"Internet guide of identical person acknowledgement on alien in Korea"
"Alien in Korea can confirm identical person through Internet easily with alien registration or passport."
"Making Republic of Korea
where communication is available by digital"
"'Identical person acknowledgement'is
to confirm identical person on the Internet
in order to settle using culture of sound internet"
"Citizens staying in
a foreign country
who are residing in Korea"
"Does identical person
acknowledgement not work?
try to confirm the followings!"
I read in the Chosun Ilbo about a page designed to help foreigners register with Korean webpages.
The Korea Communications Commission is offering another way to make life easier for foreigners living in Korea.
In cooperation with the Korea Association of Information and Telecommunications, the commission on Monday opened a Web site (www.ifriendly.kr) to help foreign expats with problems they might face when joining Korean portals.
This is what they came out with.
Foreigners do complain about how difficult it is to register for Korean websites, not simply because of the language barrier but because our alien registration numbers are not compatable. But I wish they would have given the "English" a once-over before unveiling a webpage designed to help, among others, English-speakers. I'm trying to be mild, but . . . the fuck?
Found via both the Korean Government's Twitter page, and Gangwon Notes, the latter . . . noting that the generic foreigner they chose, Hong Gil-dong, is a character in a Korean folk tale akin to Robin Hood.
See also: "Visit Korea Year: 2010-2012."
30 comments:
I've come to the conclusion that only vicious mockery will force these idiots to hire English speaking proofreaders; Korean or barbarian, it doesn't matter. As long as it gets these 750 point toefl idiots from using a translation program to process the text that was written first in Korean.
I saw a link to this on the koreagov twitter and looked at the site. What a disgrace. I sent a letter to the editor of the Korea Herald about this campaign backfiring due to a) the persistent firefox/IE issues, and b) the sad, sad English wording. I should have also raised the prospect that they were improperly coopting the IE trademark, as obvious as it is on the front page, but I didn't feel like looking up the trademark statutes to get all cite-crazy.
LOL, that's a pretty good point, holterbarbour, I didn't even notice the IE "e," and it didn't occur to me that the Korean government didn't invent IE.
And speaking of English-to-make-a-mockery ...
Have you seen the new promos on CNN and Arirang for the "Korean Free Economic Zones" ?
Yes, that's right: either the Economic Zones are for Koreans only, or they're not for Koreans at all. Perhaps we'll never know.
I can think of several ways to rephrase that promo. Another English FAIL moment.
It looks like you're really becoming the Hub of Proper Englishee, Brian.
The most wonderful aspect of this for me is that if I try to type in my full name (as printed on my alien registration card) then I find that most websites don't allow that many characters in the name box, thus forbidding me from ever accessing the amazing secrets of the Korean internet...
I think I commented previously that there are a few Brian Deans here and your name is close - so maybe we need to differentiate between "identical persons".
I don't know about you, Brian, but my health insurance card has always read simply "브라이언," so if ever there was a time to confirm identical person, this is it.
I saw this today too... I have come to the conclusion that this country doesn't want to learn English anymore. People here seem far too set in their ways and self-confident in their shitty English... Just walking in Han River Park near Yeouido and looking at the new colour signs there tells me that.
Hah. I guess it's fitting that your favourite topic du jour sees you reach a bit of a milestone BiJ:
congraduration and congratulations on making the half million.
holterbarbour wrote:
I saw a link to this on the koreagov twitter and looked at the site. What a disgrace. I sent a letter to the editor of the Korea Herald about this campaign backfiring due to a) the persistent firefox/IE issues, and b) the sad, sad English wording.
Did you also bring it to the attention of the actual koreagov people?
I should have also raised the prospect that they were improperly coopting the IE trademark, as obvious as it is on the front page, but I didn't feel like looking up the trademark statutes to get all cite-crazy.
If anything, using the IE trademark to convey "digital friendly" should be considered a case of fraud.
I like to rip on about the bad use of English as much as the next person (and boy does this website have a GOLDMINE of terrible grammar). But as this website is indeed directed at us, as well as having a laugh at it, make your concerns known to the groups responsible or nothing will change. I made an email complaint to one of the organisations involved though this address:
webmaster@kait.or.kr
I would request that you all do the same, even if it's just a short email. The quicker they realise that this type of gibberish does not make sense, and the fact that they really need to get these websites WC3 compliant (as in compatible with Firefox), the better it will be for all of us.
kushibo, go take a look at the koreangov twitter page.
Wow. The lack of 'actual' English continues to astonish me... and maybe the "e" of IE won't be considered fraudulent by Microsoft if the surrounding English doesn't make sense... lol
Brian wrote:
kushibo, go take a look at the koreangov twitter page.
To see how bad it is or to see that there's no way to contact anybody there about the problem? Seriously, I'm not sure which one you meant.
Ryan G. and I seem to be on the same page: If you want to see this changed you will probably have to contact the people who can change it.
kushibo, I feel bad ruining the surprise, but it's not the actual Korean government Twitter page. It's a wonderful spoof.
Ryan G. is right, though that doesn't change that, again, there seems to be a service aimed at foreigners that didn't first feel any interest in consulting them.
Brian wrote:
kushibo, I feel bad ruining the surprise, but it's not the actual Korean government Twitter page. It's a wonderful spoof.
Grrr... that's what I thought, when I first heard of and saw the koreangov site.
