Trouble at a Gwangju church.

From UCANEWS:

During the July 26 Mass in Imdong Cathedral in Gwangju (Kwangju), presided over by Archbishop Andreas Choi Chang-mou and 15 other concelebrants, some of the 400-strong congregation shouted as the priest involved, Father Raymundus Shin Dong-sul, recited a prayer.

The protestors accuse their former parish priest of misappropriating some 250 million won (US$200,000) since 2001. Father Shin was transferred to another parish in 2007 and made archdiocesan procurator in 2008.

In his message at the end of the Mass, archdiocesan chancellor Father Chrysostomus Kim Kye-hong said the Mass was intended by the archbishop to be an act of "reconciliation" between the priest and his accusers.

. . .

However, halfway, through his message, protesters turned off his microphone and the lights in the building. Others walked out of the cathedral and later argued with Archbishop Choi and the Mass concelebrants as they tried to leave.

Said a member of the parish pastoral council:

"We as Catholics well know we should not disturb a Mass. But it was spontaneous as we were very disappointed and angry at the archbishop who has tried to conceal the truth," one of them told UCA News.

Some pictures from 임동성당 from Prime Gyeongje (1, 2)

Gwangju says "Say Kimchi!"

Gwangju recently unveiled its promotional material for the upcoming Gwangju Kimchi Culture Festival (광주김치문화축제). I'll have more on that next month, but I just wanted to say that, holy shit, it looks like a Korean organization actually came up with a catchy, appropriate English-language slogan.



"Kimchi" is what people often say before taking a picture of somone, because it opens the mouth into a smile.



I've occassionally heard people say "cheese," but in Korean 치즈 will force the mouth into something that looks and sounds like angels dying.

It's simple, easy to remember, easy to pronounce by both Koreans and foreigners, and it's fun.

Video for BoA's "Energetic" out.

The video for BoA's US single "Energetic" is out.



She says "I'ma do a lot of talkin' with my feet," but in both this song and her first single all she does is talk over the music. She sings a little---but talks a lot---in her English-language song "I did it for love," and also gets a real live black guy to help.

Naked News anchors crying, still not naked.

Like The Marmot's Hole says, Naked News Korea is done. The Chosun Ilbo has a gallery of the aftermath.



The official website has this pop-up:



The Korea Herald has the story:

After all of the circus hoopla and controversy surrounding the launch of the Korean version of the Naked News franchise, its existence now hangs by a pithy thread as production came to a screeching halt since Thursday -- just one month after its inception. The problem? Money.

Nine of the anchors have yet to be compensated for their work during the month the service has been up while customer service has ceased its operation leaving 260,000 paid subscribers for the month of July, hanging, according to local reports.

The problem began when management of the Naked News Korea branch requested its anchors contracted to present news only in semi-nude form (i.e. in lingerie and bikini tops) to strip down completely for its pay-for-play adults-only version.

This prompted five of its anchors to hand in their resignations while the rest of its personalities stayed on.

Oh what the fuck, don't you understand what naked means? This isn't the car show, you're not getting paid to stand there in bikinis and make stupid gestures. Anyway, if you go to the site and click on "Meet our anchors!" you can see the five remaining ones: 하혜지, 한민경, 이세연, 최선이, 김재경.

The sports daily Ilgan Sports conducted an interview on Wednesday with one of the program's anchors who asked to remain anonymous and revealed she had been unable to get a hold of management in order to clarify their grievances over unpaid wages.

"We've been told to be patient and to wait but we have yet to be informed of anything. There is no one we can contact who can clear this up. No one's returning our calls and we've just been informed the company's head John Chau have flown out of the country," she was quoted as saying.

"We feel like we've been conned and cajoled into doing this. Even through opposition from family members of our participation in this program we all felt we were pioneers taking part in something new. We've reported this to the Ministry of Labor so we just have to wait and see what happens."

Every day hundreds of people come to my site Googling for "Naked News Korea." I'm not going to put in a Naked News category yet, but to organize things a little for visitors:

* May 7th, 2009: "Korea Should Make Naked English" (seriously, that's a really good idea)
* June 24th, 2009: "Naked News could be all right"
* July 9th, 2009: "'Naked News Korea' under review by standards council"

According to the communications watchdog, the contents of the site have been closely monitored since it began and an episode in which its presenters discussed female orgasms was deemed vulgar and inappropriately suggestive.

I said "still not naked" because the plan was to have the anchors just wear lingerie. From an article in May:

While South Korea is one of the world’s most-wired countries with widespread high-speed Internet access, the country has taken a stance over nudity and porn. Two years ago, South Korea blocked hundreds of foreign adult content sites and strengthened its obscenity laws.

Warda said that there most likely will be some hurdles with delivering news naked, but it should be well-received in South Korea.

"Like Japan they cannot show the pubic area, [but] appetite for all forms of adult entertainment is substantial," he said. "These are hardworking, hard-playing people."

이세연.

The Chosun Ilbo interviewed the woman above, Lee Se-yeon, during which she dropped the gem:

"Please focus on the news rather than the breasts."

The piece continues:

Lee said the company plans to maintain the current level of nudity and go no further since it reflects the cultural norms in Korea. Therefore, it is highly contextual to the changes in people's thoughts and trend. "If there is a consensus among people on more nudity, the contents can go along with such changes," she said.

Creating a version of "Naked News Korea" for teenagers was a weird choice, but it's worth repeating that in spite of "the cultural norms in Korea," there are plenty of television shows on for free that are more provokative and blatantly sexual than Naked News. The most ridiculous ones, in my opinion, are the various racing girl pool tournaments.



Pretty much all you hear are the click-click-click of cameras each time a woman bends over. Once they had a tournament between Russian and Korean models, and either they got the worst Russian pool players they could find, or they got a team of ringers to wear model outfits for the Korean team, because it was brutal.


Hours of entertainment.

Some old theaters in Gwangju.

I ended up visiting Gwangju Theater last week to check out a film in the Japanese Independent Film Festival from July 8th through the 22nd.

I took some pictures of the interior but they turned out poorly so I'll just save them for myself. It opened in 1934, making it the oldest theater in operation in Gwangju. It's worth a visit, not only because it's old and neat, but because they show all kinds of foreign movies. I ended up seeing Aruitemo aruitemo (Still Walking), staring Hiroshi Abe and Yui Natsukawa of the show "The Man Who Can't Get Married," now playing as a Korean remake "결혼못하는남자."

The theater itself is quite large, at five stories. There is only one screen, and two levels of seats. Naver says the capacity is 856, though there were fewer than 10 people in the theater at the time.

Walking around town that day brought me across other old theaters. I was killing time in an Angel in Us coffee shop when I noticed across the street the shell of the 신동아극장. It's on one of the main streets in downtown Gwangju, but I had never noticed the sign before because the side of the building is usually obscured by its neighbor.



The first two floors are currently occupied by an ABC Mart. The last film to be shown at the theater was 2004's "Anatomy of Hell" (지옥의 체험), and though the sign says it's not a porn film, Wikipedia does tell me that it's part of a "list of mainstream films with unsimulated sex."








Here's "Max Theater," known in Korean as 현대극장. It opened in the 1950s and closed in 2002.





Looking through the windows. There was a newspaper on the counter.

In an earlier post I also mentioned the 태평극장, which opened in 1957. I walked past it many times---it was on the corner near Migliore---and the last movie poster up was for Blade 3. When I passed it last fall it was gone, and remains to this day a parking lot.



Like I said in that entry on "Movie theaters in Gwangju," a local paper did a series last year on the city's old theaters. The easiest way to find them is to visit the 광주드림 website and search for "영화가 흐르던 자리."

I'll also mention that I used to keep track of movie listings for theaters in Gwangju and Suncheon because there were no resources available in English. However, the urls constantly change, making it really difficult to maintain the listings. Sometimes it's impossible to link directly to particular theater information. Your best bet will be to use "Korea Movie Times."

In other Gwangju news, there's a relatively new Arab restaurant that opened downtown. Gwangju is not only the Mecca of Kimchi Research, but indeed the Mecca of Arabs.

Lotus Industry Festival of Korea: August 6th - 9th.

Pop-up from the Muan county tourism website.

The Lotus Industry Festival will be held in Muan county (무안연꽃축제) from August 6th through the 9th. I'm impressed that the papers have written previews of it, so I'll just direct you there. From the Times:

Hoesan White Lotus Habitat in Ilro-eup, Muan-gun, South Jeolla Province, is the largest of its kind in Asia, stretching over an area of 330,000 square meters and a circumference of 3 kilometers. The habitat was originally a reservoir for farming water during the Japanese colonial era (1910-45). It became home to white lotuses in 1997 following a lotus festival.

The blossoms began to grow here in the 1950s, after a neighboring villager planted a dozen or so seeds. That night, the villager is said to have dreamt of 12 white cranes resembling the fair lotuses and took great care of them.

The habitat features walkways that enable visitors to stroll through the flowers, and a 280-meter-long bridge provides a view of the place. In addition to white lotuses, the habitat houses some 30 kinds of lotuses and 50-odd types of flora, and is often visited for biological studies.

From the Herald:

Along and across the white lotus field is a wooden esplanade. Adding a cute touch are small statues of the characters from "Demetan Croaker, The Boy Frog" hidden among the high lotus plants. Although the animation is Japanese, they bring great sense of nostalgia among Koreans who grew up watching it.

One thing to note, however, is that it would be hard to see all the white flowers bloom at the same time, as they tend to flower sporadically, unlike the pink-colored lotus flowers that bloom all at once.

At the end of the pathway is a glass greenhouse and on the first floor is a cafeteria selling various lotus teas, as well as an exhibition of water lilies.

Another fun experience is to go on a small white boat to go around the pond that takes about 30 minutes. Up to four people can get on the boat to go along the 500-meter long route.

Since last year, the annual lotus festival has taken a new turn, by highlighting the industrious benefits of the plants.

The rest of the Herald article does have a quite a bit more about what to do and where to eat. It also says that a local specialty is lotus beer. There's some information on the official Muan tourism site, but not much, and a little about last year's from the Korea Tourism Organization.

There was a lotus festival in Buyeo---the county, not the exclamation---this month, but it's over. Regarding other local festivals, the Gangjin Celadon Festival will be on from the 8th through the 16th.

Mokpo Maritime Culture Festival: July 31st through August 4th.

The Maritime Culture Festival (목포해양문화축제) is coming to Mokpo's Hadang from the 31st through August 4th.



It will be held at and around the Peace Park (평화공원). You can view the program, in Korean, here. Highlights include the multimedia fireworks show on the 31st from 10:30 to 11:00. It should be noted the website directs you to the "Logo Song" (here as .mp3). It's a rap.

There will be a shuttle bus from Peace Park from 1 p.m., with two courses: one to the port, one toward the Culture Center. All in all, looks pretty neat. Those living in or visiting Mokpo might be interested in "Museum Road," or might like to wander around the city, which Robert Koehler of The Marmot's Hole called "an outdoor museum of colonial Korea" in this excellent post. Also take a look at his piece in Seoul Selection, starting at page 77.

Washington Post on "competitive spending" and poor saving in South Korea.

A Washington Post article today looks at spending and saving in South Korea, and shows that Koreans will go from having the best rate of household savings in the world in 1988 to the worst in 2010.

But the fall-off-a-cliff character of what has happened with household savings in South Korea strikes many experts as abnormal and worrisome. It is one of several trends suggesting that South Korea, as it wrestles with post-industrial affluence, is a society under extraordinary stress.

South Koreans work more, sleep less and kill themselves at a higher rate than citizens of any other developed country, according to the OECD. They rank first in time spent online and second to last in spending on recreation, and the per capita birthrate scrapes the bottom of world rankings. By 2050, South Korea will be the most aged society in the world, narrowly edging out Japan, according to the OECD.

At the same time, South Korea ranks first in per capita spending on private education, which includes home tutors, cram sessions and English-language courses at home and abroad.

This data came to light earlier in the month, and was reported in the Chosun Ilbo, Korea Times, and Korea Herald. From the latter:

Korean households had the highest level of saving among the OECD member in 1999. Their saving ratio - saving as a percentage of disposable income - stood at around 25 percent at that time but it dropped to 10.7 percent in 2000, 4.4 percent in 2005 and 2.8 percent last year.

On the contrary, Americans are saving an increasingly large portion of their income. U.S. household savings once dipped to negative 0.4 percent in 2005, which means they spent more than they earned. The ratio came in at 1.8 percent in 2008, and is expected to rise to 5.4 percent in 2009 and 6.5 percent in 2010.

Did you get your free coffee at Starbucks yesterday?

I'm a pretty impatient person, and unless it's for an opportunity to punch Brett Favre, I don't think you'd catch me in a line this long.



To celebrate Starbucks' 10 years in Korea, they offered free coffee at their stores here between 10 and 11 yesterday. Martin Coles, President of Starbucks Coffee International, was in Seoul for the occassion.





(1, 2, 3)

The Korea Herald has something this evening; an excerpt:

Coles said that Starbucks Corp. started offering food choices like oatmeal and yogurt made with natural ingredients to reflect health and wellness in the United States, noting that this strategy will be widened at its Korea operations. He noted that plans are under way to launch fruit-based smoothies in Korea.

When the coffee giant began its official operations in Asia's fourth-largest economy on July 27, 1999, it triggered a whole new concept of coffee consumption by introducing premium take-out coffee that it had commercialized and led as a trend in Western countries. Now, Starbucks Corp. is aggressively fighting to maintain its global position as a leader in the premium coffee market by creating innovative products and marketing strategies.

The latest attempt at leading another new global trend is the Starbucks Via Ready Brew. Dorothy Kim, senior vice president of global strategy for Starbucks Coffee Co., told reporters yesterday that the new product is aimed at providing the Starbucks experience in "an instant."

There are 299 Starbucks in Korea, but only 4 down here, all in Gwangju, so I almost never go there. Those of you who are regulars, what's your take on it? While I think people working in Western chains in Korea are generally friendlier than the ones we have to tolerate back home, the service is sometimes suspect, which makes me wonder how closely the home offices are observing what goes on over here. The last time I was in Starbucks---in Seoul---the barista exhibited the oft-seen Korean habit of filling the cup only two-thirds of the way. But I rarely get drip coffee at one of these coffee shops because I can make it at home. Besides, unless I have a real craving I can't justify paying 3,000 to 5,000 won for a cup of coffee that's too often stale because so few people order it. The Starbucks in downtown Gwangju is often prohibitively crowded, so I choose one of the fifty-six others in Chungjangno.

Starbucks was rated #1 in Korea by a group in Taiwan, with Dunkin Donuts and The Coffee Bean coming in second and third, for whatever that's worth. Dunkin Donuts has been in Korea since 1994, and as of February there are 635 locations. Naver currently says 690, but I'm not going to go through and look for errors or duplicates. The Coffee Bean has been around since 2000 and has 179 locations.

I posted more on this, but cut it out for the sake of brevity, and because I have a headache. I'll leave you with a 2006 Joongang Ilbo look at the history of Korean cafes.

* Update: Okay, one more link, this one about the trouble brewing *cough* in Myeong-dong back in 2005:

Starbucks Korea said that it closed its Myeong-dong outlet because the building’s owner asked for more than double in rent, an amount the company wouldn’t disclose. The patch of land that the Myeong-dong Starbucks sits on is the most expensive piece of real estate in Korea.
“We originally had a five-year contract and so we had to renew our lease with the owner of the building, but we weren’t about to pay more than double than what we were already paying. Although the store is in a prime location, we do business strictly on its profitability, so we decided to move to another place,” a Starbucks Korea official said.

