MY MEMORABLE DINNER WITH CHUN DOO-HWAN AND FRIENDS

The news shock of the day is that all three vigilantes were judged guilty of murdering Ahmaud Arbery, in varying degrees.  Sentencing to come later.  

Georgia has become a model transition state for Black Lives Mattering and Democracy.  This will be a peaceful Thanksgiving tomorrow.

Yesterday I advocated the use of home tests to determine whether you have COVID-19 or not to make yourself safe for your Thanksgiving family gathering.  From the New York Times this morning:

That approach is possible in other countries. In Britain, pharmacies offer free packs of seven tests that people can take at home. In Germany, rapid tests are also widely available and mostly free. In this country, the situation is different, largely because the F.D.A. has been slow to approve the tests.

The rapid tests — also known as antigen tests — are designed to tell whether you are infectious. That’s why they are such a powerful public-health tool. They can prevent somebody with the virus from spreading it to others.

In the U.S....

They typically cost about $25 for a pack of two. The combination of their cost and irregular availability means that Americans interested in rapid tests often must make choices about when to use them.

The most widely available antigen test seems to be BinaxNOW, fromAbbott.  You should feel comfortable using QuickVue, Ellume and Flowflex, among others.  If you search for one of these tests online and a website points you to a different brand, do some research.  Others can be very expensive.

Both CVS and Walgreens have search engines that let you find tests for sale near you. I recommend calling the store to confirm it still has them in stock — and then immediately going to buy it. A store may limit you to buying one test pack at a time.

You will usually get a result within 15 minutes. Keep in mind that both false negatives and false positives are possible. Antigen tests typically identify 98 percent of infectious cases, according to Dr. Michael Mina, a Harvard University epidemiologist.

If you get a positive result, take it seriously, and quarantine yourself until you know more. Ideally, you would try to confirm the result with a PCR test or a second rapid test — from a different brand, my colleague Tara Parker-Pope says. If the second is negative and you are vaccinated, you can probably trust the negative.

Finally:

Probably, warmer weather is protecting the South.

Chun Doo-hwan, South Korea's vilified former military dictator from 1980 to 1988, passed away yesterday at the age of 90.  Most of you don't know and/or don't care about him.  I do because we once had a memorable dinner.

A lot of intrigue led to his becoming president, aided by a secret military club he formed called Hanahoe, composed of his fellow graduates from the 11th class of the Korea Military Academy.  After the assassination of Park Chung-hee in 1979, Chun positioned himself as director of the Korean CIA (KCIA--which is now called the National Intelligence Service).  Park's daughter, Geun-hye, became South Korea's 18th and first female president in 2012, and today is still in jail after being impeached in 2016.

While leading the KCIA, Chun was held responsible for the deaths of at least 200 protesters from Gwangju in 1980, and gained a title of The Butcher of Gwangju.  He later became president and in his attempt to quell rioting, sent more than 100,000 into hard labor and re-education camps under the name of social cleansing to minimize drugs, smuggling, etc.  He terminated his country's nuclear weapons program and formed professional baseball and soccer leagues.  The Korean Summer Olympics were held in 1988.  As he couldn't run after a seven year term, he just declared his military classmate Roh Tae-woo as the next president, through a process by which he was elected in the first presidential voting in 16 years.  The transfer of power was peaceful...for the first time in the history of South Korea.

When Kim Young-sam became president in 1993 he proceeded to investigate both Rho and Chun for corruption.  In 1997 Chun was convicted of a range of crimes and sentenced to life in prison.  However, the next president, Kim Dae-jung was instrumental in commuting the sentence.  Both Chun and Roh died this past month.

You can read my book the details, but here is an account from my blog on 16August2010.  The memorable part of this meal was not the dinner itself, but getting there:

An intermediary arranged for me to meet with some “important” people from his country at the Hilton. The information was sketchy as to the purpose of the gathering or who was to attend. The Lotte, where I was staying, was no more than a couple of miles from the Hilton, so I attempted to catch a taxi at 6:30 for the 7PM dinner.

While traffic at 6:30PM can be a problem in Seoul, I had not in the past had difficulty. Well, it was raining, so that was a complication. The taxi stand had, perhaps, 25 people waiting, and after ten minutes, all of one cab showed up. I then walked to the street to try to hail one down. All the taxis were full. Nearly sopping wet, I came back to stand in line, which had grown. It was now 6:45PM.

I remembered that the hotel had a limousine service, so, at ten to seven, I arranged to be dropped off at the Hilton. The cost was manageable. The traffic was terrible, and if you have tried to navigate away from the Lotte, you might remember that you have to traverse through two full circles, to finally head in the right direction. At 7:35PM I finally arrived at the Hilton, and with some help from the staff, found the special room in which the dinner was to be held…..45 minutes late and somewhat bedraggled, being still wet.

All three individuals, who I had not previously met, were sitting over a drink waiting for me. They all knew each other very well. They were reasonably nice about my tardiness and introduced themselves. The first Kim was the current director of the Korean Intelligence Agency, the second Kim was a high level government official who was the first Minister of Science and Technology, and the Chun was none other than Doo Hwan, who was president of Korea from 1980 to 1988. The second Kim, Kee Hyong, mentioned that if he had known of my plight, he would have arranged something, as his wife was the brother of the person who owned the Lotte. While in an advanced state of shock, I somehow managed to survive the dinner.

Till today, I don’t know if I, somehow, got shown into the wrong room, and these dignitaries were waiting for someone else. Certainly, they must have wondered why it was so important for all three at the same time to have dinner with me.

Have no idea what I ate.

Perhaps there was some good reason for that dinner, as I did get to become good friends with Kim Kee Hyong. He had obtained a PhD in materials science at Penn State University and at a very young age was summoned back to his country to become a Minister. He later became chairman of the board of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and was a key architect of technology development for his country. He came to Hawaii on several occasions and served on one of my advisory boards.

One of our later lunches was held at the Renaissance Hotel in Seoul, where, Kee, Kiryun Choi (a professor from Ajou University who at one time signed most of the research contracts for his government) and I came up with the Renaissance Project. You can go to Chapter 3 of Book 1 for some details on this hydrogen competition. Kee and I, until very recently, had dinner once or twice a year to discuss the future.

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