North Korea has the potential to generate about 7,800 megawatts of power, but fuel shortages have reduced output to less than a third of this. The shortfall in turn has kept more than two-thirds of its industrial facilities idle.
North Korea’s electrical grid still relies on facilities built by Japan during its 1910-1945 colonial rule over the peninsula.
I mention a similar empirical data point in a footnote regarding North Korea’s dependence on Japan… Imperial Japan.
Seriously. Stop doing whatever you’re doing and watch this video.
Amazing. Or are they really animatronics?
Oh, and should I mention that the Yen has reached an 10 year high against the dollar. Probably because guys like Jim Rogers having been pimping it during their interviews.
Remember the last time it appreciated greatly? I believe it was spring of 1995 where the Yen hit 79.85 a dollar, making the Japanese economy about the same size as the US. Here is a Fed paper (pdf) on that.
Is that the direction things will go? I’d like to say yes, but then again, Japan has a ginormous amount of government debt which actually knocked down its credit rating. Then again, they also have a ginormous foreign exchange reserve.
After today’s gruesome results in Asian stock markets (especially the Japanese Nikkei which is down by more than 7% as I write this) I thought it would be appropriate to post this from a friend:
Following the problems in the financial sector in the US , uncertainty has now hit Japan.
In the last 7 days the Origami Bank has folded, the Sumo Bank has gone belly up and the Bonsai Bank announced plans to cut some of its branches.
Yesterday, it was announced that the Karaoke Bank is up for sale and will likely go for a song, while today’s shares in the Kamikaze Bank were suspended after they nose-dived. While Samurai Bank is soldiering on following sharp cuts, the Ninja Bank is reported to have taken a hit, but they remain in the black. Furthermore, 500 staff at Karate Bank got the chop and analysts report that there is something fishy going on at the Sushi Bank where it is feared that staff may get a raw deal.
Having lived in various parts of urban Asia now for more than a year, from a geek perspective, perhaps the most annoying thing that my friends still talk about is broadband penetration.
Or rather, a couple of them gripe about the relatively low penetration rates of the US versus Japan or Korea.
But let’s put this in perspective. Ignoring the various harebrained schemes the federal government has implemented over the past two decades (I discuss them here and here), an important factor that just about everyone overlooks is geography.
Japan’s main island - Honshu - which 80% of the population lives on, is the size of Minnesota. The continuous urban conglomeration that stretches from Tokyo in the east to Hiroshima in the west is one of the most dense concentrations of urban development in the world. It is the definition of megaopolis.
South Korea is the size of Indiana. Nearly 70% of the population lives in 5 cities. Roughly half of the entire country lives within the greater Seoul area. For a quick illustration of how large this continuous urban development is, right now I live in Suwon a suburban city 30 km south of Seoul. The bus ride into downtown Seoul involves passing town after town filled with nothing but high-rise apartments. It’s like that in all directions.
For some perspective: the population of Minnesota is a little more than 5 million. The population of Indiana is just over 4 million.
In contrast: the population of Honshu is almost 100 million. The population of South Korea is nearly 50 million.
So, my challenge to those that cry about national penetration rates: consult a density almanac.
Country to country is apples to oranges
While both Seoul and the Tokyo areas have 60% or higher broadband penetration rates. So to do heavily urbanized parts of America.
For instance, according to a recent study (pdf) the Bay Area is now at 62%. This is not too shabby considering how spread out it is (depending which areas you count it is roughly twice the size of the Seoul metro).
Which brings us to the assignment I usually give my friends is this: measure apples to apples.
To do this, do not look at penetration in the Midwest or Great Plains which neither Asian country has. Rather, geeks should look at comparably large urban conglomerations.
So for this exercise, the North East corridor is the comparable geographical region. The Boston to Washington DC megaopolis is home to roughly 75 million people. The distance from one end to the other is 400 miles.
This distance is a little longer than that of the road connecting Busan-Daejeon-Daegu-Seoul (the four largest cities in Korea) which is around 400 km. It is also a little longer than that of Osaka to Tokyo (the Kyoto-Kobe-Osaka area is home to 14 million people and the 2nd largest metro after 32 million residents of greater Tokyo) which is about 430 km.
