Two misunderstandings

The last post was about two apologies. This week, let's consider two misunderstandings or perhaps miscalculations.

North Korea against the world ... again!

This situation would be somewhat humorous if not for the fact that a miscalculation or an inadvertent incident could trigger a deadly conflict. Nor is the leadership's stance at all funny when its policies of paranoia over the past several decades have reduced its population to one of the poorest and most isolated in the world.

North Korea has had a new leader now for 15 months. Kim Jong-un, the youngest of three sons of the previous leader - Kim Jong-il - is in his late 20s. For several months in his new role as leader/one-to-be-worshipped, he appeared to be trying to soften his image and engage with the world - something the world was ready to embrace. Kim Jong-Un even displayed his wife in public settings, who is possibly expecting no less.

Click on image for full picture
Kim Jong-un, and his wife Ri So-ju (not sure what happens to last names in North Korean marriages). Westerners do not relate well to the synchophantic displays routinely bestowed by the North Koreans on their leader.

Even as Kim Jong-un made his transition and debut, North Korea's attitude towards its enemies (ie. nearly everyone) was hardening. The hostile stance was about sanctions and talks organized by its neighbors regarding the country's continued efforts to test nuclear delivery systems (missiles) and conducting underground nuclear tests. In March, 2010, the level of tension was ratcheted significantly when North Korea torpedoed a South Korean warship killing 46 sailors.

But in early 2013, things escalated further. As the BBC notes, "Over the last month, Pyongyang promised to shred the 1953 armistice agreement and shut off the hotline at the border region. It then announced it had increased the combat-readiness level of its artillery forces, with targeting that it claimed would put US bases in Guam and Hawaii in the crosshairs. ... Kim Jong-un has made multiple visits to military units amid the tensions on the peninsula. Most audacious was Pyongyang's announcement that it reserves the right of pre-emptive nuclear war against Washington or Seoul. "

North Korea has been harsh and bellicose with its war rhetoric, threatening the US mainland, but in fact, most analysts place Alaska in any theoretical danger.

The US, South Korea's principle ally, is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Appeasing North Korea's demands conflict with its commitment to conduct military exercises with South Korea's forces. A new South Korean President, has called for continued dialog with its estranged neighbor but has also said there will be no more "non-responses' to North Korean provocations such as the torpedoing. The US has shown support for South Korea with well publicized overflights of B52s and stealth bombers in South Korean airspace (though this action would have been politically motivated cause for "concern" if the previous US administration had done so ...)

South Korea's first woman president, Park Geun-hye. Only assuming power in late February, 2013, she finds herself already in a hyper-tense situation.

Where do we go - what are the calculations or assumptions being made by North Korean leadership that may become miscalculations. Russia and even China - North Korea's clear and closest ally - are uneasy with the language flowing from Kim Jong-un and his military. China especially has much to lose, due to its long border with North Korea - if chaos descends. Still most analysts continue to conclude that real military action is unlikely; North Korea must simply be positioning itself to extract as favorable conditions as possible in future talks, its military units are not being positioned along the border for imminent action. Teatree hopes that is all true, and is not a misunderstanding on the West's part.

Germany and Cyprus

Far from North Korea, Cyprus has been in the news the past week as its revenues have run far short of its spending, and its banks's obligations extending far beyond their assets. In order to receive further financial aid from European Union members and world banks, Cyprus legislators had come up with a plan to take 10% of funds from all citizens holding money in Cypriot banks as part of a way to gather funds for debt repayment and restructuring. That did not go over well with the citizenry!

Cyprus, a small island in the eastern Mediterranean. The population of the whole island is only a little over 1 million people, but apparently loosely governed with little wise leadership.

To complicate matters, a Greek/Turkish conflict back in the 1970s has left the island divided into two camps. Hmmm, a parallel after all to the two Korea's?

How does Germany come into this story?

