Conditions in North Korea face unusually close scrutiny at the U.N. Human Rights Council on December 7, when it goes through a “universal periodic review” (UPR), a mechanism designed to examine one-by-one the rights records of all 192 U.N. member states.

Each review is based on three reports, provided ahead of time by the government, U.N. rights experts and NGOs.

Pyongyang is sensitive to outside criticism, and state media outlets hit back this week, accusing the U.S. and Japanese governments in particular of using human rights as part of “a despicable plot” to apply political pressure against North Korea.

“Those countries that are becoming most vociferous about ‘human rights issues’ are the countries with the most serious human rights records without an exception,” the official KCNA news agency said in an article on Wednesday. “To take the U.S. as an example, the rich get ever richer and the poor ever poorer and the number of the unemployed and the poor is on the steady increase; the right of equality, the right to work and the right to existence – elementary rights of human being – are being ruthlessly violated.”

By contrast, it said, North Korea was “the best socialist state in the world as it is centered on the popular masses.” KCNA said North Koreans “enjoy a genuine life and happiness as human beings, something unimaginable in the capitalist society where a human being is treated as a slave of money."

CNSnews

November 9^th marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And activists in South Korea will hold a series of events to highlight calls for similarly momentous developments leading to the liberation of North Korea.

Planned events this weekend include a mass human rights and democracy demonstration led by North Korean refugee leaders in Seoul on Saturday; an all-day national day of prayer, fasting and repentance on Sunday; and another demonstration on Monday at the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, calling for the North’s liberation.

Largely eclipsed by the Kim Jong-il regime’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, the oppression suffered by ordinary North Koreans draws relatively little international attention.

The organizers of the weekend events in South Korea note that an estimated four million North Koreans – of a total of some 22 million – have died since 1995 as a result of starvation resulting directly or indirectly from government policies, despite the provision of enough food aid by the international community to feed to entire population.

A further one million people are believed to have died since the 1970s in Pyongyang’s notorious prison camp system, where abuses reported by surviving inmates include systematic torture, rape, medical experimentation, and forced abortions and infanticide.

Fleeing oppression and starvation, an estimated half a million North Koreans have in recent years crossed into neighboring China, from where some have managed to make their way to third countries, usually ending up eventually in South Korea.

CNSnews

"On The Border" was first broadcast in March last year, and has since been aired on 16 channels around the world including the BBC, PBS in the U.S., CANAL+ in France, TBS in Japan, and ARD in Germany. The documentary has drawn worldwide acclaim, winning 14 awards both in South Korea and abroad.

The appearance of two North Korean defectors before MPs and European officials in Britain was timed to bring maximum public pressure on the North Korean government before its human rights record is scrutinized for the first time by the UN human rights council in Geneva.

Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), which organized the European visit, says that there is a prima facie case that Kim Jong-il's regime has committed crimes against humanity and possibly acts of genocide against religious groups, specifically Christians.

"[North Korean refugees] have experienced suffering and deprivation on a scale that we cannot begin to imagine," said Tina Lambert, CSW's advocacy director. "Their testimony comes at a crucial time, prior to the UN scrutiny of North Korea."

The CSW is calling for a commission of inquiry by the UN to investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea. The UN rapporteur for North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn, last month issued a scathing report of North Korea's human rights record, declaring that the "exploitation of the ordinary people" had become "the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite".

[Excerpt of a Guardian article]

Former prisoners describe harrowing ordeals as UN prepares to scrutinise North Korea's human rights record

In the nine months after his arrest on espionage charges, Guang-il Jung was beaten by North Korean security guards with a thick wooden club. He still bears the scars on the back of his head.

In the course of beatings, the guards broke all his teeth, leaving him toothless for four years. To deprive him of sleep, the guards at the underground prison at Hoeryong city near the Chinese border used "pigeon torture". Jung was handcuffed and tied by his arms to an object behind him so he could not stand or sit. He felt as though his bones were breaking through his chest while the rest of his body was paralysed.

