North Sudan Takes Contested Town on South Border

NAIROBI – The northern Sudanese army has seized a strategic town along Sudan’s contested north-south border in a serious military escalation that has the potential of igniting an all-out civil war, Western officials said on Sunday.

A column of northern Sudanese tanks rolled into Abyei, a flashpoint border town on Saturday, after weeks of hit-and-run clashes between northern and southern forces.

The southern part of Sudan is gearing up to declare independence in July and both northern and southern Sudan claim Abyei, making it one of the most combustible issues between the two sides. The Abyei area produces a small amount of oil but more than that, it has become a potent, emotional symbol for both northern and southern Sudanese. It has been called Sudan’s Jerusalem because of the difficulties of resolving its status.

“The SAF (Sudan Armed Forces) have taken this evening the control of Abyei town and repelled the enemy forces, ” declared a Sudanese state television news bulletin on Saturday night. According to United Nations officials inside Abyei, there were at least a dozen northern tanks now prowling the town. But the United Nations monitoring team in Abyei was hampered from making more detailed observations because several mortar shells landed near the United Nations compound, and United Nations personnel were reluctant to venture into Abyei’s streets.

The southern Sudanese forces, who have tens of thousands of heavily-armed soldiers – some of them trained by the United States, have not indicated yet how they will respond. On Saturday night, Philip Aguer, a spokesman for southern Sudan’s military forces, told AFP, “The SAF have entered Abyei, there is still fighting but they have come with tanks, they are shooting and shooting. ”

“Our police have been fighting but the SAF have sent many soldiers in, ” he added, speaking by phone from Juba, the capital of southern Sudan.

The crisis comes right as a delegation from the United Nations Security Council is in Sudan, visiting both sides in preparation for the division of Sudan this summer.

Abyei has been a sore spot for years, a clear potential spoiler in the separation of north and south Sudan. It has a hybrid history, a dusty, arid patch of Sudan that is culturally and ethnically linked to the south and populated by mostly Southerners but incorporated administratively as part of the north for decades. Northern nomads cross through Abyei to bring their herds to watering holes and the area has been like a mosaic of cultures between north and south Sudan.

Abyei was supposed to have its own referendum to decide whether it would join the north or the south but that got shelved because of heated arguments over who was eligible to vote. Meanwhile, southern Sudan held a referendum in January in which more than 95 percent of Southerners voted for independence.

While its status is unresolved, Abyei has been administered by a joint north-south committee and the only soldiers in the area are supposed to units made up of Northerners and Southerners. But in the past few months, human rights groups have seen a sharp build-up by both sides around the contested border.

Over the past few weeks, northern and southern forces have been attacking each other in rural areas around Abyei town. On Thursday, southern forces ambushed a convoy of northern troops, killing more than dozen northern soldiers. Southern forces had staged a similar attack in early May.

One Western official on Sunday said that the southern forces had indeed provoked the north and that it was unlikely that northern forces would now withdraw from Abyei.

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At War: South Africa Assails Libya Over Photographer's Death

  The colleagues and friends of Sultan Munadi, who was slain during a rescue operation in Afghanistan, would like to thank readers for the many generous donations they made to help his family. Sultan’s family is extraordinarily grateful to them as well.

Sultan’s family currently has the funds they need to cover their basic living costs. As a result, Sultan’s friends and colleagues have decided to use the reader donations to create a fund to educate his children. Sultan passionately believed that education was the key to stabilizing Afghanistan. His friends and colleagues believe that educating Sultan’s children is the best way to honor his memory. Our goal is to raise enough funds to allow his children to receive the best education possible.

The education fund will include the donations readers have made since Sultan was killed in September 2009 and new contributions from Sultan’s friends and colleagues at The New York Times. If readers would like to contribute to the education fund, details are below. We thank readers again for the donations they have already made.

If you would like to donate by a wire transfer (recommended outside U.S.), instructions are here.

If you would like to contribute via mail, please send your check to:

Foreign Desk / The New York Times, Attn: Cynthia Latimer
620 Eighth Avenue, 3rd Fl.
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Checks should be made payable to “The New York Times,” noting “Munadi Education Fund” in the memo field.

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Google's South Korean Offices Raided Over Data Collection

The investigation also highlights growing concerns about possible misuse of private information as the popularity of mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers increases.

Information on users’ locations is viewed as crucial for the growing mobile advertising sector, as it helps personalize online ads according to individual preferences or geographical positions. Last month, Apple defended its use of iPhone location data but denied that it was tracking the movements of customers.

Google and Apple have been criticized by U.S. lawmakers over their protection and use of consumer data from cellphone applications, including where users are located.

Google executives have talked about the ability to tailor advertising to users on the basis of location. Google bought AdMob, a leading global mobile advertising firm, last year for $750 million.

