Dokdo - a very politicized piece of worth of real estate

According to this blog by Brian Deutsch, the Korea Herald is reporting that Japan will lay fresh claims on Dokdo, known as Takeshima by the Japanese and called the Liancourt Rocks when parties wish to refer to it without pissing anyone off.
So what is this Dokdo?
Here is a Wikipedia entry for those who wish to find out a little more about the islet itself.
Since this is a Korea based blog, I will be focusing mostly on Korea's sentiment towards these rocks.

Bullshit: The Japanese encroachment or claims on Dokdo are a national security threat to not just South Korea, but to all of Korea.
The Truth: Japan's politicians use it as a way to get people's focus away from real problems such as their troubled economy by means of nationalism and South Korea's reaction to it is largely led by extremists who use nationalism to get the masses to follow them blindly down some very destructive paths.


Chemical Composition: C9H9N (100% Pure Bullshit)

How Dokdo Works For Both Sides
Japan:
Dokdo works for both sides in that, as stated above, the Japanese politicians use it as a way to divert attention away from their real problems and try to get their population behind them through nationalism. Where the politicians and the industries fail, they appeal to nationalism to try to hide their problems. It is a tactic used time and time again, very much like how General Leopoldo Galtieri, who became head of the Argentinian Government in December 1981, invaded the Falklands mostly because Argentina was going through a severe economic crisis.
The difference would be that Argentina actually invaded, whereas Japan, with the eyes of world opinion upon them are highly unlikely to do so militarily, but rather, diplomatically through the use of world opinion.
Korea:
South Korea on the other hand should know this but extremists (usually ultra nationalists who are oddly enough, the left wing in Korea) have a different agenda in which gaining followers is their primary goal. They use the Japanese actions regarding Dokdo to pent up nationalistic fervor and get people behind them in their cause. Of course it never really is about Dokdo itself. It always becomes another anti-foreign (especially anti-American), isolationalist movement in no time and because people are so overcome with emotion, they don't stop to think what it's really about.


The power of high school grade theater

The Effects
I can't say for sure how things turn out in Japan, simply becuase I'm not there to check it out myself though I do know that any Asian person who actually manages to hear about it somehow would disapprove of Japan's actions due to Japan's history in the region during the first half of the 20th century.
As regards to Korea, it does nothing but get Korea further and further away from legitimacy over Dokdo and weakens Korea's standing in the intenational stage.
The constant protests, the spreading of xenophobic, anti-foreign, isolationist propaganda simply turns the rest of the world away from Korea both in terms of the every day person's view of Korea and the diplomatic and economic view of Korea.

The Average Joe:
The average Joe usually doesn't care about South Korea but sometimes he might get a look at yet another protest in South Korea and that is all he will see. A bunch of people who are always angry at just about everything. He doesn't care about the history of the rocks etc etc.
"DO YOU KNOW? DOKDO BELONGS TO KOREA."
"I don't care."
And why should they? It's a pathetically small islet which serves no function and has no real population.
For people not really emotionally attached to Korea who know about it, it's just another disputed territory piss fight, one of hundreds that can be found just about anywhere in the world.
All it does is make Koreans hate foreigners and foreigners hate Korea in response. No one likes being around unpleasant people who are hateful of them. Koreans included. All the rules that apply to everyone else also applies to Korea. But try telling that to a Korean.


Screw the T-shirt. Actually...


Diplomatic
As xenophobic, isolationist leaders gain power and influence in South Korea (like Noh Moo-hyun and Kim Dae-jung) they make decisions that further alienate Korea from the rest of the world. Lots of countries joined in on the War on Terror. Whereas many did not participate in hostilities in Iraq (or soon pulled out when it was established that no WMDs were present), many did join the hostilities in Afghanistan where the threat IS real. The Netherlands, Denmark, Poland and Canada (among many others) provided definitive combat operations in the theater, but due to Korean anti-Americanism, South Korea did not.
Japan provided what it could under its strict laws restricting the use of their Self Defense Force.
South Korea could have easily sent troops into combat legally but refused to do so.
Although South Korea is a signatory of the Mutual Defense Pact with the United States it did not participate fully in Afghanistan. One can argue that it is not a violation since it is not a declared war against a sovreign state, but one can see how it is a violation in the spirit of the agreement.
What this does is raise Japan's image in the view of the world and it lowers South Korea's. The next time the two have a diplomatic conflict over Dokdo and the eyes of the world opinion matter, the world very well could back Japan overwhelmingly.