Jung recounted the harrowing tale of his detention, before he escaped to South Korea in 2003, during a tour of European capitals this week to shine a personal light on what a UN report recently described as North Korea's "abysmal" human rights record.

The appearance of Jung and another defector, a 54-year-old woman named only as L, before MPs and European officials in Britain was timed to bring maximum public pressure on the North Korean government before its human rights record is scrutinised for the first time by the UN human rights council in Geneva. Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), which organised the European visit, says that there is a prima facie case that Kim Jong-il's regime has committed crimes against humanity and possibly acts of genocide against religious groups, specifically Christians.

"Both Guang-il Jung and L have experienced suffering and deprivation on a scale that we cannot begin to imagine," said Tina Lambert, CSW's advocacy director. "Their testimony comes at a crucial time, prior to the UN scrutiny of North Korea."

CSW estimates that 200,000 people are being held in North Korea's political prison camps

L, a Christian woman who escaped to South Korea in 2007 with three sons, was reluctant to repeat the details of her own torture and left it to the interpreter to reveal what she had endured.

"She had her nails prised off with pliers, all her lower teeth were pulled out - she now has to wear false teeth - water with hot chillis was put up her nose," the interpreter said.

"I want to raise awareness of what is going on, we have to talk about the situation," said L, who did not want her name revealed as she still has relatives in the north. "It is the only way to make a change."

When he was arrested, Jung, a former North Korean army veteran, weighed 75kg. In the course of the interrogation his weight dropped to 38kg. After nine months at the hands of the security services, Jung made a false confession and was sent to a labour camp in Yodeok, 60 miles north of the capital Pyongyang.

At the camp, those prisoners singled out to die were assigned work they could not finish. When they did not finish the work, their food rations were reduced as punishment. Eventually the combination of heavy work and less food led to death by starvation for many. After three years, Jung escaped to South Korea in 2003.

The CSW is calling for a commission of inquiry by the UN to investigate crimes against humanity in North Korea.

The UN rapporteur for North Korea, Vitit Muntarbhorn, last month issued a scathing report of North Korea's human rights record, declaring that the "exploitation of the ordinary people" had become "the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite".

When North Korea's record is scrutinised next month, the west will have to balance its desire to denounce Pyongyang with diplomatic considerations. The US and China are trying to persuade North Korea to return to six-party talks on nuclear issues, which Pyongyang quit in April. China, with its own poor human rights record, can be expected to try to tone down criticism of its wayward protege. Beijing's top priority is to ensure that North Korea, where 9 million people are suffering from food shortages according to the UN, does not plunge into instability if Kim Jong-il, who is in ill-health, dies. In any case, China treats North Korean defectors with scant sympathy and encourages its citizens to turn them in.

L, who speaks to her relatives in the North regularly, provides a grim insight into the daily struggle to find food.

"They go to the mountains to find edible roots, grass and soft bark on trees," L said. "Out of 100 people, 70 are going hungry, 30 are better off because they have connections to families in high positions."

Despite their ordeal, both Jung and L miss home and find life in South Korea hard. L's sons are struggling because of their poor English and have trouble keeping up with computer technology. Both say they are waiting for the day when the two Koreas are reunited so they can go back.

]]> http://grantmontgomery.blogspot.com/2009/11/stats-on-north-korea-land-of-dear.html http://grantmontgomery.blogspot.com/2009/11/stats-on-north-korea-land-of-dear.html

-- North Korea is about half the size of Britain.

-- The population is about 23.9 million

-- In 2008 per capita income was $1,800

-- Life expectancy is 63 years

-- 37 per cent of children under 7 have growth problems

-- The armed forces include 1.17 million military personnel, 3,700 tanks, 420 warships and 60 submarines

-- There are three newspapers, one television station and one radio station to which all radios are automatically set.

