S. KOREA: Korea activists target foreign English teachers

Yie Eun-woong, volunteer manager of the Seoul-based Anti-English Spectrum, investigates complaints from parents about foreign teachers. Angry teachers groups call him an instigator and a stalker. (John M. Glionna / Los Angeles Times / January 20, 2010)

A South Korea group uses the Internet and other means to track foreign teachers, in an effort to ferret out illegal or unsavory behavior. The teachers say they're victims of stalkers and rumors.

January 31, 2010

By John M. Glionna

Reporting from Seoul - Sometimes, in his off hours, Yie Eun-woong does a bit of investigative work.

He uses the Internet and other means to track personal data and home addresses of foreign English teachers across South Korea.
Then he follows them, often for weeks at a time, staking out their apartments, taking notes on their contacts and habits.

He wants to know whether they're doing drugs or molesting children.

Yie, a slender 40-year-old who owns a temporary employment agency, says he is only attempting to weed out troublemakers who have no business teaching students in South Korea, or anywhere else.

The volunteer manager of a controversial group known as the Anti-English Spectrum, Yie investigates complaints by South Korean parents, often teaming up with authorities, and turns over information from his efforts for possible prosecution.

Outraged teachers groups call Yie an instigator and a stalker.
Yie waves off the criticism. "It's not stalking, it's following," he said. "There's no law against that."

Since its founding in 2005, critics say, Yie's group has waged an invective-filled nationalistic campaign against the 20,000 foreign-born English teachers in South Korea.

On their website and through fliers, members have spread rumors of a foreign English teacher crime wave. They have alleged that some teachers are knowingly spreading AIDS, speculation that has been reported in the Korean press.

Teacher activists acknowledge that a few foreign English instructors are arrested each year in South Korea -- cases mostly involving the use of marijuana -- but they insist that the rate of such incidents is far lower than for the Korean population itself.

"Why are they following teachers? That's a job for the police," said Dann Gaymer, a spokesman for the Assn. for Teachers of English in Korea. "What this group is up to is something called vigilantism, and I don't like the sound of that."

In November, the president of the teachers group received anonymous e-mails threatening his life and accusing him of committing sex crimes.

"I have organized the KEK (Kill White in Korea)," one e-mail read in part. "We will start to kill and hit [foreigners] from this Christmas. Don't make a fuss. . . . Just get out."

Yie acknowledges that he has been questioned by investigators but denies any involvement in the threats of violence.
"To be honest," he said, "a lot of our group members believe the teachers made this all up."

The debate over foreign English teachers is symbolic of a social shift taking place in a nation that has long prided itself on its racial purity and singular culture, South Korean analysts say.

In less than a decade, the number of foreigners living in South Korea, with a population of nearly 49 million, has doubled to 1.2 million, many of them migrant workers from other Asian nations.

Also included are the foreign English teachers, most from the United States, drawn here by compensation packages that may include as much as $2,500 a month plus free rent and a round-trip ticket to teach a Korean population obsessed with learning from native speakers.

Yie's efforts have the support of some educators who say many foreign teachers lack the skills to run a classroom.

"This has nothing to do with race. It is all about teaching," said Kim Young-Lan, a sociology professor at Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul.

The government has tried to stem what it sees as a troubling number of racist incidents. A 31-year-old man was charged last year for a verbal outburst against an Indian man and a Korean woman traveling together on a city bus in Seoul.

But some teachers from abroad say Korean laws regarding their status remain discriminatory. Foreign English teachers must undergo HIV tests and criminal and academic checks that are not required of Koreans doing the same work, they say.

Yie says he has nothing against foreigners. Growing up near the city of Osan, he often rode with his taxi driver father and encountered foreigners who served at the U.S. military base there. "I learned to pick out the good guys from the bad guys," he says.

In 2005, by then living in Seoul, he joined the fledgling activist group after seeing an upsetting posting on a website: claims by foreign teachers that they had slept with Korean students.
Yie, who is single and has no children, volunteered to help organize an effort to rein in such behavior.

"People were angry; most of them were parents with kids," he said. "We all got together online and traded information."
Gaymer says he doubts that such a posting ever existed. Instead, he says, Koreans were angry about photos posted on a job website showing foreigners dancing with scantily clad Korean women.

"They were consenting adults at a party with foreign men," he said. "They weren't doing anything bad or illegal."

Yie's group, Gaymer says, has used the incident as a rallying call. "They're posting online pictures of teachers' apartments and whipping each other into a nationalist frenzy, creating a hysteria against all English teachers, troublemakers or not," he said.

Yie, who says his group is managed by half a dozen key figures and has 300 other members, created a system for parents and others to report bad teachers. The group says it has contributed to several arrests, including the recent bust of several foreign instructors for gambling and marijuana possession.

"I'm being called a racist who judges the entire group by the mistakes of the few," Yie said. "I'm trying to look at these teachers with an open mind."

Ju-min Park of The Times' Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.

View Article in Los Angeles Times

JAPAN & HAITI: Rooney on Earthquakes

January 31, 2010 4:58 PM

When a quake struck Japan in 1923, Andy Rooney's father was there. Some of the lessons learned then and now remain the same.

 
Watch CBS News Videos Online

RUSSIA: On this Day (Jan 31) in 1714

Portrait of Peter the Great by Jean-Marc Nattier

On January 31, 1714, Russian Emperor Peter I, aspiring to boost the literacy level amongst teenage members of the nobility, issued his decree only allowing the young men to get married after they had completed their studies.