* Update 2: Oh, what the heck, I'll repost this video. I don't have any problem with Starbucks the company---and enjoyed reading through Pour Your Heart Into It---and I like the good stories I've heard about how their employees are treated. As somebody who spent a while in the "food service industry" I can appreciate this man's perspective:

The Moodeung Ilbo today looked at two zelkova trees in Jindo county shaped like genitals. One is male, the other is female. Kind of lame, at least compared to the "Woman Tree" in Mokpo.

Some cool videos from a trip to Korea.

These have been getting some attention on Dave's recently.

A friend of mine just traveled to Korea (to visit me), and made a very artistic video of it all. I watched it, and was moved by it... it really made me miss the place, and realize that it is quite interesting in a way we tend to overlook after living there for a while... a place which opens up your eyes a little, to a totally different, yet familiar world...

Thanks to "brento1138"; here's the first part:

Let me invite you to travel Korea with me by first stealing you from the city lights to enjoy a strange and different pace underground. The subway was my friend and my enemy.

Parts two

Within Korean cities I saw neighborhoods of neon and markets of fish. Everyone on the subway is using an electronic device. Children snack on squid. We also visited Tokyo, and looking out from Roppongi Hills we were not able to tell if the city ever ended or if it continued across the entire surface of the planet.

and three

Seoul's residential architecture is unbelievable. To the horizon stretches an ocean of identical concrete boxes. Seeing it made me reflect on the endless sea of Koreans; as a Vancouverite, it is shocking to see a country filled with only one race. You will find uniformity is in Korean living conditions, fashion and actions.

Be sure to click through to rank the videos or leave a comment.

Oh, then there's of course the "Soju Boy" parody of Soulja Boy's "Crank Dat Soulja Boy" Chris in South Korea found. Really? On a recruiter's website? Anyway, I know from time to time there are UCC contests (UCC콘테스트) held by the tourism organization and by other groups, so anybody producing videos about Korea might want to keep their eyes open.

And, finally, it's summer, so as fine a time as any to post this. I can't keep a straight face for the whole thing.



They came around here yesterday, at 7:45 in the goddamn morning.

Korea Tourism Organization looking for editor.

Late notice, I just saw this, but the official Korea tourism website is looking for a native English-speaking editor. The editor will work out of the KTO office in Seoul, and after a two-week trial period, a one-year, full-time contract will commence. The application deadline is July 31st.

It's that time of the week.

It's Tuesday, which means my weekly installment is in the Joongang Ilbo. It was kept out for two weeks, so that episode of "Chat with the Beauties" isn't so timely anymore. But, better three weeks late than never, right?

That these women would use this opportunity to smear other foreigners and perpetuate nasty stereotypes, on national television no less, demonstrates why the show is called Chatting Beauties and not “Chatting Brains.”

3 teachers with swine flu force cancellation of Jeollanam-do English camp.

A summer English camp scheduled next month in Wando county has been cancelled after three of the native speaker English teachers tested positive for swine flu. Other video reports via MBN, Yonhap, and SBS.

No details out yet about who they are or where they came from, but in June we learned that college students from the US would be teaching at English camps in Jeollanam-do again this summer. Those teachers arrived in Korea on July 19th and were undergoing a week-long orientation.

More curry pizza commercials.

Two new commercials from Mr. Pizza to show how exotic their Curry Curry Pizza is. This first one is a longer version of the original commercial that came out last month. This time it explains that the star is the "Curry Prince," who came from India to try curry pizza in Korea.



And this one has some Koreans in it, including Park Bo-young, a celebrity I don't know.



There are two curry pizzas, Curry Curry Chicken and Curry Curry Fish. I don't know about you, but I can't find out any more about these two items because of the page's encoding.

Commenter Breda Blog said the original one is her least-favorite commercial, and fattycat and WeikuBoy were moved by this Baskin Robbins one.



Indeed, that does make me want to die, but not as much as this one from Won Cashing (원캐싱):

Gwangyang monk beats woman to death.

From the Korea Times:

``I resorted to violence in a fit of anger, while I was chiding her for meeting a man,'' the monk was quoted as saying by police.

He beat her with a bottle. Story in Korean here.

In other bad news, in nearby Hadong county, Gyeongsangnam-do, police have arrested a third-year high school student (US 12th grade) for beating a 17-year-old schoolmate to death.

Drug bust in Korea with connection to Taliban.

This was in the Korea Times first, but the Joongang Ilbo has a little more information today:

The National Policy Agency said yesterday it had filed for arrest warrants on three South Koreans and a Pakistani for smuggling a chemical compound commonly used to produce heroin into Afghanistan.

According to the police, the four men smuggled two tons of acetic anhydride to Kandahar, a base for the Islamist group Taliban in Afghanistan, in February. Then between June and July, they tried to send seven more tons of the material to Afghanistan through Dubai. An official with the South Korean police said the smuggled goods could produce about 4.5 tons of heroin.

Interpol detained the Pakistani in Dubai last Tuesday and South Korean authorities caught the three other men in Yangju, Gyeonggi, on Thursday when they tried to smuggle out three tons of acetic anhydride.

. . .

The detained men have admitted to the smuggling charge, but said they didn’t receive any direct orders from the Taliban, the police said.

From the Korea Times, which gives different information about those arrested in an article "Taliban-Linked Drug Smugglers Arrested":

Police arrested two Pakistanis and a Korean man Sunday for smuggling massive quantities of acetic anhydride, a raw material for heroin production. They are suspected of being linked to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan.

According to the Police National Agency, the three suspects had used South Korea since last February as a shipping point for several tons of acetic anhydride destined for Afghanistan.

And a Korean-language Korea Times article from early this morning says two Pakistanis, two Koreans. Newsis says four, but doesn't mention the Korean guys.

This isn't the first time this drug has turned up in large quantities in South Korea. From last July:

Police said two Afghans, three Pakistanis and four Koreans tried to use South Korea as a shipping point for several tons of acetic anhydride destined for southern Afghanistan.

The chemical is heated with morphine, extracted from opium, to produce heroin.

"The key Afghan suspect admitted he did it at the instigation of the Taliban," Oh Ki-Duk, an investigator, told AFP. "But he claimed he is not a member of the Taliban."

Police confiscated 12 tons of acetic anhydride in a chemical engineering factory in the Seoul suburb of Ansan and arrested the two Afghans. The chemical was disguised as motor oil.

In a separate operation by the three Pakistanis -- who were also arrested in a Seoul suburb -- police said about 50 tons of the chemical had already been shipped, labelled as disinfectant.

The Korea Times has more---in an article that includes an Indian among those caught---on that bust, one which a Korean foreign affairs investigation officer said was the biggest bust of acetic anhydride ever.

I think they forgot a "we" in there.

Here's a coffee shop that opened in Suncheon's Jorye-dong recently.



Anticipating kushibo's response I went in and asked the guy behind the counter what the name meant. He asked me if I knew what homebred food was---I said yes but I lied---and he said it's like that for coffee. Whatever. The cafe itself is all right, and the guy working the counter was friendly. I was going to take some pictures of the interior, but when I got my camera out a couple chose, out of all chairs in the empty shop, the table right the hell in front of me.

Wonder Girls played Pittsburgh on Saturday, did one song.

The Wonder Girls were in Pennsylvania last week, doing two shows in Philadelphia and one in Pittsburgh. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette review of the Jonas Brothers' July 25th concert:

From the Jonas Brothers?

A bit grown up, but other than that, moms and daughters got a lively and very wholesome night of entertainment from these Jersey boys, not to mention Sparks, South Korean girl group Wonder Girls (for one song) and the harder-rocking quartet Honor Society.

One song? That's the only mention I found of them in the Pittsburgh media, and I found only one mention in the paper of their trip to Philly:

The Jonases even have their own farm team - the Jonas Group, which squeezes acts such as openers Honor Society into the Jonas mold, although the postcoital imagery of "See U in the Dark" doesn't exactly fit their mentors' squeaky-clean image. They also put the spotlight, briefly, on the South Asian girl group Wonder Girls, whose one-song performance failed to make much of an impression.

South Asian, South Korean, same-same. Well, they seem to really be hitting "Nobody" hard. From manager JYP's twitter page

Come learn the Nobody dance by the girls! Verizon Bus-Pittsburgh,Mellon Arena @ 4:30 C u there(No tickets required!might cancel if it rains)

. . .

11:27 AM Jul 25th from web Learn the Nobody dance by the Wonder Girls! Verizon Bus -Wachovia Center(Philadelphia)@4:30 (No tickets required!might cancel if it rains)

. . .

10:26 AM Jul 24th from web Come learn the Nobody dance by the Wonder Girls! Verizon Bus -Wachovia Center(Philadelphia) @ 4:30 C u all there!(no tickets required!)

One of those sessions was uploaded to Youtube.

Rainy month in Gwangju, too.

A little while ago I found some pictures of Gwangju Stream (광주천) swollen from the rain, and when I was downtown for something else I walked over to see how things looked a few days later.

First I just tried to find before-after pictures on the internet, but couldn't find any of the bridge you'll see in the news photographs. I think that's because I was looking in the wrong direction; though I'd been to the stream many times, it wasn't until last week that I noticed it flows southeast to northwest into the Yeongsan River. I assumed it flowed in the opposite direction, so I was looking at the opposite end of Yangdong Market on the map. Anyway, here's what turned up in the papers on the 16th (1, 2, 3, 4, 5):







Those were taken from the north side of Yangdong Market. Here's what I took last Monday and Tuesday. Blogging is very time-consuming, and photo posts take the longest to put together, hence the long delay. I took two days' worth of pictures because when I came back on Monday night I noticed the ones I took didn't match up well against what was in the paper, so I tried again on Tuesday. Unfortunately for me, it rained a lot on Monday night, bringing the river up a little. However, you can still appreciate how high the stream was, considering it's usually little more than a creek.







The parking lot and sidewalk under the market is one of the creepier places in the city. On Monday there were still large puddles and signs of the swollen river.









The next few pictures are of the flooded area we saw in those first pictures.






On Monday I took a few pictures from the middle of the stream by walking across the slabs that are there for pedestrians. On Tuesday, though, that was impossible.



A few more pictures in my Flickr gallery. I also walked around Yangdong Market for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. I also found some information about unqualified, low-quality domesticated animals that the Ministry of Justice might be interested in.

New literary journal, The Seoul International Review, to start.

From Brian Dear of Sparkling Chaos, and formerly of swine flu quarantine fame, comes news of a literary journal he's starting, called The Seoul International Review. An excerpt from his post on Dave's:

I am developing a new literary journal called "The Seoul International Review." It's going to be loosely modeled on The Paris Review and it's going to be published quarterly, with September (Fall 2009) as the first issue.

I wanted to let everyone know in case either you might be interested in submitting short stories (400-5000 words, negotiable in some cases) poems or black and white photos (we are also considering short plays, scripts and reportage as well.) Criticism is also desired, but it will be a "back of the book" feature. We want to put the emphasis on good stories and not good stories of people talking about stories.

Korea is NOT the theme of the journal.. we'll consider stories on any subject, preferably with some international flavor, setting or theme. For example, we are going to publish a great historical fiction story set in Stalin's Russia. The international requirement is flexible, but we'd like to publish stories that would be interesting for an international audience.

The mission of the journal is to promote quality short-form writing to an international audience. Korea lacks many literary journals in English and there is a great demand here, both among expats and the general Korean community.

The journal will be printed in a trade paperback form and available locally (within Korea) as well as internationally through Amazon. I have contacts in two Paris bookstores who have agreed to carry the title and I am working on distribution channels to have the journal carried in various independent books stores in San Francisco, Houston and Kansas City. Eventually, I hope to have the title more widely available, but of course such an endeavor takes time.

Read the rest of that post for more. The deadline for submissions for the first issue is August 15th, and should be emailed, preferably as a .pdf file, to superacidjax at me.com

That Kobaco ad.

By now you've probably already seen a relatively new commercial by the Korea Broadcast Advertising Corporation.



It's not, as one of the scholars on Dave's ESL Cafe will have you believe, celebrating Koreans who are rude to foreigners.

Have a close look about 60% of way thru. The main theme is 'Korea Pride.'
As I said, keep an eye out and state here what you see when the Korean guy pushes the white guy.
It's more like 'Korean inferiority complex raises it's head' than pride. Maybe I'm misreading it.

The Grand Narrative has a translation, and though Annalog posted on the video first, it wasn't until reading TGN's post I learned that one of the actors is Mahbub Alam, star of a film this summer "Bandobhi." Though it's irrating to hear politeness encouraged as a means to boost Korea's brand---there's that B-word again---it's very nice that this company is calling attention to the treatment of foreigners. Of all colors. More of this kind of awareness would be useful back home, too.

Sea-parting in Boryeong.

There's a sea-parting thing in Boryeong, too, as the city wrapped up the 무창포신비의바닷길축제. A couple pictures (1, 2):




Also in Boryeong, at Daecheon Beach yesterday, was a thing promoting that new bikini sports show I told you about before. There were some racing girls and models trying to undermine the sexiness of bikinis by acting ridiculous.






More here. I guess the gray one (김시원) is my favorite because it looks like she's the only one who bothered bringing any back to the event.

Professor Wagner in the Herald looking at "foreigner only" rules at banks, for phones.

A very interesting piece in the Korea Herald from Benjamin Wagner on the legal issues surrounding discrimination against foreigners regarding banking and cell phones. Give it a read.

While I'm an E-2 visa holder who has faced some inconveniences because of companies' discriminatory policies, I do realize that they aren't without reason when directed at those on E-2s. I don't have any statistics on teachers who pull midnight runners, but anecdotal evidence tells me that they happen with enough frequency to scare banks and telecommunications companies. Moreover, how many teachers leave at the end of a contract without cancelling service or paying all the bills?

Wagner has included a "foreigner phone chart," used by one company to show the services available based on visa type. It shows that, at this company, E-2 visa holders can either make a 200,000 won deposit to get unlimited air time (with a monthly fee), or get limited airtime for 35,000 won per month. This deposit is refundable, I believe, at the completion of a contract, though it's still a little confusing and I've never seen any explanation anywhere.

I bought my cellphone in August, 2005, after being in Korea for about a month. (It's this one, and it cost a whopping 120,000 won.) The bank where I bought it happened to be offering plans through LG Telecom and I was pleased to learn that I could purchase a phone without putting it in a Korean person's name or having them co-sign. I'm unclear on the details on these policies, though I was told by many people that this was a frequent practice. I didn't put down a deposit, either. About two years later it was time to replace my phone. After the fact I learned how to say "second-hand" in Korean because it turned out the store sold me a second-hand model. I don't know anything about technology and just wanted the cheapest, barest-bones model available, and saw one comparable to my old one. However, I couldn't buy from that company without putting down a 200,000 won deposit. Even though my actual phone company would remain unchanged, buying models from certain companies would require a 200,000 won deposit. It is refundable, as I said, though it bothered me on principle, and I ended up buying a much fancier phone than I wanted simply because I wouldn't have to put down the deposit.