“Every technology has a flip side,” said Kim Kwang-jo, a computer science professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. “Location-based services benefit customers by helping them find nearby restaurants, gas stations and other places with their smartphones. But it could potentially violate consumer privacy. There are loopholes in location-based services, and companies should get consent from customers to collect location data.”

Google confirmed that the police had visited its Seoul office and said the company was cooperating with the investigation.

Jang Byung-duk, who is in charge of cybercrime investigation at the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, said, “We suspect AdMob collected personal location information without consent or approval from the Korean Communication Commission.”

The Seoul police also raided the offices of the local Internet portal Daum Communications on similar suspicions, Daum said Tuesday. Daum said the collection of location data by its mobile ad services was not illegal, as the data were anonymous and could not be used to track individuals.

Google has already been the subject of investigations in the United States, Britain, France, Singapore, Switzerland and South Korea over data collected for its Street View mapping service, using a fleet of cars that take pictures and gather information about wireless Internet connections.

The Seoul police concluded in January that Google had collected location information and other data from 600,000 wireless Internet users in South Korea with three Street View cars.

Google tightened its privacy policy after revelations that the cars, which take panoramic pictures of city streets, had inadvertently collected data from unsecured wireless networks in more than 30 countries.

The top Internet portals in South Korea — one of the world’s most wired countries — filed a complaint with antitrust regulators last month claiming that Google was unfairly stifling competition in the country.

Google is one of the smallest players in South Korea’s fixed-line Internet search market, but it enjoys a share of nearly 20 percent in the mobile Internet market, backed by its Android operating system for cellphones.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also considering a broad investigation into Google because of its dominance of the Internet search industry.

Google, which controls about two-thirds of the global search market, is a stellar performer in the booming smartphone and tablet market. Device makers like Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, both based in South Korea, increasingly are adopting Android to counter the heavyweight Apple.

Rival technology companies, including Microsoft, are trying to rein in Google’s growth. The global smartphone market is forecast to grow 58 percent this year, and Android-based devices will account for 39 percent of the market, according to the research firm Gartner. In the tablet market, Gartner said, Apple’s share will gradually decline to 47 percent by 2015 from 69 percent this year, with Google’s share forecast to rise to 39 percent from 20 percent now.

 

South Assesses the Toll After a Deadly Barrage of Tornadoes

At least 285 people across six states died in the storms, with more than half — 195 people — in Alabama. This good-time college town, the home of the University of Alabama, has in some places has been shorn to the slab, and accounts for at least 36 of those deaths.

Thousands have been injured, and untold more have been left homeless, hauling their belongings in garbage bags or rooting through disgorged piles of wood and siding to find anything salvageable.

While Alabama was hit the hardest, the storm spared few states across the South. Thirty-four people were reported dead in Tennessee, 33 in Mississippi, 15 in Georgia, 7 in Virginia and one in Kentucky. With search and rescue crews still climbing through debris and making their way down tree-strewn country roads, the toll is expected to rise.

“History tells me estimating deaths is a bad business,” said W. Craig Fugate, the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator, in a conference call with reporters.

Cries could be heard into the night here on Wednesday, but on Thursday hope was dwindling. Mayor Walt Maddox said that the search and rescue operation would go for 24 to 48 more hours, before the response pivoted its focus to recovery.

“They’re looking for five kids in this rubble here,” said Lathesia Jackson-Gibson, 33, a nurse, pointing to the incoherent heap of planks and household appliances sitting next to the muddled guts of her own house. “They’re mostly small kids.”

President Obama announced that he was coming to Alabama on Friday afternoon, saying in a statement that the federal government had pledged its assistance.

Gov. Robert Bentley toured the state by helicopter along with federal officials, tracking a vast scar that stretched from Birmingham to his hometown, Tuscaloosa. He declared Alabama “a major, major disaster.”

“As we flew down from Birmingham, the track is all the way down, and then when you get in Tuscaloosa here it’s devastating,” Mr. Bentley said at an afternoon news conference, with an obliterated commercial strip as a backdrop.

An enormous response operation was under way across the South, with emergency officials working alongside churches, sororities and other volunteer groups. In Alabama, more than 2,000 National Guard troops have been deployed.

Across nine states, more than 1,680 people spent Wednesday in Red Cross shelters, said Attie Poirier, a spokeswoman with the organization. The last time the Red Cross had set up such an elaborate system of shelters was after Hurricane Katrina, a comparison made by even some of those who had known the experience firsthand.

“It reminds me of home so much,” said Eric Hamilton, 40, a former Louisianan, who was sitting on the sidewalk outside the Belk Activity Center, which was being used as a Red Cross shelter in south Tuscaloosa.