In the strictest sense, it was not until Peter’s coming to power that formal state-run educational establishments began to emerge in Russia. Before that, aside from minor attempts to set up schools undertaken by various Russian leaders, the youth in Russia was homeschooled, attended classes at church, or received a special education, mastering one of the trades.

Peter, after his Grand Expedition to Europe in 1697-98, was deeply impressed by the developments of European industry and science and wanted to evoke the thirst for knowledge and science in the younger noble generation.

The rather witty decree provided that “to every region should be dispatched a number of persons keen in mathematics, to teach the noble offspring arithmetic and geometry and those who disobey are to be punished, as they are not to get married until all sciences are comprehended.”

However, in the times of Peter, to feed his vast military campaigns, educational establishments were majorly focused on preparing staff for the army. Peter’s demands toward education were very high, therefore, some schools did not even have a fixed graduation date – the students were only allowed out after they displayed a decent knowledge of all taught disciplines. Very often, Peter himself actively oversaw the entire educational process, coming to classes and field practices and personally honoring the best students. According to Peter’s decree of 1701 general education was available for people regardless their rank.

The teachers to schools were invited from abroad, as well as transferred straight from the army and navy with real-life experience to share. The so-called first stage of studies was devoted to the basics of the Russian language and arithmetic, while the next stage included higher levels of trigonometry and geometry, and the final stage was about astronomy and navigation science. Though admission was open to everyone, only those higher on the social hierarchy could resume their education further than the first stage. Besides which, the higher educational establishments did not admit common people anyway. The lower-class graduates could later become orderly room clerks or do a variety of other supplementary jobs in the Admiralty. The noble graduates were sent to the Navy, to the artillery, or to the infantry regiments.

Every educational establishment under Peter was very focused on discipline; an unexcused absence could be punished by punitive labor or even death – however, such fatal punishment was never actually carried out. These strict measures were brought about by the fact that, along with the tangible advantages, the educational system brought obvious complications. The military service slacking on the part of the young nobility significantly increased due to a list of reasons: first, the actual service was now a lot harder and more complicated; besides this, another decree issued by Peter demanded that for entering the compulsory military service, the noble youth had to have a certain educational background, which automatically became compulsory, too; on the other hand, the landownership had become hereditary, rendering the practice of allotting the good servicemen amounts of land obsolete. As a result, the increased difficulty of the military service was aggravated by the simultaneous decrease of material remuneration. Unwillingness to serve in the army spawned the unwillingness to study in the first place. Slacking service and schools had become the nobility’s major vice and social disease, bringing about harsh and usual punishments, like punitive labor or ban on marriage.

Schools were nevertheless established, more and more over time, and all across Russia, stretching deeper into the Urals and other Russian regions, forming the basis for the state educational system of the youth and giving ground to opening higher educational establishments.

View Article on Russia Today

TRAVEL: How to Have a Perfect Time in Port

January 2010

by Wendy Perrin

Cruises may be a steal nowadays, but your total trip cost can skyrocket once you factor in shoreside sightseeing and activities, especially if you opt for the ship's group tours. So how do you get the most for your time and money in port?

[1] If your lifelong dream is to see a particular sight—say, the Acropolis—book a cruise that starts, ends, or overnights in that port. Ships can cancel port calls because of unforeseen circumstances such as bad weather or a labor strike. On a Mediterranean cruise, for instance, rough seas prevented our ship from sailing into Piraeus Harbor—which meant we missed our one and only day in Athens.

[2] Decide well in advance how to spend your hours in port. Web access can run a dollar a minute at sea, so waiting till you're on board to check out port options is expensive. And don't rely on the concierge desk, since most any cruise line's goal is to sell you its tours. Start your excursion research right after booking a cruise.

[3] Perusing the list of shore tours sold by the cruise line is a good way to begin your research, but don't stop there. Check out the Web sites of local tourist boards, as well as sites specializing in day-trips—ShoreTrips.com, Viator.com—and local tour agencies with a focus on your interests (say, fly-fishing or wineries).

[4] Find local events scheduled for the day you're in port. Is there a cultural festival or sports tournament happening? Read local English-language newspapers online for event listings, and check museum Web sites for exhibitions and hours.

[5] Calculate travel time from the ship to the sights you want to see. The trip from Barcelona's pier to its Gothic Quarter is a ten-minute taxi ride, whereas going from Civitavecchia into Rome can take two hours. To compute your travel time, ask which pier your ship will use and whether it will anchor or dock. If it anchors—which means you must line up to board tenders to go ashore—passengers who have signed up for a ship tour will likely get to disembark before those with independent port plans. The cruise line should be able to tell you travel time from the pier to destinations included in its shore tours.

[6] Research public transit options. They can be faster, not to mention a lot cheaper and more authentic, than the ship's bus tour. Lonely Planet guidebooks often have good logistical information, and you can usually find train, bus, and ferry schedules online.

[7] For the greatest flexibility, rent a car or hire a taxi by the day or half-day. On islands or in ports where there's a rental car agency at the pier (and where the cost isn't prohibitive), I've found that renting a car is the best way to see the sights. If driving seems too risky, opt for a taxi. On European and Caribbean islands, cabs usually cost about $120 for four hours, and many drivers speak some English.

