Buga Kingz - Siren / 부가킹즈 - 싸이렌

Here's a catchy-as-hell song from Buga Kingz, a hip-pop group with Bobby Kim, probably my favorite Korean singer inasmuch as I have a favorite Korean singer. There are a few other videos of this song floating around youtube, including this one, which has 74% more box. Here's another decent song with Bobby Kim, a collaboration with Dynamic Duo called "Insomnia." And here's a catchy Dynamic Duo collaboration with Paloalto. And here are a couple of live clips with Dynamic Duo, Bobby Kim, and Drunken Tiger. So that's how we do that.

Update: Hell, might as well post a couple songs by Leessang (리쌍) another good hip-pop group that often collaborates with Dynamic Duo, Bobby Kim, Tiger JK, T, and the usual suspects. Library of Soul remains the only CD I've purchased in Korea, except for that one of traditional music in Gyeongju. "내가 웃는게 아니야" is the best-known song off that album, but other good ones are "개리와기리" and "의정부."

Just a bit outside.

One of my second grade students (US 8th grade) decorated his desk thusly:



Yes, I'm a good teacher and I corrected him. "Oh, 찍찍찍!" he said.

ATEK, KAFLA, FUBAR?

Something that will probably get more attention among foreign teachers here is the Association for Teachers in Korea (ATEK) and their attempts at rapprochement with the Korean Association of Foreign Language Academies (KAFLA). ATEK was started in March to, among other things,

represent [English teachers'] interests and to play a bridging role between Korean and non-Korean English teachers.

You may recall that last week I posted briefly on KAFLA and their quest to "block unqualified hagwon teachers." A Korea Times piece from May 19th says:

The Korea Association of Foreign Language Academies (KAFLA) complained that the government was ``recklessly’’ opening the door to foreigners without building any safeguard against unqualified teachers. The association has about 7,000 members.

``The government is under the illusion that an unlimited number of English teachers exists overseas,’’ said Seo Jung-sook, information director of the association. ``Inviting more foreign teachers will eventually degrade the average quality of instructors and drive up costs for us.’’

Native English speakers who have no teaching experience in their 20s receive the same salaries as Koreans who have taught English for more than 10 years, she said.

The association said the Korea Immigration Service (KIS) does not retain data on foreign nationals who have had work experience here. ``No hagwon owners want to work with unqualified foreigners. Most hagwon employers terminate contracts of unacceptable foreigners, those guilty of sexual harassment or taking drugs,'' general director Choi Chang-jin said.

``However, many of these `blacklisted' foreigners return and teach English at other hagwon. I have seen a foreigner, who was expelled on drug charges, return here within three days. This is because the government does not keep records on these foreigners,'' Choi said.

And continues

As for the incoming association for native English-speaking instructors, the owners said they will take all measures against them.

``I don’t think the association will truly represent foreign English teachers, so we don’t see any point in talking with it, even if it is established,'' Choi said. KAFLA said it will take all measures possible to prevent foreign teachers from forming the representative body.

To which I extended an invitation for that group to have sexual intercourse with itself. In the paper two days ago was a piece called "Foreign Teachers Seek Dialogue With Hagwon Owners." ATEK responded to KAFLA's saying they would not meet with ATEK, but then in a comment on the ATEK piece KAFLA told the KT:

Upon the suggestion, KAFLA indicated they could meet the leaders of the foreign teachers' group but that does not mean that they acknowledge ATEK as a representative body.

``We cannot acknowledge the body. Still, we can meet them on an individual basis to discuss some issues,’’ said its general director Choi Chang-jin.

Well, all the news isn't bad though. Anyway, on the latest Seoul Podcast, Zen Kimchi said I was falling into the trap of making this an us vs. them issue. I agree with that, and also with his suggestion that some Korean teachers are right to complain about the disparity in salaries between native speakers and Korean English teachers. However, I stand firm on two counts: (1) the original piece on KAFLA nine days ago was a one-sided hit piece, and (2) you can't go after quote-unquote unqualified foreign teachers without looking in the mirror and examining the quality of Korean English teachers as well. I could talk all day about whether Korean English teachers do the job better than foreigners---a lot of times they do---and whether the system is set up to let them be more successful while we are destined to fail---I see my classes only once or twice a month---and there's no sense in getting into it now.

I'll just reiterate that, whether it's a union or a national accreditation system, foreign teachers really need a stake in the system here. The only measuring stick is years experience and salary, and for all the bellyaching about unqualified-this and untrained-that, if there were a national ordering system that rewarded, say, camps, seminars, demonstrations, publications, and language skills---in addition to years on the job---I think you'd not only have achieved a very important dialogue between "us and them" but you'd also have found a really nice way to make native teachers more productive and more useful.

If you read my feed on google you'll see that I pressed "enter" too quickly and published an unfinished version of this. My bad.

Earthquake drills on Tuesday.

The air was filled with sirens today as schools ran earthquake-preparedness drills. The pictures here I stole off Naver, and you can't tell me this next one wasn't staged.



Of course my school had the drill, too, and I was told they originally had planned to lead the students outside, but because there wasn't enough time they just hid under their desks. I have to question the wisdom of that, but I suppose in a real earthquake there isn't much time to do much else besides hide and hope. Thinking back to how my school does fire drills, and how long it takes students to get outside, trying to herd them into the playground for an earthquake drill probably wouldn't have been much more successful. [Edit: Now that I look at other pictures, seems that pretty much everybody just hid under their desks rather than go outside.] Some 8.2 million people nationwide participated in the tests. That number does not include me and my colleagues, who stayed in the teachers' office because we're tough.

Googling around for information about the earthquake in China, I found one case of 900 middle school students buried in the rubble of their school, plus other stories I don't have the stomach for right now. The drills today were in response to worries about what would happen should a similar event happen in Korea. The Korea.net article I linked above says:

The [Chinese] students died while attending classes in poorly constructed buildings that were easily demolished. Some analysts, however, also attribute the deaths to poor disaster preparedness training for students.

Sorry to sound crass, but I don't know if today's exercise, which focused on crouching down under desks, is the best way to avoid being crushed by a school. Just seems very reactionary, and not a fully-formed plan. *cough* While I have no idea how likely a huge earthquake is in Korea, there's no question that we should be worried about poorly constructed buildings as well. My Thursday-Friday school is two years old, yet each classroom has cracks running down the walls, and the floors are uneven. Since folks weren't worried about earthquakes until two weeks ago, and since most buildings weren't built . . . two weeks ago, it stands to reason that more mind should be paid to the issue in the future.


From the Chosun Ilbo.


