Pen/Insular_Notes

A good piece on the Asia Times site today explaining why so many South Koreans are against the Korean-US FTA that has been under negotiation since March of last year (I’ve posted on the protests here before and Jamie has also covered this very well). The focus here is on the US desire to get their beef back on everyone’s dinner plates (or perhaps more accurately their kalbi broilers), and the reluctance of the Korean public to submit themselves as the experimental subjects of US industrial agriculture:

Beef has been central to Korean disdain for the FTA. The issue here has been less about protecting Korean cattle ranchers than preserving public-health regulations and the democratic rights of South Korean citizens. South Korea, like Japan, banned US beef three years ago after an outbreak of mad-cow disease in the United States. To reopen the South Korean market to US beef, Washington made lifting the ban a precondition to even beginning trade talks. Seoul conceded, allowing boneless meat imports. Since that time, however, it has returned three beef shipments containing bone fragments. The US beef industry, backed by influential members of Congress, reacted by demanding that South Korea’s market be fully reopened before talks end.

On a related note, I caught the second half of a programme on BBC4 the other night which was looking into the eating of dog meat in Korea. From what I saw it did not resort to the usual angle of “look at these funny/exotic/barbaric people and their strange ways” and looked at the subject from a few different angles: the mistreatment of dogs, the attitude of dog farmers, dog meat consumers and Korean dog lovers. Interestingly, in one scene the presenter visited a Korean cattle farm which was used as an illustration of the fact that cows are well treated in Korea, presumably unlike dogs. The presenter ended up refusing to eat dog meat himself, but arguing that the dog trade should be fully legalised and regulated so as to ensure that dogs are humanely treated. (Some pics here.)

One bad thing about this programme though is that it won’t do anything at all to dispel the immediate connection that most British people seem to make between Korea and dog eating - can we not please have something about Korea on UK TV that does not involve either North Korea or dog eating?

My copy of A Corpse in the Koryo finally arrived from Amazon yesterday. I hope to start reading it when the thesis is out of the way and will be sure to write something here about it if it turns out to be as good/interesting as all the reviewers seem to say it is.

McCarthyism now:

The Korea Teachers and Education Workers’ Union (KTU), at a press conference on January 22, strongly protested the arrest of Kim Maeng-gu and Choi Hwa-seop for violating the National Security Law. Kim and Choi, members of the union, posted North Korean materials on the union’s Web site, and were arrested on January 18.

The KTU says that a report by the Chosun Ilbo about the two teachers’ actions was largely fabricated. According to the KTU, the newspaper reported only some parts of the story, doing so sensationalistically to garner a reaction. The two teachers merely quoted remarks made by North Korean officials and media, said the KTU. The union cited as an example material that answers the question, “Why does North Korea want to produce nuclear weapons?” from a North Korean perspective: “North Korea claims that to possess self-defensive nuclear deterrence is its justifiable right.”

And:

Maybe Korean society is turning more toward conservativism, but we just cannot stand back and let people be arrested for something like this. The material the two teachers posted is barely any different from what the Chosun Ilbo, the first paper to take issue with the teachers’ actions, has on its informational site regarding North Korea. There is similar material all over the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development’s “peace school” site.

Some might say the teachers’ union site has a lot more influence on students and teachers and so there should be no comparison to a newspaper’s site on North Korea. However, on the Chosun Ilbo’s site, there is a “homework helper” corner where this very moment students are getting information about North Korea. There is a “teacher’s room” for teachers doing lessons on “unification education,” and there you will find the Pyongyang government’s New Year’s Address and plenty of other primary source materials. Students and teachers are just a few clicks away from original North Korean sources. This makes the situation more than just discrimination - it’s comical.

And McCarthyism then:

A Seoul court on Tuesday acquitted eight South Koreans of treason, more than three decades after they were executed by hanging on conviction of trying to organize a subversive pro-North Korean body.

The Seoul Central District Court said the defendants were not guilty of forming an underground pro-communist group with the aim to overthrow the then authoritarian South Korean government of President Park Chung-hee.

The eight, including a Japanese language teacher and a construction company official, were executed in April, 1975, only 20 hours after the Supreme Court found them guilty of trying to rebuild what state prosecutors said was a disbanded pro-communist group called “inheyokdang,” or “People’s Revolutionary Party.”
…
In its 2005 report, the NIS concluded that the so-called “party” was nothing but a student circle interested in pro-democracy movements and that a “committee for reconstructing the party” allegedly organized by the eight victims was non-existent.

UPDATE:
Jay at the IKTU blog has a long and excellent post on this subject.

UPDATE 2:
For readers of Korean, the renewed witchhunt against members of the Korea Teachers’ Union is the lead story in this week’s edition of the Counterfire newspaper. Unfortunately I can’t seem to access the site from any internet connection in the UK. Not sure why.

A great photo story in Hankyoreh showing a rare example of Korea’s native wildcat on the prowl up near the DMZ. Also an opportunity to learn a new Korean word: 삵 (sak), which seems to be a shortening of 살쾡이 (salk’waengi), which in turn is variation on the standard word for cat 고양이 (koyangi), although I’m not sure what the ’sal’ prefix means. Sadly, 삵 is a word that may not be needed much longer considering that this animal is under threat of going where its peninsular cousins the lynx, leopard and tiger have already gone: extinction.

Things will remain quiet here for a while, although I’m posting some things with a historical flavour over at Frog in a Well. In the mean time, this is what the Secret Santa brought me this Christmas:

FM3