[8] In ports where everybody will be headed to the same famous landmark, book a private car and driver in advance. The car can meet you the minute you disembark, allowing you to bypass the taxi line and the groups boarding the buses. By booking a car and driver in Izmir, Turkey, we beat the crowds to the Greco-Roman city of Ephesus, then headed to the ancient wine- and olive-oil-making village of Sirince for a Turkish feast, not a tourist in sight. The cost of the transportation, Ephesus tickets, and lunch for four? $272. The ship's bus tour to Ephesus for four? $508. Hire a car and driver either through an excellent cruise travel agent who knows guides and drivers worldwide (see "Perrin's People," August 2009) or through a local concierge: If you plan to have lunch at a resort, for example, you could ask its concierge to arrange for the car.

[9] Where private arrangements are too expensive and logistics too challenging, opt for a ship tour. When I looked into booking a private day-trip to the Pyramids from the port in Alexandria, the cost for four was more than $2,000. Instead, we chose the cruise line's excursion to Giza for $199 per person and enjoyed desert jeep and camel rides that would have been impossible to organize on our own.

[10] When the only way to gain access to a monument or activity is via a ship-arranged group tour, book early—before it sells out. Our one day for seeing Alexandria itself was a public holiday, so to visit its famous library, the Bibliotecha Alexandrina, we had to take a tour organized by the ship. Indeed, the sole way to participate in many adventure activities—four-wheel drives, dogsledding, helicopter rides—is often via a ship tour.

Join Wendy Online: For timely travel advice and to ask Wendy your pressing questions, head to perrinpost.truth.travel.

View Article in Conde Nast Traveler

CHINA: China, and children as a commodity

January 31, 2010

It seemed a perfect match, until adoption became big business in China.

Editorial

Over decades now, infertility or the simple desire to offer a child the chance for a better life has sent would-be parents to China in search of a baby to adopt. For so many, it was the perfect match.

On one side of the Pacific were well-to-do couples yearning to share their love and good fortune; on the other were a plethora of little girls abandoned by impoverished parents in need of a son to support them in old age, or in violation of the country's so-called one-child policy.

No one liked to think of adoptions in unseemly market terms, but in fact this was a case of supply and demand. Whether paying for egg donors and surrogate mothers in the United States, or for lawyers and adoption agencies abroad, those who sought children knew that lots of money changed hands -- $15,000 to $30,000 in paperwork, travel and fees for a Chinese baby. Still, why call it commerce when such aching needs were concerned, and what did it matter if everyone was better off?

That's how it seemed, anyway, as tens of thousands of babies arrived in the United States in the 1990s and 2000s from Hunan, Guangdong and other provinces with names previously unknown to many of the adoptive parents. The overwhelming majority of adoptees were girls, moving from an often-soulless orphanage into the tearful embrace of a new family and a newly decorated bedroom in the likes of Indiana, Minnesota or California.

Unfortunately, not everything was as it seemed. Although many of the babies indeed were abandoned, demand ultimately began to outpace supply, and as Barbara Demick of The Times' Beijing Bureau recently reported, some babies were taken from birth parents in remote villages by coercion, fraud or kidnapping. Official orphanages, which received $3,000 per child from the adoptive parents, began paying up to $600 per newborn in expenses and more to finders, some of whom were government officials. In recent years, some Chinese parents have begun to talk about how they were threatened or tricked into giving up their daughters, sometimes in lieu of fines they could not afford for having a second or third child.

Chinese law prohibits commerce in children, and in 2005 the government conducted a high-profile prosecution of a trafficking ring in Hunan province for receiving payments to procure 85 babies who were then placed abroad with unwitting adoptive parents. Demick spoke with one of the traffickers, recently released from jail, who said he had purchased newborns in Guangdong province and supplied them to orphanages in Hunan. He said his supplier sold more than 1,000 babies to orphanages in Hunan and Jianxi provinces, which frequently disguised the children's origins, saying they had been discovered at a market or near a bridge in Hunan. "The merchandise may have been human, but it was a trading business like any other. Cash on delivery; prices set by laws of supply and demand. . . . The orphanages would often phone in their orders and haggle over the price," Demick wrote.

Chinese officials have told foreign agencies and governments that the Hunan case was an aberration, but a report to the Dutch parliament last year by the Netherlands-based World Children claimed the agency had evidence that the backgrounds and identities of Chinese children put up for adoption more recently had been changed, and that children still were being traded for cash. Moreover, although the Chinese government acknowledged that the children in the Hunan case had been sent abroad, it did not clarify where all of them went, according to the report.

Chinese adoptions have dropped dramatically from their peak in 2005, when nearly 8,000 babies arrived in the United States. Last year the number was about 3,000, due to a scarcity that stems from many causes. Chinese society is wealthier, with more families able to support an illegal child or two. Domestic adoptions are on the rise, and the attitude toward girls has changed along with opportunities for them in China's urbanized economy; women too can support parents in their old age.

We would like to believe that another reason for the scarcity is that the Chinese government is vigorously enforcing existing anti-trafficking laws under the Hague convention on intercountry adoption. U.S. officials say they have no evidence of ongoing violations. They note that with a wait now of three to five years for newborns, nearly half of those coming to the United States are older or special-needs children who have been in care for a while.

But many who follow the issue closely believe abuses persist, although no one seems to know how widespread they are.
There is a cultural divide between the Chinese system's tendency toward secrecy and Americans' belief in their right to know. Given that China is still the largest source of adopted babies in the United States, however, it is imperative that U.S. officials demand openness and transparency regarding the background of these children, and that U.S. agencies deal only with proven, reputable orphanages in China. The Chinese must bend over backward to clarify the origins of babies and to create a thorough databank of information to ensure that all babies are offered for adoption voluntarily. No parent should be forced or tricked into relinquishing a child.