I'd still like them to spend some time teaching traffic safety, as my heart races each day when I watch people of all ages just walk out into the street. This is, after all, one of the most dangerous countries in the world for pedestrians. I'm not sure I can name it the most dangerous, because I'm sure conditions in non-OECD countries are worse, but that so many pedestrians are dying ought to be a cause for concern. Sorry to keep flogging my new hobby horse---not a euphamism, and doesn't conjure pleasant images even if it were---but I just don't understand why traffic safety isn't a bigger issue, rather than hypothetical threats like earthquakes and cows.

Jesus Fucking Christ, get an editor already.

I planned to go on the Seoul Podcast tomorrow night and dispute my unfairly-earned label as a "pissed off guy," but after a string of positive or neutral posts the past couple days, today's efforts have disrupted my trajectory. I brought up ambiguity in my last post with the Anti-English Spectrum, and here's an even better example from today's Korea Times.



No, the story's not about shoplifting and spitting, it's about crimes against children. You can browse through the "Shoddy Journalism" category for more examples, or you can just click on any English-language edition of a Korean paper. And no, just so we're clear, this stuff doesn't get me all in a rage to the point of being "pissed off." I haven't punched through any desks at work over a misplaced word, and I didn't start an online petition to have my name switched from "Brain" to "Brian." I hardly ever swear in real life, I take my vitamins every day, I brush my teeth before bed, and I'm an all-around nice guy. Just that stories about good-for-nothing English teachers and slutty girl bands usually get more attention than write-ups about Jangheung.

More of the same.

The Marmot's Hole dug this up, a cartoon some Korean blogger made of good-for-nothing foreign English teachers who get their drink on and their smoke on, and invariably go home with something to poke on (though the cartoonist didn't depict that).

Um, in a country where 73% of Korean men drink alcohol every day, and where 40% of adult males smoke cigarettes (an generously low estimate down from 72% in 1994). The World Health Organization estimated that a decade ago 43% of male physicians smoked, and yes I know the cartoon is probably refering to marijuana and yes I know ten years is a long time but I'm not going to let that stop me. I never got that angle of attack, and never understood the stereotype of foreign teachers teaching drunk or high. I'm sure it happens once in a blue moon, but not enough to warrant comment. They'd be better off getting us for not shaving, for dressing like slobs, and for smelling bad. Anyway, and I'm going to trot out my old stand-by, I'll bet if you counted all the foreigners busted over the years for drugs, for alcohol abuse, for violence, and for illegal teaching, they'd still total much less than the 800 men who raped a middle school girl held captive in Gwangju.

Tangentially related, it looks like that, regardless of the spin job done by the Korea Times earlier this month, the "Citizens' Association for Lawful English Education" lets its true colors show through on their Korean-language cafe. Known in a previous incarnation as the "Anti-English Spectrum Cafe," and oblivious to the existence of structural ambiguity in my language, Korea Beat has translated their "statement of purpose," and here's an excerpt:

We gather here to do two things for that journey.

Anger at the arrogant English Spectrum, alive and well as ever despite criticism for its debasement of Korean women, and the expulsion of illegal, low-quality English instructors.

The small but powerful country, the Republic of Korea!

We are Anti-English Spectrum, fighting for justice for a land whose heart is not yet shriveled up.

Our work holds meaning for our country and our society. We do it together!

This is the citizens’ movement for the expulsion of illegal foreign language teachers.

Yeah, for some reason the use of alcohol correlates to a person's visa status, and by having consensual sex rather than paying for it like everyone else we somehow invalidate our credentials. Anyway, their invitation to go fuck themselves still stands.

Edit: This comes a couple of hours after my original post---as my students are having an earthquake drill by hiding under their desks---but I just wanted to add that I liked Matt's comment on the Korea Beat post:

Let’s see, a group that wants to preserve the purity of the race by eliminating foreigners…I think we have a group like that back home. They’re called the KKK. What, exactly, makes these “patriots” any different from the KKK? I see two sides of the same coin.

I'm not equating online harassment with lynchings and cross-burnings, but remember that the organization admitted to stalking foreigners in that Korea Times piece, and remember the violent outburts that took place in 2005, and an analogy not that off-base.

Whoa, who knew there was a big ol' art park in Jangheung?

Update: Well, this is embarrassing. This is actually located in Gyeonggi-do, not Jeollanam-do. Good thing nobody reads my posts of local interest.




While looking for something else I came across mention of the Jangheung Art Park in Jangheung county that opened in 2006. No idea how I never noticed or heard of that before. Looks big and neat and worth a visit.








Sorry to load up on the play areas, since most of us aren't 50 pounds and can't participate, but they seem to photograph a little better than the artwork and other installations. But you can find tons more photos on Naver and holy shit is that a McDonald's in Jangheung? I dunno, maybe not.

Gwangju Democratization Movement in Gangjin.

I've often found that the best sources of English-language information, and perhaps the only sources of English-language information, for some tourist and historical sites are the placards set up by the local governments. I pointed that out when I transcribed the text from a few placards around Suncheon marking points of note of the Yosu-Sunchon Rebellion, because there's not too much else available in English. Likewise, a placard comes in handy when we want to learn a little about the Gwangju Democratization Movement as it spread out from Gwangju to neighboring towns and counties. Unfortunately, I've found pretty much nothing about what happened in 1980in these areas, and instead have to rely completely on a placard I came across last spring in Gangjin-eup.



I'm pretty sure this one is located in front of the Gangjin County Office, and I know there's at least one more placard in town, and perhaps their locations correspond to the points on the crude map. I remember seeing another placard beside the old bus terminal, and you can see it next to the new one in this photograph.

The English text on the picture I've included reads:

May 18 Kwangju Demonstration Movement.
The Demonstration Movement in Kangjin area has been ignited by demonstrators arrived in Kangjin from Kwangju City by eight buses on May 21, 1980.

As the demonstrators entered the Kangjin, the police forces voluntarily withdrew their forces avoiding physical clash. Citizens being already aware of the Kwangju massacre welcomed the student demonstrators and joined with them.

Having set up their headquarter at the Kangjin church, the students and citizens made an organized demonstration in several places such as County Hall and Bus Terminal. At night, they stayed at the church or the inns nearby and the sisters from the church offered foods to them.

On May 23, 1980, about 500 students from Kangjin Agricultural High School gathered together and joined in the demonstration screaming "Lift the Martial Law", "Recover the democracy", and "Free Kim Dae Jung". The demonstration reached its climax as the members from the Regional Young Man's Association and Young Man's Counsel add to the demonstration group. On May 23rd, there were two bullet wounded people and many other wounded ones from Haenam Wooseljae clash against the Martial Law Command and they were hospitalized and cared for in the provincial hospital, the current Kangjin clinic.

On May 24th, Civilian Force and students joined together and made their last demonstration as they approached to Jangheung area during which no wounded ones occurred.

NPR on Pittsburghese.

