While walking around Seoul yesterday, we ran into a group of young men from a high school named Hanil (it’s a common enough sounding name that I suspect there are many Hanil high schools, but the only one I found in a naver search is down in Chungcheongbuk Province near Sejong City).
The young men had a front man who spoke excellent English, and he explained that they were conducting some kind of human-rights campaign for “Yulia.” I guessed they meant Yulia Tymoshenko (Юлія Тимошенко), the former Ukrainian Prime Minister currently in jail (and hunger striking on and off). The boys were impressed and surprised that I knew about this. My current events obsession was finally bearing fruit.
I can’t say I necessarily feel the deepest sympathy for Tymoshenko, from what I have been able to understand. She’s pretty far to the right: a fervent nationalist and furthermore an incomprehensibly wealthy “oligarch” as only the former USSR can produce. But she definitely possesses a certain charisma – she was one of the leaders of the famous “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004 – and I would concur with groups like Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International that her current prison term seems more politically motivated than genuinely based on the alleged corruption charges against her. Of course she’s corrupt – she’s wealthy and Ukrainian – how could she not be? But, if so, why is only she in prison, whereas the other several thousand corrupt Ukrainian politicians are not?
So anyway, I like to see young Koreans being politically engaged, especially by something so exotic and external to their narrower cultural sphere. Mary and I were happy to pose with them for a photo, and I handed them my camera and they took one of us with mine, too. Thus we were commemorating Mary’s and my 30th Arcata High School class of ’83 reunion posed on the Gwanghwamun plaza in downtown Seoul.
Unrelatedly, my quote for this morning:
“The self-assured believer is a greater sinner in the eyes of God than the troubled disbeliever.” – Søren Kierkegaard