The donations that adoptive parents are required to pay to orphanages -- raised to about $5,000 last year -- also should be dropped or redirected. The Chinese government considers this a social welfare fee to help fund the orphanages and care for the children who are still there, many of them with special needs. It should fund these orphanages in a way that does not create local incentives to find more babies for adoption.

In the past, Americans may not have dreamed that their pursuit of parenthood could create a market for abandoned or abducted children -- obviously that was never their intention. But now that the issue has come to light, they too must be vigilant. Their children inevitably will ask where they came from, who they are and why they were put up for adoption. For the sake of both parents and children, they should have answers.

View Article in Los Angeles Times

Cruise Planning

by Heather Hopkins Clement

My travelling companions for my next cruise, Caroline and Janabeth, came over for an afternoon of cruise planning yesterday.  I had piles of maps, brochures and books related to the various destinations for us to sort through to map out our plans.

I have always been a planner, and I am especially one when it comes to cruising in East Asia.  I wholeheartedly agree with the author of  “How to Have a Perfect Time in Port”:

Decide well in advance how to spend your hours in port.  Web access can run a dollar a minute at sea, so waiting till you're on board to check out port options is expensive. And don't rely on the concierge desk, since most any cruise line's goal is to sell you its tours. Start your excursion research right after booking a cruise.

The last thing you want to be doing when you walk the gangway ashore is trying to figure out what you will do that day and how to get there.  It is a waste of your precious time ashore and could eat up so much of your time that once you figure out what you really want to do, you find there is not enough time to do it. 

There are so many good resources on the web, and they’re FREE!  I’ve posted quite a few of the links on my blog for easy reference.  The first place to start is with the national tourist organization for the countries you plan to visit.   They have a ton of information on their websites.  Many also have representative offices overseas, and if you contact them via phone or email, they will often send you a packet of printed materials about what to do when you go ashore.  It’s especially helpful to request maps (if available), so you can locate where the sights you wish to visit are located in relation to where the ship will dock.  You can then begin to figure other logistics such as a realistic itinerary (time-wise), mode(s) of transportation, recommended restaurants (esp. important if you have any dietary restrictions), and related fees.  This will then help you budget  and calculate how much local currency you will need.

Here in Southern California, I have found the  Los Angeles offices of the Japan National Tourist Organization, the Korea Tourism Organization and the Taiwanese Tourism Bureau to be most helpful.  The more specific details you give them about what you are looking for, the better they can assist you.  I have also received some good maps from the China National Tourist Office, but I have not had any personal interaction with the staff, and the information is limited.  I have yet to find the Russian equivalent of these organizations, so if anyone knows of such a resource, please let me know.

If the information you receive from the national tourist organization is not specific enough for your particular needs, contact the tourist organization for that city.  In some cases, they may be more helpful.  A good example of this is Shanghai.  While the information I have received to date from the China National Tourist Organization leaves some room for improvement, there is a wealth of information available about Shanghai. online including the city’s official travel site.  As you probably already know, Shanghai is hosting the World Expo this year, and they have gone all out to make the city tourist friendly.  If you are requesting any overseas office send you materials, you obviously need to do this weeks, if not months, in advance to allow sufficient time for the materials to reach you and for you to sort through them carefully.

Local newspaper sites can also be quite helpful.  For example, the Shanghai Daily’s Live in Shanghai section, includes a comprehensive city guide, information on cultural events throughout the city, and downloadable maps.

Another item you may want to add to your “TO DO” list in advance, is picking up a little of the local language.  Knowing basic pronunciation, greetings, etc. can go a long way.  There are some great resources online:

• Chinese
• Japanese
• Korean
• Russian

As for our planning, we were able to sketch out most of our plans yesterday and make a list of information we still needed to research before we depart.  During Q&A sessions onboard, I am often asked some variant of “Given all your knowledge and experience, what do YOU plan to do ashore?”  So, stay tuned and I’ll give you more specifics on our plans.

CHINA: China spends billions to study dinosaur fossils at sites of major discoveries

Tuesday, January 26, 2010; HE01

By Ariana Eunjung Cha

ZHUCHENG, CHINA -- What killed the dinosaurs? Scientist Wang Haijun thinks the answer may be buried inside a 980-foot-long ravine in the Chinese countryside 415 miles southeast of Beijing where hundreds of the creatures may have huddled in the final moments before their extinction.

The fossils here -- more than 15,000 fractured, mangled and blackened bones from about 65 million years ago in the late Cretaceous period right before they went extinct -- support theories of a catastrophe. Global fires. Explosions. Climate change.

"This find is very important for understanding the very end of the age of dinosaurs," said James M. Clark, a paleontologist at George Washington University who has examined some of the fossils.

The excavation here, believed to be the largest dinosaur fossil site in the world, is one of a number of groundbreaking research projects in a country that once shunned science because it was associated with the elites.

As a construction boom sweeps through China, workers digging into the ground and clearing forests for highways and high-rises are inadvertently stumbling upon relics that are rewriting our understanding of the distant past.

The Chinese government, which during the Cultural Revolution in 1966-76 was responsible for dismantling scientific research institutions, banishing many intellectuals to farms and systematically destroying historical artifacts, is now throwing billions of dollars into projects in archaeology, historical ecology and paleontology.

