Korea's Stephen Hawking in the news, and not for making his robot voice say dirty words.

From the KT:

Prof. Lee Sang-mook of Seoul National University (SNU) Earth and Environmental Science department was embroiled in a 100 billion won ($100 million) damages suit filed by bereaved family members of his student, who died in a car accident Lee caused.

Lee is often known here as `Korean Stephen Hawking' for overcoming his disability and making academic achievement.

The accusers filed for the suit in a California state court claiming that Lee is responsible in causing the student's death, because he was the driver. In July 2006, Lee and his student had a car accident during a geological survey in Death Valley, CA. The student died and Lee was paralyzed from the neck down. However, Lee resumed lecturing in a wheelchair after six months of rehabilitation.

Okay, maybe he was responsible, but isn't ten million a bit much? Yes, I know you can't put a price on your child's life, in spite of what divorce lawyers say, but it looks like Lee's accusers have learned from their American forbears. They've even learned to grieve without dignity and turn into total pricks:

Besides Prof. Lee, other parties sued by the student's families are SNU, California Institute of Technology, automobile maker Ford and several other relevant organizations.

The article isn't very informative, and I hadn't heard about this guy until today so I don't know anything about him. But it doesn't sound like he's squirreling away money:

Prof. Lee recently published a book about his rehabilitation and vision. The profits from book sales goes to a foundation he established in the name of his dead pupil.

A quick look around Google doesn't bring up any references to the Stephen Hawking parallel outside of that KT article and this post. Looks like a creation of the author. But why not the Korean Jyh-Hann Chang, an asistant professor at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania, who was paralyzed from the waist down when he was 19? Or the Korean Dr. Kanalu Young, the late professor at the University of Hawaii? Or the Korean Dr. George Jackson? Or, why not just Lee Sang-mook, a man whose struggles in a wheelchair-unfriendly country ought to be noteworthy in their own right.

These sorts of comparisons have been well-documented on this site. They are done to add credibility to Korean people and places and, it is assumed, to allow non-Koreans to connect to the things they probably never heard of before. The result of the comparisons, though, is that the Korean object is always cheapened because it can never live up to the original. Though they might be significant and good in their own right, when they're accompanied by tacky hyperbole they end up looking like cheap knock-offs. For those keeping score at home we have:

* Korea's Madonna - Uhm Jung-hwa
* Korea's Madonna - Gwangyang's own Chae-yeon
* Korea's Madonna - Bada
* Korea's Usher - Rain
* Korea's Justin Timberlake - Rain
* Korea's Beyonce - Gwangyang's own Kim Ok-bin
* Korea's Michael Jackson - Seo Taiji
* Korea's Angelina Jolie - Kim Hye-soo
* Korea's Naples - Tongyeong
* Korea's Hawaii - Jeju
* Korea's Manhattan - Yeouido
* Korea's Grand Canyon - Bulyeongsa Valley (LMFAO, thanks Michael).
* Korean Alps - mountains in Gangwon-do
* Korea's 9/11 - The Namdaemun arson
* Korea's Bangalore - Daejeon
* Korean Harry Potter - Woochi
* Korea's Lady Gaga - CL
* Korea's Moses Red Sea Miracle - Jindo Sea-Parting Festival
* Korea's Gandhi - Cho Man-sik
* Korea's Mariah Carey - Lena Park
* Korea's Barbie Doll - Han Chae-young


And *cough*

* Korea's Amsterdam

Not that I don't appreciate the offer

but dude.



Taken at the Andong Mask Festival by Dave Pup. The missing part on the left says "Free transportation service for."

Suncheon Bay (순천만)

I spent part of Saturday at Suncheon Bay, a significant wetlands a few miles south of downtown Suncheon. It is known for not only being incredibly scenic but for being home to loads of migratory birds. It is, as the website proclaims, the "Treasure house of having the various many species."

It was a perfect day for walking around and taking pictures, the first weekend of fall, weather-wise. Here are some photos, with loads more in my Flickr set. Practically everyone in the area has taken a million pictures of the bay, the reeds, the birds, the wetlands, and everything else down there, so if you want to find other versions of what will follow, a Naver search will help.




