“Typically the relationships become personal relationships between dozens and sometimes hundreds and thousands of people within the cities,” says Anthony Al-Jamie, President of SoCal Sister Cities Organization, a group that connects cities in Southern California with international siblings. “Those can’t come to an end when one mayor says he wants to cancel something.” Mayors aren’t permanent political figures, Al-Jamie also notes, and often these bonds outlast those elected to office.


bikeexpert:

Interesting article. The general culture portion for today. What intrigued the most was the Statue of Peace which made me read its entire Wikipedia page.

"The issue of comfort women and the Statue of Peace has inspired other such statues to be built in Seoul and in cities around the world with sizable Korean populations.

In May 2012, officials in the borough of Palisades Park in Bergen County, New Jersey, rejected requests by two diplomatic delegations from Japan to remove a small monument from a public park, a brass plaque on a block of stone, dedicated in 2010 to the memory of so-called comfort women, tens of thousands of women and girls, many Korean, who were forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

Days later, a South Korean delegation endorsed the borough's decision. However, in neighboring Fort Lee, New Jersey, various Korean American groups could not reach consensus on the design and wording for such a monument as of early April 2013.

In October 2012, a similar memorial was announced in nearby Hackensack, New Jersey, to be raised behind the Bergen County Courthouse, alongside memorials to the Holocaust, the Irish Potato Famine, and the Armenian Genocide, and was unveiled in March 2013.

An apology and monetary compensation of roughly US$8 million by Japan to South Korea in December 2015 for these transgressions largely fell flat in Bergen County, where the first U.S. monument to pay respects to comfort women was erected. However, the controversial Japanese comfort women foundation which was launched to July 2016 to finance this settlement was shut down by South Korea on November 21, 2018, effectively bringing an end to the 2015 agreement."

Source: Wikipedia


posted 1894 days ago