Mr. Hamilton lived in a poor area of Tuscaloosa called Alberta City, which residents now describe merely as “gone.” He wiped tears off his cheeks.

“I’ve never seen so many bodies,” Mr. Hamilton said. “Babies, women. So many bodies.”

Officials at the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center said they had received 137 tornado reports on Wednesday, with 104 of them coming from Alabama and Mississippi. Over all, there have been 297 confirmed tornadoes this month, breaking a 36-year-old record.

Southerners, who have had to learn the drill all too well this month, watched with dread on Wednesday night as the shape-shifting storm system crept eastward across the weather map. Upon hearing the rumble of a tornado, or even the hysterical barking of a family dog, people crammed into closets, bathtubs and restaurant coolers, clutching their children and family photos.

Many of the lucky survivors found a completely different world when they opened their closet doors.

“We heard crashing,” said Steve Sikes, 48, who lives in a middle-class Tuscaloosa neighborhood called the Downs. “Then dirt and pine needles came under the door. We smelled pine.

“When you smell pine,” he said, gesturing, by way of a conclusion, toward a wooden wreck behind him, so mangled that it was hard to tell where tree ended and house began.

Some opened the closet to the open sky, where their roof had been, some yelled until other family members pulled the shelves and walls off them. Others never got out.

Campbell Robertson reported from Tuscaloosa, and Kim Severson from Atlanta. Kevin Sack contributed reporting from Tuscaloosa, and Robbie Brown from Birmingham, Ala.

 

Northern Sudanese Warn South Over Contested Area

KAMPALA, Uganda — The Sudanese government said Wednesday that it would not recognize the soon-to-be independent nation of south Sudan if the southern government tried to annex the contested territory of Abyei, raising the stakes between the two sides only 10 weeks before the south’s independence is expected to be announced.

A spokesman for the government of northern Sudan, reiterating comments President Omar Hassan al-Bashir made earlier in the day, said the southern Sudanese had no right to claim Abyei — an oil-rich region that straddles the disputed border between north and south Sudan — as their own.

“How can they decide unilaterally that Abyei is part of the south?” asked Rabie A. Atti, a Sudanese government spokesman. “We are now looking for stability with the south and north.”

“If they refuse” to compromise over the future of Abyei, Mr. Atti said, “the situation will be as it was,” referring to the decades when the two sides fought civil wars in which millions died.

The comments appeared to come in reaction to news reports that southern Sudanese officials were drafting a transitional constitution that claims Abyei as part of the new south Sudan. The southern Sudanese government could not be reached immediately for comment.

Since southern Sudan voted in a referendum in January to separate from the north and form its own country, Mr. Bashir has issued shows of support and reconciliation.

But on Wednesday night, Mr. Bashir laid claim to Abyei as well, according to a local news report, saying, “I say it and repeat it for the million times, Abyei is northern and will remain northern.”

Speaking on Thursday in the Sudanese state of Southern Kordofan, near Abyei, Mr. Bashir added that if there was “any attempt” by the south to “secede Abyei,” the north would refuse to recognize it as a separate state.

Abyei, which has a mixture of African and Arab cultures in the middle of Sudan and sits on a wealth of oil reserves, has long been a focus of violence between the north and south. The territory was supposed to hold its own referendum this year to decide whether to join the north or south, after generations of civil war, but so far that has not happened.

Satellite images from a project supported by Google and the Enough Project show both sides massing forces along the border.

“Bashir is a demonstrated utilitarian,” said John Prendergast, co-founder of the Enough Project and a member of the satellite image project. “He makes extreme statements designed to impact negotiations and intimidate internationals. And he makes good on his threats when he perceives there to be no consequence for doing so.

“If the right deal can be struck,” Mr. Prendergast said, “Abyei’s status can be resolved.”

 

At Least 55 Killed in South Sudan Fighting

 VOA News ?April 24, 2011

Officials in south Sudan say the army has killed at least 55 rebel fighters during a clash in volatile Jonglei state.
Hundreds have died in fighting between the southern army and various rebel groups since January, when southern Sudan voted to split from the north.? Southern leaders accused the north of supporting the rebellions to destabilize the region ahead of independence in July.

The latest fighting raged for several hours Saturday, as soldiers battled gunmen led by Gabriel Tanginya, who led a pro-Khartoum militia during Sudan's long north-south civil war.

Tanginya agreed late last year to integrate his fighters into the southern army.? Media reports say Saturday's fighting began after the militiamen refused to report to the southern capital of Juba.

Southern officials say five of Tanginya's generals were killed in the clash. ?

The French news agency quotes an official in south Sudan's Upper Nile state, Peter Lam Both, as saying 34 government soldiers and 43 civilians were wounded.

 

Entrepreneurial Empowerment for South Korea's Disenfranchised

SEOUL — They left, they said, not because of the jackboot repression in North Korea, and not because of Kim Jong-il’s secret police or other political strangulations.