Announcement seen as fresh demand for talks with US as observers claim Pyongyang could create another atomic weapon

North Korea today claimed to have completed reprocessing spent fuel rods at its Yongbyon nuclear plant to extract weapons-grade plutonium.

"We have finished reprocessing 8,000 spent fuel rods as of August. We have made substantial achievements in weaponising plutonium from the extraction," Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said.

Experts said North Korea might be able to produce enough material for one more atomic weapon from the fuel rods cooling at the Soviet-era plant, which was being taken apart under a disarmament-for-aid deal. The announcement is seen as a fresh attempt to put pressure on the US for direct talks.

North Korea's foreign ministry said yesterday the country would "go its own way" unless the US agreed to its longstanding goal of bilateral talks.

Analysts say despite a recent thaw in its relations with the outside world, the latest move served to underline North Korea's threat to stay away from six-party talks on its nuclear programme, and to carry out more tests of long-range missiles, as well as nuclear devices, despite sanctions imposed after the last nuclear test on 25 May.

Earlier this month, Pyongyang expressed willingness to return to the six-party nuclear disarmament talks which it quit in April, on condition it first makes progress in a bilateral meeting with the US.

North Korea's latest announcement came amid speculation that the US special envoy to Korea, Stephen Bosworth, might go to Pyongyang late this month or next month for talks to persuade North Korea to return to the six-party forum that brings together the two Koreas, Japan, China, Russia and the US.

Ri Gun, the second highest-ranking North Korean nuclear negotiator, and Sung Kim, the US nuclear negotiator, held inconclusive talks last month.

After months of sabre-rattling, North Korea has sent more ambivalent signals since August. It has made peace overtures to Seoul and Washington, but it also test-fired short-range missiles and warned South Korea of a potential naval clash on their disputed border.

US and South Korean officials believe that North Korea will eventually come back to the negotiating table because of its weak economy and heavy dependence on international food aid. South Korean officials said the US and South Korea were developing "contingency plans" in case of the "collapse" of the North Korean regime.

South Korea has dangled the prospect of aid to the North in the form of 10,000 tonnes of corn – the first offer of aid since the election of Lee Myung-Bak as South Korea's president, nearly two years ago. North Korea, accustomed to receiving several hundred thousand tonnes of food a year from the South for nearly a decade before Lee took office, has not responded.

]]> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/asia/03korea.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/world/asia/03korea.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/NorthKoreanEconomyWatch/%7E3/TWD2fEilOIQ/ http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/NorthKoreanEconomyWatch/%7E3/TWD2fEilOIQ/ http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/NorthKoreanEconomyWatch/%7E3/Gea0xZkX3Ts/ http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/NorthKoreanEconomyWatch/%7E3/Gea0xZkX3Ts/ http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/19/nkorea.hyun.korea/index.html%23cnnSTCText http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/10/19/nkorea.hyun.korea/index.html%23cnnSTCText http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/02/north.korea.us.talks/index.html%23cnnSTCText http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/11/02/north.korea.us.talks/index.html%23cnnSTCText http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/world/asia/02korea.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/world/asia/02korea.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss http://koreanlanguagenotes.blogspot.com/2009/11/have-you-read-outline-of-classical.html http://koreanlanguagenotes.blogspot.com/2009/11/have-you-read-outline-of-classical.html

Hatoyama ministers say long captivity of victims snatched by Pyongyang secret agents is bar to thaw with Kim Jong-il

On the evening of 7 July 1978, Yasushi Chimura and his fiancée, Fukie Hamamoto, drove in a small truck to a lookout point above the craggy coast that marks the city of Obama's meeting with the Sea of Japan. The waters were placid, and the couple were excited about their wedding in November.

They were not alone. Agents from North Korea were on the hillside. They overpowered the couple, took them to a waiting boat on Wakasa Bay and transported them nearly 500 miles to the Communist country where they were to spend the next quarter of a century.

The disappearance of the couple was a local mystery and might well have remained so had it not been for a seemingly unrelated event thousands of miles away in the Middle East.

