (supposed) end of the war in April 2003 (unfortunately I missed the massive Stop Bush demo in November 2003 as I was in Korea at the time). Anyway, if you want an entertaining report on the day check out leninology. A couple of pics (from IMC) to give you a flavour:

Into the haze

Taking over the streets...

Taking over Trafalgar Square

And this placard wins second prize in the funniest of the day competition (first prize goes to the one that read "Cherie, take the kids and run, while you still have time"):

Sounds as though the demo in Seoul was pretty decent too, attracting some 5-6000 protesters according to the organisers. Oh My News has the goods here.

피켓의 숲 / forest of placards

Protesting, Korean style

The BBC was reporting that there was a 4500-strong anti-war demo in Tokyo. If these figures are correct (I couldn't find anything to verify them) this is very good, especially considering that the Japanese anti-war movement has been a bit lacklustre in general and certainly wasn't able to mount the sort of opposition to the deployment of the Japanese "Self Defence Force" to Samawah that the Korean movement was able to mount against their country's deployment to Irbil. Perhaps it was Condi's visit that galvanised people into action.

I knew they were right...

2005-03-18T23:16:00.000Z

I was wondering the other day about the political orientation of the people surrounding the Japanese embassy in Seoul, cutting off their fingers, setting fire to themselves (etc), all over the Tokto (non)issue (see Kotaji passim et alia Koreanus blogium ad infinitum). Obviously, not being in Seoul it’s not possible to pop down to check out who’s hanging out burning Japanese flags, but it seems that I’ve got my answer anyway. According to the Marmot:

Something odd I noticed as I was doing a piece for the Chosun — the groups doing the protesting are, by and large, not the anti-American lefty loons you usually see protesting in front of embassies. No, this is a crew of an entirely different sort. The Korea Freedom League, Pan-Citizen Alliance to Defend Dokdo, Citizens’ Alliance to Stop North Korean Nuclear Weapons, Hwalbindan… these are some real, hardcore rightists. The kind of guys who’d normally be spending the day burning Kim Jong-il in effigy.

Oh My News also has a good article about the Tokto demonstrators (also a good English article), quoting the chairman of the Seoul veterans' association as saying that the whole Tokto crisis was actually the fault of the Korean left and their “inadequate nationalism” (어설픈 민족주의) and promotion of 'anti-Americanism'. So, the logic of this is basically that, because the South Korean left has stood up to US imperialism both on the Korean peninsula and in its recent murderous adventure in Iraq (this practice is usually known under the name 'anti-Americanism' for some reason), it has not paid enough attention to real issues concerning the Korean people such as the designs of a few Japanese loony rightists on some rocks in the middle of the East Sea. And therefore the whole Korean nation is under threat. Hmmm, personally I'm not convinced by this line of reasoning.

Anyway, it is quite clear that the whole Tokto thing, as well as being whipped up by the mainstream press, is being exploited for all it's worth by the Korean far-right and it is the right in general that is leading the protests. I'm not, of course, denying that there might be people of other political complexions out on the streets as well, but in general it seems to be a good excuse for a nice day out for all those semi-fascist, semi-gangster groups who rarely get to see the light of day in Korea these days.

Talking of fascist types, I finally found a picture of those Japanese fascists celebrating the passing of a bill to establish 'Takeshima Day' in Shimane Prefecture (they look strangely like schoolboys don't they):

Anyway, to everyone who's going to be out on the streets today/tomorrow protesting about the real imperial project of our times, have a good day. I'll think of you all as I file past the US embassy in Grosvenor Square, most likely shouting something horribly anti-American...

PS: If you think I've gone all soft on Japan, I've got a post on Japan/Korea/Iraq coming up which should hopefully be quite interesting.

First we take Tokto, then we take Berlin

2005-03-16T11:13:00.000Z

Everyone else seems to be talking about this so I suppose I’m going to have to, even if it is a bit tiresome. Since my last post on the Tokto islands dispute between Korea and Japan things seem to have developed a bit (ie people have started lopping off parts of their bodies in protest). The BBC has some good overviews including this and this. The latter article, concerning the passing of a bill today by the assembly of Shimane Prefecture which officially recognises Tokto (Takeshima) as part of its territory, has the following rather disturbing passage:

The Shimane assembly law's passing was applauded by right wing activists in paramilitary uniforms.

I didn’t realise that Japan had its own neo-Nazi nutters. No pictures unfortunately though…

Meanwhile, Dogstew has a round up of recent events and links to an article on another issue that has flared between the neighbouring countries for about the millionth time: history textbooks. The Marmot on the other hand draws our attention to the (slightly loopy) attempts by certain South Korean parliamentarians to get their own back on the pesky Japanese by claiming that Tsushima (Japanese island between Pusan and Fukuoka) is actually Korean.

Not wishing to remain left out of all this good fun, the North Koreans have also stuck their oar in. Unfortunately, as is often the case, their paranoid delusions get the better of them and their claims get a little bit wild:

The islet is situated in the waters of geopolitical importance for realizing Japan's ambition to invade Korea…It is the calculation of the Japanese reactionaries that their seizure of the islet would make it possible for Japan to reinvade Korea with ease and get great economic profits... The Japanese reactionaries would be well advised to behave with discretion and give up their ambition to seize the islet and stage comeback to Korea.

I like the idea that the Japanese want to ‘stage a comeback in Korea’, as though Japanese colonialism was actually carried out by a pop group. Having said this, judging by the nutters mentioned in the BBC article above, there clearly are some Japanese who would rather like to see a Japanese ‘comeback’ in Korea, and probably most of the rest of Asia for that matter.

If you’re in Seoul this weekend, here’s something much more worthwhile to protest about, although I still wouldn’t recommend chopping off any parts of your anatomy.

