24/Sep/2016(Sat)

[yoon.]

Debate simmers over NK flood aid

With North Korea reeling from the worst floods in decades, debate is heating up here as to whether Seoul should provide humanitarian relief despite heightened tension following Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test. 

The North’s state media has said the floods caused by recent torrential rains in the country’s north had forced nearly 70,000 to flee their homes, calling it the “worst disaster” since its 1945 liberation. A UN agency tallied the casualties as at least 138 deaths and 400 vanishings. 

To help alleviate the calamity, a growing number of South Korean politicians, experts and activists are raising the need to offer food, medical and other aids.  

The Korea NGO Council for Cooperation with North Korea, an association of 59 relief groups here, has submitted a request to the Ministry of Unification to approve their plans to meet and deliver supplies to North Koreans. 

Seoul remains skeptical, however, given the grave political situation after Pyongyang’s fifth atomic experiment on Sept. 9. It is currently pushing for a fresh round of crippling sanctions at the UN Security Council. 

“We have not received any request (for assistance) from North Korea so far, and it is unlikely for them to make one in the future,” ministry spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee said at a news briefing Monday. 

“Even if they do, I think the chances are quite low it will take place under the current circumstances.” 

He blasted the Kim Jong-un regime for pressing ahead with provocations even as the country suffers from the natural disaster. 

“Such an enormous amount of money and efforts were supposed to have been spent for the people’s livelihoods and recovery from the flood damage, not the nuclear test,” Jeong added, referencing the maxim “God helps those who help themselves” to stress the regime’s culpability. 

South Korean individuals and entities are required to seek the ministry’s approval to visit North Korea or make contact with its nationals. But the government has not given the green light, as it has virtually severed all formal and civilian exchanges and aid programs since the communist state’s fourth underground blast on Jan. 6. 

Seoul’s stance also reflects soured public sentiment following the latest explosion, as well as concerns the regime may siphon off any outside handouts for military and other undesirable uses. 

Military tension aside, critics say the across-the-board halt further confuses the Park Geun-hye administration’s about-face in its own principle that humanitarian assistance should carry on regardless of political ups and downs. 

The president reaffirmed that notion through a speech in the former East German city of Dresden in March 2014, vowing to expand humanitarian assistance as a key component of her vision of a “trust-building process.” 

“The fundamental basis regarding humanitarian support largely remains unchanged, but in carrying out such a program we also need to take into account the North’s continuous provocations and defiance of the international community’s denuclearization demands,” a Seoul official said. 

But another diplomatic source voiced the need for flood relief in a display of engagement with the North Korean people. “While intensifying pressure on the leadership, it’s imperative to deliver a different message to the ordinary citizens that we will embrace and help them now and after unification as well.” 

Opposition lawmakers also relayed calls for a two-track approach in dealing with the regime and rank-and-file citizens, warning of further damage with Typhoon Malakas inching closer to the peninsula after devastating Taiwan. 

“We can no longer delay government and civilian support from the humanitarian standpoint,” Rep. Woo sang-ho, the main opposition The Minjoo Party of Korea’s floor leader, said at a meeting of senior party members earlier in the day. 

“We should separately handle the North Korean authorities and the suffering people.”

Rep. Joo Seung-yong of the minor opposition People’s Party echoed the view. 

“We need to explore the path for dialogue through humanitarian aid like flood relief,” he said while presiding over a separate party conference in place of interim chief Rep. Park Jie-won, who was visiting the US, calling for a “stick-and-carrot strategy.”  

Drinking to Blackout

 “I call this the holy spirit,” he said, putting a concoction of blue Gatorade, vodka and God-knows-what-else in front of me — a single Jolly Rancher rested at the bottom of the bottle. I declined, he shrugged and passed the drink around to the two other women I was with.

It was 2013 and I was a high school senior visiting my first prospective college — a small liberal arts school in the middle of nowhere that boasts a 10 to 1 student-to-faculty ratio and uses the word community in every pamphlet. I was with a group of students who had offered to give me a tour and let me spend the night in their dorm. We were supposed to be going to a fraternity party that night, and this was the warm-up. But the somber faces and dimly lit room made it feel more as if we were heading to a funeral.

“It’s pretty stressful here during the week,” explained the guy with the blue concoction in response to my uneasy glances. “So everyone tends to go pretty hard on the weekends.”

I hadn’t known it at the time, but this was my first introduction to the aspirational “blackout.” That is, intentionally drinking with the goal of submersing yourself in so much alcohol that you can’t remember what happened and the only vestiges that remain from the night before are the videos on your friends’ phones.

I attended that college for one year before transferring to the University of North Carolina. During that time I never got “blackout,” but I was a frequent observer of it. I’m not naïve; I know that drinking is part of the college experience, you hang out with some friends, you party too hard and sometimes you pass out. But what I saw was something different.

Times to start drinking were scheduled on Fridays and Saturdays, liquor runs were arranged with someone who was of age. “Pregaming” festivities were set up in various rooms. These festivities included games like king’s cup, in which losers have to drink, and power hour, where you have to drink a certain amount in a specific period of time. Groups then moved to other dorms, and more games were played with more people, and then to on-campus apartments with even more people. And finally, they descended on the frat houses where trash cans filled with p.j., or party juice, also known as pink panty droppers, were at the ready. The game favored at the frat parties was cuff and chug, here you are handcuffed to a partner until the two of you finish a fifth of alcohol. For the supercompetitive, Sharpie pens were used to tally the number of drinks on your arm, establishing a ratio of drinks to the time it takes to black out — a high ratio was a source of pride among the guys.

