Former Mir Foundation official says power broker Choi received detailed presidential report almost daily, and led meetings on governance
Behind-the-scenes power broker Choi Sun-sil received and reviewed 30 cm-thick “Presidential report packets” from the Blue House on a nearly daily basis until as recently as this spring, a witness recently claimed.
Choi is also reported to have used the materials to hold behind-the-scenes meetings to discuss all aspects of governance. The claims were made consistently over the course of four interviews - totaling 16 hours in length - conducted with the Hankyoreh from Sep. 7-25 by former Mir Foundation secretary-general and close Choi associate Lee Sung-han.
“Ms. Choi typically met with experts from different areas at her office in Nonhyeon [a neighborhood in Seoul] to discuss the President’s upcoming schedule and national policy issues,” Lee said in the interview.
“She had a number of these kinds of meetings for different topics - it was a kind of advisory meeting for the President,” he added.
On the participants in the meetings, Lee said, “It ranged from as few as two people to as many as five. I attended a few times.”
“The people coming to the meetings changed a bit depending on what kind of meeting it was, but Cha Eun-taek was almost always there, and Ko Young-tae attended often,” he added. Cha is a former advertising director who has become known as “crown prince of the cultural community” since the Park Geun-hye administration took office. Ko, a close confidant of Choi‘s, drew notice when Park was seen carrying a purse he had made.
Lee went on to say Choi always had a “Presidential report packet” measuring around 30 cm thick on her office desk. He also offered the name of the individual responsible for delivering them.
“The packets were usually all the things the Blue House Senior Secretaries had reported to the President. They were brought to the office nearly every evening by Jeong Ho-seong, director of the Blue House Office of the Private Secretary to the President,” he said. Jeong is one of the secretaries known as the “door knocker triumvirate.”
Lee also recalled that Choi “would toss us the materials at the meetings and have us reading them without any real explanation, giving us orders to ‘Do things this way’ or ‘Do things that way.’”
“We would listen to her and draft project plans, and they would be passed back to us later as Blue House documents without so much as a comma changed,” he added.
While explaining this, Lee showed a Hankyoreh reporter a comparison of documents stored as image files on his iPhone, which were published as official Blue House documents after he wrote them. He also showed telephone numbers saved on the device for around 20 Blue House secretaries and senior secretaries, which the Hankyoreh later confirmed to be correct.
Regarding the topics discussed at the meetings, Lee said, “About 10% were related to the Mir and K-Sports Foundations, while the other 90% mostly had to do with government policies like the shutdown of the Kaesong Industrial Complex, which Choi Sun-sil referred to as ’issues of interest to President Park Geun-hye.‘”
“Appointment issues were also discussed at the meetings, and decisions were made on who to make or not make a Cabinet minister,” he added.
“It’s a real break with common perceptions to say this, but it’s actually a system where Choi tells the President to do things this way or that way. There aren’t any issues where the President can decide on her own,” Lee said. “It’s basically only possible once Choi has been asked about and approves everything. Even the Blue House ‘door knocker triumvirate’ are basically all just Choi’s messengers.”
While Lee‘s account seems to defy common sense, the Hankyoreh decided to report it because it is largely consistent with what the newspaper has found over the past two months of reporting, as well as an Oct. 24 segment on the JTBC network claiming Choi had read and revised Park’s speeches in advance.
I have no idea how true any of this is but wow that is seriously disconcerting if any of this is even half way true.
You know, of all the things going on in the world, the South Korean president being a figurehead doesn't really surprise me. They were under an authoritarian rule for 40 something years, that wasn't just gonna go away easy.
You know, of all the things going on in the world, the South Korean president being a figurehead doesn't really surprise me. They were under an authoritarian rule for 40 something years, that wasn't just gonna go away easy.
In Taiwan, it's something we're still grappling with, twenty years later. Specifically, the necessity of transitional justice, and how it should be framed (as well as dealing with our own past in Japanese colonialism and Chinese rule). And the post-dictatorship party, the DPP, has its own blind spots: treatment of the mainland Chinese minority in the country, particularly war veterans, what to do about the constitution, as well as the ex-Kuomintang members in their own ranks (though ultimately, time is going to deal with that for both sides). The more aggressively their pursue truth and reconciliation, invariably the more they expose their own political flaws.
For the last half-decade or so, I feel like you hear a lot less about transitional justice or confronting the White Terror in South Korea--certainly compared to the work the Truth and Reconciliation committee did on the Bodo League Massacre after the 1990s. So either everything was "Dealt with" (unlikely) or the political will to continue dried out--arguably, the same thing happened in Taiwan in the late years of the Chen Presidency and throughout the Ma Presidency, though the Ma government still publicly apologized for the White Terror (or at least the 228 Incident), and was far more proactive about addressing the Comfort Woman controversy. It's entirely possible the Park and Lee governments were actively pursuing specific issues, and I simply didn't hear about it.
