October 2017 – Page 3 – Circles and Squares

Anyone observing the recent suppression of the independence vote in Catalonia by the Spanish Government should be reminded immediately that this is not the first bid of Catalonia for independence. In fact you cannot understand what is happening today if you do not grasp what happened in the region that declared independence from 1936 until it was brought down by the Fascists in 1939 under the name of “Revolutionary Catalonia.”

I highly recommend George Orwell’s autobiographical record Homage to Catalonia for a day by day account of the effort to resist Fascism in that region. You can find the text of the book here. Of course the current politics are far from the radical views of the communists and anarchists who tried to create a classless society in Catalonia at the time. Yet the effort to break out of an increasingly restricted social environment was perhaps similar to what we are seeing today. I wonder why nothing about that period in history is mentioned in any of the news accounts about current events.

Passionate discussion of Korea-China relations at Hongling Chinese Culture Salon

On September 27, 2017, the Hongling Culture Salon, a bimonthly gathering which offers an opportunity for Koreans, Chinese and other residents of Seoul to discuss current issues in Chinese language, held a special meeting on the occasion of the 25^th anniversary of the normalization of normalization of diplomatic relations between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea.

emanuel talks

The Hongling Culture Salon is organized by the Asia Institute, Kyung Hee University Cyber University and the Confucius Institute of Kyung Hee University. The seminar was our thirteenth such event.

I was tapped to lead an honest and at times, moving debate among the 50 individuals who gathered for the salon. We had much to discuss granted the aggressive approach of the Trump administration towards North Korea and China and the tragic impact of the deployment of THAAD in South Korea over the objections of the Chinese government.

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Many attending were Chinese who have lived in Korea for many years, or Koreans who have lived in China for many years, in most cases with husbands or wives from the other country. The speakers expressed both tremendous enthusiasm about the potential for real cooperation in just about every field, a deep sadness that political circumstances had done so much damage, and desire to explore new routes forward.