“It was the eating problem,” said Lee Young-geum.

“I was starving,” said Son Hyang-sun.

These two women, like most defectors from the North, made harrowing journeys to get to South Korea. Their transition to life in the South has not been easy either, and they have endured the same slights and humiliations that cause many defectors to feel unwelcome and marginalized here.

But these are women not easily deterred. Indeed, both recently started their own businesses using loans from a new corporate-sponsored credit foundation.

Ms. Lee, 38, bought the Blue Club, a barbershop in Seoul. Ms. Son, 40, opened a fish market in the eastern seaport of Donghae. She named her shop the Future.

The credit program, financed by Hyundai, is one of several such efforts by some of the chaebol, South Korea’s mammoth family-controlled corporations. The conglomerates have been instructed by President Lee Myung-bak to become more philanthropic as part of his push for what he calls “a fair society.”

“Lee Myung-bak seemingly wants a political legacy and his brand to be increasingly predicated on the ‘fair society’ mantra,” said Jasper Kim, a professor of law and business at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul. “So the president needs — and will demand — that the chaebol return any favors they may owe politically and economically.”

LG Electronics, for example, has pledged 2.5 billion won, or $2.3 million, to nutrition campaigns run by the World Food Program. Samsung has focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at its semiconductor and LCD factories, while its employees have donated time to working with meal programs for the poor, tutoring underprivileged children and cleaning up streams and woodlands around Samsung’s major plants.

The chaebol are clearly hoping to generate good will with both the president and the public, and recent polls suggest they could use some image enhancement. Most South Koreans now consider South Korean society decidedly unfair, partly because of arrogance and persistent nepotism among the chaebol.

Another sore point: Mr. Lee has granted pardons to scores of chaebol executives convicted of crimes ranging from tax fraud to brawling. Among those let off were South Korea’s two wealthiest men: Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung Electronics, and Chung Mong-koo, the chairman of Hyundai Motor.

Hyundai Capital, the financing arm of Hyundai Motor, manages the credit program that helped Ms. Lee and Ms. Son. (Hyundai Capital, which mostly makes car loans and unsecured personal loans, is 43 percent owned by GE Capital.) The automaker has committed 20 billion won a year to the program for the next 10 years.

“We want to help underprivileged people stand on their own,” said the program manager, Han Dong-il, whose father was born in North Korea. “Among that group, we saw North Korean defectors as having the most difficulties.”

Hyundai’s loan to Ms. Lee was 50 million won at 2 percent interest. The loan is payable in five years, although she expects to pay it off in 18 months. Then she will buy a second shop.

“I want to be a C.E.O., not a housewife,” she said. “I don’t want an ordinary life.”

Already her life has been far from ordinary. A former truck dispatcher at a state-owned steel factory in North Hamgyong Province, near the Chinese border, she escaped from North Korea in 1997 by wading across the Tumen River into China.

The North was in the throes of a full-blown famine — “the eating problem” — and Ms. Lee was about to become one of its victims. She first began to think about defecting when she heard that people in China routinely fed their dogs leftover rice and soup. At the time, she had been trekking into the mountains for wild greens to boil into an edible mash.

One day, skin and bones, she just left.

She married an ethnic Korean man in China, divorced him because of his gambling and brawling, borrowed $7,000 from her former in-laws and hired a broker who got her to the South Korean Embassy in Mongolia. She sought asylum there and was put on a flight to Seoul, her first plane ride ever.

Ms. Lee went through three months of debriefing and political education at the South Korean facility called Hanawon, a kind of halfway house used by the authorities to ferret out possible spies and infiltrators. After her release, as her government subsidies ran out, she held a string of low-skill jobs.

Finally, she found an apprenticeship at the Blue Club. She learned barbering, watched how the shop was managed, then used her loan and her savings to buy out the owner. She has not told her employees or customers about her background, wary of their reaction.

Ms. Son, by contrast, has been candid about her odyssey from the North. The reaction among her customers and fellow shopkeepers has been mixed.

“Some people look down on us,” she said. “They think, ‘Low class.”’

But after the rigors of her journey, she said with a wise smile, a little nasty gossip is hardly worth mentioning.

Before Ms. Son defected, in 1996, at the age of 25, she had started eating grass to stay alive.

Government food rations had ceased at her factory, which produced glass ampules of morphine, and there was no salt or sugar. Until she defected, she said, she had never eaten fish or beef.

After crossing the river into China, Ms. Son dyed her hair and pierced her ears — small proclamations of emancipation. But before long, she was apprehended by the Chinese police and sent back to North Korea. She spent the next four months in prison.

“With my hair and my pierced ears, the North Korean government thought I was mentally ill and that I would infect other people,” she said.