Nearly a decade after the Chimura abduction, two North Korean agents stepped on to a Korean Air flight in Baghdad bound for Bangkok. In Bahrain the agents disembarked, leaving a bomb on board. The Boeing 707 took off again, exploded in flight, and 104 passengers and 11 crew were killed. The agents were subsequently arrested while trying to leave the country. One, a 70-year-old, killed himself with a poison capsule. The other, 26-year-old Kim Hyon Hui, attempted suicide in the same fashion but was stopped.

Kim was later flown to Seoul where a trial revealed a fact that would cause diplomatic reverberations: North Korea had been regularly abducting Japanese citizens to help train special agents. Those agents would then pass themselves off as citizens from Japan, take part in terrorist plots and blacken the name of that nation.

North Korea's antipathy towards Japan was ingrained after years of, at times, brutal colonisation from the 1900s to the end of the second world war.

For Japan the news was the piece of a jigsaw that went towards solving the puzzle of numerous unexplained disappearances.

Concrete confirmation came in July 2002 when North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-il, admitted that "over-zealous" special forces had abducted a least a dozen Japanese citizens – men, women and children between the ages of 13 and 46. Eight had since died.

"It was regretful and I want to frankly apologise," said Kim.

Chimura was one of those who survived, along with Fukie. They returned to Japan three months after Kim's admission, and after diplomatic wranglings were joined by their three children, who had been born in Pyongyang.

Today, the family lives in Obama. But beyond these lives hopefully returning to normal, the anger of the Japanese government is plain to see. Last week Yukio Hatoyama's recently-elected government said it was launching an investigation into the abductions, an inquiry that would potentially identify scores more victims.

Officially, 17 Japanese have been identified as abductees, although private groups put the number in the scores. Five have returned but the Japanese government contends that Pyongyang holds the remaining 12. Accounts of the eight deaths tell of some dying, remarkably young, from heart attacks, others suffering gas incidents, another killed in a road accident.

Hiroshi Nakai, a cabinet member and minister of state for the abduction issue, said previous administrations had not been bold enough in their efforts. "We are trying to start a new investigation with a new perspective on this issue. We think if we make further thorough investigations there would be more people who could be confirmed as abductees."

At stake is not just the concern of the families but the delicate balance of diplomacy. Since North Korea carried out its first nuclear test the international community has been desperate to contain its proliferation.

Six-party talks, including Japan, the US and China, have made arguably little progress. But in the latter days of the Bush administration and at the start of the Obama tenure, the US signalled a willingness to deal with Kim Jong-il directly. In August Bill Clinton became the highest-profile US visitor to Pyongyang when he secured the release of two American journalists captured while in a border area. There have also been face-to-face talks between diplomats as recently as last week in New York.

Japan has viewed a thawing of relations between Kim Jong-il and the US with some concern and is determined the abduction issue will not be sidelined. "Japan will never work on the normalisation of relations with North Korea without the resolution of the abduction issue," said Nakai. "It doesn't matter to Japan if the US normalises the relationship. The abduction issue is a roadblock … to normalisation for Japan."

Meanwhile the Japanese government explores other avenues to keep the issue alive. It invites the media to visit the abduction sites – the Guardian took part in one for this article – and produces comic books and DVDs. It also broadcasts a daily three-hour shortwave radio programme to North Korea with taped messages from relatives and news from the homeland.

Shigeo Iizuke has taken advantage of this to try to reach his missing sister, who vanished more than 30 years ago. In June 1978, Yaeko Taguchi, who was 22 and a bar worker, dropped her two children, aged one and two, at a daycare centre before going to work at the Hollywood cabaret in Tokyo's Ikebukuro district. She never arrived.

Iizuke filed a report with the police and waited. Months turned to years. He and his wife adopted Taguchi's son, one-year-old Koichiro. Another sister took on the responsibility of raising the other child. Nothing was heard of Taguchi until the court testimony from Kim Hyon Hui, the Korean airline bomber. She confessed to being trained by a Japanese abductee for nearly two years prior to her terror mission. Subsequent investigations by Japanese authorities confirmed the teacher had been Taguchi.