[Update: I should probably add to this post, for the sake of clarity that what the Shimane Prefecture assembly actually passed was not a bill asserting territorial rights over Tokto as such, but rather one establishing a 'Takeshima [Tokto] Day'. Which, I suppose amounts to roughly the same thing.]

Life imitates blog!

2005-03-14T14:05:00.000Z

Oh dear...

My post of a few days ago suggested (in jest) that the revelation that chickens can be cured of bird flu thanks to kimchi might lead to a shortage of the precious substance in Korea. The BBC has obviously realised the significance of this story and now reveals:

South Koreans are reported to be eating more kimchi as a result of the study.

"I'm eating kimchi these days because I've heard in the media that it helps prevent bird flu infections," one man said.

But actually this is only a case of history repeating itself as a similar phenomenon was apparently observed during the SARS outbreak:

There was an increase in kimchi consumption two years ago, when thousands of people in Asia contracted Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome).

Kimchi was reported to have helped to prevent Sars. The claim was never scientifically proven, but according to some Koreans, people in other countries followed their example and started eating kimchi.

"After the Sars outbreak, I went to China and I noticed that the Korean restaurants there sold most of the kimchi they'd made that day," a Korean man said.

I only hope those kimchi mountains I imagined can come to the rescue.

The Shadow of Arms

2005-03-13T23:00:00.000Z

In the comments to my last post, which touched on Korean involvement in the Vietnam War, I mentioned a passage by Korean novelist (and Vietnam veteran) Hwang Sôg-yông concerning his Vietnam War novel The Shadow of Arms (무기의 그늘). There was an English translation published in the Cornell East Asia Series, but I believe it is currently out of print. I must admit that I haven't read the novel myself, either in English or Korean, but it's on the list...
Anyway, here are Hwang's thoughts on the novel and the war in general:

It was in the eighties, in the midst of this maelstrom of change, that I published the work that would mark the end of the first half of my literary career: The Shadow of Arms.

Unlike Hollywood films and other novels that deal with the Vietnam War, The Shadow of Arms has nothing to offer on the theme of struggling with life and death on the battlefield; the pages hold no humnitarian conflict, no ideological protest against the war. Neither is it a mix of colonialism and orientalism in the tradition of "Apocalypse Now," presenting a detached but darkly emotional condemnation of war itself. The Shadow of Arms is a cold-hearted novel that deals instead with the business aspects of what was an intrinsically capitalistic war.

War is nothing more than a fiercely violent reaction to a conflict between different races, nations, and/or classes that is guaranteed to either solve or exponentially aggravate the issue at hand. Without question, was does result in the appearance of a hell on earth, full of destruction and slaughter. On the other hand, this hell is accompanied by the emergence and activation of an extremely dispassionate, precise mechanism of political and economic logic. The Shadow of Arms is an attempt to reveal both the surface appearance and inner workings of this phenomenon. America's Vietnamese 'intervention,' which came on the heels of their activities in the Philippines, was simply a move calculated to expand their imperialistic market control to include the rest of Southeast Asia. War was considered to be the quickest, most efficient means of achieving this end: in essence, the war itself was a kind of business being conducted on a rather grandiose scale.

As such, The Shadow of Arms uses the back alley black markets of the Vietnam War as its stage, a market that turns into a setting more fitting than any jungle to discover and explore the core of the war. The more we learn about the system that was used to circulate U.S. Army munitions, the closer we can come to understanding the true nature of the war. Because achieving this understanding became my overarching goal, it was necessary for the perspective of the story itself to be multi-lateral. In this novel we see the perspective of the U.S. government and soldier, the Vietnamese National Liberation Front, the South Vietnamese under American rule, and the "psychological refugee" who refuses to intervene and become a part of the war, searching endlessly fo an escape route instead. Lastly, we have the perspective that overlaps with that of myself, the author: the dazed ROK [Republic of Korea] soldier who has somehow become involved in this foul war.

In the preface to the first edition of The Shadow of Arms, I wrote that I would "never indulge in a depiction of an individual who was scarred" by the Vietnam experience. This was a manifestation of the obstinate self-consciousness that is controlled by the guilt we Koreans feel when treating of the Vietnamese, a substantial limitation that was difficult to overcome when armed with nothing but the perspective of an irresponsible outsider.

Truly, if there is one thing that must make a deeper impression on the hearts of the Vietnamese than the victorious outcome of their war for independence, it can only be the painful memories of all that was lost in order to achieve that very victory. For this alone, over my ten years of exile and incarceration, watching the world change around me, I felt remorse.

[From the 'Korean Writers Reading in the US' publication accompanying an event held October 9-18, 2003 at three US universities. This passage translated by Maya West.]

Mmmmmmm.... dioxins

2005-03-12T14:53:00.000Z

At Any Street Corner, who I've been meaning to link to for a long time, has everything you ever wanted to know about Agent Orange. Apparently a court in the US has just thrown out a case brought by 4 million Vietnamese victims against the US chemical companies (Monsanto, Dow etc) that manufactured the stuff.

It's worth remembering that the substance was also used by the US military in Korea in the late 60s when they thought the DMZ was getting a bit too overgrown and they might not be able to see the Commies for the trees. It's also worth remembering that Korea has more than its fair share of Vietnam vets registered as victims of Agent Orange - 40,000 - of whom some 60% are defined as suffering from depression.

Chinese share of world output still only half what it was in 1820

2005-03-11T10:59:00.000Z

Thought I should mine the BBC's China week a bit more (if that's not an unfortunate metaphor considering the thousands of miners who die in China every year).

Anyway, I found this interesting article providing a longer term historical perspective on China's current economic performance:

[China] has usually been a rather bigger player in the global economy than it is today.
Two thousand years ago, it produced a quarter of total world output.

A thousand years ago, it produced almost a quarter of world output.

And in 1820, it produced a third of the world's output.

China's relatively poor performance of the last two centuries has been an historical aberration, with the country falling behind Europe which learned to industrialize and develop quickly.

