And murphys mother was right

MURPHY'S LAWS

THE PRIME AXIOM:

In any field of scientific ..................................,

anything that can go wrong, will. 

 part 1____  1 - 11

 2.  If the possibility exists of several things going wrong, the one that
      will go wrong is the one that will do the most ........................

 3.  Everything will go wrong at one time.
      3.1 That time is always when you ........................ expect it. 

 4.  If nothing can go wrong, ........................  will. 

 5.  Nothing is as ........................  as it looks.

 6.  Everything takes ........................   than you think.

 7.  Left to ........................, things always go from bad to worse.

 8.  Nature always sides with the ........................  flaw. 

 9.  Given the most ........................  time for something to go wrong, that's
      when it will occur. 

 10.  Mother Nature is a bitch. 

      10.1 The universe is not indifferent to intelligence, it is actively
            ........................to it.

 11.  If everything seems to be going well,  

         you have obviously ........................    something

  part 2____  12-18

 12.  If in any problem you find yourself doing an immense amount

 of work, the ........................  can be obtained by simple inspection.

 13.  Never make anything simple and efficient when a way can be 

 found to make it ........................  and wonderful.

 14.  If it doesn't fit, use a ........................  hammer.

 15.  In an instrument or device characterized by a number of 

 plus-or-minus  errors, the total error will be the ........................ 

 of all the errors adding in  the same direction. 

 16.  In any given calculation, the fault will never be placed if  

more than  one person is involved.
      16.1 In any given discovery, the ........................ will never be 
               properly placed if more than one person is involved. 



 17.  All warranty and guarantee clauses become ........................  

 upon payment of the  final invoice. 

 18.  Murphy's Law: 

 "If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those 
      ways can result in a ........................, then someone will do it."

un 9 octubre i un drac i una princesa fa molts anys aquí i allà

dues coincidències....

PART 1____
Aqui volem agermanar dues tradicions: la pròpia valenciana, on es va conferir sentiment de poble amb la proclamació d'un 9 d'Octubre del 1238 a la ciutat de València.
Abans el territori havia format part dels diversos regnes musulmans de la península ibèrica a l'occident europeu.

A València compartim amb altres llocs la llegenda de Sant Jordi, cavaller qui va derrotar un drac a la Capadocia asiàtica (a l'Àsia Menor) allà pel segle VIII on intervenen una princesa i un drac. Poders màgics, bellesa, mals esperits, triumf del bé....

 I també Corea és territori de dracs! unes terres a l'Est de l'Àsia no podien no tenir-ne. Com podem llegir a aquesta cançó hyangga de l'època del 1285 pel monjo buddhista Iryon:

'Dedication of the Flower' (Honhwa ka)

The song was composed in the first decades of the 8th century CE and sung by an old herdsman. One day the herdsman meets Lady Suro, wife of Lord Sunjong, and her entourage touring the countryside. The lady asks for an azalea flower growing on a high cliff, but the only person to respond is the herdsman .... which the sea dragon takes away Lady Suro... 

                   Source:  taken from A History of Korean Literature edited by P.H. Lee.

PART 2____
Igualment, llegint sobre la història de la cultura coreana trobem un altre 9 d'octubre ---uns 208 anys més tard.



Every October 9, South Korea celebrates Hangeul Day: the birthday of the Korean alphabet. 

Without Hangeul, Koreans may still be writing in classical Chinese!  October 9, 1446 is when Hangeul was first published and became the official alphabet for the Joseon Kingdom.






North Korea observes their own Hangeul Day on January 15, which is said to be the actual date when the Korean alphabet was made.

Industria coreana Miwon a Manresa

"To be the Global Leader in Energy Curing..."  

Miwon Specialty Chemical Co., Ltd. began serving the UV/EB markets in 1983 as a specialized business unit of Miwon Commercial Co., Ltd. On February 1 , 2009, that business segment was separately incorporated to focus more direct attention on service to our customers as we strive to become the global leader in energy curing. Our experienced people who have supported us in the business unit of the parent company, continue with us to the new company.