For decades, much of the important research into dinosaurs was in the United States, at sites in Utah and Montana. But over the past two to three years, attention has shifted to China, with major discoveries in Zhucheng and other sites.

In northeastern China in March, scientists discovered a new fossil indicating that many dinosaurs may have had featherlike fuzz, which they said suggests a closer relationship between birds and dinosaurs than previously thought. In Inner Mongolia, researchers dug up an entire herd of young, ostrichlike dinosaurs that they said will provide critical insight into how the creatures grew up. And in the desert in the far west, another group found a dinosaur with no teeth, trapped in a "death pit" that once was probably full of mud.

Zhucheng, with miles of gated industrial complexes featuring signs advertising canned food and men's suits, looks like any other factory town aboveground. But underneath this city of 1 million, there's a treasure trove of dinosaur remains, more than 50 metric tons of which have been collected.

They are so numerous here that "fossils can even be found in some farmers' private courtyard areas and next to their houses," said Xu Xing, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who is one of the lead researchers on the excavation here.

Residents in and around Zhucheng, on China's east coast in Shandong Province, have been digging up "flying dragon" bones for use in medicinal concoctions for generations. But it took a long time for the state to recognize their value.

Dinosaur researchers "had absolutely no money in the 1990s," said Clark, who has been coming to China to do research since 1991. But by 2002, the government put a stop to people who smuggled dinosaur bones and eggs and sold them. Now, Clark said, "because they are finding so many amazing fossils, the Chinese government is putting a lot of money into it."

As a result, there are more than 30 excavation sites in this area, the largest of which was discovered in 2008 and has been nicknamed the "Dinosaur Stream."

At the time dinosaurs were roaming across China, Zhucheng is thought to have been an area of grasslands submerged under several feet of water.

The researchers theorize that the dinosaurs were killed by the force of an explosion from a volcanic eruption or a meteor impact and then were caught in a flash flood, landslide or even a tsunami that threw them together. Perhaps several such disasters occurred over a period of years.

"It's very hard to understand why there are so many dinosaurs dead in one place," said Wang, the principal technician on the excavation.

The pit has yielded some of the world's largest duck-billed dinosaur specimens, bones of a type of dinosaur that had never been seen outside North America, and at least six new species.

One of the new dinosaurs has a pointy, triangular chin, kind of like a pelican's bill but made of bone. Xu says it is "the strangest creature I have ever seen."

What's even more intriguing is that there are seven distinctive "floors" of dead dinosaurs in the pit. Some of the soil is yellow, other layers are red clay, which Xu said seems to show that "there wasn't just one event. The dinosaur bones are preserved in different layers, suggesting they were killed in several different times," he said.

Local officials are less interested in these mysteries. What they see in Zhucheng are money-making opportunities. Wang Kebai, head of the Zhucheng Municipal Tourism Bureau, has contracted with a U.S. company to draw up plans for a dinosaur museum and park that he and other officials boast will rival Disneyland. He said he expects 2 million visitors a year.

Wang said the potential is so great that the government may order scientists to stop digging and simply put glass around some of the bones in the soil and rocks so that tourists can see them in the state that they were found, rather than in isolated cases in a museum, with signs on them.

"There are so many bones," Wang reasoned. "Not all of them need to be studied."

Researcher Wang Juan contributed to this report.

View Article in the Washington Post

JAPAN & RUSSIA: Japan protests over Russian border guard shooting

Sergey Krivosheev

TOKYO, January 31 (RIA Novosti)

Japan's Foreign Ministry on Sunday issued a protest after Russian border guards opened fire at two Japanese fishing vessels off the disputed South Kuril islands.

The border guards fired warning shots from a helicopter and then had to open direct fire at the Japanese fishing vessels on Friday when the trawlers refused to stop after entering Russia's territorial waters off Kunashir Island, the Russian coastal guard service said.

The fishing boats returned to their port of Rausu with numerous bullet holes on their hulls, the Japanese Foreign Ministry said, adding that the border guards' actions could have resulted in the loss of life and were completely inappropriate.

The ministry also said the vessels were fishing under bilateral agreements and urged Russia to take measures to avoid such incidents in the future.

Tokyo's continued claim over four South Kuril Islands (Iturup, Kunashir, Shikotan, and Habomai) has so far prevented Russia and Japan from signing a formal peace treaty to end World War II hostilities.

The four southern islands of the chain to the northeast of Japan were annexed by the Soviet Union after World War II.

View Article on RIA Novosti

S. KOREA: Samsung's Profit Jumps 75% On Rising Sales

Associated Press

Samsung 2009 net profit rises 75 percent

01.28.10, 08:15 PM EST 

Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea -- Samsung Electronics Co. says its 2009 net profit jumped 75 percent as sales rose amid higher prices for memory chips and strong demand for consumer electronics.

The company said Friday in a regulatory filing that it earned 9.65 trillion won ($8.33 billion) in the 12 months through Dec. 31. It reported net profit of 5.53 trillion won the same period the year before.

Samsung said sales last year rose 23 percent to 89.77 trillion won from 72.95 trillion won a year earlier.

The Suwon, South Korea-based company is the world's largest manufacturer of computer memory chips, flat screen televisions and liquid crystal displays. It ranks No. 2 in mobile phones behind Finland's Nokia Corp. ( NOK - news - people )

View Article on Forbes

CHINA: China's strident tone raises concerns among Western governments, analysts

Sunday, January 31, 2010; A01

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer

China's indignant reaction to the announcement of U.S. plans to sell weapons to Taiwan appears to be in keeping with a new triumphalist attitude from Beijing that is worrying governments and analysts across the globe.

