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Jan. 8th, 2006 05:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsukikageAfter a decade, band's 'food store' is stocked once more
Years of poorly regulated commercial fishing left Red Lake nearly devoid of fish by 1997. Now, the fish population is coming back.
Chuck Haga, Star Tribune
Last update: January 02, 2006 – 12:05 AM
RED LAKE, MINN. - Herb Mountain stood smiling in the boat's stern as it came off a placid Red Lake in late October. The 20-footer rode lower than it had when it went out because it carried the weight of three or four more men -- in fish.
It was like before, his grin said; good, like before.
Few examples illustrate the problems and potential of the unique "closed" status of the Red Lake Indian Reservation better than the big lake itself. Actually two large bodies of water connected by a narrow channel, they often are described as the band's "food store," a cherished hedge against dependency, tribal and individual. The band's claim to the resource has been rigorously protected -- and disastrously exploited.
The shallow basins of Upper and Lower Red Lake form a natural walleye fishery. Like Mille Lacs, they are well aerated top to bottom by wind and wave action, and for decades the tribal fishery ranked with logging as an economic mainstay for the Red Lake Ojibwe.
But in 1997, after years of poorly regulated commercial fishing, the fish were nearly gone.
Each year, the band's Department of Natural Resources counted fish in weekly survey nets. In 1987, the four test nets yielded 1,277 walleyes.
In 1997, the count was 12, and the band and state agreed to a 10-year fishing moratorium.
When the test nets were brought in again in 2005, the fish count was 1,230.
"The lake is back," said Pat Brown, a biologist hired to lead the restoration effort.
The debate now is whether to resume commercial fishing. "The tribal government sent a survey to all members, and we've had public meetings to talk about it," Brown said. The results were mixed, "but fishing the lake out again, we're not going to let that happen."
The lakes are closed to nonmembers except for the northeastern corner of the upper lake, where a strip of land was severed -- stolen, Red Lake maintains to this day -- when the reservation borders were set in 1889. Non-Indian resorts in and around Waskish are preparing for a resumption of walleye angling next spring, with special state limits.
'Our babies'
For 10 years in the 1980s and '90s, Mountain, 50, was a commercial fisherman. He rose at 4:30 a.m. to check his eight gill nets and haul his catch to the tribal fishery.
When he got his weight slip, his paycheck, he raced home to hang his nets to dry. Then he started over, returning to the big lake to reset the nets.
"Regardless of weather, you needed to get out there," he said. "It was a lot of work, but it was a lifestyle you picked up. When the lake closed, it was hard to give up that lifestyle."
He worked as a conservation officer after he put his nets away, then as a fisheries technician helping with restoration.
"As a game warden, I saw a lot of abuse of the lake," he said. "But it wasn't just Red Lakers' responsibility. People and restaurants from all over Minnesota bought those walleyes.
"And after taking part in this, bringing the lake back, I never want to see a gill net again," he said. "Those are our babies out there. We raised them."
The quandary Red Lake faces is this: The reservation is poor, with high unemployment. Sport fishing could spark an economic boom, with cabins and resorts and other business catering to visitors, much like what happened at Mille Lacs. But the member survey brought a clear message: They don't want nonmembers on Red Lake.
"A former tribal chairman once proposed allowing sport fishing on the western side," said Al Pemberton, a Red Lake Tribal Council member and head of the band's DNR.
"I told my mother about it," he said. "She got very quiet. She talked to me about what the lake meant to her. 'That was left for us,' she said. 'The old chiefs kept that for us. It's our food store. We're never going to starve as long as we have that lake.' "
Meaningless quotas
In the old days, fishing camps lined the shores of the two oblong lakes, each about 25 miles across and together covering more than 275,000 acres. All but about 48,000 acres of Upper Red Lake is within the reservation.
In the early morning fog, fires burned in the camps as fishing crews cooked breakfast, tended equipment and prepared to go onto the lake.
White anglers have long criticized the Indian practice of netting, but whites have set nets, too. In 1917, during World War I, the state opened a fishery on the reservation to help ease a general food shortage. State netting ended 10 years later, and the band took over.
Commercial fishing provided Red Lake with a bridge from old ways to new, converting a traditional resource from food to currency. Pemberton and Tribal Chairman Floyd (Buck) Jourdain admit that the band didn't manage the fishery well, contributing to its collapse.
Organized as a cooperative, it had a static annual quota of fish that could be taken. But the band didn't control the numbers of nets; some entrepreneurs reportedly dropped 100 or more in the lake, recruiting relatives and friends to help. As the fish limit approached each year, the band asked federal regulators for a quota extension, and it was always granted.
If commercial fishing returns, it will be closely regulated on the basis of good science, Brown said, with guidance from a technical committee formed by the band, the state DNR, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the University of Minnesota.
The lake was restocked in 1999, 2001 and 2003, and the walleye fingerlings were treated with a chemical that researchers can read to tell the age of a fish and whether it was stocked or naturally produced.
"Five years ago, most of the fish they pulled in tests had been stocked," Brown said. "The last two years, it was 85 percent natural reproduction."
The day's catch -- 224 walleyes weighing 390 pounds, plus some lunker northern pike, slab crappies and whitefish -- was to test the effect of renewed commercial netting. Three nets, each 300 feet long, 6 feet deep with a 3 1/2-inch stretch mesh, were set where the lake level drops from 2 feet to about 20 feet.
The fish were cleaned, with Mountain and other old hands happily and efficiently working through the bounty. Brown took test samples, but most of the fillets went to a tribal nursing home and elderly nutrition program.
Ron Beaulieu, a former fishery board member, stopped to watch. He took fish as a commercial operator, he said, but with just five nets.
"I warned them," he said of the bigger operators. "I warned about taking so many fish."
Chuck Haga • 612-673-4514
***
A tiny fish could be a big factor in some development plans
Endangered, if not cuddly, a minnow is slowing road projects and there are fears it could interfere with dairy expansion.
Robert Franklin, Star Tribune
Last update: January 01, 2006 – 9:40 PM
Can the minnow coexist with the cow?
That's a question some people have been asking in the southwestern corner of Minnesota, home of the Topeka shiner.
The shiner, the only fish in Minnesota on the federal endangered species list, has delayed road building, slowed permits for water projects and raised hackles among Minnesota county officials.
Now, some say, the minnow could block some economic development, including the possibility of a 3,000-cow dairy operation that is being talked about near Adrian, Minn.
The shiner "has had major impact, some good, some not so good," said Doug Bos, assistant director of the Rock County Land Management office in Luverne. Lincoln County Commissioner Curt Blumeyer said concern about the minnow "holds up our [road] construction until later in the year."
The shiner, no bigger than 3 inches, is found in Minnesota only in the Missouri River basin in five counties--Lincoln, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone and Rock, and predominantly in the Rock River basin.
Southwestern Minnesota is "sort of the ... stronghold of the species," said Laurie Fairchild, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field office in the Twin Cities.
Largely decimated populations of the minnow remain in states such as Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.
Since the shiner was added to the endangered species list in 1999, "no project's been stopped" in Minnesota because of it, Fairchild said, although there may have been adjustments for when and how a project is done.
Bos said that, to protect the shiner during its spawning period, bridge building and in-stream construction such as bank stabilization must wait until Aug. 15 each year.
By the time construction is done, it may be too late to reestablish vegetation to prevent erosion, he said.
Blumeyer said about two miles of Lincoln County road construction near Verdi has been delayed a year because of concerns over the shiner and two species on the state's threatened list, the Blanding's turtle and the Dakota Skipper butterfly.
The county was set to do the road building as a safety measure along the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railway, and then "we ran into all this environment stuff," he said.
In the southwestern part of the state, there's a strong connection between aquifers and surface water, and concern for the shiner has slowed some permitting for well-drilling for rural water systems.
Could it prevent development?
And there's fear that the shiner could prevent development of a big dairy operation near Adrian. That's "extremely premature at this point," said Kelly Cunningham, the dairy farmer near Atlantic, Iowa, who is looking at "several places" to expand.
