Seoulscapade

The right way to progress and move forward with integrity, rigour and transparency.

I couldn’t resist posting these flow charts, especially after finishing a course on astronomy, where the scientific method is absolutely everything. This charts speak for themselves.

I would point out that the first has been instrumental in establish humanity’s place in the universe as insignificant, but incredibly able to discover, for example, the age and vastness of the universe.

In contrast, the method below held us back from the above for some time, while it burned people at the stake for the impudence of suggesting there are other suns and planets out in the cosmos.  The method below embraced by Christians and Muslims alike is a dead end after a journey of delusion.

The wrong to approach reality unless your purpose is to avoid reality and ensure others do along with you.

Sigh, goodbye Bongchun-Dong.

Glorious views of Mt. Gwanak and summer rains from our apt balcony at Woosung in Bongchun-Dong

We moved out of our apartment above mid-October into a cheap place we bought in Ansan, south of Seoul. We needed somewhere cheaper and buying a place seem a much better move than renting again. I hate renting: you slave away at work for a landlord you’ve never met. It’s just throwing cash down a black hole.

Hello Ansan!

A physical assessment day at the Ansan high school across the road from us.

The view from our new place. Our new place will require low mortgage payments–a few hundred thousand won a month. Even if free lancing is slow one month, I can probably still manage it.

One great thing about our location is that Homeplus and Lotte Mart are a five minute drive away. There’s another Homeplus a bit further on, along with a couple of E-Marts, all easily accessible and painless to get to compared to the major operation it used to require in Seoul. And down the street is a restaurant serving what is probably the best Kimchi I’ve even tasted.

We found a quick way into Seoul via Shillim-Dong. It only takes us about 25 to 30 minutes to get to Seoul Natl. Uni. Station. That’s not bad at all.

So far it’s been great. One problem we are facing, however, is that we don’t have another tenant for the Woosung apartment yet! What this means is that we’re stuck paying rent there until someone is found.

The real-estate guy informed us that the economic climate is making people reluctant to rent. Most are seeking chonsae deals, which is paying a lump sum that is returned after 2 years.  We didn’t expect and we’ve never experience such a thing, so that caught us out. Fortunately, some people have been showing interests. It’s a wait and see situation.

Most of our stuff is still back there, making the place look homey for prospective tenants. We kind of living out of suitcase, but comfortably so.  I’m too busy with study and free lancing and other stuff to worry much.

Oh, and, um, I also discovered with great alarm that in this kind of small housing in Korean you are not allowed to put toilet paper down the toilet bowl. There are warning signs about it. It’s something to do with stopping processing costs from being passed onto tenants. I hope it does not cause me psychological damage. It’s just not an issue I want to deal with on a regular basis.

Night time community meeting to share news and try to persuade old community members to stop being complete morons.

At this night meeting on site we heard the latest news in the fight against the deep corruption and stupidity that has been holding up the Sangdo construction project.  After the news there was a Q & A session that became rather heated and emotional.

The battle lines were drawn like this: the young generation–progressive, forward thinking, honest–against a peasant-like old generation–stupid, stuck in the past, easily corrupted.

The heroes in this long and protracted battle are turning out to be AMCO and the Sangdo Committee Board members, as will become apparent later.

The Snake Strikes Again

Because the snake, Mr. Yoon, refused to officially annul his leadership on a Gu office document, with one signature, other means are required to circumvent his intransigence.

a) The Gu office needs 80% of the community to sign up to attend a community meeting. At the meeting there should be a vote to get rid of the snake.  The result is given to the Gu office and everyone needs to register their official stamp by sending a document to the Gu office, i.e. about 1000 people must do this stupid procedure—very difficult to organize.

b) Another way: 20% of people have to sign to have a meeting and vote. That document then must go to the Gu office and then to court for a decision. This will take about a month.

The problem with the second option is this: the interest on a loan and the cost of guards at the front gate of the construction site is already costing about 40 million won a day!!! So let’s clarify. Because the snake will not give one single signature, he is costing the whole community a huge sum of money every day. The gives an idea of what scum he is.

But wait, there’s more! The snake has said he will certainly sign, no problem. Except all of his dirty deeds must be forgiven, no police are to be involved, and no further questions should asked. What a moron. It’s an admission of guilt. His offer was rejected, and rightly so.

Speaking of the snake, it seems that police discovered in his financial dealings record of a sum of money without any indication of where it came from, a big sum of money to the tune of 1.5 billion won. And what is suspected? Well, the snake did a land deal, an illegal one, that resulted in a 5 story building going up right near the front gate. The thing has been completed for some time. Everyone is guessing the 1.5 billion is a payment for his little favor of giving the land away.

The Council Office Crook

The court decision against the snake did little to convince the decision maker at the Gu office. This idiot said his mind was 70% made up that Mr. Yoon had been ousted, but 30% unsure about it. So since it was his decision he will do nothing. He said if the community wants to do anything about it, then they need to vote on it or take it to court. Another moron who is costing the community a lot of money because of incompetence and delays.