According to the aforementioned study the penetration of a few US cities: Boston is 61%, Washington DC is 58%, Baltimore and New York are 55%, and Philadelphia is at 52%.
In fact, according to the OECD, the US is the largest broadband market with roughly 70 million broadband subscribers which is more than any other country. This also represents around 30% of all broadband connections of the group (which both Japan and South Korea are part of).
Could it be better? Absolutely yes. Should the US government direct any more activity? Absolutely not.
Both the National Infrastructure Initiative and Universal Service Fund have been little more than criminal money laundering endeavors (see here). And both the telecom lobbyists and congressmen that approved them should be charged with fraud. In fact, entrusting politicians to craft yet another system should be curtailed for perpetuity.
Note: here is a recent broadband test I took. For comparison, the chief geek at HowToGeek.com (a friend of mine) lives in Washington D.C. and always has more throughput.
So I had a chance to visit Fukuoka yesterday. It’s a nice-sized city on the west side of Japan (just south of Busan). I wandered throughout the extremely clean and orderly boulevards for a good six or so hours (and have a super sexy sunburn as a result).
While I’ve been to downtown Tokyo very briefly at night, this was the first time I’ve been to any of the main islands during the day — and boy they aren’t kidding when they say Japan is highly industrialized.
Aside from the warehouse district (which I also meandered aimlessly through), the entire core is cleaner than downtown Seoul, Taipei or Kaohsiung (the big cities I’ve lived in thus far). Everyone was well-dressed, air-pollution was non-existent, and they all drove on the wrong side of the road!
Food prices were about par with Dallas or Seoul (Taiwan is by far the cheapest I’ve been to yet).
All the young women, if they weren’t dressed up in business suits wore impossibly small micro skirts. No complaints there.
It was kind of funny to see a line of men and women standing in front of a large magazine rack at 7-11. Apparently what you see in movies and cartoons is actually common-place: you find a book, pop in your headphones and just read standing up… in public.
I noticed less English in both advertisements and public transportation, but this could just be a result of distractions, like the young nurses that wore skin-tight clothing… as they road bicycles. Speaking of which, while all of the cars and buses on the road were modern vehicles, there were a large number of old school cruiser bicycles in use (not crazily zooming around like you see in videos from China).
And everyone walked with a different, more sophisticated air of confidence. I attribute this to the fact that Japan as a whole has pretty much been at the forefront of economic and cultural development for the past century. Conversely in Taiwan and Korea less than a generation ago most people still lived in a rural farm, and thus are still adjusting to a higher standard of living — and not walking around in pajamas (seriously, I’m not trying to make fun of “poorer” people, but some of the gitups are pretty funny to see).
This was taken right before sunset. Apparently the guy was a local man that liked to play for an hour or so each day on the park situated in the middle of the lake (Ohori Park). He even had a mini-amp connected to his guitar. I have no idea what the name of the song was, despite recording it, because the microphone on the camera didn’t work : (
There was a canal that cut the central business core into two areas.
If you’ve seen the film Lost in Translation, one of the more interesting aspects to global advertising is that you can find a famous celebrity on just about any product imaginable. One has to wonder if the star has any idea where their face is appearing on. Take for instance this beer vending machine that has the mug of ol’ Tommy Lee Jones on it. Sexy.
Obligatory Hello Kitty signage. I’ll be honest, despite the stereotypes, I didn’t feel inundated with ads for our friendly pink ambassador.
After today’s gruesome results in Asian stock markets (especially the Japanese Nikkei which is down by more than 7% as I write this) I thought it would be appropriate to post this from a friend:
Having lived in various parts of urban Asia now for more than a year, from a geek perspective, perhaps the most annoying thing that my friends still talk about is broadband penetration.
So I had a chance to visit 
I noticed less English in both advertisements and public transportation, but this could just be a result of distractions, like the young nurses that wore skin-tight clothing… as they road bicycles. Speaking of which, while all of the cars and buses on the road were modern vehicles, there were a large number of old school 
This was taken right before sunset. Apparently the guy was a local man that liked to play for an hour or so each day on the park situated in the middle of the lake (