From the Copenhagen climate change conference to Internet freedom to China's border with India, China observers have noticed a tough tone emanating from its government, its representatives and influential analysts from its state-funded think tanks.

Calling in U.S. Ambassador Jon Huntsman on Saturday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei said the United States would be responsible for "serious repercussions" if it did not reverse the decision to sell Taiwan $6.4 billion worth of helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, minesweepers and communications gear. The reaction came even though China has known for months about the planned deal, U.S. officials said.

"There has been a change in China's attitude," said Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a former senior National Security Council official who is currently at the Brookings Institution. "The Chinese find with startling speed that people have come to view them as a major global player. And that has fed a sense of confidence."

Lieberthal said another factor in China's new tone is a sense that after two centuries of exploitation by the West, China is resuming its role as one of the great nations of the world.

This new posture has befuddled Western officials and analysts: Is it just China's tone that is changing or are its policies changing as well?

In a case in point, one senior U.S. official termed as unusual China's behavior at the December climate conference, during which China publicly reprimanded White House envoy Todd Stern, dispatched a Foreign Ministry functionary to an event for state leaders and fought strenuously against fixed targets for emission cuts in the developed world.

Another issue is Internet freedom and cybersecurity, highlighted by Google's recent threat to leave China unless the country stops its Web censorship. At China's request, that topic was left off the table at this year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Josef Ackermann, chief executive of Deutsche Bank and co-chairman of the event, told Bloomberg News. The forum ends Sunday.

China dismisses concerns

Analysts say a combination of hubris and insecurity appears to be driving China's mood. On one hand, Beijing thinks that the relative ease with which it skated over the global financial crisis underscores the superiority of its system and that China is not only rising but has arrived on the global stage -- much faster than anyone could have predicted. On the other, recent uprisings in the western regions of Tibet and Xinjiang have fed Chinese leaders' insecurity about their one-party state. As such, any perceived threat to their power is met with a backlash.

A spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington said China's tone had not changed.

"China's positions on issues like arms sales to Taiwan and Tibet have been consistent and clear," Wang Baodong said, "as these issues bear on sovereignty and territorial integrity, which are closely related to Chinese core national interests."

The unease over China's new tone is shared by Europeans as well. "How Should Europe Respond to China's Strident Rise?" is the title of a new paper from the Center for European Reform. Just two years earlier, its author, institute director Charles Grant, had predicted that China and the European Union would shape the new world order.

"There is a real rethink going on about China in Europe," Grant said in an interview from Davos. "I don't think governments know what to do, but they know that their policies aren't working."

U.S. officials first began noticing the new Chinese attitude last year. Anecdotes range from the political to the personal.

At the World Economic Forum last year, Premier Wen Jiabao lambasted the United States for its economic mismanagement. A few weeks later, China's central bank questioned whether the dollar could continue to play its role as the international reserve currency.

And in another vignette, confirmed by several sources, a senior U.S. official involved in the economy hosted his Chinese counterpart, who then made a series of disparaging remarks about the bureau that the American ran. Later that night, the two were to dine at the American's house. The Chinese representatives called ahead, asking what was for dinner. They were informed that it was fish. "The director doesn't eat fish," one of them told his American interlocutor. "He wants steak. He says fish makes you weak." The menu was changed.

Tone with Europe, India

With Europe and India, China's strident tone has been even more apparent. In autumn 2008, China canceled a summit with the European Union after French President Nicolas Sarkozy met with the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama. Before that, it had denounced German Chancellor Angela Merkel over her contacts with the Tibetan spiritual leader. And in recent weeks, it has engaged in a heated exchange with British officials over its moves to block a broader agreement at the climate conference.

At the Chinese Embassy, Wang differed on the climate issue. "China is strongly behind the idea of meeting the issue of climate change," he said, "but at the same time we think that there are some people who want to confuse the situation, and we feel the need to try to let the rest of the world know our position clearly."

China also suspended ties with Denmark after its prime minister met the Dalai Lama and resumed them only after the Danish government issued a statement in December saying it would oppose Tibetan independence and consider Beijing's reaction before inviting him again.

"The Europeans have competed to be China's favored friend," Grant said, "but then they get put in the doghouse one by one."

China's newfound toughness also played out in a renewed dispute with India over Beijing's claims to the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which borders Tibet. Last summer, China blocked the Asian Development Bank from making a $60 million loan for infrastructure improvements in the state. India then moved to fund the projects itself, prompting China to send more troops to the border.

David Finkelstein, a former U.S. Army officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency who now runs the China program at the Center for Naval Analyses, said the new tone underscores a shift in China. "On the external front," he said, "we will likely see a China that is more willing than in the past to proactively shape the external environment and international order rather than passively react to it."

An example would be events that unfolded in December when 22 Chinese Muslims showed up in Cambodia and requested political asylum. China wanted to hold seven of them on suspicion of participating in anti-Chinese riots in the Xinjiang region in July.

Under intense pressure from Beijing, Cambodia sent the group home, despite protests from the United States. Two days after the group was repatriated, China signed 14 deals with Cambodia worth about $1 billion.

What the future holds

Whether this new bluster from Beijing presages tougher policies and actions in areas of direct concern to the United States is a key question, Lieberthal said. What China does after the United States sells Taiwan the weapons may provide some clues.