The Gu office has in fact insisted on more voting on things that have already been voted on and decided. It’s ludicrous. What this idiot does not know is that a lawsuit is being prepared against him. Hopefully his mind will then be 100% unhappy.

Community Board members will visit the Blue House of the president and hopefully get the message through to the President’s men about what has been going on.

The AMCO Promise

Hyundai AMCO has help to secure a Project Finance (PF) loan with the Shanghai Bank. This is essentially a standard construction loan. The amount was for 2400 billion won. AMCO employees helped secure this loan under the instruction of the AMCO boss so things could get moving.

The Community Board members were also a part of the loan negotiations, and get this: they have all put their homes up as collateral. They could not even borrow $10 from a bank now. What a contrast this is to the snake and his cronies.

The thing about AMCO is that it is a part of the Hyundai motor company, which is very committed to have a huge building arm to its business.  And I mean seriously committed. This construction deal at Sangdo has become central, critical to AMCOs success. If AMCO can make it a success at Sangdo, it’ll soar to maybe 4th place in building company rankings.

This is why AMCO is bending over backwards to help push things through. Not only that, rumor has it that model house will have the best of materials–in contrast to Hanjin’s effort. The construction of Sangdo, in other words, is to be an AMCO showcase. This is fantastic news.

The Village Idiots

So, the meeting got heated once all of the above information had been relayed. People were arguing and shouting out in the dark. I couldn’t understand a word but I knew who were the village idiots—the old community members—and who were all for getting things moving.

At one point a young woman took the microphone to tell her story of how the construction delay had cause a lot grief and hardship for her family. She broke down and was having trouble speaking. The old original community members in the area, let’s call them the village idiots, sat their stony faced, unmoved. Later my wife saw a rich looking village idiot talking to the young woman, but holding up her hand saying she would not sign anything.

So much for the older generation nurturing the young in this country of one blood. What a load of bullshit. All I’ve seen since coming here is Korean screwing over each other.

The village idiots needed to sign with us to get things moving but they kept saying the same old things. They want to negotiate, to pay less than everyone else, when the premium payments are due upon moving in. They won’t budge until they are assured of it. Meanwhile, younger people who are also part of the original residents were telling the old members to focus on getting the construction started.

We are talking here about the ones who have caused all the problems from the beginning. Then they were arguing among themselves like the village idiots they are. Some stormed off, others milled around, no solution was found.

The Big Picture

In the end, I think the idiots will be steamrolled by the process. It is unstoppable now with such committed Board members and with AMCO flexing it muscles ready to start work.

After Chosuk this weekend, the model house will be ready.  Looking forward to that.

Language Education Institute at SNU

It’s been a couple of months since I resigned from the Language Education Institute at SNU after 6 years on the job. I left with an overwhelming feeling of contempt for the place and how it is run.  My patience just ran out, and the most important thing to do then was to quit.

I’ve had to take a pay cut but that’s fine with me. I’m free lancing now and a hell of a lot happier. Admittedly, it was worry before some work came along but I’ve got some now that should last a while. Now I can work from home—an ideal situation that fits in well with my astronomy studies, independent temperament and inability to suffer any more clueless twits.

I won’t go into it to save myself some lawsuits, but I will describe a practice which it also done in Korea’s private companies. It’s truely ludicrous. This place had a system of temporary upper management. The Director’s term is 2 years or less and the Executive Director signs on for 2 years with a maximum 2 year extension. The institute was essentially a business run inside the university. However, it gets worse, only Humanties academics are given the top positions, not business people nor necessarily people with any experience.

The academic careerists are chosen according to the “network” and not by application. So, we had Humanities people who were clueless about business and about what we did, but they were in the position of running the business of the institute and our department! We used to joke that we should write a manual for these blow-ins so we didn’t have upheaval every 2 years or less. We’d have to adjust to the whims of whomever happened to .

So I ask the question, If you needed a manager for your business and you had the choice of employing for the long term businessperson with experience or a Humanities academic on a temporary basis whose main concern is their career, who would you choose? Or, let me put it another way. Which one of the two is the last person you would want running a business of any kind? . . . A reply isn’t necessay. I rest my case.

Community meeting at the Sangdo construction site as it gets dark. The front gate is in the background.

Yesterday evening, under overcast skies, a meeting was held at the Sangdo construction site to discuss the state of things. It had been hastily called the day before. We got there around 5 pm and it went on until it after dark, with people arriving steadily.

I told my wife before heading down there, not knowing who would be present, to put on old clothes in case there was a lot of blood spilled.

Here’s where things stand. I’ve got a lot of ground to cover because of the extent of corruption uncovered.

The Bad News First: the old snake, Mr. Yoon, that dithering bastard who was kicked out as the leader of the redevelopment community—by order of the court–and who has caused us monumental problems from day one, continues to wreak havoc through his incompetence and stupidity even when not around. The reach of his poison, everyone has discovered, extends to the local council office, or the Gu office as it is called here.

