Pen/Insular_Notes

If you want to make up for my complete lack of posting about the continuing struggle against US base expansion that is going on in and around the village of Daechuri near P’yongt’aek, then check out Cindy Sheehan’s article at ZNet on her recent visit there. Very strong stuff and absolutely guaranteed to make a large part of the Korean expat blogosphere foam at the mouth and turn purple in a most unattractive way:

In the ’80’s, Ronald Reagan famously said: “tear it down!” regarding the Berlin Wall. There are many more walls on Earth that separate people from their farmlands, families, jobs and country that need to be torn own, but so-called civilized nations are building more walls and fortifications to contain and control free human movement and expression and curb populations that are just trying to live their lives in the traditional ways that they always have.
…
Daechuri has become “ground zero” in the struggle against violent US military extremism. We Americans can no longer sit idly by and turn ignorant blind eyes to what Georgie Bushie does around the globe. The people of such places as Daechuri, Shannon, Pearl Harbor and Iraq are
our brothers and sisters whom we are allowing our governments to oppress and suppress.

(I like the way she’s picked up on the Korean pronunciation of Bush - v funny.)

UPDATE: For lots of foamy purpleness please see the comments at Marmot’s post on this. (I just love it when my predictions come true.) Don’t expect any actual argument over there though…

A pendantic note for Mr Carr: the pronunciation ‘Bushie’ is not an “artifact of accent” but an artifact of Korean orthography related to the way in which English words ending in ’sh’ are rendered in han’gul.

I wanted to highlight two very useful recent Korean articles that have been translated into English. Now that the Hankyoreh newspaper’s English site is fully up and running it seems that Vladimir Tikhonov’s regular columns are being translated into English. His latest piece is entitled “The flaws of ‘collapsist theory’” and points out that the illusions of the US ruling class over North Korea are based on false assumptions they have made about supposed similarities between the former Stalinist states of Eastern Europe and the DPRK.

Once again Kyle who runs the Counterfire blog has provided a great translation from the Counterfire newspaper setting out a response to the Korean government’s recent attempt to attack the Democratic Labour Party by accusing some senior members of spying for the North. A particularly good bit on the role of the National Security Law in South Korean politics:

The number of people arrested for breaking the National Security Law went up for the first time in 10 years this year. Right wing forces are once again wielding their traditional weapon against their scapegoats for the NK nuclear crisis.
This weapon is no doubt also helpful for Roh Moo-Hyun who, with his 10% approval rating, also needs a scapegoat for the dire political crisis he’s facing.

Roh is following the precedent of his predecessor Kim Yung-Sam, who remarked that “Once in office, I could see the necessity of keeping the National Security Law.”
Therefore it’s not just paranoid right wingers that cling to the National Security Law. The majority Uri Party, the Grand National Party, and the Democratic Party all wish to retain the Law in more or less its present form.

In other words, the National Security Law has been, and will continue to be, a favorite weapon of this country’s rulers regardless of their party affiliations.

It seems that a history carnival requires some sort of organising principle. Having rejected chronology and geography I thought about turning to the principles of Chinese cosmology and ordering everything under the five phases. But I soon realised that life is not as neat as the ancient Chinese had hoped, so it looks as though I’ll be keeping things random and serendipitous with a hint of geography.

Everything begins with a BANG
Even radio stations have blogs nowadays and WFMU’s blog has a very comprehensive introduction to the Tunguska Explosion of 1908, an event that fortunately occurred in one of Asia’s less populated regions. One wonders what the last century of Asian history would look like if this 40 megaton airburst had happened a few thousand kilometres further south.

The past as a foreign country
This great entry at Cliopatria illustrates the multi-ethnic, non-sectarian and tolerant history of Iraq with the story of an Armenian boy brought up by a Muslim tribal group and later reunited with his birth-mother and ‘re-inserted’ into his original Armenian Christian urban family. It has struck me every time that I’ve heard Iraqi expats speaking about the current conflict here in London just how incomprehensible it is for them that ethnic and sectarian conflict now appears to be the defining feature of their country (at least for outsiders anyway). It seems this sort of conflict really was unthinkable until a few years ago.

File under ‘Koreaphile’
Matt of Gusts of Popular Feeling, whose sheer volume of output frankly worries me, has just read the classic Korean colonial period novel ‘Three Generations’ and gives us a geohistorical guide to the places that appear in the book. Previously he provided a history of the late Choi Gyu-ha’s brief presidency and the coup that brought Chun Doo-hwan to power. And if you want more, there’s Matt’s post on The Independent and early newspaper publishing in Korea, complete with the English-language content from the first edition of the paper.

For more recent and nostalgia-tinged Korean history, Antti gives us video footage from one of Andre Kim’s 1960s fashion shows (originally from Ainslie Days), which makes for a nice comparison with these adverts for kimonos dating from 1960.

Wait, wait… I’m not finished with Korea just yet. The Sanchon Hunjang made one of his fleeting but ever so erudite appearances in October to parse a T’oegye poem composed about a pavilion located at Floating Rock Temple (浮石寺) in North Kyŏngsang Province - a place I visited a few years ago myself.

