By The Associated Press
Posted Tuesday, August 12, 2008 5:23 AM ET
BEIJING (AP) - A 7-year-old Chinese girl's face was "not suitable" for the Olympics Opening Ceremony, so another little girl with a pixie smile lip-synched "Ode to the Motherland" -- the latest example of the lengths Beijing took for a perfect start to the Games.
A member of China's Politburo asked for the last-minute change to match one girl's face with another's voice, the ceremony's chief music director, Chen Qigang, said in an interview with Beijing Radio.
"The audience will understand that it's in the national interest," Chen said in a video of the interview posted online Sunday night.
The news follows reports that some footage of the fireworks exploding across China's capital during the ceremony was digitally inserted into television coverage, apparently over concerns that not all of the 29 blasts could be captured on camera.
China has been eager to present a flawless Olympics image to the world, shooing migrant workers and so-called petitioners who come to the central government with grievances from the city and shutting down any sign of protest.
The country's quest for perfection apparently includes its children.
Lin Miaoke's performance Friday night, like the ceremony itself, was an immediate hit. "Nine-year-old Lin Miaoke becomes instant star with patriotic song," the China Daily newspaper headline said Tuesday.
But the real voice behind the tiny, pigtailed girl in the red dress who wowed 91,000 spectators at the National Stadium on opening night really belonged to 7-year-old Yang Peiyi. Her looks apparently failed the cuteness test with officials organizing the ceremony, but Chen said her voice was judged the most beautiful.
During a live rehearsal soon before the ceremony, the Politburo member said... [Read More]
Seoul and Tokyo are once again battling over the sovereignty of Dokdo. The clash happens almost every year, as politicians and activists on both sides fiercely stake their claims.
Despite the nationalist sentiment which the issue arouses here (and among right-wingers in Japan), the validity of either side`s arguments is often obscured by the passion of the conflict.
The Dokdo dispute is a centuries-long argument between the two countries; each cites historical documents and legal precedent to bolster their cases. For the Koreans, Dokdo is an integral part of the nation`s identity and a symbol of their resistance to past Japanese oppression.
For the Japanese, Takeshima, as they call it, is a piece of land that has been illegally taken away from Tokyo. Especially for the right-wingers, reclaiming Dokdo has been on the agenda since Japan lost the territory it had taken in the previous decades, following its defeat in World War II. They demand that Seoul bring the Dokdo case to the International Court of Justice, which Korea is extremely unlikely to agree to.
In both countries, politicians, academics and civic activists have been quite forceful in making their case. Korea refutes Japan`s arguments with its own legal and historical references, as well as the simple reality on the ground: Seoul physically controls Dokdo. What follows are some of Japan`s main arguments and Korea`s rebuttals:
Japan`s claims
Japan largely bases its legal claims on the Sept. 22, 1905 annexation of Dokdo by Shimane Prefecture. Tokyo asserted that, prior to that, Dokdo was "Terra Nullius," which is Latin for "land belonging to nobody." The concept traces back to the Roman Empire and subsequent legal decrees by European colonizers who usurped vast pieces of territory in their imperialistic expansions.
The term was taken to refer to uninhabited lands or those inhabited by... [Read More]
This is a bit of a hot button and there's a lot of discussion going on, but if you don't know the background I will be concise about it.
The protest centers on the ongoing debate about the Liancourt Rocks, a pair of uninhabitable islets in the middle of the Japan Sea, and Japan and Korea have been in a dispute over whom they belong to.
The islets are referred to as Takeshima (in Japanese) or Dokdo (in Korean), but those names have been historically used to incorrectly identify other islands between Japan and Korea (the historical maps are inaccurate). To make things short, the earliest historical documents show that Japan claimed the rocks in 1905, and a Japanese-made geological survey at the time indentifies the correct rocks, however Japan has since continually changed its stance on whether or not the rocks belong to Japan or Korea, since at the time there was still confusion about exactly which islands were disputed. Pro-Koreans maintain that Dokdo has been part Korea since long before 1905, but there is as of yet no historical evidence that Korea had discovered the actual Liancourt Rocks, since all documents pre-1905 appear to identify a different pair of islands in their cartography and description.
The Japanese government announced that it would make changes to its education textbooks that would identify the Liancourt Rocks as being Japanese (barring any evidence that disproves the 1905 claim), which has led to the uproar in Korean protesters, who say that allowing Japan to claim the rocks is allowing Japan to rewrite history and to maintain its imperialist behavior.
Which leads to yesterday's incident. There have been protests before of all sorts, but yesterday's protest involved about 40 Korean veterans standing outside the Japan Embassy and killing live pheasants (Japan's national bird) while soiling... [Read More]
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