1) It has transpired that a document (or documents) at the Gu office was stamped by the snake on behalf of community members. We, the community members, had no idea of it. So, this would constitute a fraud in anyone’s book. However, the Gu office is recognizing the document as legal. How can they do that, even though the court has ruled against the old snake and effectively sacked him? Well, everything has been stamped and “looks” legal and rumour has it that certain individuals at the Gu office were paid incentives—bribery went on, in other words.

The person responsible for the fake document is Mr. Han, head of Han Management, the company supposed to manage the community’s development—let’s call him the leech. The leech prepared the document but the snake would have stamped his approval on everything. This document concerns bylaws on the community and future construction. An initial document of community laws was seen by members, and everyone signed off on that, but this second document was not seen by anyone. And yet, all the stamps of all community members appear on it—put there by the leech or the snake.

The importance of this document is that it states Hanjin is the builder. So, AMCO can’t move in with that still in the way.

Believe it or not, there is a house beneath the vegetation. It stands near where the meeting was held. Apparently there is a hold-out tenant still in there.

2) The snake, Mr. Yoon, had said at a previous meeting that he would quit his position and sign a Gu office document stating his resignation. This would allow the newly elected leader, a young guy, to take over with full authority. It would also mean that AMCO could proceed. However, the snake has gone back on his word and said he will not sign anything to say he has quit. (He wasn’t at this meeting. I’ll get to why a little later.)

3) The leech, Mr. Han, reportedly bought land somewhere for 95 billion won.  Mr. Yoon has reputedly embezzled 20 billion won. The leech also took it upon himself to “create” 40 new apartments out of thin air. And he sold them! The money he would have made is anywhere between 15 billion and 30 billion won. But guess who would have stamped the documents to allow this to happen? Yes, the snake. Apparently, since the fabricated apartments have been sold, the deal cannot be undone and the purchases will have to be honored. But where is the money? No one knows yet.

4) The leech has been doing some creative accounting as well. While overspending, and as money was disappearing, he was fiddling the books to make it all look good. He also refused requests by community leaders to see his record. That’s understandable because there are very few records of transactions to see! The leech hasn’t really bothered to keep any. All the millions were managed—now get this—in an Excel file! Yes, hard to believe. Also, some deals were done in the form of land swaps.

5) It appears that different people might have been given different contracts. In addition, some were only given the size of the apartment on the contract but not the cost or what they paid. They were misled on prices. These mainly concern the old community members led by Mr. Yoon. So, it seems that the snake was ripping off his own gullible followers.

6) The leech lied to old community members about the new management company that is taking over from him, called CT Global. Daemyung, the other gangster builder, actually went to the home of AMCO’s CEO and told him that CT Global was ruining everything.

7) Hanjin is asking for money that is well beyond anything it did on the construction site.

8) The longer things are delayed the more it is costing the community because of bank loans that are already in place.

It is clear that we should have lynched these morons long ago. The list of scumbags is as follows: Mr. Yoon, Mr. Han, Hanjin, Daemyung and a handful of older community members—all out for themselves and all totally corrupt.

Empty chairs at the back before the meeting started and part of the construction site in the background, now much of it overgrown

The Good News Section: the snake and the leech are in the hands of the police! That’s right, the police are now investigating all of their corrupt dealings.

1) CT Global, who has taken over from Han Management, has seen it all before, having cleaned up 6 previous mismanagement cases concerning reconstruction developments. They are investigating the money trails and will clean up our mess. They will be asking everyone to submit their documents and finally we will see transparency and record keeping. A guy from CT explained everything at the meeting, detailing how the snake and the leech were thieves and their documents where fakes.

2) The new community leaders are going to take Hanjin and Daemyung to court for compensation for all the delays and financial suffering they have caused.

3) It seems that Lee Myung-Bak, the president, has lifted height restrictions on apartment building heights. Our development was capped at 16 or 18 floors, from memory. Now AMCO will be able to go higher. That’s fortunate given that we now have an extra 40 apartments no one accounted for!

4) Because of the Gu office problem, guards have been stationed at the gate to deny access to any Hanjin gangsters. I think this is going to be a volunteer effort. Members will volunteer as their number comes up. That means we may have to go down and perhaps do an overnighter ourselves in the near future.

5) The community will be sending a petition to Lee Myung-Bak. This may have some sway because Lee used to head Hyundai and AMCO is of course Hyundai. In fact, to make this clearer to the public, AMCO has changed its name to Hyundai AMCO.

6) Old community members have been referring to us, the newer members, as whores. We don’t know why. However, now they are beginning to realize what a thief and betrayer the snake is and what a fraud and lier the leech is. The older community members are very dumb people and will find it hard to admit what old fools they have been.

The front gate, now with all the signage taken down. No more "High Class Life" up there--no, nothing high class about the antics that have gone on

See how deep the corruption, stupidity and greed goes? So, here we are, Korea in the twenty-first century, still weighed down by corruption and people with the mentality of village peasants.

