TIM SHORROCK—My award was doubly significant because my stories had grown directly out of events that took place on the very square where I stood. There, in the shadow of Gwangju’s old Provincial Capital, the last voices of the city’s rebels had been stilled on May 27, 1980, by a Korean Army division dispatched from the DMZ marking the border with North Korea. They were sent with the approval of the US commander of the US-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham. That decision, made at the highest levels of the US government, forever stained the relationship between the United States and the South. For the people of Gwangju, many of whom believed that the US military would side with the forces of democracy, it was a deep betrayal that they’ve never forgotten.
JAPAN
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KIM PETERSEN—Kishida’s “shameful subservience to the US” (as Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, put it, according to the Guardian) is odd considering that the US is the country that firebombed Tokyo and dropped nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Yet, one can deduce from Kishida’s words that Japan accepts being a vassal of the hegemon.
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THORSTEN J PATTBERG—Privileged Western Expats, be they government officials, cultural representatives, or business leaders, must be earning a fortune to be able to relocate their entire family to Japan; so if they do, they usually enjoy generous Expat packages that include bonuses and perks, luxurious living, business travel, and private schools for the kids. And because there is more supply than demand, those private schools for foreign Expats also accept Japanese locals with enough money to burn, because the American school or the British school or the French or German schools are offensively over-prized.
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How The “First Island Chain” Members Became U.S. Client States
57 minutes readGARY OLSON—Back in 1968, American political scientist and U.S. foreign policy advisor Samual Huntington argued that, “He who controls the countryside controls the country”, and further, if the countryside is in opposition to the government and the system, both are “in danger of overthrow.” [3] Going further, Huntington asserted that because peasants are primarily concerned with their immediate material and economic needs, certain controlled reforms may be used as a substitute for revolution. He hypothesized that the likelihood of a revolution is negligible if land ownership is seen as equitable. By administering a private property inoculation, the peasant will be immunized against various leftist strains of revolutionary fever. Certain forms of land tenure change will encourage possessiveness and individual betterment through the existing system. In short, the rural sector will become a conservative force in politics.
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Japan’s Perceptions of the Propaganda regarding the SMO
25 minutes readPATRICIA ORMSBY—I can attest as a woman living in Japan nearly four decades that I could not watch the news without feeling that I would be a monster if I didn’t have any sympathy at all for the victims, even if I considered it all unverified and mostly likely misleading. I can’t tolerate such a level of cognitive dissonance, and just flee after a few minutes. My husband and his brother, by contrast, can continue watching with no emotional involvement, just out of curiosity to see how far the authorities will take such obvious propaganda.