Korea Thread: Liberal Moon Jae In Elected

[citizen k]

Looking at what was said, it appears to mean 90% of Americans should consider themselves potential targets. NK would still be picking a subset of that (unless author thinks they can sneak in man, many nukes...).

According to the Congressional EMP Commission, a single warhead delivered by North Korean satellite could blackout the national electric grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures for over a year—killing 9 of 10 Americans by starvation and societal collapse.

[garbon]

Ah I missed that part.

I think it might be more fruitful to worry about and try to make cars safer though.

[Syt]

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/02/politics/donald-trump-north-korea/index.html

Trump: US will act unilaterally on North Korea if necessary

Washington (CNN)US President Donald Trump has declared he would be willing to go it alone to restrain North Korea's nuclear weapons program should China fail to change the situation, saying if Beijing won't help solve it, then "we will" alone.

"China will either decide to help us with North Korea or they won't," Trump said in an interview published Sunday in the Financial Times. "If they do, that will be very good for China, and if they don't, it won't be good for anyone."

Trump's administration has repeatedly emphasized its high concern over the North Korean nuclear threat. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson visited China last month to press North Korea's neighbor for help in mitigating that threat, and Trump is scheduled to host Chinese President Xi Jinping this week in the US, where he intends to bring the issue up.

China didn't respond to Trump's comments to the FT Monday, but issued a statement saying that Tillerson had phoned the country's top diplomat, State Councilor Yang Jiechi, about Xi's visit.

According to the statement, Yang said the meeting was of "utmost importance in China-US relations" and was important for "promoting peace, stability and prosperity... for the whole world."

On the campaign trail and since taking office, Trump has argued China is responsible for the continued nuclear proliferation in North Korea. He said in his Financial Times interview that he planned to talk with Xi about that situation and use trade as "the incentive" to talk China into fixing it.

Trump has repeatedly said he would take aggressive action against China to reduce the US trade deficit with the country. But if the talks with Xi don't produce Trump's desired result of getting Beijing to solve the North Korean nuclear problem, Trump said the US would take action.

"If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will," Trump told the Financial Times.

Asked to clarify if he believed the US could solve the problem without China, Trump said: "totally."

In an interview with ABC News Sunday, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said the US should "no longer take the excuses from China that 'they're concerned.'"

"They need to show us how concerned they are... the only country that can stop North Korea is China, and they know that," she said.

The US maintains that China hasn't done enough to apply financial pressure given that Beijing is North Korea's only real ally and accounts for 70% of the country's trade.

China has repeatedly said that its influence over the North Korea has been overstated, and the US and South Korea should stop antagonizing North Korea with its annual military drills.

Thousands of US and South Korea troops are currently engaged in the Foal Eagle joint annual drills that finish on April 30.

"On one hand, North Korea has violated UN Security Council resolutions banning its ballistic missile launches; on the other hand, South Korea, the US -- and now Japan -- insist on conducting super-large-scale military drills. It's a vicious cycle that could spiral out of control -- and such a scenario would benefit no one," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said during a press briefing on March 14.

Beijing has proposed a "double halt" approach that would see North Korea suspend its nuclear program, while the US and South Korea would call off joint military drills.
The US has already dismissed the plan. In a briefing on March 9, Mark Toner, the acting State Department spokesman, said: "There's no equivalence between North Korea's illegal missile and nuclear activities and what is our lawful, longstanding joint security exercises with our allies in the region."

North Korean state media has slammed the drills, accusing the countries in a report dated March 12 of "becoming more reckless as the days go by."

On Monday, the US, South Korea and Japan announced a new round of exercises from April 3-5. South Korean Defense Ministry Spokesman Moon Sang-gyun said drills were planned "to show a strong resolve to counter North Korea's nuclear and missile threats as North Korea has been steadily improving its submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) capabilities."

North Korea has test-fired a number of missiles this year and in recent weeks has tested engines which analysts said could be used to power long-range weapons.

Last September, Pyongyang claimed to have tested a nuclear warhead, with South Korea's weather service estimating the explosion to have about 10 kilotons of power, or about two-thirds the power of the bomb the US dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.

Speaking in South Korea last month, Tillerson warned that the US would leave the option of military action on the table with regard to North Korea.

