烏坎據路透社報導，廣東省烏坎村的抗議活動繼續。一些村民周一表示，將游行至當地政府所在地繼續抗議農民失去耕地以及村民代表薛錦波的不明死亡。此前一個星期，由於村民代表薛錦波在被警方拘留期間突然死亡，引起民憤，導致大規模的抗議活動，據悉警方已經嚴密封鎖了該村落。在烏坎村中心的一個廣場上，另一村民代表楊森茂（音譯）呼籲村民不要放棄，並號召大家於週三舉行遊行活動，行進到附近的政府所在地繼續抗議。這名村民代表還表示，正在準備寫信給政府，要求歸還死者薛錦波的屍體。
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在周六的火車旅行途中，朝鮮領導人金正日突發心肌梗塞而死亡。朝鮮國家新聞社於週日發布了金的死訊。
在離平壤不遠處，正在做火車旅行的金正日於週六心肌梗塞突然發作而死去，享年69歲。朝鮮官方的報導說，領袖死亡的原因是身心承受了巨大的負擔。一般認為，這樣的說法是想暗示，金正日是為朝鮮人民貢獻了畢生了力量。
金正日於1994年他的父親金日成死後成為朝鮮最高領導人。有關金正日健康狀況不佳的消息時有傳聞，2008年他患了中風，健康惡化，數月沒有在公眾場合出現。
金正日出行總是乘坐火車，近年來，他曾多次訪問中國和俄羅斯。據傳，金正日的幼子金正恩是成為接班人看好的人選。近30歲的金正恩曾在瑞士接受教育，朝鮮的政治、軍事大權有可能即將移交給他。金正日的死訊宣布後，鄰國韓國和日本立即陷於緊張並做好備戰。首爾已下令軍隊進入高度戒備狀態，東京則召集緊急內閣會議。
中國政府是朝鮮最重要的盟友。金正日死訊傳出後，北京領導人表達震驚及“深切的哀悼”。雖然兩國之間的“社會主義的兄弟情誼”深厚，但中國在看待朝鮮局勢時依然充滿憂慮。
North Korea
Dear Leader, departed
Dec 20th 2011, 0:20 by D.T. and G.E. | SEOUL and BEIJING
THE tyrant has perished, leaving a failing, nuclear-armed nation in the uncertain young hands of his “Great Successor”. His father, since 1994 the "Dear Leader" of one of the world’s most secretive and repressive states (iconic, to the right in the photo above), died on a train at 8.30am on Saturday morning, of a heart attack. North Korea's 69-year-old supremo had been in poor health: he had heart disease and diabetes, and suffered a stroke in 2008. Nonetheless his demise places sudden and extraordinary pressure on his third son, his designated but untested successor, Kim Jong Un (to the left, in the photo above).
Kim junior—recently dubbed the “Young General”—is now officially in charge of North Korea. His dynastic succession, which had been in preparation since 2009, was reaffirmed swiftly by the state media (as swiftly as the 51 hours it took to announce the elder Kim’s death). The machinery of party and propaganda are organised to support a smooth succession. That does not mean its success is assured. At just 27 or perhaps 28 years of age, the young Un, educated in Switzerland and a great fan of basketball, wants for both experience and proof of loyalty from the armed forces. He was installed as the country’s leader-in-waiting little more than a year ago. By contrast his father had been groomed for leadership for nearly 20 years, with careful attention paid to establishing for him a cult of personality in the image of his own father, the dynasty’s founding dictator, Kim Il Sung.
That Kim Jong Un has no such background may be cause more for anxiety than for relief. His only qualification to lead the country is to be the son of a man who all but destroyed it, and a grandson of the man who built its disastrous brand of totalitarianism. In the 17 years Kim Jong Il ruled since the death of Kim Il Sung, North Korea teetered on the brink of collapse. A devastating famine in the mid-1990s killed as many as a million of his countrymen, while Kim Jong Il indulged his own appetites to excess and diverted massive resources to his dream, now realised, of building a nuclear weapon.