The banks of Cyprus have few controls, and after loaning out more than prudent in the past many years and being hit with the financial crisis of 2008 like many other countries, they (and the government) needed additional funds to cover lost investments and to pay liabilities. Like Greece, Iceland, Spain, and Ireland, they had overreached and needed a bailout. But instead of searching for legitimate monetary arrangements with the European Union, the banks tapped into an influx of funds from Russian tycoons (some say the mafia as well) to shore up their deposits. But the piper must be paid eventually, and now the EU's financial institutions are being asked to step in and stabilize the bankers indulgences, who have not been able to corral the Russian money in the country.

Germany remains reluctant to once again send its own resources to rescue yet another Southern European country (Spain, Italy, Greece) that has not stayed within its means. From a BBC article "Germany's intent in all this is, at a textual level, clear: they want to avoid creating a moral hazard, rewarding a country that has sold itself as a rule-free playground for Russians who want to keep their money offshore." Before sending funds, Germany is asking for better banking controls and reforms.

Local Cypriot politicians and maybe just the average Cypriot, aren't happy with living with the consequences and are making Germany out to be the scapegoat. And Germans are offended. Hence a hurtful misunderstanding - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21974496">Cyprus bailout: Feeling unloved in Germany

Some of the more inflammatory language actually came from Spain, whose citizens also are unhappy that Germany is demanding some fiscal responsibility. One Spanish newspaper compared German leader Angela Merkel to Hitler - not the sort of thing that Germans are at all ready to countenance.

In Germany, any reference to Hitler is looked at seriously and unfavorably, The type of linkage expressed by this Spanish protestor in Madrid, is especially hard to take, considering Germany's past bailouts of several EU countries.

As the article notes, "One young woman from Bavaria said: "When you see Greek people make that Hitler greeting, it's not good. It isn't allowed in Germany and it shouldn't be allowed in other countries. We are shocked. They are getting a lot of money from Germany so why don't they like us?"

A middle-aged man said: "It's not okay when people say Adolf Hitler and Angela Merkel are the same. We live in 2013 and not in 1945." An older man said he did not understand why Germany was blamed for trying to help: "It hurts, because we think we are giving money and we try to help. This is something we don't understand." That sense of hurt is universal. Jan Schaefer, the economics editor of Bild, the most popular newspaper in Germany, told the BBC that pictures comparing Germany to the Nazi state were obnoxious."

So, misunderstandings galore this week.

And so passes on Sun Myung Moon, the Korean-born founder of the Unification Church and self-proclaimed messiah

"Sun Myung Moon, the Korean-born founder of the Unification Church and self-proclaimed messiah who built a secretive global business empire that sells cars, guns, newspapers and sushi, has died. He was 92." So reports the San Francisco Chronicle, which goes on to note, "To thousands of followers, Moon was the benevolent “True Father” who was asked by Jesus to complete his unfinished mission on Earth. To detractors, he was a megalomaniacal cult leader who exploited disciples though brainwashing, separated them from their families and used their labor to amass a personal fortune."

Moon and his wife Han Hak Ja, attending a mass wedding event, which will be noted later. Han Hak Ja,known to followers as the “True Mother,” gave birth to 14 children.

Reverend Moon and the Unification Church is an interesting story, but probably without global importance. He was nonetheless a personality in South Korean history as well as a presence in the US - perhaps at the very least a figure that should give us pause as to what we believe in and who we follow.

Reverend Moon - the person

Moon was born in a province of what is now North Korea in 1920, which at that time was under military control of an aggressive, expansive Japanese government. Somehow, Moon is found to have worked past his status as an individual in a conquered nation, and attended Waseda University in Tokyo itself from April 1941 to September 1943 (during the beginning war years), when he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering. According to the Brittanica (yes, the famous encyclopedia makers), early on, " at the age of 16 he had a vision of Jesus Christ in which he was told to carry out Christ’s unfinished task. Moon believed that God chose him to save mankind from Satanism, and he regarded communists as Satan’s representatives in the world.