[Razgovory]

Looking at what was said, it appears to mean 90% of Americans should consider themselves potential targets. NK would still be picking a subset of that (unless author thinks they can sneak in man, many nukes...).

The second half of the article is about orbital EMP weapons.

That's stupid.

[Syt]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/03/us/politics/north-korea-nuclear-trump-china.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fworld&_r=0

North Korea's Nuclear Strength, Encapsulated in an Online Ad for Lithium

WASHINGTON — The online ad reads like something only a metallurgist could love: an offer to sell 22 pounds of highly pure lithium 6 every month, set for delivery from the port of Dandong, China.

But it caught the attention of intelligence agencies around the world for a simple reason: Lithium 6 offers a fast way to turn an ordinary atom bomb into a hydrogen bomb, magnifying its destructive power by up to 1,000 times. The seller listed in the ad — who even provided his cellphone number — was identified in a recent United Nations report as the third secretary in the North Korean Embassy in Beijing.

When President Trump meets with President Xi Jinping in Florida this week, administration officials say, his top agenda item will be pressing China to sign on to the most powerful set of economic sanctions ever imposed on North Korea over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs. Mr. Trump has repeatedly vowed to stop the North's nuclear efforts, telling The Financial Times in an interview published on Sunday: "If China is not going to solve North Korea, we will. That is all that I am telling you."

But experts say the offer to sell excess lithium is evidence that North Korea has produced so much of the precious material that it is too late to prevent the nation from becoming an advanced nuclear power.

If that is the case, Mr. Trump may find little success in borrowing from the playbook of the four presidents before him, who fruitlessly tried, with differing mixes of negotiations, sanctions, sabotage and threats of unilateral strikes, to force the North to give up its program. And it remains unclear exactly what the president meant when he said he would "solve" the problem of North Korea.

While experts doubt the declaration last year by Kim Jong-un, the North's leader, that the country had tested a hydrogen bomb, intelligence estimates provided to Mr. Trump in recent weeks say the mercurial young ruler is working on it. The acceleration of Mr. Kim's atomic and missile programs — the North launched four ballistic missiles in a test last month — is meant to prove that the country is, and will remain, a nuclear power to be reckoned with.

For Mr. Trump, that reckoning is coming even as his strategy to halt the North's program remains incomplete and largely unexplained, and as some experts say the very idea of stopping Pyongyang's efforts is doomed to failure. Mr. Trump's budget is expected to include more money for antimissile defenses, and officials say he is continuing a cyber- and electronic-warfare effort to sabotage North Korea's missile launches.

The president's insistence that he will solve the North Korea problem makes it hard to imagine a shift toward acceptance of its arsenal. But in private, even some of his closest aides have begun to question whether the goal of "complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament" — the policy of the Obama and Bush administrations — is feasible anymore.

"We need to change the fundamental objective of our policy, because North Korea will never willingly give up its program," Michael J. Morell, a former deputy director of the C.I.A., and James A. Winnefeld Jr., a retired admiral and a former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote last week on the website The Cipher Brief.

"Washington's belief that this was possible was a key mistake in our initial policy thinking," added the two men, experienced hands at countering the North. The United States and China, they argue, should abandon the idea of denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and turn to old-fashioned deterrence.

Similarly, Robert Einhorn, a former senior State Department nonproliferation expert, writes in a new report for the Brookings Institution that a "dual-track strategy involving both pressure and negotiations" would be more likely to "bring China on board." The technique is reminiscent of what was used to push Iran into nuclear negotiations.

But Mr. Einhorn cautioned that "while the complete denuclearization of North Korea would be the ultimate goal of negotiations, there is virtually no prospect that it could be achieved in the near term."

The Chinese appear unlikely to make more than token efforts to squeeze North Korea, fearing the repercussions if the regime were to collapse, and Mr. Kim has made it clear that he is not about to negotiate away what he sees as his main protection against being overthrown by the United States and its allies.

"China will either decide to help us with North Korea, or they won't," Mr. Trump said in the Financial Times interview. If the Chinese fail to act, he added, "it won't be good for anyone."