It also confirmed one of the key motives of the abductions. North Korea, sealed off from the world in a hermit-like state, needed its agents trained in the ways of foreign societies to be able to assimilate with those societies and pass unnoticed.

"My sister was a perfect candidate," says Iizuke. "She had experienced married life, and children, was knowledgeable about fashions and trends and songs of young Japanese women. She was quite suitable to be a teacher of life to North Koreans."

Now 71, with thinning, swept back hair, Iizuke clutches a picture of Taguchi, a laminated image of a woman with eyes closed in laughter, a broad smile spreading across a grainy face. He says he knows she is not dead, despite the insistence of North Korea. He has also since garnered more information about her desperate struggle against her abduction.

"It seems she was deceived and taken somewhere, maybe under the influence of a sleeping pill," said Iizuke. "She was taken to a beach and although her route is sill not clear … she was taken to North Korea that way. When she came to, she was wrapped in a black bag. She begged the agent; she had left two small children behind."

Iizuke, founding member of the Association of the Families of Victims Kidnapped by North Korea, firmly believes Japan now has to press harder for his sister's return.

And he points to his adopted son as evidence for that. "The boy my sister left behind in Japan was one year old. He's now 31. He does not remember anything about his mother. He does not remember her voice, he does not remember the warmth of her skin. Her son desperately wants to know of the reality of his mother."

The disappeared

Megumi Yokota The youngest, she was just 13 when taken in November 1977. Some believe she was a mistaken target, having witnessed agents in action. DNA analysis of ashes returned to her family proved it was not her.

Yaeko Taguchi Abducted in June 1978. She was taken to North Korea and forced to teach Japanese etiquette to an agent who helped explode a bomb on a Korean Air flight in 1987.

Keiko Arimoto While studying in London, she was lured to Copenhagen on the pretence of a job interview in July 1983. She has not been seen since. North Korea claimed she died in a gas poisoning incident.

]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/KoreaReport/%7E3/yPIir9NKfns/doing-business-in-north-korea.html http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/KoreaReport/%7E3/yPIir9NKfns/doing-business-in-north-korea.html [Korea Report's 300th posting.]
In a respite from preoccupation with the North Korean nuclear/security issue, U.S. media is beginning to take notice of other issues, such as joint ventures and business interactions in North Korea, that shed some light on changes occuring within North Korea.

The CNN carried an interview with Hyun Jeong-eun, the chairwoman of South Korea's Hyundai Asan, which has pioneered inter-Korea joint ventures with investment of $272 million in North Korea, in projects like the Kaesong Industrial Park and tours to Mount Kumgang.

The Fortune magazine recently featured "The capitalist who loves North Korea," about Korean-American entrepreneur James Kim (photo, in front of his university in North Korea) who is fulfilling his dream of opening a Western-style university in North Korea that will offer classes similar to a MBA program.

"Poverty (苟且) steals (偸) peace (安)."

My translation makes much more sense because, generally speaking, peace and prosperity go together, but poverty tends to lead to unrest, which can be paraphrased as, "Poverty steals peace."

Vitit Muntarbhorn's UN report says World Food Programme is able to reach fewer than 2 million needy due to aid shortfall

North Korea should take urgent steps to improve its "abysmal" human rights record by providing food to its hungry citizens, a UN envoy said yesterday as he released a scathing report on the reclusive country.

The report noted that almost 9 million people in North Korea were suffering from food shortages, with the World Food Programme (WFP) able to reach fewer than 2 million of the hungry population due to a shortfall in international aid as countries cut funding in response to Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests.

The UN imposed new sanctions on North Korea after it tested a second nuclear device in May, following a first test in 2006.

"I estimate at least a third of the population are in the hunger situation out of the projected 24 million population, said Vitit Muntarbhorn, the UN rapporteur for North Korea.