An Adrian area farmer already raises calves for his operation and, because so many dairy farms have closed, Minnesota is "becoming a milk deficit" state, Cunningham said.
However, he said, "water is a concern because we need lots of water."
Commissioners from Nobles and Lincoln counties raised questions about the shiner last month at the annual conference of the Association of Minnesota Counties. As a result, the conference voted to support "improving and updating" the federal Endangered Species Act.
An environmental study can cost as much as $100,000 of taxpayers' money, and it would seem foolish not to make sure the list is up to date, Blumeyer said. "We're just trying be reasonable [and ask] is there some easy solution?"
Fairchild said any restrictions don't have to be scary, and usually "if there are any roadblocks, it has nothing to do with the shiner and more to do with meeting water-quality conditions for [state] permits."
The shiner is an "indicator species" that can show water-quality conditions "where they could affect people, too," she said.
It's doesn't appear as warm as fuzzy as a Panda bear that folks would want to save just because it's cute, Fairchild said, but "it's as important as any other critter."
Robert Franklin • 612-673-4543
***
States Take Lead in Push to Raise Minimum Wages
January 2, 2006
By JOHN M. BRODER [New York Times]
Despite Congressional refusal for almost a decade to raise the federal minimum wage, nearly half of the civilian labor force lives in states where the pay is higher than the rate set by the federal government.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have acted on their own to set minimum wages that exceed the $5.15 an hour rate set by the federal government, and this year lawmakers in dozens of the remaining states will debate raising the minimum wage. Some states that already have a higher minimum wage than the federal rate will be debating further increases and adjustments for inflation.
The last time the federal minimum wage was raised was in 1997 - when it was increased from $4.75 an hour. Since then, efforts in Congress to increase the amount have been stymied largely by Republican lawmakers and business groups who argued that a higher minimum wage would drive away jobs.
Thwarted by Congress, labor unions and community groups have increasingly focused their efforts at raising the minimum wage on the states, where the issue has received more attention than in Republican-dominated Washington, said Bill Samuel, the legislative director of the national A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Opinion polls show wide public support for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which falls far short of the income needed to place a family at the federal poverty level. Even the chairman of Wal-Mart has endorsed an increase, saying that a worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford to shop at his stores.
"The public is way ahead of Washington," Mr. Samuel said. "They see this as a matter of basic fairness, the underpinning of basic labor law in this country, a floor under wages so we're not competing with Bangladesh."
The minimum wage has been the subject of fierce ideological debate since it was first established in 1938 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Business groups and conservative economists have argued that the minimum wage is an unwarranted government intrusion into the employer-employee relationship and a distortion of the marketplace for labor. An increase in the minimum wage, they say, drives up labor costs across the board and freezes unskilled and first-time workers out of the job market.
"Increasing the minimum wage is a bad move economically, philosophically and politically," said Marc Freedman, director of labor law policy for the United States Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Freedman said that any minimum wage set by the federal government was completely arbitrary and did not take local labor market costs into account.
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, about two million American workers, 2.7 percent of the overall work force, earned the minimum hourly wage of $5.15 or less in 2004, the last year for which such statistics were available. Those workers were generally young (half were under 25, and a quarter were teenagers), unmarried and had not earned a high school diploma. About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage worked in bars and restaurants, and many received tips to supplement their basic wages.
Advocates of an increase in the minimum wage said that inflation had so eroded the value of the minimum wage in the last nine years that it was worth less today in real terms than at any time since 1955. They also cited studies that found that raising the minimum wage did not cause job loss, as opponents argue. According to these studies, employers can absorb the higher labor costs through efficiencies, less employee turnover and higher productivity.
Tim Nesbitt, the former president of the Oregon A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that despite having one of the highest minimum wages in the country at $7.25 an hour, Oregon had had twice the rate of job growth as the rest of the country.
The 2006 battle over the minimum wage is expected to be particularly intense in Ohio, one of only two states that have a minimum wage below the federal level (the other is Kansas). The minimum wage in Ohio since 1991 has been $4.25 an hour, which applies to small employers, some farms and most restaurants. Workers at larger enterprises are generally covered by the federal minimum wage.
Efforts to get the Republican-run General Assembly to consider raising Ohio's minimum wage have gone nowhere, so labor groups and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as Acorn, an advocacy group for low-income individuals and families, are planning a ballot initiative to put the issue to a popular vote in November.
Tim Burga, legislative director for the Ohio A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that 92,000 workers in the state made less than the federal minimum wage, some as little as $2 an hour. The proposed Ohio Constitutional amendment would set the state minimum wage at $6.85 an hour, indexed to future inflation, bringing an immediate raise to as many as 400,000 workers.
Former Senator John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, said in an interview that he planned to help organize the minimum wage campaign in Ohio as part of his national campaign to alleviate poverty. He called the current minimum wage a moral disgrace and a national embarrassment.
"My view is it should be $7.50 an hour, and I can make a great argument for it being a lot higher than that," Mr. Edwards said. "This is a perfect example of the Republican leadership in Congress, combined with the powerful presence of lobbies in Washington, thwarting the will of the people."
Leading the opposition to the initiative will be the Ohio Restaurant Association, which like its parent organization, the National Restaurant Association, closely monitors and vigorously opposes efforts to raise the minimum wage.
"Restaurants are a low-margin business," said Geoff Hetrick, president of the Ohio Restaurant Association. "A number of marginal operations which are more or less on the ragged edge right now might find this to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, especially in northern Ohio where they've had a significant loss in manufacturing employment that's taken a lot of disposable income out of the economy."
One of those who would be affected by the proposed minimum wage increase in Ohio is Rick Cassara, owner of John Q's Steakhouse in downtown Cleveland. He said that while all of his 55 employees currently earn more than the minimum wage, he opposed a mandated increase because it would drive up all of his labor costs. "It exerts upward pressure on all wages and prices," Mr. Cassara said. "If the minimum wage is $7 and I have to pay $8 or $9 to hire a dishwasher, then the cooks are going to say they want more. How much can I charge for that hamburger?"
Another small employer, Dan Young, owner of Young's Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs, a working farm and restaurant operation, said that more than half of his 300 workers were high school and college students, many of them in their first jobs. He said he paid many of them $5.25 an hour, just above the federal minimum wage, but most quickly won raises or earned far more than that in tips.
Mr. Young said that if Ohio enacted a Democratic proposal to raise the state's minimum wage by $1 an hour over the federal level, his labor costs would go up by $250,000 a year or more. "When you do all the math," he said, "I'll have to figure out a way to hire fewer workers, or raise prices, or both."
In 2004, voters in Nevada and Florida approved ballot initiatives raising the state minimum wage to $6.15 an hour, in both cases by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Nevada voters must vote on the measure again this year because it is a Constitutional amendment, but proponents are confident they will prevail. Lawmakers in California, which already has one of the highest rates in the nation at $6.75 an hour, approved a bill last year to increase the wage to $7.75 an hour in 2007, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it, the second time he has rejected such legislation.
Mr. Schwarzenegger said then that he believed that low-wage California workers deserved a raise, but said the legislation, which contained automatic increases tied to inflation, would be too costly to employers.
But aides to Mr. Schwarzenegger said late last week that the governor would propose a $1-an-hour increase in the California minimum wage in his State of the State address this week. If approved, the proposal would take effect over the next 18 months and would not have an automatic inflation adjustment, the aides said. The move appears designed in part to pre-empt a ballot initiative that would raise the California hourly rate an additional $1, to $8.75 an hour, and include annual cost-of-living increases.
Inflation indexing is also an issue in Oregon, where the minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour and adjusts every year for inflation under an initiative approved by voters in 2002. Each year since passage of that measure, the Oregon Restaurant Association and other business groups have pushed legislation to cancel the indexing provision or to exempt some workers from the wage law, but have so far failed. Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski, a Democrat and former labor lawyer, has vowed to veto any such measure that reaches his desk.
