Category: Korea

Jenkins Update


I still need to read his Confessions memoir, but I suspect it’s pretty juicy. Here’s a quick update on what he’s been up to:

Jenkins: DPRK targeted Soga

Shigefumi Takasuka Daily Yomiuri Staff Writer

Charles Jenkins, a U.S. Army deserter to North Korea and husband of Hitomi Soga, a repatriated Japanese abductee, said Thursday that North Korean agents targeted Soga and waited a month to get a chance to kidnap her.

…

He said he was planning to apply for Japanese citizenship in July.

“I am planning [to become a Japanese],” he said. “What happened is I must wait for one year since the day I got my Japanese identification card. That’ll be July, I think.”

He also said he had been asked by a local tourist association in Sado to work as a tour guide during the summer.

“I think I’ll do that,” Jenkins said.

Asked if his book “Kokuhaku” (To Tell the Truth) would be published in countries other than Japan, Jenkins said he hoped so. “Maybe in the Korean language,” he said. “But it’s not definite yet. I’ll wait and see.”
(Feb. 3, 2006)

Come on, print an English edition! We all know it was originally written in English anyway. Are you afraid of unkind reviews in the New York Times, Jenkins? You can’t spend your whole life running away, you know.

Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s Foot-in-Mouth Disease Takes a Turn for the Worse

Remember this guy? Well he is still perhaps the scariest Japanese politician in recent memory:

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Emperor Should Visit Yasukuni: Aso

TOKYO (Kyodo)–Foreign Minister Taro Aso said Saturday it is desirable for the emperor to visit Yasukuni Shrine and told China to stop complaining about Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s visits to the Shinto shrine in Tokyo.

‘‘From the viewpoint of the spirits of the war dead, they hailed ‘Banzai’ for the emperor — none of them said ‘prime minister Banzai!’ A visit by the emperor would be the best,” Aso said in a speech in Nagoya.

The remarks by the hawkish foreign minister risk further damaging chilled relations with China and South Korea, victims of Japanese militarism before and during World War II who have strongly protested Japanese leaders’ visits to the shrine that honors 14 Class-A war criminals along with the war dead.

The last visit by an emperor to Yasukuni was in November 1975 by Emperor Hirohito, posthumously known as Emperor Showa.

The Class-A war criminals, including executed Prime Minister Gen. Hideki Tojo, were enshrined Oct. 17, 1978.

On criticism against Koizumi’s visits, Aso said, ”The more China voices (opposition), the more one feels like going there. It’s just like when you’re told ‘Don’t smoke cigarettes,’ it actually makes you want to smoke. It’s best (for China) to keep quiet.”

(Slightly modified from Nikkei Net, photo plucked randomly from Google images)

Jenkins Pulling a Debito!

Looks like he’s had it: Charles Jenkins, the American who defected to North Korea 40 years ago and wound up marrying Hitomi Soga, a Japanese woman there against her will, has decided to turn his back on America once again, only this time he’s doing it legally. As early as next week, the former US Army Private (who is living on Japan’s Sado island with his wife and children) intends to apply for Japanese citizenship.

Note: Check out the video (will probably be taken offline shortly because TBS sucks) for great footage of him doing some weird thing in a swimming pool.

(Japanese story follows)

Continue reading Jenkins Pulling a Debito!

Alternative Memorial for War Dead Left Out of 2006 Budget

The “Group to Consider a National [War] Memorial” is a rare ruling-opposition (LDP, Komeito, and DPJ) caucus of lawmakers that is campaigning for the Japanese government to establish an alternative to Yasukuni shrine. The idea, proposed by a 2002 advisory panel and supported by South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun, is popular among those in the Japan Policy Community (including influential types in Washington) who would prefer to see a speedy, concrete solution to the Yasukuni issue rather than all of Koizumi’s useless (and possibly dangerous) saber-rattling.

Well, don’t count on it this year, based on this year’s budget requests. This was covered in slightly less detail in the Japan Times, but you can enjoy my abstract of the Yomiuri:

Memorial Facility Survey Funds Left Out, PM Firms Stance: “Public opinion not ripe”

PM Koizumi has firmed his stance not to include funds to survey the possibility of a national war memorial in the national budget draft, a move seen to be caused by a lack of public interest.

Government sources explained that the “environment has not been prepared to include survey funds in next year’s budget,” which will be formally decided on Dec. 22. The funds were not included in the MOF’s budget recommendations, released the same day.

Another part of the decision, say government officials, was that including the funds would not likely have contributed to repairing relations with China and South Korea.

The govt plans to continue deliberating on the merits of including the funds while “carefully watching public opinion.” There is momentum within the “Group to Consider a National [War] Memorial,” which crosses party lines to include members from the ruling LDP and New Komeito as well as the main opposition DPJ, to demand the inclusion of such funding in next fiscal year’s revised budget or reserve funds. However, it is unlikely to be included in a budget during Koizumi’s tenure.