A third Kim may be a step too far. This succession’s viability may well depend on the work of a “regent”: Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law, Chang Sung Taek. He and his wife, Kim Kyong Hui, appear to have accompanied the Young General’s elevation in lockstep, as those who might stand in his (and their) way have been pushed aside. The ruling elite around the family trinity might appear cohesive from a distance, but they are potentially vulnerable to intrigue. North Korea’s is a government of obscure and competing factions—the army, the Korean Workers’ Party and the cabinet being the greatest—and any uncertainty or crisis in the months ahead could upset the delicate balance behind the dictatorship.
In the very short term though, it seems unlikely that anyone will make a move. Bruce Cumings, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, argues that the cohort of officials who rose during Kim Jong Il’s reign “are now in power and have much privilege to protect”. Even those who privately oppose Kim Jong Un will proclaim loyalty for now. China, fearing instability, will support the succession in so far as it promises to maintain order and prevent a flood of refugees from spilling over its border.
Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, called Kim Jong Il “a great leader of North Korean people and a close and intimate friend of Chinese people”. Zhang Liangui of the Central Party School in Beijing however told Caijing magazine that China’s policy has been developed with regard for “North Korea the country, not Kim Jong Il the man”. For many years Chinese leaders tried in vain to convince Kim Jong Il to embrace Chinese-style economic reforms; they might yet choose to push those reforms with renewed vigour.
The optimists’ argument would be that the time is ripe for such an overture, and that the West should join with its own. The year 2012, the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, is supposed to be the year that North Korea becomes a “strong and prosperous nation” (kangsong taeguk). The domestic justification for reform could go like so: Kim Jong Il built the nuclear weapons that made his nation “strong”, regardless of whether North Korea might choose to give them up; now it is the time make the country “prosperous”. “Diplomatically, that’s where you want to engage with them,” says John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul who watches China and North Korea. “Okay, you got strength, you’re secure. Now let’s work on prosperity together.”
Sceptics, a group who were proved right under the late Leader time and again, argue that the regime’s elite circles will be loth to abandon the systems of patronage and rent-seeking that have so enriched them. Moreover, any meaningful effort to open up the economy risks exposing the state’s ruling mythology. It has long been shielded from contamination by such inconveniences as facts.
Given a choice, the people might prefer facts to mythology, and real economic well-being over juche (loosely, self-reliance, or autarky). Local television reports are filled with the requisite footage of wailing on the streets of Pyongyang, where the more privileged and well-fed reside, but these images do not offer much insight into the reaction of the impoverished countryside. One NGO worker with extensive contacts around the country states that though they “lived under undeniable fear with Kim Jong Il as the leader of the nation, they are surely even more fearful with him gone.” Without even the barest infrastructure of civil society, lacking most of the tools of modern technology, the rural population of North Korea cannot be fruitfully compared to the victims of repression in the Middle East who are trying to make good on the Arab Spring.
North Korea's fate may depend in some measure, then, on how the rest of the world chooses to grapple with the new leadership, and vice versa. The death of Kim Il Sung in 1994 was quickly followed by the completion of an “agreed framework”, negotiated with the Clinton administration, that had seemed to sideline North Korea’s nuclear programme. Last week, immediately prior to Kim Jong Il’s death, there were whispers of a possible thaw in relations. North Korea is in desperate need of food aid, and the United States had agreed to ship nearly a quarter of a million tonnes of grain—on the condition of its suspending its uranium-enrichment programme. A familiar stumbling block, by now, and seemingly final. Just a week ago though a spokesman for the American state department said that the provision of “nutritional assistance” could be considered separately from the nuclear question. Facing an election year of its own however, Barack Obama may find it difficult to pursue a new, softer line on North Korea, even with a new Kim.
Another approach could come from South Korea, but perhaps not until after its parliamentary and presidential elections in 2012. The sitting president, Lee Myung-bak, has defined his term in office with a hawkish stance towards the North. The South’s public reaction to Kim’s death was relatively muted: The KOSPI index of leading Korean stocks fell at first but then stabilised. Ordinary South Koreans have been debating whether or not condolences should be sent (as Pyongyang did when Kim Dae-jung, a former president of South Korea, died in 2009). Some have taken to criticising the country’s intelligence capabilities. The timing of Mr Lee’s visit to Japan on Saturday, December 17th, makes it seem plain that none of South Korea’s spooks were aware of Kim Jong Il’s fate until the official announcement was broadcast. That happened to fall on the president’s birthday; his party was cancelled at the last minute.