I don't actually know where I stand on that one... On one hand, low-profit businesses shouldn't have to pay $7.50 an hour to high-schoolers, on the other hand poor parents shouldn't be payed $5.15 an hour just because they weren't able to graduate from high school. If only we had a better welfare system this wouldn't be an issue... ^^;
***
China's Youth Look to Seoul for Inspiration
January 2, 2006
By NORIMITSU ONISHI [New York Times]
BEIJING - At Korea City, on the top floor of the Xidan Shopping Center, a warren of tiny shops sell hip-hop clothes, movies, music, cosmetics and other offerings in the South Korean style.
To young Chinese shoppers, it seemed not to matter that some of the products, like New York Yankees caps or Japan's Astro Boy dolls, clearly have little to do with South Korea. Or that most items originated, in fact, in Chinese factories.
"We know that the products at Korea City are made in China," said Wang Ying, 28, who works for the local branch of an American company. "But to many young people, 'Korea' stands for fashionable or stylish. So they copy the Korean style."
From clothes to hairstyle, music to television dramas, South Korea has been defining the tastes of many Chinese and other Asians for the past half decade. As part of what the Chinese call the Korean Wave of pop culture, a television drama about a royal cook, "The Jewel in the Palace," is garnering record ratings throughout Asia, and Rain, a 23-year-old singer from Seoul, drew more than 40,000 fans to a sold-out concert at a sports stadium here in October.
But South Korea's "soft power" also extends to the material and spiritual spheres. Samsung's cellphones and televisions are symbols of a coveted consumerism for many Chinese. Christianity, in the evangelical form championed by Korean missionaries deployed throughout China, is finding Chinese converts despite Beijing's efforts to rein in the spread of the religion. South Korea acts as a filter for Western values, experts say, making them more palatable to Chinese and other Asians.
For a country that has been influenced by other cultures, especially China but also Japan and America, South Korea finds itself at a turning point in its new role as exporter.
The transformation began with South Korea's democratization in the late 1980's, which unleashed sweeping domestic changes. As its democracy and economy have matured, its influence on the rest of Asia, negligible until a decade ago, has grown accordingly. Its cultural exports have even caused complaints about cultural invasion in China and Vietnam.
Historically, Christianity made little headway in East Asia, except in South Korea, whose population is now about 30 percent Christian and whose overseas missionary movement is the world's second largest after the United States.
Today, in China, South Korean missionaries are bringing Christianity with an Asian face. South Korean movies and dramas about urban professionals in Seoul, though not overtly political, present images of modern lives centering on individual happiness and sophisticated consumerism.
They also show enduring Confucian-rooted values in their emphasis on family relations, offering to Chinese both a reminder of what was lost during the Cultural Revolution and an example of an Asian country that has modernized and retained its traditions.
"Three Guys and Three Girls" and "Three Friends" are South Korea's homegrown version of the American TV show "Friends." As for "Sex and the City," its South Korean twin, "The Marrying Type," a sitcom about three single professional women in their 30's looking for love in Seoul, was so popular in China that episodes were illegally downloaded or sold on pirated DVD's.
"We feel that we can see a modern lifestyle in those shows," said Qu Yuan, 23, a student at Tsinghua University here. "American dramas also show the same kind of lifestyle. We know that South Korea and America have similar political systems and economies. But it's easier to accept that lifestyle from South Koreans because they are culturally closer to us. We feel we can live like them in a few years."
"They seem to have similar lifestyles," Ms. Qu said. "They have friends and go to bars. They have good mobile phones and good cars and lead comfortable lives."
Her classmate, Huo Kan, 23, said, "American dramas are too modern."
Ms. Qu said, "They're postmodern."
Ms. Huo added, "Something like 'Sex and the City' is too alien to us."
Jin Yaxi, 25, a graduate student at Beijing University, said, "We like American culture, but we can't accept it directly."
"And there is no obstacle to our accepting South Korean culture, unlike Japanese culture," said Ms. Jin, who has studied both Korean and Japanese. "Because of the history between China and Japan, if a young person here likes Japanese culture, the parents will get angry."
Politics also seems to underlie the Chinese preference for South Korean-filtered American hip-hop culture. Messages about rebelliousness, teenage angst and freedom appear more palatable to Chinese in their Koreanized versions.
Kwon Ki Joon, 22, a South Korean who attends Beijing University and graduated from a Chinese high school here, said his male Chinese friends were fans of South Korea hip-hop bands, like H.O.T., and its song "We Are the Future." A sample of the song's lyrics translate roughly as: "We are still under the shadows of adults/Still not Free/To go through the day with all sorts of interferences is tiring."
To Mr. Kwon, there is no mystery about the band's appeal. "It's about wanting a more open world, about rebelliousness," he said. "Korean hip-hop is basically trying to adapt American hip-hop."
Like many South Koreans, Oh Dong Suk, 40, an investor in online games here, said he believed that South Korea's pop culture was a fruit of the country's democratization. "If you watch South Korean movies from the 1970's or 1980's, you could feel that it was a controlled society," Mr. Oh said.
Hwang In Choul, 35, a South Korean missionary here, also sees a direct link between South Korea's democratization and its influence in China. After restrictions on travel outside South Korea were lifted in the late 1980's, South Korea's missionary movement grew from several hundred to its current size of 14,000 missionaries.
Mr. Hwang, who since 2000 has trained 50 Chinese pastors to proselytize, is among the 1,500 South Korean missionaries evangelizing in China, usually secretly.
"Under military rule, it was simply not possible to come out of South Korea, and even our activities inside the country were monitored," Mr. Hwang said. "We had the potential to be missionaries out in the world, but we were constrained. We had the passion, but we couldn't express our passion."
Until South Korea and China, enemies during the Korean War, normalized relations in 1992, North Korea had a stronger presence here, with its embassy, restaurants and shops. Back then, South Korea remained unknown to most Chinese, or suffered from a poor image.
"If a Japanese television set stopped working, the Chinese would say something's wrong with the power lines," said Ohn Dae Sung, the manager of a Korean restaurant, Suboksung, who has been here since 1993. "If a South Korean television set stopped working, they'd say it was the fault of the set."
The Korean Wave has been gathering for some time, with its roots traceable to several developments, including the Seoul Olympics in 1988. The first civilian president was elected in 1992, ending nearly 32 years of military rule and ushering in tumultuous change.
A newly confident South Korea has pursued an increasingly independent foreign policy, often to Washington's displeasure, warming up to China and to North Korea. Social changes that took decades elsewhere were compressed into a few years, as new freedoms yielded a rich civil society, but also caused strains between generations and the sexes, leading to one of the world's highest divorce rates and lowest birth rates.
As South Korea quickly became the world's most wired nation, new online news sites challenged the conservative mainstream media's monopoly; press clubs, a Japanese colonial legacy that controlled the flow of news, were weakened or eliminated. Unlike other Asian nations, South Korea has tackled head-on taboo subjects in its society, including the legacy of military rule and collaboration during Japanese colonial rule.
Here, at a computer center on a recent evening, young Chinese could be seen playing South Korean online games. Cyworld, the largest online community service in South Korea, is announcing its arrival in China by plastering ads on city buses.
Thanks to the Korean Wave and South Korea's new image, being Korean helps business.
"I'm sure there is a connection, though we don't have exact figures," Jim Sohn, the chief executive of LG Electronics China, said in an interview inside the company's brand new $400 million headquarters here.
Another company that has benefited from the Korean Wave's "positive effect" is Hyundai, said Um Kwang Heum, president of its Chinese division. Though a latecomer to China, Hyundai signed a joint venture agreement with Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings in 2002 and has already become No. 2 in sales among automakers in China.
Thanks to its local partner, Hyundai's cars have been chosen by the Beijing government to replace the city's aging taxis before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Hyundai Elantras will make up most of the city's taxi fleet in time for the Olympics, which are expected to be a turning point for China, just as they signaled South Korea's entry onto the world stage in 1988 and postwar Japan's in 1964.
For all of South Korea's influence in China, though, few Chinese expect the Olympics and democratization to dovetail as they did in Seoul.
A local television production company, Beijing Modern English Film and TV Culture, proposed a Korean-language program for adults in 2004 but was rejected 10 times by the Chinese authorities for unexplained reasons. Eventually, it successfully pitched a cartoon, "Happy Imitation of Korean Sentences."
