So, they don’t hate each other entirely. The rocket got launched by Japan, and now Korea has a strong satellite in the sky that can monitor their Northern Korean neighbors and just about anywhere in the world. It’s the first commercial space launch for Japan which means many more will come. Just because they can, should they? Eventually, when it gets into bad hands, our local space will be an amalgam of hell. (VOA -Space Japan and Korea)
After the missile failure, why not take the easy route and blow something up underground? Dirt is being excavated to make space for a test that’ll not only pollute their land and what resources they don’t have, but shows their “power”. (Foxnews – North Korea)
Scary but they say that they can smash “anyone” (the US) in a single blow. Why they’d want to do that? Just ask everyone else. (VOA – North Korea Blow)
Launch failed. It broke up before getting to the atmosphere. It’s a huge error and heads will roll. (CNN – N Korea Fail )
Strange Photograph. Amidst cherry blossoms the missiles await a North Korean rocket. (VOA – rocket)
Kim Jong-Un was a crappy student. F’s, mediocrity, cutting class 75 times and started slower, this man now supposedly runs a nation and is a 4 star general… Nepotism is a great thing for one. (Google – Kim Jong-Un) Meanwhile on the other end of the coin, Shin Dong-hyuk, born and raised in a North Korean Prison camp is the only known escapee with his credentials is now the subject of a book, “Escape From Camp 14″. Nepotism didn’t work out for him as well. He watched his brother and mother get executed for trying to escape. So far it’s a smooth read and it’s a rare account of what goes on in the camps. (WSJ – Escape From Camp 14)
Some of you will actually read this book but most of you won’t. This is a book called Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden. Shin Dong-Hyuk is the only known escapee who was born and raised in a North Korean prison. This might be a book to check out. Here’s some questions asked about the book and answers as appeared on NPR – Escape from Camp 14.
The rocket is getting gassed up for a test flight. But why? Close neighbors Japan are pissed and it’s just another day in the North Korean office. (CS Monitor – Rocket)
Kim Jong Il’s monument might not have a face behind it, it’s just text. Supposedly the letter are 5 feet deep. It says the great immortal words, “Peerless Patriot General Kim Jong-Il. February 16, Juche 101 (2012)”. No face? No body? This is actually not exciting in the least.
The idea of sending socks to a far away land via balloon is a feat. The balloons look rudimentary and folks have sent food as well to North Korea. Will they ever hear from the recipients? Will the recipients get in trouble? The messages aren’t political, and hopefully North Koreans really need socks. Yet the great piece of news? A pair of socks can be traded for 22 pounds of corn! (MSNBC – Socks)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46172516/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/s-korea-love-warm-socks-sent-north-balloon/#.TyblxOPUOEN
Funny report by ABC. North Korea bans Cell Phones. It’s all in the first paragraph: “For everyone who protests the new internet restrictions that could have come with SOPA and might still come with ACTA, this one comes from the perspective department: North Korea has threatened to punish anyone using a cell phone as a war criminal.” (ABC – Cell Phones)
Kei Fischer’s American father met her mother in Japan as an English language teacher. They married and sired her shortly thereafter. Years later, they immigrated to the United States. “I know it sounds clichéd,” Fischer said as she related her story. It may sound like every other story where an American visits Japan and returns with a wife. There’s just one thing. Kei Fischer’s mother isn’t Japanese. She’s Korean.
She didn’t discover this until after death of her grandfather. It was then that her mother finally came clean. She deliberately passed herself as Japanese to avoid the negative stigma associated with Koreans in Post-War Japan.
Kei Fischer constitutes a marginalized minority in Japan called Zainichi. The Zainichi consist of multigenerational Koreans who immigrated to Japan after the annexation of their homeland in 1910. Some of these minorities sought economic opportunities and scholarships abroad, while several others worked as slave laborers under Japanese Imperial Rule.
Koreans eventually lost their Japanese citizenship after the dissolution of Japan’s colonial reign. Many returned to their broken homeland while others decided to stay and resume their lives in Japan. Since then, they’ve faced fiscal and prejudicial hardships resulting from institutionally discriminatory practices in Japan.
Fischer learned about this as she set out to explore this forgotten part of her life. Her journey eventually led her to the Bay Area, where she met Miho Kim. Like Fischer, Kim was a Zainichi from Japan and together they formed an organization called Eclipse Rising with other Zainichi Korean Americans. As founders, Kim and Fischer have been a driving force behind the organization, which doubles as an activist group rather than merely a club of solidarity. “[We want to] develop a Zainichi community that’s physical and recognize a unique perspective that our experiences offer that really can’t be understood beneath a lens of nation states and internationalism since we’re essentially stateless,” Kim said.