A spokesman for Mr Lee, Cho Hyun-jin, says that he is “cautiously optimistic” about North-South relations, and notes that he is in close contact with leaders in Japan, America, and Russia. Mr Lee’s term in office has been marked by severe tensions with North Korea. In November 2010, the North shelled a South Korean island, killing two civilians. Earlier in the same year it was accused of sinking a South Korean naval vessel with a torpedo, killing 46 sailors. Those may prove to have been the last two attacks to have been carried out at the order of Kim Jong Il. But some observers have attributed them to the “Great Successor” as rites of initiation.
Kim Jong Il’s funeral, which may provide the first opportunity for assessing the regime’s new pecking order, is to take place on December 28th. (Intriguingly, Mr Chang, the Great Successor’s chief regent, is ranked a lowly 19th on the official list of attendants.) The late Kim’s record, according to Mr Cumings, will be one of “failure at almost every level, except the critical one of maintaining maximum power for his family and the regime”. We will soon see whether or not Kim Jong Un—the youngest leader in the world to command a nuclear arsenal—has such staying power, or such unfortunate consequences for his people. The months ahead will be most telling. Mr Zhang, of the Central Party School in Beijing, makes a wry nod to his own country’s experience. Uttering the ritual platitudes of succession and actually carrying it out are two very different things. “Socialist countries are like this,” he says. “There's a certain distance between legal procedure and actual practice.”
(Picture credit: AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS)
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Critics: Korean Skyscraper Design Evokes Exploding Twin Towers
A Dutch firm proposed a "cloud" design connecting two buildings in South Korea, which some say looks like the World Trade Center on 9/11.
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韓國互聯網實名制的教訓英國《金融時報》中文網特約撰稿人金宰賢
韓國是世界上唯一實行“互聯網實名制”的國家。作為韓國人，我一般會對“世界唯一”感到自豪，但是這個“唯一”卻經常讓我感到困惑。然而，借助北京市近期的一條規定，韓國或許將擺脫這個唯一的稱號，可是我不知這到底是好還是壞。
12月16日，北京市的四個部門公佈了《北京市微博客發展管理若干規定》，要求任何組織或者個人在註冊微博賬號時，應使用真實身份信息，否則只能瀏覽不能發言。相關網站需要在三個月內完成對用戶的規範。這意味著，中國也許正在進入實名制時代。
韓國是從2007年7月開始實施互聯網實名制的。從此以後，每天訪問人數超過30萬的35家主要網站要求網民用真實姓名和身份證號註冊並通過驗證後，才能在各網站上寫帖子和跟帖。從2009年4月起，互聯網實名制的範圍擴展到每天訪問人數超過10萬的153家主要網站。時至今日，幾乎所有韓國網站都要求用戶用真實姓名和身份證號碼進行註冊。韓國推出這一規定旨在減少網上的語言暴力、名譽損壞、虛假信息傳播以及不正常的人肉搜索等跟帖。
那麼，實施互聯網實名制後，韓國得到瞭如願的結果嗎？出乎意料的是，該制度實行後，韓國各大網站卻成了黑客們的主要攻擊對象。 2011年7月，韓國發生了前所未有的信息外洩案件。韓國SK通訊旗下的韓國三大門戶網站之一Nate和社交網站“賽我網”遭到黑客攻擊，約3500萬名用戶的信息外洩。
