Author: Mick Hartley

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” with this agreement. Japan agreed to pay ¥1 billion (₩9.7 billion; $8.3 million) to a fund supporting surviving victims while South Korea agreed to refrain from criticizing Japan regarding the issue and to work to remove a statue memorializing the victims from in front of the Japanese embassy in Seoul…

But many of the comfort women and their descendants are not happy with what they claimed was a rushed settlement, made without their agreement. And any specification that South Korea should agree to refrain for all time from criticizing Japan regarding the issue is manifestly unjust – and unrealistic.

And now:

Japan has formally protested against a sculpture in a privately owned botanical garden in Korea that represents Prime Minister Shinzo Abe prostrating himself in front of a World War II sex slave.

The botanical garden has now canceled the official unveiling of the sculpture scheduled for next month.

After Japanese news media picked up the story on Sunday, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said, "If the reports are accurate, then there would be a decisive impact on Japan-Korea relations."

The work, entitled "Eternal Atonement," adorns the Korea Botanic Garden in Pyeongchang, Gangwon Province.

[Photo: Yonhap]

Wang Gwang-hyun, the sculptor, said, "The work urges [Abe] to reflect on his reluctance to apologize for the forced colonization of Korea and the comfort women issue," the euphemism for the sexual enslavement of Korean and other Asian women for the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II.

The conservative Sankei Shimbun on Tuesday said the statue is drawing criticism even within Korea for "diplomatic discourtesy" and for being "childish."

The gold-colored installation is less than persuasively executed, and there has been some head-scratching here why it would spark threats of a "decisive impact" from the top of the Japanese government given that the park is in private hands.

The Foreign Ministry here only said that Japan "appears to be worried about international discourtesy toward the leader of another country."

Very touchy on this, the Japanese.

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Women make butter by the stream © Natela Grigalashvili

21-year old Khatuna is a mother of three. She married at 14, and always moves with her family © Natela Grigalashvili

Makvala gathering vegetables © Natela Grigalashvili

Night on the summer pastures © Natela Grigalashvili

home:

A defector allegedly infected with COVID-19 who recently crossed over the inter-Korean border had turned himself in to Kaesong Ministry of State Security (MSS) officials several days after arriving in the city and is now being confined at a local MSS compound, Daily NK has learned.

A source in North Korea told Daily NK yesterday that the man had stayed at a friend’s house in Kaesong for “several days” before turning himself in.

“Soon after he was arrested by MSS agents in Kaesong, his case was reported to the MSS [in Pyongyang] and word even reached the Supreme Leader [North Korean leader Kim Jong Un],” the source said.

According to the source, the Kaesong MSS officials took the man to a hospital in the city immediately after his arrest to conduct blood and urine tests, an X-ray, and other tests. The test results were sent to the Central Anti-epidemic Committee and even reported to Kim Jong Un.

Typically, any defector who returns to North Korea – regardless of how they entered the country – is taken into custody by the MSS in Pyongyang and interrogated at a “special” detention center.

In this case, MSS officials decided to isolate the man for 30 days in Kaesong to monitor his health because he was already suspected of having contracted COVID-19, according to the source.

The man, who is referred to in state media as a “runaway,” is now undergoing a “first-round” of interrogations in an isolated room connected to the interrogation room at the Kaesong MSS compound, the source said.

“The runaway to South Korea had a fever, but [the authorities believe] it wasn’t due to the virus [COVID-19]. [They] believe that he may have caught a cold while crossing the border and have decided to isolate him and monitor [his health],” explained the source.

So they don't really believe the man has Covid-19, but he's a useful propaganda tool nonetheless.

It is possible that North Korean authorities chose to alert the entire population through Korean Central TV (KCTV) about the returnee’s suspected COVID-19 infection to increase vigilance toward the disease and justify the ramping up of surveillance and crackdowns near the country’s borders.

Some within North Korea think that the country’s leadership is simply trying to push responsibility for a COVID-19 outbreak on South Korea and turn people’s attention away from the country’s economic troubles, according to the source….

The source further reported that municipal officials in Kaesong, which is now under a state of emergency, have been ordered to completely lock down the city until additional orders by the communist party are handed down, and to also cancel any permits for travel in and out of the city.

The parallel between the poison of Covid-19 coming to the pure North from the South, and the danger of the minds of North Koreans being infected by poisonous information from the South  – always a concern – is perfectly suited to the North's propaganda. They may not be familiar with Susan Sontag's "Illness as Metaphor" in Pyongyang, but they've got the general idea.

Hawley Mews, Camden:

From Irony.

ms of racism, as anti-Semitism often does, it disqualifies Jews from concern.

Those who favor this revisionist definition have made so much headway that Merriam-Webster has agreed to incorporate it. How will we address a form of racism that purports to “punch up” against an evil elite? Most anti-Semitism in the West is nonsystemic, but its very nature is being systematically eclipsed. The loneliest hatred lives on, as it has for thousands of years—outside the ambit of our racial reckoning.

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[Photos © Oleg Pulemjotov]

Mohammad-Hadi Homayoun, a professor at Imam Sadegh University and Iran’s former Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance: people who say that man has been to the moon are almost certainly lying, but when the Hidden Imam arrives, travel to the moon and other planets will become possible, disease will disappear, and we'll be able to communicate with the jinns….

Looking forward to it.

Amusing. Sandra Boynton’s CHANSON PROFONDE with Yo-Yo Ma:

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeAfI7GxUQQ&w=550&h=309]

Bonus (via the Metafilter comments) – Marty Feldman: The Sauce Song. Back when HP Sauce graced its bottles with both English and French.

ze: 11pt”>“Families have been separated and small kids have been left alone. The families of the students who refused to return have been detained. Others have been forced to message their children and tell them to come back. It is totally controlled,” said Zulfikar Ali, a Uighur activist in Istanbul. “We never dreamt it could get so bad so fast. They started with the religious people, but they use Islamophobia to lie to the West and say that we are terrorists.”

Turkey initially took a supportive stance towards the Uighurs, accepting 173 escapees who had been imprisoned in Thailand in July 2015. On the eve of a visit to China in the same month President Erdogan said that he was raising concerns about the treatment of the Uighurs “at the highest level”.

But since 2017 China has offered a series of lifelines to the struggling Turkish economy, including large investments in infrastructure projects and the extension of a $400 million credit swap last month. Emine Erdogan, the president’s wife, embraces traditional Chinese medicine and has hosted a conference on the subject in Istanbul. In March, China shipped an unspecified Covid-19 drug to the Turkish health ministry.

As relations have warmed Mr Erdogan has stopped talking about the Uighurs’ plight, and many living in exile in Turkey have been arrested and threatened with deportation.

Mr Parac was detained for a time in November 2017, two months after he published a book of poetry. Like many others, he is now unable to renew his Turkish residency and is living without documents, in fear of being stopped again by the police. Having spent three years in prison in the late 1990s, he knows what fate awaits him back in Xinjiang.

“If I go back and it is just death waiting for me it is no problem. But the thing is the torture, it is unimaginable,” he said. “For people like us, without papers, deportation is easy. All the time I am in fear.”