The Marmot's Hole

Curzon over at Coming Anarchy has a spot-on post on Hollywood’s lack fo respect for Japan. Read it. Here’s just a sample:

Which brings me to Memoirs of a Geisha, which just wrapped up filming in… Los Angeles (groan–you know where this is going). The executive producer was Steven Speilberg, which means… yup, a total lack of believability and realism. And most galling, practically all the actors and actresses were Chinese: Michelle Yeoh, Gong Li, Zhang Ziyi… I mean, gimme a break! None of these people look even remotely Japanese. (No, not all Asian people look alike.) Why not cast my sister as Sayuri? She’d probably give a better performance and could play a more convincing Japanese lady, even if she is a honky.

If Speilberg tried to pull this crap on the Koreans, there would be an uproar like never before – anyone remember the uproar that followed the latest 007 controversy, Die Another Day? Ditto on the Chinese – and, I think, most other self-respecting people. See, this is what Koizumi and the center-right LDP are talking about when they say that Japan needs a more nationalist-leaning citizenship. Most Japanese will just give bemused shrugs. Where are the furious netizens and black trucks when you need them to protest this bull?

Speaking of Koreans and Memoirs of a Geisha, need I remind folks that Kim Yoon-jin turned down a role in that film because she’s didn’t want her Hollywood debut to be playing a Japanese geisha?

Japanese entertainer Fueki Yuko, who goes by the name Yu Min in Korea, wants to marry a Korean guy. Or so she told SBS. The actress was rumored to have dated singers Kim Joeng-hun from UN and Shin Hye-seong from Shinhwa, as well as actor Park Su-hong. Nothing concrete has ever been pinned on her, however.

For previous posts on the actress, click here and here. Arirang TV’s Showbiz Extra also did a piece on her, which English-speaking fans may wish to check out.

As I mentioned yesterday, the NYT and WaPo reported that U.S. intelligence was “almost certain” that North Korea had exported nuclear materials to Libya. Well, the WaPo came back today and reported that U.S. and international experts weren’t so sure (link to Chosun Ilbo piece, as WaPo is undergoing maintenance):

The New York Times had reported Wednesday that testing of isotopic traces of the UF6 obtained from Libya after the country declared it was giving up its nuclear program pointed to North Korea as the source. The Washington Post reported the same day that traces of North Korean plutonium had been discovered in a canister obtained from Libya

But on Thursday the Post wrote, “The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which conducted tests on the materials, has not reached the same finding and believes that the evidence is inconclusive.” It said the U.S. did not report the results of its plutonium tests to the IAEA, and tests conducted by the international body on the canister using samples taken at the same time the U.S. obtained its problematic samples last spring did not detect plutonium.

The WaPo also posited several other theories, namely, a) that the Libyan UF6 came from Pakistan; b) the UF6 was made in North Korea and sold to Pakistan, which resold it to Libya; and c) North Korea exported raw uranium to Pakistan, which then converted it into UF6 and sold it to Libya.

The paper also quoted David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. who conceded it was possible the UF6 came from North Korea, but added:

That has been a theory since last spring. What amazes me is why this is coming out again now. The timing has to make one suspicious that the information is being used to pressure allies to take a tougher line with North Korea.

The Shimane Prefectural Assembly is pushing a local ordinance to designate Feb. 22 “Takeshima Islets Day.” Feb 22, of course, will mark the 100th anniversary of an announcement by the prefecture of a report that changed the name of the islets otherwise known in Korean as “Dok-do” to “Takeshima Islets” and placed them under the administration of the Oki Islands. Interestingly enough, the ordinance is scheduled to be voted on when the assembly meets on Feb. 23. What’s more, on Wednesday, the prefecture began running on four privately owned local TV stations 30-second spot ads that claim the islets are Japanese territory and call for their return to the Land of the Rising Sun.

Oh, and the prefecture has set up in front of the prefectural hall a big electronic signboard calling for more strenuous efforts to establish Japanese sovereignty over the rocks and demanding that they be returned.

Japan’s Kyodo News apparently reported last month that the prefectural assembly was planning to legislate a “Takeshima Islets Day.” Official and unofficial inquiries made by the Korean Foreign Ministry and North Gyeongsang Provincial Hall have so far been ignored.

To make things even more interesting, Korea’s North Gyeongsang Province – of which the rocks in question are a part – and Japan’s Shimane Prefecture signed a sister province deal in 1989. Provincial Governor Lee Eui-geun warned Thursday, however, that his province was considering a number of possible responses should the Shimane Prefectural Assembly go through with its plan, including a severing of sister province ties.

Shimane Prefecture also runs a website presenting its view on the Dok Islets dispute. Feel free to read it.

