It’s time to have a look at East Asia and what’s been making the news in Asian blogs over the past month. We cover China (in depth), as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore et. al).

This is cross-posted at Winds of Change. Asia by Blog is a twice weekly feature, posted on Mondays and Thursdays (the latest edition is here). You can be notified by email when it is updated, just drop me an email at simon-[at]-simonworld-[dot]-mu-[dot…

I think Sngela meant the whole hand dramtics that Ohno made…..but to me it was obvious that Kim took a half step inside the track when he realized Ohno was breathing down his neck before the last turn.

Time again to check out the best that Asian blogging has to offer… Hong Kong, Taiwan and China Hong Kong will get universal suffrage, says the CCP. It just has to pick the right candidates first. While on HK elections, ESWN follows the latest efforts…

by the way. i have NEVER EVER heard one american, canadian (non kyopo) etc all nations except Korea bitch about ohno \”cheating\” yet angela the \”american\” is bithing about ohno cheating like it is somhow obvous. what a joke

angela if you are \”american\” then go home to korea.

Koreans claim that Ohno made exaggerated arm gestures that caused the referee(who was Australian, even though 99% of Koreans I have spoken to believe that he was from the US)to rule that Kim had improperly crossed into Ohno’s path.

On the other hand, Ohno claimes that Kim improperly crossed into his path (or at least believed that Kim had crossed into his path)and that he put up his arms and backed away so as to avoid the possibility of a painful and potentiall dangerous collision.

The majority of non-Korean experts say that Kim either actually crossed into Ohno’s path or it at least appeared that he may have done so. Nothing there to protest.

Whether Kim actually crossed into Ohno’s path or not is not really important, if Ohno merely believed that Kim had done so, then Ohno was compeltely justified in backing off and avoiding an accident by putting his hands up and out of the way of Kims swinging arms. This is particularly true when you understand what Ohno had suffered shortly before the race with Kim.

I don’t know if you have ever seen speed skates. They are different from figure skates and hockey skates in that speed skates are essentially two 14-inch razor blades strapped to your feet kicking quickly and powerfully around other peoples legs and hands.

Any accident involving speed skaters is dangerous and potentially deadly because of the speed and the blades. Speed skating has been ranked the third most dangerous winter olympic event by some sources. It is natural to not want to be sliced up in an out of control accident.

In Norway, 1994, a race accident led to Steve Bradburry being impaled on someone else’s skate and creating a cut so extensive Bradburry lost 4 litres of blood (that’s 2/3 of the blood in his body) and required 111 stitches. He was extremely lucky to survive. In 2000 he also broke his neck in a training accident.

Incidentally, Steve Bradburry was the guy that won the gold medal in the 1000m when all of the other skaters fell down. Ohno was favored to win that race but, he was part of the pile that went down. In that 4-person spill, Ohno received a 3cm gash on his thigh from someone’s skates that required 6 stitches to close.

So, just a day or so before the match with Kim, Ohno had been involved in a bad collision, was sliced open by someone’s skates and had stiches in his leg. It makes sense that he would be a bit nervous and cautious about someone improperly cutting in front of him and causing a dangerous situation. raising your arms a bit and backing off to alleviate a potentially dangerous situation is not cheating in any way, shape, or form. If the judge saw something that didn’t occur, then that is the judges problem and not Ohno’s. You simply can’t say that Ohno cheated.

There was nothing to protest. Crying wolf.

One of my main areas of displeasure is the Korean attitude when it comes to sports. Sportsmanship is in a sorry state here. I can’t comment on the state of sportsmanship in the US or anywhere else…mainly because I have been here for 16 years. I only know what I read about the US.

Sports here is a take-no-prisoners fight to the death…even in little league baseball. Celebrating a 11-0 or 12-0 (whatever it was) soccor win as the greatest blowout in Korean soccer history in a win over Nepal, is not something to be proud of. Making so many death threats agaist Ohno that he was forced to stay out of Korea and miss the world championships is not something to be proud of. (just a few examples)

I will continue to comment on parts of the society that I live in that I think are detrimental to its international image. It is sad that the state of Korean athletics has fallen to the point that the initial reaction to protests is, “oh geez…here we go again” rather than, “wow…lets think about this.” It’s the boy who cried worlf scenario. Korea has cried wolf many many times. This time, there turned out to actually be a wolf.

As for US dominanace in the olypmics. True that the US does dominate a great deal of the olympics. I am glad to see that changing as our pathetic basketball team gets blasted by Puerto Rico, and our baseball and soccer teams don’t even make it.

However, Koreans have traditionally dominated men’s and women’s short track and Korean men and women hold all titles, championships, gold medals and records for archery. My understanding is that they ALWAYS have. THAT is pretty impressive and dominant.

Shin, give me an example of where I have said anything “racist” about Koreans on my site? And while you are at it, it is necessary to define terms, so please let me know what your definition of “racist” is.

You ask, “angry lil american mad he got stared at too long, right?” wrong. I stopped being angry about being stared at by some Koreans about 14 years ago…it took me a couple of years, but I got over it.

You ask, “english teacher, right?” Nope. Never taught English here. Never will. Don’t know how to teach English and I don’t believe in doing something that I’m not, at least basically, qualified to do.

You write, “like to write racist crap about the people he likes to sleep with, right?” Again, show me my racist writings. As far as the last part of your sentence is concerned, even for a troll that was pretty lame.

As for the substantive part of your comment, which was a quote of me, I am quite surprised and happy that those people that care about such things are handling this much more civily than they did two years ago with the “Ohno affair.”