Anyhow, recently CCTV9, China’s national English television service, conducted an interview with Ri Chun-hee at the Korea Central Television studios in P’yŏngyang.  She’s finally retiring after more than 40 years on the job.  If you care to see the interview, click here.

Since the 1980s, the number of children diagnosed with autism has skyrocketed.  Some doctors, fearing that too many children are being diagnosed as autistic when in fact they’re not have urged a review of the issue.  I do understand that autism is a spectrum disorder, meaning that there’s a wide variety of different behaviours associated with autism and not all of them are found in all patients.  However, some experts find the current wording in the DSM-IV too vague.  On the other hand,  some parents of children who have been diagnosed with varying degrees of autism are indeed worried, given that their ability to receive therapy for their children from the state as well as disability payments later on, could be negatively impacted.

You can read more about that here.

I had the occasion to do some reading on Asperger’s Syndrome recently.  I was, to put mildly, a bit of an unusual child.  My interests diverged sharply from those of my classmates.  While many of my classmates were into sports, I developed a loathing for American football that I retain to this day.  Instead of a mere recreational hatred, as far as I am concerned, it is something I truly loathe.  To be honest, I had only the vaguest idea of who Joe Paterno is and no idea who Jerry Sandusky is.  I sympathise greatly with the late Robert Maynard Hutchins, a former president of the University of Chicago who killed off both the football programme and fraternities, seeing them as distractions to the university’s purpose.  On the other hand, I truly have enjoyed going to baseball games with friends.  I really think that there’s a need to make sure that persons who are a bit odd are not diagnosed with AS automatically.  In looking at what constitutes AS under the terms as defined by the DSM-IV, I can see that there might be a  likelihood that I would have been diagnosed with AS had I gone to elementary school in the 1990s.  However, I remain somewhat skeptical of it all.  I don’t doubt that there is such a thing as Austism or Asperger’s Syndrome.  However, I’m also troubled by the vagueness of the diagnostic criteria.  The experts seem to be troubled as well.

As far as polyglots go, the winner would have to be Cardinal Mezzofanti, a 19th century Italian cardinal who was said to have spoken some 72 languages and 38 of those fluently.  He even learned a Native American or two from missionaries visiting Rome.  It is said that he once picked up Ukrainian in two weeks in order to hear the confessions of two men who were due to be hanged.  The amazing thing  Another great churchman who was also very talented with language was Blessed John Paul II.  He spoke quite a few languages.  St. John Neumann, Bishop of Philadelphia in the 19th century, spoke quite a few languages.  He was born in what is now the Czech Republic and spoke Czech and German.  He learned English and spoke Italian fluently.  As large numbers of Irish came to these shores in the 19th century, he learned that some of them did not speak English, but only spoke Irish Gaelic.  So he learned Irish Gaelic in order to hear confessions.  His facility with language endeared him to the immigrants in Philadelphia. 

Speaking of Korean, it is a wonderful language with a very unique grammar.  However, learning it isn’t easy, mostly because so many of the materials are deficient in some way, especially if they are published here.  Steve Kaufman is a polyglot who speaks quite a few languages and has picked up with Korean again.  I must say that I absolutely agree with some of his assessments on materials for learning Korean.

Kim Jong-il married Kim Young-sook, who was apparently hand picked by Kim Il-sung to be Kim Jong-il’s bride.  That union produced a daughter.  Kim Jong-il later took up with the late Ko Young-hee, a former dancer in the Mansudae Art Troupe who caught his fancy.  He had two more sons from this affair, Kim Jong-chol, the poetry-writing Eric Clapton-loving son who Kim Jong-il thought to be too girlish and too nice to run the country and Kim Jong-un, the current leader. 

Kim Jong-nam has appeared in the Japanese media again, this time hinting that his half-brother’s hold on power isn’t that strong and that he will basically be a figurehead while the ruling elite continue to follow in Kim Jong-il’s footsteps.  You can read more about this by clicking here.