The bus drops you off near the Eco-Center, whose large front yard is an uncommon site in Korea. The museum has displays on the wildlife that visits the Bay, and there's a small park and a couple of convenience stores nearby. This year there's a train that motors around the park. Here's a local journalist trying to get the scoop on me:



You can take a little boat ride down the length of the river for about 4,000 won. The mud throughout the area is home to lots of crabs and a type of amphibian whose name I don't know. During the boat ride the driver will hit the boat against the shore, and you'll see the land come alive as the little creatures run for cover.



There's a network of bridges that run through the reeds. There are placards that name and describe the various plant and animal species you'll see. And there are mothers and fathers walking with their children explaining, in turn, which species of crab are good to eat.








If you follow the path to the east you'll see it leads up a small mountain. It's a twenty-five minute hike to Yongsan Observatory, where I took the photos you'll see below. Before you get to the observatory you'll go up a few sets of stairs.




There were lots of photographers at the observatory on Yongsan, and they had parked themselves in their spots, making it difficult for others to sneak in and get clean photographs. The weren't really taking pictures, though, and I assume that they were being assholes were waiting for the sunset that was about an hour away.








I'm not a fan of burials, and burial mounds I find especially unpleasant. They're often placed in accordance to feng shui, meaning they're on mountains, overlooking water, and so forth. What that means for you and I, though, is that we have to try and enjoy the scenery next to unsightly piles of dirt and remains. Hell, there are even mounds mixed in amongst the gorgeous Boseong tea fields. I bet the mounds were there first, but talk about presumptuous and selfish. And, where you have burial mounds you have the potential for this:




Only a few children ran around on the lower one, but the upper one has been reduced to a little stump because from people using it as a vantage point. The best case of this kind of behavior happened about a year ago as I was hiking in Suncheon. There's a mound overlooking New Downtown, a mound one guy was using to help him do his stretches.

On a more pleasant topic, here's a white guy photoshopped in:



People in Suncheon can get to Suncheon Bay via city bus number 67, which runs its route 32 times a day and which stops at, among other places, Suncheon University, Central Market, and in front of the bus terminal. It's also a part of the Suncheon City Tour. From October 28th to November 4th it will host the Suncheon Bay Reed Festival (순천만갈대축제), which runs concurrent to the Ramsar Convention in Changwon, Gyeongsangnam-do.

For a moment I thought I was hallucinating.

When I saw Oceans 13 in theaters last year I don't know if people were really into it. The movie had star power, but a lot of the jokes didn't seem to stick. People did come alive when the luxury cell phone Al Pacino's character got as a gift was a Samsung. Koreans are often on the look-out for any signs that the world knows of South Korea's existence, and sometimes take it to irritating proportions, such as constant boasting about such-and-such a company, or some athlete or other, or X-thousand years of history, or twice as many seasons as you're probably used to.

I do sort of the same thing, though. Just in a less obnoxious way. I get a kick out seeing references to Korea slipped in to Western media. Generally I feel like my life in Korea has little to do with my life outside of it, but when I see a bit of hangeul on American TV, or drive by a Korean church, or see some ramyeon for sale at Giant Eagle, it's like when Jennifer from 1985 sees Jennifer from 2015 in Back to the Future II.

Case in point I was watching a Britney Spears show on MTV on Sunday---don't ask---and saw her video for "Break the Ice," which was uploaded in March and has over 15 million views. The whole thing's a cartoon, and near the beginning there's some hangeul written on a billboard as the screen pans across a skyline. Nothing unusual, until I did a mental double-take and remembered that the video isn't by a Korean artist, and that not everyone in the world ordinarily reads or uses hangeul. (Hangeul is the most scientific alphabet. Did you know that?)



Another notable example is from an episode of The Sopranos, when Steve Bucemi's character works at a Korean dry cleaners.



It's a particularly notable appearance because of all the similarities between Koreans and Italian-Americans, at least in the stereotypes we've come to know and love get accustomed to. The men share a love of track suits and the women favor big hair and gaudy, colorful pants suits. Both profess a love for family above all else, and will help a family member even if it means hurting strangers. Both love to curse and both have a flair for the melodramatic. And both Koreans and Italian-Americans talk about food 83% of the time.