[...]

In the year 1AD, the per capita income of China was $450, (in 1990 prices).

In 1950, the per capita income was more or less the same ($439 in 1990 prices).

By 2001, that had risen to $3,583.

The author bases his piece on a report from the OECD called The World Economy: Historical Statistics which should make for very interesting reading (I want this book!). Seems to be quite strong material for some of the arguments that have been made by the historian Kenneth Pomeranz in his book The Great Divergence (one of those books I'll get around to reading one of these days...).

As for the figures quoted above, two things strike me: if China's share of world output was one third in 1820 and it is 15% now, then it is still only half way to recovering the position it held in the world economy almost two hundred years ago. And second, the comparison of per capita income in 1AD and 1950 must (I would guess) conceal much higher figures somewhere in beween. Surely the boom periods of the Song, Ming etc must have produced growth that led to higher per capita incomes than that of the mid Han Dynasty period.

Of course there is also something missing from this interesting article: what was the reason for the 'historical aberration' of the last couple of centuries? Well, to be slightly glib you could explain by saying that the capitalist mode of production was able to dominate societies in Europe before it could establish itself firmly in China. But this would ignore the history of political and military struggle between Europe and China that took place in the nineteenth century and in which China was ultimately defeated.

(I don't normally like to take the piss out of someone else's writing but I did think this phrase in the article was rather a good mixed metaphor if ever I heard one: "During the twentieth century, though, China was batting well below its weight.")

Kimchi's heroic exploits

2005-03-08T17:25:00.000Z

I have to admit that I am a bit obsessed by the Korean obsession with health food fads. Whereas in the UK the government tries somewhat desperately to get everyone to eat five small bits of vegetation every day and Jamie 'the pukka muppet' Oliver becomes a hero for teaching schoolkids how to tell the difference between a leek and a kiwi fruit, in Korea it seems that every kind of food is scrutinised for its possible efficacy in fighting cancer and just about every other disease known to man. In the ongoing mission to prove that the Korean diet is the healthiest in the world, the findings of intrepid food scientists are regularly reported in the Korean press, often leading to a major shortage of whatever it is they are extolling the virtues of this time round.

In yesterday's Korea Times it was announced that kimchi (Korean fermented chili and cabbage) is "helpful in fighting bird flu". Before anyone starts to panic I think that a kimchi shortage is rather unlikely and the Korean government almost certainly has a backup 'kimchi mountain' somewhere in the country for just such occasions.

Apparently though, kimchi even has its own species of bacteria named Leuconostoc Kimchii, and someone has actually been working on its genome - true dedication to kimchi. Another interesting fact: kimchi is also effective against Newcastle disease. Not sure what this is but it sounds nasty, and possibly involves wandering around drunk on a Saturday night in December wearing only a T-shirt.

Perhaps I should begin to collect these food fad stories from the Korean press for posterity or some sort of pseudo-anthropological research project. On second thoughts, perhaps I won't.

China on everyone's minds

2005-03-07T19:58:00.000Z

Just watched the first in a series of reports on Newsnight this week about changing China. In fact the BBC is having a whole China-themed week (this is quite a fashion these days - I seem to remember the Guardian also had such a week a few months ago). Tonight's report focused on class, profiling a gigantic seafood restaurant in Tianjin employing 700 people.

Talk of China's 'growing inequality' has become quite a cliche of late (as though China was once not unequal...) but some of the figures in this programme really brought home the fact that China is now one of the most unequal countries in the world. For example, waitresses in the restaurant (who live in a dorm inside the massive building) earn the equivalent of 20 pounds a month ($35?) while a head chef, who is only middle management level earns 400 pounds a month - 20 times as much. You can only guess at what the chief executive of the company that owns the restaurant is earning.

One of the most interesting parts of the report was when they interviewed a group of young people in a private karaoke room at the restaurant having the sort of after work booze-up / sing-along that employees all over East Asia seem to love. It turned out that they were actually workers from the paintshop of the local Toyota car plant letting off a bit of steam. They earn 100 pounds a month and are obviously at the relatively privileged end of the Chinese working class, but they did not seem all that impressed with their wages. As the reporter pointed out, one of the biggest worries for the Chinese ruling class is how to suppress demands for higher wages, particularly among this sector of skilled manual workers.

There is also quite a nice article on BBC News about the Chinese diaspora in the UK - Britain's so-called 'hidden minority' of 250,000 (not so hidden around where I live, as there seem to be quite a lot of mainland Chinese labourers). Funnily enough, the first person profiled is venture capitalist and fellow SOAS student Johnny Hon, who is also a pal of Kim Jong-il's I believe.

Unification and the Korean nation state

2005-03-06T18:29:00.000Z

Time for some more on one of my favourite subjects: Korean history, nationalism and internationalism. There has been a rather thought-provoking and unusual exchange of letters in the pages of the Korean socialist newspaper Ta Hamkke which I've mentioned in passing before. A letter in issue 49 brought up a number of interesting questions regarding Korean nationalism and unification. The correspondent first questioned whether internationalism was really a way of overcoming nationalism as it presupposes the existence of nation states and nationalism, even in the very word we use. More interestingly, the writer of the letter put forward the idea that unification of North and South Korea was not a progressive demand and something that would only really benefit the bourgeoisie as it would be equivalent to the completion of the Korean nation state, paralleling the process that happened in many parts of Europe in the late nineteenth century. This is possibly the most blasphemous statement that a Korean of any political persuasion can make. It is completely ingrained in Korean society that it is the destiny of Korea to be reunited as a single nation (and people), arguments are really only limited to how this can best be achieved. While there might be problems with this position, it is certainly very refreshing to find someone thinking well outside of the usual frames of reference and a million miles from the nationalistic nonsense that often passes for common sense even on the left in South Korea.