National Public Radio did a two-minute piece called "A Primer in Pittsburghese" a few days ago, with the tagline: "Some cities have accents, Pittsburgh has its own language." I wouldn't go that far, but the accent is quite distinctive. I always found it pretty annoying when I lived there, but having spent huge chunks of the past three years overseas I get nostalgic when I hear it. It's common in my family, and not so rare among young people, so I wouldn't say it's dying out.

The finest, and funniest, piece of Pittsburghese comes from a skit from a local ratio station WDVE:

Weekend anti-beef rallies lead to arrests.

Scroll down for updates.







Big rallies and demonstrations in Seoul over the weekend against American beef resulted in the arrest of 30 some people. The Chosun Ilbo has the story in English here, and you can find other photos and stories in Korean here.

My coteacher was there, along with several other teachers, and she took the redeye train back to Suncheon this morning. She told me I ought to attend one fo the rallies, to experience the atmosphere, but I politely declined. Hahaha, big mistake. I think next time I'd better just say that I don't understand English, or that I'm allergic to outside. Talking about current events is often less a discussion and more of a trial or a dissertation defense, with both sides discrediting the other's sources. Anything that I say coming from the Joongang Ilbo or Chosun Ilbo is immediately thrown out, and my objections to scare-mongering in the media are ignored because those objections are repeated in said papers. It's not that I don't admit there are legitimate reasons for protesting the President or the FTA, it's just that I believe a lot of this passion has stemmed from baseless rumors and intentional deception and that there are motives beyond just food safety (more on that in a later post, along with some context for this conversation, since I normally don't talk about politics with Koreans coworkers).

My coteacher told me about the arrests this morning and that she was very sad about it. She's a very lovely woman, and a bit of an activist if you couldn't tell. Anyway, seeing these photos reminds me of a post The Marmot's Hole had a few days ago titled "Anti-FTA Demonstrators: sheep in the US and wolves at home," based off two stories from the Chosun Ilbo. One of the articles says of a 2006 anti-FTA demonstration, according to Sonagi's translation:

In June 2006 a group opposed to the Korean-US FTA went to the US to hold a demonstration. They obtained permission from the police and peacefully picketed in a confined area.

One wonders why these people who, for one month, paralyzed traffic in the city center behind Gwanghwamun became gentle sheep in the US. It’s because of the awareness that public authorities enforce the law, gloves off, against transgressors on the spot. US law enforcement warned visiting Korean demonstrators through a posted warning, “Demonstrators who touch the police will be arrested immediately.” Although excessive use of police authority can be a problem in advanced countries, it is compensated for by the trust and respect for public authority.

* Update: Fox News has the story, and reports that 68 people were arrested over the weekend.

* Update 2: More pictures from the teachers' rally from the union's homepage.

What's that smell?

Junior Naver makes learning English fun.

Forbes ranks South Korea as hardest-working country.

Forbes.com reports that in South Korea

the average employee works 2,357 hours per year--that’s six-and-a-half hours for every single day of their life. According to a 2008 ranking by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, South Koreans work the longest hours per year, on average, out of every other OECD member.

It comes as no surprise for many of us to hear that Koreans put in long hours, whether at work or at school. Matter of fact I just caught myself skimming over the part in the article about the civil servant who sees his kids "10 or 15 minutes a week, and then just on the weekend" without much of a reaction because that's something we hear about frequently. At my private school my first year, classes didn't end until 10:50 p.m., and the lecture hall always had dozens of students in "detention" until 12:30 a.m. But I think many of us would dispute "hardest-working," at least according to how we define the term, because a lot of what falls under the umbrella is face time, whether at the office, asleep in the lounge, or hanging out with the boss after hours. The Forbes piece continues, after talking about other countries with less rigorous schedules:

As for the opposite extreme, South Korea, things are slowly moving toward the OECD norm after the Korean government introduced a five-day working week in 2004 for schools and companies with over 1,000 employees. But with the culture of hard work so deeply ingrained, change is slow. "A Korean's identity comes from his title at work," says Michael Breen, author of The Koreans, explaining that employees often refer to each other by titles such as "office manager Kim" or "accountant Park," even outside the workplace.

"This is an authoritarian corporate culture," he adds. "It's very bad form to leave the office before the boss does, so people will hang around doing nothing, and then when the boss leaves, they feel free to leave. ... Because of all of that, people don't have much of a life."

Productivity remains low, though, and a Korea Times piece from last year says, quoting from the International Labour Office, that South Korea's productivity remains at 68% of the US's. A Los Angeles Times article from last month has a lot of the same statistics of the Forbes piece, but presents the flip-side of the issue. An excerpt:

Many South Koreans see their lives as well short of wonderful. Workers put in the longest hours in any free-market economy. Students are pushed to study to exhaustion. And among the most advanced democracies, South Koreans remain among the stingiest when it comes to spending on leisure and fun.

The situation leaves South Koreans poised on the fringes of a collective burnout, a national state of stress and grumpiness that could complicate new President Lee Myung-bak's contention that they all should work harder to reboot a sluggish economy.

"South Koreans are not trained to enjoy cultural life and leisure," complained Yoon Chang-il, 47, a patent lawyer in Seoul who says his generation remains gripped by a fear of falling behind working peers and competitors. "Most people work late at night, both men and women, single and married, because there is a business culture of obsession and pressure. And when you go to the office on Saturdays, there are always people working."

Wikipedia points us to an article from the Christian Science Monitor from 2001, on the topic of creating the five-day work-week in South Korea. The article gives us this chart:



And this quotable paragraph:

But many observers expect it may take a while before South Korea's obsessive culture of work recedes from society. Even if the government regulates shorter work hours, they say, people may voluntarily abstain from earned vacations.

Wikipedia also points us to an article in the Asia Times that talks about death by overwork, although that piece deals mainly with Japan. In a 2007 release by Korea.net, a government-run page, two-thirds of Koreans considered themselves workaholics, with 38% saying they are required to work overnight or weekends, and 34% saying they voluntarily put in overtime in order to meet deadlines. The tricky question is, were respondants being truthful, or were they exaggerating because Korean culture has historically expected them to work hard, and were thus guilted into responding the way they did?

The CSM piece talks about how being so overworked is actually counterproductive and counterintuitive, and at least some people share those sentiments. There was a piece in the Korea Times a few weeks ago that talked about it, but I can't find it now, though I did come across this article talking about how some employers are starting to value creativity. It contains the same information we've just read in other articles, so I'll just excerpt a couple parts:

``Being busy is the biggest enemy to becoming creative,'' said Seoul-based career coach Kim Sul-nam, who teaches working men and women how to draw out their inner creativity. ``Korean society, as we know, is one of the fastest-moving in the world, so that's already not a great start.''

and

``You can't expect someone to come up with the most clever and unique ideas, when he or she is tired to death,'' said Kim, stressing that the best ideas come ``when your mind and body are relaxed.''