File under ‘Japanophile’
Indeed, Japanophilia and the uses and abuses of the term Zen are the subjects of a recent post at Frog in a Well: Japan. I rather liked this particular observation:

Zen is not just a sign of Japanese cool but a specific form of Mahayana Buddhism with its own distinct institutions. It has ritual, dogma, practices, and beliefs; it is not, or I guess I mean that it shouldn’t be, a substitute for Orientalist stereotypes. When was the last time you saw Jesus shampoo? Or “WebMuslim” being used as a kind of shorthand for some vaguely defined otherness?

In future whenever I see the word zen used in whatever its latest random marketing/pseudo-philosophy/coolness incarnation is, I will try to substitute the word Muslim.

I would also like to comment intelligently on Konrad’s impressive-looking post dissecting the 1970s Japanese film Shōrinji Kempō, but I will have to be brutally honest here and admit that I haven’t had time to read it properly yet. But there’s nothing to stop you doing so is there?

Not strictly historical I suppose, but Joel at Far Outliers writes about a subject I’m keen on myself: memory and the olfactory sense. He notes that the sycamore tree that he has enjoyed sniffing in Japan, Korea and North America, is actually a type of plane tree.

Meanwhile, Jodi at Asiapages posted a link to Dorothea Lange’s pictures of Japanese in WWII internment camps.

Middle Kingdom
Just discovered a blog with a wonderfully Chinese-literary sounding name, ‘Jottings from the Granite Studio’ (I think Liang Qichao’s collected works had a similarly odd, but high falutin title). The author has a very high quality post on the nature of the Chinese empire in its Qing and PRC guises - how is it that modern China includes so much that is not, er, Chinese?

The abilities and demands of the modern socialist nation quickly clashed with the desires of those on the periphery to maintain their own culture and political traditions. It was not entirely unprecedented. The CCP “socialist civilizing” project has something in common with the Confucian civilizing projects during the Qing carried out by Han officials such as Chen Hongmou in Southwest China, and “Sinicized” minority officials, such as Lan Dingyuan on Taiwan. But these tended to be ad hoc programs formulated to deal with the specific demands of localities with large non-Han populations. By contrast, the CCP civilizing project is a nationwide attempt to forge a unified “Chinese” national identity. The continued conflation of race, culture, and nation (just what does it mean to be “Chinese”?) further complicates the issue.

Our comrades at Frog in a Well: China have been busy as usual, providing some essential reading, and what can be more essential than a post with the words ’sex advice’ in the title? Alan Baumler describes the somewhat exploitative nature of ancient Chinese thinking on the female orgasm - it was a way for “The educated man [to] get energy out of the universe,” without giving too much in return. It occurs to me however, that all this ‘educated men getting energy from the universe’ stuff may have just been a clever ruse thought up by ancient Chinese women.

Meanwhile, Konrad Lawson looks at Chinese history through the lens of a recent Japanese travel guide. I’ve often wondered just how distorted my view of the history of certain countries has become due to Lonely Planet travel guides being my sole source of information.

Anyone who studies East Asian history will have to grapple with Chinese characters at some point or other, so Kerim’s post gathering together some useful online Chinese tools should be handy, even if you aren’t trying to find out how to write Tom Cruise in Chinese.

South of the river, where the swallows go
I have to admit that I have never ventured into the world of South and Southeast Asian blogging before, so this carnival may be a bit thin in that area. A few items did, however, make their way into my field of vision. First up is this piece from the Southeast Asia Archaeology blog on the teeth ‘decorating’ practices of early residents of the Philippines. Then there is this fascinating post at the Siam Sentinel on the limits of what can be said about Thai history in a country where negative opinions of the royal family are still taboo.

Moving over to South Asia, Chapati Mystery has a post that occupies the delightful interzone between Indo-English language and Korean middle-aged women, quoting from a translated Chosun Ilbo article that uses the word pukkah. Growing up in South London it was a long time before I knew that the commonly used word pukkah was of Hindi origin, so its use in a Korean context doesn’t seem too out there.

At Sepia Mutiny there is a fantastically detailed biographical entry and extensive comments section on Indian independence and civil rights activist, Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar, a member of the ‘untouchable’ Dalit caste. It leads me to wonder whether anyone has attempted a comparison of ‘untouchable’ castes in India, Japan (burakumin) and Korea (paekchŏng).

And finally…
It’s not from a blog, it’s not strictly about Asia and it isn’t really history either. But who can resist a story about chess, dictators, toilet-based corruption, aliens and Europe’s only Buddhist republic? Especially when the hero of our story has an opinion of George Bush that even the man himself might find a tad embarassing:

“The man provides order,” he says, “he conquers countries, territories and oil wells. He gives the wells to the rich oil companies, making them even richer, and that’s completely okay.” In fact, says Ilyumzhinov, it is quite possible that the world’s population will soon be living in a single, American state. “As long as order and discipline prevail — what’s the problem?”

