Summer Bento
June 29, 2009
via IM.ROHAN.BLOG
Al Gore Talks About Jailed Journalists, Current TV
June 28, 2009
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In an imagined worldwide exclusive, journalist/satirist Harry Shearer got former Vice President Al Gore to make his first public comments about what he’s doing to free two of his Current TV reporters from their imprisonment in North Korea. Shearer colleague Milton Gestler gently probed Gore on CPR’s Up to Here segment of Shearer’s syndicated Le Show program. Listen.
Journalists’ Health Said to Be Deteriorating in NKorea
June 26, 2009
The husbands of Current TV journalists held by North Korea since March said they received phone calls from their wives last week and that the two women are now suffering from undiagnosed health problems and are being held in a medical facility. A North Korean court sentenced the pair to 12 years “reform through labor” June 8.
Watch.
via S.F.’s CBS5 Eyewitness News
Lost in the media madness over his Team USA teammate Michael Phelps’ eight-gold triumph at the 2008 Beijing Olymoics and Jamaican Usain Bolt’s dominance in the sprints, Glendora, Calif.’s Bryan Ezra Tsumoru Clay, the reigning champion in the grueling decathlon, is virtually unknown in his own country.
Victory in what is considered track-and-field’s toughest event — 10 running, jumping and throwing competitions — once conferred larger-than-life status to guys like Bob Mathias, Rafer Johnson and Bruce Jenner. Not for Clay, son of Japanese American Michelle Ishimoto and African-American Greg Clay, who is competing at the U.S. Outdoor Track and Field Championships in Eugene, Ore., this weekend. (Update: Clay was forced to scratch from the USATF championships due to a hamstring injury).
Clay was tested by SPARQ to establish his SPARQ Rating across a number of different sports. The test is meant to measure sport-specific athleticism and in the football test Clay recorded a score of 130.40, the highest ever recorded. By comparison, Reggie Bush scored a 93.38. NFL?
But the devoutly Christian Clay is not bitter. “My family and I have everything that we could ever ask for. We’ve got a house, a roof over our head, we have food, we have our cars, my wife gets to stay at home and take care of the kids, our kids are happy. So really, I can’t be mad. I’ve got what I need.”
Listen to Diana Nyad’s NPR feature on Clay and America’s fickle adoration of athletes.
The Score: Track and Field Blues—06/18/09
Clay, whose grandparents, Tsumoru and Kay Ishimoto of Honolulu, cheered him on in Beijing, is proud of his Japanese American heritage.
“Japanese culture and food were a huge part of my life growing up. My mother made sure I knew who I was and where I came from. Our house was always full of grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. We ate ozoni [a traditional Japanese rice soup] on New Year’s Eve. My life was very Japanese.”
Clay was understandably upset about his injury in Eugene, but there was also good news. He’s been nominated for and ESPY Award.
- Clay Resumes 2012 Medal Quest, Meri-Jo Borzilleri, Ultimate Sports
- Bryan Clay’s Official Web Site
- Clay is Gold, Epicanthus
- In An Age of Hybrids Decathlete Bryan Clay Is the Ultimate All-American Athlete, 08/20-08, Epicanthus
Fools’ Dance: OBON in America 2009
June 17, 2009
Japanese Americans all across the land from Vermont to Hawaii will celebrate the ancient Buddhist Obon festival in the coming weeks with joyous folk dancing, religious observances and traditional Japanese foods in what is the most authentic cultural event remaining in Japanese America.
Obon Festival season continues through August and marks the zenith of the Buddhist year. But more than just a chance to take colorful photos and eat Japanese comfort foods, Obon is a Buddhist teaching come alive.
Obon [ お盆 ] originates from the story of Mokuren, a disciple of the Buddha, who during a meditative trance saw his deceased mother suffering in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts (the Buddhist equivalent of purgatory). Greatly disturbed, he went to the Buddha and asked how he could release his mother from this suffering. Buddha instructed him to make offerings and to meditate on the life of his mother. Mokuren followed the Buddha’s instructions and he began to see the true nature of her past unselfishness and the many sacrifices that she had made for him. The disciple, happy because of his mother’s release and grateful for his mother’s kindness, danced with joy. From this dance of joy came Obon, which has been celebrated for thousands of years as a time in which ancestors and their sacrifices are remembered and appreciated.
