One thing you hear and read in the papers a lot in Korea is about national development and the rising position of the country due to globalization. It is something my students speak of as well as professors, an awareness that this is a dynamic nation and that continued growth and prosperity require commitment and focus. Also, a part of is a strong nationalism that is expressed often but does not seem to me to be exclusionist in the way of European nationalism. The energy and focus is very much on the new rise to prosperity and importance of Korea. It has indeed been a rather stunning rise from poor, third world divided nation to technologically advanced major economy (if still divided). So it is interesting to read this kind of essay in the newspaper looking approvingly at the dynamic small countries in Europe that have unexpectedly and rapidly used technology and brains to become prosperous, such as Ireland or Estonia ("cool countries" according to Der Speigel). An article by a Seoul National University prof in today's JoongAng Daily concludes "This shows that a small country can become a strong one in the age of globalization when it is equipped with knowledge, creativity and openness."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Diversions for the weekend

" Germans are stealing more beehives " sounds like it could be a headline from the Onion, but it is real. "Caught in the Act Over the past few years, the Apicultural State Institute at Hohenheim University in Stuttgart, which specializes in agricultural studies, has had 72 bee colonies stolen from various locations. And in Bavaria, a honey producer even stole queen bees from his own beekeeping collective. This spring the Apicultural State Institute set three camera traps -- shortly afterwards the cameras caught a 71-year-old, hobby beekeeper from Nürtingen in the state of Baden-Württemberg, in the act of bee abduction. To counter the increasing bee thievery, some apiarists have installed GPS devices in their hives so that they can track the colonies' whereabouts online, in case of theft. Others have taken to using honeycombs in unique sizes so that their bees cannot be so easily placed into other hives."
Read more
You can't have a sexually explicit license plate in Virginia, but you can have an anti-Muslim one . If the Department of Motor Vehicles is going to let people praise certain religions or ethnicities on their license plates, it also must let people denigrate individuals of those faiths and nationalities. That's the opinion of a Circuit Court judge, who ruled last week that part of the DMV's guidelines governing vanity tags is unconstitutional. The ruling stemmed from an appeal from an Iraq War veteran who disagreed with the state's decision last year to revoke his personalized plates, which read "ICUHAJI." "Haji" is a common and often derogatory term for Arabs used by U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. The veteran's attorney, however, said his client did not intend to offend anyone. Judge John W. Brown wrote in his ruling that the DMV must either return the license plates - which can be read, "I see you, Ha...
Read more
Image
Sushi lovers do well here. It is reason enough to come here in fact, you can save enough on each sushi meal to pay for the airfare. Since I can happily eat sushi each meal this is a good thing. At home, we limit ourselves to sushi once a month so we can eat our fill of it and still afford to still pay the mortgage. I haven't had sushi for breakfast yet since that requires the operationally complex move of leaving the apartment early, but I have had flying fish roe for breakfast, since you can buy that in the market and take it home. My Midwestern core finds eating flying fish roe for breakfast both exotic and delicious. Sushi is, happily, everywhere. There are regular and/or fancy sit down places, sushi buffets, and, my favorite, the restaurants where you sit in front of a conveyor belt and grab sushi pieces as they come by. You simply pay by the number and color of the plate. I have eaten at that sort of place in Hawaii, but the overall quality here is a qualitative leap for...
Read more