Like I said I don't know anything about technology and usually don't follow news pertaining to it, so I'll have to defer to others about recent news. But speaking of buying a second-hand phone I recall this news story from March, 2008, that said company SK would turn off unregistered telephones. Nothing wrong with that on paper, though it presented a problem to those who bought a phone second-hand or who inherited one from another foreigner leaving the country. There was a letter to the Joongang Ilbo at the time on it:

Some people were using prepaid phones for scams, so SK decided that anyone using a phone not registered in their own name would have service shut off in a month.
This means that many foreigners here using phones bought from other foreigners will have to buy a new phone after March 31, even though they’ve been paying, responsible customers of SK.
I bought my phone from another foreigner, a girl I didn’t know, in February of last year. I can’t change the registration name because she isn’t here anymore. I explained this to a customer service representative and he was really nice, but told me there was nothing he could do and no one higher up I could talk to.
Basically, SK is forcing me to buy another phone because of something I had nothing to do with.

I guess I avoided that headache by virtue of buying from a then-ubiquitous LG store. Here's the five-page thread on Dave's ESL Cafe that got the news out in the beginning, in case you're interested. And here's the Dave's thread on Wagner's article.

It's also worth mentioning here that in the fall of 2007, when I moved to Suncheon and was trying to get internet hooked up in my apartment, LG Powercom wouldn't give it to me, saying they didn't provide service to foreigners. Their reason was that Koreans signed multi-year contracts, though foreigners on an E-2 visa often couldn't do that. However, I had been a customer with LG Telecom for about two years, and had a contract with LG Powercom the year before in Gangjin, and was bothered by being refused service. Here's a thread I started about it on Dave's in 2007.

I will say that one nice thing about LG Teleom is that they send you phone bills in both English and Korean.

Let's hope Koreans don't become stupid spoiled whores.

The Chosun Ilbo brings us this:


With the caption:

Girls dressed as Paris Hilton celebrate the Korean airing of MTV reality show "Paris Hilton's My New Best Friends Forever" in Myeong-dong, Seoul on Thursday.

More (1, 2, 3):





Unfortunately, Korean TV routinely airs some of the worst the US has to offer. I'm reminded of something Western Confucian wrote recently in a comment to one of his posts:

Am I supposed to feel proud to see McDonald's and rap music here in Korea? Instead, I'm doubly ashamed, for my countrymen who export this garbage and for the Koreans who eat it up.

Couldn't agree more. I'm disappointed in both the culture that produces this crap and the one that feels compelled to imitate it.

"우리는 패리스 힐튼" the headline says:



Really? Well, I'm very sorry to hear that.



One interesting thing to note, and I'm sure the pop culture bloggers will be more informative in this area than me, is that while Korean celebrities are held to pretty high moral standards, you have a woman like Paris Hilton regularly on TV and endorsing Fila Korea.

If you haven't yet seen it, go see what South Park has to say in their episode "Stupid Spoiled Whore Video Playset."

Daegu court gives Cambodian 4 years for killing husband.

From the Korea Times:

The Daegu District Court gave the unidentified woman, 18, a four-year sentence Thursday for stabbing her husband to death.

``She was pregnant, and we acknowledge that she used the knife to defend herself. But she stabbed him three times and the wounds showed that she attacked him consciously, so it was a preemptive attack rather than legitimate self-defense,'' the court said.

The woman came to Korea in April of last year to get married. The 38-year-old husband, under the influence of alcohol, attacked her at their home in Daegu in January.

In case you're curious, here's an excerpt from one of the contemporary articles, brought to us by Korea Beat:

“Cambodian people will think a person is rude for touching their heads. We do not know if that was the reason that 18-year old Mrs. Choun (pseudonym) stabbed her husband after marrying him from Cambodia.”

I ran it with the headline "Pay attention to your foreign wife owner's manual."

I'm not going to get into whether it was justified or not. Murder is murder, and besides, a 171-word article doesn't give you much to work with.

But what jumps out at me in stories like this---or when it's the mail-order bride who winds up dead---is the age gap, so telling of what's going on. When will South Korea stop buying young women in order to deal with its gender imbalance? Public relations people can talk about how the Korean Wave is touching the world and giving countries rich and poor a positive image of South Korea, but certainly people in Southeast Asia aren't getting as rosy a picture as hallyu enthusiasts might think. When you add the image of Koreans behaving badly overseas with bullshit like the wife trade, you're not building good relationships with your neighbors. Filling people with visions of palacial apartments, luxurious cars, and an exaggerated sense of filial piety won't do much when their countrywomen are sold to rural Korea, married to men who are too often poor or handicapped or otherwise unmarriable, and abused. These women are often unhappy, divorce rates among these international couples are on the rise, and we sometimes about the husbands trying to hunt down their wives after the women ran back to their home countries. In extreme cases these young women wind up dead. Sure, South Korea is one of the richest countries in the region now, but Korea itself is a great example of how quickly things can change.

Here's an excerpt from a Korea Times editorial from last August:

South Korea has increasingly come under attack for the abuse and exploitation of foreign wives, especially those from Southeast Asian countries. The plight of Vietnamese wives married to Koreans has already invited international criticism over rights abuses and human trafficking. It is heart-wrenching to read frequent stories that Vietnamese spouses were beaten to death or committed suicide ― far from realizing their ``Korean dream.''

What's more worrisome is that such a story does not stop with the ill-fated Vietnamese. The problem is now spreading to Cambodia. The Cambodian government has recently suspended processing all documents for marriages of its citizens with foreigners as a measure to minimize the possibility of human trafficking. You Ay, Cambodia's deputy minister of women's affairs, said April 3 that the suspension was prompted by concerns about exploitation and trafficking amid a surge in the number of Cambodian women marrying South Koreans.

And a Joongang Ilbo column from a while ago named "End the marriage industry":

A country is globally rejected or respected for its policies and behavior towards women. Korea must legislate against the business of buying and selling foreign wives.
The government should immediately crack down on this shameful practice.
At the same time, the government must grant quick citizenship to the foreign wives already living here so that they can have full equal rights under the law.
It is time for Korea to protect its minority citizens.

And while Korea is buying up the young women of Southeast Asia---41% of men in farming and fisheries do it, and one source says 37% of marriages in Jeollanam-do's Hampyeong county were international in 2004---foreign men in relationships with Korean women are still getting shit.

Just so we're clear about where I stand, allow me to quote myself from April:

For what it's worth, I don't object to these sort of marriages out of hand. For people who want to get married but find themselves with few options---or who simply find themselves tired of looking---I don't see anything wrong with finding someone through the internet or going through an agency. We've all tried internet dating, haven't we? (Haven't we?) And, hell, Korea and other Asian countries where this sort of international marriage business is popular have a long---and recent---history with matchmaking services. I'm also not naive enough to believe these women are all innocent victims, who didn't come here for money or the chance to live out the "Korean Dream." It says so right in the damn article. But I find it sick that these foreign women are little more than indentured servants, tied to men twice their age and half their IQ, and charged with repopulating a rural Korea that a generation or two before would have thrown them down a well.

Gambling bust in Jindo, crop circle in Gangjin, rain in Suncheon, and other local news.

I was going to give a few local news stories posts of their own, until I found a few more. Keep in mind there are scores and scores of newspapers in Jeollanam-do, all with, well, lots of news about Jeollanam-do. This is just some of what I found last night.

** On Thursday Jindo police busted six in a Jindo-eup motel room for gambling. They got about 36 million won and among the six include a local newspaper reporter, laborers, and farmers.

** A husband and wife drowned yesterday in Gurye county when their car went off a bridge and into the Seomjin River. Video report here. Perhaps it's wrong to point it out here, but I've noticed that different articles on the same topic will differ quite a bit. In this case the location of the accident is different in two articles, as are the ages of the deceased.

** A 38-year-old man was found dead in a Damyang reservoir yesterday.

** After eight years this murder was finally solved in Goheung county. And the suspect got to play reenactor, too.

** Ooooh, Gangjin got something new!



** Speaking of new things in Gangjin, they're constructing a new baseball facility there, a complex that will have four outdoor fields, an indoor practice facility, an outdoor pool, dorms, and a hotel, among other features. It'll be in Doam-myeon, a small rural township southwest of the county seat, Gangjin-eup. Official site here. You can book a field, 200,000 won per game.



** Gwangju will host the Home Run Derby on Saturday. It is hosting the All Star Game, too, and as the article points out the Derby takes place in the middle of the game.

** I thought it was common knowledge---I've mentioned it several times---but Yeongam county will have Formula One racing from next year. They're working on the track now.

** Jeollanam-do plans to have 437 kilometers of bicycle roads constructed by 2013. I've written before that there are plans to tear up all the unused train tracks in Suncheon and turn that into a bike path. That comes from the Suncheon city website, and though it does have some interesting bits of information once in a while, the "English" really makes no sense at all.

** Ben of Jeonnam Life has some good pictures of the effect the rainy season has had on Suncheon's Dongcheon.

** And here's a reservoir in Gangjin.

** I have no idea what this is in Mokpo, but it looks cool.

** There's going to be an English Pop Song Contest (click on "Notice") at the Muan White Lotus Festival. If you want to apply, do so by July 31st, says GFN. Also from GFN, they're looking for a "foreigner broadcast monitor" for the English-language station. The job ad is in Korean.

** This is a month old, but still good. Mark of the excellent The Jeonnam Hub blog had a little write-up about him and his site in the Jeonbuk Ilbo. Once I get a cute kid I'm so phoning up the Jeonnam Ilbo.

Movie title fail.

I see there's a new movie coming out next month called "10억."



Checking out the poster a little closer today in Gwangju I noticed something.



1억 is 100 million, so 10억 would be one billion, as the digits indicate. Why the movie's English name is "A Million" isn't clear.

The poster above says coming in July, though the official website says August 6th.

Gando is their land.

Some students were outside the bus terminal in Gwangju today raising awareness of Gando, stretch of land located in present-day Manchuria some consider to be Korean territory.






The sign behind the bicycles says "Goguryeo is our history, Gando is our land." The students have been riding their bikes around the country since July 13th, and will continue until August 15th. Sorry about the cellphone pics; more information via this website. You can watch what VANK has to say on the issue, if you'd like:



I don't have any dogs in this fight, but it is funny to watch East Asian nationalists bicker about history and land, trying to see who can put history in the biggest quotation marks.

New developments in the story of the Suncheon principal who stabbed himself.

About three weeks ago we read about an elementary school principal in Suncheon who was in some trouble because of an affair with a teacher. Following a meeting at the local Office of Education he drove to Gwangju to the house of a reporter and stabbed himself in the stomach. Well, the reporter has been arrested and his wife booked without detention for extortion and character defamation. Though the news articles didn't mention particulars at the time, it now has come out that the reporter wanted 25,000,000 won as hush money.

I found these lines this morning in an article from July 2nd I didn't see at the time:

한편 이 학교 운영위원회는 A교장이 지난 5월30일 전국소년체전 출장을 마치고 돌아오다 체육담당 B 여교사와 벌교소재 한 모텔에서 학교 법인카드를 사용하는 등 부적절한 관계를 맺어왔다며 A교장의 전보 조치를 요구했다.

A교장은 생일을 맞아 B교사가 마련한 케이크만먹고 나왔다고 해명한 것을 알려졌다.

The school says he went to a motel in Beolgyo with the teacher before their required trip to the National Junior Sports Festival held in Jeollanam-do, was up to no good, and paid with the school's credit card. He says they went to the motel to eat birthday cake. I'm still confused about some points, though, and don't fully understand this paragraph from today's article:

A씨 내외는 지난달 중순쯤 순천시 한 커피숍에서 순천 모 초등학교 교장 B씨가 자신의 아들 여자친구이자 같은 초등학교 교사인 C씨와 부적절한 관계인 것을 알고, 이를 협박해 2천 5백만원을 뜯어낸 혐의를 받고 있다.

Japanese fangirl interviews Harry Potter stars.

Here are some cute videos brought to us via Japan Probe. The first is a teenaged contest-winner interviewing Rupert Grint, an interview that is, unfortunately for English-speakers, both subtitled in Japanese and dubbed over.



And here's one with Daniel Radcliffe:



There is also one with Emma Watson.

Tap that ass.

Wednesday was the start of the three-day 2009 Jinha World Women's Beach Volleyball Tournament (2009진하세계여자비치발리볼대회) in Ulsan. The Chosun Ilbo of course has the coverage you're looking for.



I'm pretty sure that's Han Ji-yeon (한지연), the college volleyball star turned model who, in turn, turned up on a Japanese escort service website. In spite of trying to cheer up her teammate here, she looks a little, um, deflated.



To be fair to the Chosun Ilbo, from what I've seen on all sorts of websites, women's beach volleyball exists in the minds of photographers solely for the purpose of snapping pervy photos.



Interestingly, Han Ji-yeon is in the news because she is among several models and athletes to appear on a bikini sports show coming to the E channel on the 29th. The show's called 비키니선수단, and I don't really get the object of it, but maybe I'm overthinking it. You can browse the website here, and you'll see that Han is categorized as "얼짱배구선수." I'll have to add that to my list of racy television programs that will compete with Naked News Korea, the channel whose models are, oddly enough, not naked.




This is a good place to mention a little news story we read about a couple days ago on Korea Beat and Marmot's Hole, about two Indonesian guys busted for taking pictures of women on Haeundae Beach. Yesterday, the Chosun Ilbo put up the following blurb on their site:

Photographers need to be careful where they point their cameras when they're at the beach. Those who snap shots of women in bikinis without their permission can wind up booked for violation of the sexual violence law and face public humiliation.

The Haeundae Police Station in Busan on Monday booked without detention two Indonesian men for taking photos of bikini-wearing women without their consent at Haeundae Beach. The two men wandered the beach for five hours from 10:30 a.m. on Sunday and took pictures of some 50 women without permission.

Excuse me?! Exfuckingcuse me?

Photographers need to be careful where they point their cameras when they're at the beach.

No, it sounds like photographers need to have their press credentials on them when they're taking photos of unsuspecting women. Photographers also need to remember to not be foreign. I've collected some examples of pervy photography on the news sites, especially by the Chosun Ilbo. For example, here's one from the Chosun Ilbo, which was even on the English-language site:



Those same women were photographed by the Busan Ilbo.



Here's the Chosun Ilbo getting between the legs of some white women sunbathing.



Here's the Chosun Ilbo looking at sunbathers at a hotel pool in Itaewon.



Here's more from Haeundae Beach from Yonhap:


Some bikinis, and a big guy, at Gwangangli Beach in Busan.



Here's one Korea Beat found:



And, well, this is getting tedious, you get the idea. I've focused on foreigners in bikinis because the papers seem to be especially aroused by them, but there are of course tons of pictures of bikini-clad Koreans unwittingly photographed as well.

I know beaches are public spaces, and that if you wear a bikini on Haeundae Beach---the most crowded one in the country and perhaps one of the most-crowded in the world---you'll attract attention. It's naive to pretend women aren't aware of the attention they attract. And though it's certainly creepy to photograph these women---I've seen guys hanging out at the back of the beach with their huge lenses ready---is it any more illegal than the pictures we take of without permission of people in markets, in malls, or on the street? Michael Hurt has addressed some of these issues on previous Korea Beat posts here, here, and here. I think if you're going to bust people for taking pictures of women at the beach, then you've got to bust the journalists as well. And if you're not going to punish the journalists---or the bloggers, Korean and foreign, who fill their pages with pictures of women in bikinis at the beach or mudfest---then you shouldn't be punishing ordinary citizens.