A team of Dutch psychologists found in 2006 that people struggling to make complex decisions did best when they were not concentrating on the situation at all, which demonstrates that working around the clock isn't the smartest way to go.

Blogger "Roboseyo" shares some of his thoughts on the topic here.

I'm sure this Forbes article will be used by Kimcheerleaders to champion whatever it is they need to champion about Korean culture, and after this article went online the scholars on Dave's did their requisite collective groan. I did too, a little, because I remember having to teach middle school students a chapter from this book with this reading (page 198):

My father says that Koreans are one of the hardest working peoples in the world. And I think it's true. I live in Dallas, and I have some friends from Korea in my neighborhood. Their parents work very hard. They usually start their work early in the morning and come back home late at night. And they do their best for their children to have a better education. They know what's important in life.
- Betty Smith from Dallas, Texas.

Wait for it . . . *groan*. The implication being that parents from other cultures don't know what's most important in life. We just read about the man who sees his kids 10 minutes a week. We saw an article in the KT twelve days ago reporting that 72% of men drink alcohol every day. We know how busy students are and how their parents use after-school academies as babysitting services. Yet there is still the deep conviction that Korean parents are somehow more loving, more caring. I wonder if the woman who said this is a parent:

Jung Yeon-hee, a chairwoman of the Seoul City Council who pushes ahead with the plan, said ``I have never seen students who die because of studying.''

Tactless, tasteless. Korea has the highest suicide rate in the OCED, and that Chosun Ilbo article tells us the leading cause of death of people in their 20s and 30s in Korea is suicide (motor vehicle accidents is the leading killer of that demographic back home). I can't find any statistics now, but from anecdotal evidence I can see that suicide among overworked, or overbullied, students in South Korea is not unusual. One such story was of two twin sisters in Changwon who threw themselves from the top of an apartment building last December after testing poorly.

Well, I'm getting off topic, and all those issues are something a more able writer could write a book, or five, about. A book nobody in Korea would take seriously because the writer's not Korean. But my point wasn't to make fun of Koreans, but to provide a little bit of context to what I'm sure will be the leading headline on all the Korean papers the next week or so. It's just weird that again, as with that New York Times piece on Korea's awesome Foreign Language High Schools, the writers at these huge media institutions are still writing "puff pieces," as the Metropolitician calls them, rather than spending thirty minutes googling around. Anyway, working hard is important, and at least Koreans seem to be in agreement about that, even if "what's most important in life" varies from person to person. Certainly prefer this to the slacker chic that is celebrated in the US.

But, whatever, I'd like to close with a few excerpts from a neat little book called Confucius Lives Next Door. It deals mostly with Japan, but I still find parts of it applicable. There's a whole lot I want to quote from this chapter---like this bit about "almost all Japanese schools, businesses, and agencies have more workers than a comparable company would have in the West"---but I'll keep it short. It starts by talking about the manipulation of the yen in the mid-80s, the consequential recession, the myth of "lifetime employment," and the social contract between employers and employees. I'll pick it up here, when it talks a little about "productivity" and how there statistics on productivity and diligence are limiting, and cannot be simply examined out of the context of their respective societies. From page 187-188:

A more significant explanation for the low rate of unemployment, even in recession, is that the Japanese have made a national calculation of comparative costs. They have decided that the social costs associated with large-scale unemployment would be greater than the costs required to keep people at work. "There are always costs involved in unemployment," the economist Takeuchi Hiroshi, the chief forecaster for the Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan, explained to me once. "The only question is who bears the expense. In your country, it's usually the worker first, and then the government, and then the society as a whole because you have all those people on the street without a job. In Japan, the company is expected to bear the costs, because that's better for society as a whole."

This policy explains why Japan, despite its emergence as a global financial and industrial power, always rates fairly low on global comparisons of productivity. My economics text defines "productivity" as "the relative efficiency of economic activity---that is, the amount of products or services produced compared to the amount of goods and labor used to produce it." This means that a company or country that turns out a lot of product with few people working on any given job than you would see in another country. In purely industrial terms, low productivity is a Bad Thing; it increases direct costs. But for Japan, low productivity is the secret weapon. It's a key reason why the socieity remains civil, stable, and safe. Other countries have to spend far more money, time, and energy combating crime, drugs, and family decay than Japan spends. So economists may find, when measuring the direct costs of producing a new car, case of beer, microchip, or whatever, that Japan has low productivity. But Japan has also reduced the indirect costs that stem from the rigors of high-productivity societies.

"Gypsy Scholar" on Anti-Americanism.

Professor and blogger "Gypsy Scholar" has a neat little story up about anti-Americanism in Korea. Gangwon-do? Try Gangwon-DON'T! Hahahahahaha. *cough* Go read it here.


God I've had this saved on my computer since December and I'm thankful for a chance to finally use it.

"But at this point, the difference in law and culture at bathing places is what is likely to be at fault."

Another piece on Michael White in the Korea Times. The lengthy article is worth a read, and contains much of what we've heard before on blogs (here too) and on the podcast interview, but here's an excerpt of the end:

Unlike America and Europe, where there is the Good Samaritan Law, which imposes no blame when a person dies while receiving emergency treatment from someone attempting to help, in Korea a person who helps can be held liable for the death. Hwang at the fire station said the law hinders people from trying to help a critically ill person ― such as Michael in this case ― as they fear punishment if the outcome proves fatal.

The sauna staff, who were not certified in any rescue related activity, only called an ambulance and waited for the emergency rescue team to arrive and begin basic resuscitation. ``We cannot blame the staff,'' Lee said.

Hwang said the staff were not trained in any emergency measures as the current law does not require them to be educated in CPR, unlike swimming pool staff. ``We are seeking ways to train staff, but unless we take away the legal burden, the effect could be questionable,'' he added.

``We all feel sorry about what happened to the boy. But at this point, the difference in law and culture at bathing places is what is likely to be at fault,'' an officer at the fire station said requesting anonymity.

*Sigh* I'm really not in the mood to deconstruct that or to, again, rehash the accounts Michael's mother has given and how they conflict with what the staff and medical personnel are saying now. I don't think I could do a cool-headed job. I also don't feel comfortable doing that because news updates have been coming almost daily and stories just aren't adding up well enough to make a post to end all posts. And, I don't want to talk too much about stories of other foreigners who died under suspicious circumstances and whose deaths were never investigated. You can find lengthy write-ups here, here, and here, to name just a few, and we can recall the case of the foreigner who died of a heart attack in Incheon Airport last October because the security guard wouldn't let EMTs enter through the exit.

I will add, though, that in addition to what's available on blogs and in the papers, a few Dave's posters have typed up a transcript of the Seoul Podcast interview and put it online here, and that they're currently getting it translated into Korean for distribution it's been translated into Korean and is posted on the same site, here.

