Saturday 23rd April, 2011
Tiger and Emma arrived back on Thursday so we thought we'd have lunch together today for a much needed catchup. We decided to go see the Birthplace of Kim Jong Yeoung, He is a Korean Artist, and his Traditional Korean home is widely mentioned in Korean children's songs, such as 'Spring is my hometown'
We left just before midday and caught a cab to the residence. When we arrived, it was all closed up and we thought it was abit odd. The only reason why we came is because it is listed as a tourist attraction so we wondered why it was locked up. We were a little disappointed, but figured it was probably closed on weekends.
We walked back towards the Changwon Train Station to get some lunch at the Paris Baguette. I gave Emma some Cadbury Creme Easter Eggs that mum had sent me, as here in Korea they do not celebrate the holiday. As it was late in the afternoon, we caught a cab back to our houses as I had to get ready as Daniel and I were heading into Busan tonight.
Daniel has always wanted to get a tattoo and now seemed to be the right time to do it. He found this great Tattoo artist based in Busan and set up an appointment with him at 7pm. The tattoo shop was not what I imagined. As we drove along the shop front, we were looking out for a tattoo shop, but couldn't see anything. We gave Horitatsu a call and found out he worked from his apartment. We parked the car and he met us downstairs.
The apartment was on the 37 floor or a high rise apartment complex in Centum City. Once inside, it was nice and spacious and he had a great view of the city below him. He also had a cute little pekingese dog called Yoko, I just fell in love with her.
Yoko!!
Yoko's friend
He sat Daniel down and talk him through the process. Horitatsu spoke little English, but enough for us to understand him. He left us waiting for a little while as he went into the next room to get the design he'd drawn up. Daniel would have ' This too shall pass' inked onto his back shoulder.
Horitatsu's work station
Daniel took his shirt off and Horitatsu transferred the image onto his skin. With the text looking good and the position correct, it was time for the tattooing to begin.
This was Daniel first tattoo and it was all very exciting!!! I sat there, opposite Daniel with Yoko in my arms, watching while Horitatsu worked on his back. The whole process took about an hour and I was impressed with what a great job Horitatsu did.
TAH_2754
Daniel getting inked
Horitatsu when through the after care with Daniel and with that, we said our goodbyes; but not for long. Daniel has another design in the making, so we'll probably be back after our Spain trip to start the new ink.
Now that I've seen the process from start to finish it kinda makes me want to get a tattoo. For the time being, I'll stick to piercings but we'll see what happens
Daniel's finished tattoo
Getting inked in Busan remains copyright of the author Two Otters, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.
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Relationships with a local – where do you stand? (readers in Korea – select all that apply)
I’m interested in one (23%, 32 Votes)
I’m single (20%, 28 Votes)
I’m dating one (19%, 27 Votes)
I’m with a foreigner / non-Korean (18%, 25 Votes)
I’m married to one (17%, 24 Votes)
I’ll let you know once I find a local I like (11%, 16 Votes)
It didn’t work out, but I’d try again (8%, 12 Votes)
I’m engaged to one (5%, 7 Votes)
It didn’t work out, and I wouldn’t try again (5%, 7 Votes)
Total Voters: 142
A pleasantly diverse set of data.
Which of these (if any) would be worth money to you? (For readers around the world – select as many as apply)
I’d use one for free, but I wouldn’t pay for them (51%, 36 Votes)
A database of restaurants (37%, 26 Votes)
A Korean phrasebook on my smartphone / iPod (37%, 26 Votes)
An itinerary of what to see in Korea (35%, 25 Votes)
Directions to everywhere on my smartphone / iPod (34%, 24 Votes)
A database of destinations / attractions (31%, 22 Votes)
An itinerary of what to see in Seoul (27%, 19 Votes)
Total Voters: 71
Cheapskates, most of you! 
The other voters – if I see anything cool on the app stores I’ll feature it here.