And then when I read holterbarbour's comment. Wait, let me correct that... when I misread holterbarbour's comment, I thought he was saying talking about the koreangov twitter page and I thought, hmmm... maybe I'd incorrectly assumed it was a private effort.
Okay. No more drunk commenting at 9:30 a.m.
Another Korean internet fail. Aside from bad grammar and confusing site structures, I hate how the majority (if not all) websites are designed for IE and Activex apps. I wish there was more support for other browsers to work with Korean webpages.
Is this 'Korean Government' on twitter the real deal? At times I've thought the spelling mistakes and blatant nationalism must be tongue in cheek..
Either way I sent this message to their twitter account, in Korean to be sure they can understand it. Translation below.
http://www.ifriendly.kr/e_sub_exlpan.htm란 영역 된 사이트에 들어갔는데 영어 원어민인데 이해를 하나도 못 하겠어. 영어 정말 엉망이네~ 한국 정부인데 여기 외국 분들 위에 영어 잘 쓰는 분이 안 계시건가요? 창피하겠네..
I went to the English translated version of this site http://www.ifriendly.kr/e_sub_exlpan.htm. I'm an English native speaker but I can't understand any of it. It's a real mess. You are the Korean government yet you don't have anyone who can write English well to benefit foreigners living here? How shameful..
Korean as it is, that twitter is a spoof. An excellent one, and one that borders VERY WELL on reality, but a spoof nonetheless. It'd be more constructive to:
1) send an email to the website, and
2) make your voice heard on this site.
My biggest beef was with the English, but as an IE user, I haven't experienced the inconvenience of trying to browse incompatable Korean websites. Perhaps I'll collect some of these comments and do a follow-up post tomorrow, just to highlight all the problems with this lame effort.
Oh well, mark Kushibo off of that one. A few of us were speculating that Kushibo was the person behind koreagov.
Nah, I'm too busy ghost-writing the KCNA.
Who's got time for ghostwriting? All my writing carries my name...
By the way, has anyone visited http://visitkoreayear.com lately? It's actually gotten WORSE, if you can believe it. English has almost completely disappeared; if your computer doesn't have support for Korean characters (as the average non-Korean computer), it'll display nothing that endless rows of boxes.
I agree, Chris. If I'm going to spend a lot of time writing something, I want my damn name on it.
That said, the koreangov Twitter page ought to be up for Hub of Sparkle's Blog of the Year . . . if Hub of Sparkle ever comes back from the dead.
Chris, the foreign-language VisitKorea pages will be up in January. Korea hopes to get Koreans to . . . visit . . . Korea, wait what?
The most wonderful aspect of this for me is that if I try to type in my full name (as printed on my alien registration card) then I find that most websites don't allow that many characters in the name box, thus forbidding me from ever accessing the amazing secrets of the Korean internet...
It's limited to 20 characters. Just truncate it at 20 and it should work. My name comes to 21, and dropping the last letter is usually the solution.
Thanks ROKHound, I'll give that a try!
When I asked my wife to help translate the Korean version of this website, they translated "poninhwagin" (I don't know how to type Korean in this comment box) to the English word "identical", instead of what it's supposed to mean: "identify", now it makes more sense to me.
The website is not talking about identical foreigners having trouble accessing Korean websites, but on how a foreigner must identify themselves to a Korean website.
That is simply ONE BIG FAIL. The atrocious mistake of using a key incorrect word completely changes the tone of the website.
I agree with previous comments. It seems that Korea actually really does not care one bit about wanting to learn English, but just wants to look like they do in order to increase their perceived global status. How sad.
Anyone have any idea how to register your alien registration info if it's not in their database? I've tried to signup for numerous sites, phoned the authority of this (can't remember the name now) they told me it was only for Koreans!! I was like are you sure? Argued with him for a bit and hung up. Would really like to signup to some sites, but never get very far before getting frustrated and giving up.
아흠... In my defense, these are what popped up when I took a look at koreangov 22 hours ago:
koreangov "Citizens staying in a foreign country who are residing in Korea" go this page
koreangov "Does identical person acknowledgement not work? try to confirm the followings!"
... plausibly real tweets from a government-run website by someone whose English is marginal (which would be why they got stuck with the twitter duty).
The rest today are clearly satire... camel toe? So I don't think morning inebriation was to blame and I retract my earlier vow.
Craig: and that's the sad thing about this entire situation. This website is supposed to hold all the information you need to access those Korean websites. But if it can't convey that information to us (foreigners) then it highlights the utter failure of the point of the whole website, and basically amounts to a waste of time and money.
Meh. Typical. Some underling probably thought of the website. A boss stole it and presented it via another underling to insulate himself in case it got shot down, got approved, gave it to yet another underling in case the implementation failed.
Kicker is, it's probably considered a success because it's bright and sparkly, and ones reviewing it internally got no idea.
I have a cousin who is in an immersive English program at a college here in the States. He's been at it for over a year and he does study constantly. But he probably couldn't order coffee at Starbucks. On the other hand, I have a Korean client who worked as a waiter at a restaurant for a couple of years. To my surprise, he conversed in English very well when I went with him to register him for a pre-trial diversion.
You guys know this already, but that was the most stark evidence I had that Korean English education system is completely FUBAR and what's more, Korean students' approach to learning English is tainted by the flawed education system. I also represent some executives from Korean automaker that recently built a plant in Georgia and these guys are only marginally better.
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