A Lebanese Alawite family sits in their living room by a Christmas tree. The Alawite sect is a branch of Shi’a Islam found mostly in Syria. When asked about their Christmas tree, they replied “We obviously don’t believe in the same Christmas story, but its a fun holiday. Nice for the kids.”
Richard Armitage is at it again. George W. Bush’s deputy secretary of state has made a career of telling Japan what to do. When then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had second thoughts about joining the “coalition of the willing” in Iraq, Armitage told an official, “Don’t try to back off.” Earlier, he had advised Japan (in Gavan McCormack’s paraphrase) to “pull its head out of the sand and make sure the Rising Sun flag was visible in the Afghanistan war.”
Actress Sandra Oh has taken on a new starring role: North Korean adoption activist. In a new ad, Oh pulls heartstrings for the rescue of North Korean children who have escaped and who “are living alone and without family in foreign lands” like China. “They need us,” she says against a backdrop of fleeting images of emaciated children. But who are these children?
A year ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signaled a major transformation in U.S. foreign policy in an article titled “America’s Pacific Century,” which announced the U.S. “pivot” toward Asia, the Pacific, and the strategically important Indian Ocean. The expansion comes at a price for the region’s people.
On September 2, Dr. Imok Cha, a 51-year old San Francisco-based pathologist boarded a plane headed to Jeju Island, South Korea, where she was to present new findings at the World Conservation Congress of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the world’s oldest and largest environmental organization. But Dr. Cha’s journey to the IUCN was cut short at Incheon International Airport.
It’s election time in the United States, and once again Washington doesn’t care about Korea. I realize that this is a difficult pill for Koreans to swallow. Koreans naturally believe that, since Korea is at the heart of East Asia and East Asia is at the heart of the global economy, American politicians and voters care deeply about what happens on the peninsula.
On July 5, South Korea’s Supreme Court overturned lower court rulings against the Ministry of National Defense for proceeding with construction of a naval base on Jeju Island without an environmental impact assessment (EIA). It also ruled that the governor of Jeju had the authority to change the designation of absolute preservation areas. This ruling wasn’t just a major blow to residents of Gangjeong village where the navy base is being built but also to the many voiceless marine organisms. As you read this, massive caissons the size of four-story buildings are about to drop on soft coral reefs, forever destroying local marine ecosystems home to several endangered species.
South Korea is at the cutting edge of global technology. It is one of the most wired countries, and its biggest cities have the fastest Internet connections in the world. Whether it’s cell phones or genetic engineering, Korean scientists and companies set the pace. Korean culture, too, is thoroughly up to date, from K-pop sensations like Rain to blockbuster movies like “Old Boy.” In many ways, South Korea has replaced Japan as the face of the future: wired, fast-paced, dynamic. If Hollywood remakes “Blade Runner”, the characters will navigate an urban landscape that looks more like Seoul than Tokyo.
A classified Pentagon document leaked to me in 1984 may shed some light on a U.S. general’s outlandish claim last week that U.S. Special Forces, along with their South Korean counterparts, have parachuted into North Korea in search of human intelligence on the country’s nuclear weapons programs. The revelation was made by Brigadier General Neil Tolley, the commander of U.S. Special Forces in Korea, at a “Special Operations Force Industry Conference” in Florida organized by defense contractors. His remarks were relayed by David Axe, a prominent military writer who has reported on Africa and the Middle East but has little experience in Korea.
Scattered across the globe, far from the staid conference rooms and policy salons of Washington, are some of the world’s premier experts on U.S. militarism. But they are neither the warzone refugees who have most borne its brunt nor the polished think tank professionals who increasingly populate the developing world’s capitals.
Rather, they are the people who dwell in the shadows of the estimated 1,000 U.S. military bases speckling the planet.