Except for Human Rights abuse during the Allied Occupation. That's a ideological pit nobody wants to get dragged into, no matter the necessity, especially when US military cooperation is still paramount. That issue's pretty dead.
On the other hand, the current Seoul protests don't seem to have that much to do with historical grievances, but the perception of blatant corruption (something that basically crippled the Chen government in Taiwan, and got the Legislative Yuan occupied during the Ma government).
For better or worse (mostly worse,) Korean people have come to expect corruption from their presidents. So why is this one by Park Geun-hye causing such a strong reaction? It is not because Korean people discovered that Park was corrupt; it is because they discovered Park was irrationally corrupt. Koreans are not being dismayed at the scale of the corruption; they are shocked to see what the scale of the corruption signifies.
[...]
Even in her apology, Park Geun-hye showed that she still might be under Choi Soon-sil's hold. What would a self-interested politician would do, if the corruption of one of his cronies was revealed? The politician would sell the crony down the river, denying up and down that he ever knew or interacted with the crony. Such denial would be cowardly and dishonest, but at least it is predictable. But not with Park Geun-hye. She stood in front of the whole country and admitted that Choi Soon-sil fixed her speeches. Instead of cutting ties with her, Park reaffirmed that Choi was an old friend who helped her during difficult times.
This is utterly irrational. Rational people can expect that a corrupt politician may steal money for himself. They can even expect that he may steal for his family. But no one can expect that a corrupt politician would steal money for a daughter of a fucking psychic who claimed to speak with her dead mother. No one, not even the most cynical Korean, expected that the president would refuse to cut ties with Choi Soon-sil, a woman with no discernible talent other than manipulating the president and humiliating her in the process. Koreans may expect that the president would be corrupt, but they never could have expected that the president might be feeble in her mind.
This whole situation going on in South Korea feels like something either William Gibson or the writers of Shadowrun would sketch out, then pause and go, "Bit on the nose, don't you think?"
I'm not familiar with President Park's own scandals, but from the article, she seems to have done something to what brought Chen Shui-bian down after his immunity as president of the ROC expired--overseas money laundering--but with the added "bonus" with being tied to the twilight of the Korean dictatorship and some religious movements.
I've been reading parallels drawn to Rasputin elsewhere.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
To be fair to the Russian imperial family, Rasputin to them did appear to have the power to heal Alexei when the doctors could not. The crown prince would go from "possibly bleeding out and dying" to recovering when they listened to Rasputin. That seemed to be pretty good evidence to them.
Historical aside: people didn't understand what aspirin actually did in the body until the 1950s. It was just considered a wonder drug in the early 1900s and given to pretty much everybody for pretty much everything. The doctors were giving a blood thinner to a hemophiliac. Rasputin, like every faith healer ever, advised that all official medical treatment be stopped. In this one case it just so happened that modern medicine was genuinely making the situation worse so it worked.
So I've previously warned of the inescapable political quagmire that is the legacy of ethnic Taiwanese (including Aboriginal Taiwanese) soldiers during the Pacific War and Chinese Civil War. As expected, President Tsai was pressured into or otherwise inclined to issue a statement of support to the dead (and the survivors), amid the ideological campaign for historical and transitional justice.
The British media company GBTimes (part of the GB media group) quoted at least 200,000 Taiwanese in military service for the Japanese Empire during the Pacific War (much more than fought in the Republic of China Armies or in among Communist guerrillas), out of ~6 million people living in Colonial Taiwan. The slim majority were probably volunteers, as Japan only implemented conscription in Taiwan in 1944. About 15% of them, some 30,000, were killed, and 28,000 of them are enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine (hence the controversy).
EDIT: And of course, neither China or South Korea will be super-pleased with this, though China has been more focused on the Xi-Hung summit (the Chinese president meeting with the Kuomintang's chairwoman for semi-official talks).
The fact they are doing it so strongly is the unexpected part. Well partially. Xi takes no shit and refuses to not hold all the reigns to power.
They do realize that this is going to piss off people in Hong Kong right?
I doubt enough to cause violence. But enough to vote with their wallets and their feet.
And I don't think the CCP cares. As time has gone on HK has become less necessary as a port of money and foreign investment.
And that is why they are willing to clamp down hard on folks. They showed that two years ago with the umbrella protest.
It's not so much that even so much as there are tons of HK... uh... shall we say, non-patriots. There's really minimal need for the Chinese government to crack down on Hong Kong when Hong Kongers themselves are more than willing to do so to curry Chinese favour.
If anything, overt Chinese intervention is, imo, usually a misstep, as it prompts backlash. The current situation is, imo, more about saving face for the local HK authorities/themselves more than actually moving against HK independence. As an action to smother HK's independence ambitions, it's probably a strategic error that will only, if just for the moment, fuel HK's independence movement more than anything.
I'm almost of the inclination that the UK shouldn't have handed HK back over to the CCP. I feel like the PRC is gonna run HK's economy and social structure into the ground now.