Be sure to check out the two polls for May (click through to chrisinsouthkorea.com’s main page if you’re in an RSS feed):
© Chris Backe – 2011
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This post was originally published on my blog, Chris in South Korea. If you are reading this on another website and there is no linkback or credit given, you are reading an UNAUTHORIZED FEED.
Chaebol Object to Shareholder Activism: Not Shocking
This almost hilarious article appeared in the FT Beyond BRICs blog. Koreans have long known that the chaebol dominate Korean life. Shareholder rights is, for the most part, a foreign concept. Financial efficiency may be a stated goal but is not seriously pursued. That should be the demand made by shareholders. The funny thing is that the article tries to point out the NPF is being criticized for being a silent partner of the chaebol. That is a fact. More importantly, the problem is that the status quo affects not only current and future shareholders, but also affects disaffected employees, and Korean society as well.
Korean Corporate Personnel Practices are a Mess
Korean corporations perform an annual re-shuffling at the higher echelons of the executive ranks. At the end of each calendar year, horse-trading occurs in earnest. Executives lobby and politic to obtain new roles, or to keep their existing ones. In addition, this promotion process includes the promotion (or not) of junior executives to become senior executives. To native Koreans with working experience at a chaebol, this is nothing new. It is an age-old, antiquated process in which the level of executive productivity drops to…almost zero. All day, all night, at dinner, and thereafter, this process dominates everything. This type of deal-making, in which executives are shuffled among divisions or departments, occurs in a way that would make the team owners of the U.S. NFL or English Premier League jealous.
On an individual level, the effort of an executive to obtain job security for the next year is understandable. As a senior person rises in the ranks of a chaebol, the number of alternative jobs at different companies declines precipitously. Therefore, that executive wants to, needs to, secure himself for the coming year. Given that there are relatively few large Korean corporations, the options are very limited, which means that if there is no position, then there is almost certain unemployment (after a transition period), without the sophisticated pension plans that exist in the U.S. or Europe. Without an economic structure that supports small-business creation, the choices of alternate employee are few and far between. It is no wonder, then, that an individual executive must be involved: he has virtually no other choice.
Shareholders Should Be Appalled
While an individual employee may be acting in his own best interest, the shareholder should be appalled at this annual practice. At the end of each calendar year (in Korean language newspapers), an announcement by each of the largest chaebol which reports the names of the new heads of particular divisions. Given that this process lasts for at least a month and more likely six weeks, this is more than 10% of the entire year is used for this archaic practice.
This, of course, is only the tip of the very large iceberg. Executives at the largest chaebol have had, and continue to have, expense accounts from which dining and entertainment, of all sorts, are paid. The efficiency at the largest chaebol have been called into question for a long time. The compensation of these executives in shares of the company are relatively low. It is the view of the Seoul Gyopo Guide that this practice, i.e. low equity participation by employees, is one source of the continued divide between the rise in stock prices and the lack of increase in Koreans’ wealth. When coupled with inflation, the Korean corporate employee’s real earnings (nominal earnings adjusted for inflation) has made life even more stressful for the “salary man” in Korea. Given that the employees own little stock in their own company, why would this person challenge the status quo to improve the financial performance of his/her company? It would be almost foolish to do so.
The “greater good” of the Korean economy as a whole has been used to excuse the obvious missteps of certain Korean chaebol. Samsung Everland convertible bond, SK Corporation accounting: these are just two, but not the only, famous cases where obvious wrong has occurred but in which management remains. Another company is being charged now of keeping accounts outside the corporation for personal use. The Seoul Gyopo Guide’s only statement about these and other similar events is that native Koreans are well-aware of these practices, therefore it is no wonder that an everyday Korean believes that he/she is powerless against the status quo, and that conformity is the safer, more prosperous route.