Hereditary succession is not typical in Communist countries.  The children of the “Great Helmsman” Mao Zedong had pretty tragic lives.  The Kim family is something of an exception.  In fact, just about anybody who was a member of Mao’s family faced tragedy someway or another.  His first wife was married to him when he was 14.  He never acknowledged the marriage and it quickly broke up.  His second wife was executed by the Kuomintang, the party of Chiang Kai-shek which currently runs Taiwan for the moment.  His third marriage broke up.  His fourth wife, the infamous Madame Mao (Jiang Qing) was sentenced to death after Mao’s own death for treason for her role in the Cultural Revolution.  Two of his brothers were executed by the Kuomintang, as was a sister.  His eldest son, Mao Anying, volunteered to fight in the Korean War where he was killed.  His son Mao Anqing, who died in 2007, suffered from mental illness off and on.  Two other sons died fighting the Kuomintang during the Chinese civil war.  Two of his daughters are still living, but they bear the family name of Li instead of Mao, because he had changed his name during the period they were born to avoid the Kuomintang.   Mao’s grandson Mao Xinyu, son of Mao Anqing, has done pretty well for himself.  He’s a general in the People’s Liberation Army and is a historian, something his grandfather would have definitely approved of.  Despite his attempts at destroying China in order to rebuild it, Chairman Mao had an encyclopedic knowledge of China’s classical literature.  His bed, when not occupied by various mistresses, was piled high with books of Chinese history and literature.

Shortly after the creation of the Republic of Korea, the government of Rhee Syngman passed the National Security Law (국가보안법, 國家保安法).  This law, which is still very much in force, forbids South Korean citizens or residents from joining organizations which advocate the overthrow of the government or from creating, possessing, or distributing anti-state material.  Also, citizens are required to notify the authorities should they become aware of anyone breaking this particular law.  There have been people successfully prosecuted under the terms of the National Security Law recently.  Under the provisions of the law, the Korean Communications Standards Commission can block any website deemed to be in violation.  So while you can read the Bright Leader and Great Successor’s latest musings, you cannot do so here. 

You can read more about this by clicking here.  And if you were curious to know what kind of stories the Rodong Shinmun reports, you can read Professor Andrei Lankov’s column by clicking here.  Professor Lankov, who is from Russia and who is a professor of Korean history here, actually did part of his studies at the Kim Il Sung University in Pyeongyang.

However, this does not cover scholarly editions, such as Jonathan Del Mar’s new edition of Beethoven’s symphonies.  Nor would one expect to find the National Edition of the works of Fryderyk Chopin on-line for free.  This edition, put out by Polskie Wydnawnictwo Muzyczne, is required to be used by all contestants in the Chopin International Piano Competition in Warsaw.  Older editions, whose copyrights have long expired, can be downloaded.

The Korean pianist Son Yeol-eum, second place winner of the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow, recently surprised many by using her iPad to provide the score for one of her encore pieces.  I think that e-publishing is something that all music publishers should look into, as using an iPad is a bit more convenient than using a score.  One can carry a lot of scores on it and not have to lug around numbers of books.  The Chinese pianist Lang Lang recently played an encore on an iPad.  You can read more about how Son Yeol-eum uses her iPad by clicking here. 

In other digital related news, the British pianist Stephen Hough has written on his love for his digital piano.  While it doesn’t replace a real piano, it’s still a very useful tool according to Hough.  You can read about that on his blog by clicking here.

Every so often, we will see a news report about how some Koreans like to eat dog meat.  There are specific breeds of dog which are used.  These aren’t the sorts of dogs one would have has a pet.  I’ve managed to avoid having dog meat stew, though sometime I figure I will have to try it at some point.  I have had raw fish, raw meat, pigs feet, baby octopus, and some other things I never would have tried before.  There are some Korean foods I definitely like better than others.  On the whole, though, the food is not scary.  Not all Koreans approve of the practice of eating dog. 

Korean cooking is not, then, as adventurous as Cantonese cooking.  The Cantonese, those people who live in Hong Kong, Macau, and China’s Guangdong Province, are quite fond of some rather exotic foods.  Koreans definitely would balk at cat stew.  The Cantonese would not.   

A Chinese billionaire was poisoned by a Communist Party official.  The billionaire died, though two other people managed to survive.  They had gone to a restaurant that serves cat stew and this Communist Party official allegedly poisoned the stew with a poinsonous herb. 

Speaking of China and Korea, the Lunar New Year, also know as Seollal (here) and as the Spring Festival (China) is upon us.  China Post issued new stamps for the occasion, but not everyone is impressed. 

The family of Oh Gil-nam has not been as fortunate.  According to Mr. Oh, while he was in Berlin, the composer Yun convinced him and his family to defect to North Korea.  He realized soon after arriving that he had made a horrendous mistake.  He was able to get out.  His wife and family were not.  They remain in North Korea where they are in a prison camp.  For your reference, you can read Mr. Oh’s tragic story by clicking here.

