Seems like North Korea successfully (or partially successfully, depending on who you listen to) tested a nuclear weapon and at the same time became part of an exclusive club of nuclear powers. The Korea National News Agency stated:

The nuclear test is a historic event that brought happiness to the our military and people,” KCNA said.

“No one is going to protect” North Korea if it goes ahead with “bad behavior,” Wang Guangya said amid the heated diplomacy this past week over a statement criticizing Pyongyang. “I think if North Koreans do have the nuclear test, I think that they have to realize that they will face serious consequences.”

Also of interest is how the new Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe, deals with this. Historically, Abe has been very interested in pushing an agenda of rebuilding Japan’s military and this would seem to give him a pretty solid base to work with.

Update: Abe and South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun were at a summit Monday and just issued a statement saying: “A North Korea with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles constitutes a grave threat, Japan will now consider harsh measures.”

What about the US? Via Daily KOS comes this snip from the Oct 16. issue of Newsweek:

On Sept. 19, 2005, North Korea signed a widely heralded denuclearization agreement with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Pyongyang pledged to “abandon all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs.” In return, Washington agreed that the United States and North Korea would “respect each other’s sovereignty, exist peacefully together and take steps to normalize their relations.”

Four days later, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sweeping financial sanctions against North Korea designed to cut off the country’s access to the international banking system, branding it a “criminal state” guilty of counterfeiting, money laundering and trafficking in weapons of mass destruction.

Posted in Korea on Monday October 9, 2006. Shoutouts [1].

Pingmag does Geta in their article: Clack with your Japanese wooden clogs:

Sometimes the busy streets of Tokyo are just too much for me, so I escape into the astonishingly quiet side-streets for taking a deep breath. The other day, I heard the sound of wooden clogs – or geta in Japanese – behind me: “cur-run-ko-ron, cur-run-ko-ron” – that is as close as I can get to discribing the wooden melody. The astonishing thing is, that this sound implies so much beauty, romance and fantasy for us Japanese… Without looking back I knew it had to be a girl beautifully wrapped in her Kimono making these clacking sounds. When she finally walked passed, I closed my eyes a little to travel to the gardens of Kyoto… Here is a little selection for you – choose, what suits your feet best.

Posted in Korea on Wednesday September 13, 2006. Shoutouts.

I don’t think I ever mentioned that when I stayed in Korea, I stayed briefly in a martial-arts concentration camp and bald men in baggy grey pants tortured me for an evening. I think this photo says it all. I will never be a monk and this fact makes me strangely content. I’m sure I’ll find zen someday, it just won’t involve before dawn starts, and the six-pack will be of entirely a different variety.

Posted in Korea on Tuesday May 30, 2006. Shoutouts.

I’m still bashing my way through the umpteen billion photos I took during the Korea trip. The latest up on flickr is a set of the palaces of Seoul. Rather than try and explain thousands of years of Korean history (other than “They built it, the Japanese burnt it to the ground. Rinse. Repeat,”) Wikipedia has great articles on both Gyeongbokgung and Changdeokgung, two of the Five Grand Palaces built during the Joseon Dynasty, that I visited whilst I was in Seoul.

Posted in Travel on Monday May 15, 2006. Shoutouts.

The monk is as tall as me, and dressed in the simple grey garments that are typical of Buddhism in Korea. Surprisingly, he hasn’t shaved for several days and the black stubble is in stark relief to his gleaming pate. A pair of thick, coke-bottle glasses magnify his eyes and as he walks, he bobs his head left and right, and I can’t help but think of some huge, out-of-place heron, looking for a river to strut along. He heads off down the alley, clutching a book to his chest and as I’m headed in the same direction, I fall in a few paces behind.

A jeep swings into the alley and accelerates toward us. The monk pauses for a second and then calmly slips the book into his left hand and spins and pushes me gently in the chest with his right, forcing me up against the wall. Back against the decades old advertising posters, peeling and faded. The jeep passes in a rush of sticky air and candy wrappers, swirling up from the ground, and the driver nods almost imperceptibly as he passes. “Oknow. It’sok. Smallroad. Toosmallroad. Youareamerican. Areyou? Areyouamerican? Ok!”

And then he sweeps into a shop and is gone.

Posted in Travel on Wednesday May 10, 2006. Shoutouts.

