410. A beggar is more miserable in an abundant year.
풍년 거지 더 서럽다.

This year happens to be a year of a very successful harvest and hence the sustenance is aplenty for everybody including the poorest among the poor. Nonetheless, here is a particular beggar who feels sad and depressed because others seem to be having a greater time than him in this year of abundance. The year of excellent harvest is Romanized here as poong-nyun (풍년), where poong and nyun mean plenty and year, respectively.

As I have been going about my life neither very poorly nor exceedingly well, witnessing how well others are doing is like watching a rapid stream passing by while I am standing still. In effect, I feel I am moving backward. When I am in a terrible situation, the last thing I want to see or hear about is how happy and successful other people are. Others may call it a bellyache from jealousy but it isn’t the whole story. The narcissist in me has always kept me in the center and front of the world I live in and I have seldom lacked self-esteem. Besides, I am fully aware of the subjective nature of happiness. Yet, quite often I wish there are other people with whom I can share my misery, as in “misery loves company.”

Would this uneasiness reflect the competitiveness in all of us? Is this an acquired trait or an instinct we were born with? No matter, it is unsettling. As the Chinese have been prospering in recent years, Americans start to feel “threatened” economically as well as militarily. Extrapolating all recent relevant data seem to predict that it would be a matter of time before they will surpass the US on both counts. And think about the humongous size of their population that seems to be marching in lockstep forward under an autocratic government. If they have some social unrest, say, on the subject of LGBTQ, we do not hear about it through free presses in China. With this uneasy prospect, born was the so-called China Initiative in 2018 during the Trump era. It is being continued under President Joe Biden. This US Department of Justice program was designed to protect the top national security priority. The Initiative is to identify and prosecute those responsible for China\'s widespread theft of hundreds of billions of dollars a year in American trade secrets and intellectual property.

In December last year, the former Chair of the Chemistry Department at Harvard University, Charles Lieber, was convicted by a federal jury in connection with lying to federal authorities about his affiliation with the Wuhan University of Technology as well as failing to report the income he received from them. While his legal defense team maintained that they “will keep up the fight.” no date has been set for sentencing.

In a similar incident, MIT professor Gang Chen was arrested at 6:30 AM in front of his family, handcuffed, described as loyal to China in public, and charged for having concealed seven Chinese affiliations in applications for $2.7 million in grants from the U.S. Energy Department. In the end, however, the charge was all dismissed because the prosecutors realized that Dr. Chen was not obliged to disclose those affiliations. \"I am no longer the Gang Chen I was before,\" he said.

It was reported by CBS in January this year that there are still six China Initiative cases pending against researchers, three of whom are American citizens of Chinese ethnicity. One of these cases was the criminal trial of Feng Tao, a chemical engineering professor at the University of Kansas. It began on March 21 at a federal court in Kansas City. Tao was accused of lying about his ties to China and faced eight charges: six for wire fraud involving emails and electronic submissions of forms, and the other two for making false statements to the University and the US Department of Energy. Just two days ago, on April 7, a jury found him guilty of three counts of wire fraud and one count of making false statements. The verdict followed a twoweek-long trial that had drawn the attention of civil rights activists. The latter group claimed the Initiative unfairly targeted Chinese Americans. Deliberation for sentencing has just begun.

I am now concerned about one of my previous colleagues and a friend, Leaf Huang at the University of North Carolina. He is also a Chinese American and has trained Chinese students, post-doctoral fellows, and visiting scholars. Just like the other three professors quoted above, he is also a world-renown scientist in our field of molecular pharmaceutics.

The US government’s overly jealous scrutiny of research collaborations with China bothers me greatly. Is this trend a new form of McCarthyism in the academia of science and technology? Such sentiment will not go away so long as China remains prosperous and a “threat” to the US. Albeit somewhat tangent to the main topic, this is an unfortunate and sad analogy we can derive from the above proverb. (04/09/2022)
--- pp.38~39

470. Ten big mouths couldn’t form a single word.
입이 열이라도 할 말이 없다.

Early in the morning of June 28, 1950, just three days after the North Korean army started to invade the South, all three bridges over the Han River were let exploded intentionally to slow down the advancement of the invaders. The river circles the southern perimeter of Seoul and the move was then considered prudent. This incident was briefly introduced in Entry #348, “The more you bang the drum, the more noise you create.”

However, it was later determined that the blasting was almost seven hours premature, resulting in little time for citizens and military personnel to escape Seoul. It resulted in a significant loss to not only six South Korean army divisions and several tens of policemen but also heavy military equipment. A crude estimate was that 44,000 South Korean soldiers were captured or killed by the North Army. More to the point was that as many as 1.5 million citizens, including our family, were not able to flee to the South and had to suffer a great deal of hardship under the North occupation for several months.

A hurriedly assembled investigation later found Colonel Choe Chang-sik ultimately responsible for the fiasco. Choe was arrested on August 28 and executed by a firing squad on September 21. Choe was born while the country was still under Japanese occupation. In 1942 he graduated Japanese Military Academy and was appointed as a second lieutenant in engineering, a position he also held when Korea became independent in 1948. Within a year he was quickly promoted to colonel, reflecting the unsettling time involving Korean independence. He was found guilty as a colonel in the court-martial.

In 1962, 12 years after the explosion of the bridges, his son requested a re-trial and was successful in clearing his father’s name posthumously. In 2013, Choe’s mortuary tablet was finally restored and placed in the National Memorial Garden. The truth thus prevailed albeit many years later, certainly better than never. In 2020, at the 70th anniversary of the explosion, there was a special monument dedicated to the event and his son was invited. He declined the invite saying that he doesn’t want to even look at a newly built bridge anymore.

As expected, the unfortunate event has been a subject of continued debate. On one hand, Choe maintained that he had just followed an order from his superiors, Shin Sung-mo and Chae Byung-deok. These generals later became the Secretary of Defense and Field-Marshal, respectively. On the other hand, someone must be responsible for the loss of lives and military properties incurred from the explosion. Why were none of his bosses ever tried? Where does the inquiry stop in the rank and file? We saw a similar defense from many war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials including those executioners at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

There were many people involved in the explosion of the bridges over the Han River including Choe’s superiors and all the way up to then-President Syngman Rhee. As I read about the event unfolding now, what bothers me most is where these people had been during the trial of Colonel Choe. Indeed those “ten big mouths did not say anything,” as they were all anxious about keeping their own necks.

The American debacle at the end of and after the Afghanistan War, in terms of both military strategy and foreign policy, was similar to but worse than that of the Vietnam War. In the case of the latter, at least Vietnamese seem to currently enjoy freedom for seeking prosperity. What is happening to the social status of Afghanistan women nowadays, for instance? What about one-time collaborators we abandoned behind as if we have never met before? Where are those planners involved in the development of the country? Indeed, it seems that “ten big mouths could not say anything,”

On August 8, FBI agents retrieved many classified documents from Trump’s residence, Mar-a-Lago. Immediately, Republicans and Trump supporters cried foul about the “raid.” See more in Entry #466, “Trying to comb the hair of a turtle.” Just yesterday, on August 26, the redacted affidavit underlying the search warrant was released to the public, although prosecutors made it clear that they feared the former president and his allies might take any opportunity to intimidate witnesses or illegally obstruct their investigation. Now that the whole episode has become more serious as people begin to speculate a possible indictment of the former president, dead silence has been prevailing among those earlier protesters. Their big mouths fail to form a single word.

The proverb reminds me of the lyrics of Mrs. Robinson, sung by Simon and Garfunkel, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” (08/27/2022)