MIWON company link

Això llegiem a les noticies locals:

news 1: La coreana Miwon inaugura a Manresa una planta que crearà 13 llocs de treball -2014

                L'empresa ha invertit 7 MEUR per rehabilitar una nau en desús de Bufalvent

news 2:  Visita a Miwon Spain - març 2018

El dijous 22 de març, l'alumnat del Grau en Enginyeria Química i del Màster Universitari en Enginyeria dels Recursos Naturals van visitar la industria química Miwon Spain, S.L.U.

Durant la visita a les instal·lacions, van poder conèixer els processos que efectuen i, excepcionalment, també van poder veure la instal∙lació d'un nou reactor i un condensador de carcassa i tubs.

Country and skin complexion -Hyun Min Han or Sam Okyere -Korea and African fandom

The flourishing of a multi-ethnic society? 

In 2007 the UN declared Korea an official receiving country.

The number of foreigners in South Korea grew from 400k in 1997 to 1m in 2007 to 2m in 2016. 

Among these are 630,000 temporary laborers, as well as 100,000 foreigners married to South Korean nationals (some of them Kosian - SouthAsians with Koreans). Furthermore, there are 230,000 illegal immigrants.

For a discussion, article from KOREAN Times

We see below a couple of examples from AFRICA:

Hyun Min Han and  Sam Okyere


 SECTION 1 

South Korea's first black model

A Korean-Nigerian model faces the legacy of discrimination against "mixed blood" Koreans amid shifting demographics.

Al-Jazeera's article -here

Hyun Min Han, the 6-foot-2 biracial Korean spotted on every other runway this season and breaking down the country's barriers. 

"People assume I'm a foreigner," says Han, who only speaks the Korean language. "I've gotten used to it."
Then he adds: "But I sometimes feel upset when Korean models backstage at a show don't talk to me because they think I don't understand Korean."
Since his first runway show last year, Han has appeared on Korean television and his Instagram followers have surged to more than 26,000. Fans sometimes approach him on the street and ask to take selfies with him.

   ------at   British Daily Mail -here

Instagram ___ 155.7k Followers,



SECTION 2 

Sam Okyere is the most famous black man in Korea. 

  Instagram ___ 159.1k Followers,  article - here

Within the last few years, Okyere’s built up quite the reputation as a T.V. personality in South Korea, where he is also known as Sam Ochiri. His fanbase is so strong that he often gets mobbed everywhere he goes in public.Most recently, he went viral for a video where he recounts all the racism he’s faced during his time in Korea.

However, it wasn’t always like this for Okyere. About eight years ago in 2009, Okyere had just set foot into South Korea after getting into the Korean Government Scholarship Program. Participants of the program must learn Korean within a year, followed by a five-year university program.

One year later, Okyere was accepted into the program with another fellow Ghanaian. To this day, he vividly remembers the first day he landed in South Korea for the first time on March 29, 2009.

1. “It was so cold,” Okyere told NextShark. “I’ve lived in a hot tropical region all my life, and in Korea, it was supposedly spring but it was really cold. I remember going, ‘Wow, this place is very cold.’”

During the one-hour bus ride to his dorm, the driver didn’t speak anything but Korean so it was quiet. This allowed Okyere to look out and observe the new world he would spend the next few years in.

•  “It was totally different from where I was coming from,” he said. “The roads were all paved, every single car had a GPS in it, something I had never seen in Ghana. Everything was really fast and everything was a very well organized system.”

Chang-rae Lee entre dos mundos -novela y cosmovision

Casualmente en los dos ultimos trimestres (septiembre y Febrero) encontré las dos novelas de  Chang-rae Lee: A Gesture Life (1999), y Native Speaker (1995) respectivamente. En la pagina Goodreads se valoran con un 3.8/5 con unos 3.500 y 5.500 lectores, respectivamente.

Su ultima novela On Such a Full Sea (2014):

Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in.
On Such a Full Sea takes Chang-rae Lee's elegance of prose, his masterly storytelling, and his long-standing interests in identity, culture, work, and love, and lifts them to a new plane. Stepping from the realistic and historical territories of his previous work, Lee brings us into a world created from scratch. Against a vividly imagined future America, Lee tells a stunning, surprising, and riveting story that will change the way readers think about the world they live in.