Quite a few movies set in LA will have some Korean, either spoken or written: Jackie Brown, American History X, Training Day, to name a few. And of course there's that Keanu Reeves movie from earlier in the year, Street Kings. I saw it on the plane over here, and it wasn't that bad, but some Koreans and Korean-Americans took exception to the first few minutes, which portrayed Korean-American gangsters as Korean-American gangsters. My favorite line in the movie, said by "Thug Kim":

Konnichiwa is Japanese. It's insultin' to Koreans.

LOL.

The Korean name in the Britney Spears video isn't news, as like I said the video came out months ago. I was going to look a little more into it but Google kept bringing up bullshit about how the world is falling in love with the beauty of hangeul, the world's most scientific alphabet, that I've decided to just leave you to your own devices there.

From the "you should have hired a proofreader" file.

OCN is going to run a block of superhero movies to coincide with a new "Heroes" season, or something. They've been airing this commercial, but it looks like something is a little off.

Probably should have had someone look at that. Also related, I get thrown for a loop when most Koreans pronounce Batman (베트맨) the same as Beethoven (베토밴). Drives me crazy, too.

That's true, the Confederate flag is pretty sharp.

I've seen these bags all over the place for the past year or so, but had never known where to get them until today, when I happened across "Super Star" in Old Downtown.




They feature what is commonly known as "The Confederate Flag," a symbol of the Confederate States of America, although Wikipedia points out that that particular design was never an official flag of the short-lived nation. Highly unlikely that anybody here knows what that flag is, or what it represents, but it's still troublesome all the same. I don't think it should fly over government offices, and I don't think it should be in the hands of Korean middle school students. Wikipedia has a little more:

The display of the Confederate flag remains a highly controversial and emotional topic, generally because of disagreement over the nature of its symbolism. Opponents of the Confederate flag see it as an overt symbol of racism, both for the history of racial slavery in the United States, and the establishment of Jim Crow laws by Southern states following the end of Reconstruction in late 1870s, enforcing racial segregation within state borders for nearly a century until the Civil Rights Movement.

. . .

White southerners often see the flag as merely a symbol of southern culture, a "country music flag" without any political or racial connotation. An example of this would be the Bocephus Rebel Flag often sold at concerts performed by country music star Hank Williams, Jr., and southern rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd. For some, the flag represents only a past era of southern sovereignty. Some historical societies such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy also use the flag as part of their symbols. Also rockabilly fans hold the Confederate flag as their emblem. The flag has also been used as a symbol of generalized working-class masculinity, suggesting rowdy rebelliousness, and detached from any intended historical, Southern regional, or racial significance, although almost always in a white context, such as construction workers in Montreal.

As a result of these varying perceptions, there have been a number of political controversies surrounding the use of the Confederate flag in Southern state flags, at sporting events, at Southern universities, and on public buildings. According to Civil War historian and native Southerner Shelby Foote, the flag traditionally represented the South's resistance to Northern political dominance; it became racially charged during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, when fighting against desegregation suddenly became the focal point of that resistance.

The bags say "Icekeki," which I thnk is a clothing line, and must be available at a bunch of different stores, because I don't think bags from a little out-of-the-way boutique in Suncheon would turn up in other cities like Gwangju.

Prostitution crackdown at work in Suncheon?

No, I don't think so. Unlike Gwangju's red-light district, Suncheon's is still open for business amidst the nation-wide crackdown. The area was pretty dead, though, but there was one very noticable difference. Normally, women stand in windows and call out to customers. This time the windows all had an opaque covering, and the only time you saw the women was if they hung out the door. So I guess that takes care of that.

I'm reminded of a story from July, when it was announced that an unusued love motel would be converted into a dormitory. The Suncheon News ran this strange cartoon:

Kenya in Suncheon.

Not sure when exactly this happened, but I noticed that Suncheon has a Kenya Espresso coffeeshop now, in Old Downtown, a block from the "It's Skin." This is the second two-story coffeeshop in town, meaning Suncheon is clearly on its way to becoming the Hub of Asia. It's already calling itself the Eco-Capital of Korea.



Pardon the bad picture, it was taken with my cell phone.