“So they tortured me with an electric stick” — she searched for the right term — “yes, a cattle prod. They stuck it everywhere.”

She did her time, then bided her time. Eventually, she ducked her police tail and again crossed into China. She met a North Korean man who wanted to get to South Korea, and they walked into Vietnam, then Cambodia and on to Thailand, where they boarded a plane for Seoul in May 2003.

After a series of workaday jobs and the birth of a daughter, the couple made their way to Donghae, renowned for its clams and scallops.

They found the small fish shop for sale — the family now lives upstairs — and fitted it out using a Hyundai loan of 40 million won.

Times are tight, but business is good, and honguh — dried skate — is selling particularly well right now.

Despite their promising new ventures — made possible by a famously robust capitalist system — Ms. Son and Ms. Lee both admit to a certain nostalgia for North Korea, even though they know they cannot safely go back until there is a change of government or reunification.

“You can earn money here, but it goes so fast — 100 in, 200 out, it’s hard to keep up,” said Ms. Son. “There’s more food here, a lot of it, but it’s too sweet.

“Sometimes I think just a small bowl of soup every day would be O.K,” she said.

 

Entrepreneurial Empowerment for South Korea's Disenfranchised

SEOUL — They left, they said, not because of the jackboot repression in North Korea, and not because of Kim Jong-il’s secret police or other political strangulations.

“It was the eating problem,” said Lee Young-geum.

“I was starving,” said Son Hyang-sun.

These two women, like most defectors from the North, made harrowing journeys to get to South Korea. Their transition to life in the South has not been easy either, and they have endured the same slights and humiliations that cause many defectors to feel unwelcome and marginalized here.

But these are women not easily deterred. Indeed, both recently started their own businesses using loans from a new corporate-sponsored credit foundation.

Ms. Lee, 38, bought the Blue Club, a barbershop in Seoul. Ms. Son, 40, opened a fish market in the eastern seaport of Donghae. She named her shop the Future.

The credit program, financed by Hyundai, is one of several such efforts by some of the chaebol, South Korea’s mammoth family-controlled corporations. The conglomerates have been instructed by President Lee Myung-bak to become more philanthropic as part of his push for what he calls “a fair society.”

“Lee Myung-bak seemingly wants a political legacy and his brand to be increasingly predicated on the ‘fair society’ mantra,” said Jasper Kim, a professor of law and business at Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul. “So the president needs — and will demand — that the chaebol return any favors they may owe politically and economically.”

LG Electronics, for example, has pledged 2.5 billion won, or $2.3 million, to nutrition campaigns run by the World Food Program. Samsung has focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions at its semiconductor and LCD factories, while its employees have donated time to working with meal programs for the poor, tutoring underprivileged children and cleaning up streams and woodlands around Samsung’s major plants.

The chaebol are clearly hoping to generate good will with both the president and the public, and recent polls suggest they could use some image enhancement. Most South Koreans now consider South Korean society decidedly unfair, partly because of arrogance and persistent nepotism among the chaebol.

Another sore point: Mr. Lee has granted pardons to scores of chaebol executives convicted of crimes ranging from tax fraud to brawling. Among those let off were South Korea’s two wealthiest men: Lee Kun-hee, the chairman of Samsung Electronics, and Chung Mong-koo, the chairman of Hyundai Motor.

Hyundai Capital, the financing arm of Hyundai Motor, manages the credit program that helped Ms. Lee and Ms. Son. (Hyundai Capital, which mostly makes car loans and unsecured personal loans, is 43 percent owned by GE Capital.) The automaker has committed 20 billion won a year to the program for the next 10 years.

“We want to help underprivileged people stand on their own,” said the program manager, Han Dong-il, whose father was born in North Korea. “Among that group, we saw North Korean defectors as having the most difficulties.”

Hyundai’s loan to Ms. Lee was 50 million won at 2 percent interest. The loan is payable in five years, although she expects to pay it off in 18 months. Then she will buy a second shop.

“I want to be a C.E.O., not a housewife,” she said. “I don’t want an ordinary life.”

Already her life has been far from ordinary. A former truck dispatcher at a state-owned steel factory in North Hamgyong Province, near the Chinese border, she escaped from North Korea in 1997 by wading across the Tumen River into China.

The North was in the throes of a full-blown famine — “the eating problem” — and Ms. Lee was about to become one of its victims. She first began to think about defecting when she heard that people in China routinely fed their dogs leftover rice and soup. At the time, she had been trekking into the mountains for wild greens to boil into an edible mash.

One day, skin and bones, she just left.

She married an ethnic Korean man in China, divorced him because of his gambling and brawling, borrowed $7,000 from her former in-laws and hired a broker who got her to the South Korean Embassy in Mongolia. She sought asylum there and was put on a flight to Seoul, her first plane ride ever.