In the latest issue of Ta Hamkke Kang Tong-hun responds, arguing (correctly I think) that the first point is really little more than sophistry. I suppose it is in the nature of language that words for new or as yet unfulfilled concepts have to be based on already existing words. So the word 'internationalism' contains the word 'nation' even though it aims to produce the negation of the nation. Likewise, the Sino-Korean word 국제주의 (kukchejuûi - internationalism) contains the character 國 meaning country / state / nation. But of course concepts are created to help us understand the world and we cannot understand the world better by studying the logical connections between concepts or words in the abstract, but only by using these concepts to help us analyse concrete reality.

Kang responds to the second point by giving a good basic outline of an internationalist position on national liberation struggles: labour or progressive movements in oppressor countries should support the struggles of oppressed nations against their colonisers / occupiers, where hopefully workers will begin to see the advantage of a more internationlist position themselves and attempt to go beyond the national liberation struggle to a social revolutionary struggle which will also target their own national bourgeoisie.

But how does this apply to the question of Korean unification and ending what the Koreans call the 'system of division' (분단체제)?

Of course, on the Korean peninsula today the problem of establishing a nation state no longer exists. North Korea and South Korea have both established their own nation states and so the demand for unification is not in itself a progressive one.

However, having suffered Japanese colonial rule, then the forced division of the country by the Soviet and US imperialist powers and afterward the experience of an actual war and the threat of further war on various occasions, it is not particularly strange that the Korean people should want unification. If the mass of working class people say that they want unification then we can support this tactically.

Unification is not simply something that will strengthen the capitalists. As one can see from the example of German unification, unification can give rise to greater instability. Saying that we support unification absolutely does not mean that we become uncritical followers of nationalism. We insist on solidarity between the workers of North and South Korea and the necessity of a fundamental social revolution that goes way beyond unification.

I don't need to add much to this... But I thought what is most significant about the above argument is that it shows clearly how drawing conclusions about the position socialists should take when faced with a particular situation cannot be based mechanically on abstract principles. Although Kang agrees that Korean unification is not in itself a progressive demand, this does not mean that socialists cannot support it - socialists should always be engaging tactically with the real political world.

E-mail is so late nineties early naughties

2005-03-05T17:18:00.000Z

Interesting story in the Guardian a couple of days ago about e-mail trends in South Korea. It seems that e-mail use has started falling for the first time ever, and quite significantly. Two things intereted me about this article. First, the idea that young people in particular are shunning e-mail for other forms of communication like homepages, IM and texting. But actually, thinking about it, has e-mail ever been that popular with teenagers? The idea that it's hard to find someone in a Korean PC Bang using e-mail doesn't surprise me in the least - everyone's usually glued to Warcraft or whatever the latest game is whenever I've walked into one. Internet cafes in the sense Europeans think of them don't really exist in Korea.

Second, there's this whole thing that South Korea is now seen as the primary trendsetter in the internet world - this is where we look if we want to predict the future of the net elsewhere. Actually, I'm not so sure about this. Is Korea really so far ahead of everywhere else or is there just a diversification in the way the net is being used in different countries? Seems as though blogs haven't taken off there, but then this whole homepage craze has never really happened here as far as I know. And the online gaming thing - somehow I find it hard to imagine professional gamers getting sponsored by big corporations in the UK.

McCormack on NK nuke announcement

2005-03-01T23:27:00.000Z

Dogstew have flagged up a new article by Gavan McCormack about the latest goings-on in the on-going US-NK nuclear soap opera. I haven't had a chance to read it all myself yet, but judging by previous stuff of his that I've read it should be well worth a read if you're interested.

The real Sinûiju uprising

2005-03-01T22:18:00.000Z

The city of Sinûiju on the Korea-China border was not only the setting for North Korea's attempt at re-enacting the Kwangju uprising (see last post) but also the site of a genuine uprising that took place in November 1945 - an incident that is not widely known about.

Around three months after the Russians had occupied the northern half of the Korean peninsula, resentment began to boil over towards the occupying troops and the hand-picked Korean Communists they were putting in positions of power. In her book The Korean Peninsula from an Internationalist Perspective (국제주의 시각에서 본 한반도) Kim Ha-yong gives a good account of the events, following the testimony of Ham Sôk-hôn (leader of a local People's Committee and later a well-known democracy activist in the South). An extract from my translation (a work in progress):

Ham Sŏkhŏn points out that the direct cause of the Sinǔiju Incident was the occupation of the local law courts by the Communist Party and the establishment of their local headquarters there without consulting the provincial People’s Committee. “The behaviour of the Communist Party became more arrogant, absurd and violent by the day. This was the single most important cause of the incident.”

The students who came out to demonstrate on November 23 at Sinŭiju condemned the looting by Soviet soldiers, the improper conduct of Han Ung, security chief of North Pyŏng’an provincial People’s Committee, interference in the local school and the inhuman mistreatment of Korean refugees returning from China and Manchuria. At the time there were some 3500 middle and high-school students in the city and the most of them took part, marching in three different directions to hold demonstrations. About 1000 of these students laid siege to the former Sinŭiju court building, where the Communist Party had set up its North Pyŏng’an headquarters. The students crowded their way up to the third floor with the intention of occupying it. But at that moment, from somewhere on the third floor the sound of a pistol shot fired by a Soviet officer rang out and one student collapsed with blood pouring from his head. Around 100 members of the poandae [security police] then appeared from the basement of the building and began beating the students with their rifle butts. The sound of machine gun fire could be heard coming from behind the fleeing students as they scattered in various directions.

The well-prepared poandae crushed the attempted occupation in an instant. According to witnesses, between 15 and 24 people were killed and 168-350 injured. Immediately after the demonstration a wave of arrests began with around 1000 people rounded up. The Soviet secret intelligence service intervened directly in the interrogation of the arrested students. Of those arrested, a certain number were transferred to Soviet jails while the rest were detained in the poandae police cells. Ham Sŏkhŏn, who at that time was head of education and culture on the North Pyŏngan Peoples’ Committee, was among those arrested. During the Japanese colonial period he had been in and out of jail on at least five occasions, but after liberation he suffered his sixth period of imprisonment at the hands of the Soviets.

