The nuclear war achieved, King Donald ascends to the North-Korean throne

Shoot-the-messenger and other things North-Korean (reposted)

People are inquiring about this post, stirred by North Korea's supposedly thermo-nuclear test yesterday. The post was written in March 2013 while Michael was staying in South Korea. Here it is:


How about the situation? In Korea? Now? Aren't your scared? Don't you think they are going to throw their nukes? They know this would be the end of it, wouldn't they, a full-fledged war would trigger a violent American reaction that would certainly bring down a regime unable to feed its own people properly? They aren't crazy, or are they? Kim Jong Un, the new "leader," has studied in Switzerland, he has seen the world, he knows, right? They know, don't they, they know! At least he does!

Note the map of the US on the wall

Relax. Lean back. (Just back from the Korean dentist). Lean back.

My father was so lazy, he did not actually swim when dipping into the North Sea during our summer holidays. Instead, he did a "dead man," filling his lungs with extra air and staying afloat motionless in the water like a buoy. Along those lines, let's do an dead man and tell a story from 10 years ago when I last heard from Michel Kortczek. Michel had specialized in China, and then North Korea, and had published a beautiful essay on North Korea and its ideology on the internet. The page has disappeared in the meantime, but what I recall of his essay spoke of a regime quite unlike any other on earth, a regime completely in the thrall of  magic, superstition, and delusion.

Erosion

Heavy rains washed a lot of debris into the sea this morning---the stream ends up in the left corner, next to the marina---and you can see the border between the muddy rain water and the sea water. 

Interesting, isn't it?

And while we are at it...our Korean in-laws are still visiting...

History of the world --- Venice (3)

When yours truly arrived in Venice 25 years ago for a brief sojourn at the Business School, Massimo, his correspondent, picked him up at the airport and took him to a down-town café stuffed with pastries, liqueur bottles, and high tables inviting patrons to stand and drink sprits, small glasses of white wine with a schuss, a few drops of Cinzano, say. The spritz then was the stuff of true Venetians, tourists wouldn't know and drink Chianti or Campari instead---if they would drink in the morning, that is, because true Venetians had two spritzes at breakfast. Habits have changes in the meantime; the spritzes have tripled in size and been taken over by tourism, so true Venetians refrain from the stuff and drink lager instead.

"I'll spritz you."

I spent two weeks in Venice as a non-tourist and learned a lot, especially about tourism. Already then, Venice was almost completely touristicated---cool, folks, what an ugly word, "touristicated," but the spell checker doesn't recognize it so it's possibly a neologism¹---, and the locals behaved like a dying breed. They would avoid tourists like the plague, would only patronize their own restaurants (hidden away in secret alleys where the food was three times better), would not speak English, would not know about directions, would not make appointments because you only had to step into the street to meet friends, would sit on roof-top terraces and enjoy life, would spend week-end afternoons in secluded gardens (not having sex, by the way, just dozing off jointly for a few hours), would recognize the voices of the passing gondoliers at night (while still enjoying life on the roof-top terraces)...

The Bhuddist temple --- Korea (11)

We had to pay an entrance fee to get there but a sign next to donation box inside the holy compound reads: "We have nothing to do with the entrance fee you paid already."

Oblivion --- the movie

Perhaps you remember a post from last year, a report from Phuket, the Thai beach 'n sex paradise with its empty, black-marbeled multiplex located in the main mall showing Prometheus, the Ridley Scott movie. What a bummer, Prometheus. After Scott's flick I had given up all hope --- what a silly, one-dimensional horror-story clad in sci-fi illustrations and peopled by captains that fly at superluminal speed and then land their space ship manually on visual clues coming from co-crew that happens to look out of the window.

Hi, I'm Tom Cruise. Yes,  I'm pleased to confirm, turtleneck collars are back in fashion.

An easy act to follow, Hollywood must have thought, and yes, Oblivion is better. There's actually a story, a bit too complex for me, perhaps, the story, but just-so for Chang, who relates to movie scripts like wild boar relate to truffels, he is always, always one step ahead of the script (if that's what wild boar are, the analogy is a bit shaky, perhaps). So Chang knows already that something's wrong with Jack Harper, Tom Cruise's character. Jack and coworker/lover Victoria (Andrea Riseborough) are manning this modernistic, nicely appointed, totally airborne watch post, all glass, steel and plastic, a mile high in the sky but otherwise almost looking like Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona pavilion except for the futuristic rounded edges from central casting that have signaled sci-fi since the dawn of time. The watch post also features a swimming pool.

Airborne watch post and helitropic vehicle

The famous tourist destination --- Korea (6)

The venue is located nearby, between our village and Seogi-po, the second-largest town here on Jeju Island, on the coast. A popular tourist destination, we have to go see it. Parking lots, tour buses, people. Lots.