Ms. Lee went through three months of debriefing and political education at the South Korean facility called Hanawon, a kind of halfway house used by the authorities to ferret out possible spies and infiltrators. After her release, as her government subsidies ran out, she held a string of low-skill jobs.

Finally, she found an apprenticeship at the Blue Club. She learned barbering, watched how the shop was managed, then used her loan and her savings to buy out the owner. She has not told her employees or customers about her background, wary of their reaction.

Ms. Son, by contrast, has been candid about her odyssey from the North. The reaction among her customers and fellow shopkeepers has been mixed.

“Some people look down on us,” she said. “They think, ‘Low class.”’

But after the rigors of her journey, she said with a wise smile, a little nasty gossip is hardly worth mentioning.

Before Ms. Son defected, in 1996, at the age of 25, she had started eating grass to stay alive.

Government food rations had ceased at her factory, which produced glass ampules of morphine, and there was no salt or sugar. Until she defected, she said, she had never eaten fish or beef.

After crossing the river into China, Ms. Son dyed her hair and pierced her ears — small proclamations of emancipation. But before long, she was apprehended by the Chinese police and sent back to North Korea. She spent the next four months in prison.

“With my hair and my pierced ears, the North Korean government thought I was mentally ill and that I would infect other people,” she said.

“So they tortured me with an electric stick” — she searched for the right term — “yes, a cattle prod. They stuck it everywhere.”

She did her time, then bided her time. Eventually, she ducked her police tail and again crossed into China. She met a North Korean man who wanted to get to South Korea, and they walked into Vietnam, then Cambodia and on to Thailand, where they boarded a plane for Seoul in May 2003.

After a series of workaday jobs and the birth of a daughter, the couple made their way to Donghae, renowned for its clams and scallops.

They found the small fish shop for sale — the family now lives upstairs — and fitted it out using a Hyundai loan of 40 million won.

Times are tight, but business is good, and honguh — dried skate — is selling particularly well right now.

Despite their promising new ventures — made possible by a famously robust capitalist system — Ms. Son and Ms. Lee both admit to a certain nostalgia for North Korea, even though they know they cannot safely go back until there is a change of government or reunification.

“You can earn money here, but it goes so fast — 100 in, 200 out, it’s hard to keep up,” said Ms. Son. “There’s more food here, a lot of it, but it’s too sweet.

“Sometimes I think just a small bowl of soup every day would be O.K,” she said.

 

South Africa Exults Abroad but Frets at Home

It was a moment of international triumph, with Mr. Zuma representing his country — indeed, his continent — in such an elite club while larger developing nations like Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey stood on the sidelines.

But this week, he is back home and facing the kind of news of self-dealing and misconduct by public officials that has eroded the confidence South Africans have in their own government and political parties — the foundations of this fledgling democracy.

With the country preparing for local elections on May 18, the cabinet member Mr. Zuma chose to oversee local government, Sicelo Shiceka, is now embroiled in scandalous reports about his profligate living at public expense. Mr. Zuma announced Sunday that he was awaiting an explanation from Mr. Shiceka that has yet to come.

“It’s this flaunting of inequality and conspicuous consumption that people get agitated about,” said Ben Roberts, a researcher at the Human Sciences Research Council, which recently conducted a survey of South Africans documenting widespread disillusionment with local government.

Parliamentary leaders of Mr. Zuma’s party, the African National Congress, have asked for independent investigators in the public protector’s office to find out whether Mr. Shiceka spent more than $50,000 of taxpayers’ money to fly to Switzerland and stay in five-star hotels while visiting his girlfriend, a flight attendant, who was jailed there on drug charges, as The Sunday Times of South Africa reported.

In a follow-up article on Sunday, the newspaper reported that municipal trucks were delivering water to the building site of Mr. Shiceka’s new home in the poorest district in the Eastern Cape. His home was also slated to be among the first to get electricity.

“What a disgrace!” shouted the headline. “Minister builds emperor’s palace in South Africa’s poorest village.”

Corruption and great disparities in wealth are hardly uncommon among the other BRICS countries. But the lack of basic services has touched a particular nerve here. People in Mr. Shiceka’s home district had been protesting the poor quality of water and sewerage services. And it was precisely these issues that led poor people in Ficksburg, a town in the Free State, to take to the streets last week in a protest that ended in tragedy.

SABC, the state broadcaster, showed police officers in Ficksburg assaulting an unarmed, shirtless protester named Andries Tatane, 33, and thwacking his torso with batons. Mr. Tatane then looked down at his chest, streaming with blood. A haunting photograph shows him lying wounded in the arms of a friend whose face is contorted in anguish. Mr. Tatane died minutes later.

