In an interesting read, Jeff Ooi challenges the ‘myth’ of Singapore’s founding father Lee Kwan-yew, suggesting that South Korea has done far more with far less, and has overcome more difficulties.

• Both Singapore and South Korea were under colonial dominance before WWII, the former under British rule, the latter Japan’s.
• Both had dictorial regimes in the guise of democratic electoral processes, only that South Korea was courageous to take down the repressive regime backboned with the armed forces’ might.
• Both have close-to monoethnic demography, which off-loaded the countries the extra-luggage in formulating social-economic policies.
• In terms of GDP performance, South Korea has a composition by sector that makes it 40.4% industrial and 56.3% services-based. It’s an almost similar skew for Singapore: Industry: 32.6%; Services: 67.4%.
• South Korea has relatively a vast population, while Singapore is a tiny red dot. Proportionate ratio is at work when it comes to provisioning of all kinds.
• After WWII, South Korea’s economy and demographics were ravaged by the Korean War in the 50’s. Singapore continued as a British protectorate under the Straits Settlements after WWII, faced home-grown communist insurgency in the 50’s and mid 60’s, and well-shieled by Malaysia during Konfrontasi.
• On independence, Singapore inherited and perfected the jewels of the crown left behind by the British, the harbour infrastructure, the entrepot trades, the regional financial hub - milking its northern hinterland that the colonialist decreed by design. South Korea built itself from scratch after picking up from the ashed of the invaders’ loots.

Technorati Tags: asia, singapore, east asia, korea, northeast asia, southeast asia

While some in Japan and China have reacted with outrage over Chinese women portraying Japanese women in Geisha, more disturbing is that Malaysians are having a serious debate over whether the woman forced to do ‘nude ear squats’ by Malaysian police in detention was Malay or Chinese. As far as AsiaPundit is concerned, it would not be acceptable in either case.:

Personally I have my doubts that the raw truth of the situation will ever be known given the magnitude of the media and political storm this case has caused.

One of my readers (nick of Weng) posted this in comments.

still in doubt over the identity of the so-called lokap-girl despite ‘positive identification’ by Teresa Kok’s lawyer?

The first time we heard about this woman Teresa Kok told us that the woman was a Chinese woman of Chinese nationality. Weng, if all you have this time is Teresa Kok’s say so that this woman is Malay then I will pass on using that as infallible proof. After all she is either wrong this time or she is wrong the first time.

Which one is it? Other evidence includes that the government says so. So far the government position has been one of trooping out the woman in court (sutiably concealed with a judicial ban on publishing details) like a certain stained matress of all. Whenever the government side of the court room keeps on trooping out tired evidence and the newspapers keep on harping about it, we probably have a red herring they are trying to feed the public. At least this prime minister, unlike the last one, isn’t going to appear on national TV miming the act of masturbation, which is I guess something to be thankful for.

What we should be asking ourselves at this point is whether it matters whether the woman was Chinese or Malay.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, malaysia, northeast asia, southeast asia

After today’s excess of posts on China and internet freedom, In the interest of balance, AsiaPundit presents a response from Cisco. Via Mistrust:

Cisco Statement on Internet Censorship

Cisco does not in any way participate in the censorship of information by governments. Moreover, Cisco complies with all U.S. Government regulations which prohibit sale of our products to certain destinations; or to users who misuse our products or resell them to prohibited users.

Some countries have chosen, as a matter of national policy, to restrict or limit access to information on the Internet to its citizens. The router functionality that may be employed by such nations to restrict this access is the same functionality that libraries and corporate network administrators use to block sites in accordance with policies that they establish. While this functionality can be used for many different purposes, it is the customer, not Cisco, who determines how the capabilities will be specifically used.