On second thought, after rereading Korea Beat's post about photographers busted in Haeundae last year, for the sake of convenience I think I will post some of what Hurt, "The Metropolitician," had to say. You'll see he talks more about the freedom he thinks photographers should enjoy, and indeed are guaranteed:

This is inane and stupid. It’s a public place. So filming/snapping pics of people in a public place, exposing parts of the body that are *GASP* readily visible to anyone — that’s a crime?

Yeah, getting up in people’s grill and continuing to take pictures while violating their personal space, or continuing to photograph after being asked to stop — that’s harrassment. You don’t need a camera to harass. Or sneaking cams into saunas, bathrooms, or sticking special equipment up skirts — that’s private space and wrong. And illegal anyway.

But calling taking a picture of someone on the beach in a public space “sexual violence” is a bit much. Sure, it might not be “nice” or you might be accused of being a dick, but it’s not the same as groping someone against their will.

This is what makes people, in a land where everyone and their dog has DSLR’s and other photo equipment, scared to take pics of other people. And why people continue to largely use the $5,000 cameras and $6,000 lenses to take pictures of their cream sauce spaghetti, cafe au lait swirls, and flowers.

And in a follow-up:

In Korea, any picture taken of another human being without expressed consent is “molka.” Which compresses everything from legitimate candid and street photography into the same category as sticking a fiber-optic cable up a woman’s skirt in the bathroom.

So, to be clear, the article isn’t talking about special devices, as “hidden camera” in English would imply, but simply taking pictures without expressed consent.

Which itself IS NOT A CRIME, even according to Korean law.

Also read what he has to say about "Korean Photo Paranoia."

And I'll just close on another note. I'm working on a bunch of festival previews, and practically all the websites I'm using have foreigners in their promotional material. In Gwangju the other day I saw an advertisement for the Muan Lotus Festival on the side of a bus, and on the left side of the ad was a giant photograph of two white guys giving a thumbs up. Some might say it's nice that foreigners are being included, even though we make up a very, very small percentage of the audience at these festivals. But I have to ask when the objectification of Caucasians and English speakers will end. I think we're still quite a ways off from an honest assessment of these trends. Certainly back in the States we have people looking at how, say, Asians are represented in the media, how they're depicted in popular culture, but leading the charge has always been Asian-AMERICANS: Korean-AMERICANS, Japanese-AMERICANS, Chinese-AMERICANS, and so on. I can only think of a few foreigners offhand who have acquired Korean citizenship, and they're not doing any agitating. Until there's a generation of biracial or binational Koreans, I don't think there will be much change. I would like to hear, though, some answers from Koreans about why festival organizers always use foreigners in their promotional material. I can speculate, of course, but I would like to hear from them. I guess I'll have to ask.

Near-total solar eclipse in Jeollanam-do.

Jeollanam-do held a near-total solar eclipse this morning to improve its international image. Here are some pictures from the Naro Space Center in Goheung county (1, 2, 3):





It was the most-total eclipse in South Korea in 61 years, and there won't be another one this size on the peninsula until 2035.

I didn't do anything special for today's Dementor attack partial eclipse except wander around outside because I didn't have the proper equipment and didn't think to make a viewer beforehand. The consensus on Facebook, though, is that it was great. There were organized viewings around the country, and Jeollanam-do had a few as well. About 1,200 people showed up at the observatory at Suncheon Bay, and 150 to the observatory in Gokseong (곡성섬진강천문대). Here are some people in Seoul doing it wrong.

While we might be surprised that a Korean knows about UNKLE, we shouldn't be surprised that MC Mong ripped off one of their videos.

The South Korean Supreme Court gave a Nigerian man a life sentence for drug trafficking. Good riddance.

Lots of unfinished business after July's Pay Per View.

Run-ins, scrums, and weapons marred the July Pay Per View at the National Assembly. The Chosun Ilbo snapped a photo of the "King of Hardcore" Triple K Kang Ki-kap attempting to use a desk against his opponents.



And members of the Democratic Party attacked babyface Yun Seok-yong while driving to the ring in his free Rascal scooter.




Here some cronies went under the ring to bring a chair into the match.



The referee separates the two combatants after Baek Won-u tapped out to Kim Seong-tae's Sharpshooter.



The Korea Herald has the story.

* Update: You can catch videos all over the local news channels and their websites, or tune in to this one from the BBC. Thanks to a reader for passing it along.

Watch the Wonder Girls on the Wendy Williams Show, if you want.

Rather than watching a video somebody taped with the camera off the damn TV set, you can view the real thing on Wendy Williams' site. The Korea Times has the coverage:

The Wonder Girls, South Korea's pop sensation now active in the United States, made a successful appearance on a U.S. TV talk show on Monday with hit song ``Nobody.''

The five-member girl band sang the song in English on the daytime Wendy Williams Show in New York and drew a standing ovation. The members enthralled the spectators by wearing the same clothes as in South Korea. The producers also created a stage similar to that from the music video of the song.

The talk show Web site was plastered with postings invariably praising the Wonder Girls' performance. One of the postings said, `` I love the Wonder Girls! Thanks Wendy for having them on your show. I love you and the Wonder Girls. I love watching your show and I also hope everyone will support the Wonder Girls debut in America.''

Well, another posting said

Can you say Milli Vanilli y’all? Although those ‘chu’s are pretty convincing.

And another said

I think most of the comments here are left by their Korean fans who follow them everywhere they go. They only watch today’s show because they were appearing on it. I don’t think they can sing. They are pretty and the song is addicting…but that is about it.

My current column at the Joongang Ilbo notwithstanding, I think newspapers here tend to give too much weight to internet comments. Does what some 14-year-old says on YouTube often warrant repeating in a paper? Or what some 40-year-old takes fifteen seconds to type?

Anyway, the Wonder Girls should be given credit for doing what all the other overhyped Korean Wave, um, stars couldn't, and that's make a splash on American shores. (See what I did there?) But what's funny isn't just that Wendy Williams is a nobody to anyone who doesn't follow hip-hop, but that she's, well, not exactly wholesome entertainment, basically a shock jock who peddles in celebrity gossip. Wikipedia says:

A portion of Lil' Kim's track, "Shut Up Bitch" on her album The Naked Truth says:

"Don't come around here with that Wendy Williams shit/get your facts straight or shut up bitch!"

and

In an incident on her Hot 97 show in 1995, Wendy notoriously aired rumors that Tupac Shakur was raped in prison. Shakur was furious over the rumor, which New Jersey underground rapper Chino XL referenced in a song, "Riot". Shakur later addressed Wendy Williams on the song "Why U Wanna Turn On Me?", which remained unreleased until his death in 1996. In the song, Shakur insults Williams mainly in the last verse and the outro, stating that he prays she "chokes on the next dick down [her] throat" and refers to her as a "fat troll," and threatening a $20,000 Jenny Craig hit on her.

I don't think those'll be turning up in the reviews. She is mildly entertaining as a radio personality, and has of course been successful though I wonder how much edginess will carried over onto her TV show, which debuted on the 13th.

Jeongnamjin Aqua Festival (정남진물축제): July 29th - August 2nd.

Jangheung county---which still has the slogan "Powerful Jumping! Green Jangheung"---will hold the Jeongnamjin Aqua Festival (정남진물축제) from July 29th through August 2nd. This is the second of what plans to be an annual festival, and you can browse photos via Naver. There's a small program online as well as a festival map. The booths look to be open from 10:00 to 18:00, and there are a number of concerts planned nights, including groups like Girls' Generation, SG Wannabe, and a group called Gary Goldsmith, who shares the name of an apparently-notorious uncle of Prince William's girlfriend. One of my favorites, Bobby Kim, will be there on the 29th.



I'd like to visit Jangheung for this, and not just because there's a semi-nude photography contest on the 1st and 2nd. I've passed through town a number of times, because it's the next one over from Gangjin, where I lived for a year. Shortly after I left they completed a nice park along the river in town, and while I can't vouch for the quality of the entertainment at this festival, I'd like to get a look at this park, the Tamjin River Ecological Park (탐진강생태공원). Here's a photo from the 전광일보:



It's been a while since I've been in a small town, and I guess Jangheung qualifies. The county has 43,703---1/13th the population of Gangnam-gu---and with 15,622 people, the town of Jangheung-eup is slightly larger than Gangjin's county seat. Something that also may be worth a visit is the Water Culture Park (장흥물문화공원)---called a Waterium on the side of the building---built near Jangheung Dam (장흥댐) in Busan-myeon some 9 kilometers north of town. Conveniently there's a site called 장흥댐뉴스 that provides some interesting information and pictures. There is a "Slow City" in Jangheung, too, and a few sites used as filming locations for movies and soap operas. I suppose the most "famous" thing in town is the Saturday Market (토요시장), held each Saturday morning a short walk from the bus terminal. The events at the festival are likewise a short walk from the terminal. Buses run regularly from Gwangju, Suncheon, and practically everywhere else.

If you're still looking for incentive to visit, why not take the county's magistrate word for it?

Jangheung that starts the running with nature protecting - as it is - and all county peoples' infinite development possibility and power !

You can, um, learn a lot more about last year's semi-nude photo contest here and here, two links that aren't safe for work unless you work at the Chosun Ilbo. There's an entrance fee of 40,000 won, and you can get more information from the Jangheung Photo Club.

MC Mong's an Indian boy.

Does that mean we can buy Jeju for $24? Seriously, what the hell is this? The teaser for MC Mong's "Indian Boy" (인디언보이):



Looks like somebody raided wardrobe with the lights off.

New Kara album to drop on July 30th!

There are few things I hate more than Kara.



After abusing the English language for much of 2008, they have another album coming out on the 30th.



They have a new look, and as the article points out, it's their "comeback." Fuck me, their last single came out February 2nd. The look is apparently the "Kara upgrade" we've heard about, and I'm certainly not keeping score at home, but insofar as I'm . . . keeping score at home, this is their third look. During their last flurry of activity, as they did their best to separate our students from sensible English, they were insanely happy:



But before that they were from the streets.



Kara is also in the news because one of their members was voted the prettiest girl in the K-pop scene by Korean users of Yahoo! Japan. Says one site:

KARA’s Goo Ha Ra was voted the 1st as she has a small body and clear facial features on a small faces, which are the ideal face and body shape for Japanese.

Stolen from here.

All those K-pop sites are bullshit and just copy off one-another, so I'm not going to waste any more time on this topic.

Vietnamese wife beaten by family for neglecting mother-in-law.

From the Korea Times:

Two sisters-in-law and a stepdaughter of a Vietnamese immigrant wife were fined for beating her after she allegedly failed to tend to her mother-in-law's needs.

A district court in Changwon, South Gyeongsang Province, imposed a fine of 700,000 won each on the women, both in their forties. It also slapped a 300,000-won fine on the 26-year-old stepdaughter on the same charges.

The sisters-in-law said they had been unsatisfied with the woman's care of their mother.

Get it, slapped a 300,000-won fine on her? In Korean here.

Why?

This new Dunkin Donuts drink should set back good English pronunciation twenty years.

Remember, if you elect me I'll outlaw sexydances.

Korean candidates for the "World Miss University" (월드미스유니버시티) pageant were in the papers yesterday (1, 2) for doing sexy dances for boyband 2PM.




Actually, sexy dance should be one word. It's more of a compound noun, because the dances certainly can't be described as "sexy." On an earlier post I promised that if elected president of South Korea I'd ban ddeok from public consumption---the noisiest food in Korea---and would outlaw sexy dances.

"Sexy" was #1 on my list of "Ten most hated English phrases in Korea" in 2008, and it has a hell of a chance to repeat this year. I've also covered sexydances a lot on this site before because they are absolutely ridiculous. Granted, about half of the sexydances I've seen have been from middle school students at English camps and talent shows, but . . . well, perhaps that tells you a lot right there. I think some of the best commentary on this comes from "Qinella" on a Dave's thread a few years ago:

Is it possible to watch Korean women dance around and not just laugh? I remember this girl I met during my first year in Korea gave me a naked "sexy dance". I was laughing and told her to never, ever try to be sexy again. And it seems like they all do the same goofy dance.

A few examples I've collected on this site:



That's the exceedingly dull Son Dambi, now ubiquitous ad-girl and frontwoman of Korea's Pussycat Dolls. No, they don't know what pussy means. Here's a young woman dancing at a ceramics festival.



Sexydances share a few set moves. The women like to stomp, jerk their shoulders around, do a half-squat every now and then, look off to the side, and run their hands through their hair (see, for example, the woman on the right in the first picture). Bonus points for laughing or scrunching up your lips. Finally, inevitably, the dancers will attempt to back it up. Around 1:00 into the Son Dambi video you'll see the dancer try it, and at 1:36 of the second video she gives it a go. Once they do that move I can no longer keep a straight face. Like many other things in Korea, the dance moves are adopted without any context, and these dancers likely haven't learned that they need something to back up.

I'm not sure how far back the trend of unsexy sexydances goes, but this 2005 video from Jewelry seems quite influential.



Skip to about 2:00 to see all the hallmarks of a Korean sexydance.

For the second Tuesday in a row, my Joongang Ilbo piece was bumped because of space limitations, so I guess you can look for it next week. Maybe.

Drowning at mud fest on Saturday.

Someone said on this Dave's thread that a person drowned at Daecheon Beach on Saturday, though there isn't much in the news about it save for brief mentions in a couple of articles, here and here. According to the first one, from the 매일경제, a man in his 30s was swimming at the beach on the 18th when he was swept away by the current. The second says his name was Choi and he was 34. The 매일경제 article also says a woman in her 30s died in Daegu when she slipped while hiking near Palgongsan's Gatbawi.

No, not the ice cream!

Turns out nearly a quarter of the ice cream they tested in Seoul contains unsafe levels of bacteria and contaminants.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government (SMG) inspected 74 ice cream shops, fast food franchises, coffee houses and bakeries. Among the shops selling ice cream and ice, 18 shops sold products that contained more than the permitted levels of bacteria such as colon bacillus and staphylococcus aureus that can cause food poisoning.

A franchise in Gangnam-gu was found to have ice cream containing 220 colony forming units (cfu) per milliliter of colon bacillus, 22 times more than the level permitted.

As to ice, used mostly in ice coffee, 14 locations among 44 fast food franchises and coffee shops were found to be using contaminated ice.

The city government also inspected ``patbingsu,'' or shaved ice topped with fruits and red beans, at 24 bakeries and fast food chains. Among those, nine were found to be using bacteria-contaminated shaved ice. In these cases, SMG applied the same standards as for ice cream as it does not have separate standards for shaved ice.

In Korean here. You'll remember in May we learned about more unsafe ice being used at coffee and fastfood shops around the country. A Dunkin Donuts in Yeosu and a Tom n' Toms in Gwangju were among the offenders. I'm not sure the body conducting these recent tests, nor have I found a list of the stores in question.

NK just after attention, Secretary of State says.

Here's quite a quotation from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

In the interview with the ABC News from India, Clinton said North Korea's strategy to get attention with provocations will not pay off.

"What we've seen is this constant demand for attention, and maybe it's the mother in me or the experience that I've had with small children and unruly teenagers and people who are demanding attention," she said. "We weren't going to give the North Koreans the satisfaction they were looking for, which is to try to elevate them again to center stage."

