The Iceberg

News of the evictions of farmers from their land in Pyongtaek has made the front page of Yahoo US. Read it here.

Korea’s magical run in the World Baseball Classic came to a crashing halt, losing 6-0 in the semi-finals to archrival Japan.  Kim Byung-hyun reverted to his World Series form in the seventh inning, giving up two hits and three runs, including a home run to pinch hitter Kosuki Fukudome.  Wasted was a fine performance by Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Jay Seo, who allowed just three hits and no runs in five innings of work.

This was the third meeting of the tournament between the two teams with Korea winning the first two.  Because of a whacked out tournament format, however, Korea will head home with a 6-1 record while Japan advances to the title game with four wins and three losses.  This needs to be fixed for the next tournament in 2009.

That said, I hope the Korean media don’t try to turn this into another conspiracy theory.  The tourney format was decided long before anyone knew that Korea would manage to put together a string of wins to advance to the semi-finals.  The bottom line is that these were the rules and the media must honor the fantastic effort of Team Korea by gracefully accepting the result.