Chung Sye Kyun, the leader of the Uri Party (the one that really hates America)

Economic
Who the hell wants to invest in a country that is always having strikes, protests etc., the labor prices are high and the environment is hostile towards foreigners?
I'm surprised anyone even bothers doing business with South Korea.

Dokdo is simply a political tool used by leaders who are in trouble or by aspiring leaders who have nothing to offer and need to rely on hate, emotion and extreme nationalism to get anything done.

Simplified Through Cola
Another fine comparison would be to this kind of Korean Cola that was around. It was called 815 COLA and was supposed to be the National Cola of Korea (though it is in no way endorsed by the government). August 15th is Korea's day of independence after 35 odd years of official colonization under the Empire of Japan. 815 COLA appealed to nationalism to sell its product because the product itself was horrible.
Eventually people were fed up with buying lousy Cola and just went straight for the foreign brands.


There's no national smear crime like putting your flag on a very bad product

Same deal with policies. Bad policies set by nationaistic fervor and pent up emotion will lead to disaster very much the same way, except instead of a Company arrogant enough to try to use nationalism to sell their product going bankrupt, the country's national power would suffer badly.

Can Music Save the World? - No.

This is a response to a welcoming speech made by Karl Paulnack, Director of Music at the Connecticut Conservatory which is one of the top music colleges in the world, rated higher than even Juliard.

You can find a copy of the speech here.

It is simply too long for me to post here so let me just cut it down sweet and simple and include the one key part that needs to be challenged. Although I did find myself agreeing with most of what he had said, it was the end which got me saying "that is such bullshit."

Bullshit: (this is the final part of his speech)
"Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music;
I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness
on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual
understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come
from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even
expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem
to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future
of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these
invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come
from the artists, because that's what we do. As in the concentration
camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be
able to help us with our internal, invisible lives." - Karl Paulnack.
The Truth: Although music is great and plays a big role in our lives, in our cultures and civilization as a whole, it's not going to save the world and is subject to limitations and problems that other things have.

Music Divides
Music can divide as much as it can unite.
If only the person saying this ever listened to the hateful songs that permeate throughout the world. The hateful Jihadist music, hateful anti-establishment music the world over, the "ibne hakem" chants (sort of like music) that can be heard in Turkish football stadiums... music can unite, but it can also divide and it can be a very powerful tool in division.
So in a way, it's not very good at uniting and building peace any more than many other things in the world such as economics, violence and information.


There was a lot of singing in this rally too. Hint: it wasn't "Give Peace a Chance"

Music Makes All The Difference?
Let's compare two TV shows. One is based on a true story and it's called Generation Kill. It was a mini-series based on a book written by an embedded journalist who was with some Force Recon Marines during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It had no musical score until the very end of the series and that scene, in my opinion was one of the weaker scenes in the entire series. The show had no introduction theme and had no credits theme. Only the trailer/"previously on" had a slight musical sequence but no one paid any attention to it.
Another TV show that was somewhat similar, though fiction, was Over There, which followed a fireteam from the US Army's 3rd Infantry Division. It didn't even survive the first season despite the fact that it had a very good musical score.
Both were similar in terms of setting and both were obviously expensively made.
Yet the show without the musical score actually gained great reception, while Over There, with its great opening and closing music never got far.
Music didn't make enough of a difference.
But if we are to believe the speech, the TV show without music should have never have stood a chance.


Generation Kill - may have killed the composer.


Over There - in the discount section.

