Life in the Time of Covid-19

Wearing a mask, as we were told by the government to help control the spread of the Covid-19, I made a short and hurried visit to a neighborhood market the other day.

The mask I was wearing happened to be made of black material that covered the lower half of my face. I also wore a pair of newly purchased spectacles whose lenses automatically turn dark when they are exposed to light like sunglasses. In addition, I was wearing a black baseball cap.

As usual, I did not pay much attention to my appearance in public. So, imagine how surprised I was when I saw myself in the mirror hung just behind the checkout counter! I hardly realized that the man standing in front of the cash register was myself.

If I had a toy gun in my right hand and announced that I was a hold-up, I thought I could easily fool the cashier. While she was totting up the prices, I took off the glasses and mask to wipe the sweat off my face with a handkerchief.

Only then did she recognize me and exclaimed: “Oh, it’s you! I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” As neighborhood acquaintances, she and I go a long way back.

“You thought I was a stranger and a hold-up, I bet,” I asked her, laughing.  “Seriously, though,” I added, “you don’t have to apologize. For, even I couldn’t recognize myself in this stupid outfit!”

“No, it isn’t as bad as you think you look,” she said.

“Anyway, let’s blame the coronavirus for all the surprises and inconveniences we are experiencing these days,” I said.

With a mask on, she agreed with me by nodding and smiling with her eyes. And what a pair of pretty eyes! I have known her for years but failed to notice that she had such beautiful eyes. But now, since the mask became almost a part of our face and since it hides most other facial areas, the eyes seem to have become the focal point that attracts attention in our daily face-to-face meetings with others.

In this connection, Incidentally, I listened to a panel discussion on radio the other day in which a sociologist pointed out that since the outbreak of the corona pandemic, there has not been any beauty contest as they used to. It was mainly because government authorities as well as health officials kept discouraging, if not banning, the unnecessary person-to-person contacts in public gatherings.

It could be interesting, I thought, if some people hold a beauty contest with all the participants wearing a mask. I must admit it was a silly thought. Joking aside, though, we could not rule out such an unthinkable and outrageous event taking place if we were forced to live with the Covid-19 for a long time.

Regardless of whether we, the humans, could win or lose our current battle against the coronavirus, we wouldn’t be able to go back and live our lives as we used to. So, we have to make changes and adjust our life to the new modes brought to our society by the pandemic.

There are people in many countries who appear to be increasingly nervous and impatient with their governments, accusing them of being inefficient in their fights against the disease. But I’m sure that each and every government as well as doctors and their staff are doing their best. In the meantime, we can only hope that sooner or later, mankind will prevail once again as they have done so many times in a similar global crisis in the past.

(END)

                                 Epithets for Old Men

        As I grow older, I become increasingly aware of the various epithets which young people use to describe old men. Some of the common ones are “touchy old man,” “cranky old man,” “dirty old man” (with a sexual connotation, no less), “silly old man,” and so on. While most of these are not flattering, they prove, I am afraid, to be accurate in some cases.

        There are a few nice descriptions for old men, of course. They include “understanding old man,” “wise old man.” And I often wonder what makes some old men “wise.” I don’t think these old men have become wise because they had many different experiences in life and have “accumulated” the wisdom learned from them or honed their senses or judgments over a long period of time.

And not all smart people become “wise” by simply having many experiences through social and personal interactions with other people. I have seen many who commit “the same old” mistakes over and over again, proving that their bitter experiences have failed to make them wise. Nor are they wise on account of the “god-given” ability to discern or assess a social situation correctly and resolve any problem or issue.

To be sure, experiences could be a factor that helps some elderly persons make wiser to some extent. But I believe that the main reason is due largely to the fact that old men—and old women, for that matter—become a little more objective than younger people in their perception of the world.

As I grow older and begin to have a vague feeling of approaching death, they forego—or rather, shed—all worldly desires such as money, power and even sex.

When one is called “a dirty old man,” he may actually be dirty physically with an accompanying bad smell. But we all know that the phrase points at a man who habitually flirts with young women shamelessly, forgetting to “act his age.” Whenever I run into such an old man, I cannot help marveling at him not only because of his brazen, often disgusting, behavior but also his courage to display his energy and sexual drive that seem to dog him even at that stage in his life.

Anyway, it is desires or greed, as I said, that cloud our thinking and perceptions of the world around us. It is because of these desires that we are unable to think clearly and objectively. And as we are gradually freed from the yoke of these desires, we are able to see the world as it really is.

Also, as we get older, we don’t need to pretend to be other than what we are. It was Somerset Maugham who said, “One of the pleasures of growing older is that on the whole, you feel no need to do what you do not like. You are less likely to care what people think of you, whereas when young, one is bound hand and foot with the shackles of public opinion.” In other words, you don’t feel the need to get the approval of your fellow men and women for what you say and what you do, your opinions and behavior begin to sound more honest and refreshing.

These, I believe, are the main reasons that the younger generation calls some old folks “wise.”

Why, then, do we hear somewhat mutually contradictory descriptions such as “cranky” or “touchy” old men? Of course, wise old men can be touchy, even despite their ability to judge most things a little more objectively; they still are emotional beings until the very moment they die.

 Old people become touchy and cranky when they feel they are being treated unjustly or even with contempt, by younger people, especially by members of their own family. But this development is inevitable because old people are relegated sooner or later to minor roles in society and in their families. They are forced to live the rest of their life on the margin, so to speak. And it is difficult for them to accept the fact, even though they know deep down, it is unavoidable.

Could those old folks be blamed for being overly sensitive over trivial issues? Not if the younger people refuse to try and understand why they are so sensitive and emotional.

It is not only difficult for an old man to give up the role he had played for years as the master of the house, it is also sad and disheartening if he feels that the love and affection of his family members are gradually waning or moving away from him.

In order to maintain “power and status,” it is said, old men should keep their money and property—they have them, of course – for themselves until they die. There are many, however, who divide their money and give it to their sons and daughters out of love and/or an effort to exercise influence over them or regain their affection.

Give most of what you have to your sons and daughters, if you want to suffer misery for the rest of your life, some people say. And whenever I hear such desperate and cynical advice, I think of King Lear.

King Lear, of course, was a great man and hence his downfall was all the more tragic and poignant, but there must be many small Lears, both in the West and East, and through the centuries, who have and are suffering awful miseries because of the old man’s folly.

I wouldn’t go so far as to describe King Lear as “a silly old man,” but there must have been—and there will continue to be—countless old men who have met a similar fate as the king in Shakespeare’s tragedy, though, no doubt, on a lesser scale.

Personally, I regret that I haven’t got much money or property to give to my family. I also regret that we, old men, are being described with so many epithets. But there is at least one redeeming description and that, as I said, is “wise old man.” And I think all of us, the old folks, should try to be just that.

(END)

 

                                           Dog Lovers

        An increasing number of South Koreans, some of whom have been criticized for eating the dog meat, are turning into dog-lovers in a move that would surely surprise many animal lovers around the world, especially those in Europe.

