Bar Review

In case anyone is wondering, final exams and now bar review have brought posting to a screeching halt until post-bar. Stay tuned in late August.

The Perils of Telling the Truth While Things Are Peachy

In China, it seems you can be put in prison for publicly claiming that people with ties to the police did something bad to your loved ones. Three women in Fujian province were jailed for posting online a video clip where one of the women said her daughter had been raped by a gang having ties to the Fuzhou city police. The daughter ultimately died.

According to the judge at the women's criminal trial, their actions had seriously harmed the interests of the state. It seems to me one thing that a country would censor speech that is directly critical of the regime or the philosophy by which it operates, and another thing entirely to punish anyone who tries to expose the blatantly criminal activity (even by the standards set forth for them by the party) that various state officials may be engaging in or covering up. I'm not saying I have any sympathy for the former, but the latter is too totalitarian for a state that sees itself as even vaguely modern.

I think, though, that as long as things go well in China economically, this sort of corruption will be easy to sweep under the table and keep out-of-mind for most of the news-watching public. It certainly is an interesting counterpoint to our own current example of how, when times are lean, heads finally begin to roll. Ah, Goldman Sachs, when times were good, we might have looked the other way at a little fraud.

Naturalization in Korea

While I don't plan to ever become a Korean citizen, I have been a worker and a student there, and will probably want to get marriage-based resident status someday, to make coming and going from there a bit easier. The point is: the issues that affect foreigners trying to immigrate to and live in Korea are of interest to me.

In any case, a former professor of mine at Yonsei, Lee Chulwoo, published a paper today that will be used in a national assembly hearing on the matter soon. According to Prof. Lee, "[R]estricting the chance of acquiring citizenship by foreigners in Korea might obstruct social integration." There's really no "might" about it; knowing that you couldn't get full citizenship (or would have a very hard time doing so) definitely darkens many foreigners' views of staying in Korea permanently. Of course, non-legal, societal factors would be enough to obstruct social integration in Korea, but even for those that learn the language and possibly start a family there, staying forever doesn't seem realistic.

Any moves toward naturalization reform would begin with foreign ethnic Koreans and the children of ethnic Koreans, making such reform irrelevant to a great deal of Western expats. At least in the short term.

Update on Gao Zhisheng

It turns out Gao Zhisheng, who I reported on in my last post, is out of official Chinese custody and living near Wutai Mountain. According to Mr. Gao, he was released 6 months ago and now wants to live a quiet life with his family. He did not speak to whether he had been tortured in detention (he had been the first time he was detained), or on what terms he was released.

For now, at least, he is out of human rights law. His law practice, closed down in 2005, is not reopening. Even if this is the end of the line for Gao Zhisheng, he's already fought harder and done more good than most of us other lawyers ever will.

Disappearing Acts in China

Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese human rights lawyer, has been missing for a year, since he appeared at a press conference in Beijing with British Foreign Secretary David Milliband. That is, he was missing until today, when he reappeared "right where he should be," according to China's Foreign Ministry. "Right where he should be" is at some undisclosed place, in official state custody. In fact, Joshua Rosenzweig, a research manager for the U.S.-based Dui Hua Foundation, believes that Gao is being held outside the legal system and the Foreign Ministry itself has no specific knowledge of his whereabouts.

The Foreign Ministry official claimed that Gao had, during his year-long disappearance, been charged and convicted of "subverting state power". Asked what the exact time-line was, or when the sentence was handed down, the official directed reporters to ask the judiciary. The judiciary, in turn, has refused to answer.

Before I heard about this case, and even during the 2008 Olympics, I had thought that the common Western perceptions about old-fashioned dictatorship being alive and well in China were overblown. Certainly, my 10-day sojourn there last year gave me the sense that I was just as free there to roam where and do as I please as I am in the U.S. or Korea. The bit where I had to surrender my passport for 24 hours after arrival did make me nervous, though. Still, this story changes things. A post I read on a blog called Seeking Alpha put things in what I think are the proper perspective:

"China remains a velvet-gloved dictatorship. If you work within the boundaries set for acceptable behavior and thinking, you will be left alone or perhaps followed/tracked but not openly harrassed (sic). But if you step over that boundary by embarrassing the Central State, by questioning its authority or its prosecution of policy and laws, then you will disappear or be driven into exile."

I admit I was doing a lot more scorpion eating than policy questioning during my stay.

By the way, does this story strike you as something Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe might approve of in our own country?

Touring North Korea

Vice News (vbs.tv) ran a really interesting Guide to North Korea. It has a lot of original material, and I like the sort of raw reporting they do. The entire "guide" is split into ~5 minute episodes, so it's perfect for serial viewing.

Tip: after watching the first video, by far the easiest way to navigate is by replacing the "1" near the end of the web address, like this: "...north-korea-2-of-14."

The picture is a screen shot from the Vice News video.

Vietnam Dusts Off Subversion Law to Jail Human Rights Lawyer

Go here and here for background on the story.

