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Korean couple let baby starve to death while caring for virtual child

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/southkorea/7376178/Korean-couple-let-baby-starve-to-death-while-caring-for-virtual-child.html

Prius-game

The couple had become obsessed with the online game Prius

Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and his partner Choi Mi-sun, 25, fed their three-month-old baby only on visits home between 12-hour sessions at a neighbourhood internet cafe, where they were raising an avatar daughter in a Second-Life-style game called Prius online, police said.

Leaving their real daughter at their home in a suburb of Seoul to fend for herself, the pair, who were unemployed, spent hours role-playing in the virtual reality game, which allows users to choose a career and friends, granting them offspring as a reward for passing a certain level.

The pair became obsessed with nurturing their virtual daughter, called Anima, but neglected their real daughter, who was not named.

Eventually, the couple returned home after one 12-hour session in September to find the child dead and called police. The pair were arrested on Friday after an autopsy showed that the baby died from prolonged malnutrition.

“The couple seemed to have lost their will to live a normal life, because they didn’t have jobs and gave birth to a premature baby,” Chung Jin-won, a police officer in Suwon, the Seoul suburb, told the Yonhap news agency.

“They indulged themselves in the online game of raising a virtual character so as to escape from reality, which led to the death of their real baby.”

More UNESCO World Heritage Listings Planned

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By Chung Ah-young
Staff Reporter
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/02/117_60078.html

Yi Kun-moo, head of Cultural Heritage Administration

Following a number of Korean cultural heritages being inscribed on UNESCO lists last year, the Cultural Heritage Administration (CHA) is seeking to promote the value of national cultural assets to the world.

The Joseon Royal Tombs were inscribed on UNESCO’s World Heritage List while “Dongui-bogam,” (The Principles and Practice of Eastern Medicine) was listed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register and five intangible cultural elements were included in UNESCO Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The administration also expects the additional registration of Yangdong and Hahoe villages in North Gyeongsang Province on the World Heritage List. The International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) has conducted on-the-spot inspections of the sites following Seoul’s application last year.

“The listing standards are getting tougher and pickier. UNESCO has asked us to provide additional information. It’s a difficult process, but we are doing our best for the inscription,” CHA Administrator Yi Kun-moo, said in an interview with The Korea Times.

The government will submit “Daemokjang,” a wooden architecture master, as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and “Ilseongnok” (Records of Daily Reflections of the Joseon Kingdom) for Memory of the World registration.

He emphasized, however, that the preparation process is as important as the registration itself as it is an opportunity to collect resources and conduct research about the cultural heritages to have them internationally acknowledged.

“The status of World Heritage means more than that of Korean heritage. It has universal value for all humans. We are responsible for preserving the assets to hand them down to the next generation,” he said.

But in addition to preservation, a moderate tourism development plan should be considered for the designated cultural heritage sites.

The administration is currently pondering plans to link palaces and the Joseon Royal Tombs ― under the theme, King Sejong, it can make a connection between Gyeongbok Palace and Yeongneung in Yeoju, Gyeonggi Province, and the Silleuksa Temple. Under the theme, King Jeongjo, it can tie Yunggeonneung Cluster, Suwon Fortress, Changgyeong Palace and the Jongmyo Shrine.

“To make this a reality, it’s important to use story-telling methods to promote the related heritage sites,” he said.

The administrator admitted that there were concerns over possible damage to the historical sites due to the growing number of tourists.

“But it doesn’t mean we should only preserve them. Just preserving the designated heritages doesn’t conform to the intention of the World Heritage List. The ICOMOS recommended that the government develop a comprehensive tourism plan and an on-the-spot explanation program to better protect the historical and cultural environment and promote the value of the cultural heritages,” he said.

Thus, striking a balance between preservation and development is the top priority in managing the sites. The CHA has already finished equipping the royal palaces and other heritage sites with automatic fire extinguishing systems, and has strengthened the security and tour guide systems.

“More importantly, Koreans’ awareness of the heritages has been raised a lot recently. So we expect people to show a mature consciousness about the conservation of the historical sites,” he said.

When Yi participated in the 33rd session of the World Heritage Committee in Seville, Spain in June, he felt it was a kind of “culture war.” “More and more countries are vying for registration of their assets. But the follow-up measures are crucial because maintaining the World Heritage status is as difficult as having them registered,” he said.

Yi said that it was shocking to see UNESCO remove Dresden’s Elbe Valley in Germany from its list because of the construction of a bridge across the valley. “This case tells us a lot ― how to protect cultural heritages and continuously maintain their status after the designation is really important,” he said.

Efforts to Reclaim Cultural Heritages

A French court’s recent decision to reject a request to return Korea’s royal texts that were looted by French troops during a 19th-century invasion has rekindled the public’s desire to restore their stolen cultural assets.

On Dec. 24 the court ruled that the Korean royal books held by the National Library of France were “national property” that cannot be handed over.

The collection that records most of the royal history of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-1910) was stored in an archive called “Oegyujanggak” on Ganghwa Island off Korea’s west coast. French troops took away the royal documents from the archive and destroyed other books when they raided the island in 1866.

The National Library in Paris had classified them under its Chinese category until they were discovered by a Korean historian named Park Byeong-seon living in France in 1978.

“As we saw in the Oegyujanggak case, there are many obstacles to repatriating cultural assets. It is true that the government cannot take bold action to bring them back home because there are no legally binding regulations over the illegal ownership of the looted assets and the breach of property rights. In addition, there are no international accords for retroactive applications for the case,” said Yi.

UNESCO adopted the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Cultural Property in 1970. Under its supervision, the Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property (ICPRCP) has urged each nation to return stolen cultural properties to their home countries.

However, the convention only applies to the cultural properties stolen after 1970. Thus, UNESCO’s requests for the return of such plundered properties are mostly ineffective.

The Korean government hosted the ICPRCP’s extraordinary session in Seoul in 2008 on the occasion of its 30th anniversary and it urged the unconditional return of Korean artifacts held by Japan and France.

The government has so far reclaimed several lost cultural assets ― for example, the seal of King Gojong of the Joseon Kingdom and General Oe Jae-yeon’s flag ― in cooperation with government agencies and civic organizations through purchases or donations.

Currently, a total of 107,857 cultural properties are scattered throughout 18 countries. They were taken during chaotic periods such as the Japanese colonial rule and the Korean War.

Japan has 61,000, the largest number of Korean cultural properties, followed by the United States with 27,000 and China with 3,000.