“The post-mortem showed he died of gunshot wounds,” said Moses Dlamini, spokesman for the Independent Complaints Directorate, which investigates police brutality. “And he had bruises which indicated he was assaulted.”

Two police officers have been charged with the murder and four others with assault, but not before enraged residents of Mr. Tatane’s township set fire to two government buildings.

An African National Congress spokesman, Jackson Mthembu, described the attack on Mr. Tatane as reminiscent of “apartheid-era strong-arm tactics” — a remarkable statement considering that the A.N.C. itself led the struggle against apartheid and has governed the country, and overseen its police force, since 1994.

The so-called service delivery protests, a phenomenon across the country, provide signs of the simmering discontent among many South Africans about how long it is taking to translate the gains of freedom into material progress. Even as South Africa takes center stage with the world’s most prominent developing nations, a majority of young black South Africans are jobless. Poverty remains widespread.

A nationwide survey of?about 3,200 South Africans age 16 and older, sponsored by the country’s Independent Electoral Commission, found that South Africans were most dissatisfied with local government performance on job creation, crime and housing.

The survey, released last week, documented an erosion of trust at all levels of government, with the lowest approval level — 38 percent — reserved for local government, down from a high of 55 percent in 2004.

Politicians rated even lower. Only 27 percent of South Africans trusted them when the survey was conducted in the final months of 2010.

The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance — widely perceived as dominated by whites — has sought to attract more black support by highlighting its strong record in running the city of Cape Town. Helen Zille, the former journalist who leads the party, has seized on the killing of Mr. Tatane as emblematic of how the A.N.C. has “become disconnected from the people it is supposed to serve.”

But the loyalty of voters to the A.N.C., the party of Nelson Mandela, remains deep, and the survey found that those who were most unhappy with government were also the ones who said they were least likely to vote. So the question of whether discontent leads to change in the ballot box remains open.

 

South Pacific's Vanuatu grabbing fiber internet connection, sidesteps 'remote' stereotype

 Ever been to Vanuatu? Neither have the vast majority of the world's inhabitants -- particularly those who simply can't function off the grid. For ages, the island archipelago has relied on sluggish, unpredictable satellite connections for eBay bids and liveblog following, but it looks as if fares to the blossoming nation are about to head even further north. Around this time next year, the Pacific Island destination will be connected to the real internet, thanks to an undersea optical fiber backbone cable linking it to nearby Fiji. Interchange and Alcatel-Lucent will be working to lay and operate the 1,230 kilometer cable system, which will "link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii." At first, the system will be equipped to handle 20Gbis/sec -- a figure that dwarfs the country's current capacity by 200x. In time, that should creep up to 320Gbit/sec, enabling your future vacation videos to hit YouTube in record time. Total cost? $30 million, or a drop in the bucket compared to the economic boom that's bound to transpire.

Pacific Island's Vanuatu to join the world's optical fibre Internet backbone

Paris, April 14, 2011 – Interchange Limited, a Vanuatu based company, and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) have signed a landmark agreement to deploy Vanuatu's first international submarine cable system linking Port Vila, Vanuatu, to Suva, Fiji. Scheduled for completion in mid 2012, this new system will deliver faster, more efficient and cost-effective Internet connectivity to the pacific island nation, while removing the current dependence on satellite and strengthening Vanuatu's competitive position as an e-business hub.

Interchange will construct, own, and operate the 1230 kilometre submarine cable system, which will link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii enabling Vanuatu businesses to connect to global telecommunications highway via USA, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Initially equipped for 20 Gbit/s data transfer, which is over 200 times Vanuatu's current capacity, the new submarine cable system is designed with an ultimate capacity of up to 320 Gbit/s to support the continued growth of Vanuatu's e-business economy well into the future. Its deployment will increase internet speeds for new and existing Internet Service Providers and deliver the lower cost capacity that Vanuatu needs to encourage economic growth and support its burgeoning tourist industry.

Interchange CEO, Simon Fletcher said: "This submarine cable will open new growth opportunities for the local economy. Vanuatu's current satellite connectivity is relatively expensive, with high latency and is capacity constrained. Interchange believes telecommunications infrastructure, via submarine cable systems, is the most cost effective and reliable means to bring high bandwidth capacity and technologies to Vanuatu facilitating growth in tourism and other industries."

"Projects like Vanuatu are further proof of the need for connectivity to extend high-speed communications in area that are still unserved or currently depending on satellite connections," said Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks SAS. "Submarine cable networks provide a cost-effective and direct operational way to accelerate penetration of broadband access, while prepare for reliably supporting new applications such as data centre interconnections over time."

