Sunday, December 18, 2011

"Dear Leader" dead...renewed uncertainty for the Korean peninsula

Sunday night in Tucson...I was going to upload a few photos.
Instead, I go online and see breaking news.

Here is a clip from the BBC, showing the official North Korean state media announcement:


...more uncertainty for the Korean peninsula...
will the surreal personality cult of the Kim dynasty continue in the North?
Will the father-to-son succession go smoothly?
Or will there be a North Korean 'spring' following the pattern of the Arab spring?
What does this mean for the South? for the rest of NE Asia?
Does this mean a potential re-unification might happen sooner...or later?

As 'modern' as the world likes to think it is, it's amazing how much, geopolitically, still depends on certain individuals--Castro in Cuba, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Kim in N.Korea...

Lots of questions...
...especially about Kim Jong-Un (also spelled Jong-eun), the 'heir apparent.'
Al-Jazeera featured this piece about him last year--the little bit known of him during the time he spent at a boarding school in Switzerland as a young teenager:


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And while reading about North Korea, I came across this--some great independent Canadian reporting on North Korean labor camps in Siberia; here's the trailer:


Click here for more information from CNN, which featured the above journalism.

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A couple of colleagues of mine have started a new
literary and visual arts journal: Three Coyotes,
published here in Tucson.

Its mission: to publish "the work of our best poets, writers and artists
 in response to the environment, the American West,
current issues, animals, the arts,
imagination and survival."

So, incidentally, in this year's Fall/Winter issue of this year, which just came out,
a photo of mine is published--on page 121:

"Eye Contact"

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