2009 OBON FESTIVAL SCHEDULE
Aug. 1-2—Gardena Buddhist Temple Obon Odori, 1517 W. 166th St., Gardena, CA 90247; (310) 327-9400; 3-10 p.m. Sat./2-9 p.m. Sun.
Aug. 1—Buddhist Temple of San Diego Obon Odori, 2929 Market St., San Diego, CA 92102; (619) 239-0896: 5-9 p.m.
Aug. 1—Oregon Buddhist Temple “Obonfest 2009,” 3720 SE 34th Ave., Portland, OR 97202; (503) 234-9456: 4-9 p.m.
Aug. 1—San Luis Obispo Buddhist Temple Obon Odori, 6996 Ontario Rd., San Luis Obispo, CA 93405; (805)-595-2625: 1-9 p.m.
Aug. 1—Waialua Hongwanji Temple Obon, 67-313 Kealohanui St., Waialua, HI 96791; (808) 637-4395: from 7:30 p.m.
Aug. 1-2—Palo Alto Buddhist Temple Obon Odori, 2751 Louis Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94303; (650)856-0123: 5-11 p.m. Sat./noon-10 p.m. Sun.
Who Is Mitchell Koss and Why Isn’t He Talking?
June 11, 2009
I was changing a leaky shower head in an upstairs bathroom when I first heard the news. Two Asian American women on assignment for the cable channel Current TV were arrested by North Korean soldiers near North Korea’s border with China. Early on, CNN’s senior international correspondent John Vause, quoting South Korean sources, reported Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, had been on North Korean soil and were seen running back toward China when apprehended.
The third member of Current TV’s Vanguard team, “cameraman Mitch Koss,” and a guide of Korean-Chinese ancestry somehow eluded capture. Reportedly, Koss was questioned by Chinese authorities and released. He booked it out of the PRC, hightailed it back to the US of A, and then he dropped off the face of the Earth.
Lee and Ling were sentenced to 12 years “reform through labor” this week by North Korea’s Central Court for “grave crimes against the Korean nation.” And Mitchell Koss has sentenced himself to silence.
Three months have passed without so much as a Twitter from the elusive Mr. Koss. Meanwhile, the lazy dog media have veered away from a search for the facts and seem content to wallow in the lame sentimentality of weeping siblings and naive pleas for their release. Poker metaphors are everywhere. And the one person who could tell us flat out what really happened at the Tumen River March 17 isn’t saying squat.
And Hillary Rodham Clinton’s State Department? They’re currently on location filming a remake of The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight.
This is beginning to sound like the set-up to a bad Ludlum novel or, maybe, a remake of Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much.
Who is Mitchell Koss and why isn’t he talking?
(North Korean news agency KCNA announced Sunday evening —1:30 p.m. June 8 in Pyongyang— that American journalists Euna Lee, 36, and Laura Ling, 32, both of Los Angeles, have been convicted and sentenced to 12 years hard labor for the “grave crime” they committed against North Korea.)
♣
Veteran TV newswoman Lisa Ling led the families of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, two American journalists held in North Korea for border violations and “hostile acts” on a well-orchestrated, one-day media blitz of NBC, CNN and ABC June 1 and issued an emotional appeal for their release on humanitarian grounds. (Ms. Ling is the older sister of jailed Current TV managing editor Laura Ling.)
But there were subjects that were apparently off-limits to the interviewers that day—Matt Lauer (The Today Show), Larry King (Larry King Live) and Bob Woodruff (Nightline)—and despite his shaky credentials as a journalist only the suspender-ed septuagenarian dared to broach one of them: whether Lisa Ling herself had ever reported from North Korea under false pretenses. Here’s the elder Ling sister dancing around King’s question: Have you ever been in North Korea?