Enseña writing a Princeton University, y ahora es  director de Princeton's Program in Creative Writing.



 A Gesture Life os dejo con las palabras de ELPais de 2004: 


En las dos novelas que ha publicado hasta la fecha, el escritor Chang-rae Lee ha conseguido fijar con igual brillantez una voz personal y un territorio literario idóneo para que dicha voz se sienta a gusto. Lee nació en Corea del Sur, pero a los tres años emigró con su familia a Estados Unidos, y esa experiencia le ha llevado a escribir -en inglés- sobre la vida de los emigrantes asiáticos

• En primera instancia el lector la atribuye al tono reposado y juicioso con que el protagonista cuenta los hechos de su vida, pero a medida que avanza la historia y ese narrador va despojándose de su pasado sin ningún rubor (pero tampoco afectación alguna), el lector empieza a sentir una inquietud inconcreta y va comprendiendo que esa calma nace tan sólo de la resignación. La única redención, en fin, puede ser un nieto llegado de la nada, alguien que de alguna forma le ayude a "pasar por este mundo con algo más que una vida de gestos". Un libro precioso.
• 
  
• the fictional novels of Korean-American Chang-rae Lee, Native Speaker (1995) and A Gesture Life (1999), demonstrate different ways in which language and voice are used to shape and distinguish an identity beyond the generalization of "Asian American." Each of the two works presents a varied representation of the "American experience" through the eyes of an Asian American (more specifically Korean American) protagonist. Lee emphasizes the use of language as a shaping agent of a character's individual identity, requiring the reader to reexamine notions of a generalized Asian identity, an Asian American identity--even who is and who is not American--and, at the same time, to reinterpret the definitions of an authentic American identity and a legitimate American experience.

Dejamos aquí una parte de la Entrevista del 2014:

APA: So regarding Joyce's work, was it both a thematic and stylistic sense that inspired you?

Chang Rae Lee: Yeah – definitely. And you know, a lot of his stories have the backdrop of  - you know, these are stories of obviously Irish people – but his stories are always more about the idea that Irish people have no destiny over their own lives. You know that their destiny is in someone else's hands. And this yearning for a national and cultural identity – that also appealed to me but that was secondary, frankly because it was really mostly the language. The use of it.

APA: Are there any other particular authors that affected you in the same way as Joyce?  Or just in general?  Or even modern writers?

Chang Rae Lee: It's hard for me to say. At the time, I can definitely say that the writers that I admired a lot – like James Agee, Jack Kerouac, Walt Whitman, Hemingway. These days, I read so many different writers that I'm just kind of omnivorous. It's hard to say. I'm not – I don't know – it's not the same thing.

( ....)

APA: That's a very interesting way of looking at that. Some in the press have compared you to the Japanese British author, Kazuo Ishiguro of Remains of the Day. Why do you believe they make that assessment?

Chang Rae Lee: Well, I really think it has to do with A Gesture Life – you know the kind of story that is, the kind of character in that story. You know I don't find it as obviously as anything than a flattering comparison, but you know… but I just think that it's an easy one to make.

APA: Do you believe it's valid?

Chang Rae Lee: Well, no. I think it's valid to say that A Gesture Life and Remains of the Day have some similarities but that doesn't make me like him. I mean I think it makes me like him from other people's view. First of all that we're Asian and that we live in other places. So there's something to that, but you know, I mean to compare me to some other writer who probably wasn't Asian-American, whose story had some similarities – that wouldn't bother me.

(...)

APA: What is it about the issues of identity that fascinate you so much?

Chang Rae Lee: Well I think it's always about this drama between the self and his or her context because it's all about the interplay of those two things, it's not just we are ourselves. And we have problems, not because of who we are, it's always because of who we are in a place. For example, if I grew up in Los Angeles on the West Coast as opposed  to New York where I wasn't living in an ethnic enclave, I was just living in the suburbs,  I'll have a very different life, I'm sure. I think in my core I would be the same but I would probably have a different view of the world and of my own place in it. Right? Even just going to UC Berkeley or UCLA versus going to Yale - very different thing for an Asian-American.

here and there- blog de l'observatori social de La Caixa

Trobem una font local (feta a BCN) que parla d'ESPAÑA, UE i el MÓN (inclòs Corea). Es tracta del blog trilingüe de LaCaixa. Aquí el BLOG: 

A new initiative created with the purpose of contributing ideas and scientifically supported results that will enrich public debate over the social problems that affect us all, and whose resolution will determine our future and that of our country.

