MORSi ROAStS IRAN - Kuwait Times

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2012
SEOUL: A South Korean protester shouts slogans during a
rally against Japan’s sovereignty claims over disputed
islets called Dokdo in Korean and Takeshima and
demanding an apology and compensation for the victims
during Japanese colonial rule yesterday. — AP
Japan, N Korea meet
for second day of talks
BEIJING: Japan and North Korea were in close contact for a
second day, officials said yesterday, as the countries seek to
find enough common ground for possible future discussions at
a higher level. Diplomats from the two sides held their first
face-to-face encounter in four years Wednesday in Beijing, in
relatively low-level talks Japan characterised as “matter-of-fact
and frank.”
The countries, which have no formal diplomatic relations,
have long been at odds over numerous issues including North
Korea’s abduction of Japanese citizens and the legacy of
Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean peninsula. Beyond their
bilateral relationship, however, the meetings in China’s capital
are being closely watched for any clues as to whether North
Korea’s foreign policy could change under new leader Kim
Jong-Un. Kim, believed to be in his late 20s, took over leadership
of the communist state after his father Kim Jong-Il died in
December. Diplomats began the second day of meetings
shortly before midday at North Korea’s embassy after having
met the previous day at Japan’s diplomatic mission, according
to a Japanese official, who declined to be named.
Yesterday’s encounter ended after a little less than two
hours and the two sides were keeping in touch, though it was
unclear if they would gather again, said the official with the
Japanese embassy. In Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu
Fujimura emphasised that the talks were very much alive even
if yesterday’s physical meeting had ended for the time being.
“We have continued coordination with each other,” he told
a news conference. Japanese broadcaster NHK television
reported North Korean and Japanese diplomats were staying
in contact by phone while receiving instructions from their
governments. In another sign the sides were making some
headway, news agency Jiji press said Japan’s delegation had
postponed its return to Tokyo until today.
A key issue for Japan is the fate of its citizens abducted by
North Korean agents to help train spies, amid suspicions that
Pyongyang has failed to provide all the information it has
about them. “The abduction issue is among the most important
of the various problems between Japan and North Korea,”
Fujimura said.
“As a matter of course, there won’t be any change in our
stance that we want to discuss it.” Secretive North Korea
admitted in 2002 its agents kidnapped Japanese in the 1970s
and 1980s to help train spies by teaching them Japanese language
and culture, and later allowed five of them and their
families to return home.
It said a number of others died, though many in Japan hold
out hope they remain alive. There are also suspicions that
Pyongyang’s agents abducted more Japanese than they
admitted. Japan says North Korea agreed to reopen investigations
into the fate of abducted Japanese when the two sides
last met in 2008. Impoverished yet highly militarised North
Korea remains suspicious of Japan, which is a close military ally
of the United States. Pyongyang also regularly blasts Japan for
its colonisation of the Korean peninsula in the first half of the
20th century and treatment of ethnic Koreans in Japan. — AFP
SEOUL: Twin typhoons are renewing
fears of a humanitarian crisis in North
Korea, where poor drainage, widespread
deforestation and crumbling infrastructure
can turn even a routine rainstorm
into a catastrophic flood. Typhoon
Bolaven struck the North on Tuesday
and Wednesday, submerging houses
and roads, ruining thousands of acres of
crops and triggering landslides that
buried train tracks - scenes that are all
too familiar in this disaster-prone nation.
A second major storm, Typhoon
Tembin, pounded the Korean Peninsula
with more rains yesterday.
The storms come as North Korea is
still recovering from earlier floods that
killed more than 170 people and
destroyed thousands of homes. That in
turn followed a springtime drought that
was the worst in a century in some
areas. Foreign aid groups contacted yesterday
said they are standing by in
Pyongyang, but had not received new
requests for help from the North Korean
government. They had little information
on the extent of damage and were relying
on reports from state media. The
country’s wariness toward the outside
world, as well as a primitive rural road
system, means aid may be slow arriving,
if it is allowed to come at all.
“These fresh storms, coming just a few
weeks after the serious flooding - they do
raise concerns because we see parts of
the countryside battered again that have
already been left in a vulnerable state,”
said Francis Markus, spokesman for the
International Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies in East Asia.
