South Korea @ MindSay

 

I know the American Presidential election has eclipsed the danger of nuclear armed North Korea and North Korea’s clandestine nuclear aid to Syria and support for Iran; however the election of a new South Korean President should get some play in the Mainstream Media. Unfortunately I doubt that it will.

 

Why?

 

South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak is an outspoken Christian that attributes his election to Divine Providence. Oh my, this will mess with the Leftists in the American and Western Press.

 

JRH 2/11/08

 

On June 25, 1950 the North Korean Army stormed across the DMZ on the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea, starting the Korean War.  Lee Jin-tae and Jin-seok were brothers, leading a happy life in Seoul.  Jin-tae was a hardworking shoe-shiner engaged to Kim Young-shin, who worked a noodle stand with Jin-tae and Jin-seok’s mother.  Jin-seok was a college student, paying his tuition with the combined support of his family.  The family’s life was interrupted by the start of the war, and as the North Koreans advanced closer and closer to Seoul, the entire city had no choice but to flee as refugees.

 

Somewhere in the confusion of fleeing, Jin-seok was drafted into the South Korean Army.  When Jin-tae went to go retrieve Jin-seok, he was drafted as well.  As the train with the draftees took off, the Lee brothers were able to exchange a few words of farewell with their mother and Young-shin.

 

The film cuts to the front lines, near the Nak-dong river.  The Lee brothers were @$$igned to their squadron, and after everyone met each other, the enemy surprised them to a brutal artillery attack in which many people were killed in explosions, or wounded by shrapnel.  This brutal awakening to the horrors of combat caused ...Read more

The other week B bought the Japan Times, and there was a rather interesting article that made me actually laugh. I cut out the article and put it in my wallet for further use. So now I am going to copy it below.....

"Seoul (Reuters)- Hot pants and miniskirts will soon be legal in South Korea.
The country is in the final stages of revising an indecency law that prohibits people from wearing revealing outfits and was once enforced by ruler-wielding police during authoritarian goverments in the 1970s, officials said.
"The law for excessive exposure does not match our current society," Kim Jae Kwang, an official with the Korea Legislation Research Institute, said.
Under authoritarian rule, the police could arrest or fine women for their fashion choices. They also took scissors to men whose hair they felt was too long and tossed people in jail for unauthorised dancing."

Firstly, there was once ACTUAL FASHION POLICE. Which begs the question... where the hell were they in the 80s???

Secondly, I now have an image of South Koreans randomly dancing in the street. It must have been a problem for there to be a law made about it, right?

I am reading in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle by Matthew B. Stannard as a hat tip that a Hoover Institute Fellow is quoted in the article. The article is about being a little stunned that China has rebuked North Korea and has called sanctions.

 

Stannard’s basic conclusion is that China version of sanctions may be quite different from America’s version. The usual reasons are offered such as: close economic and military ties to China. Basically North Korea’s survival is due to the economic bones tossed by China to its rascal little puppy.

 

Here is the thing that tossed me into the wonder zone:

 

For all its anger at the North, say analysts, China may not be ready to support the kind of broad economic and political sanctions that stand the best chance of influencing Pyongyang, but that risk causing the North Korean government to collapse -- exposing China to a flood of North Korean refugees.

…

 

"If we use sanctions that are serious sanctions, it would lead to the regime falling, and that's the nightmare of China and South Korea," said Charles Hill, a former special consultant on policy to the secretary-general of the United Nations, now a research fellow at the Hoover Institution.

 

As to the first paragraph, I am fairly certain that China could utilize the world’s largest manned army to prevent a flood of North Korean refugees in the event of a regime collapse. There are a few paragraphs to read using comparative illustrations to click on an American brain, and then we come to the paragraph about China and South Korea.

 

It is implies that China and South Korea are buddies and that there is a mutual dread of a North Korean collapse. Now I can see why a North Korean collapse might be a bit uncomfortable for China, however someone needs to enlighten me as to why the South Koreans have the same dread.

 

Do the South Koreans fear a North Korean regime collapse will automatically result in a nuclear strike in South Korea?

 

I am thinking a North Korean collapse might lead to a re-unification of a ONE Korea. I think China’s new global confidence can live with a unified Korea as an incredibly viable trading partner. A unified Korea would lead to fewer tensions in that part of Asia. It would give America a chance to lessen its military presence and enable China greater influence as a hegemon on mainland Asia.

 

The only thing China would need to get over is a tiny mud on their ego of another failed Marxist dictatorship.

 

I suspect that with North Korea gone, Japan and a New Korea bloom economically as partners. Now that may not necessarily be in the best National Interests of America, however it would go a long way in America being freed up to concentrate on the War on Terrorism in the Middle East.

 

Taiwan may even benefit from Little Kim ceasing to exist as a saber rattler. With Korea and Japan cooperating with China, a capitalistic Taiwan will want some of that market stuff too. It would be to China’s National Interests to use Taiwan as a distribution center to the Western world for their cheap labor manufactured goods.

 

So again I wonder: What is South Korea’s fear?

I often watch movies, late at night. Right before hitting the bed, I switch on my notebook – and go through the list of movies that’d recently been downloaded in all its high-def glory! Being a night person, and someone who watches movies with a certain passion – this routine had always worked out perfectly for me.

But last night I found out, this isn’t always a good idea. Sometimes a movie stays with you longer than you want it to!

I’d wanted to watch the film for sometime now. Having seen the trailer and having heard so many things (not to mention the fact that this South Korean film won the Grand Jury Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival) But my curiosity reached a certain peek after this little incident few months back. Someone at work asked me whether I’ve seen the movie. I shook my head though I told him I’d been planning to. Right about then, this lady joined our conversation. Now both of them, being fellow countrymen, started talking in their non-English native language. Obviously, I couldn’t make out what they were saying. But I knew they were talking about the movie (which she didn’t see either). I took on the role of an observer: the guy talked fast, excitedly – probably telling her what happens in the movie and then - at one point, I saw this reaction on her face that usually causes from either watching someone pull finger nails with pliers or drinking full-glass shake made from blending live roaches & horse rectums...

Well, it turned out the film contained none of those particular scenarios. This could’ve been a good news for me, personally since I’ve a fairly weak stomach and had always turned into a mad man searching for the remote every time NBC’s Fear Factor would come up on TV.

Unfortunately the film did contain scenes that involve forcible removal of teeth, one that connects a pair of scissors with a tongue and another in which an octopus is definitely harmed during the making of the movie. (For your viewing pleasure, I’ve included the clip below. Warning: Not for the faint of hearts.)

But here’s the thing – those aren’t the things that made this film the most psychotically violent movie of the year. (It sure did help though). By the time the movies finished, it felt like a blow that almost knocked me if not unconscious, emotionally shaky for sure. During the movie, as the time went by - specially the last 20 minutes, which are a gross-out symphony of revelations, humiliations, and mutilations that made the two hours fly by - it got so intense, and hard to take that I felt like I was coming off of a fever through sweating like a pig.

The film could be considered a mystery (it’s full of surprises and shocking revelations), or a bloody revenge thriller, or a twisted romance, or a tale of extreme karma (extreme being the key word) –OR– a tragic tale in the most classic sense (which is how I felt about it in the end). Regardless of how you look at this film, it's unlike anything you are likely to have seen before.

I'd point out - even thought it ventures to emotional extremes, but never without reason. The scenes do not play for shock value, but are part of the whole. And that’s precisely what makes it so hard to shake off. This ingeniously structured, brilliantly shot, and very hard to take tale of revenge is indeed one of the most creative films I’ve ever seen.