The young Moon at the beginning of his religious rise

After the end of WW II, Moon began to preach his doctrines in Korea in 1946. Two years later he was excommunicated by the Korean Presbyterian Church, and shortly thereafter he was imprisoned by the North Korean authorities for reasons that are not entirely clear. In 1950 he escaped—or was released—and fled to South Korea, where he founded what was to become the Unification Church. This was, of course, the year when the Korean conflict erupted...

Korea and Japan, home to Sun Myung Moon from birth into his 50's when he moved to the US

In the early 1970s he began full-scale missionary operations in the United States. As young people were drawn into the movement, Moon incurred widespread hostility from the parents of followers, who believed that their children had been unfairly indoctrinated. Other controversies also mounted over the movement’s fund-raising techniques, as well as over immigration issues and tax manipulation.

Moon and his wife (second wife) were respectively addressed as “Father” and “Mother” by disciples, for whom the two epitomized God’s ideal family. In 1973 the Moons moved their headquarters to Tarrytown, New York, operating from there an international network of businesses. Bullet points follow from a variety of sources:

* In 1975, Moon sponsored one of the largest peaceful gatherings in history (1.2 million people) in Yoido, South Korea. That same year, he sponsored a rally of 300,000 by the Washington Monument in Washington D.C..

From the Unification church website, "During a Day of Hope tour, ... a rally at Yoido Island near Seoul was attended by 1.2 million people. Reverend Moon spoke a message of determination to stand against communism in South Korea and establish a world centered on God, at the height of the Cold War during a time of great tension between North and South Korea."

* Diversifying into media in 1982, Moon sponsored the US$50 million movie "Inchon" about the Korean War, and founded a newspaper, The Washington Times. (That year he was also convicted of tax evasion, sentenced to 18 months in prison, and fined $25,000; he went to prison in 1984.)

*In 2000, Moon sponsored a United Nations conference which proposed the formation of "a religious assembly, or council of religious representatives, within the structure of the United Nations." In the same year, he joined with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan in sponsoring the Million Family March in Washington D.C., a follow-up event to the Million Man March held in 1995. He also launched activities in China and opened an office in the Health Ministry of China in Beijing that same year.

* In 2005, at the age of 85, Moon inaugurated the Universal Peace Federation with a 120-city world speaking tour. At each city, Moon delivered his speech titled "God's Ideal Family – the Model for World Peace".

*In April 2008, Moon appointed his youngest son Hyung Jin Moon to be the new leader of the Unification Church and the worldwide Unification Movement, saying, "I hope everyone helps him so that he may fulfill his duty as the successor of the True Parents."

Hyung-jin Moon, youngest son of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon preaches to believers during a 2009 service at a Unification Church in Seoul, South Korea. Moon's U.S.-born youngest son, Hyung-jin Moon, was named the church's top religious director in 2008. Other children run the church's businesses and charitable activities

*In 2009, Moon's autobiography, As a Peace-Loving Global Citizen, was published in South Korea which became a best-seller in Korea and Japan.

The Unification Church

Officially called "The Holy Spirit(ual) Association for the Unification of World Christianity," the church has 5-7 million adherents worldwide according to its public relations office (or had), but by most accounts the numbers are much smaller.

Members of the Unification Church believe that Moon is the Messiah and claim that there is "no room to challenging Moon...history will answer whether Moon is the new messiah". Moon himself gave the following answer to the question of whether he is the messiah or not: "Yes I am. But so are you." Then he pointed to each person around him: "And so are you, and you, and you."

The Unification Church is well known for its wedding or marriage re-dedication ceremonies, given to married (or engaged) couples. Through it, members of the Unification Church believe, the couple is removed from the lineage of sinful humanity and engrafted into God's sinless lineage.

An iconic mass wedding, something close and dear to the Unification church.

Well, enough of this - Unification Church doctrine can be looked up if one wishes to review its framework of belief. This quite energetic man himself has now passed on, and reports are already surfacing that his children will have their hands full in continuing the religious and business empire. One can only point out how quickly people seek out leaders, and there is no shortage of would-be leaders willing to accept that role.