"As long as it was a kids' show, it was O.K.," said Sun Hogan, a producer at the company.
"The government," he added, "is definitely a little nervous about the popularity of the Korean Wave."
***
Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine in Cost Dispute
January 2, 2006
By ANDREW E. KRAMER [New York Times]
Correction Appended
MOSCOW, Jan. 1 - Russia cut off the natural gas intended for Ukraine on Sunday as talks over pricing and transit terms unraveled into a bald political conflict that carried consequences for Ukraine's recovering economy and possibly for gas supplies to Western Europe.
The dispute comes a year after the Orange Revolution brought a pro-Western government to power in Ukraine. It ends a decade of post-Soviet subsidies in the form of cheap energy that allowed Russia to retain some influence over the former Soviet republics.
Choking off the westbound pipes is a striking gamble by Russia, one likely to send political and economic ripples westward in the months ahead. Russia is positioning itself to become an energy-supplying nation capable of easing dependency on Middle Eastern oil in Western Europe and even in the United States.
Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, 51 percent of which is owned by the state, provides about a quarter of Western Europe's natural gas. Under a system begun in the Soviet era, 80 percent of Russia's exports to Europe have passed through Ukraine. Gazprom said it had reduced the flow to equal the volumes it agreed to provide to Western countries, minus what the company provides for the Ukrainian domestic market.
On the same day it throttled back its gas to Ukraine, Russia assumed the chairmanship of the Group of 8, the club for the world's large developed economies, promising to push the theme of "energy security."
Sunday's early-winter cut in gas supplies to Ukraine came as an unsettling reminder that promises of energy exports are not Russia's only method of using oil and gas to further its foreign policy goals - it can also turn off the valve of energy exports.
The election of Viktor A. Yushchenko as Ukraine's president last winter pulled the former Soviet country from Russia's sphere of influence. A gas shortage this winter could discredit him and weaken his party, with parliamentary elections coming up in March.
Tellingly, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was personally involved in the negotiations. It was he, rather than company officials, who made the final offer of a grace period on Saturday.
A jump in Russia's utility bill to Ukraine is at the heart of the current conflict. Russia is seeking to charge $220 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas, up from $50. [Holy shit! That's quite the price increase...] Ukraine's economy has depended on buying cheap energy from Russia, which provides about a third of its natural gas supply.
The 11th-hour effort to head off the shutdown failed. On Sunday, Ukraine's natural gas distributing company, Naftogaz, said it had faxed a draft contract to Russia shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday - agreeing to terms laid out earlier that evening by Mr. Putin, the company said in a statement.
Mr. Putin had suggested a 3-month grace period if Ukraine would agree to pay the higher prices thereafter. Gazprom, however, said Sunday the faxed reply had fallen short of demands.
"We were prepared to come to terms with the Ukrainian people and help maintain comfortable conditions for them during the winter, the most crucial season from the point of view of energy supplies," Gazprom's chief spokesman, Sergei V. Kupriyanov, said on Russian television. "Our proposals were turned down."
At around 10 a.m. on Sunday, Gazprom began cutting the pressure on pipelines at the border with Ukraine, and the effect on the Ukrainian web of pipelines was felt later in the day.
"Russia counts on Ukraine to guarantee the stable supply of Russian gas to European countries in accordance with international obligations fixed in the European Energy Charter," a statement from the Interior Ministry said.
The effects were starting to be felt in Europe on Sunday night. The Hungarian natural gas wholesaler, MOL, said that deliveries from the affected pipeline were down more than 25 percent, according to Reuters, which added that in Poland, supplies dwindled 14 percent.
Polish officials said reserves were adequate for now, and the Hungarian company asked big gas consumers to switch to oil where possible.
Gazprom reduced the pressure in the gas mains leading to Ukraine at three metering stations and ceased boosting pressure in the westbound pipelines from a storage system that is designed to keep the pressure up during peak demand in the winter. It was unclear whether the impact on the other countries was a result of Gazprom's action or whether it was the result of interference by Ukraine.
"It's their task not to take the gas that goes through their territory," a Gazprom spokesman, Denis I. Ignatyev, said in a telephone interview.
Prime Minister Yury I. Yekhanurov of Ukraine said on Sunday that his country was not siphoning gas from the pipeline.
The State Department, expressing hope that the conflict would be resolved, said in a statement: "Such an abrupt step creates insecurity in the energy sector in the region and raises serious questions about the use of energy to exert political pressure. As we have told both Russia and Ukraine, we support a move toward market pricing for energy, but believe that such a change should be introduced over time rather than suddenly and unilaterally."
Mr. Putin has said that Russia's foreign policy will hinge on energy exports. In trips to Germany, Turkey and Japan last fall, he boldly promised not only a secure supply of fuel for the West, but also that Russia could become a much larger energy exporting nation in the years ahead.
He pushed Germany to endorse a multibillion-dollar underwater gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. Gazprom is hoping to extend the pipe to Denmark, Belgium and Britain. Gazprom is also in talks with a short list of five major energy companies to develop a huge gas field in the Barents Sea, far above the Arctic Circle off western Russia, hoping to ship significant quantities of liquefied natural gas directly to the United States, the world's largest energy consumer.
Gazprom is the Russian government's largest energy policy instrument - though the company sometimes insists it operates only on business principles. The loss of fuel, if it persists, could shake Ukraine's economy the way the 1973 oil embargo helped plunge the United States into recession. Ukrainian officials said the loss could reverse its modest economic growth to cause a contraction of between 4 and 5 percent this year.
The dispute involves complex arguments by Gazprom, which says the price it wants to charge Ukraine is based on the prices of competing fuels, like diesel and bunker oil, on international exchanges. But not far below the surface, there is the embarrassing loss of a Kremlin-backed candidate in last winter's Orange Revolution.
Russia has increased the costs of its natural gas to other former Soviet states, though not as steeply. Belarus, a Russian ally, pays $47 per 1,000 cubic meters.
With its reduction in the flow of natural gas - from a rate of around 120 million cubic meters per day to around 96, according to Gazprom - Russia demonstrated there is only so far Ukraine can go before Russia reacts, and that indeed the country is still within Mr. Putin's range of influence. Each side blamed the other for the breakdown in talks.
"We will take all steps not to allow theft," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We get the impression that the Ukrainian government, feeling themselves uncertain, deliberately decided to break off the negotiation process."
In addition to a large pipeline - called "Brotherhood" for the supposed warm relations between the two Slavic republics in Soviet times - Russian gas enters Ukraine through more than 100 smaller pipes.
"There's a lot of posturing and a lot of ways to put pressure on Ukraine," said Leonid Y. Mirzoyan, an equity analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a financial company that has investment banking business with Gazprom.
In addition to the natural gas provided by Russia, Ukraine has domestic production and contracts for natural gas from the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan.
Naftogaz officials in Ukraine have said the Russian exports to Western Europe will not diminish. Yet government officials have also said the country will siphon gas from the export routes if necessary. Ukraine is a party to the European Energy Charter, an agreement intended to prevent disruption of fuel passing between countries.
Nonetheless, Mr. Ignatyev, the Gazprom spokesman, said Sunday evening that Gazprom had already detected some siphoning of gas by Ukraine, and that the company would reveal its evidence on Monday.
Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
Correction: Jan. 3, 2006, Tuesday:
An article yesterday about Russia's move to cut off natural gas intended for Ukraine misstated the amount involved. The decision reduced the flow through Ukraine's pipeline system, which is also a conduit for natural gas sent to Western Europe, by 125 million cubic meters per day, not by 24 million cubic meters.
Man, I don't think I can keep up reading all the interesting articles of the NYT every day... I think I may end up just choosing to be ignorant of the state of the world after all. *unsubscribes from NYT e-mails*
Years of poorly regulated commercial fishing left Red Lake nearly devoid of fish by 1997. Now, the fish population is coming back.