It is unclear how close North Korea is to constructing a hydrogen bomb. But Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford University professor who once directed the Los Alamos weapons laboratory in New Mexico, and has visited the North's main nuclear complex, said the ad for lithium 6, while surprising, was a reminder that North Korea, though a backward country, was still capable of major technical advances.

"I can't imagine they're not working on true thermonuclear weapons," Dr. Hecker said in an interview.

As Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi meet on Thursday and Friday, Mr. Kim, on the other side of the world, may have a plan of his own for the summit meeting: Satellite photographs suggest he is preparing for a sixth nuclear test. Workers have dug a deep tunnel, which can block radioactive leaks if carefully sealed, leaving intelligence experts struggling to estimate the North's progress.

American intelligence officials, and their South Korean and Japanese counterparts, are debating whether the next blasts will mark major steps down the road to a true thermonuclear weapon.

The lithium 6 ad is evidence that Mr. Kim is following a road map that the United States drew up back in 1954. That was when it tested its first thermonuclear weapon fueled by the isotope. The blast, code-named Bravo, was the most powerful the United States ever detonated. In minutes, its mushroom cloud rose to a height of 25 miles.

Though difficult to make, hydrogen bombs became the symbol of Cold War power — they are awesomely destructive and relatively cheap. The weapon relies on a small atom bomb, inside a thick metal casing, that works like a match to ignite the hydrogen fuel. For decades, bomb makers have used lithium 6 as a standard way of making hydrogen fuel for nuclear arms.

Last month, two Los Alamos scientists argued that the rocky North Korean test site the United States monitors could confine explosions of up to 282 kilotons — roughly 20 times as strong as the Hiroshima blast. Although a hydrogen bomb can be that powerful, so can large atom bombs. Previously, the largest blasts at the site were in the Hiroshima range.

When Mr. Kim declared last year that the North had set off a hydrogen bomb, there was no evidence to back up the claim, such as enormous shock waves felt around the globe. More likely, experts said, Mr. Kim's scientists had created a "boosted" atomic bomb in which a tiny bit of thermonuclear fuel resulted in a slightly higher explosive yield but fell well short of a true hydrogen bomb.

"It's possible that North Korea has already boosted," said Gregory S. Jones, a scientist at the RAND Corporation who analyzes nuclear issues. Like other experts, he pointed to the nation's two nuclear blasts last year as possible tests of small boosted arms.

A next logical step would be for the North to turn the material it was advertising online, lithium 6, into a more complex kind of thermonuclear fuel arrangement for a much more powerful bomb. The first Soviet thermonuclear test, in 1953, used that method. It was more than 25 times as strong as the Hiroshima bomb.

"It's a big step," Dr. Hecker, the Stanford professor, said of a true hydrogen bomb, adding that it was perhaps beyond the North's skill. But over all, he said, the North has shown technical savvy in carefully pacing its nuclear tests, suggesting that it would eventually learn the main secrets of nuclear arms.

"They've done five tests in 10 years," he said. "You can learn a lot in that time."

As for the excess lithium 6, any interested buyers may have a hard time answering the ad.

The street address given in the advertisement does not exist. The phone has been disconnected or no one answers. But if the operation really is being run out of the North Korean Embassy in Beijing, it should not be hard for Mr. Xi to find out: It is about two and a half miles down the road from the compound where he lives.

[CountDeMoney]

The article doesn't mention how all that lithium comes in blister packs for individual dosage.

[jimmy olsen]

I'm worrying far more these days than I ever had before in all my years here. 
The insanity of both leaders will feed on each other in a crisis.

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/04/north-korea-icbm/522042/

What Happens When North Korea Tests a Missile That Could Reach the U.S.?

A guide to some of the signs

Melissa Hanham
| Apr 5, 2017

North Korea, frequently the butt of jokes and memes for being backwards, is preparing to test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Such a missile, unlike the medium-range variety the country tested off its east coast on Monday, is one that could possibly deliver a warhead to the American mainland. The possibility is no joke, and it is going to be one of several painful discussions that Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping need to have at their upcoming summit in Florida. According to Thae Yong Ho, a recent North Korean defector who had served in the country's embassy in the U.K., Kim Jong Un wants a test in 2017 or early 2018.