Not germane? In June 2006, Lisa Ling and Australian cameraman Brian Green, snuck into North Korea posing as members of a medical delegation headed by Nepalese eye surgeon Dr. Sanduk Ruit. Images captured using miniature hidden cameras were combined with U.S. State Dept. and Dept. of Defense-provided footage and the result was Undercover in North Korea for the National Geographic Channel’s Inside series which aired in April 2007. Below is an excerpt from that controversial project critics termed one-dimensional propaganda “offering very little breadth and even less depth of interesting or new information. Lisa Ling is clearly over her head in terms of trying to report on something as weighty as geopolitics. Her style is trite and ill-prepared, over dramatized.”
Missing from MSM coverage of this worsening international incident is the real skinny on mysterious Vanguard Journalism executive producer Mitchell Koss, the veteran newsman who witnessed the capture of Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Koss, a 53-year-old 56-year-old Glendale, Calif. resident, reportedly eluded North Korean border guards back on March 17. He was briefly held by Chinese authorities and then released. After returning to the United States, Koss has refused all requests for interviews and has dropped out of sight. What if anything has Koss told the families of the imprisoned journalists?
—babamoto
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Monday it had found two U.S. journalists guilty of entering the state illegally and sentenced both to 12 years of hard labor.
“The trial confirmed the grave crime they committed against the Korean nation and their illegal border crossing as they had already been indicted and sentenced each of them to 12 years of reform through labor,” the official KCNA news agency said in a brief dispatch.
- North Korea Jails US Journalists for 12 Years, Reuters
- North Korea Has Sentenced Two US Journalists to 12 Years’ Hard Labour, BBC
- N. Korea Sentences 2 US Journalists to 12 Years Hard Labor, The New York Times
- Associated Press
- Korea Times
- JoongAhn Ilbo
- Digital Chosun Ilbo
- Korean Broadcasting System (KBS)
- Yomiuri Shimbun (Japanese)
- Current TV News Page
- DPRK’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Website / Twitter Page
Two Former Captives Recall NKorea Imprisonment
June 7, 2009
TOKYO.—As the world awaited a North Korean Central Court decision in the June 4 trial of two American journalists in Pyongyang, North Korea, a former Japanese journalist has recounted his experience while he was imprisoned in the country for about two years.
Takashi Sugishima
“When I was first arrested, I thought my life had ended. I was wondering how I would be killed, by public execution, by poisoning?” Takashi Sugishima told CNN in a recent interview.
International press freedom group Reporters Without Borders says the two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, are the first foreign journalists since Sugishima to be held for any length of time in North Korea.
Clinton Confirms US May Send Envoy to NKorea
June 5, 2009
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SEOUL, So. Korea (Updated 06/05/09, 6:00 PST)—With nothing but an eerie silence emanating from the North Korean capital about the yesterday’s trial of jailed American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling, a week-old rumor that the US would send a special envoy to Pyongyang to negotiate the release of the two reporters has begun to sprout wings again.
Reuters news agency has picked up a story by South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo which quotes diplomatic sources as saying former Vice President Al Gore may visit Pyongyang as early as this weekend in an effort to secure the release of the two journalists once a widely expected guilty verdict has been delivered.
Clinton said Friday she was “incredibly concerned” about the plight of the two women. In working for their release, Clinton said she has spoken with foreign officials with influence in North Korea and explored the possibility of sending an envoy to the North, but suggested that no one would be sent during the trial, Reuters reported.
“The trial which is going on right now we consider to be a step toward the release and the return home of these two young women,” she told reporters in Washington.
Lee and Ling were working on a story about the plight of women who flee North Korea into China for Gore’s Current TV network. They have been in custody since March 17 and reportedly appeared before North Korea’s Central Court Thursday to face charges of illegally entering the country and committing hostile acts.
Richardson served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and was energy secretary during the Clinton administration, and he has maintained contacts with North Korea. He took several trips there as ambassador, and he worked for the release of people held by the North Koreans in the past.
Although Richardson has publicly expressed a willingness to negotiate for the women’s release, Gore has not made any public comments about the situation. Current TV has also steadfastly refused comment since the arrest of Lee and Ling.