It seems that despite the mammoth environmental destruction, the jetlag and the long periods stuck in claustrophobic metal tubes with screaming babies, air travel does have its advantages. Once again I got a plane yesterday and had a chance to sit down and read a newspaper in a way that I never usually do in this age of News over IP. I picked up a copy of the Hankyoreh as usual and read through their fascinating lead article on what North Korea is actually doing with the wages that workers earn in the Kaesong industrial complex. It turns out that the North Korean government is actually passing on some 75-90 percent of the money they receive from South Korean companies who have factories in the zone to the workers themselves. Albeit that much of this value is actually reaching the workers in the form of payments in kind - essential goods that have been purchased from abroad by the North Korean government through a company run by a Korean-Australian man.

Song said wages go to workers “in a different way.” At first, North Korea’s agency in charge of the Gaeseong industrial complex receives wages from the South Korean companies housed in the Gaeseong complex. Then, the authority deposits 75 to 90 percent of the wages in a bank in Gaeseong. Koryo Commercial Joint Operation then remits the wages and imports some 120 basic necessities such as rice, sugar, and wheat flour. The imported necessities are distributed to the Gaeseong complex workers, Song said.

Song said the authority sends a list to each distribution center that shows the amount each worker is allowed to buy based on wage level. Workers receive necessities between the 10th and 20th of each month after showing their identification cards issued by the Gaeseong complex. The distributed necessities are priced under the North Korean won, but the workers’ real purchasing power is maintained because the prices are converted using the official foreign exchange rate of 140-150 North Korean won to $1, Song said.

Song was asked why North Korea has refused to directly pay wages to its workers at the Gaeseong complex. “In the case of top technicians in Gaeseong, they are paid 20,000 to 30,000 won in the North Korean currency and receive some goods. However, their actual purchasing power is cut by one-third when compared with that of the Gaeseong complex workers [due to unofficial exchange rates on the market]. Due to this disparity, North Korea is seen as reluctant to pay direct wages to the laborers.”

The full, original stories in Korean are here, here and here.

There are two reasons why I find this story particularly interesting. The first is that it is a bit of a poke in the eye for all the regime-changers who have seen the whole Kaesong project as a propaganda godsend with which they can bash the Sunshine Policy and pose, somewhat bizarrely, as people concerned with labour rights, accusing South Korea of being complicit in exploitation and of indirectly funding North Korea’s nuclear programme (see this Korea Times article for previous speculation on how much Kaesong workers get paid). Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not a supporter of corporations using repressive regimes to guarantee low wages and high profits (which is clearly the case however the wages are being paid), but it certainly seems the regime-changers have been proved wrong on the facts in this case.

I also find this story fascinating from an economic history point of view. What we seem to be seeing in the complex and convoluted wage payment process that has been set up by the North Korean authorities is a curious form of interface between state and market. A state that is no longer able to properly fulfil its former role as allocator and redistributor of goods seems to be fumbling for new ways to secure its economic and political base, relying partially on various sorts of market mechanisms. The thing that most strikes me here is the fact that the North Korean state knows that it cannot just allow the Kaesong workers to be paid their full wages (or rather the net wages after taxes/welfare insurance) because of the hugely disruptive effects this would have on society in the area where ostensibly more senior workers in the traditonal industrial sector are being paid so much less. Of course the market in North Korea is already well developed enough that things cannot be kept under control so simply. As the article points out, the workers are still able to realise more of their wages in cash form by taking the goods they receive from the government and selling them on the market, thus enabling them to buy such status goods as TVs (Song’s company sold 105 TVs in Kaesong in the first three months of this year, compared to a total of 3 in the first nine months of last year).

A bit behind the times I know, but I thought I’d post some more stuff from other blogs on the alleged Democratic Labour Party spy scandal. Pak Noja has a couple of related pieces (in Korean). The first one asks the question, what exactly is a spy? While the second looks at the reasons why the NL (left nationalist/pro-North faction) has been able to maintain its popularity and suggests that allowing people free access to North Korean propaganda would soon lead to the end of the NL.

Meanwhile, Antti has written something about how this situation has rekindled factional strife within the party, focusing particularly on the recent public disagreement between two minority groups: Autonomy and Solidarity (자율연대 - basically moderate social democrats) and All Together (다함께). Although this may be interesting, this is certainly not the main split in the party, since as Antti points out, both of these groups are non-NL and highly critical of North Korea. The underlying faultline is still between the left nationalists (ie NL) and the mainstream social democrats (parts of the former PD faction).

Even with all the hoohah, a delegation from the DLP headed off to P’yongyang as planned, despite much whining from the rightwing press and the National Intelligence Service, but seemingly with the tacit encouragement of the Unification Ministry.

Somewhat tangential, but nonetheless related, is this opinion piece from the Hankyoreh newspaper that I read on the plane back from Chejudo a week ago. It provided a nice antidote to the rabid red-baiting of the Joongang Ilbo editorial I read on the way there… (see my last post).