This test will likely fail. Launching an ICBM successfully is hard, and there are many points where failure can occur. The regime spent much of 2016 conducting component tests and rolling out propaganda images and video to promote its capability. While North Korea is notorious for faking images of its weapons programs, there were several images that stood out as probably true.

Officials in the U.S. and abroad have become increasingly wary of North Korea's space launch program at Sohae on the country's west coast. The rocket launched there as the Unha-3/Kwangmyongsong in 2012 and 2016 is in many ways similar to an ICBM. Like a space launch vehicle, an ICBM can consist of two or more component parts called stages, each of which carries fuel and an engine. The stages burn and drop off into the ocean one by one, until the payload—whether a satellite or a warhead—is in space. However, unlike a satellite that will orbit the earth, an ICBM warhead needs to reenter the atmosphere and land at a designated target.

It's unlikely that the Unha-3 will ever be used as an ICBM. Instead, North Korea has paraded what appear to be two variant road-mobile ICBMs that should have the U.S. worried. To date, these have not yet been tested, so it is not clear they "work," but road-mobile missiles can be constantly shuttled around the country, and hidden in warehouses, tunnels, and bunkers. This makes them hard to track from satellites, thereby increasing the likelihood they would survive a strike on them. The semi-good news is that North Korea only has six untested ICBM launchers, so no matter how many missiles or warheads North Korea makes, it is constrained. In addition, the trucks needed for road-mobile ICBMs are huge, and must travel in convoys that include fuel and oxidizer trucks as well as a large number of personnel. Many of the facilities and hiding places where North Korea puts these trucks are already known, including where the trucks were adapted and a prominent ICBM missile warehouse.

The KN-08 ICBM has been paraded in Pyongyang since 2012. At first, open-source analysts found its crude workmanship unconvincing, but by 2016 North Korea demonstrated that not only is it a real ICBM, but its engine is using a more energetic fuel than previously thought. The translucent pinky-purple color of the flames seen in photos of the April 2016 engine test at Sohae are a hallmark of a fuel-oxidizer combination energetic enough to make a target not only out of the West coast of the U.S., but also Washington, DC.

The KN-14, paraded in October 2015, is a variant. It is less frequently photographed, but if it has the same engine, it can probably put at least Chicago at risk, and may even be more accurate than the KN-08.

Still, North Korea has never tested an ICBM, so there is a fair amount of educated guessing going on in and outside of several governments about when, where, and how North Korea might make its debut. The easiest way to find out would be if North Korea issued a notice to airmen, known as a NOTAM. The idea behind a NOTAM is to warn sea and aircraft of potential hazards during the flight time of the rocket. The North Koreans have done this before for their space launches, but not for their missile launches. North Korea, if you read The Atlantic, I strongly recommend that you issue one in advance of an ICBM test. By giving advanced warning, you are making it clear that you are starting a test and not restarting a war.

But North Korea is not a very trusting state, so its leaders may not issue a NOTAM for fear the U.S. or South Korea might strike the missile before it launches. There's been a lot of talk in the U.S. about doing just this, though it is another quick way to restart a war.

Without a NOTAM to tip off observers that a launch is imminent, the next way to know what's happening is to turn to satellite imagery. Those of us in the open-source world use commercial satellite imagery companies like Planet to get near-daily updates. Where does one start to look? One possibility is that the North Koreans will not use a transporter erector launcher (TEL) truck of the kind visible in parades, because they are scarce and it would be too damaging to the ICBM program to lose one in what will likely be a failed first test. That makes Sohae a possibility. The satellite launch site there conveniently already has everything one would want for a test—a gantry tower for stabilizing the missile, fuel, oxidizer, engineers, and communications that make it easy for Kim Jong Un to observe from afar in case of failure or preemptive strike.

Alternatively, the North Koreans could set up a temporary gantry tower or use a TEL somewhere else in the country. They would need to build or use an existing flat, probably paved, area with good sight lines for communicating their data. This considerably widens our search area, but my bet is that like a space launch, an ICBM test would launch from the west coast, heading south into the ocean. That way, if it fails, it won't land on South Korea and restart a war—nor, if it fails, will it land on Japan and start a war. Similarly, I don't think the North Koreans are looking start a war with China or Russia anytime soon by aiming west or north. Large airstrips and highways in the west make good candidates for launching sites, and we've already seen some shorter-range missile tests and failures from these locations. At this point, there may be rumors of activity leaked from government sources, or open-source researchers may detect the location in advance due to construction and vehicle activity at the site.