Government crackdown on democracy across Asia appears to be on the rise. This Vietnam court's ruling comes amid greater tension between Google and the Chinese government after google.ca was hacked last month and the ongoing unrest in Iran, not to mention current trends in Russia (see here). In Iran, nine more pro-Mousavi were sentenced to death recently after being labelled "enemies of God" for what many claim was peaceful protest.

Is this, as some pundits like to say, evidence of what can happen around the world when US power declines while countries like China move at speed toward the #2 spot in terms of economic power? There is, of course, the real, if unsatisfying, possibility that all of these developments are unrelated.

I don't necessarily put much faith in either of those explanations. My take is that these are the fruits of economic volatility. As the economic and political situation in a country become shakier, democratic ideals seem to follow closely behind. In the Economist's take on the Vietnam ruling, the writer even mentions that openness in Vietnam follows a kind of boom-and-bust cycle, at about the same rate the world economy does. He isn't intending to make the same point as I am, but I think the analogy is meaningful.

But how does this model explain what's happening in China, though? In a word: it doesn't. In the case of China, I would chalk up its recent hubris over internet freedom. arms sales to Taiwan, and President Obama's upcoming meeting with the Dalai Lama to its impressive economic success during this recession. Indeed, most of the things it is chest-thumping over now are not new developments.

What do you think?

No Man Above the Law?

On Tuesday, the Langfang Municipal Intermediate Court (in Hebei province, right outside Beijing) sentenced the deputy Grand Justice of China's supreme court to life in prison. Huang Songyou, the highest-level CCP official ever convicted on corruption charges, admitted to taking $570,000 in bribes from five different lawyers since 2005 in return for favorable rulings. He was also convicted of embezzling $176,000 of government money in 1997, while a lower court judge in Guangdong province. Huang hasn't indicated whether he plans to appeal.

Huang's case is just a highlight in the CCP's anti-corruption drive. The party feels that, to maintain its legitimacy and respect among average Chinese, it has to reverse this unfortunate part of its image. I wonder, though, how successful its attempts can be, especially in the short term. While we in the West are familiar with corrupt politicians, East Asian cultures, and no only China's, tend to view deep-seated graft and nepotism as inevitable byproducts of any system of power. My experiences lead me to think that citizens of those countries view that kind of behavior as more-or-less acceptable. Against this backdrop, it will be difficult for the CCP to convince the people that this kind of dealing isn't always going on behind the scenes.

The government also seized all of Huang's property, kicked him out of the CCP and forbade him from ever serving in government again. As far as I can tell, they took all his property, not only enough to cover what he illegally took.

Huang had been the high court's greatest proponent of constitutional reform and protections. How this conviction, and the anti-corruption campaign in general, will affect the tack of the supreme court toward or away from constitutionalism is something to watch.

Google China Hacked

Google.ca suffered a "sophisticated" attack some time in the last few days. In particular, the hackers targeted the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. The data sought seems to have been account information and email subject lines, rather than message content. Google hasn't accused the Chinese government of anything, but is considering closing its China operations and offices.

Secretary Clinton put out a press release this morning after its officials spoke with Google spokesmen, but didn't report any conclusions, either. The State Department says it will give a full public address on the issue next week after investigating.

One of Google's competitors claims the company's response is just posturing. According to the BBC, Baidu, a Chinese search engine, accused Google of using this episode as a way to justify what is at base a purely economic reason for pulling out. Since entering the China market, Google has lagged behind Baidu.

The Wall Street Journal, on the other hand, praised Google for "showing it values its reputation for providing a secure service to users more than a leading position in a massive and growing market." That paper also points out that, while Google isn't the leading search engine in China, it has gone from a 13.2% market share in 2006, to 35.6% now, a very respectable increase.

Failing to Not Be Beaten Up as Breach of Contract

(image property of Saigon Times USA)

Today, the Supreme Court of Korea awarded a construction company 3 billion won ($2.4 million) of a dead woman's money.

The construction company sued actress Choi Jin-sil, who committed suicide last October. The company hired Choi as a model in March 2004. Their contract stated that she would have to pay back 500 million won ($399,000), if she "depreciated the company's social reputation."

In August, Choi appeared on television and newspapers with a face full of bruises caused by the abuse of her (then) husband. The company sued her for3 billion won, including the 500 million won in damages, as well as 400 million "additional compensation" and 210 million won in advertising costs.

In the court's opinion, "The purpose of the brand model contract is to use the model's social reputation and images to draw the customers' interest . . . The model's failure to maintain an adequate image constitutes a breach of the hiring contract. . . . The concept of the apartment which Choi was supposed to advertise was dignity and happiness, and Choi, as its model, was under the obligation to act accordingly." (emphasis is mine)

Either contract law here differs fundamentally from what we study in the U.S., or the Supreme Court justices just spent too much time in Contracts class cruising Facebook while the prof droned on about defenses and excuses.