"PGH" is a kind of shorthand for Park Geun-hye, Korea's current president, who I also like to refer to as The Dictator's Daughter.
Recently she has been on a high-level visit to Iran, now that Iran is "open for business" under the new nuclear agreement, and she can do so without antagonizing the Imperial powers in Washington and Brussels. Korea's economic presence is already huge in the region – bearing in mind that it is Korean construction contractors who have built major portions of infrastructure in Iran's neighbors United Arab Emirates to the south and Uzbekistan to the north. The Burj al-Khalifa might be in Dubai, but it was built by Koreans – a point of pride, here.
Anyway, her visit is all over the news. I keep the Korean 24 hour news channel running sometimes on my TV at home. I noticed something that frankly surprised me, that vastly increased my estimation of President Park's intelligence. It's minor, perhaps: she has made a point of wearing an Iranian-style headscarf during her state visit to Tehran. Somehow this strikes me as a remarkable bit of cultural sensitivity. It's hard to imagine a European or American female politician making such a cultural concession. It may antagonize those who object to the clearly anti-feminist nature of the Iranian regime, and I have sympathy for that. But we should also acknowledge that PGH is no feminist – if she were, she'd never have won the presidency in Korea. It was just such gestures of obeissance to patriarchy that have made her political career possible in Korea. Basically, that she can extend such symbolic behavior into the international sphere speaks well of her level of political savvy and machiavelianism.
I'm not saying I like her, but I think perhaps she is easy to underestimate.
[daily log: walking, 6km]