[Enlarge]via Lisa Ling
“Arrirang”: Waiting on Pyongyang
June 4, 2009
- Update (06/04/09, 1 p.m. Pacific) CNN—Observers have been barred from a trial for two American journalists who were detained while covering the plight of North Korean defectors living along the China-North Korea border, a U.S. State Department spokesman said quoting Swedish Ambassador to North Korea Mats Foyer.
NKorea Aware of Int’l Interest About Trial
June 4, 2009
SEOUL—Kim Jong-il’s North Korean regime is aware of the international interest in the trial of two U.S. reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling. Unconfirmed reports from South Korea say the trial has been underway in Pyongyang for about two hours.
South Korea’s government-run Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) reported that it is “extremely rare” for the North to confirm the start time of any trial as it did approximately 10 minutes before start of Thursday’s trial via the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) Web site.
“The country is being very careful in dealing with the two U.S. citizens and is aware of international attention and the implications of the case,” Park Jeong-woo, a law professor at Kookmin University and an expert in the North’s legal system, told Reuters.
Quoting unnamed experts, The New York Times reported this morning that a guilty verdict is almost certain in a North Korean justice system that protects the unquestioned rule of leader Kim Jong-il.
Donald Kirk of The Christian Science Monitor wrote: While the court will almost certainly find both Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee guilty, probably of espionage charges, predictions as to the sentence range from years of hard labor to probation and suspension of jail time before they go home.
The two have been held in what’s described as a “state guest house” near Pyongyang for nearly three months. They have received three visits by a Swedish diplomat representing US interests in North Korea in the absence of relations between Washington and Pyongyang.
Euna Lee, Laura Ling Trial Underway
June 3, 2009
PYONGYANG, North Korea—The Korea Central News Agency (KCNA) announced in a Web site bulletin that the trial of American journalists Euna Lee (Seung-eun Lee) and Laura Ling began at 3 p.m. (11 p.m. PST /0600 GMT) here in the capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)
The reporters are charged with illegal entry in to North Korea and intention to commit hostile acts, charges that could carry sentences of 10 years hard labor.
This week marks the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. The student-led protest which ended in a violent military action against the protesters lasted 10 days—10 days that changed the life of Chaohua Wang forever.
For 10 days, the 36-year-old graduate student in literature refused to leave Tiananmen Square in Beijing except for brief negotiations with top government officials and an overnight stay at a hospital after she collapsed from hunger.
In the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown, she became one of only two women on China’s list of 21 most wanted student leaders who defiantly stood up against the military might of their government and survived the ensuing massacre.
Now 56, she has finally reached a long-awaited goal — she will participate in the June 11 Ph.D. hooding ceremony for UCLA’s Graduate Division, after completing graduate studies that were unexpectedly interrupted by the uprising that held China’s — and the world’s — attention for a month and a half.
Read Meg Sullivan’s UCLA Today story about Dr. Wang here.
via Kevin Roderick’s L.A. Observed.
Ricigliano Ousts Edison NJ’s Incumbent Mayor Jun Choi; DOJ Officials On Hand to Monitor Election
June 2, 2009
EDISON, NJ—Seventy-year-old challenger Antonia Ricigliano has scored a narrow 378-vote victory over this city’s young Korean Amercan Mayor Jun Choi in a hotly contested election that saw Choi again running without the endorsement of his party. The local race also saw Ricigliano and Choi both backing separate slates of council candidates.
The final uno
fficial tally had Ricigliano receiving 6,582 votes to Choi’s 6,204. Choi conceded at about 10 p.m. election night, according to an official in the municipal clerk’s office.
Choi, 37, became the first Korean American elected mayor in the continental U.S. in 2005. Born in South Korea, Choi grew up in Edison, a city of more than 100,000 and the home of famed inventor Thomas Alva Edison’s Menlo Park lab. He holds a bachelors degree from M.I.T. and a masters in public policy from Columbia University.