Small schools are especially conducive to blackout culture. Many are in small towns and have limited social activities. Sports teams are minimally competitive at best, the Applebee’s tends to get old, and the bowling alley becomes insufficient. A general lack of bars and off-campus gathering places means that fraternity houses become the focal point of partying and social interaction.

Of course, many college students drink, including the scholarship winners, the three-sport athletes and the club presidents. They’re free from their parents, and they feel safe because everything is in walking distance. Drinking on campus is by far the most convenient way to have fun. Plus it’s cheap and accessible. But there’s something else in the mix, something that pushes them from casual drinking to binge drinking to blackout.

I think it’s the stress. It permeates everything we do as college students. Many small, elite colleges are insanely competitive to get into in the first place and they remain competitive as students try to outdo one another with grades, scholarships, extracurricular activities and internships. Having been one of those hypercompetitive students, I can tell you that it never feels like enough. The person sitting next to you in class is always doing more and doing it better. I became obsessed with stacking my resume, even more so than I was in high school. I saw it as a reflection of whether I would succeed in life. And I’m not alone. The obsession seems largely driven by fear — fear of a crumbling job market, of not meeting parents’ expectations, of crippling loan debt.

Such an intense preoccupation with success — or at least what we’ve been told success looks like — is not without its consequences. Rates of mental illness in young adults have spiked in the last couple of years. According to a 2013 survey by the American College Health Association, 57 percent of female and 40 percent of male college students reported feeling overwhelmingly anxious, while 33 percent of females and 27 percent of males reported feeling seriously depressed. The association also found that suicide rates in young adults had tripled since the 1950s, with the National Alliance on Mental Illness estimating that a quarter of college students have had suicidal thoughts.

So the mentality behind the decision to black out boils down to the simple question of why not? No one will stop you. You’re in a familiar environment. You assume that if you black out, someone will make sure you get back home. And most of the time you do get home, which makes it seem a lot lower risk than it really is and allows for it to be repeated every weekend.

The way we as students treat the blacking out of our peers is also partly responsible for its ubiquity. We actually think it’s funny. We joke the next day about how ridiculous our friends looked passed out on the bathroom floor or Snapchatting while dancing and making out with some random guy, thus validating their actions and encouraging them to do it again. Blacking out has become so normal that even if you don’t personally do it, you understand why others do. It’s a mutually recognized method of stress relief. To treat it as anything else would be judgmental.

There is also a tacit understanding that blacking out works as a kind of “get out of jail free card.” A person can say or do any number of hurtful or embarrassing things and be granted immunity with the simple excuse that they were “blackout” that night. People accept this with no question. Blacking out therefore becomes a way to avoid responsibility. Of course, this mentality backfires with issues such as sexual assault when people are held accountable for their actions.

Despite the risks — health and otherwise — blackout is not going away. Not as long as we continue to be competitive overachievers who treat the trend as a joke and as our only means to relieve stress. At the end of the day, for a lot of students, forgetting will always be the best option.

Korean Air seeks alternative funding plans for Hanjin Shipping

Korean Air, the largest shareholder of Hanjin Group, appears to be seeking alternative plans to save near-bankrupt Hanjin Shipping in the face of the board’s rejection of injecting $60 billion won ($53.7 million) in the ailing shipper.

During several rounds of emergency meetings held during the Chuseok holiday, Korean Air’s executive board failed to reach an agreement to find $60 billion won for the cash-strapped firm.

“Since there are multiple stakeholders, holding the terminal collateral is nearly impossible. New measures are under discussion,” a source familiar with the matter was quoted by Yonhap News Agency as saying. 

Amid growing public pressure for the parent group to cover the overdue balance and ease the freight transportation issue, Hanjin Group Chairman Cho Yang-ho vowed earlier this month to inject 100 billion won.

Of the 100 billion won, 40 billion won came from Cho’s private assets. The remaining 60 billion won was to come in the form of loans secured by the shipping unit’s stakes of Hanjin Long Beach. But the plan appears to have floundered due to opposition from Korean Air’s board members.

The board initially made an agreement on Sept. 10 to draw up 60 billion won with loans secured by the terminal collateral. But they reversed the plan after some board members raised questions that it could be subject to breach of trust and also that the nature of the plan is unrealistic.

Some pointed out that the plan is not feasible when looking at shareholder structure. 

Holding the terminal as collateral requires approval from another shareholder, MSC, which owns 46 percent of the terminal’s shares, as well as six foreign financial institutions from which Hanjin has already taken out collateral loans. 

Hanjin Shipping had asked for approval to secure the terminal, but the financial institutions reportedly did not respond to the request. 

The board also discussed injecting the funds first to the shipping company and acquiring the security later. But some board members reportedly opposed to the plan saying that it is subject to malpractice.

Korean Air holding other assets as collateral seems to be difficult, as the airline reportedly has nearly no useful assets, except for the terminal, industry insiders said. 

Hanjin Shipping is in need of 170 billion won to cover overdue balance and resolve delays in cargo.

Last week, Cho injected 40 billion won from his personal asset to the ailing shipper. His sister-in-law and the former Hanjin Shipping Chairwoman Choi Eun-young also presented 10 billion won from her own pocket in the face of the angry public holding her responsible for the Hanjin crisis.

Meanwhile, 54 Hanjin vessels have had their operations disrupted overseas. With stay orders granted in several countries, unloading work has resumed in Japan, following the US and Spain. 

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