“We estimate more cultural properties might remain abroad than we know now because they were taken away during social upheaval. To bring them back, it is important to track down how these properties were taken out of the country. We are trying to figure this out,” he said.

chungay@koreatimes.co.kr

A Nation of Racist Dwarfs

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Kim Jong-il’s regime is even weirder and more despicable than you thought.
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2010/02/a_nation_of_racist_dwarfs.single.html
By Christopher Hitchens|Posted Monday, Feb. 1, 2010, at 10:01 AM ET

Visiting North Korea some years ago, I was lucky to have a fairly genial “minder” whom I’ll call Mr. Chae. He guided me patiently around the ruined and starving country, explaining things away by means of a sort of denial mechanism and never seeming to lose interest in the gargantuan monuments to the world’s most hysterical and operatic leader-cult. One evening, as we tried to dine on some gristly bits of duck, he mentioned yet another reason why the day should not long be postponed when the whole peninsula was united under the beaming rule of the Dear Leader. The people of South Korea, he pointed out, were becoming mongrelized. They wedded foreigners—even black American soldiers, or so he’d heard to his evident disgust—and were losing their purity and distinction. Not for Mr. Chae the charm of the ethnic mosaic, but rather a rigid and unpolluted uniformity.

I was struck at the time by how matter-of-factly he said this, as if he took it for granted that I would find it uncontroversial. And I did briefly wonder whether this form of totalitarianism, too (because nothing is more “total” than racist nationalism), was part of the pitch made to its subjects by the North Korean state. But I was preoccupied, as are most of the country’s few visitors, by the more imposing and exotic forms of totalitarianism on offer: by the giant mausoleums and parades that seemed to fuse classical Stalinism with a contorted form of the deferential, patriarchal Confucian ethos.
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Karl Marx in his Eighteenth Brumaire wrote that those trying to master a new language always begin by translating it back into the tongue they already know. And I was limiting myself (and ill-serving my readers) in using the pre-existing imagery of Stalinism and Eastern deference. I have recently donned the bifocals provided by B.R. Myers in his electrifying new book The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters, and I understand now that I got the picture either upside down or inside out. The whole idea of communism is dead in North Korea, and its most recent “Constitution,” “ratified” last April, has dropped all mention of the word. The analogies to Confucianism are glib, and such parallels with it as can be drawn are intended by the regime only for the consumption of outsiders. Myers makes a persuasive case that we should instead regard the Kim Jong-il system as a phenomenon of the very extreme and pathological right. It is based on totalitarian “military first” mobilization, is maintained by slave labor, and instills an ideology of the most unapologetic racism and xenophobia.

These conclusions of his, in a finely argued and brilliantly written book, carry the worrisome implication that the propaganda of the regime may actually mean exactly what it says, which in turn would mean that peace and disarmament negotiations with it are a waste of time—and perhaps a dangerous waste at that.

Consider: Even in the days of communism, there were reports from Eastern Bloc and Cuban diplomats about the paranoid character of the system (which had no concept of deterrence and told its own people that it had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in bad faith) and also about its intense hatred of foreigners. A black Cuban diplomat was almost lynched when he tried to show his family the sights of Pyongyang. North Korean women who return pregnant from China—the regime’s main ally and protector—are forced to submit to abortions. Wall posters and banners depicting all Japanese as barbarians are only equaled by the ways in which Americans are caricatured as hook-nosed monsters. (The illustrations in this book are an education in themselves.) The United States and its partners make up in aid for the huge shortfall in North Korea’s food production, but there is not a hint of acknowledgement of this by the authorities, who tell their captive subjects that the bags of grain stenciled with the Stars and Stripes are tribute paid by a frightened America to the Dear Leader.

Myers also points out that many of the slogans employed and displayed by the North Korean state are borrowed directly—this really does count as some kind of irony—from the kamikaze ideology of Japanese imperialism. Every child is told every day of the wonderful possibility of death by immolation in the service of the motherland and taught not to fear the idea of war, not even a nuclear one.

The regime cannot rule by terror alone, and now all it has left is its race-based military ideology. Small wonder that each “negotiation” with it is more humiliating than the previous one. As Myers points out, we cannot expect it to bargain away its very raison d’etre.

All of us who scrutinize North Korean affairs are preoccupied with one question. Do these slaves really love their chains? The conundrum has several obscene corollaries. The people of that tiny and nightmarish state are not, of course, allowed to make comparisons with the lives of others, and if they complain or offend, they are shunted off to camps that—to judge by the standard of care and nutrition in the “wider” society—must be a living hell excusable only by the brevity of its duration. But race arrogance and nationalist hysteria are powerful cements for the most odious systems, as Europeans and Americans have good reason to remember. Even in South Korea there are those who feel the Kim Jong-il regime, under which they themselves could not live for a single day, to be somehow more “authentically” Korean.
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Here are the two most shattering facts about North Korea. First, when viewed by satellite photography at night, it is an area of unrelieved darkness. Barely a scintilla of light is visible even in the capital city. (See this famous photograph.) Second, a North Korean is on average six inches shorter than a South Korean. You may care to imagine how much surplus value has been wrung out of such a slave, and for how long, in order to feed and sustain the militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.

But this is what proves Myers right. Unlike previous racist dictatorships, the North Korean one has actually succeeded in producing a sort of new species. Starving and stunted dwarves, living in the dark, kept in perpetual ignorance and fear, brainwashed into the hatred of others, regimented and coerced and inculcated with a death cult: This horror show is in our future, and is so ghastly that our own darling leaders dare not face it and can only peep through their fingers at what is coming.

Selling South Korea

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Lee Myung-bak wants to move his country to the center of the world.

Confident: South Korean consumers

By B. J. Lee | NEWSWEEK
Published Jan 29, 2010
From the magazine issue dated Feb 8, 2010
http://www.newsweek.com/id/232786/

For the first time in modern history, South Korea is laying claim to lead the club of rich nations. South Korea became the first member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—the group of 30 wealthy nations—to emerge from the global recession when it recorded 0.4 percent growth in the third quarter of last year. This year the OECD expects South Korea’s GDP to expand by 4.4 percent, the highest growth rate of any of its members.

Now President Lee Myung-bak wants to turn the end of the economic crisis into an opportunity. He knows the crash has accelerated the decline of American might, as well as the rise of China and other emerging powers, and he aims to exploit the gap between them. His goal is to transform South Korea from a successful but self-involved economic power into a respected global soft power with the clout to mediate between rich and poor nations on global issues such as climate change and financial regulation. In particular, Lee is pushing to revive momentum on a global free-trade deal—stalled in large part due to hostility from poor nations—while defending the poor by pushing for more international supervision of the global financial system. At the same time, he is trying to establish South Korea as a leader in the fight against global warming by agreeing that the country will cut emissions by 30 percent by 2020—one of the most aggressive targets in the world—even though it is not obligated to do so because it is still considered a developing nation under the Kyoto Protocol. To many in South Korea, the selection of Seoul as the site of the November 2010 summit of the G20—the group of 20 leading economic powers—is an acknowledgment of how well it has managed the current economic and environmental crises. “The old order is being dismantled and replaced by the new order,” Lee said from the Blue House in a televised New Year’s speech. “We have to make our vision the world’s vision.”

