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Web-only Exclusives November 30, 2000 From Our Correspondent: Hirohito and the War A conversation with biographer Herbert Bix From Our Correspondent: A Rough Road Ahead Bad news for the Philippines - and some others From Our Correspondent: Making Enemies Indonesia needs friends. So why is it picking fights? |
NEWSMAKERS
RELEASING KOREAN GHOSTS OF THE PAST
TO MARK PRESIDENT KIM Dae Jung's first year in power, South Korea will release the man considered to be the world's longest-serving political prisoner. Woo Yong Gak, 71, was jailed in 1958 on charges of spying for North Korea. Since then, he has spent most of his time in solitary confinement and is thought to be in poor health. Woo and 16 other men - all have been jailed for at least 30 years and are serving life sentences for alleged espionage or for holding North Korean sympathies - had been left out of the two previous Kim amnesties because they refused to sign an oath of obedience to South Korea's laws. In the end, Kim, a former dissident and political prisoner sentenced to death by Seoul's military-backed government in 1980, came under pressure from Amnesty International to grant the pardons. Justice Minister Park Sang Cheon admitted the pressure led to the men's release, but justified the decision as leading to "greater national harmony." Not everyone was in tune. "This is insufficient," said Nam Kyu Sun who heads a support group for families of some of the more than 300 other political prisoners who remain behind bars.
WHO'S GOING TO GET LUCIO TAN?
FORMER PHILIPPINE AIRLINES CHAIRMAN and tycoon extraordinaire Lucio Tan might fall between the bureaucratic cracks, if he's lucky. A panel of prosecutors for the Department of Justice advised Justice Secretary Serafin Cuevas to continue to pursue Tan's prosecution for nine cases of tax evasion, while the Bureau of Internal Revenue wants them thrown out because they were filed without the approval of BIR Commissioner Beethoven Rualo. Tan and 10 officers in his Fortune Tobacco Corp. and owners of 11 affiliated firms were charged in 1998 with evading payment of taxes from 1990 to1992 totalling more than 25.27 billion pesos - almost $1 billion. Tan was eased out of PAL in January by President Joseph Estrada. Acting under pressure from creditors, Estrada put a member of his inner circle, Juan Luis Virata, at the head of the airline. But it's not all bad news for Tan. He looks set to become president of the Filipino-Chinese Chamber of Commerce Inc. when elections roll around on March 15. That's no simple sinecure - the FCCCI has more than 400 chapters up and down the country. And Tan represents a significant change in outlook - he's seen as more "Mainland-oriented" than "Taiwan-inclined" Vicente Yu, the current jobholder.
RE-CHANNELING THE NEWS
MALAYSIAN FINANCE MINISTER DAIM Zainuddin is reportedly rounding up money - some reports say as much as 50 million ringgit ($13 million) - to start a government-backed all-news television channel. The CEO of the endeavor is Mohamed Annuar Zaini, once press secretary for former deputy premier Musa Hitam. The Mahathir government has made no secret of its unhappiness with the international press coverage of Malaysia, and the broadcast could become part of a larger scheme that would include a weekly magazine to counter the bad press K.L. feels it has been getting. The plan is to kick off the yet-to-be-named channel as a domestic program on Malaysia's faltering satellite broadcaster Astro, and go regional at an unspecified time in the future. Astro's own news efforts were abandoned in 1997 after owner Ananda Krishnan lost loads of money. He had wound up sacking his largely expatriate newsroom staff before getting a program on air.
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