Cisco has not specially designed or marketed products for any government, or any regional market, to censor Internet content from citizens. Cisco sells identical products worldwide; the products Cisco sells in countries such as the US, China, India, Pakistan and France are the same products that it sells in other countries.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, northeast asia, cisco

Excellent stuff as usual from ESWN, a translation of a China BBS posting on how China’s police could take lessons from Hong Kong’s forces in how to suppress demonstrations:

From the way how the Hong Kong police put down the street riots, mainland China can really learn a great deal.  For example, how to deal with these mass group activities?  How to permit legal demonstrations while resolutely opposing rioters who try to create disturbances?  The Hong Kong police used pepper spray and water cannons that contained stimulating chemicals, and these can be used to disperse the crowds without causing much physical damage.  When the rioters broke through the police line, the Hong Kong police responded quickly and mobilized a large number of anti-riot police officers to form a blockade.  This shows the brilliance and maturity of the Hong Kong police command.

The Saturday riot permitted a large number of non-working local citizens to watch and make the job of the police more difficult.  The Hong Kong government mobilized and coordinated various departments to cut off vehicular traffic into the demonstration areas as well as the harbor tunnel.  They shut down the MTR station in the demonstration area, and they successfully stopped outside masses from rushing in which would escalate the chaos.

There has not been a single word in the mainland Chinese media about the action of the Hong Kong police to put down the riot.  This is obviously understandable.  Based upon the current social conditions in mainland China, if such scenes appeared in the media, it will inspire social malcontents to imitate the example and therefore affect the overall state of "stability" and "harmony."  But I think that the mainland Chinese police and government departments should pay high attention to the anti-WTO protests in Hong Kong.  Every move made by the Hong Kong police should be live educational materials for us.

Actually, certain cities on the mainland have established anti-riot police squads.  As the social conflicts slowly emerge due to the uneven development of the Chinese economy, these squads will soon face the same sort of situations that the Hong Kong police had to confront.  We can use the experience from the empirical practice of others in order to enhance our own ability to fight riots.  Only if we are prepared would we not lose our composure and become an international laughing stock.

Indeed, a laughing stock or worse.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia

Via Fons and ChinaFile, the Christian Science Monitor runs an essay by a Canadian an American writer who decided to do what so many others call for; she boycotted Chinese goods.

BATON ROUGE, LA. – Last year, two days after Christmas, we kicked China out of the house. Not the country obviously, but bits of plastic, metal, and wood stamped with the words "Made in China." We kept what we already had, but stopped bringing any more in.

The banishment was no fault of China’s. It had coated our lives with a cheerful veneer of toys, gadgets, and $10 children’s shoes. Sometimes I worried about jobs sent overseas or nasty reports about human rights abuses, but price trumped virtue at our house. We couldn’t resist what China was selling.

But on that dark Monday last year, a creeping unease washed over me as I sat on the sofa and surveyed the gloomy wreckage of the holiday. It wasn’t until then that I noticed an irrefutable fact: China was taking over the place.

It stared back at me from the empty screen of the television. I spied it in the pile of tennis shoes by the door. It glowed in the lights on the Christmas tree and watched me in the eyes of a doll splayed on the floor. I slipped off the couch and did a quick inventory, sorting gifts into two stacks: China and non-China. The count came to China, 25, the world, 14. Christmas, I realized, had become a holiday made by the Chinese. Suddenly I’d had enough. I wanted China out.

AsiaPundit has previously noted that the Chinese had ’stolen’ Christmas and Diwali, and AP doesn’t mind this in the slightest. Investment in China is bringing changes domestically and it’s bringing cheaper goods to those overseas.

But for those who do seek a China boycott, read the whole CSM item and decide if it would be worth the effort.
(note comments for correction on nationality)

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, trade, boycott china

European Commission Vice President Margot Wallström has a blog and has joined in the criticism of US companies that assist in Chinese internet censorship.:

…I was very disappointed to learn that Microsoft has agreed to block Chinese blog entries that use words like “democracy“, “freedom“, “human rights“ and “demonstration.”