        The malign criticisms had been leveled against the Koreans for eating dogs in the past. Animal rights activists in France, in particular, led by well-known actress Brigitte Bardot, have attacked the Koreans for eating “man’s best friend.” They even had staged an international campaign against the staging of the 1988 Olympic Games in South Korea.

        Because of the geographical proximity, the Koreans have been influenced by China in many cultural areas including the culinary and dietary customs. And there was a saying, “the Chinese eat everything with four legs,” proving they were eating a vast variety of animals in order to obtain protein, an essential part of the human diet.

        The dog eating custom in China has obviously spread not only to Korea but also to many other countries in Asia. And yet, for some reason, the Koreans have been singled out by many Europeans and publicized as the dog-eating people.

The meat-sellers in Korea say that consumers don’t eat dogs of every kind indiscriminately but only the “edible” ones. It is not clear what makes the difference between edible and non-edible dogs. The meat sellers explain that the edible ones are usually medium- and large-sized dogs of uncertain or mixed bloodlines while small dogs such as poodles, dachshunds, terriers and other cute, huggable and, of course, expensive ones are out of reach for butchers and meat-sellers.

In any case, a growing number of South Koreans have become dog lovers in recent years, spending quite a large sum of money on dogs as members of their families. And the sights of their dog loving behaviors in public are something to behold for outsiders who don’t care much for dogs.

A lot of people these days are out in public parks or sidewalks of residential areas early in the morning with their cuddly little dogs on leashes. You can often see two or more dog walkers chatting while the subjects of their talks are usually yapping or growling among themselves, often blocking the passages of other people on narrow streets.

During the winter, some women bundle up their dogs with their mufflers or hug them close to their bodies in order to shield them from the blasts of cold wind. I even saw some women pushing baby carriages with their dogs on board. Since their children had apparently grown up so that it now is the time for their dogs to replace them inside the warm and cozy carriages.

With an increase in the country’s canine population, the number of beauty parlors for dogs is proliferating in big cities for bathing, grooming, and even cutting nails. Also increasing are animal hospitals where domestic dogs are major customers.

The nation’s veterinary medicine is now as advanced as medical care for humans. Incidentally, South Korea’s medical care system for humans is on the world’s top level.

Korean dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals are now receiving good medical treatments. The dogs also can get dental checkups that include regular scaling of their teeth. There has also been a sharp annual increase in the number of dog owners demanding an official autopsy following the death of their loved ones in unexplained circumstances.

There are even “the kindergartens for dogs” where an average of 40 to 50 puppies are being trained, or to use the words of a dog kindergarten teacher, “study lessons.” The puppies are also fed with expensive dog food and undergo physical exercises.

There are some 300 dog kindergartens throughout the country and the number is increasing fast. The registration fees, running from 840,000 won (about 750 U.S. dollars) to 1,960,000 won (1,759 dollars) per month, which is far more expensive than the average monthly fees for human kindergarteners.

When the dogs that die of old age or in accidents, some of them are cremated and their ashes deposited in the buildings built to house the urns.

Thanks to the nation’s rapid economic development, South Koreans’ per capita income increased above the equivalent of $30,000 and the people’s standard of living rose sharply as a result. Meanwhile, the number of visitors to the eateries offering dog-meat dishes is said to be dwindling steadily in recent years.

In light of those developments, one hopes that foreign animal activists, including Brigitte Bardot, will lose their reasons for criticizing the Koreans for eating dog meat anymore.

(End)

 

                                          On Waiting

In one of his excellent short stories, the Japanese author, Osamu Dasai, writes about a woman who goes to one of busy railroad stations every afternoon and waits for someone or something. The author doesn’t explain what exactly it is that she waits for.

A big crowd of people, disgorged onto the platform from the just-arrived train would get out of the station through the main exit and, without giving even a cursory glance at the woman sitting on a waiting room bench, hurriedly pass by her and disperse in all directions in great hurry. The woman character is like the two homeless men in Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece play, “Waiting for Godot,” who are waiting for a god to show up.

In any case, reading the Dasai story, I got the impression that she was simply enjoying the act of waiting. And that precisely was what bothered me because I am one of those who hate waiting as it seems to follow us everywhere these days, especially in big cities, forcing us to waste our precious time.

In the morning almost every day, a lot of people have to wait for a bus or subway train to go to work. If they want to avoid the crowd and drive their cars to work, they are likely to wait in heavy traffic jams in and out of cities. And they have to go through the process in reverse going home. And then, some people have to wait in lines to check out the foodstuff that their spouses had asked to buy at a supermarket on their way home or wait for their kids to finish up their classes at the cram school or after school activities. These are just a few daily chores for which many of us must feel, like me, that we are wasting our time waiting.

Growing up in Seoul in the 1940s, I have learned how impatient and intolerable I could become while waiting for someone or something. As a teenager, I often had to run on family errands that involved getting, for instance, the copies of official documents such as the family registration records at one of the city’s ward offices.

The officials in charge of petitions were always surrounded by lots of unruly people who were milling around, trying to jockey for the position that would attract the official’s attention and get his or her business taken care of ahead of others.

In relatively better organized public offices, visitors were asked to wait in lines. But there were invariably some brazen, aggressive late comers, trying to cut in, triggering hot arguments among petitioners that could develop into fistfights and scuffles.

Worse than the queue jumpers were those who would bribe officials to facilitate their business rather than waiting in lines. In addition to offering a white envelope containing some money, some petitioners tried to sneak a pack of cigarettes or even chewing gums into the pockets of officials in order to avoid standing in lines. Those were the people who would disrupt the fair and orderly process, prolonging the waiting times for others.

The cumbersome and irritating process of waiting in lines in old days had disappeared with the introduction of the electronic machine that would issue stripes of paper on which waiting numbers are printed in orders of the arrivals.

Welcome to the speedy and efficient digital age!

But wait. The dawn of a more civilized and computerized world did not solve the problem of waiting. Instead of standing in lines, we are now sitting on the benches and staring at an electric board until your number flashes on it. The new system prevents line cutting but it does not shorten the time of waiting.

There are all kinds of waiting and many of them are not necessarily irritating and trying your patience. In fact, you maybe forced to wait for quite a long time unexpectedly and yet, you don’t mind it at all, if you believe that exciting or pleasant happenings are awaiting you at the end of your waiting.

The most dreaded and uncertain kind of waiting would come at the end of our life. Some people don’t have to wait for death for too long, but a majority of old and sick people would have to wait for a certain length of time at home or in hospitals and that, I believe, would be the most painful and fearful waiting in life.

I had a dream the other day, in which I was riding what I thought was a taxi. It went through a long dark tunnel at a full speed. It was moving so fast that I crane my neck from the backseat in order to tell the driver to slow down a bit. But there was no one at the wheel. That meant that the car was moving by itself. I thought it was one of those newly developed driverless cars that were driven by computers or something.

As soon as the car shot out of the tunnel, I saw a beautiful panoramic view before my eyes. I sat back and tried to enjoy the scenery but the car came to a stop in front of a tall building. Inside, there was a cavernous hall that looked like that of an airport or bus terminal. And there was a long serpentine line of people who were waiting to get into another room located further inside.

