Newley Purnell

Harper’s:

From a list of titles allegedly used by “prominent leaders from 160 nations across the world” to refer to Kim Jong-Il, as announced last winter by North Korean state television. The titles were translated from the Korean by Lee Jong-Heon. Originally from Harper’s Magazine, February 2005.

* Supreme Commander at the Forefront of the Struggle Against Imperialism and the United States
* Greatest Saint Who Rules with Extensive Magnanimity
* Lode Star of the Twenty-First Century
* Best Leader Who Realized Human Wisdom
* Leader with Extraordinary Personality
* Perfect Picture of Wisdom and Boldness
* Eternal Bosom of Hot Love
* Master of Literature, Arts, and Architecture
* World’s Best Ideal Leader with Versatile Talents
* Humankind’s Greatest Musical Genius
* Master of the Computer Who Surprised the World
* Man with Encyclopedic Knowledge
* Guardian Deity of the Planet
* Heaven-Sent Hero
* Power Incarnate with Endless Creativity
* Greatest Man Who Ever Lived
* Present-day God
* World’s Greatest Writer

See this equation? Well, an eight-year-old Korean boy, Song Yoo-geun, can tell you that it’s part of the Schrodinger Equation. But don’t feel bad if if you didn’t recognize the above as the famed “wave equation” (which, of course, is a partial differential equation that illustrates the way in which the wavefunction of a physical system evolves over time). Because Little Yoo-geun is a physics genius, and you’re not. And he just entered a Korean university.

American Dan Schorr is blogging from Pyongyang, North Korea; he’s there for the Arirang Games.

(Via BB).

North+Korea, Arirang

Doug Bandow, writing in Reason, says the US should let Korea defend itself:

The U.S. State Department has never met an alliance, treaty, or aid program that it doesn’t like. As a result, the list of Washington’s foreign policy welfare queens is long. The Republic of Korea, however, must be near the top.

Snips from an article in today’s Globe and Mail:

Nearly 50 English teachers from Canada have been detained, deported or investigated on allegations of visa fraud in South Korea, a country seeking to purge itself of young Westerners increasingly regarded as unqualified, unruly and unwelcome.

Long a magnet for foreigners drawn to working overseas, Korea has arrested hundreds of them in the past couple of weeks. Immigration officials have been rounding up dozens of teachers at their homes, work, or at the airports.

While as many as 10,000 foreigners legally teach the language at private English schools in Korea, the nation’s media have been full of exposés about teachers with dubious credentials.

Many of the foreign teachers, if not most, are Canadian.
…
Visa frauds go on in just about every country, but Korea’s clampdown has been lent a sense of urgency by highly publicized accounts of immorality by young foreigners. Reports of marijuana and cocaine busts have long tended to feature Westerners — including five Canadian teachers who were arrested two years ago.

But more recent events have led to a furor. An unknown English teacher in Korea used the Internet to post what amounted to a how-to guide for seducing Korean women. Then, two English teachers from Cape Breton, N.S., made the headlines for breaking a local man’s jaw in a bar brawl. They spent 40 days in jail and were ordered to pay $30,000 (U.S.) in a form of restitution known locally as “blood money.”

And lately, Korean TV has aired segments painting English teachers as inept, unqualified foreigners who frequently lie about their credentials.

(Via Scott Sommers.)

If you think I’m a paranoid tight-ass when it comes to traffic cameras (and don’t miss Ben P. issuing me a cerebral beat-down in the comments) , you can only imagine how I feel about the privacy implications involved in Korea’s plan to build a high-tech utopia.

NYT:

Imagine public recycling bins that use radio-frequency identification technology to credit recyclers every time they toss in a bottle; pressure-sensitive floors in the homes of older people that can detect the impact of a fall and immediately contact help; cellphones that store health records and can be used to pay for prescriptions.

These are among the services dreamed up by industrial-design students at California State University, Long Beach, for possible use in New Songdo City, a large “ubiquitous city” being built in South Korea.