Lee is one of only two former CEOs to lead a major trading power—Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi is the other—and he runs South Korea like the just-do-it boss he was at Hyundai, where staff called him “the Bulldozer.” At Hyundai he led a company known for fearless forays into foreign markets, whether it was building huge bridges in Malaysia or selling cars with stunning success in the crowded U.S. market. Now he is trying to make South Korean culture—still on the defensive after a long history of colonial occupations—as cosmopolitan as Hyundai’s culture. He’s pushing for greater use of English and generally trying to open up South Korea to the world. In his first big political job, as mayor of Seoul, he created a huge ruckus when he ripped up the downtown to expose a boarded-up stream—but it is now a major draw for commerce and tourism. Lee’s grand domestic ambition as president is a multibillion-dollar plan to refurbish South Korea’s four major rivers despite protests from environmentalists and opposition members. Lee believes the project will boost local economies by creating jobs and promoting tourism and commerce. Lee’s popularity ratings, after an early plummet driven by a decision to allow U.S. imports of beef, are now at more than 50 percent as voters warm to his vision of newly developed South Korea as a model nation to be emulated by many developing countries.

South Korea’s successful management of the economic crisis surely helps. Early on, the country was battered like the rest of the world. The South Korean won dropped 30 percent in the first three months of the crisis, the stock market dropped by half, and foreign investors left in droves. But unlike most other rich nations, South Korea had recent experience with a major financial meltdown. Many of its current leaders are veterans of the Asian crisis that crippled the country’s economy in 1998, and they knew how to manage a free fall. Lee’s team immediately moved to save threatened banks and companies by setting up $200 billion in various funds to guarantee payment of their debts and for other forms of emergency aid. They struck currency-swap deals with major economies such as the U.S. to secure dwindling reserves of foreign currency and front-loaded public spending so that 65 percent of the country’s $250 billion budget was spent during the first half of 2009, ensuring that the money got into the economy rapidly—but without adding new debts. A government focus on protecting jobs kept consumer sentiment relatively high, and the Bank of Korea cut interest rates by 3.25 percentage points to 2 percent, a historic low.

All the while, Lee worked relentlessly to quiet calls for protectionism at home and abroad, at a time when many other leaders, including Barack Obama and Hu Jintao, were beginning to succumb. Lee’s administration is pushing for a slew of free-trade agreements with the U.S., the European Union, Peru, Colombia, Canada, Australia, and even China and Japan, if possible, says Abraham Kim, a Korea analyst at the political-risk consultancy Eurasia Group. Lee also lobbied hard at the Pittsburgh meeting of the G20 last year to have Seoul selected as the site of the next summit this autumn, an event he hopes to organize as a coming-out party. “He is trying to use the crisis to enhance the reputation of South Korea and help it to be widely recognized as a developed-world state,” says Kim. “This is partly a nationalism thing, but more importantly, they are trying to get out from under Japan’s and China’s shadow. South Korea needs to find its niche for its long-term competitive survival.”

South Korea was further protected from the crisis because its economy was built on pillars other than the collapsing financial-services industry. Decades of government efforts to nurture globally competitive conglomerates through massive infusion of capital had helped build export machines such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG. As the crisis unfolded, the weakening currency allowed these companies to expand global market share, especially against key Japanese and other rich-world competitors. As a result, South Korea registered a record trade surplus of $42 billion last year, surpassing that of Japan for the first time. South Korean companies and banks were also ready to compete because the crisis of the 1990s had forced them to improve corporate governance, get their finances in order, and invest heavily in new technology. “We just had to dust off the old measures we used a decade ago and use them again,” says Vice Finance Minister Hur Kyung-wook.

In short, the South Korean model is a more mature cousin of China’s—a hybrid economy, part free market, part state-controlled—but with more freedom for the market and for political dissent. Now Lee is positioning South Korea within Asia as a dynamic alternative to both China’s mighty command economy and Japan’s no-growth economy. In Southeast Asia, South Korea has long been admired for completing an economic miracle in just one generation, moving its 48 million people out of poverty and entering the ranks of fully industrialized nations, with average per capita income that surpassed $20,000 in 2007. And, unlike China, South Korea has achieved economic and political growth at the same time, with an increasingly well-established multiparty democracy that respects free speech and election results. South Korea, says U.S. Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, is “the best example in the post–World War II era of a country that has overcome enormous obstacles to achieve this kind of success.”

Many Southeast Asian nations, alarmed by the harsh sides of the China model, look to South Korea as an alternative. Vietnam is sending civil servants there, studying how in the 1970s and ’80s Seoul used massive government support, such as cheap loans, to develop strategic industries such as steel and petrochemicals as the backbone of its export economy. As part of Vietnam’s effort to develop capital markets, it also now runs a stock exchange in Hanoi, built with the help of the Korea Stock Exchange. Officials from Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Uzbekistan regularly visit South Korea to join training programs that teach economic and business management. “Developing countries are eager to learn South Korea’s economic model because of its relevance to them,” says Euh Yoon-dae, a Korea University economist currently heading a presidential committee to promote the national brand. “Our open economic system is more appealing to them than, say, that of China.”

Surrounded by bigger powers—China, Russia, and Japan—South Korea needs to carve out a global role for itself to “ensure its prosperity and security,” says David Straub, a Korea expert at Stanford University. So, in his first year in office, Lee made a point of systematically reaching out to foreign leaders in the United States and other major powers. The following year he headed to Europe. This year, Straub says, Lee is expected to target Africa. At the same time, he is upping South Korea’s profile abroad, posting 3,000 volunteers from its version of the Peace Corps to Asia and Africa, where they will focus on public health and childhood education, with plans to increase that number to 20,000 by 2013. Last year South Korea officially became the first former recipient of international aid to graduate to the donor ranks, sending $1 billion to dozens of poor countries, and it plans to triple that sum within five years. Likewise, the number of troops it commits to U.N. peacekeeping operations will jump from 400 in 2009 to 1,000 this year and will work in roughly 10 nations, including Lebanon and Pakistan.