Within minutes, the world should know if there is a failure.

Once the missile is launched, most open-source analysts will turn to Twitter, where there are other analysts as well as the accounts of the U.S. Strategic Command, Pacific Command, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and a variety of Korean and Japanese publications willing to circulate statements and leaks from their governments. The U.S. has space-based overhead persistent infrared (OPIR) sensors which can detect a missile launch (and failure) from nearly anywhere. South Korea and Japan have ground-based radar, which means they only detect missile launches as the missile rises over the horizon. Information from all three usually becomes available nearly simultaneously. This can include information on location, missile type, bearing, apogee, and range. Sometimes information is lacking, and occasionally conflicting, or wrong.

Within minutes, the world should know if there is a failure. If ground-based radar doesn't detect it, then the test failed before the missile even made it over the horizon. If the first stage of the missile does not land in the designated area of the ocean, it could mean that the stages didn't separate correctly or the first stage malfunctioned. If what's known as a "splashdown" does occur, it will give us information about the bearing of the missile. During North Korea's space launch last year, the first stage of the rocket exploded into approximately 270 pieces before splashing down, indicating that North Korea may have intentionally destroyed the stage to prevent examination.

What will North Korea launch in its first ever ICBM test? I'm hoping a dummy warhead that will test the ability to deliver a device through the heat, pressure, and vibration of re-entry through the atmosphere. Since North Korea does not have its own space-based sensors, it will not be easy for the country to track the dummy warhead's progress far afield. It also will not be easy for the North Koreans to recover it if they launch it south into an ocean. There is a small chance that the North Koreans could be reckless enough to try an atmospheric nuclear test from an ICBM, though it is very doubtful, especially on their first few ICBM tests. At least, I really hope they don't. So, Kim Jong Un, if you happen to be reading The Atlantic today, please don't restart the Korean War.

[Josquius]

Well, a decade ago official NK doctrine in case of war changed from overrun the south ASAP to take Seoul hostage.
I really wouldn't be surprised if they are now on "just make it look like we can kill a lot of people as we go down and hope they don't call our bluff"

[MadImmortalMan]

Please shoot. We suck. 

[jimmy olsen]

Good article on Korean women, language and society.

https://bust.com/feminism/18583-korea-mothers-names.html?platform=hootsuite

In Korea, Where Our Mothers Lose Their Names
BY HAHNA YOON      

I have a memory of my mother so clear I almost feel as if I was there.

My mother is sitting in a circle with the other moms of my kindergarten class and her eyes fire up as each woman introduces herself.


I am Ji-eun's mother.
I am Ah-ram's mother.
I am Min-sook's mother.

In my mind, even though it was not part of her story, my mom's voice booms when it is her turn. "My name is Kim Hyun-sook," she says so proudly it almost puts the other moms to shame.

Korea is not a country that does not know the importance of a name. For most of Korea's history, your family name indicated your clan and heritage. Your name was said with a sense of pride (or shame). Take apart your Korean name character by character and there is meaning behind each syllable. We are constantly reminded, for instance, that during Japanese colonialism, many nationalists fought against Sōshi-kaimei, a 1939 policy that forced Koreans to adopt Japanese names. After the war, many Koreans chose more advantageous names that feigned them of a nobler heritage.

"You are a Yoon. And Yoon women are strong," my mom would tell me when I lamented about my name as a child.

Although women do not change their family name after getting married, Korean is so heavy with honorifics and sensitive to a Confucian sense of hierarchy and age that it's more common to refer to someone by your relationship to them as opposed to their name. In the office, for example, colleagues I outrank will call me sunbae (senior) and in social circles, women younger than me will call me unnie (older sister). In public, when the relationship can be undefined, I am addressed by my gender and age. At a department store, I can be called ah-ga-ssi (young lady) and at a press conference, I will most likely be called gi-ka-nim (reporter).

At one point in my career a few years ago, I realized that I had gone several months without hearing my name. And some colleagues I worked with on a daily basis didn't even know my name at all. I was "the American."