"Don't give it to them," Clinton said. "They don't deserve it. They are acting out in a way to send a message that is not a message we're interested in receiving."

Rainy month in Suncheon.

Yes, of course it's rainy all over the place, though Suncheon turned up in an article a few days ago about massive flooding in the south that claimed the lives of at least four.

Some 36 houses in South Jeolla were flooded, and 81 hectares (200 acres) of farmland, 131 hectares of salt pan, and four salt storehouses in Shinan County, South Jeolla, were swept by flooding, which caused property damage estimated at 300 million won ($237,000).

The rain has been exceptionally heavy.

Busan has had its highest rainfall since records began in 1908. Over 900 millimeters (35 inches) fell between June 20 and yesterday. Seasonal rain arrived on the Korean Peninsula on June 20.

Suncheon in South Jeolla and Masan in South Gyeongsang came under nearly 1,000 millimeters of rain during the same period.

Suncheon has had its heaviest rainfall since 1973 and Masan since 1986.

Ben at Jeonnam Life looked up the numbers on Thursday.

In the past nine days---in the peak of the local monsoon season---Suncheon has received a whopping 667mm of rain! That's over [three] times as much precipitation as Suncheon received for the whole of July last year when it recorded just 200.2mm.

Thanks to Jeonnam Life also for passing along the link to the Korean Meteorological Association, which lets you look at weather stats for years present and past. Select your city or county, and select 강수량 for precipitation.

Actually I've been meaning to do a post about all this rain, but it's taken a while to piece together. One confusing part is the different numbers they're throwing around. The Joongang Ilbo piece says just under 1,000mm for Suncheon, though when I looked at the KMA stats I found it was under 700mm. Then today I found the map pictured below, which says Suncheon has received 997.6mm from June 20th through July 16th, a number which doesn't match up with the KMA figures.



The only thing I can think of is that they're taking measurements at different places within the city, and that these figures are wildly different, but who knows. Suncheon does, after all, have an area one-and-a-half times that of Seoul. For example the number given in this article on the 16th is 10mm higher than what's on the KMA website, and this one is 120mm higher, and this one is nearly twice as high as what's on the KMA site. When I've looked around the internet and watched TV, there's a lot of mention of Suncheon's Hwangjeon-myeon---about 22 kilometers northwest of downtown---which looks to have gotten a lot. On the 16th it got, according to this site, 73.5mm in one hour. This article shows 201mm for Hwangjeon-myeon by 10:10 on the 16th, but 180.5mm for Suncheon. It also says 53mm for nearby Yeosu, which shows what a difference a few kilometers can make. (The distance from Suncheon Station to Yeosu City Hall is about five kilometers greater than the distance from Suncheon Station to Hwangjeon-myeon).

Interestingly, there's been almost no rain here the past two days, in spite of the forecasts calling for it.

Launch of Naro-1 rocket postponed again.

The launch of Naro-1, the first space rocket launched from South Korea, will be delayed until August. Scheduled to launch July 30th from Naro Space Center in Goheung county, it will be pushed back because of technical problems.

The pre-launch combustion test won’t be carried out until after July 27, according to the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center in Russia, which is responsible for the first stage of the rocket.

“The center was scheduled to perform a combustion test on July 23 but the center notified us that the test would have to be delayed until after July 27 because of technical problems,” said Lee Sang-mok, an official of the ministry on Thursday. “This means we will have to put off the launch for four days or more.”

Lee added that the center called for renegotiations on the launch schedule once the center had completed the combustion test.

Under the current plan, the Russians should conduct the test in order to check the performance, safety and other systems critical for a successful launch of the space rocket.

This is, as another article reminds, the third delay of the launch. It was scheduled first for December, 2008, then for March, and then for July 30th. According to that Korea Times article, the launch was originally delayed because of an earthquake in China that slowed delivery of parts, and was delayed again in March because of safety concerns. Here's an interesting paragraph from an April article:

Out of the eight countries that have launched a rocket with their own technology, only three - Israel, France and Russia (Soviet Union) - have succeeded in their first try. South Korea’s own track record in developing space technology is short. The country launched its first satellite in 1992, from French Guiana. After that, nine more satellites have been launched but all with overseas technology.

Finals for Miss Hawaiian Tropic Korea held in Yeosu.

Posing on the stairs.

Yesterday, the 18th, the finals for the 2009 Miss Hawaiian Tropic Korea contest (미스 하와이안트로픽) were held at "The Ocean" resort in Yeosu. Preliminary contests were held in a few clubs in Seoul in June and July. The winner was Lee Ji-yun (이지윤).



Plenty more pictures via a Naver news search, but the Chosun Ilbo knows what we came here for.



That's 전예은, who took 3rd place. A lot of the other pictures make you wonder how a group of twentysomethings could make bikinis look so dull.

Odds and ends.

A few Korean-related stories from the past few days:

* The "Korean Taekwondo National Demonstration Team" will start its US tour in Noblesville, Indiana, of all places.

* Korea doesn't have a home-grown luxury brand.

* Sports columnist Don Hunsburger looks at the "three-pronged attack that threatens [the LPGA's] very existence," one of which is Korean golfers. An excerpt:

45 South Korean golfers hold membership in the LPGA and last week, of the 72 players who made the cut at the US Women's Open, 20 were from South Korea. Five finished in the top 10, including the eventual winner, Eun-Hee Ji.

What's worse, when Ji headed to the interview tent, she came bearing an interpreter. When that happened, you could hear the click of TVs being switched off all over America.

Bivens tried to deal with this by instituting an English-only policy early last season. But the media pushback was instantaneous. The commissioner was accused of being insensitive at best and racist at worst. Within weeks, there was no more talk of such a policy.

But Bivens was reacting to real complaints in the real world - primarily by sponsors that it was difficult to play a pro-am event with golfers who couldn't speak English.

This problem affects not only the Tour, its players and its sponsors, but also its fans. Comments like this one are common on Web sites devoted to the LPGA: "The LPGA is on life support. Nobody will turn on the TV to watch 20 players named Kim, unless one of them is named Anthony."

Australian golf pro and former LPGA cover girl Jan Stephenson assessed the situation in early 2007: "Asians are killing the Tour," she said. South Korean standout Se Ri Pak seemed to agree, when she said last year that "it's going to be the Korean Tour pretty soon."

And names are part of the problem.

"When I look at a leader board and can't figure out how to pronounce most of the names, my eyes glaze over," one disgruntled fan posted on a blog devoted to the Tour.

But South Koreans are proud of their heritage and age-old traditions make it difficult for some to make the transition to American culture and American lifestyles.

I still get quite a few hits from Google searches looking for information on why Korean women are such good golfers, and I'm happy that to direct my visitors to the answers on this post.

* Some features of the Bay Area's Koreatown, including a Paris Baguette and The Face Shop.

* Three Kunsan Airmen saved the life of a local man last Sunday.

Master Sgt. Robert Parks and staff sergeants Donald Weber and Sandy Bates were headed back to Kunsan Air Base, ROK, when they noticed a vehicle traveling past them at a high rate of speed.

"We had taken a wrong turn and decided to drive a little further up, when we noticed a vehicle fly past us going about 120 to 130 kph," said Sergeant Weber.

"All I could think about when we saw the car fly past was who speeds like this in the pouring rain?" said Sergeant Parks.

As the speeding vehicle went to take a turn it hydroplaned, lost control and slammed into the signal light pole.

"Immediately everything just clicked into place," said Sergeant Weber.

* "New York Hot Dog & Coffee," a Korean chain, finally has a location . . . in New York. And there's kimchi on the bulgogi burgers.

* As far as Girls' Generation songs go, their new one "소원을 말해봐" is pretty catchy. Why they insist on saying "I'm genie for you boy, I'm genie for your wish" is unknown at this time.

* The Chosun Ilbo wonders "What's the Best Way to Promote Korean Studies Abroad?."

* The city of Changwon in Gyeongsangnam-do got 307 millimeters of rain on Saturday. Suncheon hardly got any.

* Busan has been hit hard lately, too, though some took advantage of the beach today. I had to lol at this picture of young women in bikinis at Haeundae, though.

* And, there was a "White girls in bikinis" "Summer Swimsuit Fashion Show" at the large Shinsegye in Busan today. Outside, these women helped put the 백 in 백화점:



Yes, I know the Hanja is different, but it's a funny joke.

Gwangju to become both Hub and Mecca of kimchi.

What glorious news. We are truly blessed to live not only in the Hub City of Asian Culture, but in the World Kimchi Mecca as well. The Korea Times tells us that Gwangju will be the Global Hub of Kimchi research thanks to a new world kimchi research and development center (세계김치연구소) to be ready by 2011:

The southwestern city of Gwangju will launch a new research facility on kimchi as a part of efforts to globalize Korea's culinary trademark.

Gwangju faced intense competition from other cities to house the new R&D center. ``We decided in the end to give Gwangju this unique privilege because it is a region that prides itself on superior expertise on kimchi,'' said Prof. Roh Jae-sun of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at Seoul National University. Roh headed a state committee organized to select the venue of the institute.

Wanju of North Jeolla Province, Goesan of North Chungcheong Province and Geochang of South Gyeongsang Province also applied to the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries to house the institute.

Gwangju Mayor Park Kwang-tae made the announcement at a press conference Wednesday, underlining Gwangju's long tradition of promoting kimchi at home and abroad through various projects and festivals.

. . .

[T]he city has about 200 kimchi researchers at Chosun University, Chunnam Techno College and Chonnam National University, among other universities and institutes in the region.

The city has already committed to establishing a comprehensive kimchi center with processing facilities and museums.

To be completed by 2011, the institute will focus on globalizing kimchi through expanding research on the nutritional and cultural merits of kimchi and other fermented dishes.

``One of the most important goals of the institute is to take a global approach for advancing kimchi studies. For example, we could share the fermenting techniques of Kimchi with countries like Japan and China, which also have a tradition of consuming fermented vegetables,'' the professor said.

Christ Almighty.

The Gwangju institute will also work closely with the Secretariat for Kimchi Globalization, founded in June by the Korea Food Research Institute in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province.

I just messed myself. Yesterday the Jeonnam Ilbo told us Gwangju has taken the first steps to becoming a "세계 김치 메카," the "World Kimchi Mecca." I've added it to my list of Meccas in Korea, and I'm sure GFN will be all over this hard-hitting news on Monday morning.

Japan lays claim to Liancourt Rocks in annual "defense white paper."

From the Korea Herald:

The Japanese government on Friday approved its annual defense white paper which defines Dokdo, a set of rocky Korean islets in the East Sea, as part of Japanese territory, raising tension less than a month after the two countries held a summit, South Korean diplomats here said, according to Yonhap News.

Officials at the South Korean embassy in Tokyo said that the 2009 Japanese defense white paper endorsed by the Japanese cabinet contains the same expressions on Dokdo as the 2008 document.

As good a time as any to bring up this video from Beijing last summer that I just saw yesterday on TV. It's from the popular show 무한도전 (Infinite Challenge), and is a compilation of dozens of foreigners singing bits of the Korean song "독도는우리땅" ("Dokdo is our land.")



Sneaky, I wonder if they knew what they were signing up for. As easy as it is to snicker at the Dokdo obsession on this side of the Sea of Japan, it is really irresponsible and immature for Japan to continue to lay claim to the rocks like this, knowing that doing so provokes such an angry response over here. If Japan is so confident in its claims to the rocks, why doesn't it submit a case to the United Nations or Hague Tribunal?

Bombings at Jakarta hotels Friday morning.

At least nine people are dead after bombs went off at the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta, Indonesia on Friday. CNN, among many others, has some eye witness accounts, and also reminds that there was a terrorist attack in August, 2003 as well.

News sites here are reporting that one Korean man was wounded. Mr. Toh Shin-woo (도신우) was going to get something to eat when suddenly he heard a "boom." From Yonhap:

A South Korean man, formerly a popular fashion model, was wounded in an explosion at a hotel in Jakarta on Friday, Seoul's foreign ministry said, as Indonesian police said at least six people have been confirmed killed in the suspected terrorist bombings at the Ritz-Carlton and Marriott hotels.

"According to our local embassy, the man named "Toh Shin-woo" was wounded in the incident. He was taken to a nearby hospital. He seems to have suffered (only) a slight injury," a ministry official said. "But our embassy officials there are still trying to find out his exact health condition."

The 64-year-old Toh, head of Model Center International, was visiting Jakarta for a cultural event, according to the Seoul-based company which organizes fashion shows and trains models.

"Toh was staying at one of the two hotels at the time of the incident, but the name of the hotel has not been confirmed yet," the official said.

Swine flu at mud fest?

This can't be good. From some public school teachers in Daegu comes this email from the Daegu Office of Education:

I hope everyone is well and not too busy preparing for summer camp. Unfortunately, this email is once again in regards to swine flu.

This week someone from Chilgok tested positive for SI (swine influenza). This person came to downtown Daegu and took a private bus along with other people from Daegu in order to attend mud fest last weekend (7.11 - 7.12).

The DMOE is taking precautionary measures to avoid any possible contagion. So, if you attended mudfest last weekend notify your co-teacher. Your co-teacher will instruct you to stay home until the 19th of July, consider this an observation period. During this period if you have a fever accompanied by either a cough, runny nose, or sore throat call your co-teacher and ask him/her to contact your nearest public hospital and the DMOE. Resume your normal routine, most likely going to summer camp, on Monday if you are not showing any flu-like symptoms or tested negative for SI.

Needless to say this could have come from anywhere, and spread anywhere. It's also worth keeping in mind that Daegu found ten more people on Tuesday who had the flu, so the one case mentioned in the email isn't without company.

There have also been a few stories of festivalgoers developing a rash, a week after hundreds of schoolchildren also picked up a skin disease attending some pre-festival activities elsewhere in Boryeong on the 4th and the 5th. Commenter JazzyAbby wrote:

I would just like to say that i knew about the risks of getting the rash before I went and now I am suffering... My friend and I have red bite like bumps all over our feet and legs.. At first I thought this was just bites but now i am sure it's the skin rash.. Anyways... I just wanted to say that we knew about the risks before we ever went to mud fest... other than the rain and the rash we had a great time.. FYI.. I won't be going next year.. this rash SUCKS!

Jenn's Korea Experience writes:

I have a mud rash all over my legs and feet now. Its really itchy. Apparently a bunch of kids got it last week. I got some sort of cream from the pharmacy today, so hopefully that will help. I think it was worth it though. Despite the weather and the rash, we had a lot of fun.

Dave's poster mr_zoot writes:

I just came back from the first weekend of mudfest 2009 and I got the skin rash. I am white American with somewhat sensitive skin. My friend on the same trip (we did similar things and took the same mud baths) who is also American (Philipino descent) also got the same rash. The rash looks pretty similar to those pics posted earlier, only on my white skin they look more red. My friend and I both got these primarily on the lower legs.

The doctor says it is an allergic reaction to something in either the mud, the water, or maybe even a bug bite. It is not dangerous and should go away within a week.

The first night I had it though, it was seriously the itchiest thing I have ever experienced. It was maddening. I couldn't sleep that night. Now that I have medicine, it does not itch anymore.