Lee has big plans for Brand South Korea, too. At Hyundai, he turned what had been a small contractor into a global manufacturing powerhouse. He speaks English, unlike his predecessor as president, and he is comfortable playing national pitchman. Just after Christmas, following six rounds of telephone calls with United Arab Emirates President Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and a last-minute visit to the country, Lee helped South Korea beat out a French and a joint U.S.-Japan consortium to win its biggest foreign contract ever: a $40 billion nuclear-power-plant contract in the U.A.E. While Hyundai and Samsung have overcome the perception abroad that “made in South Korea” still means poorly made, many other South Korean brands have not. According to a survey by Simon Anholt, a British expert on national branding, the country ranks 33rd in global branding power, although its economic size ranks 13th in the world. What’s more, more than half of U.S. college students believe Hyundai and Samsung are Japanese brands. “Our job is to narrow the perception gap between the national and corporate brands,” says Euh, the head of the branding committee.

Lee plans to build on that success at the G20 summit. He has already distinguished himself from his predecessors by embracing foreign investment and free trade, rather than focusing on rigid ideology, and he intends to use the meeting to showcase the rewards of that strategy. Lee’s hope is that he can send a message to smaller, poorer countries, particularly in Asia, that South Korea’s less insular, more global approach can be a model they can follow, too. Of course, as his opponents are quick to point out, the fate of his country will not change because the leaders of 20 advanced nations get together for a few days. But Lee says it is part of a larger effort to move his country “away from the periphery of Asia,” as he put it recently, “and into the center of the world.”

Green initiatives

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In November in Seoul, at The Economist Conferences Business Roundtable with the South Korean government, President Lee Myung-bak and his full team of economic ministers and other top officials all harped a good deal on green themes. I append the relevant section of the summary that I wrote for participants. You’ll note a degree of scepticism.

Songdo, the subject of the article that Michael links to, is probably a lost cause by now for the poor spoonbills. (For a broader and more positive view of this project overall, from a source which one might have expected to be critical, see http://www.japanfocus.org/-David-McNeill/3247.)

Then there is Saemangeum: mother of all white elephants, and politically the purest pork. They built the world’s longest sea-wall, at vast expense and here again destroying wetland bird habitats. Yet after almost 20 years, nothing has been done with it because no one can agree what the ruddy thing is for! Some links:

Birdskorea.org | Visit Korea (A casino now, forsooth!) | Joongang Ilbo

Now we have the Four Rivers Restoration Project (4RRP), which is ploughing ahead despite many serious concerns. These are summarized in an article I wrote last May; also appended here, if I may, since it is not in the public domain.

An excellent piece on the 4RRP is this by James Card:

His opening paragraph reads as follows:

The Korean peninsula was once called geum-su-gang-san, “a land of embroidered rivers and mountains.” Before South Korea industrialized in the postwar years, the rivers were wild-running freestone streams barreling down the mountains and turning into sandy shallow rivers edged by wetlands as they reached the sea. In her 1898 book Korea and Her Neighbors, 19th-century travel writer Isabella Bird described the upper Namhan River as “where pure emerald water laps gently upon crags festooned with roses and honeysuckle, or in fairy bays on pebbly beaches and white sand.”

That world is long gone now…

Finally, ecological doubletalk is only one instance of how ideology befuddles the brain and skews policy. There is also egalitarian doubletalk, whose progeny is Sejong City: like Saemangeum an ill-considered pork-barrel scheme on whose purpose no one agrees, and a political hot potato which will waste time and money for years to come, belying its website name: http://www.happycity.go.kr/.  Here are two views: JoongAng Ilbo | Hankyoreh

—————————–

Conference Summary

A major theme was what President Lee called the “new national vision” of low carbon green growth. (So new, indeed, that it hardly figured in his campaign for office in 2007.) Strategy and finance minister Yoon Jeung-hyun outlined the “Green Growth Five-Year Plan”, dating only from July, whereby Korea “will invest two percent of the GDP as public spending on green growth between 2009 and 2013.” Similarly, according to the only recently appointed knowledge economy minister Choi Kyunghwan, five ‘green tech industries’ are among 17 ‘new growth engines’ announced in January; the other 12 being in ‘high-tech convergence industries’ and ‘value-added service industries.’ (More on services in the following section.)

Minister Choi, who is also a member of the national assembly, admitted that he had recently expressed the fear that South Korea plans to go green too fast. In his view public consensus is missing. Moreover his brief includes being in charge of industry, so he fights their corner. (MKE is the new name for what used to be the ministry of commerce, industry and energy or MOCIE: arguably a more accurate moniker than the trendy new one, with its aura of IT.) Kim Hyung-Kook, who chairs the presidential committee on green growth, conceded that for a country whose emissions had more than doubled since 1990, going green would be hard. He saw his committee as open to foreigners, and a ginger group to the rest of government.

The US$18bn Four Rivers Restoration Project (4RRP) was little mentioned, despite its being the most tangible project in this field as well as a major focus of public debate. Many view it as a covert rebranding of President Lee’s former ‘grand canal’ scheme, which he had pitched more for logistical than green reasons (though few were convinced) and reluctantly dropped. In sum, despite right-on rhetoric and good intentions, doubts remain about both the depth of this new conversion to eco-friendliness, and just how green some aspects of it really are.

…

As participants left, they may have noticed posters and preparations in the Hyatt for an event next day: the 2009 International Forum for Green Growth and Saemangeum Project. This is about the world’s longest sea-wall (33km) and largest polder on Korea’s southwest coast, not yet complete after nearly 20 years and some US$7.5bn. No one agrees what to do with the site; plans have altered several times, while critics claim it is bad for the environment.

An editorial on October 21st in the JoongAng Ilbo, Seoul’s leading daily, linked this to other currently planned large-scale projects under the headline: “Prudent Policy, Please.” Besides the Four Rivers project, this also alludes to the main hot potato of current political debate: a US$18bn plan to move half the government to a new administrative city 160km south of Seoul. (Interestingly this went unmentioned in the Roundtable.) Even if modified as seems likely into a scientific or educational complex instead, this will still be an costly distraction.

____________________

Brief for Oxford Analytica. Edited version published 22 May 2009.
Some slight updating.

SOUTH KOREA:
Rivers restoration project rekindles canal controversy
SUBJECT: The Lee Myung-bak administration’s environmental infrastructure plans.

SIGNIFICANCE: Critics claim the government’s ideas are environmentally unsound, and a ploy to resurrect the president’s dream of a nationwide canal network via the back door.

ANALYSIS: On April 27 President Lee Myung-bak presided at the launch of an interim plan to upgrade South Korea’s four major rivers: the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan. This is to be finalized by end-May, with work starting in September after the rainy season.