I'm a big fan of Cafe Mochas, and I think coffeeshops are neat places in general, so I'm happy about this. When I moved to Suncheon in August, 2007, the only chain coffee shops were Tom n' Toms, Rosebud, and Dunkin Donuts, with a handful of no-name places near Suncheon University, and New and Old Downtowns. Since I've arrived, though, we've gotten a third Dunkin Donuts, two Holly's Coffees, a Ti Amo across from Suncheon University, and a bunch of new one-off places clustered around the above hotspots and also the fast-growing area behind Home Plus. My friend says that it won't be long until we get a Starbucks. I don't know about that; cities of Suncheon's size haven't gotten one yet. Besides, we must remember that the next rung in the evolutionary ladder is KFC, which Suncheon still lacks.

I heard that Kenya Espresso is a Gwangju-grown institution. I couldn't find any more details about it, but Naver shows that all 12 locations it lists are in Gwangju, so it's nice to see local boys doing good.

Korea Times: "Fall Festivals in South Jeolla Province."

Interesting article in today's Korea Times about upcoming festivals in Jeollanam-do. *cough* Wish they didn't feature the "Myeongnyang Japanese-Killing Festival" on the top of the page, though. That's one event I don't think I'll be taking in. Anyway, Girlfriend in Jeollanam-do wants to go to the Namdo Food Festival in Suncheon and the foreigner festival in Gwangju that weekend, and because of her I think I'm obliged to attend the one happening the week after:

The following weekend, from Oct. 15 through 19, is the Gwangju Kimchi Festival. Devoted to the country's representative side dish, it is a great opportunity for foreigners to be photographed doing whatever it is foreigners do when exposed to kimchi.

In other local news, there's a concert happening tomorrow night (Saturday, 27th) September 30th, at Suncheon Jeil College, with the pop duo "Da Vichi" (다비치). It will be at the 비봉광장, but I don't remember the time. If you're looking for something to do, maybe go check out a semi-popular singing act. Or stay home and wash your hair, I dunno.

No, I didn't need another reason to hate New York, but thanks for the offer.

From the NYT.

This is old news, but it pisses me off all the same. As you may or may not know, the New York Yankees play "God Bless America" durng the seventh-inning stretch at home games, ostensibly to remember the September 11th attacks. Because the real heroes of 9/11 are and were New Yorkers and their baseball team. *cough* They take the song and the gesture quite seriously, apparently, and will put up chains along the gates to keep people in their seats, and don't tolerate "excessive movement." In August a man was thrown out of the stadium for trying to take a bathroom break during the song.

When he tried to leave his seat during the traditional singing of God Bless America, however, he says he was stopped by a NYPD officer who said he'd have to wait until the song was done.

"I then said to him, 'I don't care about God Bless America. I just need to use the bathroom.' As soon as I said that, he immediately pinned my arm behind my back," Campeau-Laurion told CBS 2.
The 29-year-old says two officers pinned both of his arms behind his back and ejected him from the stadium.

"He shoved me out the front gate and told me get out of their country if I didn't like it," he said.

Please don't take tips on ethics and civic duty from members of the NYPD, or lessons on multiculturalism from security guards. Deadspin has more, including an email from and an interview with Campeau-Laurion.

This week the final game was played at historic but shitty Yankee Stadium, which leads to the question, "Have the terrorists won?"

Journalist sentenced to one year for defamation, for claiming actor assaulted her.

The KT has the story that a freelance journalist who falsely claimed actor Song Il-kook beat her up has been sentenced to one year in prison.

``Given the evidence and testimony, it seems to be true that there was some physical contact between Kim and Song. But it was not severe enough to be seen as an assault,'' the court said in its ruling.

The journalist, Kim Soon-hee, had been writing about the actor and told a sports newspaper that he beat her, a story the paper subsequently ran.

Another insightful passage from the 3rd grade English book.

From the same book that brought us the pro-kimchi tirade last week comes this bizarre exchange, which students have to put in order while listening to the CD:




What the fuck is that? There are no foreigners listed among the authors, but who knows if they were employed as proofreaders. Learning about foreign cultures from a Korean English book is often a painful process. My all-time favorite comes from the teachers' guides handed out with the elementary school books. They're pretty much all in Korean except for some cultural tips at the back of each chapter. The best one is this, from the 5th grade teachers' guide:

Western people show exclamation even over trifles. This phenomenon isn't found an oriental culture that appreciates people who control their feeling and taciturn. We can usually see Americans who are moved so easily by things that Koreans aren't effected by. This means they are accustomed to expressing feeling freely and frankly. In Western culture, they start a conversation about the weather when they meet someone for the first time: "It's a lovely day, isn't it?" This is reference to the inclement weather in England. The people who live in an area with nice weather like Korea aren't touched by this kind of thing but Englishmen can be impressed.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ. Keep that in mind the next time the teachers huddle around over 떡 saying "맛있네" sixty-seven times in three minutes, or can't stop themselves from sighing and alternating between "추워" and "더워" seven times an hour.