I came to this country with an open mind, but given these events and my past experiences with management at SNU, I am beginning to think that incompetent and clueless management may be a cultural tradition in Korea. One almost expects it. And by the way, Mr. Yoon, the snake, is an SNU graduate.

No one seems to be doing much to stop dirty deeds like these from happening in the first place. Something similar happened with my brother-in-law’s housing, which is to be constructed next to ours. As well as crooked dealings with the Gu office, their community leader running away with a whole lot of money. The police are still looking for him. Thankfully that’s not our problem.

Nonetheless, slowly the forces of good are overcoming the forces of evil. Thus we edge closer to our apartment’s construction, millimetre by millimetre.

Now for a sad and poigniant tale told by the new community leader. He said a 75 year old man came up to him at the last meeting, took his hands, and said that at his age he probably would not live to see his apartment built. I know how he feels.

On concentration camp horrors in North Korea

After having read The Aquariums of Pyongyang, I knew what to expect with this book, the tale of Soon Ok Lee’s 6 years in a North Korean labor camp.

First of all, it’s all the same to call it a labor camp, a concentration camp, a death camp, a prison, when speaking of prison camps in a Stalinist state. The idea of these camps is to provide cheap labor for gangsters presiding over a country that is an economic basket case. That was why Stalin worked 20 million to death.

The toll of the Kim dynasty–Kim Il Sung and his idiot son Kim Jong Il–is probably now also in the millions. Eventually, the number of deaths they are responsible will come to light, and they will join the ranks of modern history’s most reviled and detested mass murdering gangsters, such as Pol-Pot, Stalin and Hitler.

Tailless Animals shows you why. But it’s no Gulag Archipelago, far from it. Solzhenitsyn’s record is up there with the greatest, it’s a literary classic, and one my favorite books of this “genre,” if I can call it that. Tailless Animals is at the other end of the scale. It is not written well and is pretty simple in terms of expression and ideas. It almost seems as if it were written according to a checklist.

So much is left out. You get stark facts but no real attempt to evoke what conditions were like. On the other hand, as a steady and objective account of the depths of human depravity, it serves its purpose. It could be excused as written by someone using their second language, or as a translation, but I tend to think for such an important subject, perhaps more effort could have been made. And the sketches here and there are a waste of space. They appear to have been Americanized, with hardly Asian looking characters, which struck me as bordering on stupid if not insulting. They make it look like a child’s story. Was it to illicit more sympathy from dumb American readers? Regardless, it was a poor decision by the publishers.

Christian publishers, that is, so you can skip the Christian intro. I could have done without the Christian sentiments toward the end, but I guess they were a part of what the author became. Koreans have a habit of getting sucked in by religion as much as they have been by Confucian dictators. No, god didn’t make the birds fly out at the right time to cover any noise Lee made when seeking to cross North Korea’s border. No, the guards let her into Hong Kong because your fake IDs were good not because of god’s smoke and mirrors. Well, whatever gets her through the night.

The Senate hearing testimony she gave contains details that aren’t in the book. For one thing, the ability to bury all factory workers en masse in underground tunnels, if guards wanted to, are absent; for another, the biological experiments conducted on prisoners. Why were things like that left out? I can only wonder.

Despite my criticisms, everyone needs to read this book, as they do the others I’ve mentioned. North Korea is a poisoned land, operating on corruption, greed and thuggery such that decency cannot survive there. It really gets to me that the world knows North Korea is like this and has concentration camps but does nothing–scared of Chine, no doubt. Politics means that the people that get stuck the the death camps simply have no hope, except for the very, very lucky few.

Some great news today that is keeping me chuckling. AMCO has begun construction! The gates down at the construction site where our apartment will be built are finally open again, signs are up and trucks will be rolling.

This comes after the court ruled in our favor of AMCO, and by extension us, on all counts and booted out the gangster Hanjin. It has also ruled that the trouble-makers, the old residents there, who refused to pay more money and created so many of the problems for us, will have to pay up and do as they are told.

I really laughed when I heard that last part. They have cost me so much money in rent because of their stupidity. Finally, we have some justice.

I also hear that AMCO is a rising star. It has or is building a steel works twice the size of Yeouido—Seoul’s business district—so it’s truly massive. That is raising their profile and will send our apartment values up. At last the wait is over.

But there’s no getting back the years of rent we’ve had to pay because of the delay.

—- Update! —-

Often in my life I speak too soon. You know, I’ll never get married, I’ll never be poor again, I’ll never become a cynical person—things like that.  And yet again, I spoke too soon. It seems that the signs and activity at the site were not AMCO’s doing. It was Hanjin!

Why is Hanjin suddenly motivated to look like it is a real building company and actually turn up at our construction site? Well, of course, it’s just a front for their gangster operation. The reason they are attempting to look busy is to get more money out of AMCO. AMCO has to pay for work already done, so Hanjin is putting on a pathetic and fake show to impress the idea that it has done and still is doing lots of work.

It’s yet another tactic that shows what a scumbag company Hanjin is. They’re not fooling anyone with such an amateurish production.

