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August 29, 2005

Kim Dae-jung Gets Funky

Christina's post on journalistic foibles in the Phillippines reminds me of some of the odder things I've had to deal with since coming here. The other papers here (the Herald and the Times) refer to Kim Dae-jung as "DJ." That one took me a second to figure out. Fortunately the JoongAng's standards are higher than that. I certainly feel like some of our op-ed columns (which we're required to translate from the mother paper instead of writing ourselves) should have been "willfully destroyed," though. That said, they're just so entertaining. My favorite so far is the one that argued that Koreans are winning the global economic contest because of their innate competitiveness, as evidenced by their skill at badeuk (Go) and Kart Rider (a computer game). I also heard about a column about a year ago that extolled the virtues of Korean genetic engineering by highlighting the fact that using metal chopsticks gives Koreans the dexterity necessary to insert genes into eggs.

And the Fountain column is always very funny. I'm not sure what the purpose of it is, but it seems the writer picks a random premise out of a hat every day and then sees how he can go from that to "President Roh is bad." There have been some pretty creative ones so far. I will post links to the next interesting example.

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August 19, 2005

Island review

I got to review The Island after all.

The photo caption pretty much sums it up:

"The Island" tries to confront ethical issues of cloning too controversial and real to be bandied about in a crash-bang blockbuster.

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August 18, 2005

Radioblog!

Look right. It's a radioblog! Neat, huh? The one I put up on my last blog killed the bandwidth, but hey, this is Princeton hosting here! Plus I downgraded the quality a bit. Have a listen to the Orange Range album I bought last week ("MusiQ"). EXCELLENT stuff. And 19 tracks of fantasticness at that! Good value in Japan, even better when you consider I paid Korean prices for it (13,000 won instead of 3,000 yen). One of the best parts of living here.

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August 11, 2005

One-Sided Love

The Japan Times runs an editorial today that discusses polls of perception of "warmth" by national populations toward Japan and vice versa.

In China, 83 percent of the pollees say they feel little or no warmth toward Japan. The corresponding figure in South Korea is 75 percent. Both figures represent a worsening of sentiment toward Japan since the previous poll in 2002. At that time, people who felt little or no warmth toward Japan accounted for 67 percent in China and 69 percent in South Korea.

By contrast, 48 percent in Japan hold either some or strong feelings of warmth toward China; and 58 percent toward South Korea. Interestingly, while the figure for China represents a decrease of six percentage points from the 2002 poll, the corresponding figure for South Korea has gone up by five percentage points probably due to the "Hanryu" boom or heightened interest among Japanese in South Korean movies and TV dramas.

In the other poll conducted in early July in Japan and the U.S., to which some 1,000 people responded in each country, 52 percent of the Japanese pollees say the U.S. government cannot be trusted, an increase of 26 percentage points from a similar poll in 1991. By contrast, 59 percent in the U.S. regard the Japanese government as trustworthy.

Americans' general warm feeling toward Japan is not reciprocated by Japanese. While 81 percent in the U.S. say they feel some warmth or have a strong warm feeling toward Japan, only 68 percent in Japan have such a feeling toward the U.S.

What a fascinating interplay of culture and politics. It'll be interesting to see if Koizumi goes through with his Yasukuni Shrine visit this year.

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August 10, 2005

Ben is Stupid: The Sequel

Not only don't I know Korean or Korean culture, I am reminded that I didn't learn how to be a journalist in two weeks either. Specifically, I am ashamed of a View from the Pew column I wrote last month on Yeouido Full Gospel Church. Though everything in the piece is factually true, I treated it in a judgmental, snarky, un-Christian and unjournalistic way. Really, reading the article now, the levels of hypocrisy I displayed are horrific. I was rightfully chewed out the next day (the only reason it got in the paper at all was because the editor was out). Part of the problem, though not an excuse, was that I wasn't sure the degree to which the "column" was supposed to include my own opinion (my editor assures me that degree is precisely zero). Sure, the sermon was rather toxic. Sure, they dragged me off to an office building and sat me down for two and a half hours and pitched their religion to me, making me late for work and behind schedule. But they were also genuinely doing good work, and I could've lost the dumb comments about ATMs in favor of exploring the realities of a church that has spread out across the country and built a vocational school for disadvantaged kids and a home for the elderly and more all based on the charisma of one single man. That would have been a much better article.

I wouldn't have posted about this (frankly I would rather have forgotten that it happened), except that the piece found its way onto a blog by a much-more-experienced-than-me woman living in Busan, a blog that is apparantly frequented by other much-more-experienced-than-me people in the news business in Korea.

At least the Internet makes me aware of (some of) the repercussions my screw-ups have. I am acutely aware of having graduated from college not two months ago yet and being one of the most blundering, ineffectual people I know, not just because I don't know Korean, but because I haven't gotten my brain around this whole "real life" thing.

Though I suppose, with someone already calling for me to be fired after only six weeks in the profession, I can only go up from here.

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The end of an era... again?