Teach English to the stars . . . for free!

Here's part of an ad running on WorknPlay:

*Starting date: ASAP
*Time and Date: Will be decided after meeting but mostly it will be once a week.
1.5 hrs/1 day
*Student information : Celebrities of Climax Entertainment, CJ Entertainment
http://www.climix.co.kr/
http://www.cjent.co.kr/
(They belong to the top 5 entertainment company in Korea, They make movies, dramas, produce albums, manage stars,..etc.)
*Notice: There will be no payment. It is a volunteer job.
It is a social networking between Entertainment/ Broadcasting celebrities and English teachers.
You will have lots of fun with Top stars and CEOs.
And you will gain a popularity being as English teacher of those top stars.
(Just like Madonna's Trainer, Celine Dion's English teacher ^^)
We will help you to take picture with them all the time and when you write a book they will be glad to write a recommendations for you.

HT to xCustomx. You know how we always get stories about Nigerians or Russians or Iranians getting busted for posing as native English speakers? How Koreans generally can't tell the difference betwteen a black guy with a French accent and me? It kind of works the same here. Unless it's Ha Ji-won I don't think I'd recognize a single Korean celebrity, so they could just stick any random person in front of me and I wouldn't know the difference. That's not to say they all look the same---black hair, dark eyes, good at math---but rather . . . well yeah, I guess they kind of all look the same.

This would be illegal, by the way, for people on an E-2 visa, who aren't permitted to work or volunteer outside of their designated place of employment. I don't have the regulations in front of me, but I recall they prohibit sleeping with D-list celebrities as part of a language exchange. The ad continues:

For example, this brand-new service, called Starcare, could be best understood if you imagine a situation where a famous star entertainer, seeking to advance into bigger markets like Hollywood in the future, can receive language help offered through Jinnybank, which will link him with the top language schools or excellent English teachers, so that the entertainer can prepare himself adequately before visiting the States.

Thanks to the safe and secure network foundation thus established, most of the major hospitals and language schools and lots of teachers have showed their interest in our new business and we have ended up signing an agreement with some of the top-ranked hospitals and schools in the nation.

Do we really need any more Korean entertainers in the US? Zero is enough, thank you very much.

As I mentioned earlier, a friend of an acquaintance was, according to rumor, Ha Ji-won's English tutor when she was filming something in Jeollanam-do. I don't recall them ever appearing out in public. As a matter of fact something tells me that a celebrity would probably be embarrassed to be photographed with a foreigner, even if that foreigner happened to be their English teacher. Wouldn't having an English teacher imply that they suck at English, hence a loss of face? (Singing "You-Go-Gull" is to an audience of millions is apparently not embarrassing, though). The difference between that earlier situation with Ha Ji-won and this one is that I'm attractive, and would be a boon to any celebrity's career. *cough* And I can lay the pipe.

KT&G rolls out "Pirates of the Caribbean"-themed cigarettes.

I don't think Disney signed off on this. Then again, I don't think they've made a fuss yet about Lotte World and it's, um, "tributes" to Disney World, so who knows if this will even show up on the radar. Actually, the article mentions the movie and the Jack Sparrow character---probably a bad idea---but I don't think Disney has patents on pirates or pirate motifs. The box itself says "Inspired by Black Beard and Calico Jack," but apparently stores have put Jack Sparrow to work advertising for the cigarettes. Thanks for "Grandfalloon" for the scoop, not surpringly on a Marmot's Hole post about Korean movie posters, um, "borrowing heavily" from American ones.

Google will probably poop in your baby's diaper if you're not careful.

Google and YouTube Korea are favorite whipping boys in this time zone. Last month Google and YouTube upset Korea's Victorian sensibilities *cough* by apparently having all kinds of porn and illegal videos up. A little before that was the debate whether YouTube would have to adopt the "real name" system present on the domestic sites here. A few years ago was the business about children being exposed to foreign pornography because of lax security standards. Remember that South Korea is the world's largest consumer of porn.