Chuck Haga, Star Tribune
Last update: January 02, 2006 – 12:05 AM
RED LAKE, MINN. - Herb Mountain stood smiling in the boat's stern as it came off a placid Red Lake in late October. The 20-footer rode lower than it had when it went out because it carried the weight of three or four more men -- in fish.
It was like before, his grin said; good, like before.
Few examples illustrate the problems and potential of the unique "closed" status of the Red Lake Indian Reservation better than the big lake itself. Actually two large bodies of water connected by a narrow channel, they often are described as the band's "food store," a cherished hedge against dependency, tribal and individual. The band's claim to the resource has been rigorously protected -- and disastrously exploited.
The shallow basins of Upper and Lower Red Lake form a natural walleye fishery. Like Mille Lacs, they are well aerated top to bottom by wind and wave action, and for decades the tribal fishery ranked with logging as an economic mainstay for the Red Lake Ojibwe.
But in 1997, after years of poorly regulated commercial fishing, the fish were nearly gone.
Each year, the band's Department of Natural Resources counted fish in weekly survey nets. In 1987, the four test nets yielded 1,277 walleyes.
In 1997, the count was 12, and the band and state agreed to a 10-year fishing moratorium.
When the test nets were brought in again in 2005, the fish count was 1,230.
"The lake is back," said Pat Brown, a biologist hired to lead the restoration effort.
The debate now is whether to resume commercial fishing. "The tribal government sent a survey to all members, and we've had public meetings to talk about it," Brown said. The results were mixed, "but fishing the lake out again, we're not going to let that happen."
The lakes are closed to nonmembers except for the northeastern corner of the upper lake, where a strip of land was severed -- stolen, Red Lake maintains to this day -- when the reservation borders were set in 1889. Non-Indian resorts in and around Waskish are preparing for a resumption of walleye angling next spring, with special state limits.
'Our babies'
For 10 years in the 1980s and '90s, Mountain, 50, was a commercial fisherman. He rose at 4:30 a.m. to check his eight gill nets and haul his catch to the tribal fishery.
When he got his weight slip, his paycheck, he raced home to hang his nets to dry. Then he started over, returning to the big lake to reset the nets.
"Regardless of weather, you needed to get out there," he said. "It was a lot of work, but it was a lifestyle you picked up. When the lake closed, it was hard to give up that lifestyle."
He worked as a conservation officer after he put his nets away, then as a fisheries technician helping with restoration.
"As a game warden, I saw a lot of abuse of the lake," he said. "But it wasn't just Red Lakers' responsibility. People and restaurants from all over Minnesota bought those walleyes.
"And after taking part in this, bringing the lake back, I never want to see a gill net again," he said. "Those are our babies out there. We raised them."
The quandary Red Lake faces is this: The reservation is poor, with high unemployment. Sport fishing could spark an economic boom, with cabins and resorts and other business catering to visitors, much like what happened at Mille Lacs. But the member survey brought a clear message: They don't want nonmembers on Red Lake.
"A former tribal chairman once proposed allowing sport fishing on the western side," said Al Pemberton, a Red Lake Tribal Council member and head of the band's DNR.
"I told my mother about it," he said. "She got very quiet. She talked to me about what the lake meant to her. 'That was left for us,' she said. 'The old chiefs kept that for us. It's our food store. We're never going to starve as long as we have that lake.' "
Meaningless quotas
In the old days, fishing camps lined the shores of the two oblong lakes, each about 25 miles across and together covering more than 275,000 acres. All but about 48,000 acres of Upper Red Lake is within the reservation.
In the early morning fog, fires burned in the camps as fishing crews cooked breakfast, tended equipment and prepared to go onto the lake.
White anglers have long criticized the Indian practice of netting, but whites have set nets, too. In 1917, during World War I, the state opened a fishery on the reservation to help ease a general food shortage. State netting ended 10 years later, and the band took over.
Commercial fishing provided Red Lake with a bridge from old ways to new, converting a traditional resource from food to currency. Pemberton and Tribal Chairman Floyd (Buck) Jourdain admit that the band didn't manage the fishery well, contributing to its collapse.
Organized as a cooperative, it had a static annual quota of fish that could be taken. But the band didn't control the numbers of nets; some entrepreneurs reportedly dropped 100 or more in the lake, recruiting relatives and friends to help. As the fish limit approached each year, the band asked federal regulators for a quota extension, and it was always granted.
If commercial fishing returns, it will be closely regulated on the basis of good science, Brown said, with guidance from a technical committee formed by the band, the state DNR, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the University of Minnesota.
The lake was restocked in 1999, 2001 and 2003, and the walleye fingerlings were treated with a chemical that researchers can read to tell the age of a fish and whether it was stocked or naturally produced.
"Five years ago, most of the fish they pulled in tests had been stocked," Brown said. "The last two years, it was 85 percent natural reproduction."
The day's catch -- 224 walleyes weighing 390 pounds, plus some lunker northern pike, slab crappies and whitefish -- was to test the effect of renewed commercial netting. Three nets, each 300 feet long, 6 feet deep with a 3 1/2-inch stretch mesh, were set where the lake level drops from 2 feet to about 20 feet.
The fish were cleaned, with Mountain and other old hands happily and efficiently working through the bounty. Brown took test samples, but most of the fillets went to a tribal nursing home and elderly nutrition program.
Ron Beaulieu, a former fishery board member, stopped to watch. He took fish as a commercial operator, he said, but with just five nets.
"I warned them," he said of the bigger operators. "I warned about taking so many fish."
Chuck Haga • 612-673-4514
A tiny fish could be a big factor in some development plans
Endangered, if not cuddly, a minnow is slowing road projects and there are fears it could interfere with dairy expansion.
Robert Franklin, Star Tribune
Last update: January 01, 2006 – 9:40 PM
Can the minnow coexist with the cow?
That's a question some people have been asking in the southwestern corner of Minnesota, home of the Topeka shiner.
The shiner, the only fish in Minnesota on the federal endangered species list, has delayed road building, slowed permits for water projects and raised hackles among Minnesota county officials.
Now, some say, the minnow could block some economic development, including the possibility of a 3,000-cow dairy operation that is being talked about near Adrian, Minn.
The shiner "has had major impact, some good, some not so good," said Doug Bos, assistant director of the Rock County Land Management office in Luverne. Lincoln County Commissioner Curt Blumeyer said concern about the minnow "holds up our [road] construction until later in the year."
The shiner, no bigger than 3 inches, is found in Minnesota only in the Missouri River basin in five counties--Lincoln, Murray, Nobles, Pipestone and Rock, and predominantly in the Rock River basin.
Southwestern Minnesota is "sort of the ... stronghold of the species," said Laurie Fairchild, a biologist for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service field office in the Twin Cities.
Largely decimated populations of the minnow remain in states such as Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska.
Since the shiner was added to the endangered species list in 1999, "no project's been stopped" in Minnesota because of it, Fairchild said, although there may have been adjustments for when and how a project is done.
Bos said that, to protect the shiner during its spawning period, bridge building and in-stream construction such as bank stabilization must wait until Aug. 15 each year.
By the time construction is done, it may be too late to reestablish vegetation to prevent erosion, he said.
Blumeyer said about two miles of Lincoln County road construction near Verdi has been delayed a year because of concerns over the shiner and two species on the state's threatened list, the Blanding's turtle and the Dakota Skipper butterfly.
The county was set to do the road building as a safety measure along the Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern Railway, and then "we ran into all this environment stuff," he said.
In the southwestern part of the state, there's a strong connection between aquifers and surface water, and concern for the shiner has slowed some permitting for well-drilling for rural water systems.
Could it prevent development?
And there's fear that the shiner could prevent development of a big dairy operation near Adrian. That's "extremely premature at this point," said Kelly Cunningham, the dairy farmer near Atlantic, Iowa, who is looking at "several places" to expand.
An Adrian area farmer already raises calves for his operation and, because so many dairy farms have closed, Minnesota is "becoming a milk deficit" state, Cunningham said.
However, he said, "water is a concern because we need lots of water."