“Shareholder Rights” is a Foreign Concept in Korea
The FT blog points out the NPF to be the largest shareholder of many of Korea’s largest companies. That is a fact. However, the issue that the article does not make is that as the largest shareholder, and one of the most important investors in the world, it is not using its voting power to demand greater improvements in efficiency and performance of its largest holdings. The implications are two-fold at the minimum. First, outside investors would find Korean companies even more attractive investments if there were greater transparency and efficiency at the corporate level. The NPF, as the article has mentioned, has been accused of being a silent partner of chaebol management. Second, the Korean population has grown immune to this entire practice as “the way it is.” Koreans have little belief, systematically, that their savings are being properly, efficiently managed. Korean employees do not want their earnings invested in their own company’s stock, because they see and understand how great the inefficiencies are, and how much they affect the company during the year.
Conclusions
Of course, there are exceptions to all of these statements. Nevertheless, everyday Korean life is full of an incredible amount of stress. Part of that stress can be attributed to the knowledge of large, systematic issues facing Korean life, and perhaps more importantly, the lack of hope for future changes to these fundamental issues. It is the opinion of the Seoul Gyopo Guide that the lack of shareholder rights and the lack of exercise of those rights when obtained is a systematic barrier to the fundamental improvement of the Korean economy. Perhaps some of the observations above are news to those unfamiliar with Korea. Korea itself is a country full of contradictions and is widely misunderstood: the Seoul Gyopo Guide exists to remove some of that misunderstanding. However, everyday Koreans are well-aware of the statements made in this post; perhaps it will require greater shareholder activism from foreign investors to help improve the situation. Clearly, those that benefit from the status quo aren’t interested in changes, and this blog has made that clear on numerous occasions. Perhaps the FT Blog article will help in some small way. Until the largest shareholders begin to demand fundamental changes on behalf of their clients, that change is unlikely.
At Goodreads, I gave it four stars because I see great relevance with my own teaching position. Otherwise, the discussion about his life choices and family problems – though well-written – didn’t appeal to me and took a little away from the book. I was also disappointed in his overly florid prose, brimming with metaphor and allusions to literary classics. Perhaps he was working to defend employment; a sort of “Look at me! I know books! I really am a good teacher.”
I do think he is a good teacher and I intend to try a few of the techniques he described in my classes. I can do that because the whole adjunct professor – community college- education inflation thing he describes is a pretty good description of my own work as an ESL teacher at a university in Korea. The parallels might not be perfect, but they are clear.
Professor X has written an excellent expose on the problems of an artificial demand for education requiring an artificial supply of professors. There are several types of jobs out there that don’t require a university education. Although getting an education is not normally a bad thing, getting hugely in debt to find a job that doesn’t really require that training is.
X didn’t mention it, but I think this artificial need for a university degree could be compared to the artificial requirements for police jobs that limited the number of females that could apply. Eventually, feminists pointed out that most police work doesn’t require as much masculine physicality as claimed and more women were hired.
Anyway, more jobs either claim to require a degree or have so many degree holders applying that not having one is an immediate negative. President Obama and general opinion in the wider world hold that everyone should get as much education as they can.
Universities now see a lot of students who don’t have the basic skills necessary so they need to offer classes in remedial studies. The tenured profs are busy so adjuncts are hired. They are not treated so well by the university they work for. Prof X had no complaints about his superiors individually but did point out that he received no benefits nor was there a system for advancement. He often felt closer to his students, arriving almost by stealth at night, spending a few hours and going home, than he did to the ‘real’ professors who had perks like desks and such.
The students, however, had never planned on a university education and now were trying to catch up on years of neglect in order to attend real university. A quote from a student’s evaluation of X: “Before this I would of never voluntarily read a book. But now I almost have a desire to pick one up and read.”
It’s too late to choose a pseudonym for myself, so let me describe working conditions at X University in South Korea. The decision was made years ago to require six semesters of ESL for every student. A large number of native speakers were hired and described as “Visiting Professors” in English but as “Instructors” in Korean. Many of their students could use English capability in looking for work or in other ways to expand their horizons but few really needed it. The ESL department was a PR exercise to attract, I don’t know – Parents(?) to think about the university. Luckily for the students, the profe..sorry, instructors were expected to follow a bell curve by first filling in the A quota, then the B quota then the rest. It was a required class but luckily it was an easy one to get high grades in.
The book was also reviewed in Salon twice (1, 2) and I started writing about it when I was partway through.