The latest flare-up has to do with Google apparently exposing personal IDs online. The Chosun Bimbo points out what's wrong with that accusation.

Being that it indexes everything that goes into the tubes (and clearly outlines what and how it goes about things. Haha - Pigeons!) responsibility for "exposing" important personal information rests not on The Google, but on those who chuck up an unprotected Excel spreadsheet onto an open server somewhere on the net. Such people apparently include a Busan elementary school and a doctor amongst others.

The Chosun Ilbo article he's quoting goes on to say that if a person wants to hide their personal information after its been exposed they'll have to sign up for Google. The article makes it sound like a burden, one that takes a week, to which The Bimbo replies:

Aaaaaahahahahahaha! After all signing up for Google is such a chore. At least it doesn't need a bloody National ID number! Tried joining Naver lately??!!

No, I haven't, but I did try to sign up for a Korean site last year but quit when it asked me for a scan of my passport. And those of you out of the country might not be aware that many sites here are inaccessible to foreigners because our ID numbers are 13 digits long though the sites can only handle 12. Hell, we can't even reserve train tickets online, and last I heard my favorite game to watch on TV Kart Rider was still off-limits. There are a bunch of sites where it's easy for foreigners to sign up, provided you can navigate Korean, but the fact remains that bitching about Google's process is ridiculous when you consider that there's a national ID system in place here and that it largely excludes foreigners.

Korean doctors charging "foreigner fees"?

Stolen from here.

Some are, according to posters on Dave's.

When i got there i completed a form which informed me i would have to pay 30,000w for the first consultation and 20,000w for any appointments that may follow. Fortunately as a respectable citizen i pay my medical insurance and had my book/card with me. I explained this to the receptionist. Another receptionist explained that it was an extra charge for foreigners. I explained that i had my medical insurance book and would not be willing to pay this extra fee. They said i should explain this to the doctor.
When i got to see the doctor i explained the situation and he said he would waive the fee. He then asked me a couple of questions and said i should return two times a week. I replied that i would not be willing to pay extra fees due to the fact that i am foreign. He asked me to leave.

. . .

Same thing happened to me in Suwon. I went to an English speaking doctor to get a prescription. They charged me 20,000 won. They told me it was a foreigner fee even though I had my insurance card. The next time I went to another doctor who spoke only basic English and he charged me only 3000 won.

. . .

I just called [ed: the place in the OP] and asked if they charge extra for foreigners. The woman on the other line kind of stuttered her way through an answer, but didn't say yes or no.

I encourage more of you to do the same.

This guy is using his ability to fleece customers. It's total BS.

Needless to say, don't fall for that trick, and take your business elsewhere. Get the name of any place that tries this and pass it along so other foreigners know to avoid it.

As a requisite disclaimer, I have to point out that I've been generally satisfied with the service I've received at hospitals and clinics, especially at Suncheon's 제일병원, so this isn't me letting a few bad apples spoil the bunch. And this service has come without the ninety-minute wait you can expect when you visit my general practitioner back home.

A nice music video about a man who loved his daughter.

This came out this past spring, but I saw it for the first time Monday morning. It's the video for the Dokdo guy's "Sonagi," starring model-turned-actor Cha Seung-won. It's a bit much, and I'm not talking about the ten-minute running time.



It gets even more ridiculous at the end, when Cha _______________ while in police custody twice in a row. I don't want to spoil the surprise.

I had been trying to figure out that guy's name, but I couldn't recall the title of any of his movies. This morning, though, 선생 김봉두 was on, and naver told me it was Cha. That movie, if you haven't seen it, is about a corrupt teacher from Seoul who gets sent down to the boonies and who then beats the shit out of his students for most of the time, although the kids come to love him in the end. When I do as much as raise my voice in class, though, I'm told I'm being "not friendly," so I guess I'll never be a success.

Drawing the Korean flag is hard.

From time to time the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union draws attention to errors in textbooks. The latest case is of some erroneously drawn Korean flags in a 1st grade textbook, brought to our attention by the KTEWU's newspaper, 교육희망.