Other parts of their mission statement include cultivating stronger relationships with other oppressed groups like the LGBT community, Burakumin (‘untouchables’ in Japan), Okinawans, and Ainu among others. In addition to this, they campaign for the peaceful reunification between North and South Korea. As wide reaching as this objective is, it maintains the consistent focus of supporting, empowering, and granting further rights to Japanese minority groups like them. “We’re really fighting the root cause of structural racism within Japan because that’s the only way we can really bring resolution to what has perpetrated this subjucation of Zainichi,” Kim said. She further related her experiences as a Zainichi to those of the Japanese Americans interned during World War II. “Being immortalized, criminalized, and banished, your entitlement taken from under your feet overnight.”
Some of their past activities included a recap of their 2010 U.S.-Japan Solidarity Tour. They hosted this as a joint holiday party at the School of Unity and Liberation Office in Oakland, California on December 16th, 2010. The participants of this tour reported the findings of their 9-day long trip where they met the political prisoner Kazuo Ishikawa, The Burakumin Liberation League, Women’s Active Museum On War and Peace for Korea’s “comfort women,” The Funreai House community center for minorities living in Japan, and the Iju-ren solidarity network for migrant workers. In addition to this, Fischer and Kim had the opportunity to visit Pyong Yang, North Korea, in 2008. They rallied to stop the Korea US-Free Trade Agreement with other on January 14th, 2011 in front of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office in San Francisco under the pretense that it would sacrifice jobs and further erode workers’ rights.
These combined activities have brought the members of Eclipse Rising a long way from where they once stood. The days of passing and living in shame are as foregone as their history in Japan. This isn’t to say that their historical and emotional scars are effaced, but no longer are they hiding in the shadows and as a result moved beyond their previous state of victimhood to taking a stand for others.
He critiques North Korea and is in line to probably be killed one day, but Kim Jong Il’s son let’s words fly without much hesitation it seems. He doesn’t appear as bright or evil, and his detainment from trying to enter Japan to hit Disneyland in 2001 was the beginning of his political end. The weird thing, he had a Dominican passport! His book “My father Kim Jong Il and Me,” is a sure hit. (Global Post – Kim Jong Nam)
A Japanese chef who penned a book, “I was Kim Jong Il’s Chef” knew the sons well, and says that Kim Jong Un was the choice from a very young age. Of the brothers he was the one who made decisions. Chef Kenji Fujimoto says, ““If I was their father, I would have chosen Kim Jong Un too,” he says. It’s a nice story and despite leaving in 2001, Fujimoto releasing a book about Kim Jong Un. (Time blogs – Kenji Fujimoto)
Kim Jong Un looking at things… the tradition continues…
At least that’s what it sort of promises. A book, yes, a book that would be worth 7 figures or more, but I’m sure Kim Jong Nam is getting a lot less if at all – not that he needs it. Watch for a book to be published in Japan. Note that he’s the son who got busted for entering Japan to go to Disneyland. That put him out of favor with the big boys.
From the Huffington Post “Gomi’s book, based on “extensive interviews” with 38-year-old Kim Jong Nam, will outline Kim’s “opposition to the hereditary succession system that led to his younger brother, Kim Jong Un, being appointed North Korea’s new leader,” according toThe Japan Times, who also reported that although Kim Jong Nam recently asked to delay the book’s publication, the Japanese publishing firm Bungei Shunju decided to release it anyway.”
(Huffington Post – Kim Jong Nam)
It’s hard to say what’s really news or not. Kim Jong Eun coup remains just rumors in Chinese social media. Who knows what’s true… and how long it would take for it to come out. Is it by his own uncle and what for in the end? The Washington Post writes, “According to some of the rumors, Kim Jong Eun’s uncle — Jang Song Thaek — had helped lead the military uprising. Another version of the story said that the military was going to install Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il’s oldest son, as the new leader. Kim Jong Nam would create a “pro-China regime.” (Washington Post – North Korea Coup)
200 counties in 10 years? Okhwan Yoon is protesting or more so, calling attention to the 60 year division of North and South Korea. This man caught the eye of a Little Rock TV Station. He’s not a fame whore at all, perhaps a guy who walks to the beat of his own drum and is making a difference even if it’s just by making people think.
