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One
of the first places I almost always take friends that visit Busan is
Jagalchi fish market. It’s a strange place. While
it’s a pretty well-established place to visit, the fish market is a bit
of an oddity. Going and watching old women gut and chop up
dead fish is not exactly akin to relaxing on the beach in the ranks of
must-do tourist activities. The best explanation I can come
up with for why I keep going back, is that I unknowingly despise fish.
Some inner chamber of my subconscious mind must love to watch
them suffer and squirm. Strangely, consciously I’ve got
nothing against fish. I don’t love them, but my enjoyment of
Jagalchi market must go beyond pure aquatic schadenfreude. (Squid, on
the other hand, are truly evil and horrible creatures.)
So here are some other possible reasons why I like the fish market so much.
-It’s
pretty much a free aquarium. But weirder and scarier,
like a horror aquarium. So many creepy, freakish
looking creatures, packed into tanks while their friends and family are
being hacked apart and gutted above them.
-The fish market is one of the best spots to photograph people in Busan. It does feel slightly exploitative to walk around snapping photos of poor people while they’re working. It made me think of a few unhappy years I spent as a house painter, and how I’d have felt had groups of Korean tourists crowded around me with their expensive cameras, taking pictures of me while I suffered through my work day. It’s gotta be really annoying, still, you can get some pretty cool photos.
-Getting
sashimi can be fun. On the second floor of the indoor area
can be a great place for some cheap seafood. While you won’t
be blown away by any extraordinarily sanitary conditions, at least
you’ll know it’s fresh when they guy brings it to you, still alive, to
ask if the fish he’s about to kill and feed you looks okay.
Also the fish being cooked on the grills outside, along the
street, look and smell fantastic.
-It’s convenient. Right beside Nampo-dong. Only a few stops from Busan Station. It’s definitely easy to find and get around. Stop by for a few minutes before catching your train, or make it part of a Nampo shopping day.
-There
are some great views of the port and of the surrounding hillside
neighborhoods here. It’s definitely worth a look around.
Also, try going to the top of the Lotte Department store in
Nampo. There’s a sky garden that has some of my favorite
views of Busan.
Well it may not be the most crowd-pleasing, relaxing, or pleasant smelling spot in Busan. Jagalchi wins major points for being among the most interesting places. You’ll definitely see things that you just aren’t gonna experience in too many other places.
Directions: Take the Orange metro line to Jagalchi Station. Go out exit 10. Walk straight until you see the market gate on your right, follow that street until the end.
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So, what do you believe – was the Korean War a civil war, or an international war? Or, did Kim Il-sung start it? China’s Vice President, Xi Jinping, angered the South Korean Foreign Minister, Kim Sung-hwan
Beijing stepped forward to set things straight after Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping’s remarks that the Korean War was “a just war to defend peace against aggression from the U.S.” got on the nerves of Seoul and Washington.
Xi’s speech Monday during a meeting with veterans of the Chinese People’s Volunteers to commemorate the 60th anniversary of China’s entry into the war made South Koreans uncomfortable as it sounded like a denial of the fact that North Korea was to blame for the war.
State-run Xinhua News and the Chinese Communist Party’s organ People’s Daily ran an article on their websites Thursday that acknowledged that the Korean War was started by North Korea’s invasion based on former Soviet Union documents.
The article written in 2005 by Xu Yan, professor at the National Defense University of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, noted that regardless of who fired first, the Korean War was a civil war.
Xu said the Korean War from June 25, 1950 through July 1953 was a civil war and China’s assistance of North Korea against the U.S. between October 1950 and July 1953, in what was an international war, must be strictly distinguished from it.
While the Korean War started by the North and aimed at unifying the divided Koreas ended with no clear winner, the war against the U.S. was victorious as it drove the “invaders” 400 kilometers south, Xu said.
This Russian veteran’s testimony certainly makes it look “international”. Bruce Cumings rejected the entire question, characterizing it as “Koreans invading Korea.” William Stueck simply called it a “tragedy” for Koreans. The safest play is not to let oneself be sucked into the various nationalistic sentiments still at war – technically. Every governments’ perspective is still valid, because each opinion is still backed with a gun.