As Han Heung-sik, professor at Pusan National University discusses in the 2001 article "Gender Discrimination in the Korean Language," expressions used to refer to women in public are often degrading and impolite. While an older man is more likely to be addressed as mister or teacher (the polite standard for greeting any person in public), an older woman is likely samonim – a word meaning "teacher's wife" but often translated as "madam." My mom adds that not only has she been called uhmuh-nim (mother in the honorific), so have childless peers her age. "Why is the only role for women my age motherhood? I am not your mother, don't call me mom," my mother says.

Even when my mother and I lived in the United States, she held firm to her name, never opting to call herself Jennifer or Diana like many other immigrated parents around me and never letting me change mine when I briefly went through a phase where I wanted to be called Melody. "Not Hyoung-sue, Hyun-sook," she would say mouthing the necessary "o." Friends who never even got the pronunciation of my relatively easy name right (opting to call me Hannah instead of Hahna) could say my mom's name in three crystal clear syllables.

Back here in Korea, I cringe when my Korean friends come over and call my mom "Hahna's mother" or ajumma (middle-aged lady), despite the fact that these are the most commonly used terms. After all, google "how to call my friend's mom in Korean," and you'll get plenty of posts advising you to do just that. According to Minju Kim of Department of Modern Languages at Claremont McKenna College, Korean women with children are addressed by reference to their children's names even by her close friends. A husband could address his wife as "Eunji's mother" and while in theory, this terminology could extend the other way, calling someone "Eunji's father" is much less practiced. (According to a Better Life report in 2015 conducted by the OECD, Korean children spend an average of six minutes a day with their fathers.)

In Korea, a mother is identified for her sacrifice, her suffering.

When I briefly taught English writing, I was shocked to find that a great majority of my younger students did not know their mother's names. While it does not speak to the entire Korean experience, it also made an impression on me that few of my high school students wrote about their mothers outside the context of their relationships with them. While fathers were doctors, businessmen, lovers of sports, short-tempered and drinkers, mothers were described as organizers of schedules, makers of dinners and bearers of gifts. What are your mother's hobbies? What is she other than your mother? I'd encourage them to ask.

In "Halo of Identity: The Significance of First Names and Naming," M.D. Tschaepe writes that "[a] first name not only grants one a specific identity as a language user, [it] also directs who that person is and will be through the name's physiognomy and reference to the world. The name is both a liberation through identity and a powerful order of limitation..." To this, I would love the opportunity to ask: What are the consequences of never hearing your name? What if your name is your Samson's hair? Can your identity hold strong when your name is rendered anonymous?

With all her might, my mom has held onto her name, and her identity, her entire life – insisting the two are intertwined. Even she, with the fire in her eyes, has become weathered.

"죽을때가 다 되다"is a common expression among elderly women that scares me and it means "It's time for me to die." (And it's particularly chilling since suicide rates amongst Korean senior citizens are some of the highest in the OECD.) Women 60+ are most likely to be heard saying them and often, these words are preceded by stories of "my children are grown and my youth is gone... ". After all, if a woman is valued solely for her physical beauty and her ability to be a mother, what good is she when her youth is gone and her children have children of their own? Who remembers the names of these strong women when they are not spoken?

Hahna Yoon. Freelancing for Lonely Planet Korea, previously at Time Out Seoul. Twitter: @hahnay. Anecdote collector

[Monoriu]

One of the most shocking moments I had in Canada was when I was issued a driver's licence.  The clerk asked me, "what was your mother's last name before she got married?"  This was my internal monologue:

So these Canadians regard my mother's maiden name as some sort of password, semi-secret that few people know.  Why?  Oh I remember.  Because their women adopt their husband's name when they get married.  Yeah.  Gender equality, land of the free, and all that.

[Razgovory]

The article doesn't mention how all that lithium comes in blister packs for individual dosage.

Man, I was on that stuff for a while.  It felt like I was underwater.  Really weird.

[Josquius]

One of the most shocking moments I had in Canada was when I was issued a driver's licence.  The clerk asked me, "what was your mother's last name before she got married?"  This was my internal monologue:

So these Canadians regard my mother's maiden name as some sort of password, semi-secret that few people know.  Why?  Oh I remember.  Because their women adopt their husband's name when they get married.  Yeah.  Gender equality, land of the free, and all that.