Saturday is the second McEwan novel I’ve read and for me it suffered from the same thing the first did: the drilling down into minuscule detail of mental processes, beyond which for me is realistic. Perhaps I lead a dull inner life. But that would surprise me to learn.

It was also the tangential excursions, not just of emotions but of the intricate descriptions of surrounds and objects, such as the details of Henry’s cooking that drove me to question their relevance. OK, Henry, the main character, can cook, he is a competent modern man—we get it, we don’t need pages of how he cooks to labour the point.

Character introductions or establishments were forced for me, too contrived, such as descriptions of blues guitar playing that not even most blues players would recognize or jargon filled neurosurgerical procedures. I wonder what blues player would analyze “playing off triplets against two- or four-note clusters.” At least, I never did. The impression is that a lot of the novel has been, well, over-researched, which is fine, but you know it only too keenly.

The family at the centre of the novel is very well-to-do. They are so well off that the son can pursue a career in blues music and the daughter in poetry. Half their luck! Their well-to-do upper-class parents, a lawyer and a brain surgeon, don’t seem to mind having kids bordering on wastrel, which might strike some as very unrealistic. On top of that, offspring with such easy fortune put me off them pretty quick.

Here is a well-balanced family, then, the artists and leaders of society as their parents. Henry, the father and surgeon, is hard on himself for lacking artistic sentiment, but not to outdone he has his own highly lauded craftsmanship. He also good at creating fictions to avoid trouble, so he is not totally devoid of creativity. He appears to be cast as truly a figure of British accomplishment in an age when there seems to be so few of them around.

It didn’t feel so much as Henry’s perceptions of the times as McEwan’s idea of what we should be thinking of them. Against the backdrop of an anti-Iraq war rally, much of it seemed like a modernized rendering around the theme of a “stiff upper lip” or promoting the sentiment British World War II posters used to proclaim: “Keep Calm and Carry On.”

Spoiler warning: the family encounter their own form of home grown terrorism. But for me the parallelism here of world and local terrorism was too pat. I enjoyed musing, however, that the local terrorist was on the path to becoming a raving lunatic (because of a medical condition), and how that seemed to imply as much of the nature of Islamic terrorists—that is, they are insane.

So, the family, offspring and parents, prevail through their own little war on terror using their collective and superior talents. Then they help the terrorist and give him as much ease as possible. Again, I couldn’t help drawing parallels with what this suggests about the terms of the international drama in the background, a drama that is still going on—the rich Western nations helping to rewire the brains of the poorer (invariably Islamic) troublemakers.

I would never say McEwan wasn’t the master at taking a very simple story and padding it out into a book of many intricacies. It’s happened in both of the books of his I’ve read. But it’s too much padding for me—the scenery in fine detail, the mental process excessively probed. It’s like McEwan was giving film makers every last detail for a film, saving them all the work. This is just not my thing, not in literature: too much served up on a plate, too much like watching a movie.

Here is everyone--well, not quite everyone--voting unanimously on 10 issues that need to be resolved before AMCO construction can start.

One small flower and big stupidity created all of the problems and delays we’ve had for the past 3 years.

Imagine the scene in 2003. A community vote is being held to nominate the builder of the Songdo redevelopment. All the people there are residents, whose homes will be demolished and who will gain an new apartment for a small payment of 250,000,000 won ($250,000). Not only that, they will be given money, possibly 100,000,000 won ($100,000), to live on, while they wait for the construction to be completed. Pretty good deal, I’d say.

There they are with a new strut in their step—community leaders are swaggering about, everyone’s puffed up and happy because they’ve hit the jackpot. They are nobodies in a poor neighborhood, not too smart, and mostly elderly, but here they have the power to vote who will build their new expensive homes.

And the choice? Hanjin or LG. It’s a no-brainer. LG is the biggest and the best. It’s a forgone conclusion that LG should be voted because the apartments will be top quality and their resale value will be very high. All residents were going to choose LG. But wait! At the door of the voting place are Hanjin representatives with a rose for each person. It worked.

The elderly community, largely poor, largely uneducated and unintelligent were swayed by Hanjin’s flower. They changed their minds and voted Hanjin. Fucking morons. Had they voted LG that day, we would be now living in a rather expensive apartment and looking quite well off.

The old residents voice their opinions. This is when things had calmed down a little and people had dispersed but trouble still flared up now and then.

Since that day of the Hanjin vote, all the problems started. The community leader handed over his official stamp to the community manager, who then proceeded to stamp everything. Another builder, Daemyung, got involved. No records were kept of where money went. Illegal activities were done. Now an accounting firm has to be hired to track down what happened and where money went.

After years of problems because of these clueless pea-brained residents, we are at some final voting on Saturday, July 4, and they all walk out! This is not before they demanded a special contract different to everyone else, where they didn’t have to pay a cent more. That would mean everyone else would have to pay for them.

Morons on the move. These are the last people at the meeting that should have any reason to show indignation.