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Robert Kelly compares and contrasts the two Germanies before unification with the Koreas now, to gauge how unification on the Korean peninsula will go. The picture is mostly a depressing study in contrasts.
Once the ‘leading’ economic performer of the east bloc, East Germany was wealthier than North Korea is now, and was heavily subsidised by the USSR throughout most the Cold War period. Less important North Korea never received such big handouts. Its current GDP per capita today is at most US$1,700; East Germany in 1989 was $10,000 (non-adjusted figures).
Worse still, North Korea trails the old East Germany in almost every area: environmental management, infrastructure, labour productivity, health care, education, technology, and, given this substantial lag, the cost of Korean unification will be much higher than that which took place between East and West Germany with the collapse of the Soviet Union. While, over 20 years, West Germany transferred 1.2 trillion euros [2] to the 16 million people of 1989’s East Germany, North Korea’s larger and poorer population of nearly 24.5 million would require much more support.
East Germany and the Soviets misled the world, claiming East Germany was modern and advanced, yet when West Germany finally pulled the lid off, almost everything turned out to be outmoded or unusable: a poor telecommunication system, wretched cars, labour ignorant of computers or basic office devices, World War II infrastructure still unrepaired. North Korea is probably worse.
Hence, South Korea is less capable than West Germany of effecting unification. Aside from the economic challenge, it has weaker political institutions, its mercurial parties change names quickly, and political unresponsiveness engenders a street-protest culture and brawling in the National Assembly. It lacks the state capacity West Germany had in 1989, and faces a greater communist-half burden. Overloading South Korea’s still maturing democracy may leave North Korea in a semi-annexed limbo like the West Bank.
The international situation today is also less conducive to unification. American power peaked in 1989 — the USSR was in decline and China was still far off. Today, a weakening US and a rising China make it harder for the US to support South Korea in any contest with China or North Korea over unification. South Korea will have to do most of the work on its own, allowing China to more easily dictate the terms of unification [3]: such as no US forces north of the DMZ or even on the peninsula at all (the ‘finlandisation’ of Korea).
Back in 1989, East Germany’s patron, the collapsing USSR, could no longer afford the Cold War contest. The USSR sought to retrench geopolitically and restart its economy. Gorbachev abandoned the subsidisation of his eastern bloc albatross. China, however, is not overextended — by contrast it is just beginning international expansion, as result of its rising strength. Tiananmen Square [4] proved China’s willingness to maintain the one-party state, and Gorbachev-style ‘new thinking,’ which helped facilitate German unification, does not seem forthcoming regarding Korean unification. China can indeed carry a client albatross, and, rather than withdrawing, it is projecting its interests into the periphery.
Beijing has more interest in North Korea than Moscow did in East Germany. North Korea borders China; East Germany was two time-zones away from Moscow. North Korea is a buffer between democratic South Korea, Japan and the US. South Korea cannot buy unity from China as West Germany did from the USSR. West Germany threw money at Moscow to abandon East Germany, but South Korea does not have such resources. Despite its OECD and G20 membership, South Korea is decades away from German levels of affluence. Besides, the Chinese scarcely need the money, and they will play a much harder game than the Soviets were able to 20 years ago.
Perhaps a generation yet unborn can realistically dream of unification.
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A one-woman show about adoption by Amy Mihyang, Between:
…encapsulates her experiences as a Korean American woman, a New Yorker, and most of all, a transracial adoptee. Bringing the audience with her on the plane en route from NYC to Korea, the author contrasts her journey with the echoes of other adoptees and those touched by the act of adoption. Mihyang makes us ask ourselves, “Do we need to know where we came from in order to know where we’re going?”
And as The Korea Herald describes her performance:
Mihyang adeptly embraces her characters ― from a confused young girl, desperate to assimilate in America, to a distraught woman confronting a forbidden pregnancy in Korea ― with heart-felt conviction, shifting the audience from empathy-laden sadness to laughter with ease.
For more details, see the press release here, or click on the poster below:
Apologies to readers for not mentioning the show earlier, but fortunately there’s still many chances to see it later this week!^^
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