I'm almost of the inclination that the UK shouldn't have handed HK back over to the CCP. I feel like the PRC is gonna run HK's economy and social structure into the ground now.
I don't think they should of. It should of been up to the people of Hong Kong to decide their future, not the Chinese and British governments.
I'm almost of the inclination that the UK shouldn't have handed HK back over to the CCP. I feel like the PRC is gonna run HK's economy and social structure into the ground now.
I don't think they should of. It should of been up to the people of Hong Kong to decide their future, not the Chinese and British governments.
It's easy to forget the 1960s in Hong Kong, when the political left was throwing bombs, and the Hong Kong police were shooting into crowds and arresting journalists in response.
"We will just have to look for another source that is cheaper and maybe as durable and as good as those made in the place we are ordering them."
The US State Department did not commented on the sale of rifles to the Philippines, but spokesman John Kirby said Mr Duterte's rhetoric was "inexplicably at odds" with US-Philippine relations.
Last week, Mr Duterte accused his American counterparts of "rude" treatment and said he could alternatively source rifles from Russia or China.
"Look at these monkeys, the 26,000 firearms we wanted to buy, they don't want to sell. These American fools."
Philippine police chief Ronald dela Rosa reiterated the president's position saying the it was the US which had lost out on sale of the rifles.
For those that don't know, Ferdinand Marcos was a dictator who declared martial law back in the 70's, and maintained power until the EDSA Revolution in 1986. Highlights of his regime include numerous extrajudicial killings, severely curtailing freedom of the press, and stealing billions of dollars from the country. And now he's going to be buried as a hero because the Marcos' are Duterte's allies. I don't really blame the Judiciary much for the decision since I'm not really sure of the legality of it, but I do know that it is morally wrong and a slap to faces of Marcos' victims, many of whom are still alive to witness this! It was just literally three decades ago! Fuck Duterte for trying to alter history and treating a dictator as a hero.
For those that don't know, Ferdinand Marcos was a dictator who declared martial law back in the 70's, and maintained power until the EDSA Revolution in 1986. Highlights of his regime include numerous extrajudicial killings, severely curtailing freedom of the press, and stealing billions of dollars from the country. And now he's going to be buried as a hero because the Marcos' are Duterte's allies. I don't really blame the Judiciary much for the decision since I'm not really sure of the legality of it, but I do know that it is morally wrong and a slap to faces of Marcos' victims, many of whom are still alive to witness this! It was just literally three decades ago! Fuck Duterte for trying to alter history and treating a dictator as a hero.
Well, maybe something good will come of this. After all, Marcos Family still has its admirers and allies in the US from the huge trade deals Marcos signed, and his alignment during the Cold War. Probably not though.
I'm almost of the inclination that the UK shouldn't have handed HK back over to the CCP. I feel like the PRC is gonna run HK's economy and social structure into the ground now.
I mean, it's not like they had a real choice in the matter.
And while it was enlightened colonialism, it was still colonialism
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
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Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
Most of Hong Kong's utilities depend on connections to the mainland. China was like, look, A) you forced us to sign you a lease, and we still honored it, but now the lease is fucking over, and if you don't honor the end of the lease we're gonna shut off all your shit... Also, we'd totally fight a war over this.
I mean, I'm hardly going to be an apologist for the CCP, but the loss of Hong Kong was the beginning of the Century of Humiliation for China, humiliation that was largely doled out by the western colonial powers. If you're from Mainland China and the Brits are like, "Well actually, we don't think you deserve to have Hong Kong back because you're not democratic enough", your natural reaction is to tell them to go fuck themselves. Granted the question is more complex in Hong Kong.
China still has a lot of work to do, but refusing to end colonial power structures until the west decides that they measure up is completely hypocritical. Also, it's an idea that Asia over the 20th century learned to be terrifically cynical of, for good reason.
Kana on
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Most of Hong Kong's utilities depend on connections to the mainland. China was like, look, A) you forced us to sign you a lease, and we still honored it, but now the lease is fucking over, and if you don't honor the end of the lease we're gonna shut off all your shit... Also, we'd totally fight a war over this.
That makes a lot more sense.
I mean, I'm hardly going to be an apologist for the CCP, but the loss of Hong Kong was the beginning of the Century of Humiliation for China, humiliation that was largely doled out by the western colonial powers. If you're from Mainland China and the Brits are like, "Well actually, we don't think you deserve to have Hong Kong back because you're not democratic enough", your natural reaction is to tell them to go fuck themselves. Granted the question is more complex in Hong Kong.
China still has a lot of work to do, but refusing to end colonial power structures until the west decides that they measure up is completely hypocritical. Also, it's an idea that Asia over the 20th century learned to be terrifically cynical of, for good reason.
Bolded is a bit of an understatement. And I look at the "Century of Humiliation" claims with a jaundiced eye, as the CCP throws it around as much as Israel does antisemitism accusations (and for the same reasons).