During the explanation of voting, the old fogies were standing up demanding to be heard. They were running up the front and shouting. The audience was shouting them down. It was clear there were two factions there. The elderly idiot residents and the younger later purchasers like us. Finally, a wall of people was put across the stage to prevent violence. Then a debate ensued, the culmination of which the old residents walked out.

Residents stop to voice objections and shout abuse.

While it was all happening, the conniving old fool, the community leader was sitting like a snake behind a rock, watching intently. Finally he got up and said he would go with the other residence and they all walked out the door.

Another debate followed to decide whether the vote should go ahead. Everyone wanted to do it, even without the old fogies.

All of this took 5 hours to resolve. I was sitting their shaking my head at the stupidity and greed of the old resident’s demands. They should giving us money for all the trouble they have caused. My wife was full of hatred for the old community leader. He has been at the center of all the feeble minded stupidity that has cost us time, money and frustration.

Satellite shot of the current state of the building site. Everything is basically cleared and ready to go. Soongshil Uni. Station can be seen right of centre.

Hanjin, the builder that behaves like a Korean gangster organization, accepted that if members of the development community voted them out, they would leave. Everyone did vote Hanjin out, opting for Amco instead, unanimously. However, Hanjin does not want to go now, not without blackmailing us for as much money as possible.

The case has gone to court and decisions will be handed down in August. In the meantime, Hanjin has sent out documents asking community members to select them as the builder. These documents contained the threat that if Hanjin was not made the builder, nothing would be built. This is bizarre since everyone has already voted them out. It is also very indicative of the thuggery that characterizes Hanjin’s mode of operation.

Here is what this gangster builder is demanding.

1. Cost of construction to date: 55 billion won (around $55 million US)
2. Compensation for damages: 23.5 billion won (around $23.5 million US)
3. Compensation for breach of contract: 23 billion won ($23 million US)

So, in total, the Hanjin thieves are demanding $101.5 million US to move out and let construction begin.

The cost of construction they are demanding is a ridiculous figure, given that 1) they have not actually done anything except clear land and that 2) they have only completed about 1% of the total project. Their other claims are ludicrous since Hanjin is the one that has caused damage and failed in its obligations.

Apart from dealing with these thieves, other issues have to be resolved. One is to get rid of that 70+ year-old bastard, the community leader, who has caused so much grief and trouble to everyone. Personally, I think they should string him up, but unfortunately this against the law nowadays. He’ll just be voted out, leaving the damage behind.

Next issue, which will be pursued in another court, is getting compensation from Hanjin for wasting everyone’s time and for criminal behavior. The fact remains that if it had not been for Hanjin and the other morons involved in all of this, we would be living in a our new apartment about now.

Finally, there is the issue of how much we are actually going to pay for the apartment. The price is no longer fixed and it will depend of market fluctuations.

Many of these issues will be discussed at a meeting July 4, 09. Meanwhile, we’ve been sent a book showing Amco’s apartement redesigns, which look better than the ones Hanjin came up with. Here are the 3 different 84 square meter designs that are relevant to us.

Plan A

Plan B

Plan C

It has been said to me by a Korean that this generation of Koreans is not enthusiastic about reunification with North Korea or its collapse. They know it would me a huge aid and rebuilding debt they would have to pay. It’s pretty disheartening. Sometimes I think I have a deeper loathing for Kim Jong Ill and his gangster cronies than the average Korean does.

Portrait of a Megalomaniac

I see in Korea’s young and not so young generations a preoccupation with other things, primarily their social mobility and financial success. They are fashion victims and brand whores. Like the Japanese, they spend far too much time watching the idiot box, obsessed with banal and formulaic soaps, with an endless collection of utterly trivial game shows and sophomoric comedy programs.

All of these diversions are self-centred and inward looking, all seemingly a little too smug and self-congratulatory over their own wit, cuteness or cultural uniqueness. They exhibit misplaced importance at every turn, and in that are mirrors of benumbed audiences that take superficial concerns and artificial emotions for something meaningful—oblivious or uncaring that it is all of minimal interest or importance to the world at large.

It’s all utterly mindless garbage, and though I cannot understand the language, I can see quite clearly the brainwashing repetition of patterns in all of it. Every soap episode has someone crying and people shouting at each other. TV here is like the music business, a tireless and endless stream of copied ideas and mediocre, barely disguised repetition, of aimless thrills and celebrity gossip.

When I first came to the country I thought K-pop was cute, interesting and technically advanced. But even then I could hear the stolen musical cliches and chord changes. Some songs sounded like a cynical rendering of sound bites taken from carefully selected pop classics of the last few decades. Now I just cringe when I hear K-pop and its mindless lack of originality, its pointless, boy-meets-girl blather. It makes me cringe as much as the soaps do. I even get angry at the vacuity of it all and how it contributes to complacency in all things.

A preoccupation with stupid diversions, self-centred trivia and the vanities of shopping—this is my impression of what mainstream Korea has become. I’m not saying everyone is like this. But it does seem to characterize the mainstream, and in that, I guess, it imitates much Western pop culture, which is guilty of the same excesses and even more culpable for starting it all.