In conclusion, the rash is real. Don't quite know exactly what caused it (one of the hundred odd mud baths, the dirty beach water or even bug bites) but you can get it if you go. However, Mudfest was so much fun I probably would have gone anyway, even if I knew it would happen again!

As I wrote in a follow-up, a couple news foreign news articles have mention the spread of a rash at the actual festival, but these articles weren't well-enough put-together to really be taken seriously. So far no local papers have reported anything, nor have any prominent foreign newspapers. I'm curious if in years past anyone has come home from the festival with a rash or an eye infection. In other years people might have figured it was bug bites, or sun burn, or just some local irritation, but this year after hearing about those schoolchildren perhaps people are quicker to associate their case with the festival and with a larger trend that may or may not be there.

And regarding the World Choir Championship Korea 2009 that was cancelled earlier in the week because of an outbreak, the Joongang Ilbo says that nearly 2,000 teachers and students who attended the events before the cancellation have been asked to stay home:

Following an emergency meeting on Tuesday, the province’s education office decided to keep 1,788 students and 249 teachers who attended the World Choir Championship Korea 2009 as contestants or audience members out of school.

The office said students have been told to stay in isolation in their respective homes under their parents’ care. They have been asked not to go to hagwon, or private education institutes. Teachers have been told not to make physical contact with others.

Woooooo, get rich teaching in Korea!!!

We already know that Korean public school teachers are among the highest-paid in the world, but today Yahoo! News has a short video up about some exceptionally-popular cram school teachers who earn millions of dollars each year. Though it leads off with "If you want to strike it rich, go teach in South Korea," the article of course doesn't deal with foreigners teaching English. Though the salaries of these celebrity teachers seem outlandishly, inaccurately high---and wouldn't be the first time foreign correspondents missed the mark on Korea---a lot of that money comes from online courses. One of the tutors mentioned has 50,000 paying subscribers, and if you do the math you'll see that if each subscriber paid as little as 10,000 won (US$7.90) per month, the classes would earn over US$4.7 million a year. Supplement this with thousands of dollars per month from the on-site hagwon, and it's not inconceivable for a teacher to become a millionaire.

The Korea Herald profiled a celebrity English teacher a little while ago.

Yoo Su-youn, who teaches TOEIC classes at YBM e4u Language Institute in Jongno, downtown Seoul, is a star lecturer. Her classes are fully booked each month, her personal essay collection is a bestseller at local bookstores, and her annual income reaches about 2 billion won ($15 million).

The continued popularity of TOEIC, or the Test of English for International Communication, is driving her success, but Yoo said many people do not understand what the test means.

Of course a big obstacle to any foreigner striking it rich this way is that we don't own our E-2 visas, and I'd suspect setting up online tutoring would be illegal. And, as demonstrated by Yoo, the big money here is teaching toward tests.

Meanwhile, in other tutoring news:

Since the Education Ministry launched a nationwide crackdown last week on private education institutes and tutors, 1,884 tutors have voluntarily registered with local education authorities to avoid sanctions, the ministry said yesterday.

Further, reports made to authorities by third persons on tutors and illegal operations of hagwon, or private education institutes, tallied 292 over a one-week period ending Monday.

. . .

With the exception of university and graduate school students, tutors must register with education offices in their residential district so that the National Tax Office can impose income taxes.

A person without a full-time job who teaches several students at home is illegal if he or she isn t registered.

Schoolteachers are banned from tutoring and two or more people working as tutors at the same residence are also illegal regardless of their registration status.

The article also shows that if you can't get rich teaching you can always try narcing.

People reporting illegal tutors to authorities can receive 20 percent of the tutor’s monthly income as a cash reward. For reports of hagwon overcharges or operations beyond curfew, 300,000 won ($235) can be rewarded. Those reporting unregistered hagwon can receive 500,000 won. The ceiling for rewards per tipster is 2.5 million won a year.

2009 Gangjin Celadon Festival (강진청자축제): August 8th - 16th.

I originally had this post-dated for late next week, but with commercials airing and with ads already on the sides of buses, I figured I'd push it up. The Gangjin Celadon Festival is coming next month, and is considered one of the top festivals in the area. Gangjin is well-known for its celadon (청자) pottery, with 80% of Korea's celadon treasures being produced here, and indeed masterpieces produced in Gangjin routinely tour the world. I attended the festival in 2006 and enjoyed myself, even though I find pottery boring. There are all the things you typically find at festivals---food and old people music, mostly---though there are lots of pieces of celadon on display, some done by reknowned craftsmen, others done by area students. And last year they had some cool lanterns out.



It's held in Daegu-myeon at the Gangjin Celadon Museum. Buses regularly run there from the terminal in Gangjin-eup. It's the biggest thing to happen in the county all year, so you should have no problem finding where to go if you just follow the hordes of people. If you'd like to spend the night, there are about a dozen love motels in Gangjin-eup, and are, with the exception of a couple high-rises, the tallest buildings in town and thus easy to find.

The festival used to be held in the fall---when I went it was in October---although it's been bumped up to summer in recent years. If the heat isn't too much, I'd recommend seeing some of Gangjin's other sites. Maryang is a pretty little town of a couple hundred on the southern tip of the county. Go, eat some fish, look at the islands, and spend the night at one of the three motels if you'd like. There's also Dasan Chodang, where the scholar Jeong Yak-yong spent 20 years in exile, and nearby Baekryeonsa temple. Or, visit Nammireuksa and see the tallest Buddha statue in South Korea. Please see "Gangjin: Its people and their places" and "Gangjin's temples, part 1" for more information on regional attractions (also because they took me forever to write).

Hell, you might just want to wander around Gangjin-eup---the county seat and the town at which you first arrive---especially if you're a city slicker and have never spent any time in a small Korean town. If the heat isn't too oppressive, take a walk to Yeongryang's Birthplace a couple blocks away, or wander around some of the rice paddies to the south. There's some decent, leisurely hiking on Boeunsan, which abuts the town, and the view of the town from above became one of the things I liked best about living there.



Would you like to see some pictures from the 2006 festival? Well, you have no choice.











More in my flickr set. Looking at these reminded me of another attraction of the festival: the 5K run. My head teacher at the time thought it would be a good idea for me to participate in this. At the time I was a pack-a-day smoker, and although I ran 10 kilometers each night in my junior and senior years of high school, all kinds of shin splints and stress fractures made that impossible by my 25th year. Well, as you've probabably learned by now it's hard to say no to your boss, so I did the race. I ran the whole thing and finished without injuring or embarrassing myself. Funny how these pictures jogged my memory. *cough*

A fourth-grader was swept away by the current of the Hwangryong River---made swifter and deeper by the season's heavy rains---in Jangseong county on Wednesday afternoon. She was riding her bike when she fell in around 4:30, and as of one article's publication the search was still ongoing.

Korea Waffling: "Sparkling" and "Dynamic" slogans to be replaced.

From the Korea Herald:

The chief of a presidential panel on enhancing the national image proposed yesterday the national slogans, "Dynamic Korea" and "Korea Sparkling," be replaced by something more symbolic of the nation's "miraculous" technological advancement. "The national brand is something that elevates the national character. It is to change Korea's negative image," said Euh Yoon-dae, chairman of the Presidential Council on Nation Branding, during his lecture celebrating the first anniversary of a group of 56 Grand National Party lawmakers.

"The meaning of 'Dynamic' itself is positive, but it should be changed to something that expresses the country's technological power such as IT powerhouse."

"Korea Sparkling" is completely ricetarded. It makes no sense at all, and pairing it with the AquaFresh logo doesn't help. I'm not sure their suggestion "Miraculous Korea" is much better than the fake one I made up, "Visit Korea: No, the other one."

He said "Miraculous Korea" could be one of the suggestions to replace Dynamic Korea.

Euh cited North Korean issues, Korean politics, street demonstrations and unkindness as factors that have added to the negative national image.

"One of the wrong promotional efforts is to take foreigners to the demilitarized zone. When they are back to their countries, they would get only reminded that the South and the North are in a standoff," he said.

You can peddle hanbok, kimchi, and semiconductors all day long, but trying to convince foreigners---all six billion of them---that Korea is not at war is neither reasonable nor appropriate, and moreover it's insulting to so blatantly try and gloss over negative perceptions of the country that were developed fair and square. People don't seem to realize that the heavy-handed way with which Korea is "branded" by policymakers and PR people has a lot to do with the brand.

Japanese Independent Film Festival at Gwangju Theater from the 8th through the 22nd.

I just learned about this today while looking for something else, sorry, but there's a Japanese Independent Film Festival at Gwangju Theater from July 8th through the 22nd. Don't misunderstand "festival," it just means that Japanese films will be shown there. Films being shown are: Tokyo Sonata, Still Walking, Kimi no Tomodachi, Traveling with Yoshitomo Nara, Detroit Metal City, Barber Yoshino, The Magic Hour, and Sword of the Stranger. Showtimes are available here. There are small gifts available to customers, and there's a write-up in Korean from the Gwangju Dream paper. A very inopportune time for my fiance to be back in Japan, because although there are usually two or three English-language films in the theaters at any given time, Japanese movies are here, like, never.

Gwangju Theater (광주극장) is a small theater downtown that dates back to 1934 and is easy enough to get to. If you're at that intersection in front of the McDonald's, cross the street and wander into the older part of town and make that first left. It's on your right. Check the theater's homepage for other foreign-language and independent movies playing.

Comedy show "Animal Farm" torments bear cub for amusement.

Jesus Fucking Christ, this might be a new low for SBS's "Animal Farm" (동물농장).



Hat tip to Zen Kimchi. I say "might be" because of course I haven't seen every episode, but I do know that putting species together to see what they do is a common theme. This video shows a bear cub screaming and trying to run away from a pair of lion cubs, while the laugh track and "ooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo" go in the background. Later the put a monkey in the bear's habitat, and the panelists laugh as the bear falls down trying to escape. On what fucking planet are these people put in charge of animals?

You know, I reckon that stuff like this---the numerous, numerous videos on Youtube of Korean animal abuse---and anecdotes expats share of mistreated cats and dogs are more influential on Korea's image abroad than news of hanbok, rice cakes, and semiconductors. Go to hell.

Tom Coyner had an interesting piece in the Joongang Ilbo the other day.

Thanks to missionary work, academic exchange programs, the Peace Corps and others, more native English speakers are functionally foreign language capable than in the past. Yet when it comes to truly serious matters, it seems progress has been marginal. In recent years, there may even have been a retreat in foreign language learning by native English speakers.

One need not look any further than daily newspapers, television broadcasts or the Web. Yes, we see news as it happens, but almost always with real-time commentary by “experts” who share their views, inevitably filtered through the lens of the English language.

These opinion leaders rarely have the capacity to read a newspaper in the local language of the areas on which they profess authority. At best, they rely on local contacts who are bilingual in English for a disturbingly large percentage of their understanding. When Western opinion leaders use these contacts, they are basing their perspectives on the views and interpretations of a relatively narrow, elite segment of a foreign nation.

Swine flu worries lead to cancellation of Yeosu International Youth Festival.

On Monday we learned the last half of the World Choir Championship Korea 2009 was cancelled after 14 of its participants were found with swine flu. Today it's another international event, this one in Yeosu, Jeollanam-do:

Facing an unexpectedly rapid spread of type A(H1N1) influenza, local governments have been forced to cancel several domestic and international events this week at a cost of billions of won.

The city of Yeosu in South Jeolla said yesterday it will cancel the 10th Yeosu International Youth Festival slated to begin on July 23.

The three-day event was to host 100,000 participants, including youths from around 50 countries. They were supposed to sleep in outdoor tents.

“Should any case of A(H1N1) infection occur, it will deal a blow not only to the city’s external image but also the 2012 Yeosu Expo,” said Chung In-hwa, vice mayor of the port city. The city says it has already spent several hundred million won on the event.

First-time visitors might want to browse the "Swine flu in Korea" category. The latest news is that there are 561 cases of H1N1 in South Korea, with 66 turning up yesterday, and authorities are especially concerned about the number of Koreans returning from overseas study and vacation. The government has said it will vaccinate some 13 million people starting in November to prevent an outbreak in the winter. The 561 figure comes from this Korea Herald article, though articles up on both the Herald and the Times sites say 535, with 40 more turning up on Tuesday. Both articles have the same final paragraph as well.

박수 for 수박; or, ohmigod foreigners can eat fruit!

97 foreign college students from 40 different countries participated in a watermelon-eating contest in Seoul on Monday.



Though the object was to eat the fruit as quickly as possible, it was no doubt the quietest watermelon-eating session you're likely to hear in Korea.

This is watermelon season, and there were a few festivals this month. You've missed the ones in Changwon and Euiryeong, but there's still time to visit the one in Gochang. The 19th Gochang Watermelon Festival (고창수박축제) will take place on the 18th and 19th in Gochang county, Jeollabuk-do. A program is available here, in Korean; fireworks on Sunday at 9:30. If you're like me and enjoy fireworks but don't care about eating watermelon, you'd probably nonetheless like seeing the carved watermelons on display.

Some changes at waygook.org.

Waygook.org has undergone some changes. If you'd like to download the lesson plans posted you'll first need to log-in. This is to encourage more contributions and to discourage poaching from the hundreds of visitors who haven't registered and haven't shared. We are toying with the idea, upon my request, of instituting a policy that requires users to contribute a certain number of posts each year---whether lessons, feedback, local events, news---in order to retain their membership. This is, again, to discourage lurking and poaching, to make sure those who have contributed are getting feedback on their lessons, to allow users to see how these lessons work in a variety of settings, and to let those who have shared their lessons to get as much back as they've put in.

Waygook.org started as basically a messageboard for teachers in Jeollanam-do, but most of the original class of 2006 is gone. The site has grown to host hundreds of lesson plans made by public school teachers all over Korea. It has become a good resource, though I admit that we need to tinker with the layout and find ways to better organize everything.

The site, which I've helped moderate for the past three years, has been an albatros around my neck, but that's a rant I'm saving for another time. I'm glad the site has found broader appeal outside Jeollanam-do, and I hope these new changes will encourage more people to share their experiences and expertise.

Choi Hui-seon turns "racist c**t" text message into news story.

Choi Hui-seon is back for more, this time reporting on the response her earlier pieces on native speaker English teachers generated. You can Korea Beat translations of what she wrote earlier:

* from June 30th, 2009.
* from July 1st, 2009.
* from July 2nd, 2009.
* from July 3rd, 2009.

Though I understand the frustration with her hit-pieces, calling her a racist cunt wasn't a very diplomatic move and won't win any sympathy.

Swine flu forces cancellation of World Choir Championship Korea 2009 halfway through; participants quarantined.

Pop-up on the official site.

The outbreak of swine flu among 14 participants in the World Choir Championship Korea (월드콰이어챔피언십) has forced the cancellation of the event halfway through. From the Joongang Ilbo:

The second half of the first international choir competition slated to be held for four days starting today at local cities in South Gyeongsang has been canceled after A(H1N1) influenza infected more than a dozen foreign competitors and a Korean volunteer worker participating in the contest.

The South Gyeongsang Provincial Government said on Saturday that the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 13 Indonesians and one Korean volunteer worker participating in World Choir Championship Korea 2009, have contracted the new virus.

Award and closing ceremonies for the first half that were scheduled on Saturday were also canceled.

The first half of the competition ran for four days from Wednesday.