Margot Wallström taking part in an online chat

It seems like Microsoft is not alone in “bad company“. Google has agreed to exclude publications that the Chinese government finds objectionable. And Yahoo has even gone further. They collaborated with the Chinese government and gave up the name of a writer who sent an e-mail that commented on a party decision. Based on this information, the man received a ten-year prison sentence.

According to the organisation Human Rights Watch these companies are hiding behind statements claiming that they “have to ensure that they operate within the laws, regulations and customs of the countries they are based in”.

Words like ethics and corporate social responsibility seems to be deleted from their corporate code of conducts – or they have flexible ethical standards depending on where they operate… I can only recommend these companies to visit the website of the UN Global Compact at www.unglobalcompact.org. And, hope that these companies one day will understand that to endorse democracy and corporate responsibility is a prerequisite for “smart” growth. From now on, this issue is also on my political agenda.

AsiaPundit commends Wallström, EU officials criticizing China is something that is far too rare.

Two points though: first, as a European politician Wallström could have directed her attention somewhere where it would be more effective. As well as Cisco, which is lambasted here daily on the left-hand sidebar, France’s Alactel and Sweden’s Ericsson also provide China with the infrastructure necessary to build the internet. It should be revealed how much the companies modify their products to provide them with Chinese characteristics (specifically the ability to block websites and conduct surveillance on dissidents). The attack on US companies, which are not in EU jurisdiction, reeks of PR and does not show a real commitment to the issue.

A further point is Wallström’s noting of the Global Compact.  AsiaPundit generally has a warm spot for the Global Compact. Although I am a touch skeptical, it is very well intentioned and the participants seem sincere. That said, the UN-sponsored group has no opinion on internet censorship or free-speech issues in relation to technology companies.

Georg Kell, head of the initiative, was recently in China, and I asked him wether the group had any stand on free speech issues (specifically relating to Yahoo!’s complicity in the arrest of journalist Shi Tao and the Boston Common shareholder action on Cisco - both of which he said he was familiar with).

Kell said the UN Global Compact had not yet adopted any principles in regards to behavior of technology companies and how their business affects freedom of information and speech issues, and specifically on US companies such as Cisco Systems and Yahoo! Inc which are facing criticism due to some of their activities in China.

"No (we have no view), we are newcomers in China and we are very careful and we are learning together with foreign and Chinese corporations," Kell said.

That said, Kudos to Wallström for raising the topic and for blogging, especially as she hasn’t - as most politicians’ ‘blogs’ do -disabled comments and trackbacks.

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, censorship, china, east asia, northeast asia

The Christian Science Monitor has, about one month late on this admittedly,  joined in on exposing US corporate involvement in internet censorship in China and elsewhere.:

When Chinese authorities crack down on Internet use by dissidents, or the Burmese government prevents its people from access to e-mail, they have something in common with more than 20 other nations: They rely on technology, usually from corporations in the United States, to help them police the Web.

Without products from Cisco Systems, Secure Computing, and other US firms, regimes from Uzbekistan to Saudi Arabia would apparently be unable to manage what their citizens find or write when they surf the Internet. Reports of that reality are now inspiring investors to push for corporate human rights policies that support an open Internet, even if that means saying no to demands from certain governments.

Twenty-seven institutions - mostly American-based mutual funds - with more than $21 billion in assets under management signed a statement last month urging Internet businesses to adopt codes to uphold freedom of expression and to make public what each is doing "to ensure that its products and services are not being used to commit human rights violations."

"The universal declaration of human rights laid down in 1948 the basic freedoms that all people should enjoy, including freedom of opinion [and] freedom of expression," says Dawn Wolfe, social research and advocacy analyst for Boston Common Asset Management, the money management firm that launched the Joint Investor Statement on Freedom of Expression and the Internet.