According to Choi’s campaign manager Mike Barfield, the former mayor was the target of a racially insenstive remarks by his opponents. A campaign mailer urged voters to “send Mayor Choi a one-way ticket back out of Edison.” Council candidate Thomas Hanke quipped at a public forum, “Let’s send Choi a one-way ticket back to Korea.” Barfield said there were also thinly veiled attempts to associate Choi with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.
Lisa Ling Extols Facebook: Says Social Media Sparked Grassroots Movement to Free US Journalists Held by NKorea
June 2, 2009
Monday was a long day for network TV reporter Lisa Ling. It started before the sun came up in a New York hotel room. She checked her e-mail and then she “friended” a few people on her Facebook account. As the sun was rising over Manhattan, she led her parents, two worried husbands and a four-year-old little girl into the NBC studios to launch a worldwide media blitz seeking the release of two American journalists being held by North Korea—one of them her sister, Laura Ling, and the other, Euna Lee, the mother of that four-year-old.
- Follow Lisa Ling on Twitter
- Join the Laura Ling/Euna Lee Facebook Support Group
- Free Laura Ling and Euna Lee, sign the petition
First was a 7 a.m. slot on the Today show at 30 Rock. Then it was over to CNN on Columbus Circle for Larry King Live which airs at 6 p.m. on the East Coast. Finally, it was up Broadway to 66th for ABC’s Nightline at 11:35 p.m.
By the time she was waiting for the start of her Nightline segment last night with Bob Woodruff, Lisa Ling, the desperate big sister with the destinies of two families and the weight of the world on her shoulders, was ready to lose it emotionally. She’d been under hot TV studio lights, working the phone or battling New York traffic for 20 consecutive hours.
Then she lost it, tearing up as she talked about how virtual strangers had used Facebook to mount a nationwide support network for her sister and Euna Lee and how she finds solace in the kind words of Internet strangers.
“You know, it’s been amazing to us. Through Facebook—It’s been extraordinary—this whole grassroots movement has been born,” she said.
“I’ve been at home late at night feeling emotional, and I’ll post something so intensely personal on Facebook, and I don’t know who’s reading it, Ling told Nightline anchor Bob Woodruff.
“After I hit ‘update,’ I think to myself, ‘Why did I just post that for thousands of people I don’t know to see?’
“I think the reason is because there is no support group for this and for some reason when people I don’t even know send me a message that says ‘We support you.’ ‘We’re praying for you.’ ‘We’re behind you’—somehow there’s the strangest comfort in that.”
Here’s an excerpt of that Nightline segment:
- Follow Lisa Ling on Twitter
- Join the Laura Ling/Euna Lee Facebook Support Group
Journalists’ Families Issue Mea Culpa, Ask U.S., N. Korea to Step Up Negotiations for Release
June 1, 2009
NEW YORK—The families of jailed journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling appeared on NBC’s Today show this morning and called on both the U.S. and North Korean governments to increase dialogue with each other and resolve issues surrounding the arrests of the American reporters and negotiate their release.
“It’s been long enough,” declared Lisa Ling, sister of one of the detained reporters and herself a veteran TV news correspondent. “We all sit and watch the news and we see the tensions escalating continuously and we just felt like now is the time to urge both governments to communicate.”
Lee and Ling were arrested in the early morning hours of March 17 along the northeastern border of China and North Korea. Both work for the San Francisco-based multimedia news operation Current TV, which was founded by former Vice President Al Gore. At the time of their arrest, Lee and Ling were accompanied by veteran newsman Mitchell Koss, executive producer of Current TV’s elite Vanguard Journalism reporting unit. Koss managed to elude capture.
Saying that neither Lee nor Ling have admitted any possible violations of North Korean law, Ling added: “What we can tell you is that when they left the U.S., there was no intention of crossing the border into North Korea. And if at any point they may have, the families profusely apologize on their behalf.”
Asked how the families felt about the two reporters becoming pawns in a drawn-out diplomatic stand-off, Ling replied:
“Of course, we’re terrified, and that’s why we’re here. We hope both governments will come to a solution on humanitarian grounds on our issue.”