The Korea Times says that 15 people from the event have the flu, and a Thai article says, according to a family member of one of the participants, that 34 others are sick. From The Straits Times:

Organisers on Sunday rushed to send home hundreds of foreign contestants.

'We feel really sorry that we had to cancel this great event. But it's inevitable for the sake of public health,' Mr Kang Mal Rim, an organiser of the South Kyeongsang Province government, told AFP.

Health authorities have quarantined the infected at state hospitals for treatment and conducted more tests on suspected others.

Interkultur, the organizers, have issued a statement on the messageboard; an excerpt:

There are 13 indonesian people infected with influenzia H1N1. We don't have the result for two more indonesians yet.
But these 13 (15) infected people are in the Medical Center in Masan in quarantine. According to the circumstances
they are doing well. There isn't a more difficult evidence, so it is to estimate that these singers can go home
in 4-7 days.

All choirs who were living with these infected people together in the same hotel are in quarantine, too,
but they get food and doctors care for them. They all have to stay in quarantine approximately until the 17th of July.
If non of them will be infected in the next days too, they are allowed to leave the country.

We and the representatives from the indonesian embassy are in a constantly contact with all the people in the quarantine.

For now we are not able to give any information about back-payments. It's the first time in the long
INTERKULTUR event history (over 90 events) that we had to cancel a competition.

We ask all affected people to have patience.

There are nine choirs from Indonesia quarantined, their names listed in another post. According to a Jakarta Post article:

[A choir group leader] said the 12 members most likely contracted the flu on their flight from Indonesia to South Korea aboard the Korean Airlines because their health condition before departure was normal.

Other members who took the Garuda Indonesia flight were not infected with the flu, she added.

However, the good news was the group won the gold medal in the contest, Lita said.

One group from South Africa was stranded in Dubai International Airport.

The group had been heading to South Korea to take part in the International Choir Championships in South Korea, but were informed that the event had been cancelled because of swine flu.

The choir were not able to leave the airport. The choir were unable to leave the airport as they did not hold entry visas into Dubai and all flights back to South Africa were fully booked.

"As we arrived in Dubai we were informed by the Korean government that no tourists are allowed to enter the country because there is a severe outbreak of swine flu. That is why we are stranded at the moment at Dubai Airport. We’ve been awake for about 36 hours and it is difficult to sleep here because there are no beds," explained choir conductor Andre Van der Merwe.

Seems like Interkultur didn't know what it was getting itself into, though, judging by a post made by one of the forum's moderators previous to the contest. One user wrote:

The Organising Committee must be very busy at this stage of preparation for 1st WCC. With their extensive experience I am sure the event will be well-run. However I hope they take a few minutes to reassure parents from all over who will be sending their children to participate in the championships.

Will there be any measures in place to minimize the spread of Flu? Obviously a lot depends on individual behaviour but it will help if organisers have certain measures in place.

To which the moderator answered:

Please don't worry!

At the airports in South Korea will be checks, which should prevent the spread of Influenza A H1N1.

Also is South Korea one of the countries the virus did't appear yet.

All the public buildings where the World Choir Championships will take place have sickrooms with healthcare professionals.

Of course the virus has appeared in South Korea prior to this competition, though perhaps the writer was thinking it didn't have any home-grown cases yet. Interestingly the original Joongang Ilbo article mentions:

[T]he KCDC confirmed for the first time on Friday that one woman, who had never gone abroad or had physical contact with a patient infected with the new influenza, was infected with the flu.

And there's one other thing that caught my attention. From the Joongang Ilbo article:

No symptoms of the virus were detected when they were being quarantined at a Gimhae International Airport on Tuesday and Wednesday.

I wonder if this means participants were held overnight for observation at the airport upon arrival. Regardless, authorities suspect this to be a busy flu season. From the Korea Times:

The authorities are worried about the possibility that large events over the summer holidays will turn into routes for possible mass transmission of the virus.

So far this month, 13 people have already been confirmed with the infection. All of them are suspected of having contracted the virus at events involving people who have been abroad.

Five members of a group of 45 Christians were confirmed with the virus after a trip to Thailand from June 17 to July 2. Two university students were confirmed after returning from a trip to the Philippines from June 24 to July 4.

In addition, another two patients were diagnosed with the disease after attending a large camp where 8,500 university students from more than four countries gathered for four days. The disease center assumes that all attendees may have been exposed to the virus.

Boryeong "shrugs off" concerns about mud safety.

From Newsis.

Kang Shin-woo of the Korea Times is a little ambiguous here, as the headlines says "Boryeong Shrugs Off Mud Contamination," though the first paragraph says it's the "Thousands of holidaymakers" doing the shrugging. The article continues:

The regional health agency has yet to determine the exact cause of the skin inflammations suffered by about 230 children after participating in the pre-events between July 4 and 5.

Research is being conducted on samples of mud, water and other substances, with results expected as early as Tuesday.

``For now, we presume it’s because of some contaminated water coming from Daecheon Stream and an unhygienic environment downtown,’’ a festival organizer told The Korea Times Sunday.

The official insisted the mud itself was safe and the festival was going ahead on Daecheon Beach as scheduled. ``We are using cleaner water and strengthening all sanitary steps so tourists don’t have to worry about it.’’

Interesting to note that the news of the sick schoolchildren from a nearby "mud experience" in Boryeong wasn't reported anywhere in English except on this site, curious because thousands of foreigners attend the festival each year, are heavily represented in photographs and news coverage, and are prominently displayed on most of the promotional material. Last year 83,000 of the 2,266,000 people who attended during the festival's nine days were foreigners, making it, according to several sources, the Korean festival that attracts the most foreign visitors. It's more appropriate to write that festivalgoers "shrugged" rather than "shrugged off," because these concerns about mud safety weren't reprinted in the local English-language media.




The last three posters for the Boryeong Mud Festival, in reverse order.

One site is reporting the following:

Boryeong just south of Seoul, South Korea is the place where hundreds of people complained of itching on their skin and some had to go the hospital the skin discomfort they contracted in the pre-events of 'Boryeong Mud Festival'. According to city administration, some 200 participants contracted some kinds of skin inflammations while they were undergoing mud baths in the pre-Mud Festival events. The mud bath events were held on the embankment of Daecheon Stream in Daecheon-eup, Boryeong City, for two days.

. . .

The events were hosted by Boryeong City, the official host of the 'Boryong Mud Festival'.

The participants including many foreigners reportedly enjoyed mud bath, and mud slides and other mud-related facilities.

They are still being treated with various symptoms coming from dermatitis.

In one case some 50 students of a grade school are complaining of symptoms of dermatitis including itching.

And another site says:

According to the City Administration, around 200 out of 1,500 festival-goers were infected with some kinds of skin inflammations while they were undergoing mud baths in the pre-Mud Festival events.

The participants, including many foreigners, are still being treated with various symptoms coming from dermatitis.

The last line is of course ambiguous, because readers might get the impression that foreigners are among those being treated for dermatitis. Earlier in the article is says hundreds of people were hospitalized after they got sick at the festival, when in fact they developed rashes at another site in the city the week before the mud festival. Neither of those two pages cite any sources, and unless the two writers are based in South Korea, there's no reason to trust what they've compiled on their sites.

The festival will continue through next week, convenient for those kept away this weekend by the mud or the heavy rain. For what it's worth, the Boryeong Mud Festival is considered among the best festivals in the country. Google can tell you more, but for now here's what a Korean Tourism Organization profile has to say:

Out of all of the festivals in Korea, the Boryeong Mud Festival attracts the most international visitors every year. Last year it was recognized by the Ministry of Culture, Sports & Tourism as one of the best festivals in Korea. This year the festival will run for nine days (July 11th – July 19th) at Boryeong City’s Daecheon Beach in Chungcheongnam-do Province. Boryeong’s mud flats have a high concentration of Germanium and a host of other minerals that are beneficial for the skin. During the festival, many fun activities are organized such as mud slides, mud wrestling, and mud massages, enabling visitors to become covered from head-to-toe in this “healthy” mud. With festivities running day and night, the Boryeong Mud Party is a fun-packed beach party that’s sure to be a highlight of your summer. Every year, the festival is visited by around 80,000 international travelers. Make sure you don’t miss out!

Feel free to post first-hand accounts of your experiences this weekend, or browse the Naver news aggregator to see if your picture has turned up anywhere.

What's your least favorite Asian pose?

Mine is "The Holler," demonstrated here by the insufferable pop group Kara.



I've termed it "The Holler," though the authoratative website Asian Poses calls it "Hey." Actually I had planned a post on this topic before Mike from GFN's "City of Light" passed along this link, and because I wasn't aware of any sites stockpiling examples of cutsie poses, I, believe it or not, simply looked around for pictures of Kara, because every time they're in front of the goddamn camera they're doing something ridiculous.




Just like the music of Kara and their assault on the English language, Asian poses make me want to die.

The native English speaker editors at the Joongang Ilbo have a sense of humor. Here's their latest, a variation of a line from the Saturday Night Live video "Dick in a Box," and last week somebody demonstrated an awareness of 1990s two-hit wonders. This, though remains the paper's finest work.

Murder at a Gwangju church, possible serial killer apprehended.

Gwangju police have apprehended a Mr. Park who stabbed a woman to death outside a Gwangju Catholic church on Wednesday. Park, 38, from Naju, slit a woman's throat and wrists outside a church in Unam-dong at roughly 6:37 pm on the 8th. A Munhwa Ilbo article says Park told the police he drove toward Gwangju from Naju, picked a church, and started stabbing. Police are also looking at Park for two other killings in Gwangju, the May 20th murder of a doctor at a Yongbong-dong parish, and a March 19th murder at a Jungheung-dong church. The articles now make the geographical connection to churches, though the original news stories don't.

Park had accumulated a hate for churchgoers. Last July he married a Mongolian woman, but after an unpleasant marriage she went back to her country in April on the encouragement of people she met at church. Park went to Mongolia to find her, but returned in May unsuccessful. Other articles mention that he had been receiving treatment for depression that past five years. Perhaps worth noting that all three victims were women.

There is a video report here, with the relevant clip showing up at 0:46 after some news out of Paju. They blur the church name at the first close-up, but fail to do so when they show the sign again, which is how we learn the name is 천주교운암동교회. Unam-dong is where we stayed during teachers' orientation in August, 2006, if any readers were in the same group as me, and is a place I walk through frequently getting to and from my fiance's apartment.

Kia saves small Georgia town.

It's nice to have some good news atop this page for a change; from CNN:

A community that seemed on the road to becoming a ghost town has taken a turn toward prosperity despite the recession, thanks to an automaker.

Korean car manufacturer Kia plans to open a sprawling automobile factory in tiny West Point, Georgia, by the end of the year. The boon has already spurred economic growth -- and just plain excitement -- among residents, said Mayor Drew Ferguson.

"We jokingly call it Kia-ville," said Ferguson, a 42-year-old dentist helping to oversee expansion of West Point, population 3,500. The announcement is drawing workers and businesses to the community about 80 miles south of Atlanta.

"The revitalization of the community is touching every aspect," Ferguson said. "

. . .

On Main Street, residents are sampling new flavors that have come to West Point since the announcement.

Asian restaurants and businesses are popping up. The old Pizza Hut has transformed into a Korean Bar-B-Que, and the southern staple KFC is now a popular Korean eatery called Young's Garden.

Resident Christy Magbee said West Point is starting to feel like a melting pot.

"You got the culture coming in. You don't have to travel to Atlanta anymore. It's starting to come here," she said.

There's a video report as well, which says the town of 3,500 will gain 20,000 jobs over the next 5 years.

A 27-year-old New Zealand man, who taught English in Wonju in 2006, was murdered in Jamaica standing up for his wife after she got pistol-whipped on the couple's second honeymoon.

"Naked News Korea" under review by standards council.

From the Korea Herald:

The Korea Communications Standards Council announced on Monday they will commence deliberations on the fate of "Naked News Korea," which started its racy services late last month both online and mobile.

"Naked News," as its title implies, showcases female anchors who strip down while they cover the latest in current affairs. Two versions of the service are available -- one for adults and another for teenagers.

According to the communications watchdog, the contents of the site have been closely monitored since it began and an episode in which its presenters discussed female orgasms was deemed vulgar and inappropriately suggestive.

The council determined cautionary measures must be made by rating the contents of the service harmful to teenagers. They plan on taking stern action against "Naked News Korea."

Expect some light posting ahead as I'm going to go watch the racing girl pool tournament, Sexy Mong, 5 Girls, and the forty-two other programs regularly on Korean cable television that are more suggestive and blatantly sexual than "Naked News."

Chinatown coming to Muan?

Samedi of An Acorn in the Dog's Food mentioned here and the newspapers mentioned a few times that

The Chinese government is working hard to create a manufacturing center for Chinese companies and a Chinese commercial district in Muan, South Jeolla Province, a farming region in the southwestern part of the country.
China's Chongqing city and Shandong Province are spearheading the investment drive, while nearly 300 Chinese businesses, including automaker Sinotruck and the country's fifth-largest home appliance maker Hisense Group, have expressed intentions to set up facilities in Muan.
The 17.73 million sq. m Korea-China international industrial complex will include a manufacturing zone, a Chinese commercial district and an international university. The project is planned for completion by 2025 at a cost of W1.76 trillion (US$1=W1,273).

I was interested to learn that Muan is sister city of Taizhou in China, a city of 5.7 million. Muan is one of those places you easily forget about because there's not much there, but it has been the capital of Jeollanam-do since 2005. There's a big project underway to turn the village of Namak-ri into a city of 150,000 by 2019, and this development is no doubt related. You can read all about those ambitious plans here, plans which include "Creation of Changpo Lake Natural Habitat Park," "Accommodation of Health & Recreation Theme Park," "Creation of Mass Shopping Mall Complex," "Development of Sun City Demonstration Complex at Namak New Town," "Branding Project for Muan County Onions," and many other things. The article continues:

China chose Muan for its location. Much of the region is farmland so land is plentiful and cheap. Muan also has the only international airport in southwestern Korea (Muan International Airport), with flights of just an hour to Shanghai, an hour and a half to Shandong Province, and three hours to Chongqing.

The Muan International Airport opened in 2007 and is one of Korea's many airports operating at a loss. I'm reminded of a line in an article I read last week:

Discussions on merging Gwangju and Muan airports will likely gain speed, but local governments in South Jeolla Province and Gwangju are expected to put up a fight.
The government will look at offering domestic users of Gwangju Airport alternative means of transport such as the bullet train before making a final decision to transfer its domestic flight services to Muan Airport, Chung added.

My unsophisticated opinion is that these development projects in small places like Muan and Haenam are just a way to spread the wealth, but I really don't see the point in building a new capital of Jeollanam-do when cities like Mokpo and Suncheon are already there, or building a new international airport in southwestern Korea so far away from all the major population centers. On the Muan website I see that the population is 63,293, down from 311,523 in 1969 when Shinan formed its own county.

The Chosun Ilbo article quoted in the beginning also has a paragraph about the social impact:

Many Chinese people from Shandong Province have already settled in Muan, opening Chinese restaurants and other businesses. If the complex opens in 2025 according to plan, the rural region, where farmers now account for 70 percent of the population, would transform into a Chinese business stronghold combining elements of manufacturing, finance, tourism and education. It could also mean the creation of some 37,000 jobs and W2.4 trillion in production.