Call me an idealist but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to willingly abandon a democracy to rule by a totalitarian state. I get why Britain did it, but still.
If anyone's vaguely curious about what the election was considered to mean for Taiwan, a decent English-language source can be found on ICRT (the successor to the American Armed Forces Radio station that left with departing US troops in 1979).
In summary, not a great deal--both candidates were publicly against the Trans Pacific Partnership, which while understandably repugnant to Americans would've been beneficial to mercantalist Taiwan. Mr. Trump's belligerent threats of a trade war with China are hard to parse amid his erratic behavior--they would likely hurt the Taiwanese economy, but would simultaneously force closer economic ties with our other neighbors--and Sen. Clinton has not particularly pursued a modification of the overall disappointing performance of United States military sales under the Obama government, and in her tenure in government (unlike Mr. Trump), Sen. Clinton naturally supported the positions of the Philippines, etc., over Taiwan's claims in the South China Sea and welcomed the Hague ruling on Taiping Island. Of course, even of an expansion of military sales arguably means very little given the asymmetric nature of the military situation on the strait. It's very hard to picture either of the two advocating against Taiwan's isolation from international organizations, that's something we'll need to sort out ourselves if we can.
Which is not to downplay the consequences of the election overall, but the experts, for what it's worth, Taiwan will probably remained in its beleaguered, isolated position.
If anyone's vaguely curious about what the election was considered to mean for Taiwan, a decent English-language source can be found on ICRT (the successor to the American Armed Forces Radio station that left with departing US troops in 1979).
In summary, not a great deal--both candidates were publicly against the Trans Pacific Partnership, which while understandably repugnant to Americans would've been beneficial to mercantalist Taiwan. Mr. Trump's belligerent threats of a trade war with China are hard to parse amid his erratic behavior--they would likely hurt the Taiwanese economy, but would simultaneously force closer economic ties with our other neighbors--and Sen. Clinton has not particularly pursued a modification of the overall disappointing performance of United States military sales under the Obama government, and in her tenure in government (unlike Mr. Trump), Sen. Clinton naturally supported the positions of the Philippines, etc., over Taiwan's claims in the South China Sea and welcomed the Hague ruling on Taiping Island. Of course, even of an expansion of military sales arguably means very little given the asymmetric nature of the military situation on the strait. It's very hard to picture either of the two advocating against Taiwan's isolation from international organizations, that's something we'll need to sort out ourselves if we can.
Which is not to downplay the consequences of the election overall, but the experts, for what it's worth, Taiwan will probably remained in its beleaguered, isolated position.
I'm more wondering about consequences for other nations in the Pacific Rim. I think about Vietnam, in particular, and how their leaders are likely freaking the fuck out right now.
Also, dunno if anybody else noticed but, but apparently the South Korean government called an emergency strategy session when Trump won. They apparently received assurances from the US government that the US was not going to be abandoning its alliance with South Korea, but.........
If anyone's vaguely curious about what the election was considered to mean for Taiwan, a decent English-language source can be found on ICRT (the successor to the American Armed Forces Radio station that left with departing US troops in 1979).
In summary, not a great deal--both candidates were publicly against the Trans Pacific Partnership, which while understandably repugnant to Americans would've been beneficial to mercantalist Taiwan. Mr. Trump's belligerent threats of a trade war with China are hard to parse amid his erratic behavior--they would likely hurt the Taiwanese economy, but would simultaneously force closer economic ties with our other neighbors--and Sen. Clinton has not particularly pursued a modification of the overall disappointing performance of United States military sales under the Obama government, and in her tenure in government (unlike Mr. Trump), Sen. Clinton naturally supported the positions of the Philippines, etc., over Taiwan's claims in the South China Sea and welcomed the Hague ruling on Taiping Island. Of course, even of an expansion of military sales arguably means very little given the asymmetric nature of the military situation on the strait. It's very hard to picture either of the two advocating against Taiwan's isolation from international organizations, that's something we'll need to sort out ourselves if we can.
Which is not to downplay the consequences of the election overall, but the experts, for what it's worth, Taiwan will probably remained in its beleaguered, isolated position.
I'm more wondering about consequences for other nations in the Pacific Rim. I think about Vietnam, in particular, and how their leaders are likely freaking the fuck out right now.
Also, dunno if anybody else noticed but, but apparently the South Korean government called an emergency strategy session when Trump won. They apparently received assurances from the US government that the US was not going to be abandoning its alliance with South Korea, but.........
Oh, I have no doubt the situation means something quite different for Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, even China and Vietnam. Especially with normalization of the Japanese military now more an inevitability than ever.
My thing is just to report the happenings from my own isolated little island in the Pacific. The day after 8 Nov, we are still as isolated, and all our neighbors (well, almost all of them) still want us the fuck out of the South China Sea as much as they wanted before. In that very specific area, life goes on.
EDIT: Also, I had no idea your avatar was a Pikachu in a Pikachu suit. I sort of needed that this morning.