When SK President Roh Moo-hyun asked that Koizumi consider the establishment of a national war memorial during the Korea-Japan summit on June 20, the Japanese leader accepted, saying he would “consider it taking into consideration circumstances including public opinion.” However, the PM’s October 17 visit to Yasukuni Shrine is quickly becoming a diplomatic problem due to China and SK’s strong protests. It seems as if the PM thought that it would look like he would be giving in to their pressure if he included such funds in this year’s budget.

According to a November poll conducted by Nikkei, 49% of Japanese people would approve, while 31% would disapprove of a national war memorial. I guess in the Land of Consensus even clear numbers in favor of such a memorial smack of “divided public opinion.” Of course, Koizumi didn’t let a little thing like internal division stop him from pushing through postal privatization, did he?
Continue reading Alternative Memorial for War Dead Left Out of 2006 Budget

Fan death- seriously?

When I came back from the Philippines it was already cold enough in Taiwan that I needed something to make sitting at the computer a little more palatable. My superthick blanket is enough for sleep, but I decided to pick up an electric heater. Now, I had just read this article on Yahoo Japan, which says that an 82 year old man in Yamagata City has been hospitalized in serious condition to to carbon monoxide poisoning resulting from a loose rubber hose on a Matsushita (aka Panasonic aka National) oil heat-fan. Despite the fact that I was shopping for an electric and not oil heater, I avoided Panasonic products like the plague.

Earlier today, I glanced at Kushibo’s blog and saw this post about fan death, which I’d never heard of before. Fan death is apparently a very silly Korean urban myth that an electric fan can create “a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside” or possibly “suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing.”

It’s claimed that this legend has spread to surrounding Asian countries, but the closest thing I’ve heard in Japan is that having an electric fan on you at night can make you catch cold, which is the kind of thing that a grandmother in any country might say without sounding like a vortex-phobe. The fact that the Wikipedia page exists only in English and Korean also seems to indicate that it may not have much of a presence in other countries, although I am at least a little surprised that no enterprising Japanese wikinerd has translated the article as fodder for making fun of Koreans.

Conspiracy theory time! Albright and Kim

Lord Curzon’s post at Coming Anarchy about Hu Jintao’s trip to North Korea reminded me of this shenanigan:

Is is just me, or is there WAY too much resemblance between the two of them? I submit that it can be explained by any of the following theories:

  • Kim and Albright are alien beings, sent to our planet by an extraterrestrial race with an eye for messing with geopolitics.
  • Albright is a clone created by North Korea’s secret genetic engineering laboratories to infiltrate the Clinton administration and make it unwilling to go after rogue states.
  • Albright and Kim are both descended from an unspeakably evil overlord, who may or may not also be responsible for Alan Greenspan.

On a more serious note, living in Philadelphia makes me really hate organized labor. If the President can break up airline strikes, why the hell can’t he break up mass transit strikes, which wreak so much more havoc on people’s lives? I mean, if Bush stepped in and forced the transit workers to go back to work, Philadelphia would go red in 2008, no further questions asked.

Yasukuni revisited

We kind of knew it was coming: Koizumi went again. Protests broke out in Beijing and Hong Kong. Best dismissal EVER:

Koizumi told reporters in Tokyo that he made his visit as a private citizen and not in an official capacity, saying that “China and South Korea will eventually understand.”

The angry reactions in China and Korea are covered in more depth in AFP’s article.

UPDATE: Another great Koizumi jab: “In principle other people should not meddle with matters of the heart… much more, foreign governments should not say ‘you should not’ when the Japanese are offering sincere condolences to the war dead from Japan and other parts of the world.”

The Roots of Japan

The good people at Utopia Network (“Millenium Era/For New Space Age!”) have cleared up this confusing historical problem once and for all.

Around 355-360, the ocean country “Kudara” had been conquering with Saishu Island in today’s South Korea, Tsushima, Kyushu, Chugoku area, Shikoku area and Kii Peninsula in today’s Japan. In about 360, the ocean country “Kudara” founded the Yamato Dynasty with the emperor system and the centralistic country of Japan in today’s Nara Prefecture, Japan. And then the relative control of Kudara Dynasty began in Japan. Japan and Kudara had the strongest relationship just like the same country. And most of the Japanese traditional culture came from “Kudara.” “Emperor Jinmu” in the ancient book of “Kojiki” was “King Onjo,” who was the founder of Kudara. And “Emperor Sujin,” who was the founder of Japan, was seemed to be the grandson of “King Kei,” who was the 12th King of Kudara Dynasty. Also, “King Kinshoko,” who was the 13th King of Kudara Dynasty, founded the great ocean country “Kudara” in 346. The Kudara Dynasty were descendants of “Joseph,” who was sold to the Ancient Egypt, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Noah, and Adam in “The Old Testament of the Bible.”

Numismania

We’ve known for years that North Korea has been printing counterfeit money, but the BBC reports that we finally have proof.

The United States has formally accused North Korea of forging millions of dollars of high-quality counterfeit US dollar notes, known as supernotes.

A US court indictment said seven men, including senior Irish republican Sean Garland, distributed the fakes, which all had a face value of $100.

There is still no word on whether or not North Korea has been accused of counterfeiting the new US ha’penny coin.