I’m sitting on the subway in Seoul and glancing mindlessly at one of the many colourful ads for plastic surgery that I can’t read at all, when a guy in an immaculate grey suit pushes past me and places a huge suitcase on the floor of the train. He adjusts his cuff links, clears his throat, and claps his hands three times. Instantly, the carriage goes silent. The man begins to pace up and down the train, waving his finger at people and stopping to ask them questions. An younger woman asks him something untoward and he shuts her up with a look of contempt and a wave of his hand. He’s smooth, oh so smooth, and he’s got everyones undivided attention. He bends down, flings open his bag and pulls out a tube of something.

As my Korean is limited to “Hello!” “Thank you” and “Kindly bring more beer to this table,” I couldn’t tell you what he is selling, but he sweeps up and down the carriage extolling the virtues of this particular tube of happiness and suddenly people along the length of the carriage are waving notes in the air and clamouring for his attention so he could sell them their very own tube. Everyone wants some happiness. Then the buzzer buzzes, the doors ding and our friend collects the last of his orders, dispenses tubes, bows briefly and jumps off the train and onto one heading in the opposite direction.

It seems, in Korea, the salesmen ply their trade to the captive audience in train carriages. And it seems to work.

Posted in Travel on Sunday May 7, 2006. Shoutouts.

As I was leaving Seoul yesterday morning, I ran into a Kiwi guy who was rummaging about on the table trying to find a spoon so that he could eat his breakfast; cereal out of a paper cup, with another paper cup of milk on the side. I mentioned that I was heading down to Daegu and he said he’d been there for four days, visiting friends. “I was shocked” he said, “it was so grey and urbanised and just, well, unpleasant. It reminded me of big-city China. That’s why I was so shocked seeing how nice this area is. Seoul is a change for the better.” He’s right, Daegu doesn’t have an enormous amount going for it. The streets are wide, crowded and busy. Smog is everywhere and there’s very little green between the grey.

Thanks to my late night wanders around the city, I’ve seen the herbal medicine markets, strolled down rice-cake street and gorged myself on a very tasty and cheap-as-chips meal on beef-rib alley. Today it’s off into the mountains to stay at a temple. In a cave. Surprisingly enough, they call it a cave temple. I think the monks are planning to get me up at 4:30am to rake the temple garden and as a contingency plan for this, I’ve stuffed my backpack with tiny packets of coffee, which I’ll inhale if I have to. Let’s hope it’s a cave with hot water.

Posted in Travel on Thursday May 4, 2006. Shoutouts.

“So what’s the deal with Taco Tuesday?”
“You order a beer, and we give you a free Taco”
“Great. Well, I’ll have a Dos Esquis”
“Beef or Chicken Taco?”
“Uh, beef please”
“And would you like any food?”
There is a pause while my mind boggles and I look completely confused. The brits titter at me as I skip a gear and clunk in bafflement.
“The taco isn’t food?”
“No”
“Is it very small?”
The cowboy-hat wearing waiter looks at me as if I’ve just invited him to play ping-pong with hard-boiled eggs. Whilst naked. On the moon. He reaches up to push the hat out of his eyes and sneers at me.
“Of course!”
Jamie and Nikki burst into giggles as I reach for the menu and try and find some food to order. I settle on a fajita and the waiter minces away, swinging his hips.

Posted in Travel on Wednesday May 3, 2006. Shoutouts.

If anyone tries to tell you that Korean food is gross, too spicy, or only about the eating of our four legged friends, tell them they’re wrong. Everything I’ve eaten here has been some of the freshest, cheapest and most delicious food in Asia. If you like you food with kick, and your booze with bite (Soju, the national liquor, is 20%) Korea will certainly not fail to impress. Last night, we ate a huge two course meal with several thousand drinks and endless side dishes for less than $10. Amazing.

Posted in Gastros on Tuesday May 2, 2006. Shoutouts.

Sometimes, when you travel, you just get lucky. Take this weekend for instance: I rocked into Seoul without a great deal of planning, or indeed any real plans at all, only to find that the annual Lotus Lantern festival, featuring more than 10,000 lanterns, would be trucking down a street near where I was staying. After thousands of people had marched past my vantage point on a subway control box, and the crowd below me had screamed themselves hoarse, the crowd bunched in a huge circle around an outdoor stage and they shot millions of pieces of tiny pink paper into the air as we danced underneath.

Posted in Travel on Tuesday May 2, 2006. Shoutouts.