Vice has its shares of issues, but one thing they've consistently impressed me with is their photo journalism--whether it's a besieged minority religious community in Syria, geeky Manhattanites playing Magic: The Gathering or color photography of the usually hard North Korean daily life.
It's basically a reminder that, even in probably the most autocratic nation on Earth, people are people, and generally, harmless civil servants retire in modestly nice hotels, rather than being melted down into glue. Also, North Koreans are big on picnics (not surprising--so was Taiwan in the 1980s), and within the numerous rules and constraints by the law (no unapproved photos of the military, no cropping part of a leader out of a photo, etc.), you can take a lot of photos.
Is there a reason why picnics were/are so popular?
If it's like Taiwan, combination of general outdoorsy-ness (and by all accounts, weather and travel permitting there are lots of nice vistas in the country), a strong cultural appreciation for food (during most of the Cold War, food was much scarcer in Taiwan than in countries like the USSR, much less rich ones like the USA, and to be appreciated), and simplicity/ease of access. To have a picnic, you need a location's weather (which generally isn't the domain of government), food, and some free time. You don't need electricity or even plumbing necessarily, and I'm guessing the DPRK, like the ROC, has serviceable mass transit to go to a hiking trail or somewhere similar.
Based purely on my own limited knowledge, I assume the above are well-off residents of Pyongyang, so they probably just went outside the city.
In Taiwan, hiking is still really popular, and picnics are sort of part of that, but the end of the Cold War and the abrupt climb out of poverty gave rise to things like cafe culture, and more options for relaxing in cities during the day rather then exclusively in the evening at night markets, etc. There's more free time available, even if Taiwanese still work much longer hours than Americans--you don't need to have a monthly picnic when you and your friends can meet for lunch every day during your break.
So, the Trans-Pacific Pact. It's probably going to be dead. Okay, that's not fair, it's not dead, it's probably going the way of the League of Nations (which is as good as dead in Shinzo Abe's opinion).
I want to say how much I appreciate the multiple levels of irony here. The first being that the president-elect is an American businessman (or plutocrat or oligarch or whatever, if you go far enough they're all the same people), from the precise background who would have likely advocated the TPP for its obvious economic, rather than strategic political value, is shooting it down. The circumstances that pushed both him, and Sen. Clinton (another strong advocate of it), to repudiate it are clearly apparent. I've heard the case that anti-globalization--or perhaps even populism as applied to foreign affairs in general--is little more than a disguise for xenophobia and racism argued pretty extensively on this forums, which is an argument to be made (though considering just how unpopular the TPP was with the base of both Republican and Democratic voters, that would suggest the later also have a good bit of populist racism to deal with).
I actually don't completely agree with it, which goes to the second level of irony: we did this in Taiwan a year ago--albeit with protests and the occupation of the legislature, since there wasn't a vote to be had for a few months, though one can argue that of hte two electoral outcomes in 2016 (blue or green), the electorate overwhelmingly chose the somewhat less trade-friendly of the two. The Sunflower Movement demonstrations, which I've reported on in the previous E.A. events thread, was fundamentally a overwhelmingly young populist movement in rejection of forcefully approved trade negotiations with China--an inseparable, perhaps even most important, aspect of globalization in Taiwan. They were absolutely anti-globalization, which might seem strange in a hyper-mercantilist economy like Taiwan's, because they directly targeted a major aspect of our globalized economy, our state of trade with China. They were at the very least questioning the designation of globalization as a "universal good" as it had been for years. They weren't directly advocating constraining or revisiting our trade relations with Japan or other countries, but the fact of the matter is you cannot protest Chinese trade without casting the country's extremely high level of globalization in a suspicious light, you don't get to pick and choose when a billion poorer people live next door, and you own some of the biggest companies they work in.
In Taiwan, that was a major critique of the SFM, even prior to the occupation of the Legislative Yuan--that it was a movement born out of economic distress that would only worsen it due to short sighted populism. Sound familiar? It should. Of course, from American media's perspectives, that wasn't what the Sunflower Movement was about. They were a heroic anti-Beijing movement standing up to Chinese economic domination, not a heroic anti-trade movement standing up to Chinese economic domination. And I don't even completely disagree with that view, I had a lot of admiration of the movement. But even the most populist Sunflower knew that Taiwan couldn't divorce itself economically from China, but that the end goal was to force extensive re-evaluation of those trade relations. As I understand it, that's not that different than the points argued by both Sen. Clinton and Donald Trump in their skepticism of the TPP. And the handful of American skeptics of the Sunflowers were uniformly from publications like the WSJ and business press, who blasted it for its distinctly anti-capitalist flavor of populism--and their complaints actually read like a preview of what's happened in the wake of the election.
