Korea Thread: Liberal Moon Jae In Elected

[jimmy olsen]

Psy's latest video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrG4TEcSuRg

[jimmy olsen]

Curiouser and curiouser

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/pyongyangs-once-sleepy-roads-now-filling-with-cars/2015/12/10/0f3ba852-9f02-11e5-9ad2-568d814bbf3b_story.html

Pyongyang's once sleepy roads now filling with cars

By Eric Talmadge | AP December 10 at 12:51 AM


PYONGYANG, North Korea — The once sleepy streets of Pyongyang, where the city's iconic traffic controllers would stand in the middle of usually deserted intersections to direct what few cars came by, are now looking a lot busier. So much so, in fact, that a new word has entered the North Korean lexicon — "jam," as in traffic jam.

Traffic in North Korea's capital has gotten visibly heavier over the past year or so, with more trucks, taxis, passenger cars and other vehicles plying the streets and giving the often empty-seeming city of roughly 2.5 million a much more lively look.

To be clear, Los Angeles or Jakarta it is not.

Even with more vehicles on the roads, it's unusual to have more than a dozen or so cars waiting behind a red light at any time of day, in any part of the city. At night, the roads remain virtually empty. Most residents still get around on foot, pedal their way around town on bicycles — Pyongyang also got its first cycling lanes this year — or use public transportation. Unlike any other city in North Korea, Pyongyang has a subway system.

What's driving the increase in traffic in Pyongyang, like many things about North Korea, is something of a mystery. Obtaining official figures on vehicle numbers in North Korea is virtually impossible given the opaque nature of the government bureaucracy.


But the trend does seem to jibe with an increase in construction going back about five years, which has meant more trucks are on the road to deliver workers and building materials, and the spread of entrepreneurial-style businesses that have the backing of state-run organizations. Such businesses could be generating the kind of profits needed for their mother organizations and their own managers or workers to use automobiles.

Pyongyang streets continue to be dominated by trolleys, buses, cargo-carrying trucks and the official vehicles of the military, government or party elites. And while the number of taxis has swelled over the past few years, they are still probably in the 1,000-plus range. It remains exceptionally rare for any North Korean to have a car that is strictly for personal use.


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Most passenger cars are either overtly from China or brought in from China and then given some final assembly touches and rebranded with local markings. North Korea only has one domestic automaker, Pyonghwa Motors, and its production output is believed to be very low.

Nevertheless, the ripple effects from the growth in traffic — and efforts to deal with it — are beginning to stand out.

For one, the number of traffic lights has been steadily increasing, though they probably don't pose much of a threat to the traffic controllers, who are mostly young women and whose ubiquitous presence and bright uniforms that change with each season have long made them a symbol of the capital.

Parking lots, including the one at Pyongyang's new airport, that charge hourly fees are also springing up all over the city. Lots outside some department stores are now charging fees and so are attendants in the parking area outside the popular Tong'il market, a bazaar-like spot off-limits to most foreigners but normally crowded with locals and diplomats.

It's also gotten a lot easier to find a gas station, even outside the city.


Though paying for gas is a big hurdle to car ownership, the price has reportedly gone down recently. At one Pyongyang gas station last week, the price for one kilogram of gas — instead of liters, that's the most commonly used unit — was 73.33 North Korean won, or 80.06 won if purchased with a debit card. Diesel costs 63.33 won.

At the official exchange rate, that is less than one U.S. dollar.

[jimmy olsen]

A Facebook friend of mine posted this today.

Today in Korea: Man gets on bus and yells at the bus driver. Man continues to yell, but gets off bus. The bus driver gets off the bus and enters into fisticuffs with aforementioned yelling man. Ajummas become hysterical and send a frightened male Korean bus passenger to stop the fight. Fisticuffs end and the bus driver simply returns to his post and continues his route like nothing has happened. Onlooking bald foreign teacher, which is traveling on said bus, raises his eyebrow and scratches his head in confusion.

[jimmy olsen]

Shocking good news

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/japan-south-korea-reach-historic-deal-wartime-comfort-women-n486596

Japan, South Korea Reach Historic Deal on Wartime 'Comfort Women'

by The Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — The foreign ministers of South Korea and Japan on Monday reached a deal meant to resolve a decades-long impasse over Korean women forced into Japanese military-run brothels during World War II, an important breakthrough for the Northeast Asian powers.

The deal, which included an apology from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) aid fund from Tokyo for the elderly former sex slaves, could reverse decades of animosity and mistrust between the thriving democracies, trade partners and staunch U.S. allies.