One thing that struck me about this incident and similar ones from that period was that foreign military occupations seem to have a certain logic to them - a course which they follow regardless of the circumstances and location. The similarities between what happened when the Soviets occupied North Korea and when the US Army occupied parts of Iraq in 2003 are quite striking and I'm sure that a hundred other military occupations could demonstrate some of the same similarities. A particular recurring flashpoint seems to be the use of public buildings - the occupying army may already be carrying out acts of theft, rape and murder but it is often conflict over a specific physical site that seems to set the spark to the tinder.

As I read about the uprisings in Sinûiju and Hamhûng I immediately thought of Fallujah, where the initial demonstrations also erupted over the requisitioning of public buildings and where they were also met with overwhelming force. Of course, the Soviet occupation of northern Korea and the US occupation of Iraq have played out in very different ways. Unlike the Americans, the Soviets and their Korean Communist allies (Kim Il-sung foremost among them) took a conciliatory stance after these events and were later able to win large sections of the population around with reforms that benefitted peasant farmers and so on. The US doesn't seem to have been so tactically astute, offering little to the Iraqis apart from death and privatisation.

North Korea's Tiananmen that never was

2005-02-28T23:57:00.000Z

I was told rather a funny North Korea story by a friend the other day. Haven't been able to scrape anything up from Google to back it up but I'm sure there's something out there on the internet somewhere... Anyway, you'll just have to take this as a secondhand anecdote and make of it what you will.

In 1991 North Korea's all-important film industry (see previous posts), set out to make a film of South Korea's Kwangju uprising of 1980. When it came to finding a suitable stand-in for the city of Kwangju the filmmakers were helped somewhat by the Japanese colonial regime's penchant for building near-identical city halls all over the country in the German colonial style. So the streets and city hall of Sinûiju up on the border with China could double for those of Kwangju way down in South Chôlla Province. They duly rounded up volunteers from among the local army and workplaces and had them dress like the student protesters of early 80s South Korea, re-enacting scenes from the actual event: demonstrations, pitched battles and so on. It happens, however, that Sinûiju is only separated from the Chinese city of Dandong by the river Yalu and by some coincidence a BBC reporter was in the city at the time. Looking across the river he saw the mass demonstrations with their pro-democracy placards and banners and immediately reported that a democratic uprising was taking place in North Korea. The story had spread around the world before the mistake was discovered.

You say Takeshima, I say Tokto, let's call the whole thing off

2005-02-27T11:07:00.000Z

It's good to see that the Japanese are dredging up the question of Tokto again as it gives me a chance to write a topical post on the subject rather than just a random rant. For those who want to know, Tokto (or the Liancourt Rocks as they are quaintly known in English) refers to a collection of rocky outcrops in the sea east of the Korean peninsula (thus between said peninsula and the Japanese archipelago) claimed by both Korea and Japan but occupied by Korean troops. Lost Nomad has a nice picture, which while making Tokto look as pretty as possible, shows the general uninhabitability of this collection of rocks.

So, we have some rocks in the middle of the sea with very little strategic significance (no harbour, no landing strip, little in the way of fresh water I assume) but for some reason they are important enough for the Japanese ambassador in Korea to say baldly:

"There exists a clear difference in views between South Korea and Japan over the issue of Takeshima [Tokto],’’ Ambassador Toshiyuki Takano was quoted as saying in a meeting with foreign reporters in Seoul. "It is historically and legally Japan’s territory."

They are also important enough for the response in Korea to be one of outrage, even in a left-leaning newspaper such as Hankyoreh:

They have essentially invaded our territory; they just haven't done it with gun and sword... Japan's doublefaced, shameless behavior should be tolerated no longer. Japan needs to be clearly warned that depending on the situation, Korean-Japanese relations could need a complete reevaluation.

So what is it that gets such a broad spectrum of people from the Korean [nationalist] left to Japanese government officials so excited about these rocks? Well, before I get to that I have to admit that the point of this post is really to plug an excellent article by Han Kyu-han (in Korean) that appeared in Ta Hamkke last August at the time of the last minor blow-up over Tokto.

The author does an excellent job of looking at the actual history of Tokto and the interest of Koreans in it. He shows that attempts by nationalist historians to claim that Tokto was considered to be 'Korean' territory back in the Silla period (668-935 AD) are highly spurious. The references cited from the Samguk sagi history do not refer to Tokto but to the much bigger island of Ullûngdo and even that wasn't considered part of the Silla kingdom but as a separate country (named Usan'guk, which bizarrely sounds like 'land of the umbrellas' in modern Korean). Later kingdoms on the Korean peninsula generally continued to show a lack of knowledge or interest in Tokto and at the end of the Chosôn dynasty when renowned patriot Min Yông-hwan saw the islets he called them "Japanese islands".

Han points out that the real interest in Tokto began in the 1950s under Syngman Rhee when a fierce fishing war developed between Japan and South Korea. Apparently, between 1947 and 1962 some 282 Japanese fishing boats were seized, around 3500 Japanese fishermen were detained and eight were killed. So the interest in Tokto has to be understood as part of the process of formation of South Korea's modern nation state. More precisely, the collection of rocks in the middle of the sea is important to the Korean ruling class as a nationalist symbol that can always be revived to turn people's attention toward old anti-Japanese feelings. Although the Japanese state is somewhat different to South Korea (as an erstwhile coloniser rather than a post-colonial nationalist regime), the Japanese ruling class seems to view Tokto in much the same way: as a means for mobilising nationalist sentiment. As Han puts it:

The rulers of both South Korea and Japan consistently use the Tokto problem as a means of expanding and reproducing nationalist feelings. South Korean leaders are constantly promoting the fear that Japan is about to attack Tokto at any moment. But this is nothing more than ideology.