The last person standing at the end of the line was a Caucasian man in his 70s. As I approached him, “hello,” he said, adding: “Welcome the gateway to purgatory.” I just nodded as I couldn’t fully understand what he was talking about. Somehow, I felt I had been brought to this strange place by someone by mistake.

“Excuse me, but can you tell me what they are waiting for?” I ask the man.

“All of us here are dead people, in case you hadn’t realized,” he said. “They brought us here and we are waiting to get into purgatory where our soul will be made clean and pure by suffering for our wrong-doing on Earth until we are fit to enter Heaven.”

Strangely, what he told me did not surprise me as though I have heard a similar story many times before. I asked him how long has he been waiting in line.

To my great surprise, he said, “Oh, about 10 days.”

“Ten days! You mean you have been waiting here that long?” I exclaimed. “I cannot believe it!”

“It’s nothing,” he said. “Time here is quite different from that on Earth. Ten days up here is about 10 minutes down there.”

“But how can one stand on your legs for that long?”

“No problem,” he said. “As you can see we all lost our legs before coming up here.”

I looked around and, indeed, everybody is legless and floating in space slightly above the ground. They really look like ghosts.

“Oh my god!” I shouted involuntarily. And with that, I woke up.

It was just a dream. Lying in bed, I stretched my right arm down, groping with the hand for my legs under the bedsheets. Then, I gave out a great sigh of relief when I was able to make sure that they are still there.

(End)

 

        Moon Jae-in, the Fence-sitter

From the outset of his presidency, Mr. Moon Jae-in wanted to play a role of a mediator between the United States and its democratic allies on one side and Communist China and North Korea on the other.

Mr. Moon’s idea of being a neutral mediator for the resolution of international disputes doesn’t make much sense because he couldn’t be “neutral” even in the post-Cold War era as his country is an ally of the United States. That was probably why he has never been invited to play such a role by other countries in three years since he became the president of the Republic of Korea.

Only a few occasions in which Mr. Moon made a diplomatic maneuver of sorts was his voluntary efforts to arrange three meetings between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un in Singapore, Hanoi and the Korean truce village of Panmunjom. As we all know, nothing much came out of those meetings, however

His real diplomatic skills, if any, could have been used in the on-going negotiations to help settle hot disputes between the United States and China, but neither Washington nor Beijing asked for his service. Although Mr. Moon has not been critical of the United Stater on bilateral issues, he has never shown enthusiasm for the friendly ties between the two allies.

The latest case in point occurred when U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper asked his counterparts in Japan and South Korea to hold a meeting in Guam on August 29.  Japan’s defense minister Taro Kono flew to Guam while their South Korean counterpart was absent for the meeting. The meeting had been convened to discuss the problems related to North Korea and China.

South Korea’s official excuse was that because of the worsening crisis brought on by the Covid-19, the defense minister was unable to leave his post for an overseas trip. But as cynical press commentators in Seoul pointed out that the Corona pandemic was raging in America and Japan as well.

       Some pundits added that when Seoul cannot say openly “no,” to Washington, the government officials simply remain silent, lest what they say could upset the big and powerful neighbor, China.

In fact, Mr. Moon, a leftist politician, has been cozying up with Communist China since he became the President of the nation which has kept close and friendly ties with the United States since the founding of the Republic 70 years ago. And that is why Mr. Moon is often described by some pundits as a fence-sitter between Washington and Beijing.

However, the day will come sooner or later when Mr. Moon will have to come down to one side or the other for good. Otherwise, he will be like Humpty Dumpty who had a great fall after sitting on a wall. Then, we will have to change the last part of the old nursery rhyme: “All the president’s horses and all the president’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”  (End)

Seoul Claims Coronavirus Is Leaving South Korea

President Moon Jae-in announced to the world the other day that his administration has successfully put the coronavirus pandemic under control and invited other countries that are interested in learning “how we’ve done it” are welcome to visit Korea.

Believing that Moon told the truth, almost all South Koreans, who had been gripped by fear and despair amid the fast-spreading disease for months were swept into the state of indescribable relief and hope. They were also proud of themselves before the world as the country has become one of the leading nations that had achieved such a feat of “winning the battle” against the vicious virus.

Meanwhile, the popularity of President Moon in opinion polls shot up, especially among the country’s voters who will cast their ballots on April 15 to elect the members of the National Assembly. It was not immediately clear whether the president made his remark prematurely in order to help the pro-government left-wing parties gain the control of the national legislature.

Despite the presidential announcement, however, the number of persons found to have contracted the virus continued to come in, proving that the pandemic is far from over. What’s more, as of Sunday, March 29, the government is debating whether to reopen the nation’s schools in early next month as having been announced or postpone the opening day yet again, contradicting the president’s proclamation that the threat of the coronavirus is over in South Korea.

“We cannot run a risk of opening schools nationwide and see some of our children getting infected,” one news commentator was quoted as saying. “As far as I’m concerned,” he added, “President Moon popped the champagne cork too early. (END)

Japanese militarism

            A nation that fails to learn from its past mistakes is condemned to repeat them. This aphorism came to my mind the other day when I heard the news that some Japanese cabinet ministers and members of the Diet (Parliament) visited Yasukuni Shrine to pay tribute to their war dead including the war criminals who were executed at the end of the Second World War.

 

Japan, needless to say, is the only nation on earth, two of whose cities were destroyed by nuclear bombs. It was part of the price the Japanese had to pay for the cruel and inhuman aggression they had perpetrated against Korea, China and other Asian countries before and during the war that they started against the United States in 1939.

 

The nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as other painful experiences of the war that had “traumatized” the Japanese and forced them to do some soul searching after the war are apparently fading fast from their memories. Led by an increasing number of rightists, the Japanese voters elected Shinjo Abe as their prime minister late last year, paving the way for their country toward the revival of militarism.

 

Unlike Germany, Japan’s Axis partner, which has apologized for the atrocities that the Nazis had committed in Europe, Japan refuses to admit that it had brutalized Korea as a colonial overlord for 35 years. Instead, it claims that it had been a generous benefactor to Korea and China as it has helped modernize them

It says, for instance, it built railroads in Korea for the Korean people when it actually needed them to transport the minerals and other materials to Japan to produce weapons, among other things, in preparations for the war against America. Japan also claims that it had helped “Korean prostitutes” to earn their living when it had, in fact, forcibly recruited young, innocent girls and sent them to China to serve as sex slaves to Japanese soldiers fighting there

This kind of white lies are sweeping Japan these days in rightist efforts to cover up its wartime brutality.

In any event, Korea and China today are not what they used to be at the turn of the 20^th century: a pair of meek and poverty-stricken neighbors. South Korea and China are the world’s 12^th and second largest economies, respectively, with strong armed forces that could defend themselves against any foreign aggressors including, possibly, Japan. The Japanese would have to pay a heavy price once more, if they try and repeat their past mistake by arming themselves heavily and attack their neighbors again.