Commissioners from Nobles and Lincoln counties raised questions about the shiner last month at the annual conference of the Association of Minnesota Counties. As a result, the conference voted to support "improving and updating" the federal Endangered Species Act.
An environmental study can cost as much as $100,000 of taxpayers' money, and it would seem foolish not to make sure the list is up to date, Blumeyer said. "We're just trying be reasonable [and ask] is there some easy solution?"
Fairchild said any restrictions don't have to be scary, and usually "if there are any roadblocks, it has nothing to do with the shiner and more to do with meeting water-quality conditions for [state] permits."
The shiner is an "indicator species" that can show water-quality conditions "where they could affect people, too," she said.
It's doesn't appear as warm as fuzzy as a Panda bear that folks would want to save just because it's cute, Fairchild said, but "it's as important as any other critter."
Robert Franklin • 612-673-4543
States Take Lead in Push to Raise Minimum Wages
January 2, 2006
By JOHN M. BRODER [New York Times]
Despite Congressional refusal for almost a decade to raise the federal minimum wage, nearly half of the civilian labor force lives in states where the pay is higher than the rate set by the federal government.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have acted on their own to set minimum wages that exceed the $5.15 an hour rate set by the federal government, and this year lawmakers in dozens of the remaining states will debate raising the minimum wage. Some states that already have a higher minimum wage than the federal rate will be debating further increases and adjustments for inflation.
The last time the federal minimum wage was raised was in 1997 - when it was increased from $4.75 an hour. Since then, efforts in Congress to increase the amount have been stymied largely by Republican lawmakers and business groups who argued that a higher minimum wage would drive away jobs.
Thwarted by Congress, labor unions and community groups have increasingly focused their efforts at raising the minimum wage on the states, where the issue has received more attention than in Republican-dominated Washington, said Bill Samuel, the legislative director of the national A.F.L.-C.I.O.
Opinion polls show wide public support for an increase in the federal minimum wage, which falls far short of the income needed to place a family at the federal poverty level. Even the chairman of Wal-Mart has endorsed an increase, saying that a worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford to shop at his stores.
"The public is way ahead of Washington," Mr. Samuel said. "They see this as a matter of basic fairness, the underpinning of basic labor law in this country, a floor under wages so we're not competing with Bangladesh."
The minimum wage has been the subject of fierce ideological debate since it was first established in 1938 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Business groups and conservative economists have argued that the minimum wage is an unwarranted government intrusion into the employer-employee relationship and a distortion of the marketplace for labor. An increase in the minimum wage, they say, drives up labor costs across the board and freezes unskilled and first-time workers out of the job market.
"Increasing the minimum wage is a bad move economically, philosophically and politically," said Marc Freedman, director of labor law policy for the United States Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Freedman said that any minimum wage set by the federal government was completely arbitrary and did not take local labor market costs into account.
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, about two million American workers, 2.7 percent of the overall work force, earned the minimum hourly wage of $5.15 or less in 2004, the last year for which such statistics were available. Those workers were generally young (half were under 25, and a quarter were teenagers), unmarried and had not earned a high school diploma. About three-fifths of all workers paid at or below the federal minimum wage worked in bars and restaurants, and many received tips to supplement their basic wages.
Advocates of an increase in the minimum wage said that inflation had so eroded the value of the minimum wage in the last nine years that it was worth less today in real terms than at any time since 1955. They also cited studies that found that raising the minimum wage did not cause job loss, as opponents argue. According to these studies, employers can absorb the higher labor costs through efficiencies, less employee turnover and higher productivity.
Tim Nesbitt, the former president of the Oregon A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that despite having one of the highest minimum wages in the country at $7.25 an hour, Oregon had had twice the rate of job growth as the rest of the country.
The 2006 battle over the minimum wage is expected to be particularly intense in Ohio, one of only two states that have a minimum wage below the federal level (the other is Kansas). The minimum wage in Ohio since 1991 has been $4.25 an hour, which applies to small employers, some farms and most restaurants. Workers at larger enterprises are generally covered by the federal minimum wage.
Efforts to get the Republican-run General Assembly to consider raising Ohio's minimum wage have gone nowhere, so labor groups and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, known as Acorn, an advocacy group for low-income individuals and families, are planning a ballot initiative to put the issue to a popular vote in November.
Tim Burga, legislative director for the Ohio A.F.L.-C.I.O., said that 92,000 workers in the state made less than the federal minimum wage, some as little as $2 an hour. The proposed Ohio Constitutional amendment would set the state minimum wage at $6.85 an hour, indexed to future inflation, bringing an immediate raise to as many as 400,000 workers.
Former Senator John Edwards, the 2004 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, said in an interview that he planned to help organize the minimum wage campaign in Ohio as part of his national campaign to alleviate poverty. He called the current minimum wage a moral disgrace and a national embarrassment.
"My view is it should be $7.50 an hour, and I can make a great argument for it being a lot higher than that," Mr. Edwards said. "This is a perfect example of the Republican leadership in Congress, combined with the powerful presence of lobbies in Washington, thwarting the will of the people."
Leading the opposition to the initiative will be the Ohio Restaurant Association, which like its parent organization, the National Restaurant Association, closely monitors and vigorously opposes efforts to raise the minimum wage.
"Restaurants are a low-margin business," said Geoff Hetrick, president of the Ohio Restaurant Association. "A number of marginal operations which are more or less on the ragged edge right now might find this to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, especially in northern Ohio where they've had a significant loss in manufacturing employment that's taken a lot of disposable income out of the economy."
One of those who would be affected by the proposed minimum wage increase in Ohio is Rick Cassara, owner of John Q's Steakhouse in downtown Cleveland. He said that while all of his 55 employees currently earn more than the minimum wage, he opposed a mandated increase because it would drive up all of his labor costs. "It exerts upward pressure on all wages and prices," Mr. Cassara said. "If the minimum wage is $7 and I have to pay $8 or $9 to hire a dishwasher, then the cooks are going to say they want more. How much can I charge for that hamburger?"
Another small employer, Dan Young, owner of Young's Jersey Dairy in Yellow Springs, a working farm and restaurant operation, said that more than half of his 300 workers were high school and college students, many of them in their first jobs. He said he paid many of them $5.25 an hour, just above the federal minimum wage, but most quickly won raises or earned far more than that in tips.
Mr. Young said that if Ohio enacted a Democratic proposal to raise the state's minimum wage by $1 an hour over the federal level, his labor costs would go up by $250,000 a year or more. "When you do all the math," he said, "I'll have to figure out a way to hire fewer workers, or raise prices, or both."
In 2004, voters in Nevada and Florida approved ballot initiatives raising the state minimum wage to $6.15 an hour, in both cases by more than a 2-to-1 margin. Nevada voters must vote on the measure again this year because it is a Constitutional amendment, but proponents are confident they will prevail. Lawmakers in California, which already has one of the highest rates in the nation at $6.75 an hour, approved a bill last year to increase the wage to $7.75 an hour in 2007, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it, the second time he has rejected such legislation.
Mr. Schwarzenegger said then that he believed that low-wage California workers deserved a raise, but said the legislation, which contained automatic increases tied to inflation, would be too costly to employers.
But aides to Mr. Schwarzenegger said late last week that the governor would propose a $1-an-hour increase in the California minimum wage in his State of the State address this week. If approved, the proposal would take effect over the next 18 months and would not have an automatic inflation adjustment, the aides said. The move appears designed in part to pre-empt a ballot initiative that would raise the California hourly rate an additional $1, to $8.75 an hour, and include annual cost-of-living increases.
Inflation indexing is also an issue in Oregon, where the minimum wage is currently $7.25 an hour and adjusts every year for inflation under an initiative approved by voters in 2002. Each year since passage of that measure, the Oregon Restaurant Association and other business groups have pushed legislation to cancel the indexing provision or to exempt some workers from the wage law, but have so far failed. Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski, a Democrat and former labor lawyer, has vowed to veto any such measure that reaches his desk.