A couple of interesting interviews over at Mr. Gentry’s pad you may wish to read. Firstly, it appear Jodi from the Asia Pages took some time off from drinking rose bud tea to answer a couple of Andres’ questions. Then, of course, there was Nathan’s interview that I somehow missed – blame Mercenaries – that I now give a belated link to. Nathan, of course, is the man, the myth and certainly the legend behind The Argus, the preeminent blog on Central Asian affairs.

Well, the commander of the Korea Army Training Center in slightly-less-than-lovely Nonsan has been issued a warning and 11 other officers will face disciplinary measures over the infamous “shit-eating” incident that took place last month. The Army will also tighten supervision of drill instructors. Interestingly enough, the Army is also setting explicit limits to the kind of physical and verbal abuse that may be dished out to new recruits. Namely, in order to cut down on verbal abuse, it will consider as infringements of human rights swear words exceeding the level of something like “야! 이 놈아.”

All I can say is thank God these regulations weren’t implemented in 1950, or the film “Taegugki” would have been considerably less interesting.

This means, of course, that Korean-Americans who find themselves accidentally drafted into the ROK Army will not have to reference dda’s post on Korean obscenity.

OhMyNews ran a two-part series on Unju Temple in Hwasun, South Jeolla Province with some great photos that readers may wish to check out, even if they can’t read the actual story. Unju Temple is, hands down, the most unique temple in Korea, with an assortment of rather odd-shaped stone pagodas, tons of roughly cut stone Buddhas and a giant reclining Buddha atop a hill. I’ve never seen anything like it anywhere else in the country.

Oh, and if you decide to pay it a visit, combine it with a visit to nearby Ssangbong Temple, which is one of my favorites.

If former Miss Korea Jeong A-reum doing golf-themed nudes doesn’t float your boat, I don’t know what will.

Link NOT work safe, even though it’s straight from the Chosun.com.

Both the New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting that analysis of nuclear material samples obtained from Libya has concluded “with 90 percent certainty” that the materials originated in the DPRK:

Nine months ago, international inspectors came up with the first evidence that the North may have provided Libya with nearly two tons of uranium hexaflouride, the material that can be fed into nuclear centrifuges and enriched into bomb fuel. Libya surrendered its huge cask of the highly toxic material to the United States when it dismantled its nuclear program last year.

Now, intelligence officials say, extensive testing conducted at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee over the last several months has concluded that the material did not originate in Pakistan or other suspect countries, and one official said that “with a certainty of 90 percent or better, this stuff’s from North Korea.”

It is unclear if there are any dissenting views in the government, though some outside experts have accused the administration of overstating intelligence on North Korea. Officials cautioned that the analysis of the uranium had been hampered by the fact that the United States has no sample of known North Korean uranium for comparison with the Libya material. The study was done by eliminating other possible sources of uranium, a result that is less certain than the nuclear equivalent of matching DNA samples.

One recently retired Pentagon official who has long experience dealing with North Korea said the new finding was “huge, because it changes the whole equation with the North.”

The U.S. is apparently taking the news seriously, to put it mildly:

Two senior officials on the National Security Council, Michael J. Green and William Tobey, told key officials in Asia about the alarming intelligence, a U.S. official said last night. He said the “sole reason” for the trip – officially billed as consultations about possible talks with North Korea about its nuclear program – was to brief Japan, South Korea and China about the information.

According to the Chosun Ilbo, however, at least one South Korean official said Green didn’t discuss North Korea’s reported nuke sales, but instead focused on restarting the six-party talks. Whatever.

Hard to make out a “Korean media response” as of yet, although the NYT and WaPo reports have gotten pretty wide coverage. A couple of reports, for example, in the Chosun Ilbo (English), JoongAng Ilbo (Korean) and Kyunghyang Shinmun (Korean) suggest that the neocons might be making a “media play” ahead of the State of the Union Address, especially because Bush is likely to refrain from calling Kim Jong-il dirty names. Meanwhile, according to the Chosun Ilbo, South Korean officials are not taking the reports seriously:

Privately, South Korean government officials were suspicious of the intention of the U.S media reports Wednesday. With U.S. President Bush’s key State of the Union address only a day away, the two major U.S. newspapers – the New York Times as well as the Post – both carried similar reports on North Korea’s nuclear program on the front page. Korean officials suspect that someone planted the reports.

Two interpretations suggest themselves. One group says that as the second Bush administration favors negotiations over putting pressure on the Stalinist country, U.S. hardliners are spreading misinformation against North Korea. Another school of thought says the Bush administration itself is trying to keep the pressure up and therefore fed the story to the papers. South Korean Foreign Ministry officials are not taking the reports seriously.

Well, Michael Green will be meeting with more Korean officials tomorrow, presumably in an effort to get people to take the reports seriously.

