Isn’t naming oneself “Jackie” for the Western audience merely succumbing to American/Anglophone cultural imperialism one is railing against?
Barf on Jackie Chan. He is a hypocrite. I didn’t see him rail against American cultural imperialism when Hollywood paid him millions to put him in films or when he appeared in the Oscars ceremony.
Or perhaps he’s […]

Although this has been covered on a few other blogs, it’s worth a trip to Google Maps to take a look at Pyongyang. Once at the site, click on “Satellite” (street maps not yet available), put “Pyongyang, North Korea,” in the location section, and zoom in to where you want, or pan around to […]

UPDATE: Yet another site, but this one dedicated to books, videos (DVD/CD), and even music, ‘North Korea Imports‘ (seller ‘dprkstuff’). Hat-tip to Ian.
For those of you who are interested in North Korean items – pins, military, books, bills, coins, uniforms, etc. – there are a few excellent sites that offer what you’re looking for.
First […]

Why Korean soap operas are more compelling than Japanese ones (via Simon World):
For me what stands out the most is the very, very high production values of the popular Korean shows - there simply is no discernable gap between them and those made in Japan, with all being shot in gloriously vivid HDTV detail […]

Remember Nick Leeson, the destroyer of the ancient Barings Bank? His story was even made into an HBO film starring Ewan McGregor called “Rogue Trader.”
Now comes China’s version of Nick Leeson:
China on Thursday acknowledged that a since-detained government trader placed a series of disastrous bets on the price of copper in London this summer, […]

On the heels of the Harbin toxic spill incident comes the mining accident nearby in a nearby city that has killed over 100 people:
Anxious relatives demanded access to a coal mine Monday after an explosion killed at least 134 miners and left 15 others missing, adding to a soaring death toll in China’s mines […]

From Reuters:
The United States should give North Korea “political and economic” compensation after the collapse of an international project to provide it with nuclear reactors, a spokesman for Pyongyang’s foreign ministry said on Monday.
Last week, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organisation (KEDO), the body running the project, pulled the plug on the long-stalled deal […]

‘Reptile media’? According to the KCNA:
North Korea lashed out at TV news network CNN for airing footage purporting to show a public execution, accusing it of being part of a US-government-organised slander campaign.
CNN this month aired a documentary with footage defectors claimed to have smuggled out of North Korea, including a public execution of […]

My latest column is available in The Seattle Times today:
THEIRS were compelling tales of privation, hardship, sorrow and unspeakable horrors of sexual slavery.
Kyeong-Sook Cha and Soon-Hee Ma, two defectors from North Korea, testified for the House Committee on International Relations, and provided firsthand accounts of widespread tragedy occurring in the Sino-North Korean border areas.
In […]

Earlier I asked about online gaming in China:
An unmentioned, but interesting corollary to the story is, will the Chinese government regulate the virtual worlds created by these online games? If not, will they become havens for dissent and free information exchange, places to escape from the censorship and government regulations that is the Chinese […]