The facade

The difference is that while South Koreans amuse themselves with mindless trivia, half of Korea—their own people, if the “one blood” myth has any credence—is suffering under a dictatorship whose cruelties are on the scale of the Nazis and Stalinist Russia. Everyone has known this for decades. The concentration camps can even be seen on satellite photos all over the web. Yet, nothing is done to liberate the 100s of thousands that are being kept in such places, like animals in a factory farm, right now, as you read this.

It seems that very few people in South Korea want their lives interrupted or disrupted by upheaval in North Korea.

Though it is difficult to see any other solution except war. To my mind, it would be over very quickly, perhaps in two weeks, and you would not get the protracted terrorist resistance seen in Irag. I should think that the upper echelons could be eliminated fairly quickly, the infrastructure would collapse within days. However, before anything, the concentration camps would have to be liberated, and with lightening speed, otherwise mass murder will result. Authorities allegedly already have a mass murder plans in place to cover everything up.

Afterwards, I’m sure if the populace could get a hold of him, Jong Ill would end up Mussolini style, hung upside-down like a pig after being shot or with his throat cut, though that is too easy and too good for him.

And what has inspired this rant? Well, learning about the book Eyes of the Tailless Animals: Prison Memoirs of a North Korean Woman and reading the Senate hearing testimony of its author, Soon Ok Lee. The book is 10 years old and I had not heard about it. I’d already read The Aquariums of Pyongyang: Ten Years in the North Korean Gulag and discovered in that the horrors of North Korea. I also knew about Dong Hyuk Shin. But there is a lot of evidence out there.

This got me thinking that there is too much forgetting, too much complacency out there, in South Korea as much as anywhere else. So, all of the above has been by way on introduction for presenting some material about the hell of North Korean concentrations camps, doing my part in spreading the word that everyone has to know about.

First, here is the incredible story of Dong Hyuk Shin. He was born and raised in a concentration camp because his parents were classed as criminals. Conveniently, this adds to the supply of slave labor, which is what the concentration camps are really all about. Shin lived in a camp for about twenty-three years as a slave laborer. He endured constant beatings, torture, starvation, and witnessed the execution of his family members.

Lifetime prisoners like Shin were not taught about the existence of Kim il-Sung and Kim Jong-il because it was assumed they would never leave their camps. It’s amazing to think, given that the main tool of Stalinist or communist regimes for brainwashing and spreading lies has always been propaganda. It enslaves the minds of people outside the prisons. To abandon even that shows how the prisoners were fated to die in prison without any propaganda wasted on them.

Second, the testimony of Soon Ok Lee is worth reading, and I’ve included it here in an it’s entirety.

The mentality of Baby Kim

End of rant, for today.

Survival In Auschwitz

Primo Levi

This book is an undeniable classic. Written with authority and control, with a kind of restrained disgust, it has so many well phrased passages. Its unconventional structure makes it seem more modern than it is: Levi plunges in and out of episodes and time periods. Some things you would expect to be focused upon are not, while others are, such as those things that were most pertinent to individuals on the edge of survival, like the work they had to do in extreme cold.

Because Levi focuses so much of the daily physical privations and the work he had to do, I was continually reminded especially of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 Abridged. Interesting how similar both fascists and communists contrived in much the same way to grind millions of human beings into the ground—they took everything from them and ground them down with hunger, cold and work until they died, as of course North Korea is doing right now.

The moment it might have dawned upon Levi that people were being gassed and burned is not detailed. Rather, the idea of it seeps into the text, it is alluded to here and there only, and then finally it is spoken of as one of the facts of life that hangs over everyone. He has few words of hatred for the Germans, as if they are beyond contempt as forces of nothingness and evil—such words would not be enough, anyway.

It was clear Auschwitz was a very different experience depending on your nationality and religion, with the Germans at the top of the heap. But something that is not explored in the book, and which I only learned about recently, is that Auschwitz was a kind of resort for the Germans. They had fun there, with girls and good times, while overseeing the gassing and slaughter of 100s of thousands.

And it did not matter how strong you were, or how smart as a prisoner, what mattered was luck. If Levi does not state it outright, it is nonetheless clear that he only survived through luck. That’s a very sobering thought.

The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter

Peter Singer & Jim Mason

This study covers a lot of ground, tracing back and examining the implications of where our food comes from. Basically it is divided into three sections and each revolves around a family and their eating habits. It goes from a standard meat eating family to a semi-vegetarian or “conscientious omnivore” family to a vegan family. No prize for guessing which comes out as the best lifestyle choice for all of us, for animals and for the environment–the vegan family, of course.

This book is packed with information, more than a lot of other books I’ve read. It introduced me to a couple of things I hadn’t considered, such as the way food industries defray costs onto others, or why fish farming is just as bad as any other factory farming, or how food transportation consumes so much energy, or why buying local may not be best in all cases. It touches upon more issues than you might expect, and gives local detail before widening the perspective with broader implications. Ultimately, “agriculture indirectly affects all living creatures” and all of the detrimental effects of this are “because of our choices about what we eat.”

