It’s hard not to yawn.

North and South Korea have agreed to hold preliminary military talks on 8 February, in an attempt to defuse heightened tensions on the peninsula.

South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak urged the North to seize a “good chance” to improve relations.

The Koreas will discuss the two deadly attacks by Pyongyang against the South, which killed a total of 50 people, Seoul’s defence ministry said.

The talks may lead to a more senior meeting, possibly at ministerial level.

The perfect message for the New Year holiday, with South Korean citizens trapped in their family headquarters, right? A way for President Lee to look conciliatory, but then not a pushover either? Maybe. But, realistically, I think it’s a chance to bury the excitement of the last few months under a load of meetings. A summit with Kim Jong-il is news; talks leading to talks won’t match family banter for a conversation at the holiday dinner table. Full-time campaigning, Obama-style, has come to Korea!

What’s more, it seems everyone is tired of meetings.

For years the North has expertly improved its bargaining position through brutishness and unpredictability, reaping benefits at the negotiating table—extracting huge amounts of aid, usually, only to return to its old ways when expediency calls.

Mr Lee’s relatively confrontational strategy makes the point that South Korea has tired of the game. There seems to be a consensus forming in Seoul, Washington and Tokyo that the days of bribing for peace (only to repeat the same bribing in time) are at an end, at long last. North Korea’s government will not be able to enter any talks without knowing this. The fact that it faces new challenges preserving control at home, just when it is gearing up for the succession of a chubby and untested twenty-something whose only qualification appears to be that his father is Kim Jong-il, increases the pressure.

Unfortunately though, the relative strength or weakness of the North Korean position is overshadowed by the fact that China, the regime’s only friend, persists in backing its old ally by refusing to blame it for any of its various provocations. It has mitigated the effect of sanctions by ramping up its trade with the North

Pyongyang could always use its hysterical brand of diplomacy, to exploit the very real lack of coordination between Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington. Beijing and Pyongyang were always a tighter fit, even when Chinese mandarins complained of North Korean antics. And, that “lips and teeth” friendship is getting tighter still. Beijing has also said little publicly about Pyongyang’s apparent re-nuclearization.

There are three possible explanations for China’s extraordinary tolerance of the Kims’ roguery. One is that it has some sympathy for the North’s claim of being the injured party. An international inquiry blaming North Korea did not lay to rest all the conspiracy theories about the sinking of the Cheonan. And North Korea had repeatedly threatened dire reprisals if military exercises in disputed waters near its shore involved live firing, as those in November did. (In joint exercises in the same area this week, American and South Korean forces cancelled live-fire artillery drills.) Even so it is hard to dispute that the North Korean response was, in the words of Shen Dingli, a Chinese scholar, “completely excessive, disproportionate and outrageous”.

A second explanation is that China’s alliance with North Korea—“as close as lips and teeth”, as the catchphrase has it—gives the Kims special licence. On a trip to Pyongyang last year Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, visited the grave of Mao Anying, a son of Mao Zedong, who died fighting as a Chinese “volunteer” in the Korean war of 1950-53.

That also seems limp. China’s leaders are not a sentimental lot, and if they cling to an alliance with the North Korean regime it must be because they believe it in China’s interests. Which leaves the suggestion that the officials Mr Chun was quoting were either out of line, telling their interlocutor what he wanted to hear or, perhaps, ahead of their time. Mr Chun himself described a generational shift in Chinese attitudes and noted that the Chinese envoy to the six-country talks on North Korea was, contrary to his hopes, not one of the enlightened sophisticates. Rather it was (and still is) Wu Dawei, an older man, whom he called China’s “most incompetent official”, and the American scribe summed up as “an arrogant, Marx-spouting former Red Guard”. The old guard in China still seems to be running Korea policy.

Another leaked cable contains an account of a meeting last year between a senior American official and Singapore’s “minister mentor”, Lee Kuan Yew. He is reported as giving a typically no-nonsense summation of the North Koreans. They are “psychopathic types, with a flabby old chap for a leader who prances around stadiums seeking adulation”, though the next leader may not have “the gumption or the bile of his father and grandfather. He may not be prepared to see people die like flies.” The cable summarises the minister mentor’s view: though China would rather North Korea did not have nukes, it would prefer—even if Japan were also to “go nuclear” in response—a nuclear North Korea to an American presence on its own border.

I’m thrilled President Lee is learning politics. But, he can’t make up for a crippled trilateral quasi-alliance – Hitoshi Tanaka offers some advice for what it’s worth – with his main protectors or Beijing’s geopolitical ambitions with a speech.

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Filed under: East Asia, Korea, Military Tagged: china, dprk, hu jintao, kim jong il, kim jong un, lee myung bak, marcus noland, prc, rajin-sonbong, rok

“‘We want a leader who has used public transportation.’” (The Second World, p. 201) Put that on a placard! But, The Economist argues Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is “not done yet”.

Though the size of Egypt’s public protests seem quite impressive on television, it remains unclear to me whether the turnout represents mass opposition of sufficient scope to swamp the regime’s considerable capacity for coercive containment. It’s important to remember that Cairo itself contains almost 8m inhabitants, whilst the larger metropolitan area boasts upwards of 20m souls. Alexandria, which has seen some of the largest and energetic protests, is a city of over 4m. The mass in mass opposition is generally a relatively small portion of the overall population, but it’s not obvious to me that the protests so far have added up to enough to force regime change. So far they haven’t. If these numbers swell, it may well be all over but the cryin’. Al-Jazeera reports that opposition leaders are calling for over a million protesters to take to the streets tomorrow, as well as for a general rolling strike. And there is always the question of whom the grunts and cops will ultimately side with when the rubber bullets hit the road.