Overstating The Importance of One's Own World
People often overstate the importance of their own world.
A psychologist will tell you that the human mind and what's in it is just about everything.
An economist will tell you that money is everything.
The infantryman will tell you that the infantry is the most important.
The artilleryman will tell you that artillery is the king of the battlefield.
The sailor will tell you that control of the seas IS national power.
A teacher will tell you that without good teachers and good education, there is no future.
Consider that this speech was given at a welcoming speech. The guy is not going to say "dear parents, you're going to be spending about $60,000 a year on your kid learning something irrelevent." You're going to tell them "your kids are going to learn the most important thing in the whole world." Only THAT would justify such a hefty price tag that comes with college education.
He is simply one of many people who overstates the importance of his own line of work.


Screw world peace, he needs to make your parents feel good about parting with their money

All in all, it was a nice little speech, but like many nice speeches, it uses elements of truth to sell a great big lie. Music is not going to save the world. Music causes division as well as unity. It's just hard to ask parents to fork out tens of thousands of dollars each year so their kid can either sing or play a violin at a higher level.

Corruption In Miss Korea Contest?

They tell us that Miss Korea (or Miss Whatever) contests are not a beauty contest in its entirity, but that beauty is a factor. Just then WHY, I ask you is that we end up with these sort of fails?


Left: Miss Korea 2008, Right: Miss Korea 2009

Bullshit: It's because it's not a complete beauty contest.
The Truth: Because the competition is rigged.

Call me Mr. Conspiracy Theorist, but seriously, I think we need a closer view of the contestants to really get the full picture.


Miss Korea 2008

Seriously.... and it gets worse.


Miss Korea 2009

Or if that's not good enough for you,


Can you believe it? I can't.

No, I'm not one of those losers on the internet who see an obviously HOT chick and say "bleh, she's average," or "WTF OMFG She's UGLY" when in reality the only action they ever get is limited to left hand, right hand and canteloupe.
But this is serious.
South Korea, is one of those countries that seem to have an unlimited supply of hot women, and highly educated women, so how on earth did these two win the competition? Notice the swimsuit picture and you'll see that the one behind her is even worse.
There are more attractive women (some of which I assume have some level of college or graduate school education) who walk the streets of Seoul every day. I see them every time I go outside, pretty much without fail, not because I go looking for them, but simply because there are so many of them.

There really is only one explanation: Corruption. The competition is obviously rigged and what beauty or qualification the women have, has little to do with the final outcome. It's actually fairly common in Korea to have rigged contests. Art contests are probably best known for being rigged because an 'expert' has to show up and endorse a certain art piece. In Korea, name and reputation is simply everything. You buy the 'expert' and you have your award.
I guess the same goes for the Miss Korea competition as well.

The Propaganda of Kimchi

Recently I went to the Kimchi museum at the Seoul World Trade Center. Being in Korea, I just had to see what they had to say about the one side dish that has become the center of a nation's pride. That's quite a title to be held for what is often described as "pickled cabbage."
However, even in this museum I have found evidence of a propaganda that permeates throughout the country. Actually, it's not so much evidence, but the lack of evidence.
There is simply no mention about the origins of Kimchi's two most important ingredients: chili pepper and garlic.

Bullshit: Kimchi is a purely and uniquely Korean product.
The Truth: Without the Columbian exchange, Kimchi would not be anything like it is today.

Why this is significant:
There is this belief that anything purely Korean is good and anything foreign is suspect or at the very least, unpatriotic. Imagine back in the 1600s when garlic and chili pepper first entered Korea. There probably wasn't anything more alien than those two strange plant products. One grew in the ground and had a strong taste and smell (more so than jinseng), the other was a long "fruit" of sorts which was not sweet but burned your mouth.
It was as ALIEN as you could ever get.
Yet now it is a part of a uniquely Korean side dish.
But credit for as to where garlic and chili comes from seems to be some sort of secret, as if they're embarrassed that their national dish's most important ingredients are not indigenous to the land they dish belongs to.
The truth, that it was introduced to Korea as a result of the Columbian Exchange, dares Korea to open up and accept foreign influences. There are many groups in Korea who can never accept such a thing.


