Thomas journals

KoreaTimes newspaper of April 5, 2014:  the front page features five items: a photo of the Avengers2 film shoot, with Captain America posed on the set; four stories with these headlines:   Japan adopts absurd claims in textbooks ; Obama plays favorites ; Ortiz’s selfie makes White House uneasy ; and ‘US knows japan at fault on row with Korea’ … all about America and Japan!  (Obama is said to be favoring Japan -- he even supposedly pressed the Virginia governor to veto the bill requiring Virginia textbooks to add the name “East Sea” to Sea of Japan!). And the Avengers2 filmshoot dominates public talk -- students and teachers alike discuss sightings of the film crew or actors, and the resulting traffic delays at the bridges in use. But it is considered worth the effort, to show the world that Korea is a hip, modern place, worth the effort for Captain America to defend against the villains (from the north, perhaps?).

As part of the Great Game -- originally describing the cold-war-like battle between Russia and Great Britain in the 1800s -- between China, Korea, and Japan, recent elections of more conservative and certainly more nationalistic leaders have led to a war of words.  We all worry that the words may escalate to more damaging exchanges.   As South Korea is now trading furiously with China on the economic front, the political connections continue as well.   While I was in China last month, the news media trumpeted the repatriation of the remains of Chinese soldiers killed in "the war against American Imperialism" (later editions termed it "the korean war"(all lower-case)).   China Daily's front page displayed a nice photo of military honor guard bearing caskets at an airport, and described the great care that South Korea had taken in disinterring the remains.   A few days earlier the same newspaper reported that a new holiday had been declared, to...