The paper noticed two other incorrect flags, but my Korean isn't good enough to figure out what they are. I think one has to do with the fluttering in the opposite direction? A few months ago I seem to recall some embarrassment over an old Korean flag on display that turned out to be not only incorrect but also a fake, though I can't find the links right now. Some of these old ones look pretty suspect, even taking into account the different arrangements used on earlier flags, and I think a couple were photographed upside-down. The one in question a few months ago was, I think, the one used by the exiled interim government and which was kept at Ewha University (the flag, not the interim government).

It's interesting the things we don't notice right under our noses. I know the arrangements of the trigram on a Korean flag, for example, but probably wouldn't notice if they were out of place or if the specifications were off. I think I'd notice an incorrect American flag, particularly if it were flying upside-down. But take, for example, some of these logos that have symbols that most people have probably never noticed. Can you see the arrow in the FedEx logo?



Or the H and W in the Whalers' one? I didn't learn about the H until today.



Notice anything in the Goodwill logo?



In a related story, the flag of the Korean Empire (Empire?) is pretty bad ass. Here's a photo of the oldest, courtesy of Korea Beat.

Pittsburgh school board wants to set 50% as the lowest score.

I don't like this idea at all.

Pittsburgh Public Schools officials say they want to give struggling children a chance, but the district is raising eyebrows with a policy that sets 50 percent as the minimum score a student can receive for assignments, tests and other work.

The district and teachers union last week issued a joint memo to ensure staff members' compliance with the policy, which was already on the books but enforced only at some schools. Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers President John Tarka said the policy is several years old.

While some districts use "F" as a failing grade, the city uses an "E."

"The 'E' is to be recorded no lower than a 50 percent, regardless of the actual percent earned. For example, if the student earns a 20 percent on a class assignment, the grade is recorded as a 50 percent," said the memo from Jerri Lippert, the district's executive director of curriculum, instruction and professional development, and Mary VanHorn, a PFT vice president.

I ran into this during my last speaking test here. One of my coworkers asked me what the lowest possible score would be and I said "um, zero," and she laughed and said "impossible." With the stress on the wrong syllable, of course. And so students who attempted to answer but were way off got the same score as students who stared at their shoes and said nothing. I made adjustments to account for partial answers, and since the students had plenty of time to prepare, and were tested on basic phrases from the textbook and from my class, perhaps wrong answers earning the same as no answers would have been perfectly justified. But I didn't lke the idea of it.

I agree with Pittsburgh's rationale a little bit:

The district and union insist the policy still holds students accountable for performance.

"A failing grade is a failing grade," district spokeswoman Ebony Pugh said.

At the same time, they said, the 50 percent minimum gives children a chance to catch up and a reason to keep trying. If a student gets a 20 percent in a class for the first marking period, Ms. Pugh said, he or she would need a 100 percent during the second marking period just to squeak through the semester.

"We want to create situations where students can recover and not give up," she said, adding a sense of helplessness can lead to behavior and attendance problems.

But how about giving people the grades they earn? I'd rather parents and teachers work to prevent students from earning 20s in the first place, yet holding them accountable when they do. Ms. Leonardi, below, brings up a good point:

Judy Leonardi, a Stanton Heights resident and retired district home economics teacher, said she objected to the notion that a student could "walk in the door, breathe the air and get 50 percent for that."

"I don't think it sets kids up properly for college, for competition in life," she said.

To Ms. Leonardi, a 20 percent score means a student isn't trying or needs more help with the material. Automatically putting 50 percent in the grade book, she said, doesn't help the student in either case.

"To me, it's morally wrong," she said.

Give the full article a read.

Korea doesn't want to share its citizens' criminal backgrounds with the U.S.?

So, let me get this straight, foreigners in Korea are forced to produce a criminal background check in order to get an E-2 visa, but South Korea is having qualms about complying with the United States' same request as part of a potential visa waiver program?

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Monday that consultations on South Korea joining the U.S. Visa Waiver Program (VWP) with the United States were on schedule with the goal of concluding them by the year-end.

Ministry spokesman Moon Tae-young denied a newspaper report that the VWP for South Koreans would likely be delayed due to differences between the two countries over ways of sharing the criminal records of tourists.

. . .

Some South Korean lawyers claim that sharing the criminal records of citizens is in violation of basic human rights, while Washington insists it is one of the basic standards to be met by those countries wanting to join the VWP to help protect American nationals and interests from terrorists or criminals who have committed felonies.