該案件發生後，不少民間組織和專家稱“互聯網實名制”是使網站遭到黑客攻擊的根本原因，並主張廢除互聯網實名制。他們稱，韓國網站以互聯網實名制為由，註冊時收集並保管用戶的諸多個人信息，從而導致動輒發生個人信息洩露案件。隨後其存廢與否在韓國成了燙手山芋。該案件遠超過2008年電子商務網站Auction的1800萬名用戶信息外洩，成為韓國IT史上最大規模的黑客攻擊。洩露的用戶信息非常詳盡，包括用戶名、名字、生日、電話號碼、地址、加密的密碼和身份證號碼等。該案件涉及面廣，幾乎牽涉到了所有韓國網民。韓國媒體報導稱，該案件有可能造成大量發送垃圾郵件、電話詐騙等非法行為。
對互聯網實名制效果的質疑早已紛紛傳出。 2010年4月，首爾大學的一位教授發表《對互聯網實名制的實證研究》稱，該制度實施後，誹謗跟帖數量從13.9%減少到12.2%，減少了僅1.7個百分點。更值得一提的是，以IP地址為基準，網絡論壇的平均參與者從2585人減少到737人。可見，互聯網實名制導致的“自我審查”可能在一定程度上抑制了網上的溝通。
2010年1月，韓國民間團體“參與連帶”向“憲法裁判所”提出了對互聯網實名制的憲法訴願，並稱該制度侵害互聯網用戶的匿名表達自由、互聯網言論自由以及隱私權。起訴者認為，匿名表達作為思想傳播的有效方式，為公益做出了非常重要的貢獻，這正是即使匿名有些弊端，大多數國家仍保護匿名表達自由的理由。憲法裁判所對此已進行了一次公開辯論，但迄今為止還沒做出決定。
面對來自各個方面的壓力以及互聯網環境的變化，互聯網實名制已經有鬆動的跡象。韓國主管部門“放送通信委員會”於2011年3月份發布實名制對象網站時，將社交網站排除在實名制對像在外。理由是包括Facebook、Twitter以及韓國me2day在內的社交網站屬於私人領域，不應適用實名制。不僅是來自國內的批評，韓國的互聯網實名制也遭到一些來自國外的批評。 2011年9月，《紐約時報》刊登了一篇題為《網上命名》(Naming Names on the Internet)的文章，批評稱：“韓國的經驗證明實名制是劣等政策”。
開始在中國寫微博以來，我屢次遭遇到語言暴力，部分網民甚至用與微博內容毫不相關的言語罵我，令人更為無奈的是，把這樣的用戶拉黑都沒用，因為他們可以註冊新的用戶名來罵。這曾讓我想到，如果中國實行實名制，也許可以減少這些語言暴力性的評論。
但後來，我發現韓國網站雖然實行了實名制，但仍有不少語言暴力、毫無參考價值的跟帖。因為要發洩的網民，無論如何，還是要發洩，因此他們會想方設法避開法律，甚至盜用他人的身份證號碼進行註冊。在我看來，韓國互聯網實名制實施的結果真是南轅北轍。絕大多數韓國網民期待憲法裁判所對“互聯網實名制的憲法訴願”做出正確的決定。
日前，一位中國朋友用略帶擔心的眼神問我：“韓國真的限制了韓劇對中國的輸出嗎？”我也不知道她是在哪裡聽到的，於是答道：“當然不是的。”我們應該限制出口的不是韓劇，而是“互聯網實名制”。
（作者金宰賢畢業於高麗大學(Korea University)中文系，自2003年起在華工作，曾在北京大學讀MBA，現在上海交通大學攻讀管理學博士。作者電子郵箱：zorba00@gmail.com，微博：http://t.sina.com.cn/jinzaixian。本文僅代表作者本人觀點。）
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Security Industry
Taiwan receiving missile fire units
WALTHAM, Mass., Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Taiwan is receiving Raytheon new fire units for the Patriot Air and Missile Defense System through a $685.7 million U.S. Foreign Military Sales contract.
Raytheon, in announcing the award, said the fire units for the Patriot system feature advanced technology and upgraded man-machine interface.
Work on the units for Taiwan will be conducted at company facilities in Massachusetts, Texas and Alabama.
Raytheon didn't disclose a delivery schedule for the products.
In 2008, Raytheon was contracted to upgrade Taiwan's existing Patriot systems and was contracted the following year to provide new Patriot systems. It also delivered a Configuration-3 upgraded radar system to Taiwan this year.
"Raytheon's excellent performance for this customer on current and past contracts continues to drive trust, as we deliver superior technology and support for Taiwan's protection," said Sanjay Kapoor, vice president for Integrated Air and Missile Defense at Raytheon's Integrated Defense Systems business.
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