The launches and the threats they provoke do raise concerns. North Korea’s been pretty aggro as it undergoes a leadership transition, shelling a South Korean island near the two countries’ disputed border and showing off a new nuclear weapons facility. Provoking the North with a balloon bombardment during this sensitive time might provide some inspiration to North Koreans — but it might also provoke another showdown with an increasingly itch-trigger-fingered North.
North Koreans Hard at Work on New Uranium Reactor:
The new reactor, or at least the apparent construction of one, may be little more than cover for an extensive uranium enrichment program, since we presumably won’t be able to verify the degree of enrichment. Uranium must be highly enriched before it can be used in a nuclear (but not a radiological) weapon. A new reactor allows the North Koreans to claim that its uranium enrichment program is for the generation of electricity, which is exactly what it said about its plutonium program back in the early 1990’s.
Time to Wise Up on North Korea:
There were, to be sure, a couple of simple requests – nothing that reasonable men couldn’t attend to. There was, for instance, the matter of a “security guarantee”.
The North Koreans apparently feel the American forces, down to 28,500 from 45,000 when Carter was president in the late 1970s – he had to swallow his pride and keep them there when he wanted to bring every one of them home – are poised to attack. What would be so hard about US President Barack Obama promising to do no such thing? And while they were at it, the Americans should also agree to a formal peace treaty instead of that outmoded armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953.
Carter evinced no sign of having comprehended the advice the quartet received from Daniel Pinkston, head of the International Crisis Group’s Korea office, when he briefed the quartet in Beijing before they took off for Pyongyang.
“The US is obligated to provide negative security assurance to North Korea,” said Pinkston, but Carter’s remark “seems to imply that the US has not provided negative security assurances”. That, said Pinkston, “is not the case.” Actually, the US has offered the requisite assurance “on several occasions”, he observed.
But what “would be sufficient in the eyes of the North Korean leadership?” Pinkston asked rhetorically. “If it means things such as renouncing extended deterrence for allies in East Asia and withdrawing US forces,” he responded to his question, “then it’s not going to happen.” And as for “credible commitments and implementation of previous agreements”, he added, North Korea “clearly has reneged on its commitments or failed to implement them”.
Armitage: Korea-U.S. Relations ‘Eight and Half’:
“We don’t have to rush forward every time North Korea barks,” said Armitage. “We want a changed regime, not a regime change.”
UN Launching Emergency Food Aid Program in NKorea:
WFP stressed in a statement that the aid operation in the authoritarian single-party state “will include the highest standards of monitoring and control to ensure that food gets to where it is needed.”
Jimmy Carter Gets Hoodwinked by Pyongyang Again:
Providing food aid to North Korea remains a difficult policy decision. Clearly there is a need since the North Korean populace is suffering from the abysmal conditions imposed by the country’s economic system. Yet North Korea’s track record of belligerency, violation of UN resolutions, diversion of food aid, and resistance to economic reform and monitoring requirements undermine support for providing food assistance. Large-scale aid should not be provided without tangible changes in North Korean policies and behavior.
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Daniel Pinkston at ICG discusses North Korean-Style “Democracy” and the Prospects for True Democratisation.
Under the concept of “democratic centralism” Kim Il-sung began to establish a personalistic system fitting the term “totalitarian” or “sultanistic” in the words of Juan J. Linz.[iii] Others have described the DPRK political system as “Stalinist, corporatist, mono-organizational, neo-traditional.” Charles Armstrong correctly points out that the state has displayed all of these characteristics and the state has transformed since it was founded in 1948.
(…)A modern democracy must include free and fair elections, the protection of human rights and civil liberties, freedom of thought and of the press, freedom of religion and a separation of powers with an independent judiciary. The DPRK fails in every single category necessary for a functioning democracy. The DPRK probably has come closer to the totalitarian ideal than any of its predecessors that attempted to build a totalitarian system, and the DPRK has lasted longer than any of its peers.