Let me say categorically, that the optimal solution for the US does not involve Vice-President Omar Suleiman. Even if the next ruler of Egypt is not Gamal Mubarak, Suleiman is just another autocrat. I’d like to see the US follow these pundits’ advice, particularly the broad point about communicating to the street about outcomes. But, that said, Americans, as well as Washington, has to be ready to accept Islamists. Washington can also rein in the Egyptian military, but perhaps the EU can deal with the opposition, a point Parag Khanna quoted. “‘We like the Europeans because they are less committed to Mubarak, and have the kind of parliaments to which we aspire’, a reformist politician explained.” (The Second World, p. 200) In the end, I accept Khanna’s main argument: “The Western policy of prizing stability over democracy has become a pathetic cliche, for such stability never lasts more than a generation and culminates in instability.” (p. 201) Yet whether the Obama administration acknowledges this is unclear.

As thousands of protesters in Egypt continue to call for an end to President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, the Obama administration is being careful not to advocate a specific outcome in the conflict, instead calling for an “orderly transition” to a more representative form of government in the country.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hit the airwaves Sunday calling on Egypt to move toward a more open political system, but stopped short of calling for Mubarak to step down.

Oh, the folly of power.

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Filed under: Africa, bhtv, Europe, USA Tagged: barack h. obama, egypt, eli lake, eu, heather hurlburt, hillary rodham clinton, hosni mubarak, muslim brotherhood, omar suleiman, parag khanna, protests

Twenty three years later, on a day that seems the very antithesis of summer, Shane and I survey the remains of those games, Olympic Park. The Rough Guide we often consult on these matters tell us that "there's a general air of decay about the place-- but that's part of its appeal." It's right. As we walk, we don't see many others, being winter and a weekday. The buildings look as though they are trying their hardest not to look like they were designed by a Cold War era architect. 


We continue on through to the sculpture park, exhibiting works by artists from a handful of the countries who competed. The individual monuments strike me as spartan, but the collaborative nature of the sculpture series hints at a more dramatic story. Larger works stand solitary spread over the grounds, smaller works cluster together. Olympic Park also contains a small art museum. It's nice to know that art got some attention at an event that is all about athletics.






At the front of the park, the air becomes energized. The Olympic flame continues to burn on under the colossal World Peace Gate. Flags from each participating nation still wave, including flags that have outlasted the nations themselves, like Zaire, East and West Germany, the Soviet Union, and North and South Yemen. Lots of children, on winter break from public school, ice skate on the rink next to the gate. We admire the grotesque-faced totems lining the wide walkways. 


I shiver and snap a few more pictures and Shane catches some last glimpses of the World Peace Gate. We walk to the subway, away from this serene place that once held such spectacle, toward our next destination. 

This time I’m not apologizing for the weak content but rather for storing links I want to check out more fully when I return to my own computer.  I guess these links seem important to me so I am attempting to provide value in my posts. The content is good, but it is not mine and I cannot comment fully upon it.

Scientific American describes instances of under and over education.  Or, about cowardly teachers and insufficiently attentive teachers: American biology teachers are avoiding evolution content and French teachers are making GMOs.

Regarding the former link, in which some teachers simply gloss over or skip content, I wonder if we ESL teachers do the same with cursing and the like.  The closest I get to teaching ‘forbidden English’ is to explain what gee or gosh or dang really mean – I use the example, excellent in Korea, of stubbing my toe and saying “18″.  Oh, that and telling the students with “Fuck” on their shirt to put their coat on over it and not bring it back to my class.

Shelly Terrell is encouraging educators to set 30 new goals for themselves in an effort to keep up with technological changes and changes in teaching theory – a way of keeping yourself current. Teach Paperless confirms that technology will change and discusses what we can do with it.

Kalinago has a post describing how she became an ESL teacher and Scott Thornbury wonders if ESL education is a profession.  My own path to ESL was a winding one and I still struggle to be a professional so I hope to read these soon.

Finally, some amusing news on the same level as finding that a fortune telling class has been canceled due to unforeseen circumstances, we learn that a  class on weather has been canceled due to bad weather. Via Boingboing

UPDATED:  Testing boosts learning and a two-year-old learns the Periodic Table.

And Learning to learn.  Here is an ecxerpt:

Kristin E. Bonnie, an assistant professor of psychology at Beloit College, said that on her tests, she has always let students pick a few questions on the multiple-choice portion (say 3 of 25) that won’t be graded. It’s a way to show students that she understands they may not grasp everything right away.

In the past, she just let students cross out the questions they didn’t want to answer. Now, she makes them answer all the questions — and to exempt a question from grading, students must pick from a list she provides of the reasons they are selecting that question. Students choose from options such as “I don’t remember the material” or “I was able to narrow it down to two possibilities, but not one” or “I didn’t study” or “I’m not confident of my answer,” among others.

The idea is to make students think for just a minute about why they don’t know an answer (or don’t know it with confidence).

In another metacognition strategy, students are asked, after they take exams and then when they receive their grades, to take a few moments for reflection and to answer such questions as how much they studied, how they studied, and so forth. Those reflections can be anonymous — understandable, Bonnie said, when she reads a reflection that states simply “there wasn’t a whole lot of studying going on” (although she quipped that she had a good idea who wrote that response).

By forcing students to stop for a few minutes and associate their study habits with their exam performance, and to think about why they don’t know an answer, the academics hope to change students’ habits — to encourage them to figure out what they don’t know and to study in more effective ways (and more). “We want those who are not doing well to think about it,” Bonnie said.