I might as well vote for Kim Jung-il

Reuters: S.Korean foreign minister to run for top UN job (Feb 14)

I know what he says about the diplomatic issues between Korea and its neighbors: he's one of the typical Korean politicians who're refusing to talk over the territorial issue on Takeshima at the Hague. Any politician who doesn't pay respect to international law doesn't deserve the responsible position in the U.N.

Reuters also reports:

Ban said South Korea's spectacular rise from the ruins of war and its economic and political accomplishments mirror the ideals of the U.N. and thus make its candidate ideal for the job.

I think S.Korea should first consider performing its financial duty appropriate to its "accomplishments" which Ban is proud of.

Tags: Korea UN United Nations

Another Google problem

I have sent a mail to Google admin as below:

If you search the web for "takeshima", you will see the following page on the top of the search results:

http://www.pref.shimane.jp/section/takesima/eng/top.html
Takeshima homepage

Now, its page description says like this:

Page maintained by the Shimane prefectural government in Japan, defending their country's claim to the Dokdo islets.

You may know that Takeshima, the islets called "Dokdo" by Koreans, is under a territorial dispute between Japan and Korea. It is unlikely that Shimane prefecture should describe their web page as though they admitted Koreans' point of view over the dispute: in fact, you can't find a description like this anywhere in the HTML source of the page above.

I would like you to make clear where the page description mentioned above came from at all, and to immediately substitute the description with a correct one. Thank you in advance.

Tags: "Dokdo" Google Japan Korea Takeshima

A letter to the president of ROK

In my main blog (usually in Japanese), I posted a letter to Roh Moo-hyun, the president of S.Korea, and sent a trackback to his blog. Here's the copy of the letter:

Dear Mr. President,

It is my pleasure to announce, to Your Excellency and to all Your nations as well, that we are about to see Takeshima's Day coming round.

It is natural that each of the two countries has its own point of view over the territorial dispute on Takeshima (what Koreans call "Dokdo"). As you know, Japan has been advocating a peaceful resolution of the issue at the International Court of Justice for decades, while Korea has been defying it. If Korean leaders were really confident of the legitimacy of their claim over the issue, they would have no reason they should avoid discussing.

I hope that Korean people and their government will someday realize that talking at the Hague is the best way, or possibly the only way left, for each of the two countries to keep the bilateral relation peaceful and future-oriented, unless they wish to drive Japanese government into inevitable consideration of having resort to a more drastic measure for breaking through the current situation.

Yours truly,

Suika Dorobo

(See also: Takeshima, Takeshima's Day)

Actually this is not my first letter to Mr. Roh: the first one was an E-mail I sent to him in December 2004 (see this post for its carbon copy), in which I criticized him for his speech at the joint communiqué after the top-level bilateral talk with Japan's PM Koizumi.

In his speech, Mr. Roh repeatedly attempted to justify North Korea's point of view over the rogue nation's abduction of Japanese citizens. It was unpardonable for me, as well as for quite many Japanese people, that he mentioned to an abductee, Yokota Megumi, calling her family "the bereaved", thereby justifying NK official's claim that Megumi is dead since long and all what NK officials could do was to hand over "her ashes" to Japan, which later turned out to be fake.

There was no response from President Roh; I got a new year greeting card from Korean presidential office instead.

Tags: abduction "Dokdo" Japan Korea Takeshima

"Look, polar bears, Dokdo belongs to Korea!"

(Click to enlarge)

The photo of the "little patriot from Korea" presented before reminds me of a news I read at a Korean news site a couple of months ago. It reported an Arctic expedition by a S.Korean team, but it rather highlighted a political appeal they made on their way to the North Pole, than their expedition itself. You'll easily see that their banner says just the same as the little boy's one in the "little patriot" photo.

It seems that their persistence in exploiting everything for their political aim stunned some Japanese people to no small extent, and made other Japanese laugh. See this blog for some of the parody images created by the latter. Yes, Koreans could do this way everywhere on the Earth (or maybe in the outer space as well)---everywhere but at the Hague.

See also: Takeshima

(originally posted on Jul 27 2005 on my Flickr)

Tags: "Dokdo" Korea Takeshima

"Keyboard is mightier than swords"

(click to enlarge)

I came to knew Gmail's "web clip" feature today: I don't know when this feature was implemented because I didn't see any announcement before I switched Gmail's language preference to English.

The figure above I found at Gmail's [Mail settings] - [Web clips] dialog. I like this sort of joke: I just wonder if the feature is available in China as well as in other countries.

Yes, keyboard is mightier than swords, indeed, so we don't need to worry about people in some countries, left blind by internet censorship, just as long as they have keyboards to speak out with.

censorship China Gmail Google

A little patriot from Korea

A photo I saw in a Korean news. A five-year-old schoolboy from S.Korea is standing beside a landmark on the top of Mt.Fuji (Japan's highest mountain). The boy is displaying a banner with a slogan which maintains Korea's territorial rights on the disputed island.

At first I was so impressed to see that even a five-year-old boy can go over the sea and take an action for "protection of the territory of their homeland". However, I wish I could have given an advice to the photographer: he/she should not have added the newspaper co.'s name at the bottom of the banner, thereby exposing that the boy's patriotic excursion is just a setup by them. :p In fact I saw a similar example of setup several weeks ago.

See www.flickr.com/photos/a6m5/tags/takeshima/ for related photos.

(originally posted on Jul 26 2005 on my Flickr)

Tags: "Dokdo" Japan Korea Takeshima

Korean schoolchildren's paintings

(Click to enlarge)

If the reader has ever seen this site, it will be easy to see what these paintings are all about.

Their pictures seem all the same. Probably their teacher handed the same mass-produced b/w drawings and made the children paint them as they like.

This is the way their uniformity in fanaticism is inherited from generation to generation.

Tags: "Dokdo" Japan Korea Takeshima