Of course, there's the argument that the TPP, as a passion project of Pres. Obama, is a political realignment of Asia against Chinese influence disguised as a trade deal--if so, that's literally the worst thing you could disguise it as in the United States, or at least that's how it looks. And on the other side, I'm hearing mumbles from Beijing that while the government is relieved over TPP's slow demise, they're deeply concerned about what this means for the spirit of globalization in the American economy, and what that could mean for US-Chinese trade relations more broadly (no doubt due to the president-elect's infamously erratic personality). Of course, to Taiwanese the TPP could be an anti-Chinese bloc or not, the economic opportunities following exclusion from the AIIB were extremely promising (no one in the SFM was protesting it for starters).
I guess the point of this is that populism and anti-globalism are weird. For once, Taiwan--a vastly smaller, radically different economy--was one of the canaries in the coal mine of globalization and neoliberalism. It's been argued that with Pres. Tsai's victory in January, anti-globalization and populism got the single greatest victory they could've hoped for at the ballot box, even though it was a modest one at that (and considering the new breakout of anti-DPP protests we're gradually seeing in Taipei since the "honeymoon" ended, it looks like history will repeat itself).
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I have no idea how true any of this is but wow that is seriously disconcerting if any of this is even half way true.
Foreshadowing what a Trump presidency would be like.
In Taiwan, it's something we're still grappling with, twenty years later. Specifically, the necessity of transitional justice, and how it should be framed (as well as dealing with our own past in Japanese colonialism and Chinese rule). And the post-dictatorship party, the DPP, has its own blind spots: treatment of the mainland Chinese minority in the country, particularly war veterans, what to do about the constitution, as well as the ex-Kuomintang members in their own ranks (though ultimately, time is going to deal with that for both sides). The more aggressively their pursue truth and reconciliation, invariably the more they expose their own political flaws.
For the last half-decade or so, I feel like you hear a lot less about transitional justice or confronting the White Terror in South Korea--certainly compared to the work the Truth and Reconciliation committee did on the Bodo League Massacre after the 1990s. So either everything was "Dealt with" (unlikely) or the political will to continue dried out--arguably, the same thing happened in Taiwan in the late years of the Chen Presidency and throughout the Ma Presidency, though the Ma government still publicly apologized for the White Terror (or at least the 228 Incident), and was far more proactive about addressing the Comfort Woman controversy. It's entirely possible the Park and Lee governments were actively pursuing specific issues, and I simply didn't hear about it.
Except for Human Rights abuse during the Allied Occupation. That's a ideological pit nobody wants to get dragged into, no matter the necessity, especially when US military cooperation is still paramount. That issue's pretty dead.
On the other hand, the current Seoul protests don't seem to have that much to do with historical grievances, but the perception of blatant corruption (something that basically crippled the Chen government in Taiwan, and got the Legislative Yuan occupied during the Ma government).
She was raised in power. She did win in a fair election. But she also won a heavily nationalist ticket with a lot of anti-Japanese rhetoric.
This whole situation going on in South Korea feels like something either William Gibson or the writers of Shadowrun would sketch out, then pause and go, "Bit on the nose, don't you think?"
Historical aside: people didn't understand what aspirin actually did in the body until the 1950s. It was just considered a wonder drug in the early 1900s and given to pretty much everybody for pretty much everything. The doctors were giving a blood thinner to a hemophiliac. Rasputin, like every faith healer ever, advised that all official medical treatment be stopped. In this one case it just so happened that modern medicine was genuinely making the situation worse so it worked.
Is anyone surprised? No. Not at all.
The fact they are doing it so strongly is the unexpected part. Well partially. Xi takes no shit and refuses to not hold all the reigns to power.
The British media company GBTimes (part of the GB media group) quoted at least 200,000 Taiwanese in military service for the Japanese Empire during the Pacific War (much more than fought in the Republic of China Armies or in among Communist guerrillas), out of ~6 million people living in Colonial Taiwan. The slim majority were probably volunteers, as Japan only implemented conscription in Taiwan in 1944. About 15% of them, some 30,000, were killed, and 28,000 of them are enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine (hence the controversy).
EDIT: And of course, neither China or South Korea will be super-pleased with this, though China has been more focused on the Xi-Hung summit (the Chinese president meeting with the Kuomintang's chairwoman for semi-official talks).
They do realize that this is going to piss off people in Hong Kong right?
I doubt enough to cause violence. But enough to vote with their wallets and their feet.
And I don't think the CCP cares. As time has gone on HK has become less necessary as a port of money and foreign investment.
And that is why they are willing to clamp down hard on folks. They showed that two years ago with the umbrella protest.
It's not so much that even so much as there are tons of HK... uh... shall we say, non-patriots. There's really minimal need for the Chinese government to crack down on Hong Kong when Hong Kongers themselves are more than willing to do so to curry Chinese favour.
If anything, overt Chinese intervention is, imo, usually a misstep, as it prompts backlash. The current situation is, imo, more about saving face for the local HK authorities/themselves more than actually moving against HK independence. As an action to smother HK's independence ambitions, it's probably a strategic error that will only, if just for the moment, fuel HK's independence movement more than anything.