I don't actually know where I stand on that one... On one hand, low-profit businesses shouldn't have to pay $7.50 an hour to high-schoolers, on the other hand poor parents shouldn't be payed $5.15 an hour just because they weren't able to graduate from high school. If only we had a better welfare system this wouldn't be an issue... ^^;
China's Youth Look to Seoul for Inspiration
January 2, 2006
By NORIMITSU ONISHI [New York Times]
BEIJING - At Korea City, on the top floor of the Xidan Shopping Center, a warren of tiny shops sell hip-hop clothes, movies, music, cosmetics and other offerings in the South Korean style.
To young Chinese shoppers, it seemed not to matter that some of the products, like New York Yankees caps or Japan's Astro Boy dolls, clearly have little to do with South Korea. Or that most items originated, in fact, in Chinese factories.
"We know that the products at Korea City are made in China," said Wang Ying, 28, who works for the local branch of an American company. "But to many young people, 'Korea' stands for fashionable or stylish. So they copy the Korean style."
From clothes to hairstyle, music to television dramas, South Korea has been defining the tastes of many Chinese and other Asians for the past half decade. As part of what the Chinese call the Korean Wave of pop culture, a television drama about a royal cook, "The Jewel in the Palace," is garnering record ratings throughout Asia, and Rain, a 23-year-old singer from Seoul, drew more than 40,000 fans to a sold-out concert at a sports stadium here in October.
But South Korea's "soft power" also extends to the material and spiritual spheres. Samsung's cellphones and televisions are symbols of a coveted consumerism for many Chinese. Christianity, in the evangelical form championed by Korean missionaries deployed throughout China, is finding Chinese converts despite Beijing's efforts to rein in the spread of the religion. South Korea acts as a filter for Western values, experts say, making them more palatable to Chinese and other Asians.
For a country that has been influenced by other cultures, especially China but also Japan and America, South Korea finds itself at a turning point in its new role as exporter.
The transformation began with South Korea's democratization in the late 1980's, which unleashed sweeping domestic changes. As its democracy and economy have matured, its influence on the rest of Asia, negligible until a decade ago, has grown accordingly. Its cultural exports have even caused complaints about cultural invasion in China and Vietnam.
Historically, Christianity made little headway in East Asia, except in South Korea, whose population is now about 30 percent Christian and whose overseas missionary movement is the world's second largest after the United States.
Today, in China, South Korean missionaries are bringing Christianity with an Asian face. South Korean movies and dramas about urban professionals in Seoul, though not overtly political, present images of modern lives centering on individual happiness and sophisticated consumerism.
They also show enduring Confucian-rooted values in their emphasis on family relations, offering to Chinese both a reminder of what was lost during the Cultural Revolution and an example of an Asian country that has modernized and retained its traditions.
"Three Guys and Three Girls" and "Three Friends" are South Korea's homegrown version of the American TV show "Friends." As for "Sex and the City," its South Korean twin, "The Marrying Type," a sitcom about three single professional women in their 30's looking for love in Seoul, was so popular in China that episodes were illegally downloaded or sold on pirated DVD's.
"We feel that we can see a modern lifestyle in those shows," said Qu Yuan, 23, a student at Tsinghua University here. "American dramas also show the same kind of lifestyle. We know that South Korea and America have similar political systems and economies. But it's easier to accept that lifestyle from South Koreans because they are culturally closer to us. We feel we can live like them in a few years."
"They seem to have similar lifestyles," Ms. Qu said. "They have friends and go to bars. They have good mobile phones and good cars and lead comfortable lives."
Her classmate, Huo Kan, 23, said, "American dramas are too modern."
Ms. Qu said, "They're postmodern."
Ms. Huo added, "Something like 'Sex and the City' is too alien to us."
Jin Yaxi, 25, a graduate student at Beijing University, said, "We like American culture, but we can't accept it directly."
"And there is no obstacle to our accepting South Korean culture, unlike Japanese culture," said Ms. Jin, who has studied both Korean and Japanese. "Because of the history between China and Japan, if a young person here likes Japanese culture, the parents will get angry."
Politics also seems to underlie the Chinese preference for South Korean-filtered American hip-hop culture. Messages about rebelliousness, teenage angst and freedom appear more palatable to Chinese in their Koreanized versions.
Kwon Ki Joon, 22, a South Korean who attends Beijing University and graduated from a Chinese high school here, said his male Chinese friends were fans of South Korea hip-hop bands, like H.O.T., and its song "We Are the Future." A sample of the song's lyrics translate roughly as: "We are still under the shadows of adults/Still not Free/To go through the day with all sorts of interferences is tiring."
To Mr. Kwon, there is no mystery about the band's appeal. "It's about wanting a more open world, about rebelliousness," he said. "Korean hip-hop is basically trying to adapt American hip-hop."
Like many South Koreans, Oh Dong Suk, 40, an investor in online games here, said he believed that South Korea's pop culture was a fruit of the country's democratization. "If you watch South Korean movies from the 1970's or 1980's, you could feel that it was a controlled society," Mr. Oh said.
Hwang In Choul, 35, a South Korean missionary here, also sees a direct link between South Korea's democratization and its influence in China. After restrictions on travel outside South Korea were lifted in the late 1980's, South Korea's missionary movement grew from several hundred to its current size of 14,000 missionaries.
Mr. Hwang, who since 2000 has trained 50 Chinese pastors to proselytize, is among the 1,500 South Korean missionaries evangelizing in China, usually secretly.
"Under military rule, it was simply not possible to come out of South Korea, and even our activities inside the country were monitored," Mr. Hwang said. "We had the potential to be missionaries out in the world, but we were constrained. We had the passion, but we couldn't express our passion."
Until South Korea and China, enemies during the Korean War, normalized relations in 1992, North Korea had a stronger presence here, with its embassy, restaurants and shops. Back then, South Korea remained unknown to most Chinese, or suffered from a poor image.
"If a Japanese television set stopped working, the Chinese would say something's wrong with the power lines," said Ohn Dae Sung, the manager of a Korean restaurant, Suboksung, who has been here since 1993. "If a South Korean television set stopped working, they'd say it was the fault of the set."
The Korean Wave has been gathering for some time, with its roots traceable to several developments, including the Seoul Olympics in 1988. The first civilian president was elected in 1992, ending nearly 32 years of military rule and ushering in tumultuous change.
A newly confident South Korea has pursued an increasingly independent foreign policy, often to Washington's displeasure, warming up to China and to North Korea. Social changes that took decades elsewhere were compressed into a few years, as new freedoms yielded a rich civil society, but also caused strains between generations and the sexes, leading to one of the world's highest divorce rates and lowest birth rates.
As South Korea quickly became the world's most wired nation, new online news sites challenged the conservative mainstream media's monopoly; press clubs, a Japanese colonial legacy that controlled the flow of news, were weakened or eliminated. Unlike other Asian nations, South Korea has tackled head-on taboo subjects in its society, including the legacy of military rule and collaboration during Japanese colonial rule.
Here, at a computer center on a recent evening, young Chinese could be seen playing South Korean online games. Cyworld, the largest online community service in South Korea, is announcing its arrival in China by plastering ads on city buses.
Thanks to the Korean Wave and South Korea's new image, being Korean helps business.
"I'm sure there is a connection, though we don't have exact figures," Jim Sohn, the chief executive of LG Electronics China, said in an interview inside the company's brand new $400 million headquarters here.
Another company that has benefited from the Korean Wave's "positive effect" is Hyundai, said Um Kwang Heum, president of its Chinese division. Though a latecomer to China, Hyundai signed a joint venture agreement with Beijing Automotive Industry Holdings in 2002 and has already become No. 2 in sales among automakers in China.
Thanks to its local partner, Hyundai's cars have been chosen by the Beijing government to replace the city's aging taxis before the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Hyundai Elantras will make up most of the city's taxi fleet in time for the Olympics, which are expected to be a turning point for China, just as they signaled South Korea's entry onto the world stage in 1988 and postwar Japan's in 1964.
For all of South Korea's influence in China, though, few Chinese expect the Olympics and democratization to dovetail as they did in Seoul.