The four river restoration project (4RRP) is a core part of a 50 trillion won (37 billion dollar) ‘Green New Deal’ announced earlier this year. Costing 14 trillion won, the 4RRP aims to:

  • Provide more and better water. Two new dams and 13 reservoirs are to store an extra 1.25 billion cubic metres of fresh water by 2012.
  • This, and dredging the river beds, are also meant to improve control of seasonal flooding. The latter has worsened since the 1970s, possibly because of the effects of industrialisation.
  • Amenities will include 1,411 kilometres of new cycling paths, sprucing up cultural relics near the river banks, and general riparian beautification for leisure and tourism purposes.
  • It is hoped thereby to create some 190,000 jobs directly and more indirectly, boosting local economies along the rivers and contributing to more balanced regional development.
  • New photovoltaic and small hydropower plants on or near the four rivers, as well as larger green spaces, are supposed to reduce carbon emissions by 100,000 tons annually.

Canal redux? On February 26 prime minister Han Seung-soo said “there should be no more controversy over this project,” calling it “the backbone of our Green New Deal plan.”

However, this has not silenced claims that the 4RRP is essentially a covert bid to revive Lee Myung-bak’s pet project for a ‘Grand Korean Waterway’ (GKW): a 540 kilometre cross-country canal linking Seoul to the port of Busan in the southeast, costing 16 trillion won.

Mountainous and densely populated, South Korea has high logistics costs. But few experts supported the GKW, fearing rather a white elephant and ecological harm. Yet Lee persisted,  until forced to drop the idea last June amidst a deepening political crisis caused by protests against US beef imports and complaints that he was riding roughshod over public opinion.

Water shortage. Among the varied aims of the 4RRP, water shortage is a growing problem. Though South Korea’s yearly rainfall of 1,274 millimetres is 30% above the global average, its dense population means per capita water supply will fall to 1,199 cubic metres by 2025; the UN regards 2,000 as the safe minimum. Yet daily consumption per head at 397 litres is the highest in OECD, suggesting a need for action at the demand as well as the supply end.

Protest. Environmental NGOs are influential in South Korea. Their record includes:

  • Holding up for several years construction of the world’s longest seawall (see below).
  • Delaying the last section of the KTX high speed rail link from Seoul to Busan, now set to open finally in 2010. On April 23 the Supreme Court convicted Venerable Jiyu, a Buddhist nun, for obstructing this; most famously in a 120-day hunger strike in 2005 against a planned 13 kilometre tunnel near her monastery, said to threaten the habitat of a rare salamander.

Green? Ecological NGOs are predictably sceptical of the 4RRP and its green credentials:

  • Birds Korea (BK) claims that the plans to dredge rivers and build dams, weirs and bicycle paths will breach obligations under the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Ramsar Convention on wetlands, to both of which South Korea is a signatory.
  • BK also argues that vegetated riverbanks, appropriately supported, would be stronger and cheaper to maintain than concrete, as well as more attractive for biodiversity and recreation.
  • Or again, silting and stagnation from dams will harm rather than help water quality. Tap water potability has become a public concern in recent years; bottled water sales have soared despite official insistence that mains water is safe to drink. Water quality and quantity and flood control alike would be better guaranteed by restoring natural flood-plain wetlands.
  • Conversely, a construction-focused approach will disturb and restrict water flows, destroy natural river beds and edges, reduce biodiversity and risk long-term ecological damage.

Bulldozer. Relatedly, critics query the underlying perspective and priorities of this project:

  • President Lee is a former CEO of Hyundai’s construction arm. Nicknamed ‘bulldozer’, he is viewed as espousing an old-school view of development as covering nature with concrete.
  • The construction sector, accounting for nearly 20% of GDP, is suffering in the downturn. This affords an excuse for public works projects as Keynesian stimulus, and for job creation. On this basis the 4RRP, like the GKW before it, is popular in most of the localities affected, with hopes of regeneration and new employment outweighing environmental concerns.
  • In Lee’s favour, his controversial removal of a raised motorway to restore a long-hidden stream while mayor of Seoul is now applauded as much improving the capital’s amenities.

Exempt? There is disquiet that no full feasibility studies have been done. Indeed, a 1999 law mandating such a survey for all projects costing over 50 billion won was recently amended to exempt works for “natural disaster prevention” – as the 4RRP is classified – from this.

Canal reduced. Similar unease affects another canal project, predating the GKW and still going ahead. On May 6 President Lee visited the site of the 18 kilometre Gyeongin canal. By 2011 this will connect the Han river in Seoul with the port of Incheon on the Yellow (West) Sea for cargo ships of up to 4,000 tons.

Conceived in the 1990s, this idea was abandoned five years ago amid doubts that it could be economic. In 2003 the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI) criticised officials for fudging a cost-benefit analyis by the Korea Development Institute (KDI) to make it look viable. Lee revived the 2 billion dollar project, but doubts persist and KDI’s study remains unpublished.

Green growth. More broadly, on May 12 the Presidential Committee on Green Growth said 12.6 trillion won will be invested by 2013 in green technologies, to create half a million jobs.  4.2 trillion won will be spent on Internet infrastructure, green IT products, and low-carbon transit systems, while R&D into other various green technologies, such as high-efficiency solar batteries and hybrid vehicles, will receive 8.4 trillion won.

Seawall saga. If precedent is any guide, two relevant cases point in opposite directions:

  • Confounding early scepticism, upgrading of the Han river in Seoul – initally for the 1988 Olympics – has been a success. The river now is far cleaner and more attractive than before.
  • However, the main recent precedent for large-scale nature-remaking is discouraging. At 33 kilometres, Saemangeum on the southwest coast is the world’s longest seawall, infilling an estuary and adding 400 square kilometres of reclaimed land. This remains controversial:
  • Begun in 1991, the wall was not finished till 2006. Environmentalists opposed it, saying it would destroy some of East Asia’s most important wetlands, crucial for migratory birds. In 2007 the RSPB, a British bird protection body, reported that seabirds were starving there.
  • Conceived mainly to boost and placate the neglected Jeolla region, which complained at missing out on major development projects, Saemangeum’s precise purpose has never been agreed or clarified. Talk variously of industrial or agricultural uses has come to little so far.
  • Last year the area was designated a free economic zone (FEZ), again to no visible effect.
  • In March the central and provincial governments agreed to make Saemangeum a “model green vacation spot”, international tourist resort, or even “a Korean Dubai”. This latest twist appears no better thought out, nor more likely to succeed, than its many predecessors.
  • – as witness that by October the state-run Korea Rural Community Corp. (KRC) was touting the wholly different concept of an “eco-friendly manufacturing hub.”

CONCLUSION: Lee’s river restoration plan is ambitious and far-reaching. Confidence that it will actually achieve its diverse goals would be higher if feasibility studies had preceded it. If this goes ahead but proves to have little or negative impact, especially on the environment, this will only cement the president’s reputation for bulldozing projects without consultation, and could work against the ruling party in 2012’s presidential and parliamentary elections.