(END)

 

North Korea wins again

         North Korea wins the game of chickens once again.

For the last two months, South Korea and the United States stood eyeball to eyeball with North Korea while Pyongyang threatened to nuke the South as well as some American cities. In the end, though, Seoul and Washington obviously blinked and are now begging Pyongyang to come out for another round of talks with them to resolve their problem peacefully.

The outcome of the talks, as they had done so many times in the past, will compel the United States and South Korea to provide the North with food, fertilizers, oil and the like for a few months of “peace and quiet.”

On the surface, the United States and its allies would agree to extend their economic aid to the North only on condition that it will give up its nuclear ambition. But we all know that North Korea will throw any international agreement like a pair of old shoes into a waste basket whenever it wants to.

That is not all. The gangsters in the North will shake the world with a new series of nuclear threats again after the economic aid from its "enemies" stops coming. Its young dictator and his lackeys will stage the worldwide circus again. Thus, the farcical North Korean show will go on and on ad infinitum.

In the meantime, American scholars and journalists as well as government officials will continue their current arguments on whether North Korea has or has not succeeded in miniaturizing its nuclear warheads and developing intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear bombs “to reduce the cities in the U.S. and South Korea to piles of ashes,” as North Koreans are fond to say these days.

While the Americans are arguing endlessly and fruitlessly, North Koreans would be able to arm themselves with viable nuclear weapons and missiles sooner or later. Then they would not only use the bombs for themselves without any hesitation but also sell them to any country or group of crazy people that are willing to pay.

A corrupt society

            Once upon a time in Greece, a philosopher named, Diogenes, became famous for walking the streets with a lighted lamp in the daytime looking for “an honest man.” He believed that the ancient Greek society of his time (about 412-323 BC) was full of corrupt and dishonest people that it was almost impossible to find an honest person.

Today, some 2,300 years later, South Korea’s new President, Park Geun-hye, could use the help of Diogenes, as she has been struggling to find honest men and women to fill the high posts of her administration.

More than a month after she became the nation’s chief executive, President Park saw six of her nominees for her cabinet posts resign, some even before facing the Congressional scrutiny, because of their past records that were tainted by financial irregularities, unscrupulous, if not illegal, accumulations of personal wealth, or other unethical conducts.

Meanwhile, opposition political parties and the news media were busy criticizing the President, day in and day out, for her “inability” to find well qualified officials for government positions. But they forget that the country is full of corrupt and sleazy people so that President Park, like Diogenes, is having a hard time finding “smart and able” persons who are also “clean and honest.”

Rodman, once again

            A day or two after I posted the piece here on Dennis Rodman and his North Korean visit, it was reported that the American visitor told his hosts that he wanted to meet “Psy,” the South Korean rock star, who has become a worldwide sensation with his “Gangnam Style” video.

But wanting to meet Psy in Pyongyang? Despite his friendship with the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, Rodman apparently didn’t know the first thing about two Koreas. He was not aware obviously that Psy simply couldn’t be in North Korea to accommodate his wishes. Asking to meet Psy in North Korea is like wanting to eat a McDonald’s hamburger at a Chinese restaurant.

            Rodman has probably heard about the Korean War, recalling vaguely perhaps the facts that the North Koreans invaded the South in 1950 and that the United States and other allied forces fought, under the United Nations flag, with the South Korean Army to repel the Communist invaders.

Sure, the Korean War ended in truce in 1953. What Rodman probably didn’t know is that two Koreas are still technical at war as they have not signed a peace treaty. And under the hostile circumstances, no South Koreans are allowed to visit Pyongyang unless the North Korean dictator invites them as he did for Rodman and his friends.

The various remarks Rodman made in Pyongyang and in the United States after his return betrayed his ignorance of the situations in Koreas. But I am not surprised because I have run into many Americans who, like Rodman, were unable to distinguish between the two Koreas and say which side is America’s ally and which one is developing long-range missiles and nuclear bombs to fight the United States.

(END)

 

Judging people by the friends they keep

     I have nothing against Dennis Rodman. As National Basketball Association (NBA) players go, he was an above-average player, for sure, but it was his antics that attracted the attention of basketball fans more than anything. If the fans were to pick one great player purely on his athletic ability or even his charisma, there are a plenty of them, other than Rodman, to choose from.

     Strangely, though, Rodman's playing as well as his antics must have enthralled, of all people, Kim Jong Un when the current North Korean dictator was studying as a teenager in Switzerland. Year later, remembering him, Kim apparently invited Rodman to Pyongyang. And Kim has entertained the visitor with a sumptuous banquet after watching a game together between a North Korean team and the Harlem Globetrotters who accompanied Rodman.

     Press report said that Kim and Rodman have even vowed to keep their friendship in the rest of their lives. Hearing the news, I recalled a saying: "You can judge a person by the friends he or she keeps." But a dictator and a clown on the basketball court? They sure make an odd couple, I thought.

     It was also reported that Kim has expressed the hope that Rodman's visit would help thaw the frigid relations between North Korea and the United States. It is a good news, of course, provided the remark was not just a diplomatic nicety the 29-year-old leader of the Coimmunist nation was exercising.

     When I heard the news, I almost exclaimed: "A good show, Dennis!" After all, President Nixon established ties with China following his visit to Beijing with a U.S. table tennis team. The visit was later dubbed "ping-pong diplomacy." If Rodman's visit brings about a similar result, maybe we should give him some credit and call his visit the "slam-dunk diplomacy" or something.

     Being an eternal pessimist, however, I don't believe that there would be a thaw in the relations between Washington and Beijing as long as North Korea keeps developing nuclear bombs and refusing to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. His friendship with Rodman notwithstanding, Kim Jong Un cannot afford to give up his nuclear ambition. For, he knows it means the end of his regime and the Kim dynasty.
       (END)

December 12, 2012

     The world, if you remember, was to end on Dec. 12 last year, according to some astronomical "theory," or groundless prediction. Luckily for most of us and to the great "disappointment," no doubt, of those who believed in such a theory, no meteorite has struck the earth. Nor has a worldwide nuclear holocaust taken place, wiping out all creatures from the face of our planet.

    The good old sun kept rising from the east every day and we all went with our business as usual. And as for as I know, not even doomsday believers or religious, scientific or other organizations have publicly stated as to why the world did not end as feared. Newspapers and TVs also chose not to remind the public what has happened or rather has not happened on that day.

   As far the doomsday believers, I could not help wondering about some of them who had hoarded bottled water and food like canned stuff and instant noodle (ramyon) in the belief that they would be the only survivors even if the world was completely destroyed. Are they incurable pessimists or hopeless optimists? Whatever they are these dizzy people would never come to their senses; they would jump on another similar prediction as soon as some people with ulterior motives of their own set a plausible date, like, Friday the 13th, 2013,  on which the world would end..., er, again.

   Meanwhile, I can only sympathize with those believers who had stockpiled the food for survival; they have to consum them even if they get sick of eating the same stale thing so long.