(Via CDT)

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, censorship, northeast asia

China has resumed its crusade against ‘unregistered’ domestically hosted websites, shutting down the sites of major investors such as Intel China Top Blog reports.:

Many Chinese web sites have been closed since December 19. According a law enforced in Feburary this year, every sites hosted in mainland China, have to be registered in Ministry of Information Industry (MII). Any breach of this law would be punished severely. Even the Chinese mirror site of Intel (www.intel.com.cn) was closed for several hours (). ISPs in China warned their clients, if they don’t register now, a permanent closure of their sites and RMB10,000($1,200) fine will be enforced in near future.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, northeast asia

A lot of government and SOE officials in China always seems to fear us Western media folk. Some of the higher-ups (and even the lower-downs) fear we are out to overthrow the government or at the very least misrepresent the country.

Does AsiaPundit want to see a downfall of the Chinese Communist Party? I won’t answer that question directly but I will say that there are more than a few parts of the government that are worth keeping. For instance, some of those guys at the People’s Bank of China are pretty bright.

Member of the PBoC’s monetary policy committee in an undated interview says that China, and East Asia, must reduce its dollar and treasury holdings.:

…in the first stage we must reduce accumulation, then later we should reduce our reserves….[China and Asian countries] don’t need that large an amount- more than $2 trillion- of foreign exchange reserves…. This is a very big problem and I think the Chinese government should take some action to reduce the growth rate of the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves as we’re still facing the possibility of a big devaluation of the US dollar, so the capital losses will be huge. If that happens, it will be tremendous hit to the Chinese economy."

This is hardly the statement of a gentleman with a benign view toward the US dollar’s valuation. It is instead a gentleman, in a position of authority, with a great deal of concern. He went on: "The trouble is, with such a huge amount of foreign exchange reserves, that there is no way to spend it very quickly and there’s no plan to sell it of course– otherwise that inflicts damage on ourselves. You don’t want to dump shares when the stock market has not collapsed yet and you are the biggest shareholder." Then, he said "all east Asian countries have tremendous foreign exchange reserves and they all want to get rid of them, but if you do this then you cause competitive devaluation, not of their own currencies, but of the US dollar. So we should do this in an orderly fashion. If Asian countries moved too fast, everyone would lose… It would be utterly unfortunate if Japan sells a proportion [of their reserves, for] that causes problems. Then China panics and China sells a proportion — it would be very damaging."

The "nicest possibility" for China, Japan and the US to escape this problem was for further "tightening of US monetary policy so that further dramatic devaluation of the US dollar can be stopped. Then, because of the slowdown in the economy, the US current account deficit would reduce and in this way will create conditions for East Asian countries to get off the hook."

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, economy, northeast asia

An anonymous Singaporean blogger has started a blog where the leadership of the long-ruling People’s Action Party receives obsequious praise:

There are many other blogs, websites, anarchists, rubbish and websites that criticize and, maybe even ridicule Lee Hsien Loong (LHL) and how he became PM with the help of his father, Lee Kuan Yew. This blog will not be another biased slur on him. If you need these slanted and profane articles, this may not be the best article you need….

We do know that LHL was from Cambridge and graduated with First-Class Honours, but maybe some might suspect that he was riding on his father’s might. First and foremost, Cambridge does not take such favourism, even the son of a Prime Minister of a small, backwater former British Colony that broke free. An Associate Professor, Jayaram Muthuswamy, currently teaching in one of the local universities, once asked his friends in Cambridge, how smart was LHL? The answer he got from the senior professors there was that he results was so high up in the scale that the number two in the class was quite a distance from his score. Don’t quote me on that, but trust the reputation of Cambridge. From young, he bears the burden of being the Lee Kuan Yew’s son. The pressure to perform academically was second to none. He has to perfect his English, Malay, Mandarin, and even learn Russian. And there was no compromise in his education, he was demanded the best of him, the best he delivered.