Actually, as he points out, previous South Korean governments have not always shown that much patriotic love for Tokto - during negotiations with the Japanese in the 1960s, Kim Jong-pil apparently offered blow it up as a solution.

This is not, of course, to minimise the dangers of Japan's recent turn to the right and its attempts to rebuild itself as a major military power (particularly with its participation in the Iraq quagmire, outlined brilliantly by Gavan McCormack in NLR 29). But the only way for Koreans to fight this is to ignore the nationalist rhetoric peddled by politicians and commentators and practise solidarity with ordinary Japanese people who will also suffer at the hands of a new era of Japanese militarism.

Brothers in arms

2005-02-24T16:43:00.000Z

According to an article in today's Guardian, one of the points of EU-US conflict lurking under the surface of Bush's recent PR visit to Europe is the arms embargo on China (a subject I've touched on before). European arms manufacturers obviously have the smell of fresh Chinese cashish in their noses and aren't going to let go until they get the embargo lifted. And the British government, as always a stalwart supporter of its arms industry, is at the forefront of the push:

Gordon Brown, the chancellor, was touting for business in Beijing and Shanghai while Mr Bush was in Brussels.

Strikingly, this is an issue on which Britain now stands firmly on the European side of the argument rather than in its traditional mid-Atlantic bridging mode. The foreign secretary, Jack Straw, has signalled that he wants the matter settled before July, when the UK takes over the EU's rotating presidency from Luxembourg.

Clearly, the developing confrontation between a rising superpower and a waning one is also having major repercussions for Europe's role in global geo-politics. The US obviously wants to keep Europe in line on this one and prevent countries like France and Germany from beginning to build some sort of 'counterbalancing' alliance to hold back what they perceive to be US 'hyperpower'.

US on the ropes...

2005-02-23T14:48:00.000Z

A piece by Kim Ha-yong in the latest issue of Ta Hamkke says some similar things on the North Korea nuclear issue to a post I wrote a week or two ago. In other words: we all knew Rumsfeld could be funny, but his reaction to the North Korean announcement is taking comedy to a new level. She goes further though, arguing that what this whole charade demonstrates more than anything is the weakness of the American imperial project at the moment:

I want to bring up an important point that the social / citizen’s movements haven’t really paid much attention to. Actually, this point is the most interesting aspect of North Korea’s nuclear declaration.

That is, the extent to which the US, the “world’s only superpower,” has lost face over this and is experiencing a huge loss of authority.

In the light of the United States’ image as a superpower, one would expect them, at the very least, to issue a fiery denunciation of the North’s declaration and increase economic sanctions or even to make military threats. This would be particularly in line with the expectations of those in the citizens and social movement camp who talked exaggeratedly about a ‘Korean peninsula crisis” after Bush’s reelection.

However, the White House, directly confounding these expectations, attempted to minimise the significance of the situation, announcing that this was just “rhetoric that has been around for a long time” and that “there was no crisis.”

Kim Ha-yong points out that the nuclear announcement, far from being a reaction to US military threats to the North and the increasing threat of a war on the peninsula as many on the Korean left have claimed, was only possible precisely because the US is not in a position to attack North Korea:

By making use of the fact that the US is currently in a weak position, with its feet tied in the Middle East, and announcing its possession of nuclear weapons, North Korea is attempting to pressure the US into changing its negotiating position (so far the Americans have only been playing for time) and urge it to enter into direct talks.

Exactly how relations between the US and North Korea will develop in the future will not be decided wholly on the basis of the power relations between the two states. As the circumstances surrounding the North’s nuclear announcement have shown, the ability of US imperialism to enforce its rule everywhere in the world will largely be settled in Iraq and the Middle East.

So, as Kim rightly says, Iraq and the broader situation in the Middle East, is now key to what happens on the Korean peninsula. In fact, it seems that Iran is particularly crucial, hence Condi Rice’s desperate attempts to paint Iran’s “peaceful nuclear power programme” as more dangerous than North Korea’s “actual possession of nuclear weapons”. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has claimed that the orders for the bombing of Iran have already been signed by Bush and it will take place in June (let’s wait and see). But it does occur to me that one reason that Iran has suddenly become so important is that Iraq is rapidly becoming an Iranian possession rather than an American one (Shiite dominated government, intelligence assets in high places and so on).

South Korean piracy on the high seas of literature

2005-02-22T10:24:00.000Z

In amongst the usual stuff about floral baskets and flailing imperialists an article caught my eye yesterday on the KCNA (North Korean news agency) website. It concerns the matter of copyright and an apparent controversy over South Korean publishers reprinting books by writers from the north without getting permission or providing royalties.

The particular novel in question in this article is "Rim Kkok Jong" (North Korean spelling) by Hong Myông-hûi. An interesting aspect of this is that the novel was written in the 1920s, long before North Korea ever existed, so it is actually the author's grandson, also a writer, who is the injured party. Most of the article is filled with his indignation at the idea that these unscrupulous publishers could be making money out of his grandfather's book, but there are some interesting points too:

Human rights and right to property are strictly protected in the DPRK under the law on copyright recently adopted at the Supreme People's Assembly as they were in the past.

An infringement upon copyright means stealing other's intellectual creation. Therefore, such act can never evade public rebuff and denunciation for its immorality although "law" may connive at it.

Ok, so we can skip over the part about human rights... What interests me most is North Korea's interest in adhering to the norms of the international capitalist system. In fact, not only is there a deep concern with adhering to capitalist norms, but these appear to be of the free market variety as opposed to the state capitalist flavour - ie individual private property is sacred. I don't think this should really be very surprising, but it does perhaps indicate an increasing interest in North Korea in the market.