An absurd world

There was a brief newspaper report that caught my eyes the other day. It was about an old Korean man who was making a meager living by picking garbage, mostly recyclable papers on Seoul streets, and selling them for a few hundred won. The old man, who is living alone, is a recipient of a bronze medal from the U.S. government for his bravery during the Korean War (1950-53). He was a member of KATUSA (the Korean Augmentation to the U.S. Army), who were assigned to fight against the common enemy along with American soldiers.

            Details of his life before his retirement were not disclosed. But the report said he tried to receive the Korean government’s financial support that is given regularly to most veterans who had served in the Korean army during the war. The stipend is said to be not much, but for many old men in situations like his, the sum of money, however small it may be, can help them eke out a living.

But the South Korean government refused to give him the support because the bronze medal he received was an honor bestowed on him by the United States and not by South Korea, the report said.

When I heard the news, I was puzzled by the Seoul government’s reasoning for rejecting his request. For, regardless of which allied nation has honored him with a military medal, the fact remains that he had fought bravely for his country in the war against the invading Communist enemy from the North.

I realize that the government, burdened by perennial budget deficits, is trying to curb its spendings as much as it could. Nevertheless, I believe it shouldn’t begrudge its monetary support for the single veteran who has also risked his life for the country.

Ironically, the government has been more than generous toward the violent anti-government rioters and demonstrators. Since leftist politicians took power with the inauguration of Kim Dae-jung as President of the country in 1998, they have been giving money to the families of those who were killed during their seditious "struggle” against the government and the nation that they claimed was controlled by the "rightist dictators" in the '60s and '70s.

 

But can any one make sense out of this kind of government policies that refuse to support the old war veterans while paying monetary compensations to the relatives of those who got killed while fighting the nation’s police officers and army troops? It's absurd, to say the least.

A Pied Piper of Korean Politics

South Koreans elect their president every five years and the next election is scheduled for November, 2012. It’s a bit too early, therefore, to try and predict an outcome but, judging by the way things are developing, a 49-year-old computer guru and hitherto rank political outsider is expected to win the election hands down.

Ahn Cheol-soo, founder of anti-virus vaccine firm, AhnLab, emerged recently, like a shooting star, as the front-runner for the next presidential election. According to the latest opinion poll, he is heavily favored to win the presidency with more than 50 percent of support, far outstripping the nearest contender, Park Geun-hye, who had long been regarded as a clear leader among possible candidates. She is the elder daughter of President Park Chung-hee and former chairwoman of the ruling conservative party, Hannaradang.

This astonishing development is taking place even before Ahn himself said anything about his intention to run for president, much less enunciating publicly what his political philosophy is and what kind of policies he would implement if and when he becomes the nation’s chief executive.

Ahn is riding the crests of sweeping popularity and is tantalizing his followers by refusing to clarify his political ambition immediately. Perhaps, he is acting on a carefully worked out strategy. At a recent press conference, he said he was not considering forming a political party or running in the elections for representatives to the National Assembly in April. But he declined to say whether he would run for president.

The sudden rise in Ahn’s popularity is attributed by analysts and commentators to a widespread negative perception of the corrupt and arrogant politicians of today. A vast number of voters, especially those in their 20s through 40s, are fed up with incompetent and self-serving politicians. That is why Ahn’s emergence on the political stage, however reluctant he may be, is a breath of fresh air to most voters, no doubt.

A physician-turned-IT mogul, Ahn said earlier last month that he would donate half of his stocks in AhnLab he founded in 1995, to help relieve the poor of their economic hardship. Ahn is said to own some 37 percent of AhnLab shares, currently worth 302.4 billion won (269 million U.S. dollars). His pledge was seen by many as part of preparations for his presidential bid.

Earlier in September, Ahn was criticized in the National Assembly over a sudden surge in AhnLab stock price which has nearly tripled in value after rumors circulated that he would run for Seoul mayor. He resigned as CEO of AhnLab in March 2005, but has been serving as chairman of directors. He is also dean of Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology.

Ahn became an overnight sensation after he has reportedly expressed interest in running in the mayoral by-election in Seoul on Oct. 26. But he later bowed out and threw his support for little known leftist political activist and his friend Park Won-soon. And thanks to Ahn’s well-publicized support, Park scored an easy victory over a ruling party candidate.

It is still unclear where Ahn stands politically but his association with Seoul Mayor Park is any indication, he would probably be a “progressive” candidate, backed by all the leftist groups that are now opposing President Lee Myung-bak and his ruling conservative party.

To be sure, between now and next November, a lot of things could happen so that his political fortune could take a wrong turn. But as long as today’s messy political conditions persist with politicians doggedly following their sleazy and disgusting ways, we can safely predict that Ahn could be swept into the Blue House by this time next year. For, his bandwagon seems to have started rolling already and lots of voters are getting on board. Like those children in Hamelin, Germany, who followed the Pied Piper blindly, they are determined to follow him without knowing exactly where they are going.
(END)

Living with Crazy Neighbors

South Koreans were attacked by their fellow Koreans in the North so often and almost routinely that they seem to have become insensitive and immune to the continuing aggression from the North.

Maybe, we in the South are such a nice and tolerant people who love our cousins in the North so much that we forgive them generously, instead of reacting to their attacks with corresponding intensity, every time they perpetrate their fratricidal crime against us.

Or maybe we are really scared stiff of the North Koreans who are threatening to reduced us and our country to ashes with their nuclear bombs and other terrible weapons of mass destruction.

Although we don’t admit publicly but deep down, we all realize that our armed forces are no match to their counterparts in the North and therefore could not defend our country by ourselves alone. We are such a meek and gutless people, in other words, that we could not muster a measure of courage to stand up against the crazy and despicable tyrant and his loyal followers in Pyongyang and teach them an unforgettable lesson that we, unlike their own cowed and trembling people, would not put up with their cruel and inhuman behavior.

Whatever the reason, we have shown an amazing, almost infinite, degree of patience and stoic tolerance toward the North Koreans who have attacked our nation and killed hundreds of innocent people since the War ended in truce in 1953.

As the North Korean launched their attacks with impunity, even with contempt, South Koreans, for their part, have developed the pattern of their meek reaction, which seems to have become routine as well.

In the latest attack, the North Koreans shelled a South Korean island in the West Sea, just south of the Northern Limit Line, killing two marines and two civilians and injuring 18 on Nov. 23.

Pundits and scholars in South Korea, the United States and other Western countries tried, as usual, to figure out why Kim Jong-il and his lackeys were behaving the way they did. But there cannot be any clear and rational explanation because these are acts of irrational people.

It is easy to believe that the North Korean leaders are a bunch of crazed men and women; what I don’t understand is, there are equally crazy people amid us in the South, who are blindly following the cruel dictator in Pyongyang. These are leftist politicians, unionists, radical teachers and students who are sympathetic to and supportive of Kim Jong-il and his regime.

I wouldn’t go so far as to describe them as “enemies within,” but they represent, without doubt, a dangerous element in our society which could play a dangerous and extremely damaging role, if another all-out war breaks out in Korea.