Muntarbhorn, a Thai professor who has investigated North Korea for nearly six years but never been allowed entry, was presenting his latest report to the UN general assembly committee that deals with human rights issues.

North Korea's deputy UN ambassador, Pak Tok Hun, rejected the report, calling it a "politically conspired document, full of distortion, lies, falsity, devised by hostile forces".

Muntarbhorn dropped any diplomatic niceties as he rounded on the regime's treatment of its own people.

"The freedoms from want, from fear, from discrimination, from persecution and from exploitation are regrettably transgressed with impunity by those authorities, in an astonishing setting of abuse after abuse," Muntarbhorn said in his report.

"They compromise and threaten not only human rights, but also international peace and security."

He pointed out that while poverty was rife in North Korea, the country itself was endowed with vast mineral resources.

"It is the exploitation of the ordinary people which has become the pernicious prerogative of the ruling elite. This is all the more ironic since it is reported that the economy has improved slightly over the past year, an indication that more resources could be available to help the population," he said.

Publication of the report comes amid reports of a secret meeting between North and South Korean officials last week in Singapore to discuss a possible summit of Kim Jong-il, the North's leader, and Lee Myung-bak, the South's president.

Relations between the two Koreas deteriorated after Lee adopted a tougher line towards the North after taking office early last year. He linked aid for Pyongyang to progress on efforts to end its nuclear programme. In response, Pyongyang suspended reconciliation talks and most of their joint projects.

In recent months, the North has taken a more conciliatory tone, freeing detained South Koreans and pledged to resume joint projects, possibly in response to the effects of the UN sanctions.

]]> http://koreanlanguagenotes.blogspot.com/2009/10/does-mean-same-as.html http://koreanlanguagenotes.blogspot.com/2009/10/does-mean-same-as.html

父生我身(부생아신)	[My] father (父) gave life (生) [to] my (我) body (身).
母(모)鞠(국)吾(오)身(신)	My] mother (母) raised (鞠) my (我) body (身).
腹以懷我(복이회아)	With [her] stomach (腹以) [she] sheltered (懷) me (我).
乳以哺我(유이포아)	With [her] milk (乳以) [she] fed (哺) me (我).
以衣溫我(이의온아)	With (以) clothes (衣) [they] warmed (溫) me (我).
以食飽我(이식포아)	With (以) food (食) [they] filled (飽) me (我).

From what little I know about classical Chinese, the order of the characters was important to determining the meaning of a sentence. Therefore, I suspect that 以 coming before the noun had a different meaning from 以 coming after the noun. However, the only difference I noticed between the two sets of sentences above was that the nouns in sentences 3 and 4 were either a part of the mother (her stomach) or originated from her (her breast milk), but the nouns in sentences 5 and 6 were just general references to food and clothing.

When 以 came after a noun, did it imply that the noun belonged to the subject of the sentence or originated from him or her? In other words, does 乳以 mean "with her milk," and 以乳 mean just "with milk"?

Films on Korean reunification issues are scarce, as the news media is mainly preoccupied with the security issue and bypasses the underlying issues of the division and its impact on average Koreans. This new documentary film by a Korean-Canadian filmmaker Min Sook Lee, supported by the National Film Board of Canada, sheds some light on the latter. The following is a description of the film from the film site:

The psychic scar shared by millions of people, separated from their families during the Korean War in the 1950s, is symbolized by the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing communist North from capitalist South. Here, along this infamous border, award-winning filmmaker Min Sook Lee sets out on a revelatory, emotion-charged journey into Korea’s broken heart, exploring the rhetoric and realism of reunification through the extraordinary stories of ordinary people.

Tiger Spirit begins in the Korean foothills, where the filmmaker joins former TV videographer Lim Sun Nam in his obsessive quest to prove tigers still live in the DMZ’s swath of wilderness. A powerful symbol of resilience in Korean mythology, the tiger once roamed the peninsula but is thought extinct in the region. Lim believes finding the tiger will reconnect Koreans to their spirit and fuel the reunification train.