Dictators and totalitarian leaders always face threats and challengers. The rent-seeking opportunities are extensive in personalistic systems, but even the greatest dictators are victims of the system because of the attention and resources that must be expended to remain in control. Terror is a common instrument in non-democratic regimes. The ruthlessness exercised in these systems and the consequences of losing power, which often results in death—or exile if lucky—lead to a culture of settling political differences violently.
The lack of internal checks and balances, and the very militarized societies built to maintain personalistic systems, often result in dictators using their militaries to settle international disputes. The North Korean case is exacerbated by national division and a sclerotic economy that obstructs any modernization of its conventional military forces. The result has been a long-term commitment to the development weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their related delivery systems.
The need for critical technologies and materials, and the desire for economies of scale in production have led to the establishment of procurement and proliferation networks for the most dangerous materials and weapon systems.[vii] WMD development, including two nuclear tests, has brought international sanctions that have compounded the DPRK’s economic plight. North Korea’s WMD threat cannot be ignored, but the very sanctions and other international pressure designed to compel Pyongyang to disarm have had little effect. Instead, they almost certainly reinforce hardliners in North Korea. This is not to suggest that sanctions should be lifted. To the contrary—but we must have realistic expectations about the effectiveness.
We should not be very optimistic about WMD disarmament, economic liberalization, the protection of human rights and civil liberties or democratization until there is a change in leadership and a change in the political structure/system. Without structural change—in other words, without a dismantling of the inter-locking institutional arrangement of the KWP, the military, and the security apparatus and the tight centralized control of economic resources—whoever is the suryŏng will not matter. Anyone would rule in a similar fashion in such an institutional environment or risk being toppled from within.
The current DPRK system is doomed to failure, but it could last for a considerable time. The international community could impose democracy through force, but that would require a very costly war that is politically untenable. Deterrence and containment are the primary policy instruments for dealing with Pyongyang for years or decades ahead. That means waiting for change generated from within, but the prospects are bleak.
Democracy in a North Korean context is almost Orwellian. But, the decent comparative analysis aside, is Pinkston implying that North Koreans gave some claim to perfecting totalitarianism, what with all the other examples in human history? What’s missing is the international context that feeds the North Korean state, and that accounts for this “prodigy”.
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Lanterns are everywhere during this time of year and the biggest challenge is getting an image that stands out. Here is one of my favorites because of the angle and color. There are a few elements that make this style of shot work and I will try and be as detailed as possible.
First of all this is an HDR shot but, it is a very controlled on at that. I will explain later after I explain the set up and whatnot, I just wanted to prepare you for that as some might not have noticed that it was.
The main part of this photo is the angle in which it was taken. I set my tripod up on the shortest setting. Basically, I just opened the legs and sat it down. I then framed the shot so that there was a little break in the pattern making it a little more interesting to the eye than just a straight flood of color (which also would have worked too!). If you notice the rich blue popping out from between the lanterns, well that is because I timed this shot to get the blue hour. These days you are looking to hit blue hour around 7 to 7:30 pm, so try to be at your location a little bit earlier and get set up.
As I said before, this is an HDR shot, so I have bracketed the shots about 2 stops apart and used a cable release to make sure there was minimal camera shake. Alternatively, you can set your camera to timer (what you would use for taking a shot that you want to be in) and if you are using a Canon, it will fire all three bracketed shots for you without having to press the button each time.
Once I get on the computer, I load the images into Photmatix and tone map them. What you are looking to do here is bring out the colors but not go way over the top. I usually bump up the saturation and the strength to create a rich effect, but here you have to be really careful (be controlled). I adjusted the white and black sliders to bring out more of the sky and also create more contrast. I kept the strength around 83 but dropped the saturation to around 50 or so to not blowout the reds.
You really have to be careful with the saturation and especially the reds. With this shot, the reds are extremely strong and thus when brought into aperture or photoshop, I had to desaturate the red a lot to maintain balance. The other tip is that if you find that you are getting a purple sky, cool your photo down by either adjusting the temperature slider or using a cooling filter. When all is said and done, add a light sharpening layer and you are done.
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