After a North Korean submarine was found to have fired a torpedo and sank a South Korean naval vessel, killing 46 sailors last March, Pyongyang denied the responsibility for the attack, despite the findings of an international investigation. That was not all. Resorting to its favoring game of turning the table on the victims, it outrageously claimed that the sinking was the work of the South Korean government.

These North Korean claims were parroted by the afore-mentioned people in the South who follow the Dear Leader blindly with what appears to be unswerving loyalty.

But who in their right mind with a modicum of intelligence would believe that the administration of their elected president is such a rotten, inhuman government that it could think of, let alone carry out, such a horrible crime against its own people?

In the wake of the latest attack, these people and others as well as China, North Korea’s only ally, are urging the rest of the world, as usual, to talk to the North Koreans to defuse the tension and negotiate a peaceful resolutions of “Korean problems.”

But haven’t we had enough talks in the past half a century? What had we gotten out of those talks? What have we achieved in our talks with those crazy people except to let them make a number of nuclear bombs and continue their attacks against the South?

Talking with insane people to work out a sensible solution is a senseless thing to do. It is an exercise in futility at best.

There is a saying in Korea that the best and only way to treat a mad dog is a good thrashing with a stick. Those insane people in the North need a good beating. For they, like mad dogs, fear and understand only the brutal and merciless force.

To be sure, we may have to pay a considerable price, including the loss of lives, in order to put an end to this senseless life-and-death game that North Korea is forcing us to play. But we must act, sooner rather than later, if we are to keep our hard-earned freedom and advancing economy.
(END)

Something I Couldn't Erase From My Memory

My mother, who had been suffering from a serious heart disease for several years, tried to kill herself by cutting her own throat with a knife when I was 13.

A few days before the incident, my father had taken her to a Christian missionary hospital on the outskirts of Seoul, where she was diagnosed with a defective heart valve, but she was told to go home because the doctors there couldn’t do anything for her. It was too late to treat her, they said.

Realizing that it was pointless to keep suffering, she had apparently decided to end her own life. Father found her in the bedroom just in time to wrest the knife from her hand and call a doctor. Even though she was awfully weak and frail already and despite a heavy loss of blood, she somehow survived thanks to quick emergency treatment.

I was at school all morning that day without knowing what had happened; when I came home in the afternoon, she was sleeping under sedation. I saw a trace of blood that had seeped out and stained the white gauze that was wrapped around her neck.

Watching her pale, emaciated face, I was too stunned to feel—much less, think of—anything. I just sat on the floor where Mother lay on a thin mattress. Mother was so still I thought she was either asleep or dead.

After a while, I realized that though she was extremely weak, she was conscious of her surroundings. I even detected a trace of what looked like a faint smile on her face.

“What is it, Mother?” I asked her. “Is there anything you want?”
“I have messed thing up, haven’t I?” she said. “But don’t be frightened; you are a big boy now.”

Her voice was barely audible; I had to lean forward to listen to what she was saying. “After I die,” she went on, “you will have a new and healthy mother who will take a good care of you.”

“What are you saying,” I mumbled but I couldn’t go on and tell her to stop talking nonsense.

It was then that I realized I resented Mother for what she had done not only to herself, but, more importantly, to me.

The train of thought that ran through my young mind went something like this: there I was, her only son, whom she said she loved despite her long illness and suffering, and yet, she was ready to go away and “abandon” me. It was very selfish of her, I thought, to leave her loved one behind and “try to go away alone.”

The realization of that fact was pretty unsettling as I felt that her attempt to kill herself was a kind of betrayal. But it soon dawned on me that I was the selfish one for thinking only of myself while I’d cared very little about how much Mother must have suffered to have wanted to end it all with her own hand.

She died a week later. Father, who always insisted that I should never miss a day at school, told me to stay home that day. He must have had some kind of premonition.

I stayed at Mother’s bedside all morning but in the afternoon, a friend dropped in to find out why I had skipped school. While the friend and I were in another room, talking about a book we had both read recently, Mother was left alone and death must have come then.

It was Father who discovered her and called me and other members of the family into the room. By then, it was too late.

The funeral rite was held at a Buddhist temple on the western outskirts of Seoul. Mother was neither a Buddhist nor a Christian. But she had believed in the supernatural. In other words, she was superstitious.

I do not know who decided to hold her funeral at the Buddhist temple three days after her death. It must have been customary at that time for most Koreans to cremate the dead after holding the funeral at a temple. And we must have just followed the custom, although no member of our family was Buddhist.

The temple was about 500 meters up a hill behind the crematorium.
Before we left for the temple, they placed the wooden casket on a trolley in front of one of the four furnaces. A crematory worker told us we could stay there a while and watch the casket going into the furnace. I wanted to stay. I felt I had to see Mother for the last time before she would be reduced to ashes.

Even at that age, I could see that it would be one of the most painful moments in the funeral processes: while mourners stood around, the crematory worker would open the thick glassy door for us to see the fire roaring inside the cylindrical chamber into which mother in the casket would be pushed by the worker. If you are the “chief mourner” of the deceased you are supposed to watch the process, he said.

But as it was too painful, especially for such a young chief mourner, like myself, the worker explained we could leave the job for them. And my father said we had better go to the temple right away to attend the funeral rite.
The rite at the temple was a drawn-out affair.

A faded black-and-white photo of Mother, which must have been taken years before when she was relatively healthy, was placed on the altar. She looked like a stranger to me perhaps because I had not known such a healthy looking mother in all my life.

A monk recited a long, unintelligible scripture while we kneeled on the floor and bowed to a huge, gleaming bronze statue of Buddha, and stood up just to repeat the process again and again. At the end of the prayer service, the monk explained to me: “Now, the soul of your mother can leave this world because of the infinite mercy of Buddha.”

After the rite, we were led to a dinning hall where rows of dishes of steamed rice and vegetarian foods were laid out. My sisters, uncles and aunts and other members of our family ate hungrily. When I thought about it, we had not had a substantial meal for three straight days and they must have been starving. Watching them wolfing the food down, I, too, felt ravenous, and yet, my mouth was extremely dry, and I felt I could not swallow anything even if I tried.

I sneaked out of the dining room and crossed the front yard of the temple to the edge of the cliff from where I could watch the crematorium. A wisp of smoke was coming out of its chimney and disappeared into the air even though there was hardly any wind in the dull, early spring weather.

The chimney was extremely tall. Then, I remembered hearing that it wasn’t tall at first, but the crematorium was forced to raise its height after the people in nearby villages complained of the smell of burning flesh almost every day.

Vaguely, I wondered how many dead bodies were cremated there. Hundreds? Thousands?

Then suddenly I realized that I was trying to force myself to think of something that had nothing to do with my mother, who, at that very moment, was being reduced to a handful of ashes and smoke that was emitting from the chimney and disappearing into the thin air.

I wondered whether my mother felt the heat in there—the suffocating and insufferable heat—had she been able, perchance, to feel as we, the living, do. Of course, there was no way of knowing whether the soul of dead persons could feel anything. And yet I could not help wondering about it.