________________________

Michael Rank had written:

If you’re interested in development vs conservation, “cities of the future” and “ecological doubletalk” in Korea you may be interested in this:

http://tinyurl.com/yl7ldsv

Michael Rank

Danse a Montpellier: Young Ho Nam 2009

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http://www.webzinemaker.com/admi/m9/page.php3?num_web=15440&rubr=2&id=364549
http://hantoma.hani.co.kr/board/contents.html?board_id=ht_culture:001032&uid=207447

pho1_364549Notre coréenne de Montpellier poursuit son exploration intérieure à base de redécouverte de son propre passé historique. Superbe ! Pourtant, cela n’attire pas grand monde.

La semaine précédant celle de Noël, Young Ho a donc présenté sa nouvelle création, à Sérignan puis au studio Bernard Glandier.

Je sais que cela surprend certains que je consacre autant de pages à Young Ho. Elle est manifestement peu appréciée des happy few. Depuis peu, j’ai compris pourquoi je trouvais ses pièces attachantes ; je vais donc essayer de m’expliquer.
Je trouve qu’il y a beaucoup de choses à tirer de ses pièces, qui dépassent nettement l’aspect de la danse pure. En ce sens, je la rapproche d’Hélène Cathala, aussi surprenant que cela puisse paraître. Pourquoi ? Parce que, tout d’abord, je pense qu’Hélène et Young Ho font partie des chorégraphes qui ne cèdent pas aux sirènes de la mode. En ce sens, elles ne sont pas tombées dans les “tartes à la crème” de l’époque : la non-danse, la danse plasticienne, la danse “performance”(1). Cela leur nuit en termes de succès auprès des producteurs et diffuseurs… Mais le fait est là et se poursuit contre vents et marées. Et pourquoi font-elles ça, ce qui est le cœur de mon intérêt ? A mon avis, parce que pour elles, le “sujet” de la danse compte bien plus que la forme, qui doit être au service du sujet. De ce fait, la réflexion esthétique venant après la réflexion existentielle, la mode devient un diktat, qu’en artistes elles ne peuvent accepter.
De nombreux artistes sont dans ce cas là, me direz-vous ? Oui. On pourrait mettre par exemple un de ceux dont on a parlé récemment dans ce cadre : Jean-Baptiste Bonillo. Mais Jean-Ba comme d’autres, s’intéresse avant tout à son moi (ou à ses proches). Young Ho et Hélène (c’est leur deuxième caractéristique commune) ont une vision beaucoup plus globale de leur moi. Il est inscrit dans une histoire, dans une société, l’intime stricto sensu paraît y avoir moins de place. Entre les deux optiques, je ne mets pas de jugement de valeur, d’ailleurs. Simplement, je suis de plus en plus persuadé que le sujet, le “de quoi ça parle ?” a beaucoup plus d’importance que le “comment ça parle de rien!”, qui serait l’autre extrême. L’entre les deux : “de quoi ça parle ?” et “comment ça en parle ?” est bien sûr mon idéal. Et comme je suis très sensible aux notions sociales, tout autant qu’à l’intime, forcément ça me plait : ce qui compte au fond, quel que soit le “principe” de l’artiste est la sincérité de ce qu’il y a derrière. Ce que Young Ho en bonne asiatique appelle “la source”.
A noter qu’on a le même problème en sciences. Il y a des scientifiques obsédés par “l’élégance de la démonstration”. En fait, les “bons” sont surtout obsédés par le résultat de la pensée, les moyens pour y arriver étant sans importance, en ce sens que “tous les moyens sont bons”. Y compris l’invention pure et simple ou le truandage des résultats (Pauling en étant un bon exemple… et pourtant double Prix Nobel, ce n’est pas rien !)

Le titre de la pièce est Une femme coréenne (le corps est un visage). C’est le point le plus faible du truc. C’est un titre qui ne veut pas dire grand chose d’important et qui ne correspond à rien. Sauf si dans la tête de Young Ho, il y a la volonté de montrer ça uniquement sous sa deuxième partie, ce qui serait intitulé “le corps est un visage”…? Car la soirée présentée à Sérignan et au studio Glandier était en deux parties.

4205862177_539aec2cc0En première partie, nous avons eu droit à l’interprétation d’un “trésor vivant” de Corée. (CLIK)

Chul Jin Lee (photo, CLIK) est le “porteur” d’une danse de temple bouddhique, le Seung Mu. Cette danse a un passé chamanique. Elle sert de base à Young Ho pour construire un solo qui est la deuxième partie.
On avait donc l’interprétation “absolue” par Chul Jin Lee, assez longue en temps et utilisant un tambour. Et la relecture par Young Ho (qui est d’origine catholique !) au son de la voix de Paul Godard, poète.

Du simple fait de la présence de Chul Jin Lee, la soirée volait très haut. Parce qu’il est finalement très rare de voir des interprètes de “trésor vivant”, d’une part. D’autre part parce que cela ne s’inscrit généralement pas dans un dialogue avec le présent.

A la fin du spectacle, à Montpellier, Young Ho expliqua ce qu’elle avait dans la tête. Elle a découvert assez tardivement (quelque peu bloquée, finalement, par ses études de danse qui la focalisaient sur le classique et le moderne/post-moderne) que la danse traditionnelle coréenne respectait certains préceptes de la “contemporaine”, notamment la relecture individuelle. Chul Jin expliqua ainsi au public qu’une danse “musée” se devait d’être incorporée et modifiée par son porteur au cours d’un longue période de méditation “dans la montagne”. Une telle révélation d’une similitude entre l’orient et la danse contemporaine n’est pas vraiment pour nous surprendre. En même temps, pour Young Ho, cela semble avoir fait l’effet d’un choc. Depuis quelque temps, elle repart ainsi à la relecture des danses traditionnelles coréennes pour en refaire l’interprétation personnelle et ainsi décrire une sorte de long solo introspectif.
C’est touchant et la partie Young Ho/Paul godart ne manque pas d’intérêt. Elle joue sur le noir et les moments où elle se dépouille de la longue robe bouddhique pour laisser apparaître quelques bribes de chair et un vêtement nettement occidentalisé étaient vraiment prenants.

Ce qui m’intéresse le plus dans tout ça est le discours en creux. Elle nous fait un vrai discours sur l’identité nationale ! Et comme on peut comprendre ça du fait d’un certain rejet par les diffuseurs locaux de son son art(2). Rajoutez à cela un divorce… son art peut s’apparenter à l’histoire d’un rejet du corps étranger. C’est en ce sens que je trouve que “ça parle” beaucoup. Et en ces moments où la France a de nouveau une tentation de repli xénophobe, je trouve ça vraiment intéressant.