Apparently, National Police Agency chief Huh Joon-young has been advised by the Foreign Ministry to stay away from the Dok Islets this Lunar New Year. The nation’s top cop had planned to use the Lunar New Year’s vacation to visit police officers stationed on Ulleung Island and the nearby Dok Islets, protected from Japanese aggression by the ever vigilant Ulleung Island Coast Guard (which actually operates under the North Gyeongsang Province Police Agency). Those officers, of course, will not be going home for the holiday, so the police chief though it might be nice to go out there and encourage the guys. Maybe bring some rice-cake soup. The Foreign Ministry, however, told Huh to stay home, expressing concern over possible Japanese responses should the head of the police agency make an inspection of the islets. In particular, the ministry is known to be concerned that should Korea provoke Japan on the issue, Japan might attempt to have the Dok Islets recognized as a disputed territory and the matter referred to the World Court, where the Japanese reportedly have a lot of pull.

Sounds like an over-reaction to me, and besides, a refusal to send your own police chief to a territory under your control to visit men under his command might be construed in some places as an admission that the territory is, in fact, disputed, and that would seem to me the wrong message to send.

UPDATE: Netizens giving the Foreign Ministry a tough time on this, as should be expected. Some pretty funny comments from Cyberland for those who read Korean.

The St. Petersburg Times dedicated on Jan. 28 a front page piece to the activities of Korea’s Zaytun Division in Iraq, apparently the first U.S. media story exclusively dedicated to the role Korean troops are playing in the Middle Eastern country. It’s kind of interesting, and it does convey some of the good work the boys and girls with the Zaytun Division are doing in Arbil. Unfortunately, it also revealed a tendency GI in Korea warned about back in October, namely, the temptation to lock yourself away behind fortress walls lest something happen that leads to political problems back at home. As the St. Pete Times put it:

The region in which their soldiers are now based is the most stable in Iraq, thanks to 12 years of U.S. and British air cover that allowed the Kurds, a non-Arab group, to live independently from Saddam Hussein’s murderous regime.

The Kurdish region is so safe, relatively speaking, that a small unit of American soldiers stays in ordinary houses, with only modest protection, in a village near Irbil.

The Koreans, on the other hand, live in a fortress of razor wire, sand bags and blast walls in a remote area several miles from the city. No vehicles can approach without clearing at least two checkpoints with armed guards.

“This region is stable compared to other regions,” the South Korean captain said, “but there is no region in Iraq that is secure. If it were secure, instead of the military, there should be civilian companies and government” doing reconstruction work.

Local residents say the South Koreans rarely venture off their base, except for doctors and other medical personnel who staff a mobile clinic. Since November, the mobile clinic has paid a few visits to nearby villages, treating residents for minor ailments like toothaches and superficial burns.

Patients with more serious conditions go to a 30-bed hospital on the base. They are referred there by the Kurdish government’s Ministry of Health, and are transported on Hyundai coaches that say “We Are Friends” in English and Kurdish on the side.

Given the political situation back at home, it’s probably unavoidable that the troops remain, for the most part, on base. In fact, given the political situation at home, it’s amazing the troops are there at all.

Andrew Petty did a piece a couple of days ago in the Korea Herald on video games, North Korea and intra-Korean peace and reconciliation:

On the eve of agreements between North and South Korean leaders to unify the peninsula, a rebel North Korean general assumes power through a coup and threatens the world with nuclear weapons. And, it’s up to you to save the day.

This is the plot of “Mercenaries: Playgrounds of Destruction,” a third-person shooting game designed by LucasArts and Pandemic Studios for X-Box and PlayStation 2 consoles, which was released in the United States earlier this month.

But chances are it won’t get past the Korean censors. “Mercenaries” is the second such North Korean fantasy war game to come from the U.S. market and the first, “Ghost Recon 2,” never reached local shelves.

The Tom Clancy-inspired game was rejected by the Korea Media Rating Board shortly after it was released in November; it said the scenarios may upset ongoing reconciliation efforts between the Koreas.

Feel free to read the rest on your own. For what it’s worth, I bagged my first Ace card in Mercenaries today. Yes, I’ve had the game for a week already, but I’m a bit of a noobie in that genre. I was about to start on the Diamonds when the wife bounced me from the PS2 to watch The Village, which didn’t suck as bad as I had heard. As for Ghost Recon 2, I’ve only screwed around with it briefly – most of my PS2 time has been dedicated to Mercenaries and the exceedingly sweet Ace Combat 5.

One thing I wonder about Mercenaries and Ghost Recon 2 (more the latter) is whether, ironically enough, the game producers may have actually had Korea’s big-time game market in mind when they brought out the titles. Some of Red Storm Entertainment’s other titles like Rainbow Six were extremely popular in Korea, and I could see how someone over there – unaware of the current winds of reconciliation and cooperation blowing on the Korean Peninsula – might have been thinking, gee, we set one in Korea, and every middle school kid between Panmunjeom and Busan will buy it. Didn’t quite work out that way, but still, you gotta wonder…

We’ve been experiencing some technical issues here at the Marmot’s Hole. Anyway, the problem is being worked on. Hopefully figure out what’s going on.