Even before the United States announced its plans Friday, at least six senior Chinese officials, including officers from the People's Liberation Army, had warned Washington against the sale.

Once the deal was announced, China's Defense Ministry said it was suspending a portion of the recently resumed military relations with the United States. China also announced that it would sanction the U.S. companies involved in the sale.

What happens next will be crucial. China quietly sanctioned several U.S. companies for participating in such weapons sales in the past. However, it would mark a major change if China makes the list public and includes, for example, Boeing, which sells billions of dollars worth of airplanes to China each year.

He, the vice foreign minister, warned that the sales would also affect China's cooperation with the United States on regional issues. Does that mean China will continue to block Western efforts to tighten sanctions on Iran? Bonnie S. Glaser, a China security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the answer will probably come soon.

France takes over the presidency of the U.N. Security Council on Monday and is expected to push for a rapid move in that direction.

View Article in the Washington Post

TAIWAN: US defends weapons sale to Taiwan

Page last updated at 19:23 GMT, Saturday, 30 January 2010

Taiwan says the arms deal will make it feel more secure

The US has defended a proposed weapons sale to Taiwan following a furious response from China.

The US State Department said on Saturday that the sale contributed to "security and stability" between Taiwan and China, Reuters reported.

Beijing announced a series of moves against the US in retaliation for the proposed $6.4bn (£4bn) sale.

Ties between the two countries are already strained by rows over trade and internet censorship.

ANALYSIS

Damian Grammaticas, BBC News, Beijing

You would expect China to react angrily to any proposed arms sale to Taiwan, but this time it seems to be going further than before.

Suspending military exchanges is a classic reply from Beijing and it may not even concern the US too much.

China's threat to impose sanctions on US firms supplying arms to Taiwan is interesting if perplexing.

It's unclear what "sanctions" would involve in practice, since US firms aren't allowed to sell arms to China

China's threat to withdraw co-operation on key international and regional issues is the most serious one. Here China can make life difficult for Washington.

It can complicate US attempts to deal with nuclear programmes in Iran and North Korea, it can refuse to help in currency and trade issues.

But what is China trying to achieve by sounding so furious? Maybe Beijing's real aim is to try to deter America from future arms sales - for example the fighter jets and submarines which Taiwan really wants.

"Such sales contribute to maintaining security and stability across the Taiwan Strait," said US State Department spokeswoman Laura Tischler, quoted by Reuters.

The US is the leading arms supplier to Taiwan and has a treaty obligation to provide it with defensive arms.

'Severe harm'

Beijing said it would suspend military exchanges with the US, review co-operation on major issues and impose sanctions on companies selling arms.

However, the US - like the EU - has banned its companies selling arms to China since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, so it was not clear what effect Chinese sanctions would have.

Chinese defence ministry spokesman Huang Xueping said the measures reflected the "severe harm" posed by the deal.

A foreign ministry spokesman said the arms deal would have "repercussions that neither side wishes to see".

Difficult ties

Taiwan and China have been ruled by separate governments since the end of a civil war in 1949.

Beijing has hundreds of missiles pointed at the island and has threatened to use force to bring it under its control if Taiwan moved towards formal independence.

Defence ties between Washington and Beijing have been on ice for several years because of differences over Taiwan, though the two countries' leaders pledged to improve them in 2009.

TAIWAN-CHINA RELATIONS

• Ruled by separate governments since end of Chinese civil war in 1949
• China considers the island part of its territory
• China has offered a "one country, two systems" solution, like Hong Kong
• Most people in Taiwan support status quo

Taiwan, meanwhile, welcomed the US move.

"It will let Taiwan feel more confident and secure so we can have more interactions with China," the Central News Agency quoted President Ma Ying-jeou as saying.

The Pentagon earlier notified the US Congress of the proposed arms sale, which forms part of a package first pledged by the Bush administration.

Friday's notification to Congress by the Defense Security Co-operation Agency (DSCA) was required by law. It does not mean the sale has been concluded.

US lawmakers have 30 days to comment on the proposed sale, Associated Press reported. If there are no objections, it would proceed.

PROPOSED ARMS SALE

• 114 Patriot missiles ($2.81bn)
• 60 Black Hawk helicopters ($3.1bn)
• Communication equipment ($340m)
• 2 Osprey mine-hunting ships ($105m)
• 12 Harpoon missiles ($37m)

Source: Defense Security Co-operation Agency

The arms package includes 114 Patriot missiles, 60 Black Hawk helicopters and communications equipment for Taiwan's F-16 fleet, the agency said in a statement.

It does not include F-16 fighter jets, which Taiwan's military has been seeking.

Last week US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton angered Beijing with a call to China to investigate cyber attacks on search giant Google, after the company said email accounts of human rights activists had been hacked.

View Article on BBC News

CHINA: China suspends U.S. military exchanges in wake of Taiwan arms deal

Saturday, January 30, 2010; 3:46 PM

By John Pomfret
Washington Post Staff Writer

The Obama administration announced the sale Friday of $6 billion worth of Patriot anti-missile systems, helicopters, mine-sweeping ships and communications equipment to Taiwan in a long-expected move that sparked an angry protest from China.

In a strongly worded statement on Saturday, China's Defense Ministry suspended military exchanges with the United States and summoned the U.S. defense attache to lodge a "solemn protest" over the sale, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

"Considering the severe harm and odious effect of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the Chinese side has decided to suspend planned mutual military visits," Xinhua quoted the ministry as saying. The Foreign Ministry said China also would put sanctions on U.S. companies supplying the equipment.