"This marks the beginning of a new era of Japan-South Korea ties," Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida told reporters at a news conference. Abe, he said, apologizes "from his heart" to the women for their pain and for "scars that are difficult to heal physically and mentally."

  The issue of former Korean sex slaves, euphemistically known as "comfort women," has been the biggest recent source of friction between Seoul and Tokyo, especially since the hawkish Abe's 2012 inauguration.

Japan appeared emboldened to make the overture after the first formal leaders' meeting between the neighbors in 3 ½ years, in November, and after South Korean courts recently acquitted a Japanese reporter charged with defaming South Korea's president and refused to review a complaint by a South Korean seeking individual compensation for Japan's forceful mobilization of workers during colonial days.

Many South Koreans feel lingering bitterness over Japan's brutal colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula from 1910-1945. But South Korean officials have also faced calls to improve ties with Japan, the world's No. 3 economy and a regional powerhouse, not least from U.S. officials eager for a strong united front against a rising China and North Korea's pursuit of nuclear-armed missiles that could target the American mainland.

South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said at a news conference that Seoul considers the agreement "final and irreversible," as long as Japan faithfully follows through with its promises.

Seoul, meanwhile, will refrain from criticizing Japan over the issue, and will talk with "relevant organizations" — a reference to civic groups representing the former sex slaves — to try to resolve Japan's grievance with a statue of a girl representing victims of Japanese sexual slavery that sits in front of the Japanese Embassy in downtown Seoul. Yun said South Korea recognizes Japan's worries about security over the statue, where anti-Tokyo protests take place weekly.

Abe plans to call South Korean President Park Geun-hye later Monday to discuss the deal, Park's office said.

There has long been resistance in South Korea to past Japanese apologies because many here wanted Japan to acknowledge that it has a legal responsibility for the women. Japan had long argued that the issue was settled by a 1965 treaty that restored diplomatic ties and was accompanied by more than $800 million in economic aid and loans from Tokyo to Seoul.

Kishida said the comfort women system "deeply hurt the honor and dignity of many women under the involvement of the Japanese military at the time, and Japan strongly feels responsibility."

Historians say tens of thousands of women from around Asia, many of them Korean, were sent to front-line military brothels to provide sex to Japanese soldiers. In South Korea, 46 such women are still alive, mostly in their late 80s or early 90s.

[Josquius]

Hopefully it's the end of it and Korea don't keep it up for nationalist gain and yet more money.
Surprising it happened considering the two countries current pms (ans ive seen no warning) and I am doubtful much will change but a good step.

Also I am doubtful Korea will ever do aught about the post war comfort women

[alfred russel]

Wait, they are settling this with money? If I was Korea I would have held out for Japan sending us compensatory comfort women.

[Admiral Yi]

Also I am doubtful Korea will ever do aught about the post war comfort women

Are you making up stupid shit?

[lustindarkness]

Comfort women, what a nice term.

[Josquius]

Also I am doubtful Korea will ever do aught about the post war comfort women

Are you making up stupid shit?

of course not
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for_the_U.S._military

[Admiral Yi]

of course not
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for_the_U.S._military

You do understand that the problem with WWII comfort women is *not* that they had sex with members of the military, right?

[Josquius]

of course not
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitutes_in_South_Korea_for_the_U.S._military

You do understand that the problem with WWII comfort women is *not* that they had sex with members of the military, right?

I ask the same of you, only with the word post placed before WWII

[DGuller]

Tyr, if I may ask, what the fuck are you trying to say?

[Admiral Yi]

I ask the same of you, only with the word post placed before WWII

No.

What is the problem with post WWII Korean prostitution with American military customers, and why should Korea do something about it?

[Josquius]

I ask the same of you, only with the word post placed before WWII

No.

What is the problem with post WWII Korean prostitution with American military customers, and why should Korea do something about it?

Because in large part the Korean government just picked up the pre existing imperial japanese comfort woman system and ran with it.
They forced women into military brothels on a large scale. It wasn't as bad as during ww2 of course but it still happened and it wasn't particularly nice.

But of course it is only in modern times that this is really beginning to come to attention- when youre gaining massive popularity points with accusing the former colonial power of doing a bad thing, it isn't particularly trendy to acknowledge that your own government made similar mistakes.  Kind of typical of former colonies really, but still, Korea really should be looking at the skeletons in its on closet too.
Though the Wikipedia article seems pretty well sourced here is something else about it
http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0FG0VV20140711

[Admiral Yi]

Because in large part the Korean government just picked up the pre existing imperial japanese comfort woman system and ran with it.
They forced women into military brothels on a large scale. It wasn't as bad as during ww2 of course but it still happened and it wasn't particularly nice.

Do you have a cite for any of this?  I've read your two links.