When all else fails........

you turn to TiK madness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


So, as the conservative president (LMB) watches his landslide victory in both the presidential and National Assembly elections dissolve into a near coup d'etat (by High School Students no less) he seems to have turned to the old standby from the liberal days, BLAME JAPAN!

What better way to get the stupid masses off your back over misjudgements on US beef, FTA's, USFK policy, and a crazy Jesus-told-me-to-do-it canal plan then by lighting them up with Dokdo! What is Dokdo? Two crappy islets (yes islets, not even islands) that both Korea and Japan claim as their own. In this crazy Asian grudgematch, Korea holds all the cards since their military forces occupy the islets and there is no way (short of a war) that they would give them up.

So why even bring up Dokdo? Well the Japanese conservative nuts bring it up in Japan and then oppertunitistic leaders in Korea use it to rally the masses against the evil "Japs". But does the government really care about what some silly people say about the islets?

No, of course not. But now all the "Korean thinkers" have stopped worrying about the failing economy, the US Beef deal, the dead S.Korean tourist, the fact that LMB has broken everyone, EVERYONE, of his election promises in under 200 days in office.

Ahhhhhhhh smell that, its rampent, xenophobic nationalism mixed with piss-poor personal judgement. That's TiK!

Go here for some reads on this developing bullsh*t non-story:

http://english.chosun.com/

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/index.asp

Changes on the way

To the readers of this blog. Changes will be coming and a new blog will be formed from this one by August 20th.

The prevailing themes of this blog will be maintained, just expanded in scope.

This blog will likely be inactive from July 18th to August 20th, but check back just in case.

Over and out.

Accountability

Accountability is a buzz word in politics that gets thrown around. It's a word and an idea that needs to be developed in Korea on a level that is difficult to imagine. The education system is ripe with examples of no accountability, and Korean society at large is the best example whereby every problem Korea has is someone else's fault, with the normal scapegoats being Japan, America and sometimes China. I remember one distinct conversation I had with the trainer at my gym who was making perfection sense describing many of Korea's many problems in very clear terms. And then he explained the reason for these problems was that when Japan occupied Korea they taught Koreans only bad ways of doing things, and when they left they took all the good things with them and left only the bad...

So in honor of accontability, I give you this story from the Ilbo

In it it explains that web portals have been fined for online defamation. The portals played a role based on what the story explains, but the key issue missing is personal accountability. It says that the mother of the girl played a role, but mentions no fines against her. It mentions that many people played a role in spreading the info about him, and they did not get fined either. And perhaps most important of all, it doesn't say that the claims were untrue, only that they were damaging.

Accountability is lacking all around with this incident, from the law, to those involved in the portals, right down to the guy who left his pregnant girlfriend, who clearly wasn't being accountable for his actions/sperm.