Korean blues: By Ignacio Ramonet. Intro: "Pessimism is the prevailing mood in South Korea these days when you talk with politicians and trade unionists. Relations with the United States over what to do about North Korea are going from bad to worse. Tensions are evident in relations with Japan, because Japanese schoolbooks persist in minimising the cruelties inflicted on the Koreans during the Japanese occupation (1905-1945), and because of the row over the Dokdo islands, to which both sides have territorial claims. Seoul is opposed to Tokyo's diplomatic ambition to have a permanent seat on the new UN security council next September, after the reform of the UN. Above all the economy is going badly. Western visitors have an impression of dynamism, the result of the spectacular success of South Korea - one of the rare countries that has succeeded, over a few decades, in extracting itself from the third world and joining the developed nations - but growth is now slowing. The economy, the third-largest in Asia after Japan and China, is suffering from a decline in consumption and a slowdown of exports." Link
monochrom is an art-technology-philosophy group having its seat in Vienna and Zeta Draconis. monochrom is an unpeculiar mixture of proto-aesthetic fringe work, pop attitude, subcultural science, context hacking and political activism. Our mission is conducted everywhere, but first and foremost in culture-archeological digs into the seats (and pockets) of ideology and entertainment. monochrom has existed in this (and almost every other) form since 1993. [more]