I was particularly interested in hard facts on labeling. They deliver on this by actually visiting so-called organic farms and detailing what they saw. As suspected, many of these farms are not what I would class as organic regardless of any official pronouncements. The authors had similar reservations. It all remains “questionable,” and while buying products with “Certified Humane” and the like is better than not, the best choice of all is not buying animal based products at all. You cannot get away from one undeniable reality: food producers seek to maximize profits and this is invariably contrary to the interests of the animals.

The book is dictated by the food choices in it, but I wonder would it have been an entirely different book if different families and foods been focused on? There’s no doubt, although given that the problems with food production are universal, many food trails would lead back to the same culprits or their equivalents. I then wonder how much was controlled by the authors and how much simply left to chance. That is not really explored, and I guess the idea was to leave much to chance, to rely on chance to deliver “averages” and make it more “objective” without their interference.

One criticism I have is that I had trouble remembering who bought what, which farmer it was traced back to, and what the findings were. Perhaps if each section paralleled others I could look back and find corresponding sections for each family, but sections do not parallel each other, and I suppose they can’t, since different issues arise for different circumstances. For example, meat and dairy are not going to be discussed in relation to the vegan family. I question the effectiveness of this structure. For me, it would have been better to structure it according to food type and discuss each family under that.

I would like to have seen more details on the families, like which family members haul around the fattest arses and what kind of education levels we are dealing with in relation to food choice. I guess that’s all getting into murky territory that would be enough to sustain another book, yet a few cholesterol stats wouldn’t have taken up much space. I did enjoy the note that although the US is somewhat slavish to Christian notions, the sin of gluttony appears to get overlooked.

Criticism there could have been sharper, and sharper too against lazy or twisted thinkers the authors touch upon. They at least took Michael Pollin to task and others who justify the raising of animals for slaughter as some kind of bizarre evolutionary bargain or “mutualism,” as if they cannot shake a dominion mentality passed on through Christian culture. As for the farmers they spoke to, I suspect they were not chewed up and spat out because of their cooperation.

One idiot they did not talk to called Joel Salatin believes humans are made in the Christian god’s image and have a soul, while animals do not. All they say to this lunacy is that religions often reflect “the speciesism of the humans who made them.” Again, dissecting Salatin would have gone beyond the scope of the book, but still I’d like to have read a few more sentences explaining in their words why he is deluded.

Overall, this is a great book to have on the shelf, one that can be returned to for reference, since I doubt the findings will be going out of date any time soon. It is heartening to see that the kind of information Singer and Mason have presented here is entering into mainstream consciousness. I expect the documentary Food, Inc. will echo many of the issues found in this book and will probably reach a wider audience, of the kind that would never pick up a book on ethics.

What I wanted was have a category link on my site open up an external site in a new tab. A simple task in something like Joomla. But you can’t configure this in Wordpress! It baffles me why such a basic feature is not standard. However, here’s my solution.

First, I tried a lot of redirection plugins. None did what I wanted but the best of these plugins was Redirection. It’s a professional job. First of all I created the category that I wanted to use as an external site link within my category menu. Then I created a dummy post linked to the category, so the category would appear on the site.* I then used Redirection to redirect that category link to an external site. However, while this works great, Redirection cannot redirect to a new window/tab—no redirect can.

It has to be done at the tag level by inserting a target=”_blank” into a link tag. For this, I needed to track down where the category links were being created by Wordpress.

It took a while to track down but the function that handles the output for category links is in wp-includes/classes.php. In there is the Walker_Category class and within that the start_el function, where the category output is created.

if ( $cat_name == ‘Screenshots’ )
$link = ‘<a target=”_blank” href=”‘ . get_category_link( $category->term_id ) . ‘” ‘;
else
$link = ‘<a href=”‘ . get_category_link( $category->term_id ) . ‘” ‘;

I simply added an if statement at the get_category_link section. It checks for a $cat_name match with the category I want to make an external link. (Of course for multiple categories this could be more elaborate) Then I added target=”_blank” to the $link tag for that category only.

Redirection works in perfect harmony with this solution. I suppose I could have hard coded the external link at this point. But no need, since Redirection can handle it. And if I want to change the external URL I can use Redirection instead of hacking code further.

You can see how it works by clicking on the Screenshots link in the category list.

• NOTE. If you use this for a child category, the dummy page with actually show up under the parent category.

Candide

Voltaire

This was a fun read and, as I find with a lot of earlier literature, quite modern in its execution. Or, did the translation make it seem that way? Partly, perhaps. Maybe it’s the eighteenth century writing, which for me has a timeless quality. Many of my favorite authors come from that period—it really was such a golden age for literature. I suspect the original French Candide would be funnier but as it stands the Penguin Classic I read gave me a smile and an occasionally a laugh. You don’t need to go into great depth studying the philosophical arguments of the day to enjoy this. The gist of it is explained well enough in the intros of most editions, I should think. The “indifferint shrug and callous inertia” Voltaire satirizes could apply equally well to attitudes and behaviors today.