I don't think they should of. It should of been up to the people of Hong Kong to decide their future, not the Chinese and British governments.
It's easy to forget the 1960s in Hong Kong, when the political left was throwing bombs, and the Hong Kong police were shooting into crowds and arresting journalists in response.
For those that don't know, Ferdinand Marcos was a dictator who declared martial law back in the 70's, and maintained power until the EDSA Revolution in 1986. Highlights of his regime include numerous extrajudicial killings, severely curtailing freedom of the press, and stealing billions of dollars from the country. And now he's going to be buried as a hero because the Marcos' are Duterte's allies. I don't really blame the Judiciary much for the decision since I'm not really sure of the legality of it, but I do know that it is morally wrong and a slap to faces of Marcos' victims, many of whom are still alive to witness this! It was just literally three decades ago! Fuck Duterte for trying to alter history and treating a dictator as a hero.
PSN: jrrl_absent
Well, maybe something good will come of this. After all, Marcos Family still has its admirers and allies in the US from the huge trade deals Marcos signed, and his alignment during the Cold War. Probably not though.
I mean, it's not like they had a real choice in the matter.
And while it was enlightened colonialism, it was still colonialism
And better democracy than despotism. Could've made 'em independent, like Singapore.
China military big. UK military small.
More a matter of "China military close, UK military far"--and also the fact that China cared a lot more than the UK did.
Also, as much as I've enjoyed my own time in the city, I would strongly advise against citing Singapore as an example of "democracy not despotism."
I mean, I'm hardly going to be an apologist for the CCP, but the loss of Hong Kong was the beginning of the Century of Humiliation for China, humiliation that was largely doled out by the western colonial powers. If you're from Mainland China and the Brits are like, "Well actually, we don't think you deserve to have Hong Kong back because you're not democratic enough", your natural reaction is to tell them to go fuck themselves. Granted the question is more complex in Hong Kong.
China still has a lot of work to do, but refusing to end colonial power structures until the west decides that they measure up is completely hypocritical. Also, it's an idea that Asia over the 20th century learned to be terrifically cynical of, for good reason.
Surreal to see; I was walking on that very road only a month ago.
Edit: English article http://edition.cnn.com/2016/11/07/asia/giant-sinkhole-fukuoka/index.html
Old PA forum lookalike style for the new forums | My ko-fi donation thing.
I would go with The Devil is a Part Timer jokes myself.
Mao get out here and clean this shit up!
Bolded is a bit of an understatement. And I look at the "Century of Humiliation" claims with a jaundiced eye, as the CCP throws it around as much as Israel does antisemitism accusations (and for the same reasons).
Call me an idealist but it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to willingly abandon a democracy to rule by a totalitarian state. I get why Britain did it, but still.
The UK could have made it easier for people in HK to gain British citizenship, though.
In summary, not a great deal--both candidates were publicly against the Trans Pacific Partnership, which while understandably repugnant to Americans would've been beneficial to mercantalist Taiwan. Mr. Trump's belligerent threats of a trade war with China are hard to parse amid his erratic behavior--they would likely hurt the Taiwanese economy, but would simultaneously force closer economic ties with our other neighbors--and Sen. Clinton has not particularly pursued a modification of the overall disappointing performance of United States military sales under the Obama government, and in her tenure in government (unlike Mr. Trump), Sen. Clinton naturally supported the positions of the Philippines, etc., over Taiwan's claims in the South China Sea and welcomed the Hague ruling on Taiping Island. Of course, even of an expansion of military sales arguably means very little given the asymmetric nature of the military situation on the strait. It's very hard to picture either of the two advocating against Taiwan's isolation from international organizations, that's something we'll need to sort out ourselves if we can.
Which is not to downplay the consequences of the election overall, but the experts, for what it's worth, Taiwan will probably remained in its beleaguered, isolated position.
I'm more wondering about consequences for other nations in the Pacific Rim. I think about Vietnam, in particular, and how their leaders are likely freaking the fuck out right now.
Also, dunno if anybody else noticed but, but apparently the South Korean government called an emergency strategy session when Trump won. They apparently received assurances from the US government that the US was not going to be abandoning its alliance with South Korea, but.........
Oh, I have no doubt the situation means something quite different for Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, even China and Vietnam. Especially with normalization of the Japanese military now more an inevitability than ever.
My thing is just to report the happenings from my own isolated little island in the Pacific.
EDIT: Also, I had no idea your avatar was a Pikachu in a Pikachu suit. I sort of needed that this morning.
It's basically the opposite of everything I want to happen.
It's basically a reminder that, even in probably the most autocratic nation on Earth, people are people, and generally, harmless civil servants retire in modestly nice hotels, rather than being melted down into glue. Also, North Koreans are big on picnics (not surprising--so was Taiwan in the 1980s), and within the numerous rules and constraints by the law (no unapproved photos of the military, no cropping part of a leader out of a photo, etc.), you can take a lot of photos.
