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Showing posts from January, 2013

Humanitarian with a guillotine (Korea Times, February 1, 2013) by Casey Lartigue, Jr.

Former U.S. President Ronald Reagan said the nine most terrifying words in the English language are, `` I’m from the government, and I’m here to help .” For many well-intentioned activists, politicians, and intellectuals, that should be updated as: ``We are here to help you. You’re under arrest.” For example, ``sex workers” around the world oppose anti-prostitution laws. Prostitutes may not know the theoretical arguments but they do know in reality that prohibiting prostitution means they lack protection in dealing with abusive pimps and madams, violent patrons and crooked cops. Locally, a Korean woman busted for prostitution recently appealed to the courts pleading , ``I cannot survive without this job. I don’t want to be treated as a criminal for making a living the only way I can.” How should someone who genuinely wants to help her respond? If you say ``arrest her” then you are qualified to be a “harmful humanitarian.” In your desire to help, you have elimin

Michael Breen discussion at 10 Magazine

Yesterday I attended a discussion with writer Michael Breen, hosted by Barry Welsh. Very often, when I attend a speech or discussion about a topic I know a lot about, I often think about ways the speaker/facilitator/discussant could have done better. But I didn't feel that way about Breen, it was one of those times that I really felt like I had a lot to learn and should listen more than talk. He's been in Korea for three decades, working as a reporter, commentator, communications specialist. He reminds me of Andrei Lankov in that his analysis seems to be based on observation of how things work rather than trying to get the world to fit his biases. I don't know him, so his friends may say he is a raging ideologue, but that's not the impression I had yesterday and based on his writings. Michael Breen (L) and Casey Lartigue I first read his book The Koreans about a decade ago. It was a delightful read, that was both warm to Koreans but also critical at times. Yes

Open letter to Park's advisers (Korea Times, by Casey Lartigue, Jr.)

As soon as Park Geun-hye won the 2012 presidential election, she became like the main character in `` The Marriage of Figaro ” (``The Day of Madness”). She was getting so much advice from so many people that she didn’t know which way to turn. Some of the advice in open letters and wish lists for the President-elect has been good. I’d like to offer this advice to her many advisers: Focus on what you can do. My first reason for this is that by the time 2018 rolls around, many South Koreans will be happy to see Park on her way home or behind bars. Even if she follows through on what 49 million people in Korea want, they are likely to be disappointed by the inevitable compromise on their particular issue. Due to compromises and ``only Nixon could go to China” strategies, presidents in democracies rarely leave office more respected than when they were initially elected. Political leaders are scapegoats for people waiting for supermen (or superwomen) to fix

Last two weeks: Fan Death of the People, For the People, By the People

Attempted Fan Death Homicide Fan Death--in which people allegedly die when sleeping in a closed room with a fan on--has been written about in Slate magazine . As I wrote in 2010 : the air conditioner is broken at work... my coworker located a fan, and pointed it directly at me--then closed the door when he left. is this an attempt on my life? Check out fan death , still one of my all-time favorite Web sites. I wonder, have there any been any attempts at killing someone through fan death? Such as, a wife closing the door and turning on the fan while her drunk husband slept. Or attempted fan death suicides? * * * Half of the Women on the Net are the Men on the Net A friend said it more than a decade--a lot of the "women" on the Internet are actually men pretending to be women. For some reason it has become a national story in America about a Notre Dame football player getting scammed. Another story is about NFL and NBA players also getting contacted by

Hyeon-Seo Lee, speaker at Ted 2013!

Update: Hyeon-seo's speech at TED has been posted . Watch, share, link, comment. Congratulations to HyeonSeo Lee , a wonderful young lady who was born in North Korea, now lives in South Korea, and will soon be speaking at TED's annual gathering from February 25-March 1. She is the first North Korean refugee to speak at Ted. I was the co-chair of the campaign to raise awareness about her last summer. Thanks to my co-chair Jane Bojung Park for her inspiration and energy. David Choo and many other fantastic folks were also a part of our team. https://www.facebook.com/ events/336383593122599/?ref=14 Campaign to get her on Ted HyeonSeo's Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/leehye onseo Here's the speech she gave last year at Ted's tryouts. http://talentsearch.ted.com/ video/Hyeonseo-Lee-Escaping- North-Kor;TEDSeoul Article in Korean announcing this. Ted2013 speaker lineup . Hyeon-Seo's profile at Ted . Casey Lartigue, Jane Bojung Park,

Open door to N. Koreans (Korea Times, January 16, 2013) by Casey Lartigue, Jr.

Open door to N. Koreans By Casey Lartigue, Jr. Last Dec. 12, I fired off an opinion piece of about 1,500 words to the Washington Post. It easily could have been 1,600 words, but I deleted all of the curse words. The day before, I had learned that the United States government had rejected visa applications by three of the students at the Mulmangcho School for North Korean refugee adolescents. Mulmangcho (meaning, ``forget-me-not”) is a small alternative school located in Yeoju, more than an hour south of Seoul. It opened last September with 11 former North Korean children who are orphans or are disadvantaged in some other way. It was founded by former national assembly member Park Sun-young and a distinguished board of directors. Why were the youngsters rejected? The explanation I got: 1) The U.S. government is concerned that they might not return to South Korea and 2) there was a question about their refugee status because they didn’t have pr