But a tiger’s stripes extend beyond its fur. Inspired by her desire to understand the country she left as a child when her family moved to Canada, Lee takes us deeper than symbols, asking the crucial question—how will the two Koreas be put back together?

We meet stoic elderly Koreans holding out for news of long lost relatives in the North. We encounter the fractured lives of younger defectors, including a woman who relives her harrowing escape story every day working as a tour guide at a war memorial site.

Crossing the DMZ into North Korea, we visit an inter-Korean economic project in Kaesong, the ancient capital. And we gain unprecedented access to state-sanctioned family reunions held at a high security “resort,” where we witness the Kim family’s heart-wrenching meeting with a relative they haven’t seen for 50 years.

An eloquent tale of longing and hope, Tiger Spirit is unforgettable portrait of Korea at a crossroads.

The former England manager may have turned down the opportunity to work for Kim Jong-Il. Big mistake . . .

Sven-Goran Eriksson has turned down the chance to manage North Korea at next year's World Cup. This is a great shame, as a closer look reveals the rogue Swedish football manager and the rogue one-party state are in fact a match made in heaven.

Sven-Goran Eriksson

Current status: Face of a mysterious and shadowy regime (newly oil-rich Notts County FC).

Experience with dubious authority figures: Employed at Manchester City by Thaksin Shinawatra, deposed Thai prime minster recently sentenced to two years in prison for corruption.

Globetrotting: In the last 15 years, Lisbon, Genoa, Florence, Rome, England, Manchester City, Mexico and now the banks of the Trent

Loves to hate: England. Revenge is a dish best served by a distinctly chilly Swede

He says: "No, I don't know where the money comes from. I'm not interested in that." On settling in at Notts County.

North Korea's football team

Current status: Face of a mysterious and shadowy regime (Kim Jong-Il's Stalinist dictatorship).

Experience with dubious authority figures: Kim Jong-Il personally instructed his players on World Cup qualification.

Globetrotting: Before this year the team hadn't visited Europe since 1966.

Loves to hate: England. Kim is said to have been enraged by pictures of David Beckham posing with journalists freed from a North Korean prison. His players have reportedly been offered cash bonuses to exact revenge on the pitch at the World Cup.

They say: "It turned into a theatre of plot-breeding and swindling." On claims that players were "poisoned" by hosts South Korea at a game last April.

]]> http://koreanlanguagenotes.blogspot.com/2009/10/was-used-to-make-causative-verbs.html http://koreanlanguagenotes.blogspot.com/2009/10/was-used-to-make-causative-verbs.html THIS WEB PAGE, the Chinese character 來 (내) was used in classical Chinese to mean, "[He] comes," and 來之 (내지) was used to mean, "[He] makes him come." In other words, the 之 (지) seems to have made "to come" (來) into a causative verb. In classical Chinese, was 之 sometimes used to make causative verbs?

I am curious because I want to know if the following translation is correct:

一僧寺 與餠茶粥醬以食之

A temple (一僧寺) gave (與) [us] rice cake (餠), tea (茶), rice gruel (粥) and soy sauce (醬) and had us eat them.

• 무엇 = 무어 = 뭐
• 무엇 = 뭣
• 무엇이 = 뭬
• 무엇을 = 뭘

Unfortunately, it is probably too late to save the 뭬 contraction because 뭐가 and 머가 have become so ingrained in the Korean language that it would be difficult to get rid of them now. I think I remember reading that sometime in the past 가 used to be the only subject marker in Korean, which may help explain why 뭐가 is so ingrained.

By the way, if you do use 뭬, do not add the subject marker 가 to it since its meaning already includes the subject marker. Some Koreans even add the object marker 를 to 뭬, which, of course, is also wrong since it would be like saying 무엇이를.

Clinton said he is not a policy maker and shouldn't be, but has an obligation to report to his government.

By Armen Hareyan