Gulags on both sides of the DMZ?

Gavin McCormack, Australian Orientalist wrote a book review a few years ago with an interesting conclusion:

"One dearly wishes therefore for a book that would offer us a dialogue between Kang, prisoner in the North Korean labour camp for 10 years, and Suh, political prisoner in South Korea for 19 years. When each can feel grief and outrage over the brutality and violence inflicted on the other, perhaps then Korea north and south will be able to move towards its democratic future, one without gulags of any kind."

Professor McCormack's full review from an ABC Radio broadcast of Book Talk on March 1, 2003 can still be found here.

His equivocation of the two prison systems is elegantly simple, though likely far from accurate, even applying such to that mythical monicker,"Land of the Morning Calm."

 "Choson, the Land of the Morning Calm," 

by Percival Lowell (1885)

Meanwhile, autodidact, William "Bill" Caraway, has some interesting insights on certain origins behind that particular nomenclature here.  As Bill writes on the home page of his "Korea History Project,":

"History forgotten, never happened."

Yi Song-gye (aka, Taejo of Joseon) - Very Calm

Well, it certainly did happen . . . and does.
The book, The Aquariums of Pyongyang, along with two others mentioned in the broadcast apparently, Unbroken Spirits, and Brotherhood of the Bomb, might yet remain pertinent and compelling reads.

Find a calm, quiet place.
Picture yourself in a land far, far away.
Now scream.
(Or keep reading.)

The Atheist on God

 A brief, piss-poor interview recently with Christopher Hitchens:



Though I've enjoyed reading some of Mr. Hitchens' scribblings over the years (see: God is Not Great and that Shakespearean Slate piece, "Free Exercise of Religion. No Thanks.") and respect his craft tremendously, particularly (oddly?) lately, it just all, ultimately (for me), rings hollow.

Perhaps, with Hitchens (and others not completely unlike him) it is as Friedrich Nietzsche (that great lover of fate or what?) noted in one of his many aphorisms:

"The irrationality of a thing (God?) is no argument against its existence, rather a
condition of it,"
or
"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and
epochs, it is the rule,"
or
"The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others,"
or
"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the
abyss, the abyss gazes also into you,"
or
"In heaven all the interesting people are missing,"
or especially,
"In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross,"

Deists, of late, and romanticists, generally, might want to hold onto this one:
"What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil."

May we ALL (my own underlying, quiet idealism springing eternally), in the end, find true peace.

Continuity

Back to the darkness today . . . remembering Beslan:





The mountain people of Chechen - "a short step from love to hatred"?


Journeyman Pictures attempts to uncover the roots of war, terror and despair here.