HT to ROK Drop on this one. To use South Korea's Ministry of Justice's words:

I just don’t understand why they cannot make some exceptions to accommodate the needs of their own nationals. In Korea, criminal records can be easily obtained online. But they don’t have a centralized system.

Actually, that was arrogantly said in relation to foreign embassies' hesitation to provide criminal histories to comply with new E-2 visa regulations. South Korea implemented those new rules in 2007 without checking first with whether other countries would be willing or able to follow them. South Korea was quite keen on this idea, and immigration put out a release saying in part:

The Korean Government will prevent illegal activities by verifying requirements of native English teacher and tighten their non-immigrant status [...] [and will] eradicate illegal activities of native English teachers who are causing social problems such as ineligible lectures, taking drugs and sex crimes. English teachers, who disturb social order during their staying in Korea such as illegal teaching, taking drugs and sex crimes, will be banned from entering South Korea.[...] [They will] prevent illegal English teaching activities and the taking of drugs and sexual harassment of English teachers, [...] teachers who disrupt the social order by taking drugs, committing sexual harassment and alcohol intoxication.

Perhaps the U.S. should do the same in kind. After all there are roughly 230,000 Koreans staying in the U.S. illegally, and I'll bet they're not raising unicorns and kissing babies.

And for the record I'm not oppossed to teachers having to submit criminal background checks, as a country has the right to allow or bar whomever it pleases, and set its visa regulations any way it sees fit. Thus, it's not unreasonable in the least for the United States to ask for passengers' criminal histories. If I understand it correctly, a criminal offense doesn't bar one from entering the country, but it does exclude one from entering visa-free under the VWP. My gut reaction is to say no to a VWP with South Korea, because wasn't it contingent on the KORUS FTA, an agreement squashed with apparent impunity? But, that's not what developed nations do, how grown-ups behave, and my temper is one reason among many why I'm not a diplomat. Hey, maybe the VWP will mean I can stay in South Korea visa-free for longer than 30 days jaf9wj93owejfjflasf23faa0o.

Maryang-myeon (마량면)

I spent part of Saturday in Gangjin county, but unfortunately the weather restricted our tour to four turns in the town of Gangjin-eup. I did make a point of heading back to Maryang-myeon, a township in the southeastern corner of the county and one of my favorite spots in Gangjin.



When I visited Maryang back in June, 2007, I met that little guy chained to the door of a seafood restaurant. He had quite a noisy bark but was very playful when I approached him. When I walked past the restaurant again this time the dog was gone, but in his place was this tiny, handheld kitten tied to the air conditioner and left out in the rain.




Maryang is a township of 2,576, according to the 2001 census, although the population of the seaside town looks to be a fraction of that. Besides the view, points of interest include: Manhoseong, a 15th-century fortress wall on the west end of town; a string of seafood restaurants overlooking the harbor (this season's specialty is 전어); and Gogeum Bridge (고금대교), a big bridge that connects Wando county's Gogeum-do island to the mainland. When the bridge opened in the summer of 2007 it was a pretty big deal. Two of my three schools took trips to see the new bridge. We also saw hundreds of little crabs running all over the place, cramming themselves into little crab apartments under the docks or the steps whenever somebody walked by. When I visited two summers ago I also saw loads of jellyfish floating among the boats, though there weren't any on Saturday.




The location of Maryang, if "southeastern corner of Gangjin" means nothing to you, which in all likelihood is the case.

The weather was pretty bad, and that's the excuse I'm going with for not taking any good pictures. Instead, here are a few from October, 2006:








맛있는 stingray 드세요!



That's the fire and rescue station. Despite all appearances not, in fact, made out of Legos.



The bus terminal. Seriously.


Gogeum Bridge, from the Wando side.

More on my flickr page. The night view is pleasant as well because the three recently-constructed docks all have multi-colored lights. Buses back and forth between Gangjin and Maryang about twice an hour, but the last bus heads back to Gangjin, and Gwangju, at around 8 pm, so it may be a little difficult to enjoy that nighttime vista. There are three motels in Maryang, so that's an option should you be stuck or looking to spend the night. There are those sea food restaurants, a galbi house or two, a Family Mart, and a few hofs. Weather permitting they also have concerts on one of the piers on Saturday nights. And if you're in the neighborhood they're also having a harbor festival there in October, although I don't think the dates have been set yet.