In the complex societies in which we live, defining the actions and policies to be taken in the social sphere is not simple and involves many interest groups, often with opposing perspectives.

Llegint el dossier de Finals de 2017, dedicat a la ciènca i la investigació, hem trobat dues gràfiques que ens situen en l'horitzó del món, on vem Espanya i Corea -dues entitats d'una població similar 45 milions-- al mateix gràfic-

Mirem dades en darrer any d'estudi, el 2014. En el gràfic tres, el del sector privat,  Corea inverteix més de 5 vegades més; en el gràfic 5, el sector públic, una mica més del doble. Fredes dades! Les copiem a continuació:

Espanya inverteix menys en R+D que la mitjana dels seus socis europeus, i la distribució entre el sector públic i el privat no és la més adequada per augmentar l’impacte del coneixement en l’economia i el benestar. 

El gràfic 3 presenta l’R+D que financen les empreses (en percentatge del PIB). El 2014 les empreses espanyoles van invertir el 0,57% del PIB en R+D, mentre que la mitjana de la UE arribava a l’1,07%. Així doncs, les nostres empreses haurien d’invertir gairebé el doble per arribar a la mitjana europea, i quasi el triple per assolir els valors mitjans de l’OCDE; si el 2015 les empreses espanyoles van destinar 6.000 milions d’euros i escaig a activitats d’R+D, per estar a la mitjana europea haurien d’invertir-hi entorn d’11.500 milions d’euros l’any. (source-in English: here)

Considering that investment in R&D prepares countries to better overcome the crisis and therefore they should follow a counter-cyclical pattern AND countries that historically invested more in R&D have weathered the crisis better.

In Spain, R&D policy and its funding are the shared responsibility of the state government and the autonomous communities, and the state government’s R&D budgets and those of the autonomous communities have been falling since 2009 for the former and since 2010 for the latter, with a slight upturn from 2014 onwards. See graph 5 (source - in Catalan: here)

Epilogo. Los dossieres se pueden leer en pdf.

Para saber más: 

Dossieres por temáticas... here

EYE on Korea historic opening via USA, via Japan

the question of the "opening" of the East


INTRO.

Reading about James Fenton, British poet, in ‘A German Requiem’, which concerns the efforts of the vanquished power to come to terms with the experience of the Second World War:

It is not your memories which haunt you. It is not what you have written down. It is what you have forgotten, what you must forget.

The poem thus concludes with a mirroring of the opening lines:

‘It is not what he wants to know. It is what he wants not to know.’

Came to think about the route to meet the West for the nation of Korea.

James Fenton is highly unusual among contemporary poets in not only writing about history but also participating in it, having been present at many of the major international wars and revolutions of the last twenty-five years of the XX century. Fenton went to Indochina in 1973, travelling in and reporting from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. In 1975, he was evacuated from Phnom Penh just before the Khmer Rouge arrived, and moved to Saigon, where he famously rode on the first North Vietnamese tank to reach the Presidential Palace. Fenton was the Guardian’s correspondent in Germany in the late 1970s, witnessed the Kwangju massacre in Korea in May 1980.
Fenton was leaning on the left, some Marxist origins, In presenting the past of Asia as one of perpetual bloodshed, chaos and despotism, then, he risks reproducing what Said calls ‘the imaginative demonology of “the mysterious Orient” ... but he opens to other mindsets.