En tout cas – même sans tenir compte de la modicité des sommes demandées – les joyaux proposés, la profondeur de la pensée, la qualité humaine de la restitution scénique proposée, tout cela était époustouflant.

PS : A noter que la promotion du spectacle était assurée par “Le garage électrique” : le site

Notes :
(1) Il y a eu des pièces magnifiques là-dedans ! Mais avec le recul, il y a surtout eu un bon moyen d’être riche et célèbre.
(2) Comme tout les montpelliérains (non CCN), après un passage au Festival Montpellier danse, elle subit un rejet général ! On se demande vraiment pourquoi les compagnies ont envie d’y aller ! Seuls Ramalingom et Cathala (d’une autre manière) semblent échapper au syndrome.

영국 신사가 전해주는 한국과 한국 문화

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http://weekly.donga.com/docs/magazine/weekly/2009/12/01/200912010500000/200912010500000_1.html

200912010500000_1“유현목 감독은 특별하다. 그는 멜로물을 만들지 않았다. 예나 지금이나 멜로물이 한국 영화의 큰 축이었음을 감안하면 상업적인 감독은 결코 아닌 셈이다. 그는 또 새로운 영화의 개척자였다. ‘수학여행’에서 그는 처음 서울에 온 시골아이들의 모습을 유머러스하고도 따스한 시선으로 그리는가 하면, ‘오발탄’에서는 전후(戰後)의 서울에서 살기 위해 몸부림치는 가족을 묘사하면서 결코 애국심이나 민족주의를 부각하지 않는다.”

이 리뷰를 쓴 사람은 놀랍게도 한국인이 아니라 영국인, 그것도 영화 전문가가 아니라 순수한 아마추어 애호가다. 세계 금융계의 중심지인 런던 시티지역의 한 회계법인에 근무하는 필립 고우먼(47) 씨가 그 주인공. 부드럽고 침착한 태도가 돋보이는 전형적 ‘영국 신사’인 그는 2006년부터 런던에서 열리는 한국 관련 행사들과 각종 한국 문화를 소개하는 ‘런던 코리안 링크’를 열고 인터넷의 ‘한국 알리미’로 맹활약 중이다.

그의 웹사이트 ‘런던 코리안 링크’(http://londonkoreanlinks.net)에는 한국과 관련된 정보가 다양하게 실려 있다. 최근 런던의 한국문화원에서 열린 봉준호 감독 특별회고전 같은 행사는 물론 세르비아와 한국 국가대표팀의 축구 경기, 런던을 방문한 재즈 가수 나윤선과 트로트 가수 김수희의 소식, 심지어 북한 망명자들이 영국 의회에서 증언한 뉴스까지 볼 수 있다.

그렇다고 고우먼 씨가 한가한 사람인 것은 아니다. 회사에서 한창 근무 중일 때는 단 10분의 전화통화도 어려울 정도다. 그처럼 바쁜 그가, 더구나 한국과는 아무 연고도 없는 그가 어떻게 한국 문화에 푹 빠져들게 된 것일까.

“저 는 원래 다양한 분야에 관심이 많은 사람입니다. 피아노를 연주하고, 교회 성가대에서 활동하고, 수공예 책을 만드는 과정도 배웠죠. 그러다 10년쯤 전에 제가 다니는 회계법인에서 한국의 한 은행 런던 지점 개설을 돕게 됐습니다. 그 일을 하면서 조금씩 한국인과 한국이라는 나라에 호기심이 생겼죠. 또 한국 영화를 보게 되고, 한국인 친구들이 생겼습니다. 2006년에 웹사이트를 열고 난 뒤부터는 여기에 집중하느라 다른 취미를 모두 포기하게 됐습니다.”

몇 명의 도우미가 있긴 하지만 웹사이트의 기사 절반 이상은 고우먼 씨가 직접 쓴다. 그러니 최소 하루 한 번은 새로운 기사를 써야 한다. “하루가 48시간이면 좋겠다”는 그의 말이 엄살이 아닌 셈. 그의 웹사이트에는 하루 1000명가량의 누리꾼이 방문한다. 최근에는 점점 그 수가 늘고 있는 추세다.

“기사를 쓰면 쓸수록 단신보다 좀더 깊이 있는 기사를 쓰고 싶어집니다. 그러니 늘 시간이 부족하죠. 아무래도 제가 약간 미친 건가 싶기도 해요.(웃음)”

그는 최근 들어 한국에 대한 런던 사람들의 관심이 부쩍 늘어나는 것을 체감한다고 전했다. 특히 한국 영화제를 찾는 관객 수가 많아졌다고.

“가끔 한국 감독들과 관객들의 만남의 자리 같은 행사가 열립니다. 그 자리에서 영국 관객들이 한국 감독에게 질문을 하는데, 그 질문의 내용이 점점 깊이 있어지더군요. 영국에는 봉준호, 박찬욱 감독을 좋아하는 사람이 많습니다.”

개인적으로 그는 이창동, 임권택, 임상수 감독을 좋아한다.

“나 자신에게 뭔가 생각할 거리를 던져주는 영화를 좋아합니다. 이 세 감독의 영화는 생각할 여지를 줌과 동시에 재미도 있죠.”

한국 영화에 대한 애정도 보통이 아니지만 고우먼 씨가 최고로 꼽는 한국 문화는 음악, 그중에서도 현대음악과 결합한 전통음악이다.

“사물놀이가 가진 현대적 감각에 놀랐습니다. 한국의 전통음악에 대해서도 좀더 많이 알고 싶어요. 언젠가는 직접 종묘제례악 실연을 들어볼 수 있었으면 좋겠습니다.”

그는 출장차 또는 짧은 휴가를 이용해 여러 차례 한국을 찾았다. 그가 한국에서 가장 기억에 남는 장소로 꼽는 곳은 해인사.

“절 안에 가득한 평화로운 분위기가 잊히질 않아요. 이런 기억 때문에 한국을 더욱 사랑하게 되는 것 같습니다.”

런던=전원경 객원기자 winniejeon@hotmail.com

From the Goldsmiths catalogue

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Misun Won chose a circle for a basic unit as it is a more efficient geometric figure and lends itself to 3 dimensional forms. She has used multiple circles to develop an assortment of complex forms in silver, making a subtle and varied collection of objects based on the idea of Korean patchwork. She makes patterns from one sheet of silver using basic techniques such as saw piercing, bending and soldering, creating complex forms on their own or in combination with precious and non-precious material. She also developed some functional and symbolic containers using the “patchwork” of circles to form supporting, light-reflective and playful rhythmical structures.

