You sycophantic political dwarf!

I ran the TBDNight blog yesterday! Click to read about the concerts, bar specials, goth nights and bobblehead dolls that you missed out on.

My year spent in Seoul has been sponsored by Princeton in Asia, a fellowship program that sets people up with jobs all throughout the continent. I agreed to participate in a storytelling program they put together, and one thing I wound up recording was an interview with a few filmmakers from Kuridstan who were in Korea for the Pusan International Film Festival.

May be worth listening to if you’re interested in the recent history of filmmaking in Iraq.

From Reuters:

Its state media routinely makes claims about the laws of nature bending to coincide with the birthdays of its founder or his son and current leader, Kim Jong-il, that include the appearance of double rainbows and sunrises so brilliant that frost explodes with the sound of firecrackers.

“Maybe if two suns show up in the sky tomorrow, then people could believe the claim,” said Kune Y. Suh, a nuclear expert at Seoul National University.

Following up in the spirit of my post about the return of the pardoned-criminal chief of Samsung Electronics, the LA Times reports on an expat writer here who is being sued for breaking Korea’s libel law, which is notoriously anti-free speech.

The writer, Michael Breen, wrote satire that made references to Samsung’s hereditary structure and past allegations of widespread bribery. I can’t find the original anymore. The Korea Times, who originally published the piece, had to run a retraction to get themselves removed from the lawsuit.

Legal experts here say the case underscores the considerable power wielded in South Korean society by such mammoth corporate conglomerates, known as chaebols, which are dominated by top officials, often related, who are treated here as near-royalty.

Most critical stories run in smaller media less dependent on ads from big companies. Major media reports are mostly limited to breaking news of prosecutions of chaebol leaders but seldom probe deeper, critics say.

“Samsung has financial power over the press. They’re their own sanctuary where no one can intervene or criticize them,” said Kim Keon-ho, an official at the Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice.

Not what you think.

“Kim Jong Il is known to be fond of encouraging the drinking of such drinks at his gatherings, because he believes one of the signs of a good leader is alcohol tolerance.”