Tembin’s strong winds and hard rain
were pounding South Korea yesterday,
as residents of some cities waded
through streets flooded with murky,
knee-deep water. The national weather
BEIJING: Giving up his successful career as the head of a medical
research firm to spend his days at home reading from children’s
story books was a tough choice for Chinese father
Zhang Qiaofeng. But Zhang, one of a small but growing number
of Chinese parents who are turning their backs on the
country’s rigidly exam-oriented state-run school system, felt
he had no choice. “China’s education system has special problems,”
said Zhang, a wiry-looking graduate of one of the country’s
top universities.
“I want my son to receive a style of education which is
much more participative, not just the teacher talking while
students listen. Most of my son’s time is set aside for following
his interests, or playing.” From a small apartment on the outskirts
of Beijing, Zhang teaches his son Hongwu for four hours
a day, in contrast to the six hours of compulsory classes the
seven-year-old used to sit through at primary school.
In the living room where he holds most of his classes,
Zhang rattles through a long list of gripes with China’s education
system, from what he calls its “obsession” with exam
results to an overly authoritarian teaching style. China has
made impressive progress in rolling out universal education
across the country, with urban areas such as Shanghai claiming
a perfect school enrolment rate. The United Nations says
China has a youth literacy rate of 99 percent.
But many parents complain about the focus on rote learning
and passing exams, which means that children spend long
hours in class. Chinese children spend an average of 8.6 hours
a day in school, with some spending 12 hours in the classroom,
according to a 2007 survey conducted by China’s Youth
agency in Seoul said the storm would
move off the peninsula’s east coast and
that some cities in North Korea would
see severe weather conditions. There
were no deaths reported from Tembin;
20 people were dead or missing in
South Korea from Bolaven.
North Korea has yet to release casualty
details, though heavy rains that might
be little more than an inconvenience
elsewhere can be calamitous there.
Downpours trigger landslides that barrel
down the country’s deforested mountains.
For years, rural people have felled
trees to grow crops and for fuel, leaving
the landscape barren and heavily eroded.
Rivers overflow, submerging crops,
inundating roads and engulfing hamlets.
Since June, thousands have been
left without clean water, electricity and
access to food and other supplies. That
leads to a risk of water-borne and respiratory
diseases and malnutrition, aid
workers say.
Because the North annually struggles
to produce enough food from its rocky,
mountainous landscape to feed its 24
International
Twin typhoons raise fears
in disaster-prone N Korea
Second typhoon pounds S Korea, kills two
million people, a poorly timed natural
disaster can easily tip the country into
crisis, like the famine in the 1990s that
followed a similar succession of devastating
storms.
A North Korean land management
official acknowledged in an interview
with The Associated Press that widespread
deforestation and a lack of basic
infrastructure have made the country vulnerable
to the typhoons and storms that
batter the peninsula each year. “It’s
important for the future of our children
to make our country rich and beautiful,”
Ri Song Il, director of external affairs for
the Ministry of Land and Environmental
Protection, said in June.
He said a campaign is under way to
replenish forests, build highways and
construct proper irrigation at the order
of North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong
Un. He held up a green pamphlet on
land management that was the first official
document Kim published after taking
power from his father. But it may be
too little, too late, for this year’s summer
rains. — AP
SEOUL: A man carries his dog to safer place from the cage yesterday. — AP
Parents reject China’s classrooms
and Children Research Center. Lao Kaisheng, an education
policy researcher at Beijing Normal University, said growing
numbers of Chinese parents were demanding more of a say in
how their children were educated.
“There’s been a rapid rise in home schooling, especially in
the past few years,” he told AFP. “Parents who home school
tend to have more strict requirements for their children’s education,
and feel that schools won’t meet their children’s individual
needs.” No official figures are available for the proportion
of Chinese parents educating their children at home, but
Lao estimates it at less than one percent.
One of the most prominent is Xu Xuejin, who moved from
the booming eastern Chinese manufacturing hub of Zhejiang
to the picturesque but sleepy southwestern town of Dali to
provide a better environment for his two children. “Chinese
children are taught to compete from a young age,” Xu told
AFP by phone. “Students who can’t compete are eliminated...
there’s too much pressure on them.” Xu, a Christian, said he
wanted to give his children a more “Bible-centred” education
than they could get in school, a key motivating factor in countries
such as the United States where home schooling is
becoming more popular.
An Internet discussion forum he started in 2010 for Chinese
home schoolers to swap classroom materials and discuss educational
theory now has more than 4,000 registered members.
Worries about the legality of home schooling feature heavily
on the forum Chinese law states that children must be
enrolled in school aged seven and receive compulsory education
for nine years. — AFP