Serena Park’s works are exquisite and timeless scuptural pieces. Her jewellery combines glass blowing, traditional goldsmithing, and modern jewellery making techniques. It is about a message of harmony – a harmony between the different materials of glass, gemstones and precious metal, and also how nature tunes with the human body. Furthermore, the contrasting materials of glass and metal represent the two sides of human beings – their fragility and their tenacity. All of these elements conjure up a sense of the “marvellous” and bring the “elegant refinement of the goddess” into ordinary life. Although an aesthetic of consistency runs through all of her works, each of Serena’s collections has a totally different theme from the others – making each one a truly unique experience.

William Lee’s work is always reainsed from one piece of silver, thus “seamless”, and he has the rare gift of transposing a “soul” to the finished piece of metal.

The Beaker is an exciting sized object within his collection as normally he works on large scale form.

THis collection is also hand raised from a single sheet of silver with the hammered surface texture to bring vitality to the forms. William has added surface finishing that looks like icicles that are formed by water freezing as it droups. It conveys a benign emotion of tranquillity and peace plus a feeling of “natural” mind.

Who Ate up all the Shinga?

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Who Ate Up All the Shinga?
by Park Wan-suh
translated by Yu Young-nan and Stephen J Epstein
Columbia University Press, £17, 248 pages
Source: Weekend FT, 3/4 Oct 2009 (not available on the internet)

One of Korea’s foremost authors, Park Wan-suh has published more than 20 books. Who ate up all the Shinga?, written in 1992 but only recently translated, sits somewhere between novel and autobiography, and tells the story of the author’s upbringing during one of the most turbulent years in her country’s history

From a child’s perspective, Park shows Japan’s colonial occupation reaching into the remotest parts of the countryside. The writer’s adolescent years then find her family caught in the ideological crossfire of the civil war, first praised then persecuted for their leftist sympathies. The struggle of an entire people seems concentrated in the figure of Park’s headstrong mother.

Lyrical in its descriptions of village life, this gripping book is weitten with a confessional chattiness that contrasts with the hardships it describes.

AT.

The Caged Bird Sings – A review of The Old Garden

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Myers-t.html

Hwang Sok-yong. Photo by Park Jae-Hong

Hwang Sok-yong. Photo by Park Jae-Hong

THE OLD GARDEN
By Hwang Sok-yong
Translated by Jay Oh
539 pp. Seven Stories Press. $30

One must never speak ill of nonchronological storytelling in America, where it is considered innately more serious than the other kind. But it is worth pondering the fact that flashbacks are nowhere more common than in North Korea. A writer will start with a woman getting a medal, say, then explain how she got there; this approach leaves less room for intellectual uncertainty and divergent responses. I make the point because although Hwang Sok-yong’s “Old Garden” was written south of the 38th parallel, it resembles a North Korean narrative in structural as in ideological ways. This is not a good thing. If I never read another mournful account of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it will be too soon.
Park Jae-Hong

“The Old Garden” begins interestingly enough. The description of a former political prisoner’s first day of freedom after almost 20 years, when the mere sight of open space exhausts him, is vivid and moving. (Hwang, one of South Korea’s most famous novelists, was himself a dissident who served prison time after an unsanctioned visit to the North.) Unfortunately the protagonist, Hyun Woo, soon learns that his lover and comrade Yoon Hee has died of cancer, whereupon the novel starts going back and forth in time. We read her letters to him, his cards to her, and so on. Much of this correspondence is of the implausible kind in which the recipient is reminded in great detail of shared experiences, but the transition to Yoon Hee’s notebooks from the 1980s does not help matters. To recount the student movement’s struggle against Chun Doo Hwan in such a disjointed and meandering fashion is to take all the drama out of it.

Jay Oh’s translation is basically functional, but it feels too youthful and distinctly American. The standard Korean expression for “24 hours a day” is rendered into English as “24/7,” a word meaning “shy” becomes “totally embarrassed,” and so on; this is hardly how a middle-aged man emerging from a long prison term would express himself. Other characters are made to swear in ways that could not seem less Korean: “Jesus, my mouth is watering.” The original at least has more gravitas — but that’s about it. Especially baffling is the author’s choice of a narrator. Hyun Woo is a man for whom “everything is unexciting and ordinary,” and he obviously wants us to feel the same way.

Indeed, the students’ opposition to the Chun regime is taken so much for granted that they barely seem to think at all, let alone engage in moral or philosophical debate. Does Hwang know how fatuous they sound? His later novel “The Guest” (which preceded this one into English translation) is a more nuanced affair, but here there is little sign of a critical or ironic distance between the author and his characters. When Hyun Woo says the Kwangju massacre of 1980 made him realize “our enemy was not the North,” we are evidently to agree that this was the only possible conclusion. And when another man explains his newfound sympathy for Pyongyang with the words “I just decided to be on their side, O.K.?” (the Valley Girl tones of the translation are not always inappropriate), we are to feel something other than the urge to hurl him across the DMZ. Yoon Hee, who is clearly the author’s favorite, grows more insufferable with every page. Having chosen to live in West Berlin, she is horrified when East Germany collapses, and worries that North Korea may follow suit. “This is not the solution. At least they had the correct beginning, didn’t they?”

The striving for simplicity and emotionality among students bewildered by long reading lists is, as the historian Ernst Nolte once wrote, “almost disgustingly easy to explain.” Harder to understand is why a man of Hwang’s age and experience would want to present this striving as something the world needs more of. (According to the publisher, Hwang is organizing a “peace train” that will go from Paris through North to South Korea — though I suspect he wants to stay on until Stockholm.) Having studied in Seoul in the mid-1980s, and witnessed the bravery of the demonstrators on many occasions, I was ready to like Hwang’s characters for helping to end military rule. Alas, he has so little apparent respect for the ensuing bourgeois democracy that he describes them cursing the transition to it. The hunch that we are dealing here with an ideology even sillier than Marxism is confirmed in one of Yoon Hee’s lines: “It’s a fight that has continued for over a hundred years since we opened up the port.” In other words, Korea’s problems began when it ceased to be the Hermit Kingdom. The penny drops: this is how the students could have fought so heroically against a pro-American dictator in Seoul, yet found so little cause to criticize the paranoid nationalist thugs in Pyongyang. “The Old Garden” thus raises an interesting question despite itself. Should we admire these people for making South Korea less like North Korea, if they were aiming for the opposite effect?

B. R. Myers, the author of “A Reader’s Manifesto,” is a researcher at Dongseo University in South Korea. His forthcoming book, “The Cleanest Race,” is about North Korea’s worldview.