I do wonder when they'll drop that.
Made sense 40 years ago when everyone's parents were conventionally married. But it's more and more common to have unmarried parents, hyphenation or women keeping their name. Plus foreigners.

[dps]

One of the most shocking moments I had in Canada was when I was issued a driver's licence.  The clerk asked me, "what was your mother's last name before she got married?"  This was my internal monologue:

So these Canadians regard my mother's maiden name as some sort of password, semi-secret that few people know.  Why?  Oh I remember.  Because their women adopt their husband's name when they get married.  Yeah.  Gender equality, land of the free, and all that.

I do wonder when they'll drop that.
Made sense 40 years ago when everyone's parents were conventionally married. But it's more and more common to have unmarried parents, hyphenation or women keeping their name. Plus foreigners.

No, they're just going to want more and more info, not less. 

When aa and I applied for a marriage license, WV wanted not just our parents', but also our grandparents' names and dates of birth.  Only possible reason I can think of for that is that they were trying to make sure we aren't 1st cousins, but they didn't ask for any actual documentation to verify what we were telling them, and the fact that we didn't know some of the information (aa:  "I don't know their dates of birth, but Grandma Juanita is still alive;  I can call her and ask her hers if you want"  lol) didn't stop them from issuing the license, so what was the point?

[jimmy olsen]

Now we know who toils away on Katmai's sugar plantations! 

https://koreaexpose.com/koreans-cuba-jeronimo-lim/

In Search of Koreans in Cuba: A Tale of Jeronimo Lim
Published on March 27, 2017  by Joseph Juhn

On Dec. 28, 2015, I boarded a flight in Toronto bound for Havana, Cuba. It was one of those trips you grant to yourself as a reward for having worked hard that year. I had no particular agenda other than observing how people live in a communist nation, going to the beach, and, of course, wanting to try a lot of Cuban cigars.

After landing and clearing customs, I walked out of the gate, looking for the driver from my hostel. To my surprise, it was a middled-aged Asian woman.

When we jumped into her decades-old, beat-up Russian sedan, I asked her, "So, would you happen to be Chinese?" To which, she replied, "Haha, no, I am fourth-generation Korean."

Right there and then, I knew this trip was meant for something much greater than mere tourism.

She continued, "my grandfather came to Mexico technically as a Korean slave, and my father fought for the Cuban Revolution."

After consulting multiple academic, governmental and literary sources, including writer Kim Young-ha's novel Black Flower, I would learn the history behind her story: In 1905, 1,033 Koreans boarded a ship in a port city Incheon, believing, mistakenly, that they were headed to a land of opportunity.

In truth, they were being sold to work in Mexico as indentured servants.

At the request of Yucatan Plantation Owners' Association in Mexico, English broker (or, to put it more bluntly, slave trader) John Meyers conspired with Japanese associates to establish the "Continental Settlement Company," which actively recruited Korean laborers.

Describing Mexico as "Heaven on Earth," the company published blatantly false advertisements across the Korean Peninsula, promising financial fortunes, an "elevated" social status in Mexico, and the option to return to Korea four years later.

Korea was effectively under Japanese control at this time, and its ruling family lacked both the power and courage to protect its people. The 1,033 Koreans that signed up came from a variety of different social classes: poor peasants, homeless people, orphans, fishermen, retired soldiers, failed royalty, priests, shamans, and eunuchs.

After crossing the Pacific for 50 days, during which two died, the thousand-odd Koreans found themselves standing in the middle of a bleak plantation. They were sold to owners of 30 different plantation farms that cultivated henequen, an agave species grown for rope fiber. Contrary to their wishes, none of them ever returned to their motherland. Instead, in 1921, 300 emigrated to Cuba in search of a better life.

Jeronimo Lim: El Coreano Revolucionario

Yes, Patricia, the first Cuban I met in Havana that day, was descended from some of the 1,033 Koreans who left for Mexico 110 years earlier. Talk about serendipity. She then invited me to meet her family the next day. I not only met them but spent a whole day with them in their humble abode in Havana. Later we drove to a coastal town called Varadero to meet other extended family members.