AsiaPundit assumes anonymity has been chosen because the blogger doesn’t want the Straits Times to find out who is muscling-in on their turf.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, singapore, southeast asia

AsiaPundit is a regular an irregular contributor to the Good Beer Blog. He should be more regular but there is so little good beer in China. But there is still good beer news in Asia… and if it holds up to peer testing it could be very good news, Japan’s Kirin Brewery has discovered antibodies that can protect humans from Avian Flu.:

I kid you not! The Kirin Brewery has apparently discovered or developed avian flu antibodies to protect humans from the flu…

The antibody proved effective in fighting avian influenza, including H5N1 strains, according to Gemini Science Inc., a U.S. unit of Kirin, which reported the findings at a meeting of the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Washington. The antibody proved effective in experiments with mice, the company said.

I wonder if they found them in the beer?

Technorati Tags: asia, beer, east asia, japan, northeast asia, bird flu, h5n1

Imagethief says Beijing will never be a great city until it is attacked by a giant monster. AsiaPundit agrees, and suggests that the city has a few monstrosities already there that could probably do the job just fine.

I’ve come to the conclusion that Beijing cannot be a great, global metropolis until it is attacked by its own giant monster. Thanks to the encyclopaedic reference information contained in two invaluable websites, Stomptokyo.com and Giantmonstermovies.com, I’ve been able to research some of the cities that have been on the receiving end of giant monsters. Sure, you all know that Tokyo has had a fifty year kaiju infestation that has included Godzilla, Gamera and friends. New York got King Kong on multiple occasions plus, as a bonus, the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (by the way, that’s 180,000 feet, or about six times deeper than the deepest part of the ocean). London was attacked by Gorgo. San Francisco got the five-armed octopus of It Came from Beneath the Sea. The list has also has some surprises, including some of Beijing’s key, regional rivals and a few cities you’d never expect:

* Copenhagen was attacked by Reptilicus

* Hong Kong was attacked by Mighty Peking Man in 1977, in an unintentional but apt metaphor for the city’s future

* Rome’s Colosseum was destroyed by Ymir in 20 Million Miles to Earth

* Los Angeles got Them

* North Korea was attacked by Pulgasari, admittedly in ancient times

* South Korea’s Seoul has had various monsters

* Sweden got a monster, although it appears to have been confined to rural areas, in keeping with Scandinavian tidyness

* Bangkok got Garuda

* Even neutral Switzerland had a monster, although it was put there by Americans

* Every tiny town in the American southwest had a Gila Monster, Mantis or giant Lepus at some point, thanks to the tireless efforts of Bert I. Gordon and his contemporaries.

As you would expect, Singapore is monster-proofed, although I think a romp by a giant merlion would do it a world of good.

(UPDATE: The below item is possibly a hoax. Details at Boing Boing. UPDATE 2: Or it may not be a hoax. UPDATE 3: Hoax.)
As Mainland China itself avoids the use of ‘Maoist’ or ‘Maoism’ in a political sense, the Little Red Book is nothing but a historical artifact. So, there is really no excuse for this* (via Frog in a Well):

NEW BEDFORD — A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung’s tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."

Two history professors at UMass Dartmouth, Brian Glyn Williams and Robert Pontbriand, said the student told them he requested the book through the UMass Dartmouth library’s interlibrary loan program.

The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand’s class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents’ home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.

The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further.

(*No excuse unless Homeland Security has some evidence linking the student to those Nepalese bozos or Sendero Luminoso lunatics).

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, homeland security, northeast asia

Good news (of sorts). While an investigation is still underway, state news agency Xinhua has determined the scapegoats for the killings in Dongzhou.:

Xinhua has now, two weeks after the incident, the official editon on the shooting at Dongzhou and fortunately they did not try to change bullets into bombs, like local officials wanted to. But many details do not fit with other stories going around.

The story sticks to three casualities (and not twenty as in the stories of the villagers) and eight wounded. Three protesters have been detained and the police commander in charge of the shooting.

New is the accusation that one of those detained Huang Xijun organized the protest out of anger because he was not elected for the village committee.

When he realized that he might lose the election, Huang blew up the ballot box in public with firecrackers, halting the vote, officials said.