If it's like Taiwan, combination of general outdoorsy-ness (and by all accounts, weather and travel permitting there are lots of nice vistas in the country), a strong cultural appreciation for food (during most of the Cold War, food was much scarcer in Taiwan than in countries like the USSR, much less rich ones like the USA, and to be appreciated), and simplicity/ease of access. To have a picnic, you need a location's weather (which generally isn't the domain of government), food, and some free time. You don't need electricity or even plumbing necessarily, and I'm guessing the DPRK, like the ROC, has serviceable mass transit to go to a hiking trail or somewhere similar.
Based purely on my own limited knowledge, I assume the above are well-off residents of Pyongyang, so they probably just went outside the city.
In Taiwan, hiking is still really popular, and picnics are sort of part of that, but the end of the Cold War and the abrupt climb out of poverty gave rise to things like cafe culture, and more options for relaxing in cities during the day rather then exclusively in the evening at night markets, etc. There's more free time available, even if Taiwanese still work much longer hours than Americans--you don't need to have a monthly picnic when you and your friends can meet for lunch every day during your break.
I want to say how much I appreciate the multiple levels of irony here. The first being that the president-elect is an American businessman (or plutocrat or oligarch or whatever, if you go far enough they're all the same people), from the precise background who would have likely advocated the TPP for its obvious economic, rather than strategic political value, is shooting it down. The circumstances that pushed both him, and Sen. Clinton (another strong advocate of it), to repudiate it are clearly apparent. I've heard the case that anti-globalization--or perhaps even populism as applied to foreign affairs in general--is little more than a disguise for xenophobia and racism argued pretty extensively on this forums, which is an argument to be made (though considering just how unpopular the TPP was with the base of both Republican and Democratic voters, that would suggest the later also have a good bit of populist racism to deal with).
I actually don't completely agree with it, which goes to the second level of irony: we did this in Taiwan a year ago--albeit with protests and the occupation of the legislature, since there wasn't a vote to be had for a few months, though one can argue that of hte two electoral outcomes in 2016 (blue or green), the electorate overwhelmingly chose the somewhat less trade-friendly of the two. The Sunflower Movement demonstrations, which I've reported on in the previous E.A. events thread, was fundamentally a overwhelmingly young populist movement in rejection of forcefully approved trade negotiations with China--an inseparable, perhaps even most important, aspect of globalization in Taiwan. They were absolutely anti-globalization, which might seem strange in a hyper-mercantilist economy like Taiwan's, because they directly targeted a major aspect of our globalized economy, our state of trade with China. They were at the very least questioning the designation of globalization as a "universal good" as it had been for years. They weren't directly advocating constraining or revisiting our trade relations with Japan or other countries, but the fact of the matter is you cannot protest Chinese trade without casting the country's extremely high level of globalization in a suspicious light, you don't get to pick and choose when a billion poorer people live next door, and you own some of the biggest companies they work in.
In Taiwan, that was a major critique of the SFM, even prior to the occupation of the Legislative Yuan--that it was a movement born out of economic distress that would only worsen it due to short sighted populism. Sound familiar? It should. Of course, from American media's perspectives, that wasn't what the Sunflower Movement was about. They were a heroic anti-Beijing movement standing up to Chinese economic domination, not a heroic anti-trade movement standing up to Chinese economic domination. And I don't even completely disagree with that view, I had a lot of admiration of the movement. But even the most populist Sunflower knew that Taiwan couldn't divorce itself economically from China, but that the end goal was to force extensive re-evaluation of those trade relations. As I understand it, that's not that different than the points argued by both Sen. Clinton and Donald Trump in their skepticism of the TPP. And the handful of American skeptics of the Sunflowers were uniformly from publications like the WSJ and business press, who blasted it for its distinctly anti-capitalist flavor of populism--and their complaints actually read like a preview of what's happened in the wake of the election.
Of course, there's the argument that the TPP, as a passion project of Pres. Obama, is a political realignment of Asia against Chinese influence disguised as a trade deal--if so, that's literally the worst thing you could disguise it as in the United States, or at least that's how it looks. And on the other side, I'm hearing mumbles from Beijing that while the government is relieved over TPP's slow demise, they're deeply concerned about what this means for the spirit of globalization in the American economy, and what that could mean for US-Chinese trade relations more broadly (no doubt due to the president-elect's infamously erratic personality). Of course, to Taiwanese the TPP could be an anti-Chinese bloc or not, the economic opportunities following exclusion from the AIIB were extremely promising (no one in the SFM was protesting it for starters).
I guess the point of this is that populism and anti-globalism are weird. For once, Taiwan--a vastly smaller, radically different economy--was one of the canaries in the coal mine of globalization and neoliberalism. It's been argued that with Pres. Tsai's victory in January, anti-globalization and populism got the single greatest victory they could've hoped for at the ballot box, even though it was a modest one at that (and considering the new breakout of anti-DPP protests we're gradually seeing in Taipei since the "honeymoon" ended, it looks like history will repeat itself).