Until then, I have never thought of what might be “the best way to go” after death. Which would be better? Burned to ashes or buried deep in the cold, dark, damp ground? Actually, when they told me that Mother was going to be cremated, I thought it wasn’t such a bad idea. But then, when I thought of the heat, that awful heat she had to suffer, I felt a cold shiver running down my spine.

When we returned to the crematorium, they had already pulled the trolley out of the furnace and a heap of ashes with some fragmentary white bones scattered among them were ready for us to pick up. I was given a pair of big wooden sticks to pick the bones and deposit them into a ceramic urn along with some ashes.

I could still feel the heat that emanated from the remains. In addition, perhaps because of the awfully hot atmosphere of the hall, I felt beads of sweat running down my face.

“Let’s hurry up,” my father, standing behind me, said to no one in particular. “We have to catch the last bus from the station in the village and we haven’t got much time.”

After depositing most of the ashes into the urn, we left the crematorium for the village. As mother’s only son, I was asked to carry the urn in a cloth contraption that hung from my neck while I held it with both my hands. As we walked down a narrow, winding road in a single file, I was surprised to find how light the entire remains of my mother were. I also felt the warmth of Mother’s ashes through the ceramic urn that I was holding against my chest.

Then suddenly and for the first time since Mother had died, tears started welling up in my eyes, blurring my vision, in spite of myself. Right after Mother died, I had told myself not to show tears in front of others if I could help it.

To this day, I do not know why I made such a resolution. Anyway, all of a sudden, tears started flowing, and I couldn’t do anything about it. I handed the urn to my father, told everybody to go ahead and leave me alone for a while. I then sat down on the side of the road and, after making sure nobody was watching me, I wept with abandon.
(END)

Blaming General MacArthur

In an opinion poll, conducted recently to mark the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War on June 25, 1950, more than 30 percent of young people in South Korea said they believed that Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the United Nations forces during the war, was responsible for blocking the Korean people’s effort to reunify their country.

From the point of view of most older South Koreans who experienced the war, the opinion of the young people, came as a complete shock, I am sure.

Admittedly, the young people were born long after 1950 and therefore had no experience of that awful war, launched by the North Korean dictator Kim Il-sung to communize the South. They have also grown up in a free and affluent society, which their grandparents and parents worked hard to build up in the 1960s and 70s from the rubble of war. Moreover, they were educated by teachers, many of who are leftists, who have apparently tried their best to brainwash their students with their pro-Communist and pro-North Korean view of the war.

In any case, the young South Koreans apparently believe that MacArthur foiled the “attempt by Koreans to unify their country,” when he launched the tactical maneuver in which the U.S. and South Korean forces landed at Inchon from the West (Yellow) Sea on September 15, 1950 and attacked the occupying North Korean force, recapturing the capital city of Seoul within a few days.

The surprise attack also cut off the North Koreans’ supply line, completely isolating the Communist forces in the South. Within about ten days, the North Koreans had either surrendered or beat a hasty retreat, crossing the 38th parallel that had originally separated from the South from the North.

The U.N. forces then marched north, all the way to the Yalu River that separated the Korean Peninsula from China, nearly succeeding in unifying the country.

But then, the Red Chinese forces, hundreds of thousands of them, crossed the border and surged into North Korea to fight the U.N. forces alongside the North Koreans. They eventually pushed the United Nations forces near to the original dividing line of the 38th parallel before the two sides came to an armistice agreement in 1953.

So, if MacArthur’s Inchon landing frustrated reunification efforts, as those young South Koreans believe, the Chinese Red Amy that invaded Korea, should also be viewed as responsible for blocking the Korean people’s effort to unify their country.

I wonder why those young people so conveniently forget this fact and unfairly shift the blame for the division of their country only on General MacArthur.

It’s incredible as well as deeply saddening to realize that those young South Koreans are blaming the American commander and the United States for blocking the reunification of their country instead of expressing appreciation to MacArthur and being grateful to the United States for helping their country remain free and build up its democratic system and economy.

Would they rather live in a country that is one huge gulag for all practical intents and purposes, starving or living in utter inhuman conditions under the cruel and merciless dictatorship of Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il? The answer, of course, is clear; no one who wasn’t forced to would want to live in constant fear and complete darkness like that.
(END)

Beware of Liars on the Internet

Koreans on the whole are so emotional and gullible that they believe all kinds of dubious allegations, heresies and even downright lies concocted by netizens and spread through the Internet for fun or with malicious intent.

Without ascertaining their truth, Koreans tend to take action, turning the false allegations into social or political issues that sometimes shake the very foundation of the republic.

We all know that on a personal level, a lot of harm is being done to well-known public figures by the nasty twitterers and Internet bloggers and surfers. It has become easy for everyone to use such Internet sites as Google, YouTube and Facebook to attack others, often under the protection of anonymity.

The problem becomes more serious when unscrupulous political activists abuse the Internet to incite social unrest by planting misinformation or rumors. In most advanced societies, the people are not so easily duped into believing information they read on the Internet, until it is substantiated by facts. But the opposite is true in South Korea; for, it is a society where the people are, as I said, highly gullible and excitable.

The situation is exacerbated by the people’s political mindsets.

The country, which is barely as big as the state of Indiana, is politically divided by regions, which have hated each other like irreconcilable brothers for centuries. One group is ostracized and marginalized by the other whenever political power changes hands.

The group, currently in power, comes from the conservative region or the southeastern part of the country while the others—in the opposition now—are mostly left-leaning people from the southwest. Also, as in many other countries, the younger generation tends to be liberal whereas the elderly are conservative.

These, of course, are not fast and clear-cut rules but they are generally true.

Those from the southwestern region, plus a majority of young people, are generally leftists, sympathetic to—if not downright supporters of—the pseudo-Communist regime of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il while the conservatives are pro-American and anti-North Korean regime.

It is against this demographic and political background that the game of intrigue and propaganda has been played out through the use of the Internet.

Thus, a group of anti-American leftists alleged on the Internet a couple of years ago that the beef imported from the United States was tainted with mad-cow disease, fomenting fear and hysteria among the general populace.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators hit the streets of Seoul and other major cities almost daily to demonstrate against the government for months. However, the allegations were eventually proven false. And yet, not many of those who were known to have spread the groundless allegations were forced to take responsibility for their action.

Then, a South Korean navy vessel exploded and sank in the East (Yellow) Sea nearly three months ago. A painstaking and detailed investigation by South Korean authorities, aided by foreign experts, has established that it was a North Korean submarine that torpedoed and sank the ship.

As usual, the North Koreans denied the charge and the leftists in South Korea parroted Pyongyang, claiming that it must have been the South Koreans themselves who sank their own navy ship. There were even allegations, made on the Internet, that a U.S. submarine was somehow responsible for the sinking.

But who, in their right mind, would sink a navy ship of their own or that of a close ally, unless they were crazy like the leaders in Pyongyang?