China's vice minister of foreign affairs, He Yafei, said Friday that Beijing was "strongly indignant" about the arms sales to Taiwan and warned that they would have a "serious negative impact" on U.S.-China cooperation. China also could cancel a visit by President Hu Jintao to Washington in April and sanction businesses in the districts of congressional lawmakers known to be backers of Taiwan.

The weapons deal was formally announced by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency and constitutes the second part of a package that was announced at the end of the Bush administration.

The sale comes at a time of heightened tensions between the countries, despite an intense effort by the Obama administration to improve ties with Beijing. The two are at odds over how to deal with Iran's nuclear program; they are bickering over issues involving Internet freedom and how Beijing is treating Western businesses; and soon they could clash again over Tibet.

On Friday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called on China to adopt a tougher stance against Tehran and took the unusual move of publicly warning Beijing of significant trouble if Iran's nuclear ambitions were not reined in. China has opposed slapping additional sanctions on Tehran.

"China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the Gulf, from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supplies," Clinton said at the end of a speech at Ecole Militaire, France's college for senior officers in Paris. Iran is China's No. 3 supplier of oil, and Chinese energy companies have committed to investing more than $80 billion in Iran's oil and gas sector.

U.S. and Chinese officials have also clashed recently over trade and investment issues, which for years constituted the bright side of their relationship. On Thursday, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said U.S. companies face too many "headaches" in China and could lose interest if Beijing backslides on openness and the rule of law.

Locke referred to a threat by Google to end its operations in China over Internet censorship. Google has also alleged that hackers from China broke into e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

More problems could arise after a possible meeting between President Obama and the Dalai Lama, when the Tibetan spiritual leader visits the United States in February. China says the Dalai Lama is a separatist who wants to lead Tibet to independence.

Of all the issues, though, arms sales to Taiwan is the most sensitive to the Chinese. China views Taiwan as part of its territory and contends that U.S. arms sales to the island are, as the vice foreign minister said Friday, "a gross intervention into China's internal affairs."

The United States says weapons sales to Taiwan help to maintain stability in East Asia by making it more difficult for Beijing to bully Taiwan. The United States is legally obligated to provide weapons for Taiwan's defense, under the Taiwan Relations Act.

"This is a clear demonstration of the commitment that this administration has to provide Taiwan the defensive weapons it needs," State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said Friday.

A State Department official played down the chances of the sale hurting U.S.-Chinese relations. "We have worked through these issues before. We will work through them again," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The only silver lining for China in Friday's announcement was that it did not include the sale of 66 F-16 C/D fighters to Taiwan. But that does not mean the Obama administration has rejected Taiwan's request for the advanced fighters to replace its aging air force. The Defense Department is drawing up a report on the air power balance between China and Taiwan that could be used to push a decision.

Over the past month, at least six senior Chinese officials have warned the Obama administration not to sell the weapons to Taiwan, and some have raised the possibility that China might sanction the companies involved.

One weapons system, the $3.1 billion package of 60 Blackhawk helicopters, will be particularly galling to the Chinese. The United States sold China 24 Blackhawks in the mid-1980s. But China has had trouble keeping the aircraft flying because of a U.S. arms embargo imposed in 1989 after the crackdown on student-led protesters around Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

After the massive Sichuan earthquake in 2008, China sought to buy spare parts, arguing that it needed the helicopters to save the injured. The U.S. government rejected China's request.

Staff writer Karen DeYoung in London contributed to this report.

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JAPAN: Eight countries press Japan on parental abductions

Japanese government is being pressed to sign a treaty to prevent international parental child abductions

(AFP) – 1 day ago

TOKYO — Envoys of eight countries met the Japanese foreign minister Saturday to press the government to sign a treaty to prevent international parental child abductions.

Activists say that thousands of foreign parents have lost access to children in Japan, where the courts virtually never award child custody to a divorced foreign parent.

Japan is the only nation among the Group of Seven industrialised nations that has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention that requires countries to return a child wrongfully kept there to their country of habitual residence.

In the latest move to urge Tokyo to sign the convention, envoys from Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, New Zealand, Spain and the United States expressed their concerns to Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada.

The ambassadors visited the foreign ministry to "submit our concerns over the increase of international parental abduction cases involving Japan and affecting our nationals," they said in a joint statement.

"Currently the left-behind parents of children abducted to or from Japan have little hope of having their children returned," said the statement.

Such parents "encounter great difficulties in obtaining access to their children and exercising their parental rights and responsibilities," it said.

"This is a very serious issue, to which we have to find a solution," said Okada as he received the delegation including French ambassador Philippe Faure and US envoy John Roos.

"This comes from the different legal systems between Japan and the countries of North America and Europe," Okada said.

The envoys' visit to Okada followed their meeting with Justice Minister Keiko Chiba in October, as they hope Japan's new centre-left government, which ended a half-century of conservative rule in September, will review the issue.

Activist groups estimate that over the years up to 10,000 dual-citizenship children in Japan have been prevented from seeing a foreign parent.

The United States has said it has listed cases of more than 100 children abducted by a parent from the United States and taken to Japan.

Japanese courts usually award child custody in divorce cases to just one parent, usually the mother, rather than reaching joint custody agreements with parental visitation rights.

Japanese courts also habitually side with the Japanese parent in an international custody dispute -- sometimes even awarding a child's Japanese grandparents custody rights over a foreign parent.

View AFP Article