But the topic of cultural differences is one pretty much any foreigner will hear during his or her time in Korea. Probably within, like, the first three seconds, and probably to used to justify when something doesn't go your way. Wasn't too long ago we heard about politicians who went to the States, fondled some statues, and blamed cultural differences. That may or may not be acceptable, but nevertheless that excuse was invoked. And if I weren't in school I'd have more free time to look around for other examples.

It works both ways, though, and I recall reading about this story for the first time last year. Wikipedia has a summary of "The Hattori Shooting," which happened in Baton Rouge on October 17, 1992. A 16-year-old Japanese exchange student Yoshihiro Hattori was walking up to a house for a costume party. Turns out it was the wrong house, and the homeowner shot him after the student rang the doorbell and then went around to the side of the house. The Wikipedia entry has a bit of the exchange between the D.A. and the defendant:

"You were safe and secure, weren't you?" Moreau asked Peairs during his appearance before the grand jury. "But you didn't call the police, did you?"
"No sir." Peairs said.
"Did you hear anyone trying to break in the front door?"
"No sir."
"Did you hear anyone trying to break in the carport door?"
"No sir."
"And you were standing right there at the door, weren't you - with a big gun?"
Peairs nodded.
"I know you're sorry you killed him. You are sorry, aren't you?"
"Yes sir."
"But you did kill him, didn't you?"
"Yes sir."

Rodney Peairs was acquitted after the jury deliberated for just over three hours, and had to pay damanges to Hattori's family.

Say what you will about the negative aspects of Japanese culture, the culture of guns and climate of violence that exists in the US is in stark contrast to Japan, and people there were rightfully shocked by this "difference in law and culture." A culture that permitted a man to not only own a weapon but use it with impunity. Likewise, foreigners here are shocked by the laziness, incompetence, and shiftiness of authorities over here, attitudes that differ, at least in our minds, with what we've come to expect from those responsible for our well-being.

The Hattori case garnered worldwide attention, and if people are interested in pursuing the Michael White story, and not letting it fall through the cracks like the cases of Bill Kapoun, Matthew Sellers, Jamie Penich, and the woman stabbed to death at her Suncheon school in 1998, they'd be wise to follow Stephannie White's advice and write to your hometown newspapers. As most of us know, what happens in Korea tends to stay in Korea, and is apparently of little interest to people in other countries. That may prove to be the case again, but as others have pointed out, we ought to make the effort to go global, rather than whining on English teacher blogs that nobody reads.

Okay, I know I really shouldn't be laughing at this.

Somehow this transpired last week at the Preakness.







From the Baltimore Sun, via Deadspin.

Remembering the 2003 Daegu Universiade (and those women).

A couple of weeks ago I was reading some old Marmot's Hole entries when I came across a story he was running third-hand from a newspaper article quoted by a now-defunct blog. Here is an excerpt, apparently from the other blog, that the Marmot quoted, and which I will quote in full:

At the men’s volleyball competition Wednesday between the United States and North Korea at the Universiade games in Daegu, the Americans were booed upon entering the court. They say it went on for quite some time, stopping only after the announcer asked for restraint.
Reports are that the crowd numbered around 4,000, and that many in attendance were part of the university student movement. When you consider how American athletes have not been given that kind of treatment in other Universiade competitions one can assume that the behavior was instigated by such students; but more importantly, it was an example of the confused state our society is in these days.
It’s not as if the Americans committed some terrible, insolent incident that would put the reception they got into context; and still, here in Korea, they get publicly heckled like that, and in front of the Northerners. According to one journalist present, some children waving American flags were made to cry when confronted by one adult, who asked, “Where do you think you are, carrying those things around like that?"

The article and the Marmot's entry was from 2003, when the Summer Universiade was held in Daegu. I couldn't find any reference to the incident in the media or in other blogs, but it's still an interesting anecdote considering the articles I'm about to quote. Given the nature of what I'm about to quote, and given the number of articles and sources I've combed through, I'm inclined to believe it apocryphal and unlikely to have slipped through the hypersensitive media of the day. But the reason the story stood out to me is because next Wednesday, May 31st, the International University Sports Federation will decide if Gwangju will host the 2013 Universiade, or if the games will go to Kazan, Russia, or Vigo, Spain. Also known as the World University Games, the Universiade will feature about 10,000 athletes from some 170 countries. Should Gwangju win this will be Korea's third time hosting. Daegu had it in 2003, and Muju, Jeollabuk-do, hosted the Winter Games in 1997. I couldn't find much information online about the Muju Universiade, aside from this interesting write-up from the FISU site, but there are plenty of articles out there on the Daegu Games. Most of the domestic articles come from the Joongang Ilbo. The Korea Times changed its url last year, thus losing all articles written previously. The Chosun Ilbo has a few, but the user-unfriendly Korea Herald forces you to pay for articles older than a couple weeks.



Probably the best-known story to come out of the Games revolved around the busload of North Korea cheerleaders who noticed a picture of Kim Jong-il out in the rain and went batshit crazy. From CNN.com, an excerpt:

For the most part, North Korea's cheering squad for the University Games in South Korea last month lived up to their reputation as "the army of beauties."
Singing and smiling, the women became the center of attention wherever they appeared.
But one incident, captured by South Korean media, has shocked many South Koreans.
It involved a busload of the North Korean cheerleaders who became extremely upset over, what some onlookers said, a very trivial matter.
The cause of the emotional distress was a banner with the picture of what North Koreans they call their "dear leader", North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, which was hung crooked and left out in the rain.
For those North Koreans, it was considered sacrilege.
"How could you place our general in such a place?" a cheerleader said. "He deserves only respect. We cannot stand for this."

The Chosun Ilbo has a little more of the story of these loons. An excerpt:

The group of 150 cheerleaders, here as part of the North Korean delegation to the Universiade games in Daegu, first saw the banners at about 1:40 p.m., as the women were returning from an archery competition.
One banner had a picture of Kim Jong Il shaking hands with former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung at one end and a picture of the reunification flag at the other. In between was a message welcoming the North Korean athletes.
The women, who were in six separate buses, demanded that the vehicles stop. According to one bus driver, some even stepped on his right foot while trying to apply the brake themselves.
Then about 30-40 of them ran the 300-500 meters back to where the banners were. Protesting, they pointed out apparent horrors such as that a seal was stamped on Kim Jong Il's image, that the banners were hanging too low, that they were beside a scarecrow and that they had been left to the mercy of the rain and wind.
Several of the women, helping each other, managed to climb up a two-meter tree and pull down the four banners. They rolled them up, making sure to keep the images still visible, and carried them reverently back to the bus, while weeping out loud. About 10 of them also wrested a camera away from a South Korean reporter who was on the scene.