A ubiquitous city is where all major information systems (residential, medical, business, governmental and the like) share data, and computers are built into the houses, streets and office buildings. New Songdo, located on a man-made island of nearly 1,500 acres off the Incheon coast about 40 miles from Seoul, is rising from the ground up as a U-city.

But seriously, to clarify my stance: I’m all for gadgets in instances like this, when they promise to make our lives easier. But when techno-wizzardry increases the chance of me getting a traffic citation, I’m all like “down with the autoritarian surveillance state, yo!”

…I would totally go to the Arirang games in North Korea.

NYTimes:

American tourists will have a rare opportunity this month to visit North Korea’s capital and see a mass sports festival. North Korea will allow United States passport holders to enter on visas from either Oct. 8 to 12 or Oct. 15 to 18 to go to the Arirang 2005 festival. Travelers will have to fly from Beijing to Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, on the country’s airline, Air Koryo, and then will be able to attend the games and see other parts of the country.

(Via Gridskipper.)

Pyongyang, North+Korea, Arirang

Conventional wisdom holds that when Kim Jong-Il finally loses his grasp on North Korea, millions of refugees will come streaming across the border to the south. Or will they?

(Via The Marmot’s Hole via my brother.)

North+Korea, Kim+Jong-Il

CNN:

The Bush administration is “cautiously optimistic” about North Korea’s agreement to give up its nuclear program, according to a White House official.

“We are pleased that North Korea decided to abandon its nuclear program but North Korea must move forward with the next steps to dismantle,” the official told CNN on Monday.

NK News: “Database of North Korean Propaganda.”

Korea, North+Korea

New York Times:

German Village, South Korea, only three years old, is an improbable creation, the product of this nation’s shifting needs. In the 1960’s and 70’s, South Korea, poor and overpopulated, sent thousands of its citizens to work as nurses or miners in West Germany. Today, they and their German spouses are being welcomed back, especially in rural areas whose populations have been decimated by urban migration and declining birthrates.

The authorities here, in Namhae County, took the invitation a step further by carving this village from a mountain facing the sea. They offered cheap land and construction subsidies to any Korean nurse or miner who had lived in Germany for at least 20 years, requiring that they build houses in one of five German architectural models. The village will eventually accommodate up to 75 houses.

So far, the village has drawn a small community of Koreans and some Germans, who may not have ever imagined whiling away their retirement days in a corner of South Korea that is visited by few Koreans, though it is famous for its garlic.

“When the opportunity arose, I said, ‘Let’s go!’ right away,” said Friedrich-Wilhelm Engel, 76, who built the village’s third house with his wife, Woo Chun Ja.

South Korea, Korea, Germany, migration

Kim Jong Il is sooper smart yo!

North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong-il never forgets a phone number, a cadre’s career or a line of computer code.

According to an article posted on Tuesday on a Web site run by North Korea, Kim wakes up early every day for intensive memory training where he sits down and commits to his keen mind items such as the phone numbers of workers in his Stalinist state.
…
North Korean propaganda is ripe with the amazing achievements of its Dear Leader. The highly controlled state also closely monitors its citizens to make sure they do not speak out against Kim or challenge his rule.

Kim pilots jet fighters, pens operas, produces movies and accomplished a feat unmatched in the annals of professional golf by shooting 11 holes-in-one on the first round he ever played.

(Incredulous emphais mine.)

North Korea, Kim Jong-il, golf

Telegraph:

It is one of the most secretive regimes in the world, part of George Bush’s “axis of evil” and is believed to be close to building a nuclear arsenal. Next year, however, North Korea will open its borders to an eclectic mix of models, showbusiness personalities and captains of industry taking part in the real-life version of Hollywood’s Cannonball Run.

(Incredulous emphasis mine.)

OhmyNews: “One visa-less American has spent two months in prison awaiting deportation from Korea”