Koizumi is all in on his Japan Post plans. I'm not sure what to think about the upcoming elections-- part of me wants Koizumi to win. The privatization plan is a good idea and it would finally make good on Koizumi's reform promises. Plus a win by the "new" LDP would, as the IHT said, mean a more ideological party. I would certainly like to see a return the Democratic Party to their earlier, more ideological roots, though that's probably not going to happen. And yet I find Koizumi's foreign policy (including the LDP's continued abuse of Okinawa) misguided, so I can't say I'd be unhappy if they lost. It's going to be an interesting month in Japan, that's for sure. Reminds me of Robert F Kennedy's "Chinese curse."

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August 7, 2005

Wow.

I'm sitting in a coffee shop and the radio is playing "He's Got the Whole World in his Hands," and it's an operatic soprano with the most dramatic backing ever.

"HEEEEEE'S GAUUUUT THAH WHOOOOOOLE WOOOOOOOLD IIIIIIN...

HIIIIIIIIIIS HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHNDS!"

I love Korea.

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August 5, 2005

SICAF Article

At the bottom. I get to go next weekend and write a wrap-up for the 19th. Me so excited. This is going to rock.

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August 4, 2005

Games 'n' Movies

In addition to the regular Ticket listings this week, Friday carried my reviews of Psychonauts which you should go buy right now, and Stealth, which you should avoid if at all possible.

Tomorrow a feature on SICAF.

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August 3, 2005

Civilization IV ramblings

So I write this Civ IV preview for a game column that can supposedly be "about anything," and only then do I find out it was supposed to be a review and so my rambling is pointless (I wrote a review of Psychonauts, which you should all buy right now). I'm posting it here in case anyone has cause to care. View the rest of the entry to read the article.

I can't wait for Civ IV, by the way. It looks fantastic.

"In the beginning, the Earth was without form, and void." That quote from Genesis, displayed on my Magnavox 386 accompanied by surging MIDI music and a majestic, 256-color depiction of the dawn of time, glued my eyes to the screen, because it meant another game of Civilization was about to begin. The game was unlike any computerized challenge my ten-year-old mind had yet encountered: an opportunity to create my own nation, choose its government and build its military, cities, buildings, roads and ships. At that age, of course, I was too cool to read user's manuals, so it took me about six months to figure out that one could actually move one's units out of the square in which one started, but even then it was entertaining to build the greatest city-state I could. And my eventual violent destruction was not so bad either, because the end of the game meant I could watch all of "history" over again.

Of course, strategy games have come a long way since Sid Meier completed Civilization. Westwood's Command & Conquer in 1995 ushered in a new era of adrenaline-pumping real-time gameplay. I was a terrible real-time strategy player, always too distracted by constructing cool buildings to realize that hordes of enemies were about to come stampeding across the horizon. So it was good that I had Civilization sequels to keep my gaming self-esteem intact. Each of them boasted improvements; Civilization II improved the graphics, while Civilization III tackled the terrain, resource and trade systems and introduced my favorite new concept, culture.

Recently the folks over at Mr. Meier's development company, Firaxis, have noticed me getting a bit too much sleep and have decided it's time to make Civilization IV. And again, big changes are a-coming. The most noticeable one will be an animated, zoomable map. There will also be a new religion option, which will allow civilizations to found holy cities and send out missionaries. Particularly exciting for former political science majors, the government system is up for a complete revamp. Instead of choosing a set option like democracy or communism, the player will be able to adjust five categories: Government, Legal, Labor, Economy, and Religion.

Yet it's the least complicated of the changes that has my inner ten-year-old most excited. The movies that accompanied the completion of Wonders of the World are set to return. The Wonders are taken from real human history, and include everything from the Pyramids and the Colossus of Rhodes (or Kyoto or Tenochititlan as the case may be) to the United Nations and the Manhattan Project. Somehow, it justified waiting sixty turns to see waves crashing up on the cliffs below the Great Lighthouse in Civilization II.

Civilization is unique in that it relies not on well-rendered flying organs or repetitive button-pushing but on detailed, complex planning for its gameplay. And it looks like this sequel will be just as enthralling and popular as its predecessors. It seems, in his pixellated 1991 innovation, Sid Meier truly has built a Civilization to stand the test of time.

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August 2, 2005

Movies, Games 'n' Cartoons

It's official, I've become the weekly film critic guy here. Pretty cool. This week I review Stealth, as Island has been out for too long. Not as cool.

Also got the weekly video game column foisted on me today. Which will make this my first return to game writing since I worked for Disney in middle school.

And next weekend I cover the Seoul Cartoon and Animation Festival. So this week I am being paid to watch movies, play games and go see cartoons. I never expected to accomplish one of my life goals so soon. ;)

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August 1, 2005

Return to Korea

This weekend I review The Island. Saw it yesterday, and alas, it was pretty awful. However, it is unique in that it's the first science fiction film I've ever seen that explicitly comes right out in favor of the rights of the unborn. At one point there's a "product recall," and employees of Big Evil Corporate Cloning Man walk among the artificial wombs and destroy them. Some of the clear sacs of fluid get hacked to pieces and some get a drug injected into them that looks very much like saline solution (which is injected into the amniotic sac in certain abortion procedures). Subtle, no?

Thus it's a crazy coincidence that the ever-dispassionate, remarkable William Saletan came out with a series on arificial wombs and embryo harvesting this week. Anyone who wants to call themselves informed on the issues of cloning and use of humans for research owes it to themselves to read the articles. They are incredibly objective, but very reminiscent, to me, of Brave New World.

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