The North Korean cheerleaders were apparently a big deal here in 2003 and also in 2002, when they first arrived for the Asian Games in Busan. More on them a little later.

Reading through the Joongang Ilbo's stories I was surprised at how much protesting was going on before and during the Games, and how amped up at least the Joongang Ilbo and Chosun Ilbo are making things out to be. That makesthat original post on the Marmot's Hole seem very out of place, if true at all. Given the climate of the time, less than a year two girls were killed by an American military vehicle, it's not that out of the question, especially since those anti-American protests continued for years. Many of the articles indicate an unhappiness with welcoming North Korea considering that country's human rights record. So while the crowd may not have booed the U.S. volleyball team, it apparently quieted considerably when the U.S. and Japan entered the World Cup Stadium, as the North Korean cheerleaders, predictably, refused to cheer. From a Japanese source:

Some 300 young North Korean cheer girls, who stole the show at last fall's Pusan Asian Games with their show of patriotic support, suddenly became quiet when the Japanese and US delegations came forward and resumed cheering immediately after they marched off.

Demonstrations against North Korea seemed destined to derail this display of Korean unity before it even started. An excerpt from an August 18, 2003 Chosun Ilbo article, "Pyongyang Indicates Boycotting Universiade":

North Korea, offended by anti-Pyongyang protests here, said Sunday that it would not send its athletes and cheerleaders to the Universiade Games in Daegu.
According to its state official broadcaster, a spokesman for North Korea's Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland explained that because conservative groups in South Korea had insulted the Pyongyang regime at an anti-nuclear and anti-Kim Jong-il rally last week, Pyongyang could not send its athletes to "a dangerous South Korea, which did not guarantee the safety and dignity of a brother country."

An article titled "North Korean Athletes Again in the South" in a 2003 edition of the journal Korea Scope has a bit more of the statement:

Angry at some South Korean citizens’ burning of its flag and an image of its leader Kim Jong-il two days earlier, North Korea threatened on Aug. 17 to boycott the Universiade. The North’s move came in a statement issued by a spokesman of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland. “There occurred in the heart of Seoul in broad daylight such extreme and reckless provocation as seriously hurting the dignity and the prestige of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and malignantly insulting it,” said the statement, adding: “This compelled us to take a resolute measure as regards the issue of our people’s visit to South Korea fraught with the danger of openly infringing upon the security and the dignity of fellow countrymen in the North, the issue of sending our players’ team and supporters’ group to the Daegu Universiade at present.”

The news of the potential boycott came four days before the Games were set to begin, but South Korea apologized two days later and the North withdrew its threat. North Korea boycotted the 1984 and 1988 Olympic Games, and had, according to that Korea Scope article

rejected all of Seoul’s proposals for the North’s participation in international games hosted by South Korea such as the Seoul Asian Games in 1986, the Summer Olympic Games in 1988, the Busan East Asian Games in 1997 and the Kangwon Asian Winter Games in 1999, among other events. The North’s participation in the Busan Asian Games was the results of the South’s two-year efforts to persuade the North Koreans to take part in the games.

The blog Korean Unification Studies has a list of times where North and South have competed together under the same flag. The North's decision to participate in the Games cheered a lot of people up in Daegu. An official for the Taegu Summer Univeriade Organizing Committee was quoted in a Yonhap report saying:

"We had a depressed atmosphere here due to the subway arson attack but the decision by North Korea to dispatch a large delegation to the Taegu Summer Universiade and active promotion campaigns by the city council and administration officials have been heating up the atmosphere."

Right before the games security was tight. South Korean authorities were already on alert, distributing pamphlets on airport and seaport safety, and slightly restricting flights over Daegu, Gumi, and Yecheon during the games. The U.S. warned of possible attacks that would coincide with the anniversary of 9/11. In fact South Korea was warned of a possible terrorist attack during the games, according to Yonhap:

Security authorities were alerted against chemical weapons terrorist attack during the Taegu Universiade from an intelligence tip that the game sites were among possible targets by Islamic extremist groups, the Environment Ministry said Thursday [21 August]. Security surveillance has been intensified around North Korean team accommodation facilities, especially against suspicious substances.

Police have also bolstered their surveillance around game venues, restricting passage of dangerous material within 5 km of the venues. The National Intelligence Service (NIS) has received information from foreign sources that the Universiade is included in the list of possible attack targets, ministry officials said citing recently received document from the NIS.

But apparently the Games got off to a good start. From an understated Yonhap piece on the opening ceremony:

. . . [A]t 7.50 p.m. [local time], some 50 minutes after Ghana had led the procession of teams into the Taegu arena, hearts and voices were lifted skywards in unison with the sight of the blue and white Korean Peninsula flag fluttering in the Taegu night air. With flag bearers Choi Tae-woong and Kim Hye-yong leading the way, the young athletes must have been well aware they were representing not only the sporting hopes of the two Koreas, but also the dreams for peace, reconciliation and unification of a divided people.

The protests weren't confined to the August 15th Liberation Day holiday, but continued throughout the Univeriade. From an August 24th report:

North Korean reporters clashed Sunday [24 August] with a group of protesters demanding Pyongyang improve its human rights record in front of the Universiade Media Centre (UMC) in Taegu.

The reporters were returning to the UMC after covering North Korean athletes competing in the archery and diving events of the Taegu Summer Universiade when scores of ralliers raised placards saying, "Bring Down (North Korean leader) Kim Jong-il and Save North Korean Residents", witnesses said.

The North Korean reporters initially asked the demonstrators to get rid of the placards before moving inside the UMC.

Minutes later, however, several of the journalists re-emerged from the centre and struggled with the protesters to try to remove the placards, according to the witnesses.

Norbert Vollertsen, a German doctor noted for his efforts to bring humanitarian aid to the North, was pushed to the ground during the fracas, a witness said.

Shin Hye-sik, president of Internet newspaper "independent.co.kr" who took part in the rally, said, "Vollertsen, who was taking part in the rally with damaged feet, collapsed when a North Korean reporter hit him."

North Korea's KCNA has a slightly different take:

rowdyism was kicked up in Taegu where the 22nd universiade is under way. At least 100 members of the ultra right reactionary conservative organizations of South Korea including the South Korean netizen Solidarity for Democracy and the Youth Committee for Solidarity with Citizens for Freedom on 24 August staged such rowdyism as defiling the dignity and system of the DPRK and assaulting reporters from the North in front of the press centre in Taegu.

This rash act was kicked up again in South Korea in the wake of the frantic racket reported on the 15 August Liberation Day when the spirit of national reconciliation and unity and peaceful reunification for the implementation of the 15 June Joint Declaration is running high across Korea and the inter-Korean cooperation and exchange are brisk as evidenced by the joint march of the groups of the North and the South at an international sports function with the Korean Peninsula flag in the van[guard]. This is an open challenge to the will of the fellow countrymen for reunification.