Reading this brought to mind an article I read by Eric Lee (of Labourstart) a few years ago concerning Napster. Unfortunately it seems to have fallen into the internet black hole from whence nothing returns, but by some miracle I saved a copy. He argued that peer-to-peer file sharing was a classic example of new technology outgrowing capitalist relations of production - this is a means of distribution of a product which can only really work in a socialist society. Actually, four years and a number of legal onslaughts down the line big business seems to be finding ways to make a decent profit out of mp3s after all. But Eric did make some good points about this whole business of intellectual copyright etc:

When we look at the revolution in digital music and the broader issues raised by peer-to-peer networking, which allows the free distribution not only of music but of books, articles, art works, software, and so on, we can begin to sketch out a socialist program for culture and the arts in the twenty-first century. That program would include a guaranteed income for musicians, writers and artists, based on state support, while also guaranteeing no state control over the arts.

In such a society it is unlikely that any individual musicians are going to become very rich, but with the way technology is heading now, they're not going to get rich under capitalism either. In fact, the vast majority of musicians (and writers and artists) are well aware of the fact that only a tiny fraction of them will ever earn the big bucks. The vast majority of them struggle like the rest of us to make ends meet.

Of course, this does not mean to say that while we live under capitalism (and North Koreans clearly do just as much as the rest of us) artists and their families are not entitled to recompense for their work. But, unlike North Korea, we should also be challenging the currently prevailing means by which artistic products are produced and distributed.

Who you calling progressive?

2005-02-20T22:15:00.000Z

Shout out to Antti for an excellent bitesized post on two rather overused Korean words - chinbo (progress) and sômin (ordinary people). These slippery words have a tricky life of their own in an ever-changing political and ideological context.

On the word sômin, I've always had the impression that it has something of a petit bourgeois ring about it. In other words, it refers to not only workers but also small businessmen and women (the sort of people who are sometimes referred to as 'ordinary hardworking people' in the UK). This seems to be somewhat in contrast to the word minjung (people, masses) which has more of a meaning of the dispossessed, or the classes in opposition to the ruling class, while carefully avoiding such a specific meaning as working class or proletariat. My impressions about the nuances of Korean words are often wrong, so Antti might correct me about this.

I'm also interested by the article that Antti quotes from referring to the criteria for being considered a 'progressive'. It is definitely the case that sections of the Korean left believe that one's attitude to North Korea determines whether one is progressive (진보적) or not. So one can only be progressive if one has an 'open minded' view of the north (ie is to some degree supportive) and supports unification (presumably with the North Korean regime to some extent intact).

Of course this is clearly nonsense, in fact in my view it is only possible to be progressive if you are opposed to the North Korean regime, that is, if you are on the side of workers and 'ordinary people' rather than the side of North Korea or South Korea or the US. Of course peaceful unification of the Korean peninsula would certainly be some form of progress and infinitely preferrable to whatever the warped brain of Rumsfeld might think up as a solution for the Korean people. But I don't think that such a unification will be achieved by throwing in one's lot with one of the least progressive regimes on the face of the earth.

On a side note, there are, it seems, people on the Korean left who don't support the idea of unification at all. A correspondent in the latest issue of Ta Hamkke argues that unification of the Korean peninsula would parallel the creation of nation states in western Europe in the late nineteenth century and could only benefit the capitalists. How can leftists (and internationalist leftists at that) call for the completion of a capitalist nation state? A very interesting point that may be problematic but certainly provides some food for thought.

World still here: Official

2005-02-19T15:31:00.000Z

Well, I've returned to civilisation and the world is still here.* It hasn't been blown away in a puff of nuclear smoke in my absence by a crazed man in a polyester suit, or a crazed man bearing more than a passing resemblance to a gorilla for that matter.

In the meantime, Counterpunch has produced a couple of interesting articles about the situation vis-a-vis North Korea, nuclear weapons etc. First was John Feffer's article, which offers some excellent analysis and background as well as healthy scepticism about many of the recent reported 'developments' both on the nuclear front and on North Korea's possible internal instability. Unfortunately, he falls into the good old-fashioned liberal position of offering some (rather modest) policy recommendations to the Bush administration, which is particularly amusing and unrealistic when you consider the nature of that government. But he does have some good points as well, eg:

With a quiescent public at home, regional allies pushing in different directions, and war off the agenda, the Bush administration is likely to choose the middle way of diplomatic stasis coupled with covert and nongovernmental destabilization. This "muddling through" approach is truly faith-based, for it relies on faith in the so-far-elusive collapse of North Korea.

The muddling through thing really does seem to summarise the Bush administration attitude to the DPRK. It might be somewhat better than outright aggression, but it does have the potential for an 'accidental outbreak' of hostilities, especially if, as Feffer believes, various covert operations are being pursued in the background. He also makes the important point in his conclusion that the US administration should not get too starry-eyed about the North Korean people being ready to welcome anything the neocons get up to. As we've seen with Iraq, hating a despot is one thing, loving US intervention is quite another.

Gregory Elich has produced an even more in depth piece for Counterpunch. He gives a detailed historical assessment of what exactly North Korea's nuclear deterrent is. It's a complex business, but worth reading if you're into that sort of technical stuff. Anyway, to cut a long story short, his conclusion is that the DPRK's February 10 announcement was a bluff and it is not able to produce nuclear weapons. What a shame, I thought it might have been the birth of another 'proletarian bomb' like those wielded for peaceful ends by the former USSR and China...

* Not that I'm implying that Wales is uncivilised... far from it. Just a turn of phrase, you know.

Heading for the hills

2005-02-12T21:03:00.000Z

Heading up into the hills for a few days so no blogging until the end of next week.