He and two accomplices, Huang Xirang and Lin Hanru set up many armed protests since June, using villagers’ anger about the compensation funds for the land being used to build a power plant to incite them, the spokesman said.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, corruption, dongzhou, east asia, northeast asia

Via Sun Bin, a comparison of the distribution of Han Chinese surnames (1990 census) compared with South Korean surnames (2000 census).

…45% of all Korean (South) people are either Kim, Lee or Park. If one use the same breakdown and project to the whole of Korea one has the following chart (source, 2000 figure)

* Top 3 concentration: 45%

* Top 10: 64%

* Top 15: 72%

* 22 names have over 1% population (see chart): 81%

The Han Chinese, being a much larger ethnic group, is less concentrated.

* Top 3 concentration: 23%

* Top 10: 44%

* Top 15: 51%

* 19 names have over 1% population (see chart): 56%

While China largest surname, Li (aka Lee) covers a 7.9 percent share of the population of China, Lee (aka Yi) as the third-most-common family name in South Korea holds a 15 percent share.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, korea, northeast asia, south korea

Many expats I know rave about skiing in China. While one would expect ski resorts to be excessively congested in a country of 1.3 billion - as such resorts are in neighboring South Korea and most other tourist attractions are in China- AP has been assured that “they are virtually empty and the locals mostly avoid everything except for the beginner slopes.”

Obviously better marketing is called for. This is a good start.

Professional women skiing performers, in bikini,demonstrate skiing skills at a ski resort in Jinan, east China’s Shandong Province December 17, 2005. The temperature then was 5 degrees centigrade below zero. The activity was organized by the ski resort to attract customers. These performers come from Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, sport, skiing

AP has slipped in his promise to deliver 10 Asian-inspired Christmas gift ideas, in part due to the TypePad outage, so AP will try harder tomorrow. Today, AsiaPundit is happy to endorse the counter-surveillance headdress.

AsiaPundit likes the design of the counter-surveillance headdress, although he agrees that it lacks a needed degree of utilitarianism. Surely having a laser beam attached to one’s head would make a person the subject of more scrutiny and suspicion rather than less.

The purpose of the “Counter-Surveillance Headdress” is to empower the wearer by allowing him/her to claim a moment of privacy.

The design of the headdress borrows from Islamic and Hindu fashion. The reason behind this is to comment on the racial profiling of Arab and Arab-looking citizens that occurred post-9/11. Unfortunately the fear of terrorism led to the targeting of those of non-western decent. Therefore in its design my headdress is a contradiction; meaning although it’s goal is to hide the wearer it would make the wearer a target of heightened surveillance.

The “Counter-Surveillance Headdress” is a laser tikka (forehead ornament) attached to a hooded vest and reflective shawl. The laser is activated by pressing a button enclosed in the left shoulder area of the vest. When pointed directly into a camera lens, the laser creates a burst of light masking the wearer’s face. Additionally the wearer can use the reflective cloth to cover the face and head. The aluminized material protects the wearer by reflecting any infrared radiation and also disguises the wearer by visually reflecting the surroundings, rendering the wearer’s identity anonymous.

In spite of the downsides of this innovation, this is deserves an endorsement. Seriously, a laser beam attached to the head… how frickin’ cool is that?

AP would love to incorporate a few laser-beam devices into his own wardrobe. If anyone knows where to buy, say, counter-surveillance cufflinks do leave a comment (Mrs AsiaPundit needs hints for stocking stuffers).

Technorati Tags: asia, south asia

AsiaPundit has immense gratitude for the US armed forces for defending liberty, maintaining Asian regional stability and - on a more personal level - for providing AP with black market access to hard-to-find items such as cheese in Korea and, especially, liquor in Kuwait.

This is disturbing.:

Thanks to a homeland security based computer program, big brother is watching you:

Computer codes once developed to predict terrorist activities and illegal stock market trades have been adapted to identify people who buy popular black market items at the 12 commissaries throughout South Korea, U.S. Forces Korea officials say. The technology is so precise that it can spot the shopper who occasionally buys one or two packages of hot dogs but never remembers the buns. It can find the childless person who routinely buys baby food and formula. It can pick out the retired officer who just happens to cash out in the same checkout lane — manned by the same cashier — during every shopping excursion.