PART 1. - THE EAST

In one early poems written before his journey to Indochina, ‘Our Western Furniture’ is a twenty-one sonnet sequence about the enforced ending to Japan’s isolationist policy by an American expedition under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry in the 1854-55

Fenton quotes from Perry’s report to Congress in 1856, in which he warns that America’s main imperial rival will be Russia, as both seek to extend across Asia from different directions, clearly anticipating the domino theory formulated in the Cold War:

Speaking before the American Geographical and Statistical Society on March 6, 1856, he expressed views that should ring through the centuries and I quote :

 It requires no sage to predict events so strongly foreshadowed to us all; still westward will "the course of empire take its way." But the last act of the drama is yet to be unfolded ; and notwithstanding the reasoning of political empirics, westward, northward, and southward, to me it seems that the people of America will, in some form or other, extend their dominion and their power, until they shall have brought within their mighty embrace multitudes of the islands of the great Pacific, and placed the Saxon race upon the eastern shores of Asia. And I think too, that eastward and southward will her great rival in furure aggrandizement (Russia) stretch forth her power to the coasts of China and Siam ; and thus the Saxon and the Cossack will meet once more, in strife or in friendship, or another field. Will it be in friendship? I fear not. The antagonistic exponents of freedom and absolutism must thus meet at last, and then A-ill be fought that mighty battle on which the world will look with breathless interest ; for on its issue will depend the freedom or the slavery of the world — despotism or rational liberty must be the fate of civilized man. I think I see in the distance the giants that are growing up for that fierce and final encounter ; in the progress of events that battle must sooner or later inevitably be fought. 

These words so meaningful today, were uttered more than a century and a half ago. 

PART 2- KOREA 

The term, "hermit kingdom" is used to describe a country that directly shuns foreign involvement. It can describe many different countries. However, it has come to describe Korea on account of a book by William E. Griffis' book, entitled Corea: The Hermit Nation, which was published in 1882.
The book was unfair The term, "hermit kingdom" is used to describe a country that directly shuns foreign involvement. It can describe many different countries. However, it has come to describe Korea on account of a book by William E. Griffis' book, entitled Corea: The Hermit Nation, which was published in 1882. The book was unfair as Griffis never visited Korea. Western Christianity was taking root there. 

Japan employed gunboat diplomacy to press Korea to sign this unequal treaty. The pact opened up Korea, as Commodore Matthew Perry's fleet of Black Ships had opened up Japan in 1853. 

In September 1875, a Japanese warship, the Unyo, appeared in Korean waters, ostensibly to conduct coastal surveys, in direct violation of Korea's national isolation policies.
The drafts of the treaty defined Korea as an independent state on an equal footing with Japan. Japan sent an envoy, Mori Arinori, to China to report on recent Korean affairs. China insisted that, although Korea was independent, China could come to the support its vassal state (Korea) in a crisis, an interpretation that Mori saw as contrary to the idea of independence in international law. Finally, on February 26, 1876, Korea signed the Kanghwa Treaty; finally, the “Hermit Nation” had been forced to open its doors.


PART 3 -The treaty 

The escalation of foreign negotiations in the following years further prompted the necessity for a national flag. One of these proposals was described in the “Korea Strategy” papers written by the Chinese delegate Huang Zunxian. The plan suggested incorporating the flag of the Qing Dynasty into the flag of the Joseon Dynasty, the nowadays known one, the Taegeukgi (태극기). 

A delegate of the Joseon Dynasty, was sent to discuss the issue with politician Li Hongzhang, the Kissinger of the ime,  who agreed with the idea, but suggested some changes of his own.

According to the treaty, it ended Joseon's status as a tributary state of the Qing dynasty and opened three ports to Japanese trade. The Treaty also granted Japanese many of the same rights in Korea that Westerners enjoyed in Japan, such as extraterritoriality.

• Under Article 3, Japan would use the Japanese and Chinese languages in diplomatic communiques, while Korea would use only Chinese.
• Article 4 terminated Tsushima's centuries-old role as a diplomatic intermediary by abolishing all agreements then existing between Korea and Tsushima.
• In addition to the open port of Pusan, Article 5 authorized the search in five provinces for two more suitable seaports for Japanese trade to be opened in October 1877.
• Article 7 permitted any Japanese mariner to conduct surveys and mapping operations at will in the seas off the Korean Peninsula's coastline.
• Article 9 guaranteed the freedom to conduct business without interference from either government and to trade without restrictions or prohibitions.

Poor Korean fishermen -1880

____________

Taegeukgi   =   tae 태      geuk  극   -- gi  기.