Haha, interesting use of the passive voice in that first line. You can find a list of other statements made around that time here, and can get to other dates by playing with the numbers in the URL. There's a release available here, and I can't tell but looks like a different translation of the same one I just quoted. Its language is a bit more colorful. An excerpt:

This incident is through and through an intolerable criminal manoeuvre by heinous nation-sellers and human trash, who do not welcome the nation's reconciliation and unity, and is nothing but a desperate worthless rash act by those who are on the verge of death for being driven out in the great flow of the nation's history, which is moving towards the fatherland's reunification under the banner of the 15 June Joint Declaration.

Damn. It concludes with:

In this land, which is turning into a confrontation arena where personal security is seriously threatened because the Republic flags worn on the chests of our members and their clothes were torn by South Korean ultra-rightist groups and slogans calling on compatriots to topple their compatriots are shouted, it is very obvious that we cannot participate in the games without worries.

The South side should take due responsibility for this incident, immediately punish the leaders, apologize to us, and guarantee that such incidents will not recur.

We will watch the South-side authorities' attitude.

The South apparently did apologize, or "express regret" rather, and the North was placated long enough to not walk fly back home. Yonhap tells us:

North Korea's delegation to the 2003 Taegu Universiade said Wednesday [27 August] it will continue to take part in the sporting event despite the sporadic anti-Pyongyang rallies it said have seriously undermined inter-Korean relations.

In a press conference held at the Universiade Media Centre (UMC) here, Jon Guk-man, North Korea's chief delegate to the Taegu Universiade, said, "We have decided to continue to take part in the remainder of the Taegu Universiade because the South Korean authorities expressed regret, which clearly amounts to an apology, and pledged to prevent a recurrence (of the clash involving North Korean reporters and anti-Pyongyang ralliers in front of the UMC last Sunday).

"Our decision to continue to participate in the Taegu Universiade was made out of respect for the noble ideals of the ongoing sporting event and appreciate the brotherly love of most South Korean people and Taegu citizens," Jon said.

The North Korean official, however, warned right-wing forces in the South not to commit provocative acts that could hinder the progress towards national reconciliation and reunification.

Jon's remarks were in contrast to his statement the previous day in which he reiterated a threat to withdraw from the Taegu Universiade if South Korea fails to apologize for the recent incident and take measures to prevent future anti-Pyongyang rallies.

On August 28th an attempt to burn a North Korean flag in downtown Seoul was foiled by police. Said one of the participants:

“We were trying to protest against the North Korean journalists who committed acts of terror against South Korean citizens.”

Perhaps the aggressive tone towards the North and towards the South's toadyism in 2003 is a trait unique to the Joongang Ilbo, and to a lesser extent the Chosun Ilbo, or perhaps they were borne out of tense times between the two Koreas, but nevertheless I was surprised to read rather harsh words printed in that paper the week after the Games wrapped up. I'm not sure we would find such language in the papers today. Here is an excerpt of an editorial from "a former director-general of the South-North Dialogue Office at the Unification Ministry":

. . . [A]t the Daegu Universiade, North Koreans not only picked a quarrel about the behavior of South Korean citizens who exercised their freedom of expression within the lawful limits of the South Korean system, but they also showed a propensity to use violence themselves.
One of the “rules” which has been followed in the interactions between the two Koreas is “to follow the other’s guidance and order in the other’s region.” That means “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.”
Nevertheless, the Roh Moo-hyun administration, far from censuring the North Korean team who followed Pyeongyang’s law in Seoul, blamed and regulated its own citizens.
And the government, from Mr. Roh to the culture and tourism minister and the mayor of Daegu, was intent on “apologizing” to the North Koreans.
This country must be going really wrong. Doesn’t this government have a backbone? We note the fable that an anchovy does not marry an octopus, which has no spine.

A September 2, 2003 editorial titled "No place for politics in sports" criticizes the nationalism that enshrouded the games, making the assembly of 174 nations seem like a cross-border intramural tournament. An excerpt:

The 2003 Summer Universiade in Daegu, where young athletes from 174 countries around the world forged friendship and harmony, has ended. The event, supposedly a festival for world university students, was operated and reported as if the games were a celebration for the two Koreas only. That was not a mature or appropriate practice and we should learn a lesson from that.
The two Koreas marched together for the opening ceremony, following the precedents of the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the Busan Asian Games last year and the Aomori Winter Asian Games early this year. That heightened the expectation that the two Koreas would march together again and form a unified team for the Athens Olympic Games next year. It was encouraging that the two Koreas affirmed their reconciliation, cooperation, trust and friendship through sports. But outside the sports arena, the North threatened to boycott the games after some South Korean activists burned its flag. It is regrettable that politics overwhelmed the sports festival.
Moreover, the media and citizens focused their attention on the two Koreas, particularly the beautiful North Korean cheerleaders, instead of emphasizing the sports event itself, making the games look like a domestic festival. The two Koreas should reconsider their behavior in creating such an atmosphere, which was inappropriate for a world festival.

A blogger wrote pretty much the same thing regarding the coverage of the North Korean women in 2002 and 2003.

I remember when I was living in Seoul the Asian Games were held in Busan, and then the Universidad games in Taegu. I remember that for both these games, the biggest hits were the North Korean cheerleaders. They were extremely good looking girls that came cheering for their team, with DPRK and Korean unification flags. In fact, much more airtime and newstime was spent on them than the rest of the games. And not without reason: they were sweet cheery nice girls from North Korea. When they weren't performing their cheers ("Skill! Technique! Focus!") they were staying at a hotel off-limits to anyone else (many young guys would drive up there to meet them and get turned away).

North Korean cheerleaders in Busan (I think).

There is a lengthy piece on the North Korean cheerleaders here. It begins:

“They’re so beautiful!” cried Yang Hyeon-jeong, a 25-year-old volunteer at the Summer Universiade Daegu 2003, as a bus filled with North Korean cheerleaders prepared to depart.
Using a camera phone, Ms. Yang took a picture of two of the girls sitting on the bus. Then she held the phone up to the window so the cheerleaders could see their picture.
The North Koreans looked at the image with apparent amazement. They nudged a friend so she could see it too.
“Look how flawless their skin is!” cried Ms. Yang’s friend Lee Hae-shin, 21, also a volunteer.
The South Korean girls jumped up and down with joy, making the universal sign of love, putting their hands over their head and shouting, “Saranghaeyo” (“I love you”).

And continues:

That squad took the South by surprise. These were not the dark-skinned, malnourished-looking women often shown in TV news stories about North Koreans in Pyeongyang. Instead, plump, smiling, timid, fair-skinned girls walked into the public’s heart.
Before long, some of the cheerleaders had their own fan clubs in the South. One, Ri You-kyeong, still has a fan club at Daum, an online community.