Although some sources indicate their average salary being as high as 200 U.S dollars a month, the official average salary in Cuba is mere 25 dollars a month. Whether one is professor, engineer, lawyer, doctor or janitor, unless one is involved in commerce or tourism business, most of the Koreans I met lived in relative poverty.  What they lacked in possession, however, they had in abundance at heart. They prepared a plate full of kimchi and Korean-style fried rice for me and offered me hand-rolled cigars.
Patricia's 87-year-old mother, Cristina, is ever-resilient, passionate, and compassionate. She sat me down, brought out dozens of photo albums and shared epic tales of her family history and her late husband, Jeronimo Lim, with me.

Jeronimo was a legendary fighter in the Cuban Revolution. He went to law school with Fidel Castro and later worked with Che Guevara in the country's new government. Prior to the revolution, however, most of Koreans still worked on plantations and were subject to anti-foreigner law that discriminated against ethnic minorities. Whether one was for or against communism, the Cuban Revolution upended the existing order and benefited the Koreans there. Finally, they were equal with others. 

Although Jeronimo served in the communist Cuban government for years, he is remembered as a non-ideologue who worked solely for the betterment of his people. He was a disciplined idealist, putting human values over self-interest and ideology. Jeronimo dedicated his early years to the well-being of the Cuban people, while his later years were spent rebuilding the local Korean community.

I might venture to label him "Cuba's Ahn Chang-ho," after the great independence activist of colonial Korea.

Jeronimo's father, Lim Cheon-taek, was among the 1,033 Koreans that boarded the ship for Mexico, carried by his single mother. He grew up in Mexico until he was 18, then moved to Cuba in 1921 along with 300 others. Cheon-taek worked on plantations for most of his life to make ends meet for his wife and nine children, while saving what little money was left over to send to the Shanghai-based Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, to support his country's independence movement.

In recognition of these efforts, Lim Cheon-taek's name appears in Baekbeom Ilji, the autobiography of renowned politician and freedom fighter Kim Gu. After his death in 1997, Lim received the highest presidential honor in South Korea; his body is now buried at the Korean National Cemetery in Daejeon.

So there is the Lim family history: A grandmother working on a Mexican plantation as an indentured servant; a father collecting funds to support the Korean independence movement; and a son fighting in the Cuban revolution. Unbelievable is the right word. Imagine hopping into a complete stranger's car and unexpectedly entering a forgotten chapter of Korean history.

Jeronimo the Documentary

I remember lying on my bed at the hostel the night I met Patricia's family for the first time. I couldn't fight back tears as I tried to make sense of what had just happened — a powerful and profound experience. If I were to regard this as just a cool travel experience and let it evaporate, I would be doing a disservice not only to the Lim family and other Koreans in Cuba, but also to my friends in the U.S., South Korea and elsewhere.

A few months after leaving Cuba, I started acting on something that had formed inside me from that first day in Cuba. I summoned the courage to quit my job as a lawyer so that I could make a feature-length documentary about Jeronimo and other Koreans in Cuba.

To raise funds, I made a short video with the footage I had shot in Cuba and launched a Kickstarter campaign with a target of 10,000 U.S dollars. People reacted with excitement, providing over 22,000 U.S dollars via Kickstarter and other channels. With my new funding and much gratitude, I returned to Cuba in the summer of 2016 with five friends who worked in the film and media industries. In the span of two weeks and across four cities, we met over 100 Korean Cubans and interviewed 35 of them. Needless to say, it was a life-changing experience.

As I approach the midpoint of the project, my goal remains the uncovering of Jeronimo's heroic yet humble tale and give the Koreans in Cuba the voice they have long deserved. If my documentary achieves this, I will have done my part. At a time when oppressive and xenophobic sentiments against immigrants run high, I believe the epic story of unsung heroes in Cuba who had no choice but to survive against insurmountable obstacles has a few things to teach us.

When I came across Jeronimo, I felt he had settled fully into his environment all while holding on to his culture and sense of pride. He was 100 percent Cuban and 100 percent Korean. Jeronimo fully embraced both identities, and the resulting affirmation and empowerment inspired him to serve others and live for causes larger than himself.

I've long searched for answers to the many questions revolving around my Korean identity. To me, the challenges that Jeromino and his family faced, and continue to do so — as members of an ethnic minority in a strange land — was as inspiring as it was familiar.