Category: Links

Mongolian Surnames

After losing their surnames during Communist Rule, since 1997 Mongolians have been required to have them again. This interesting saga has, among other things, led to everyone wanting Genghis Khan’s tribal name “Brojigin.” Read more about this on this posting at Keywords and this article. I also talked a little bit about Mongolia’s national fascination with Genghis Khan here.

Annette Lu: Let’s Move Aboriginal Storm Victims to Central America

The Taiwanese Vice President has always been a bit loopy, but really… Read more in the pro-DPP Taipei Times. She also said that, “The government must have an advanced immigration policy, because Taiwan is so small while the population is increasing quickly.” Hmm…shifting an aboriginal population overseas…wouldn’t that make it an emigration policy? Seriously though, this issue does bring to the fore the issue of environmental preservation versus the rights of native populations to hunt and continue traditional practices. (via Taipei Kid)

New DPRK related documents

There is a great collection of Cold War related docs at Woodrow Wilson Cold War International History Project. There is a really interesting collection of articles and (and in many cases newly discovered) primary documents related to the DPRK. (Thanks to Budaechigae for this awesome link) Incidentally, I am not really comfortable with many of the Korea related blogs around which constantly refer to the DPRK as the “norks.” I don’t know anything about the origin of the term but it has a similar ring to “japs”, “chinks”, and “gooks” etc. It is interesting to note that I haven’t seen any of them refer to the South Koreans as “soks” so I think there is a good possibility they are engaging in a kind of classic dehumanizing objectification of a perceived enemy. I hope they might consider using “DPRK” or even “N.K.” or something if they want an easy abbreviation for North Korea.

Scott Sommers: English Teachers as Migrants

Scott Sommers in Taiwan has a very interesting collection of postings on the issue of English Teachers as Migrants over at his Taiwan Blog. While the issues covered in the postings vary and I don’t have time to give my own take on everything here, I found lots of fascinating little tidbits. One of the postings has statistics showing that Canadian teachers outnumber American teachers, and there is a third large group of teachers: South Africans (17.66%) with South Africans being the largest single group in Taipei county. I have noted a similar prominence of Australian teachers in Japan (though I have no statistics on hand) and on the bullet train yesterday, I noticed that all the English announcements were done by an Australian.

Korean Media and the Political Pendulum

Joel at Far Outliers mentions an article about a trend towards the “suppression of free speech” in South Korea. In addition to the harassment that a “free North Korea” group has apparently gotten from “self-styled ‘progressive'” protesters discussed in the article by Aidan Foster-Carter, Joel mentions the recent bizarre (and inexcusable) banning of online blogs by the South Korean government in an attempt to prevent distribution of footage of the recent beheading of a Korean hostage. He refers us to the great blog NKZone which also has a posting on this (pretty much any blog related to Korea has been talking about this of late).

My only concern with the Foster-Carter article and the sometimes rabid responses to the recent censorship and current left swing of Korean politics on the usually deeply conservative English-language blogs about Korea (in particular Marmot’s Hole and Flying Yangban over at GOPKorea – I should take care to note that despite my own raving liberal politics, I still read these two blogs, which are often excellent sources for recent Korea related news) is that I believe they are portraying Korea—and Koreans—as emotional slaves to political fashion who swing from one political extreme (authoritarian dictatorship and anti-communist ideology) to the other (a pro-unification, pro-North Korean regime) without conceding the exceptionally complex adjustments and changes that are going on in Korean society. One person whose opinions I respect the most on this are those of my friend Lim Jaehwan. His most recent posting on the Korean media emphasizes the continuing dominance of conservative newspapers in Korea, even as populist or left-leaning alternative media sources like OhMyNews are growing in popularity.

The “free North Korea” and “pro-America” segments of Korean society didn’t just die overnight. Nor, for all its faults and recent blunders, does the young and more radical government of South Korea mark the establishment of a North Korean puppet in the south that will crush all voices of “freedom” and dissent. The pendulum has surely swung, but it swung partly as a result, I believe, of a number of contingent political factors (the recent impeachment crisis, desire for reform, etc.) that may not consistently serve the current ruling party in the future. The new Uri Party has had, and will surely continue to have, its share of political excesses, but if it survives another election, it may undergo a process of “professionalization” similar to what is happening with the Taiwanese ruling party now. The adjustment from a party made up of old protesters who, upon gaining power, gathered in the halls of government to sing old anti-government protest songs (Jae – I’m waiting for you to post the details about this!) to one that can function with the bureaucracy, make level-headed and long-term policies, and appeal to mainstream voters in a time when a mass reaction to a political crisis is no longer available—all this takes time.
Continue reading Korean Media and the Political Pendulum

Spiderman 2 and Civil-Military Relations

Sayaka has deeply immersed herself in reading related to her potential topic for PhD research: civil-military relations. She will be applying to PhD programs in the fall. I can tell it is getting serious—she has a great posting about Spiderman 2 and its connection to her topic. I also watched the movie in Korea (the first movie I have ever seen at a movie theater at 9:45 in the morning) and thought it was fantastic. Probably the best comic book movie I have seen to date. Frank Rich has a great editorial that I read in the International Herald Tribune which talks about Moore’s new film and Spiderman 2. He lauds Spiderman for being a movie that, “promotes a credo of justice without vindictiveness.” The article also touches on some of the things Sayaka mentioned. For Rich, Peter Parker is the hero that America could have been.

“With great power comes great responsibility” is the central tenet of his faith, passed down not from God but from his Uncle Ben (Cliff Robertson). He takes it seriously. Spider-Man wants to vanquish evil, but he doesn’t want to be reckless about it. Like the reluctant sheriff of an old western, he fights back only when a bad guy strikes first, leaving him with no alternative. He wouldn’t mind throwing off his Spider-Man identity entirely to go back to being just Peter Parker, lonely Columbia undergrad. But of course he can’t. This is 2004, and there is always evil bearing down on his New York.

Philosopher’s Tics

Ok, so I know I have a major case of this and it is one of my major personality flaws, but I really like to think that I’m a recovering patient:

“Philosopher’s Tics: The inability to pass over a faulty inference or fallacy in silence, or to correct it in a spirit of generosity; a relentless need to accuse one’s adversary of insufficient ‘rigor’, or of ‘misreading’ or ‘failing to understand’ one’s position; and, the worst of all, a constant need to drive home one’s greater intellect, at the expense of the merits of the argument.”

Via Crooked Timber and The Leiter Reports

Article: Losing the Soul of Japan

I have written an article for Chanpon, a wonderful website dedicated to mixed up cultures, identities, and a multicultural Japan. In the article I talk about the use of foreigners, especially those who have a deep appreciation for Japan’s traditional arts, in advertisement campaigns attempting to instill a sense of “lost culture.” I talk about some of contradictions that inevitably result from this and emphasize the illusory nature of an essentialist view of a national culture.