Anyway, in the latest episode, Guus Hiddink, former head coach of the South Korean national football (soccer) team, who successfully piloted his team to the semifinals of the 2002 World Cup held in South Korea and Japan, was quoted as sharply criticizing the South Korean team currently competing in the World Cup in South Africa in the wake of its 1-4 defeat at the hands of the Argentine side.

Korean newspapers prominently played Hiddink’s criticism under big headlines. And readers were puzzled by the kind of remarks that would not have come from the smart and suave coach. Indeed, it turned out that the whole story was fabricated by a netizen and run on an Internet site as though Hiddink made the remarks in an interview with a Dutch publication.

Needless to say, what this netizen has done is inexcusable. He should be hunted down and made to pay the price for his stupid and pointless prank.

But what is more deplorable, shameful, really, is the irresponsible Korean newspapers that lifted the false story out of the Internet site and without checking its truthfulness, published it on their front pages.

True, we are all victims of the sensationalism and untrustworthy tidbits of information that are masquerading as legitimate news reports these days. We also know that the electronic media, whether we like them or not, are playing an increasingly important role in our society. That is precisely why we must be wary of its harmful effects as well.
(END)

Loser In the Game of Chicken

When I was reading news reports on North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s return to Pyongyang from his visit to China early last month, a faded image of a small Korean boy resurfaced in my memory out of half a century of oblivion.

The boy was one of my classmates at the elementary school in a remote village in South Korea nearly 70 years ago.

The North Korean dictator somehow reminded me of the obnoxious little kid who was disliked and avoided like a leech by everyone in our class. He was not unusually big or strong but managed to bully everyone because he had a big brother who was four years older than us.

His family, I remember, was extremely poor and yet he always was in possession of a pocketful of candies and marbles that he had “confiscated” from us. He even forced us to give up our lunch boxes so that he didn’t have to skip a meal. Luckily for us, his family moved out of our village a couple of years later, and the memory of that awful boy soon faded away.

As we all know, Kim Jong-il visited China shortly after a South Korean navy ship was attacked and sank in the West (Yellow) Sea. A month-long, meticulous investigation by South Koreans aided by a team of foreign experts established—based on undeniable and watertight evidence—that the North Koreans had perpetrated the crime.

Outraged and angry at the latest in North Korea’s unending series of terrorist acts against them, South Koreans vowed to retaliate. President Lee Myung-bak’s government declared it would force the impoverished but belligerent North to pay a price for the unprovoked attack.

South Korea and its ally, the United States, also announced that they would hold a joint naval exercise as part of demonstrations to show their determination to confront possible further provocation from the North. In addition, Seoul moved to have the United Nations condemn North Korea for the attack and tighten its existing economic sanctions against Pyongyang as punishment.

The North Koreans, as usual, resorted to their well-worn tactics, claiming that it was South Korea itself that had “staged” the incident and sank its own navy ship. It even threatened to launch an all-out war against the South if Seoul tries to retaliate against them.

Although Kim Jong-il and his running dogs in Pyongyang barked loudly, they must have been scared nonetheless over a possible military action by the South against them. For, Kim dragged his ailing body to Beijing apparently to seek Chinese reassurance that they would continue to stand by their North Korean puppets no matter what happens.

In the ensuing game of chicken between the North and South, it is Seoul, it seems, that has blinked and let Kim Jong-il get away with murders once again. South Korea and the United States postponed their announced naval exercise indefinitely while the United Nations has not taken any action against North Korea as of early June.
The Seoul government even issued a statement saying it would refrain from taking any step that could provoke North Korea.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did visit Beijing but was unable, obviously, to exert any effective influence over the Chinese leadership. Judging by the action—or rather, inaction—of Beijing, China’s role of big brother for the North seems to be unchanged, if not strengthened.

Thus, like the obnoxious kid that my classmates and I had to put up with in our elementary school days, that cruel and insufferable dictator Kim Jong-il, riding piggyback on his big brother, will keep terrorizing and murdering South Koreans with impunity as China continues to expand and wield its power and influence over its neighbors.

Kim Jong-il knows, no doubt, that right now, the United States can’t do anything much for South Korea not only because it has its hands full with two wars—in Iraq and Afghanistan—but also because it is suffering serious financial difficulties that include an enormous debt to China. It has been reported that Beijing has dragged its feet on the U.S. request for Chinese efforts to help maintain peace in the Korean Peninsula.

One only hopes that the overconfident Kim Jong-il will not take any more rash and miscalculated action against the South that could easily trigger another all-out war that would surely reduce the two Koreas to one huge heap of rubble.
(END)

Living With Ants (II)

The other day, I played god with a couple of tiny ants, members a species that is smaller than a grain of rice. Hundreds of thousands of them have invaded our house and have been living with us for years. That is why I wasn’t very upset when I saw them crawling around the edges of the bathtub when I was taking my morning bath.

I decided to get rid of them but not immediately. I wanted to see how strong their instinct for survival was. I realized that I was being cruel. But my desire to observe their behavior in the face of imminent death was stronger.

First, I built a puddle of water around them with warm bath water scooped up with the palms of my hand in order to see them struggle to get out of their watery confine and escape. Apparently, though, they are not good swimmers.

Despite their desperate efforts, they could not wriggle through water. But they never gave up; they ran around tirelessly in search of a possible exit for more than five minutes.

I found out that in the world of ants, there are also individual differences. One ant was obviously stronger physically than the other. It continued to scurry around while the other one gradually slowed down, eventually stopped running altogether and lay there as still as though it was dead.

Then, I witnessed an amazing scene. The stronger one approached the weaker one and in what appeared to me to be a gesture of nudging, pushed its head against the body of the exhausted fellow ant. Of course, I had no way of knowing whether ants actually communicate with each other and, if they do, how.

Anyway, to my great surprise, the one that I thought was dead, started moving again. And pretty soon, it began running again, not with its companion, but separately.

Meanwhile, the bathwater was getting less and less warm as I forgot to replenish it with hot water as I usually do. I was too preoccupied with my observation of the ants’ behavior.

Then, a disaster befell on the physically stronger ant. While it was frantically trying to find a route for escape, it run over the slippery edge and fell into the tube. And for a few moments, I thought it had no chance of surviving in the larger body of water, however tepid the water had become.

But lo and behold! It not only survived the fall but was vigorously moving in the soapy bathwater. Impressed by the tenacity of such a small creature and taking pity on it, I fished it out in my palm and returned it to his former “watery prison.”

Some may say that I was being needlessly cruel, but I had become extremely impatient with all the ants that had been bothering us everywhere in our house day and night. And I have killed them mercilessly whenever I spotted them. The couple of ants I ran into in the bathroom could not be an exemption. I contemplated what could be the best way to send them to their death. The answer was hot water. I knew the water didn’t have to be scalding hot.

I turned on the hot water, cupped some of it in my hands and sprinkled it on the two ants, which were reduced to a couple of dark specks instantly.

Coming out of the bathroom, I did not feel sorry for them. But somehow, I didn’t feel any vengeful elation either. Nevertheless, as I was drying myself, I turned on my CD player, knowing that the music it would play would be Mozart’s Requiem.
(END)