I can already see how this could inconvenience some people just by one of the examples listed above. Almost every time we go grocery shopping, we buy two to three packages of hot dogs without the buns but that’s because my wife uses the hot dogs when she makes budaechigae or kimchi chigae. And I pity the poor single guy who has a crush on one of the cashiers in one of the commissaries and goes to her checkout lane every time he shops. All in all, I find this a bit Orwellian, don’t you?

Since moving abroad, Shanghai is the first city AP has lived in where there has not been access to goods from a US Forces commissary (even though that Navy base is Singapore was, technically, not a US base). During this period, Shanghai is also the first city AP has lived in where he wasn’t living next-door to a chicken farm.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, korea, northeast asia, south korea

Via DPRK studies, an item about the ROK and its surnames. The three most common surnames - Kim (21 percent) Lee (15) and Park (9) - accounted for a full 45 percent of the population in 2000.:

… a lot of interesting information on Korean names is found at Wikipedia… Kims, Lees, and Parks, oh my! They also have a page that lists Korean surnames in alphabetical order, along with the Hanja and how many people have that name as of 2000 (South Korea only). I see that my Mother-in-law has a relatively uncommon surname: 가 (‘Ka’ or ‘Kah’), and that she is one of about 9,000 others.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, korea, northeast asia

Salon reports on internet censorship in China and the complicity of US companies. There’s not a lot of new information in it, but it’s nice to see that the topic is still interesting to Western media. Reproduced in full by Howard French.:

About once a month executives from China’s Internet news sites gather in a small meeting room on the first floor of Beijing’s Information Office, where a government official tells them what not to report. China’s Internet giants all send representatives, as does the China branch of one of America’s best-known icons: Yahoo. The visitors take notes and ask few questions.

On especially sensitive days, the speaker is the office’s director, Wang Hui, a woman whom an attendee of the meetings describes as pleasant and informal, with her hair cut short in the classic style of a Chinese bureaucrat. "Her demeanor is friendly," says the attendee, who requested anonymity because describing the meetings could lead to arrest. "We have known each other for a long time, and our companies are very cooperative."

The meetings are part of a system of Internet censorship that combines technological filters, human monitors and threats of detention to systematically suppress political speech. With more than 100 million regular Internet users, China is second only to the United States in terms of potential customers. But the Chinese government holds Web sites responsible for the content they and their users provide. Although much of the censorship gets carried out by the state, the authorities also rely heavily on the private sector.

To conduct business in China, popular Internet companies Yahoo, Microsoft and Google have had to accommodate a regime that forbids free speech, bars political parties and jails journalists. This means filtering searches on their sites, censoring news and providing evidence in the trials of political dissidents — or risk having their sites blocked in China. Forced to choose between ignoring the world’s hottest market or implicitly endorsing a system of censorship that a recent Harvard study called "the most sophisticated effort of its kind in the world," the companies have decided to cooperate.

"Business is business," Jack Ma, CEO of Alibaba.com, which controls Yahoo China, told the Financial Times. "It’s not politics."

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, censorship, china, east asia, north korea

As a central government investigation descends, Andrea at T-Salon notes rumors that authorities in Dongzhou have been falsifying evidence as well as :

Dongzhou villagers mourning in white. This is a photo that a Chinese friend has shared privately (aka in a access controlled area) over the internet.

NYT: “Local officials are talking to families that had relatives killed in the incident, telling them that if they tell higher officials and outsiders that they died by accident, by explosives, while confronting the police, they must make it sound convincing,” said one resident of the besieged town in an interview. “If the family members speak this way they are being promised 50,000 yuan ($6,193), and if not, they will be beaten and get nothing out of it.”

The most disguisting part, which was not reported in the New York Times, but elsewhere on overseas Chinese news websites, was that the authorities bombed the bodies they found and kept, so that they have “evidence” on hand to show that villagers died by explosives.