 We ask where "it" is. Somebody points down. We descend past this charming tea house into an over-designed park.  

Connubial Bliss --- Korea (5)

By sheer serendipity we find ourselves climbing the road hugging Mount Halla, Korea's highest mountain at 1,900 meters, a somewhat listless volcano that hasn't harmed anybody in quite some time and defines Jeju Island in a sort of materialistic way, almost vulgar-marxistically so --- Jeju wouldn't be there without the volcano, Jeju in fact is the volcano in geological terms --- so we climb Road 1139 and have already reached an altitude of 1,000 m when Michael has the idea that Chang could get carsick on this sinuous path across the high altitude forest, and we U-turn and descend again. Mentioning car-sickness wasn't perhaps the best idea, Chang is starting to think about his stomach and the stomach thinks back and new, or slightly altered, thoughts feel provoked by each turn. Thought-provoking, that's what this road feels, thought-provoking.

Mount Halla

Anyhow, the worst is over when we hit a stretch of road marked by red cross-stripes. They are well-done, these stripes, each marking is slightly raised, creating a bump per mark and accentuating our downward glide in this floating American-suspension car in unmistakable ways, warning us of impending danger. We wonder which danger we're facing, no stripes mark the upward leg of the road. We cross perhaps 5-10 marks per second, thus reverberating downward in a three-dimensional alert space, visual (red stripes), proprioceptive (the position of our limbs) and auricular (vibratory humming). This goes on for a while. After two kilometers or so you would assume we've been warned enough, but the stripes won't go away, one stripe following the next with unrelenting stamina, stripe for stripe for stripe. Ever tried to count to 100,000?

"You could have invented these stripes," Michael finally says to Chang.

How about Jeju? --- Korea (4)

(Christine, our friend from Switzerland writes:)

I found time to read your manuscript [Green Eyes]... It is very interesting and easy to understand. I even can understand more about gay's reactions and sexual practices. Well, the story is captivating and we always want to know more. Important is that you don't get bored with it.

We wonder if you are OK in Jeju and how is the weather and temperature? Are you in a hotel? How does Chang feel?

 We have very cold weather. Lot of snow was falling in France and England. Here in Solothurn we had -6° this morning and 1° during the day. We have almost enough and wait for spring.

How many hours do you have more in Korea?

 (We answer:) 

Thanks, Christine. Yes, we are very OK in Jeju, even though the promises by Der Spiegel haven't materialized yet. How do we mean? Well, Der Spiegel, you know, every reader of Infinite Jest knows it, the German news magazine, they had a recent story on Jeju where they write about

(a) fertility rites with phallic stone statues on which we so far missed out (the rites) and

Jeju haru bang, (local stone statue, judge yourself)

The price of vengeance --- Korea (3)

So we’re on this BA flight to Seoul and grab the Daily Mail, the British tabloid.

“The Price of Vengeance” --- that's the boldface headline of the Mail today and we don’t recognize the faces. “Vicky Price is shell-shocked,” though, and “Chris Huhne may receive a lighter sentence for pleading guilty.” Expressions like "Hell hath no fury," and the Greek saying "a woman and the sea are the same in danger," dance before your lying eyes (Vicky is Greek).

All this has little to do with Korea, except that’s eternal and universal and we have to write it down so we can use it in the next part of the Green Eyes. The entire first 11 pages of the tabloid are about Vicky & Chris & collateral damage & even the boobs on Page 3 have to defer to pictures of a Greek wedding “where Huhne gave his stepdaughter away [although] the MP had already begun a fateful affair with his bisexual aide.”

The view --- Korea (2)

(We've arrived on Jeju Island:)

Thesis

Antithesis

Synthesis

 (People who've followed the 2002 worldcup may recall a venue being located on Jeju; we're located right next to it) 

Who of you is the man? --- Korea (1)

We didn’t have a fight for a few minutes, so it’s not really something for the Connubial Bliss, plus, we’re in Heathrow, changing planes for our trip to JeJu, Korea. South Korea, that is, the place nobody dares to visit since the North is reiterating its prediction that it will throw “small nukes” if feeling annoyed by is ethnic neighbor much longer.

Heathrow airport

Everybody hates Heathrow (queues) but the shopping is supposed to be good, so we have to buy “Polo.” Polo, among other things, is a fragrance created by Ralph Lauren and used by Chang. A spunky duty-free sales-female takes charge first of Chang and then of yours truly as the mammal bond between the two homosexual travelers transpires. We’re apparently adrift in the wrong place and should follow her to the male section and get “something for men.”

(This is a bit overwritten, apologies.)

“We’re kinda girls,” I say ...