A local television production company, Beijing Modern English Film and TV Culture, proposed a Korean-language program for adults in 2004 but was rejected 10 times by the Chinese authorities for unexplained reasons. Eventually, it successfully pitched a cartoon, "Happy Imitation of Korean Sentences."
"As long as it was a kids' show, it was O.K.," said Sun Hogan, a producer at the company.
"The government," he added, "is definitely a little nervous about the popularity of the Korean Wave."
Russia Cuts Off Gas to Ukraine in Cost Dispute
January 2, 2006
By ANDREW E. KRAMER [New York Times]
Correction Appended
MOSCOW, Jan. 1 - Russia cut off the natural gas intended for Ukraine on Sunday as talks over pricing and transit terms unraveled into a bald political conflict that carried consequences for Ukraine's recovering economy and possibly for gas supplies to Western Europe.
The dispute comes a year after the Orange Revolution brought a pro-Western government to power in Ukraine. It ends a decade of post-Soviet subsidies in the form of cheap energy that allowed Russia to retain some influence over the former Soviet republics.
Choking off the westbound pipes is a striking gamble by Russia, one likely to send political and economic ripples westward in the months ahead. Russia is positioning itself to become an energy-supplying nation capable of easing dependency on Middle Eastern oil in Western Europe and even in the United States.
Gazprom, the Russian energy giant, 51 percent of which is owned by the state, provides about a quarter of Western Europe's natural gas. Under a system begun in the Soviet era, 80 percent of Russia's exports to Europe have passed through Ukraine. Gazprom said it had reduced the flow to equal the volumes it agreed to provide to Western countries, minus what the company provides for the Ukrainian domestic market.
On the same day it throttled back its gas to Ukraine, Russia assumed the chairmanship of the Group of 8, the club for the world's large developed economies, promising to push the theme of "energy security."
Sunday's early-winter cut in gas supplies to Ukraine came as an unsettling reminder that promises of energy exports are not Russia's only method of using oil and gas to further its foreign policy goals - it can also turn off the valve of energy exports.
The election of Viktor A. Yushchenko as Ukraine's president last winter pulled the former Soviet country from Russia's sphere of influence. A gas shortage this winter could discredit him and weaken his party, with parliamentary elections coming up in March.
Tellingly, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was personally involved in the negotiations. It was he, rather than company officials, who made the final offer of a grace period on Saturday.
A jump in Russia's utility bill to Ukraine is at the heart of the current conflict. Russia is seeking to charge $220 to $230 per 1,000 cubic meters of natural gas, up from $50. [Holy shit! That's quite the price increase...] Ukraine's economy has depended on buying cheap energy from Russia, which provides about a third of its natural gas supply.
The 11th-hour effort to head off the shutdown failed. On Sunday, Ukraine's natural gas distributing company, Naftogaz, said it had faxed a draft contract to Russia shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday - agreeing to terms laid out earlier that evening by Mr. Putin, the company said in a statement.
Mr. Putin had suggested a 3-month grace period if Ukraine would agree to pay the higher prices thereafter. Gazprom, however, said Sunday the faxed reply had fallen short of demands.
"We were prepared to come to terms with the Ukrainian people and help maintain comfortable conditions for them during the winter, the most crucial season from the point of view of energy supplies," Gazprom's chief spokesman, Sergei V. Kupriyanov, said on Russian television. "Our proposals were turned down."
At around 10 a.m. on Sunday, Gazprom began cutting the pressure on pipelines at the border with Ukraine, and the effect on the Ukrainian web of pipelines was felt later in the day.
"Russia counts on Ukraine to guarantee the stable supply of Russian gas to European countries in accordance with international obligations fixed in the European Energy Charter," a statement from the Interior Ministry said.
The effects were starting to be felt in Europe on Sunday night. The Hungarian natural gas wholesaler, MOL, said that deliveries from the affected pipeline were down more than 25 percent, according to Reuters, which added that in Poland, supplies dwindled 14 percent.
Polish officials said reserves were adequate for now, and the Hungarian company asked big gas consumers to switch to oil where possible.
Gazprom reduced the pressure in the gas mains leading to Ukraine at three metering stations and ceased boosting pressure in the westbound pipelines from a storage system that is designed to keep the pressure up during peak demand in the winter. It was unclear whether the impact on the other countries was a result of Gazprom's action or whether it was the result of interference by Ukraine.
"It's their task not to take the gas that goes through their territory," a Gazprom spokesman, Denis I. Ignatyev, said in a telephone interview.
Prime Minister Yury I. Yekhanurov of Ukraine said on Sunday that his country was not siphoning gas from the pipeline.
The State Department, expressing hope that the conflict would be resolved, said in a statement: "Such an abrupt step creates insecurity in the energy sector in the region and raises serious questions about the use of energy to exert political pressure. As we have told both Russia and Ukraine, we support a move toward market pricing for energy, but believe that such a change should be introduced over time rather than suddenly and unilaterally."
Mr. Putin has said that Russia's foreign policy will hinge on energy exports. In trips to Germany, Turkey and Japan last fall, he boldly promised not only a secure supply of fuel for the West, but also that Russia could become a much larger energy exporting nation in the years ahead.
He pushed Germany to endorse a multibillion-dollar underwater gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. Gazprom is hoping to extend the pipe to Denmark, Belgium and Britain. Gazprom is also in talks with a short list of five major energy companies to develop a huge gas field in the Barents Sea, far above the Arctic Circle off western Russia, hoping to ship significant quantities of liquefied natural gas directly to the United States, the world's largest energy consumer.
Gazprom is the Russian government's largest energy policy instrument - though the company sometimes insists it operates only on business principles. The loss of fuel, if it persists, could shake Ukraine's economy the way the 1973 oil embargo helped plunge the United States into recession. Ukrainian officials said the loss could reverse its modest economic growth to cause a contraction of between 4 and 5 percent this year.
The dispute involves complex arguments by Gazprom, which says the price it wants to charge Ukraine is based on the prices of competing fuels, like diesel and bunker oil, on international exchanges. But not far below the surface, there is the embarrassing loss of a Kremlin-backed candidate in last winter's Orange Revolution.
Russia has increased the costs of its natural gas to other former Soviet states, though not as steeply. Belarus, a Russian ally, pays $47 per 1,000 cubic meters.
With its reduction in the flow of natural gas - from a rate of around 120 million cubic meters per day to around 96, according to Gazprom - Russia demonstrated there is only so far Ukraine can go before Russia reacts, and that indeed the country is still within Mr. Putin's range of influence. Each side blamed the other for the breakdown in talks.
"We will take all steps not to allow theft," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "We get the impression that the Ukrainian government, feeling themselves uncertain, deliberately decided to break off the negotiation process."
In addition to a large pipeline - called "Brotherhood" for the supposed warm relations between the two Slavic republics in Soviet times - Russian gas enters Ukraine through more than 100 smaller pipes.
"There's a lot of posturing and a lot of ways to put pressure on Ukraine," said Leonid Y. Mirzoyan, an equity analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a financial company that has investment banking business with Gazprom.
In addition to the natural gas provided by Russia, Ukraine has domestic production and contracts for natural gas from the Central Asian country of Turkmenistan.
Naftogaz officials in Ukraine have said the Russian exports to Western Europe will not diminish. Yet government officials have also said the country will siphon gas from the export routes if necessary. Ukraine is a party to the European Energy Charter, an agreement intended to prevent disruption of fuel passing between countries.
Nonetheless, Mr. Ignatyev, the Gazprom spokesman, said Sunday evening that Gazprom had already detected some siphoning of gas by Ukraine, and that the company would reveal its evidence on Monday.
Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington for this article.
Correction: Jan. 3, 2006, Tuesday:
An article yesterday about Russia's move to cut off natural gas intended for Ukraine misstated the amount involved. The decision reduced the flow through Ukraine's pipeline system, which is also a conduit for natural gas sent to Western Europe, by 125 million cubic meters per day, not by 24 million cubic meters.
Man, I don't think I can keep up reading all the interesting articles of the NYT every day... I think I may end up just choosing to be ignorant of the state of the world after all. *unsubscribes from NYT e-mails*