There was also an interesting write-ups in the Washington Post and a smaller one in New York Times. From a September 9, 2003 Washington Post article:

Since the squad’s arrival here at the 22nd annual Universiade games, an 11-day sports competition that ended Aug. 31, the well-scripted women have become South Korea’s unlikely sweethearts—and a symbol of the South’s recent embrace of its old enemy. Even as North Korea squared off in a six-nation summit over its nuclear weapons program in Beijing last month, the cheerleaders, gushing with expressions of love for their dear leader, Kim Jong Il, were winning the admiration of millions here through poignant TV coverage and adoring newspaper headlines. Smitten South Koreans traveled hundreds of miles to offer roses and serenades to the Beauties from the North, as one headline called them.

The Joongang Ilbo piece I quoted a few paragraphs above concludes:

Not everyone in South Korea has been charmed by the cheerleaders.
“It was great, at first,” said Park Jin-suk, 25, a viola player for the Daegu Philharmonic Orchestra, which performed for the North Koreans during Saturday’s luncheon. But she added, “They were very different from us.”
How so? “They seemed to be trained,” Ms. Park said, with a tone of uncertainty. “The North Koreans’ movement seemed awkward and artificial, as if they’d been heavily trained.”
“They’re pretty, but their looks seem to be artificially made,” said Shin Gyu-beom, a 22-year-old police officer assigned to guard the squad. “They don’t seem to have any individual movement of their own.”
If the two Koreas reunify, Mr. Shin said firmly, he doesn’t want a North Korean girlfriend.

Getting a little ahead of ourselves, I came across a Japundit post from 2005 that says while these women are quite popular throughout Asia, some worry that impressionable young South Koreans may be mesmerized and influenced by these Northern Beauties (duh).

I'm not swept up in the love affair with North Korean women, and because of their hollow movements and vacant, lifeless smiles, I place such feelings of lust just a touch above necrophelia. Maybe that's an insensitive analogy, since some North Korean cheerleaders did end up in prison camps in 2006, reportedly for talking about what they saw while touring the South on three different occassions. While the media doesn't seem to know for sure why the twenty-one women were arrested, the Chosun Ilbo reports on some testimony from a defector:

Another defector explained the cheerleaders are picked among university students, propaganda squad members and music school students from good families. Before they were sent to South Korea, they had to sign a pledge bearing their 10 fingerprints that says if they are going to an enemy country -- Pyongyang’s epithet for the South -- they must fight as soldiers of leader Kim Jong-il and never talk about what they have seen or heard in South Korea once they return. They agree to accept punishment if they break the promise.

So bitterly ironic. Representing at one time the simplistic, beautiful utopia many South Koreans imagine to exist, and later falling victim to the country's harsh reality. I like how commenter "slim" summed things up on a One Free Korea post from 2006:

I was in Pusan in 2002 and the striking thing for me is how the Korean press and public were affixed on the women, while Western reporters focused on the cage.

Those who aren't locked up will be forming a single cheerleading team with South Korean cheerleaders for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but they won't be---in a strange choice of words---"unifying the dormitories." There are a couple other stories that didn't fit in anywhere else up there, such as this one on the disappearance of Nepalese runner Alisha Awal in the middle of the Games. According to Yonhap:

Police assume the 21-year-old athlete has contacted her boyfriend, Siraram Chaudary, who fled the athletes' village in similar circumstances during last year's Asian Games held in the southeastern port city of Pusan.

Also, looks like an Iranian Taekwondo athlete lost his medal to a South Korean guy over some bad officiating. And, another story that I can't fit anywhere else happened in Japan.

Tensions are rising across Japan before the scheduled docking of a controversial North Korean ferry (Monday) at the northern Japanese coastal city of Niigata. Steven Shayman in Tokyo reports that Japanese police have defused two bombs planted by suspected rightists near a North Korean-linked bank and a building of a pro-Pyongyang residents' group in the western Japanese city of Fukuoka.

More from the New York Times and the BBC.

And, while all this brouhaha was happening in South Korea, a group of 256 Jeju residents made a visit North bringing gifts of carrots and tangerines.

And this doesn't really fit the general trajectory of the post and with the Universiade, but on the topic of "North Korea's living exports" and North Korean women, I was reminded of the series cell phone commercials a few years back with Lee Hyori and North Korean dancer Cho Myong-ae. There is one commercial on youtube here. Googling around I see Cho also participated in a cross-country drama called "Sayuksin." There's an article here from the Korea Times, and I would make a joke about "all look same" but I don't think you'd find it funny, so I won't.

Epilogue: Matt pointed out in his comment something I'm frequently guilty of, the tendency to ramble on to no point and to forget what I was talking or writing about when I started. He suggested I put together a concluding paragraph to tie things together, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that the articles themselves were kinda the point. After I came across that Marmot's Hole post I started googling around to find other accounts of the story, but instead found many articles talking about palpable tension between the North and South. I found them interesting mostly because I had never paid attention to the Universiade before, and wouldn't have even heard of it at all if Gwangju weren't trying to host it and if stories about it didn't pop into my news feed. Now, I think there are several issues here that could be fleshed out into huge posts, if not chapters, by more able writers: the cheerleaders, for example, or why President Roh "apologized," why---or why not---it was necessary, expected, or typical. If I can think of a better conclusion I'll add it.

I suppose the point of this post, long-winded as it was, was to talk a little about what happened when the Universiade was last here, since I wonder how many people in the area even know what Universiade is. Personally I don't care too much about those Games, and I don't pay attention to college sports that aren't played on a gridiron on Saturday afternoon. Am I suggesting those conflicts will happen again? No, and I'm not trying to compare those demonstrations to, say, what I saw in Gwangju last weekend. I guess "그냥" is a bad answer to people who spent a long time scrolling through this, but I just thought the topic was kind of interesting.

Seoul Podcast with Michael White's mother.

If you haven't heard it yet, go and listen to Seoul Podcast's hour-long interview with Stephanie White, the mother of Michael White, the 14-year-old boy who died last week in a Gyeongsan sauna. Forget everything you've ever heard about the incompetence, laziness, callousness, and stupidity endemic among Korean police and medical workers, because this will throw all that out the window. I would summarize things a little bit and include some excerpts, but I think our computers would explode. Or, you'd put your fist through the monitor.

I don't want to editorialize too much here because it's such a recent and sensitive issue, but this is absolutely ridiculous, and Jesus Fucking Christ, can we get the word spread to as many as possible and reach a Korean audience as well? I know that too many of the expats in Korea with influence and Korean-language skills are too indifferent, too jaded, too lazy, too aloof, or too self-absorbed to do much beyond shake their head and mutter something about being a shame, but how about paying attention, for a change, to what is truly important in our "community."