Apparently, Yun Isang’s widow was among the mourners in Pyeongyang.  I admire Yun Isang’s music.  I can’t say that I necessarily admire the man’s politics, though. 

In keeping with today’s theme of contemporary Korean composers, I leave you with Chin Unsuk’s (진은숙) Piano Study No. 5 “Toccata”.  Chin was a student of the great Hungarian composer György Ligeti.  She currently resides in Germany.

I’ve written before about Turkish.  Turkish is not related to Arabic, though like Persian which is also not related to Arabic, it used to be written in the Arabic script.  (Strangely enough, Persian or Farsi is an Indo-European language.  English belongs to the great Indo-European family of languages as well.)  After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, a man by the name of Kemal Atatürk took power.  Atatürk wanted Turkey to shed its feudal past.  For Atatürk, modernization meant Europeanization.  He wanted to create in Turkey a secular state.  Very strict separation between mosque and state was put in place.  However, this did not stop Atatürk from meddling in the religious affairs of the Turkish people.

Part of his modernization program involved making Turks write in Roman letters.  Before, they had written in Arabic script.  It is now very difficult if not impossible for modern Turks, most of whom are Muslim and therefore have some familiarity with Arabic, to read anything published prior to 1930.  One reform of Atatürk’s which is still in practice today is the practice of giving the Friday sermon in Mosques in Turkish rather than Arabic.  He also purged the language of Arabic and Persian loan words.  From 1932 until 1950, it was actually illegal in Turkey to chant the ezan, or the call to worship that is chanted from the minarets of mosques five times a day in Arabic.  Rather, only a Turkish translation could be used.

Maria Zijlstra has interviewed Professor Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar about this.  You can either read the transcript or listen to the podcast by clicking here. 

If you’re interested in such things, you can also hear guest host Prithvi Varatharajan interview Dr. Mark Okrand, inventor of the Klingon language.  There is a community of people who have learned this language which was devised for Star Trek.  You can access this one by clicking here.

What will happen is, of course, anybody’s guess.  Some experts have stated that there will be a power struggle.  However, B.R. Myers, a professor at Busan’s Dongseo University argues that this unlikely.  Given that the North Korean regime draws its legitimacy from the Kim Il-sung legend, it’s unlikely that the regime could survive were someone from outside the family to run the country.  It’s a difficult situtation right now.  In 1974, Kim Il-sung, the founder of the reclusive state, named his son as his successor.  Kim Jong-il had twenty years to prepare and to also become known, or at least a propagandized form of him, by the people.  Kim Jong-un was only designated as the successor a year ago. 

Here in Korea, it was of course big news.  There were also protests against the Kim regime in Seoul, but it has been more or less quiet. 

In looking at the life of Kim Jong-il, one has to be in awe of the man’s sheer audacity and shrewdness.  Kim was able to play the most powerful nations in the world off of each other while continuing his nuclear weapons development.  But the worst aspects of his life are the sheer luxury in which he and his family lived while most of his people were starving.  The government of North Korea spent millions of dollars preserving the corpse of Kim Il-sung.  It will likely to the same with Kim Jong-il’s body.  Like his father, Kim Jong-il had a fear of flying.  Thus, when he visited Russia or China, he travelled on his private train.  According to some reports, live lobsters were flown to his train every day of his journey towards Moscow.  Needless to say, it was well-stocked with fine wines and presumably Hennesy cognac, one of the most expensive varieties available.  One of his sons, Kim Jong-nam, lives in luxury in Macau, one of the two Special Administrative Regions of the People’s Republic of China.  Macau is sort of like the Las Vegas of Asia, given that it derives much of its income from gambling and tourism.  Kim Jong-nam, while pretty much exiled, still lives pretty comfortably.  He has two families, a wife and family in Macau and a wife and family in Beijing.  On top of that, he is also said to support another mistress. 

As I mentioned before, Kim Il-sung’s body was given very expensive treatment.  It rests at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang.  This palace was completely overhauled.  Those who have been through it report that it’s a bit like entering a clean room of a semiconductor plant.  Any speck of dust is blown off of the clothes of visitors and they must wear special slippers inside.  Kim Il-sung’s embalmed body lies in state where presumably Kim Jong-il’s body might also be on display.  Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on this project.

Meanwhile in Pyongyang and elsewhere, starvation is commonplace.  One wonders whether or not Kim Jong-il’s death will also herald something along the lines of the massive famine of the 1990s which killed some two or three million people. 

Al Jazeera had some of the best coverage of what had happened.  In this report, they interview Professor Myers.  His comments are well worth hearing.