Seoul Blog: Kimchee-Chigae and Putin vs. Khodorkovsky

Blog 11-5-2003
6:32 PM Seoul, Gangnam-gu
Taldren-Korea Offices

Korea

Well now I am sitting at my new desk here at Taldren-Korea, Ltd (TK). I had an excellent lunch today of Kimchee-Chigae. It has a hearty, tangy taste with an orange broth. Inside was tofu and an assortment of vegetables. It was served with a bowl of steamed rice and an assortment of pickled vegetables with of course Kimchee being some of it. The best part of the meal was perhaps the truly awesome cinnamon punch served at the end of the meal. It was sweet without being overly so, and with a powerful punch of cinnamon. Korea is full of cool and tasty punches and drinks.

Politics

I was reading in the Financial Times (one of the better newspapers I think) all about Putin putting Khodorkovsky in jail. It looks rather messy, but the short of it is it appears that Putin feared the growing political power that the $8B USD Oil Oligarch was planning on bringing to bear on a presidential bid for the 2008 election. It seems that Putin decided that he just didn't want the competition and so he let the prosecutors throw Khodorkovsky into jail and seize his assets.

This is complicated for, sure, I too think Khodorkovsky didn't get his oil empire in a fair manner (but then again not many billionaires play fair). However, Russia needs to have a healthy mixture of competition for power to avoid remaining an authoritarian state. So in the end I think Putin is wrong and that Khodorkovsky should be allowed to spend his ill-begotten gains to try to gain political power.

However, the comments from our administration seem a bit too far. Considering the obvious corruption in our administration between Enron and Halliburton and the rest of the energy giants; it puts Bush in an awkward position to comment on Putin's practices.

Of course Putin's actions are highly un-democratic and again I think they are wrong, but I wish we demanded just as much or more of our own leaders.

-Erik