Known unknowns and known knowns

2005-02-11T10:36:00.000Z

It's almost hilarious to see the pantomime of Rumsfeld going "out of his way to say he still did not know with any certainty if North Korea possessed a working, deliverable nuclear weapon or not." So we have a country telling the US to its face that it has a nuclear weapons capability and the most hawkish of hawks is treating this as (in his own nomenclature) a known unknown, whereas only a couple of short years ago we had the massed ranks of the Bush administration declaring that Saddam Hussein's supposed imminent possession of a nuclear capability was a known known and using this as a pretext for war. As Bush put it in his 2003 State of the Union address:

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

Apparently, according to the now fully-discredited Iraqi defector Khidir Hamza, speaking in August 2002, Saddam would have had nuclear weapons by now (2005). Obviously this all turned out to be 24 carat horseshit.

The only conclusion to draw from Rummy's current attitude can be that the US doesn't particularly want a war with North Korea at the moment as it thinks that Iran looks like a much tastier target (if only things would quieten down a bit in Iraq). But what exactly the US administration's plan for North Korea is, is still a mystery, as it has been for the last four years.

Lest we all get too excited about North Korea's self-declaration of nuclear manhood, Jeffrey St. Clair has a good article on the current nuclear ambitions of the US. Apparently most of its stockpile of 10,000 nuclear warheads are too old and potentially 'unhealthy' and they need to build a new generation of bigger and better nukes. Meanwhile, the tactical mini-nukes and 'nuclear earth penetrators' may have suffered a bit of a setback but Rumsfeld is finding ways to bring their development back online.

I'll leave you with a small gem I found while browsing Bush's 2003 State of the Union (if we ignore Condi it's just about perfect):

Throughout the 20th century, small groups of men seized control of great nations, built armies and arsenals, and set out to dominate the weak and intimidate the world.

Cock-a-doodle-doo / 꼬끼오

2005-02-10T15:39:00.000Z

Well the year of the rooster (or chicken, take your pick) has begun and I feel I should offer some sort of poultry-themed post or at the very least a deep and meaningful new year's message. Perhaps something along the lines of: Happy Rooster Year, peace and chickens for all!

In other news: some jokers in Sydney seem to have been marking the occasion by catapulting frozen chickens at people's houses. Apparently rooster years can be bloody and unpleasant but they are good for the gold market (so that's alright then). The health prognosis isn't great either:

A local feng shui master is warning that problems with the respiratory tract and the intestines will dominate the first three lunar months, until early May, and will peak in the period from August to November.
In Hong Kong people are already nervous about a possible return of Sars and fear the rooster - the bird that's supposed to bring good fortune - may this year bring bird flu instead.

In the 60-year cycle 2005 is the Ûlyu (乙酉) year. The last was in 1945, which of course saw the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule. Previous to that, the Ûlyu year of 1885 was not exactly one to remember in Korean history, but it was noteworthy for Britain's one imperialist adventure on the Korean peninsula. Actually, Britain never quite made it onto the peninsula itself but made do with occupying Komundo island (고문도), renaming it in typical British style Port Hamilton, a measure apparently designed to foil Russian ambitions in East Asia (all part of the 'Great Game' I believe).

Unfortunately, the omens for this Ûlyu year are not good as North Korea has decided to mark it by announcing that it will not attend talks on the nuclear issue 'indefinitely', and has apparently also affirmed that it has nuclear weapons. So it looks like another year of brinkmanship-style fun for all the family.

Wanted: one million wage labourers

2005-02-08T23:09:00.000Z

A couple of new articles on labour and labour struggles in China. One from AP provides a good overview of the current situation and gives a good sense of the full throttle capitalist exploitation taking place in the Pearl River delta region. Apparently there were 5 million migrant workers in the Guangdong region in 1995 whereas now there are something like 30 million. In earlier posts I've linked to some good articles about the rising unrest in the area as workers' struggles begin to take on a more militant tone.

But a major contradiction is also raising its head within the economy of southern China: a huge labour shortage resulting from an increase in rural incomes on the one hand and over-exploitation in the factories of Guangdong on the other. There is no longer the same motivation for immigrant workers to flood in and accept whatever conditions they have to. The manufacturing boom in southern China, which means that European and US shops are stuffed full of £30 DVD players, is based on paying workers incredibly low wages. But this is clearly not sustainable:

A sample survey on migrant workers in the province's Pearl River Delta, conducted by the provincial statistics bureau, showed that the labor shortage had been been getting worse since it first appeared in 2004, Xinhua News Agency reported.

Since the first half of last year, about 72.9 percent of companies questioned had difficulties recruiting workers.

``If a company can provide a monthly salary of 1,000 yuan [HK$943] or above, it will not have difficulty in recruiting workers,'' the report quoted Fang Chaogui, director of the provincial labor and social security department, as saying. The average monthly salary for a migrant worker in Guangdong is 500-1,000 yuan, it said.

Strange goings on in Irbil

2005-02-07T23:33:00.000Z

After last month's apparent false alarm over the abduction of two Korean nationals in Iraq, it appears something odd is happening in northern Iraq once again. This time an arabic website has claimed that three Korean soldiers of the brigade based near Irbil have suffered a grenade attack leaving one dead and two injured, but the Korean government has quickly denied that anything has happened. Apparently this is part of a 'psychological war' being waged against the Korean troop presence in Iraq. Perhaps the reason that no Korean soldiers have been killed or injured (aside from the fact that they are stationed in the safest place the Korean government could find in the heart of Kurdish territory) is that they (like the Japanese soldiers further south) are rarely venturing out of their base. Oh My News also has a report on the inspection team which is being sent to Iraq to investigate alleged irregularities at the Korean base. It seems that anonymous documents have been turning up accusing a senior officer of corrupt practises in the procurement of food supplies for the Irbil base. The political sensitivity of the whole enterprise in Korea is such that seemingly small problems can take on great importance and it is difficult to say what might happen if there was really to be a major incident involving the soldiers based there. It is clear that the Iraqi guerillas are well aware of this sensitivity and are trying hard to exploit it, even if they are unable to launch an actual attack.