Wordplay

The sign says "Leftward Project," a play on the term "Northeast Project," China’s academic enterprise designed to claim, in scholarly terms, that certain parts of Korean history really fall under the history of China instead.

The Korean novelist and conservative Yi Munyol, currently a guest writer in residence at the University of California at Berkeley, told a reporter over the weekend that "progressivism" is "not the exclusive property" of the left, and that he wants to see something he calls "progressive rightism."

"How clever!" says a fellow conservative. "Sure enough, he’s a man who knows how to work with language."

President Roh Moo-hyun, wearing a banner that says "leftist neo-liberalism," asks Yi, "Are you imitating me?"

(Hankyoreh Geurimpan, 19 September 2006)