Technorati Tags: asia, blogs, censorship, china, corruption, dongzhou, east asia

(Via CDT) China’s netizens are still discussing the Dongzhou massacre, in spite of a widely reported crackdown on the media and online expression. The Washington Post reports.:

“In Memory of Ms. Liu Hezhen,” which Lu Xun wrote in 1926 after warlord forces opened fire on protesters in Beijing and killed one of his students, is a classic of Chinese literature. But why did thousands of people read or post notes in an online forum devoted to the essay last week?

A close look suggests an answer that China’s governing Communist Party might find disturbing: They were using Lu’s essay about the 1926 massacre as a pretext to discuss a more current and politically sensitive event — the Dec. 6 police shooting of rural protesters in the southern town of Dongzhou in Guangdong province.

In the 10 days since the shooting, which witnesses said resulted in the deaths of as many as 20 farmers protesting land seizures, the Chinese government has tried to maintain a blackout on the news, barring almost all newspapers and broadcasters from reporting it and ordering major Internet sites to censor any mention of it. Most Chinese still know nothing of the incident.

But it is also clear that many Chinese have already learned about the violence and are finding ways to spread and discuss the news on the Internet, circumventing state controls with e-mail and instant messaging, blogs and bulletin board forums.

The government maintains enough control over the flow of information to prevent an event like the Dongzhou shooting from causing a major public backlash or triggering more demonstrations. But the Internet appears to be weakening a key pillar of the party’s rule — its ability to control news and public opinion.

“I learned about it on the 7th,” one bulletin board user wrote Monday of the Dongzhou shooting. “Some day, I believe, this incident will be exposed and condemned. Let us pay tribute to the villagers . . . and silently mourn the dead.”

At Kdnet, a large bulletin board site based in Hainan province, users flooded forums with more than 30,000 messages of protest and sorrow in the days after the shooting. The site deleted almost all of the messages Sunday night, but a top editor felt compelled to post a note pleading for forgiveness.

“Please understand, what other Web sites cannot do, Kdnet also cannot do,” he wrote to the site’s users, promising to convey their anger over the shooting to “the authorities in charge.”

The party relies on private Internet firms to monitor and censor their own sites, and can shut down those that don’t. But officials at these companies often look the other way or drag their feet when they think they can get away with it, because they know customers are drawn to Web sites with less censorship.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, china, east asia, northeast asia

Given that it is illegal to ride a Segway on Japanese public byways, the police should prosecute Junichiro Koizumi for this:

Just because he’s prime minister doesn’t mean he’s above the law.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia, segway, koizumi

The use of Chinese actresses as lead characters in the movie Geisha has caused a stir in both Japan and China, as well as in the blogosphere.

AsiaPundit doesn’t care!

To make a controversial comment, the physical differences between the peoples of the three main Northeast Asian nations are so minimal that it should make no difference to Hollywood casting directors for a English-language movie. For instance, AP isn’t the slightest bit perturbed to see Daniel Dae Kim cast as a .

AP has spent almost a decade in the region and can fairly easily tell when someone is from Korea, China or Japan. For that matter, its easy to guess whether an ethnic Chinese person is from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Mainland or elsewhere. This, however, is more often because of behavior, style of dress, language and accent than it is by physical appearance.

AsiaPundit has had Canadian Chinese friends in Korea who needed to, repeatedly, convince Koreans that they did not speak the language and were not ethnically Korean. I know ethnic Koreans who must do the reverse in China. Further, at the recent anti-Japanese protest in Shanghai, AP met Japanese consular staff and reporters who were in the crowd passing themselves off as Chinese simply by altering their style of dress. Quite simply, Northeast Asians can’t tell the difference between each other either.

Now, before posting any nasty responses, please do this short quiz at AllLookSame.com.

AsiaPundit admits to scoring a dismal, but above average, eight out of 18.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, hong kong, japan, korea, northeast asia, singapore, southeast asia