At a cost of USD $30 million, the submarine cable project is largely funded by the private sector. However the Government of Vanuatu has shown strong support for telecommunications infrastructure project with Vanuatu Post coming forward as a seed investor in Interchange Limited. The Vanuatu Government has also committed to the pre-purchase of capacity to enhance the utility of the e-government network by extending it internationally.

Vanuatu will now join Fiji, PNG, Samoa, American Samoa, New Caledonia and French Polynesia as smaller South Pacific Island countries which have a submarine cable.

Interchange Limited has secured an option with ASN for the extension of the system from Vanuatu to Noumea. This extension would enable connectivity for New Caledonia to Fiji as well providing Vanuatu with diverse cable outlets. The option can afford the benefit of an integrated solution reducing the cost compared to a separate standalone implementation. Such an extension would further enhance the network security for both New Caledonia and Vanuatu. This greater certainty of continued operation will equip Vanuatu to exploit its position as a pivotal location for e-business and data centres in the Pacific. Additionally the extension cable can run in close proximity to Tanna offering the potential for a cable connection between Vila and Tanna.

 

South Pacific's Vanuatu grabbing fiber internet connection, sidesteps 'remote' stereotype

 Ever been to Vanuatu? Neither have the vast majority of the world's inhabitants -- particularly those who simply can't function off the grid. For ages, the island archipelago has relied on sluggish, unpredictable satellite connections for eBay bids and liveblog following, but it looks as if fares to the blossoming nation are about to head even further north. Around this time next year, the Pacific Island destination will be connected to the real internet, thanks to an undersea optical fiber backbone cable linking it to nearby Fiji. Interchange and Alcatel-Lucent will be working to lay and operate the 1,230 kilometer cable system, which will "link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii." At first, the system will be equipped to handle 20Gbis/sec -- a figure that dwarfs the country's current capacity by 200x. In time, that should creep up to 320Gbit/sec, enabling your future vacation videos to hit YouTube in record time. Total cost? $30 million, or a drop in the bucket compared to the economic boom that's bound to transpire.

Pacific Island's Vanuatu to join the world's optical fibre Internet backbone

Paris, April 14, 2011 – Interchange Limited, a Vanuatu based company, and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) have signed a landmark agreement to deploy Vanuatu's first international submarine cable system linking Port Vila, Vanuatu, to Suva, Fiji. Scheduled for completion in mid 2012, this new system will deliver faster, more efficient and cost-effective Internet connectivity to the pacific island nation, while removing the current dependence on satellite and strengthening Vanuatu's competitive position as an e-business hub.

Interchange will construct, own, and operate the 1230 kilometre submarine cable system, which will link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii enabling Vanuatu businesses to connect to global telecommunications highway via USA, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Initially equipped for 20 Gbit/s data transfer, which is over 200 times Vanuatu's current capacity, the new submarine cable system is designed with an ultimate capacity of up to 320 Gbit/s to support the continued growth of Vanuatu's e-business economy well into the future. Its deployment will increase internet speeds for new and existing Internet Service Providers and deliver the lower cost capacity that Vanuatu needs to encourage economic growth and support its burgeoning tourist industry.

Interchange CEO, Simon Fletcher said: "This submarine cable will open new growth opportunities for the local economy. Vanuatu's current satellite connectivity is relatively expensive, with high latency and is capacity constrained. Interchange believes telecommunications infrastructure, via submarine cable systems, is the most cost effective and reliable means to bring high bandwidth capacity and technologies to Vanuatu facilitating growth in tourism and other industries."

"Projects like Vanuatu are further proof of the need for connectivity to extend high-speed communications in area that are still unserved or currently depending on satellite connections," said Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks SAS. "Submarine cable networks provide a cost-effective and direct operational way to accelerate penetration of broadband access, while prepare for reliably supporting new applications such as data centre interconnections over time."

At a cost of USD $30 million, the submarine cable project is largely funded by the private sector. However the Government of Vanuatu has shown strong support for telecommunications infrastructure project with Vanuatu Post coming forward as a seed investor in Interchange Limited. The Vanuatu Government has also committed to the pre-purchase of capacity to enhance the utility of the e-government network by extending it internationally.

Vanuatu will now join Fiji, PNG, Samoa, American Samoa, New Caledonia and French Polynesia as smaller South Pacific Island countries which have a submarine cable.

Interchange Limited has secured an option with ASN for the extension of the system from Vanuatu to Noumea. This extension would enable connectivity for New Caledonia to Fiji as well providing Vanuatu with diverse cable outlets. The option can afford the benefit of an integrated solution reducing the cost compared to a separate standalone implementation. Such an extension would further enhance the network security for both New Caledonia and Vanuatu. This greater certainty of continued operation will equip Vanuatu to exploit its position as a pivotal location for e-business and data centres in the Pacific. Additionally the extension cable can run in close proximity to Tanna offering the potential for a cable connection between Vila and Tanna.