All this decoration and display and not even a one liner about where garlic and chili came from

In A Folk Tale:
The lie has even affected Korean folk tales. There is a story about the founder of Korea Tan Keun, who offered a bear and a tiger a deal. They would have to stay in a cave for 100 days eating nothing but herbs and garlic. The tiger didn't make it past 30 days, but the bear stayed the full 100 days and became a human woman and married the son of God and became the mother of all Koreans.
What's wrong with the picture here?
It's almost like the first guys who told the story or added garlic into the story, never realized that garlic was never native to Korea and the lie continued. Not only that, the so called fairy tale that is supposedly extremely ancient either isn't, or underwent some serious revision somewhere along the way.


Different kinds of Kimchi

It makes me question even more things: is the cabbage native to Korea?
And more importantly, why is it so important that something be "purely" Korean?
They claim that Kimchi contains more Lactic Acid Bacteria (which attacks the Helicobacter pylori) than Yoghurt, but no one has ever answered: how much Lactic Acid Bacteria is too much?

Koreans will tell you that their food and cuisine go back thousands of years, but considering how important gartlic and chili pepper is in their food and how recent their introduction was, you can pretty much discount most of that talk.

All this propaganda makes everything about the food unbelievable and in fact, suspect.

Honduras - It's not a coup d'etat

There's been a lot of stuff flying around in the news about a coup d'etat in Honduras. It's not a coup d'etat, at least not in the capacity that we know of it. The Western press have largely called it a huge blow to democracy, but was it really? Let's find out.

Bullshit: The military in Honduras staged a coup d'etat.
The truth: The military in Honduras was ordered by the National Congress and the Court to remove President Zelaya from office for attempting to break the law and end democracy.

Modern day Mussolini, except more incompetent and less charismatic

What Happened:
Zelaya attempted to change the constitution making the maximum number of terms for a President unlimited. Sound familiar? The National Congress voted against it.
Then failing that he attempted to conduct a poll among the people to see if he could use that to pass his new "ammendment." Doesn't seem very illegal, but somehow also seems not so legal since you're circumventing the proper channels (i.e. the National Congress). However, what most Western publications fail to emphasize is that Zelaya wanted the military to conduct "logistical support" for this poll. This of course sent alarm bells ringing throughout the National Congress and the military itself (who wanted no part in this).
When President Zelaya ordered General Vasquez to conduct this poll, the General consulted with legal authorities about the matter and then refused to carry it out. President Zelaya fired the General for not carrying out the order.
Zelaya then attempted to go ahead with the poll anyway despite warnings and so the National Congress decided to act. The military was ordered to remove Zelaya from office and Roberto Micheletti was instated as temporary President until the end of the term which is in November of 2009 (this year).
(Compiled by both me and a Spanish speaking friend)

Important things to consider:
Zelaya was obviously trying to be the next Chavez and was pretty much determined to end the democracy in Honduras, turning it into another Venezuela style dictatorship.

Why was General Vasquez's firing highly controversial to the point where the National Congress did not recognize the General's firing and the Chiefs of Staff of every branch of the military turned in their resignations? It is because you cannot be fired or legallly punished for refusing to follow in illegal order. That is what Zelaya's orders for the military to conduct the poll was: illegal.


General Vasquez refused to follow an illegal order

No General currently is heading the government, officially or unofficially.

Zelaya is lucky that Honduras has come a long way. Years ago he would have either succeeded or he and his family would have been shepherded to the basement of his palace where they would have been riddled with bullets.

Roberto Micheletti belongs to the same political party as Zelaya, the Liberal Party.

The Conclusion:
Depending on how the elections go in November 2009, that is, that they prove to be fair, this would be in fact not a defeat for democracy but a major victory for it. There is nothing wrong with having a system (and people with the courage) in place to challenge actions taken by a President who wishes to end democracy and bring in dictatorship in its place (especially when the democracy is working just fine).

The Western media condemns the actions by the military, but what if, back in the 1930's the German Army decided that Hitler (who was democratically elected) was a threat to German society and democracy, overthrew him and reinstated democracy? Would we be accusing the German Army of committing a serious crime?

Although I am generally in support of President Barack Obama, the condemnation by him and others on the Honduras issue is one I am very much against. Depending on what happens on November 2009, I think a lot of heads of government will owe Honduras' military and National Congress an apology.
Maybe leftist pussies the world over can't seem to recognize courageous and righteous action when they see one.