Wikipedia points to a January, 2008 article and says that this "Enterprise City" will include "a Chinatown for expatriates." In June the Chinese Consulate became the Chinese Consul-General, and a press release said that there are 36,000 Chinese people in the jurisdiction of the Jeollas and Jeju. If this plan does get off the ground, it turn into a Chinatown different than that in Incheon: the one in Muan will actually have Chinese people.

Interestingly, Muan is also constructing an "America Town" (무안미국타운) designed "for overseas Koreans living in the U.S. who wish to spend the rest of their lives in their homeland." It sounds dreadful. The purpose is:

* Creation of an English Town to provide English tutoring and hands-on studies to regional students
* Vitalization of the regional economy through increased population, enhancement of the county's image, and promotion through the creation of the American Town
* Strengthened regional competitiveness in the era of globalization through the acceleration of regional development by systematically promoting tourism, education, and cultural projects in connection with the birthplaces of Baek Ryun Ji and Cho Eui Seon Sa, and the Doripo Coast within our region.

Sounds like a blast. Manufacture a faux-ethnic community for the purpose of teaching English and giving the locals something to stare at.

Test of Proficiency in Korea [TOPIK] registration through July 15th.

Late notice on this---and it turns out I won't even be in the country to take this *grumble* ---but the Test of Proficiency in Korean will be held in Korea on September 13th, with registration open through July 15th. If you want to sign up you'll have to first create a login ID on the Korean-language website. More information, in Korean, is available via the .pdf file posted here.

The test for beginners will run from 9:00 to 12:30, the intermediate exam from 14:00 to 17:30, and for advanced . . . well, if you're taking the advanced exam you can make sense of the .pdf file yourself. There are eleven testing centers in Korea, listed both here and on page four of the aforementioned .pdf; the one nearest us is the at the Language Education Center at Chonnam National University in Gwangju.

There are six levels, but three tests. A couple of years ago there were six separate exams, but now there are three. Those who take the beginner exam (초급) and score over 70% will finish with Level 2; those earning between 40% and 69% below will get Level 1. The same pattern follows for both intermediate and advanced levels. One result is that those who see themselves as a Level 3 will have to contend with questions on the higher level. A person who earns below the lower threshold---40% on the lower level, 50% on the upper---on any of the four portions will earn the lower level. The example given on page 5 says that a person who takes the beginner level test and scores 82% on vocab/grammar, 48% on writing, 76% on listening, and 80% on reading will have an average of 71.5%, but because the test taker scored below 50% on the writing portion, s/he will earn Level 1. There is a breakdown, in Korean, of expectations for each level here.

If anyone has any resources they found particularly useful in preparing for the exam, feel free to share them below. You can view previous exams and their results on this forum on the TOPIK page, a website that is extremely irritating to navigate, and which I guess is in and of itself a test of Korean proficiency because there is no meaningful information provided in English. I was under the assumption the fall exams were in October, but since it is during the time I planned to spend back home, I'm debating whether I should come back to Korea a week earlier to take it, or simply wait until the next time. I took it in April, 2008, and earned Level 2. My scores were above 90% for all areas except writing, which was in the 70s. John B said in an earlier post about TOPIK that

It's worth noting that the Korea Foundation supposedly gives preference to grant and fellowship applicants who have TOPIK or KEPT scores to demonstrate their language proficiency, as opposed to university transcripts or language school certificates.

For me, I want to take the exam again because language proficiency is something I can take home with me. Sure, if I ever get good at Korean my language skills will speak for themselves, but in the meantime it's nice to have a tangible record of my time overseas and my time spent studying, even if my Korean is only a modest high-beginner level.

Some horse shit about pig flu.

Here's a hell of a story from ExpatKorea; a couple of excerpts:

So one of my students was away all last week. She comes back to class on Monday and it turns out she was in the Philippines. Today we've found out she got swine flu and I taught her on Monday so the health department fucks have told me not to go to work until the 13th, that is, if I don't come down with swine flu in the mean time.

I know foreigners who are coming from overseas have been told not to go to work for one week after they come to/get back to Korea but what about the Koreans going overseas? This obviously doesn't apply to them (Koreans) or at least this student's parents thinks so. Now I don't mind a week off work but I'll probably lose some money because of it but my big worry is my young son getting it from me or from being at the hagwon yesterday for a visit. I feel fine now so hopefully I didn't get it from her .

STUPIDMORONIC FUCKING PARENTS for sending her to our hagwon the day after she got back from the Philippines but oh no those dirty foreigners have to be quarantined if they've been overseas but the pure Han race are immune with their kimchi .

I also have to now cancel, and lose money because of it, our trip to Chejudo this weekend. ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR for fuck sake!!!!!

. . .

As for the health department DICKS, I'm the only teacher who's been told no to go to work for a week. Not one of the Korean teachers or my wife (Korean) who's wangjang have been told not to go to work for a week . I guess us 'dirty' foreigners are more susceptible to get swine flu. MY FUCKING ARSE WE ARE! Koreans with their almost nonexistent hygine standards definitely are, and worse just don't give a fuck so spread it around to everyone else without a care in the world.

Go ahead and read the rest. The Herald says yesterday the Ministry of Health confirmed an additional ten Koreans had swine flu, nine of whom recently returned from overseas trips.

KTO contest for K-bloggers.

From the Korea Herald comes news that the Korea Tourism Organization has been running a contest for K-bloggers:

The Korea Tourism Organization is looking for 100 international bloggers who can cover the topic of Korean culture and travel. The application is open from Jun 15 to Aug. 31. The project is collaboration with the Voluntary Agency Network of Korea.

The event titled "Blog Korea! Visit Korea!" will review blogs on Korea written in a variety of foreign languages (English, Chinese, Japanese, German, French, Spanish and Russian) and choose the best 100 that show great interest in Korea as well as receive a high number of visitor "hits."

Top five bloggers will each receive $500 worth netbook, 10 runner-ups digital cameras while the remaining 80 bloggers, MP3 players. Top 30 bloggers will also be invited to a special camping trip in Korea in October.

Better late than never, I suppose, and I want to try and get me some free stuff spread the word about Korea. How can you enter?

To take part in the event, visit KTO at http://english.visitkorea.or.kr or VANK's blog http://www.prkorea.com/metablogen/

VANK? Well, does that mean I'm unqualified disqualified?

Since those foreign girls put out so much, they might as well go fuck themselves.

Big ups to Korea Beat for translating an article on the contents of a recent episode of "Chat with the Beauties."

After choosing as the worst foreigners in Korea those foreigners who always speak English or their native language, never learning Korean, and easily meet Korean women they said, “most western men approach Korean women by saying they want to learn Korean.”

They also said there are many foreigners who live in Korea for many years but speak poor Korean. Among the criticisms a particularly strong one came from Japan-born Sayuri, who said, “when you go to a foreign country, learning that country’s language is proper etiquette.”

They also implicitly criticized the attitude of Korean women who get involved with “tall foreign men who speak English.”

Kenya-born Euphracia said, “in Korea it seems that if you’re tall and just speak English well, you’re treated as the king… My other Kenyan friends were so surprised when they went out with they Korean girlfriends.” Germany-born Vera said, “if a German guy is tall then everybody thinks he’s handsome in Korea… They come to Korea and start acting like Casanova.”

UK-born Eva said, “foreign men who were not popular in their home countries are treated like kings… It’s so strange that western men who of course have very plan features are always being followed by pretty girls.”

Eva added, “if a Korean friend of mine is thinking about having a western boyfriend I tell her to let me see him first. Once my Korean friend’s boyfriend from the UK turned out to have a girlfriend back in the UK.”

I'm not going to pretend there aren't foreigners who make no effort to learn Korean, or who use English everywhere they go, or who assume that they'll have an easy time getting dates. They actually hit on a couple good points, judging from the article, but I will leave those for another time. Right now I just want to ask why they'd get into such a topic in the first place. I like how commenter Xnay put it:

I would have hoped that given the opportunity to be seen and heard on TV by many Koreans, these women would have avoided making broad generalizations about people. Instead, maybe they could promote the idea that foreigners come in all different shapes and sizes and are not identical. I don’t think they have the right to judge the nature of a relationship between two consenting adults.

The show's been on for years, and they're bound to run out of ideas now and again. I did give the show a mention in my 2008 "Top 15" list in the Korea Herald---and not simply because I was told to include some positive items---and wrote

The continued popularity of "Global Beauties Chat" has been a pleasant surprise. Some object to the premise, and say that it plays into the fetishization of foreign woman, but these women are smart, sexy, well-spoken and cultural ambassadors for countries many Koreans wouldn't care about otherwise. Plus, whoa, they're speaking Korean!

But I'm bothered about this topic, and the longer I thought about it, from the time I read the Korea Beat post this morning until now, the more upset I got. This isn't one of the playful stereotypes they talk about from time to time, this is an ugly one that has been circulated in the media lately with renewed vigor. Why would a panel of women gifted enough to speak the language enter into a discussion of this topic? Did they simply acquiesce to the demands of producers? Are the women fed lines, as has been suggested? Do they look down on foreigners who aren't privleged enough to study Korean full-time or be on TV? It's one thing to be angry with arrogant pricks who come to a foreign country and don't make an effort to learn the language---though to be fair women are just as guilty of this as men---but it's quite another to conflate that with stereotype of the sexual predator, or to demonize what two consenting adults do with their time (though the article itself does this as well). Furthermore it's especially ridiculous to hear this from people who, let's not kid ourselves, are famous because they're foreign, exotic, and borderline attractive. The show isn't called "Chat with the Foreign Minds" after all, and while most of them have better Korean than I do, we oughtn't pretend the show places higher priority on quote-unquote the issues than on having them wear short skirts and sit on a terraced stage.

I also want to remind readers that this isn't a one-way street. I tried to make this point in a January post but I guess it didn't work, though it's worth pointing out that there are countless websites out there geared toward helping Koreans meet foreign friends. There are even "Special Mission" videos out there that show Koreans how to approach foreigners in Itaewon.



You can look at it one way as ambitious Koreans looking for language exchanges, or you could look at it the other way and assume these women are looking for sex, a break from their regularly-scheduled boyfriends, a night out on the town, or a sense of adventure for a little while before they settle down. Oooh, see how sensational it sounds when I highlight "Special Mission"?

To echo what I wrote as a comment on that post, I wonder when they'll have a "Chat with the Casanovas" episode about why white girls in Korea are so fat, or why Russian chicks put out, or why Korean girls date foreigners under the pretense of learning English. Oh, that's right, they're not mature enough to handle a show with foreign men flirting with Korean women. About the only time we saw a positive portrayal of a white man dating a Korean woman was a program with former Playboy Playmate Lee Pani, a woman who is already considered a slut for posing nude.

Heads up, they're dropping names.

The issue of revising the Revised Romanization is in the Joongang Ilbo today, and, what a nice surprise, they lifted a couple quotations from my June 30th piece.

Hundreds of elementary school students in Boryeong get rash from mud.

KBS reports that 180 students from six Boryeong elementary schools have picked up a rash after visiting a preview of the Boryeong Mud Festival on the 4th and 5th. The Daejeon Ilbo says 500 students have come down with a skin disease. Organizers hope this news won't keep away the bikini-clad white women with large breasts, or the photographers who follow them. The festival itself runs from the 11th through the 19th.

On the bribery front, Korean teachers don't like being portrayed as criminals, either.

Recently Seoul has tried to implement a system that would reward people who report teachers who accept bribes from parents. However, it's been met with some objections from teachers, the Korea Herald says.

Many have expressed concern about possible negative effects of such a reporting system. The education office claims that the system will work effectively to stamp out any corruption by teachers and education officials.

"With the system, teachers may become subjects to be monitored by the education authorities and look like potential criminals, which will create very negative images of teachers among students, damage the authority of teachers and obviously dampen the morale of hard-working teachers," said Kang Dong-heun, a high-school English teacher in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province.

Kim Dong-seok, spokesman of the Korean Federation of Teachers' Associations, said that the system has the potential of yielding many innocent victims as there could be people who would seek to receive the rewards and file malicious and false reports.

"The committee in charge of deliberating on the reports does not have any investigation rights like prosecutors, so it is in actuality difficult to vouch for the authenticity of the reports," Kim said.

"I agree that the government and teachers ourselves should try our best to eradicate any corrupt practices, but the reporting system is like police putting potential criminals on a wanted list and giving rewards when they are caught. This will damage the mutual trust between teachers and students, which is a very critical quality in educating students."

Indeed, the negative portrayal of native speaker English teachers has the same effect.

Earlier this year we saw some figures about how common gift-giving is, though I'll just preface the numbers by saying we really oughtn't lump all these gifts together. There's a difference between giving a white envelope to buy a little more attention to your child, and giving a plate of food, case of juice, or a pair of socks as a token of thanks. From the Korea Times:

The Anti-corruption & Civil Rights Commission surveyed 1,660 parents whose children attend elementary and secondary schools across the country at the beginning of the month.

It showed 18.6 percent of respondents said they had offered money or gifts to teachers.

By region, Gangnam had the highest ratio at 36.4 percent, trailed by South Jeolla Province with 36.2 percent. Busan and Gwangju, came next, with 31.9 percent each.

South Gyeongsang Province had the lowest ratio at 9.5 percent, while Jeju Island and Ulsan recorded 10 percent and 12 percent, respectively.

By grade, parents whose children are first graders in middle school took the largest portion of the money-offering group with 26 percent. More than 25 percent of parents of senior elementary students offered money to teachers.

The LA Times had more in May.

In South Korea, the deeply rooted practice of parents offering under-the-table payoffs is known as chonji. Calling the practice an economic corruption of the classroom, authorities have announced 2009 as the year of the war against such bribes.

On a national day to honor teachers this Friday, they have devised an unusual plan: On Teacher's Day, many schools will be closed and parents will be sent letters asking them not to visit their children's classrooms for at least a month.

Investigators have also stopped teachers on the way home from school to check their vehicles for chonji-related gifts.

Such measures have touched off a debate in this education-obsessed nation about who are the real perpetrators: Are they greedy teachers with their hands out or overly aggressive parents who will stop at nothing to promote their children? Is it both?

In a recent government survey of 1,660 parents of school-age children, more than half of those polled cited parents' "selfishness" in putting their kids before all others as the main reason for the practice. Forty-eight percent considered chonji a bribe, as opposed to a harmless gift.

Accepting chonji is considered a crime in South Korea if prosecutors decide the amounts are large enough, but the law does not penalize the giver, authorities say.

"Across the country, one of five parents says they have given chonji to teachers, and one of three in big cities says so," said Kim Jong-yoon, who heads a bribery investigative team for the national Anti-Corruption and Civil Rights Commission. "This culture must be fixed and improved."

In one case, inspectors posed as parents to follow school visitors carrying envelopes and shopping bags. Kim said such tactics have brought results. One $1.50 box of candy was found to contain hundreds of dollars.

"Justice for Ali Khan Bike Ride" reaches Daejeon Prison on Thursday.

From some coverage in a local paper.

The "Justice for Ali Khan Bike Ride" went from Gwangju to Jeonju today, and will go from Jeonju to Daejeon tomorrow. On Thursday, from 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. the riders will circle the Daejeon Prison before meeting Ali Khan. Last month I posted about Ali Khan, a Pakistani man who believes he is in jail for a 2003 murder he didn't commit. The ride is to raise awareness of the case, and the riders are looking for any expats in the area who would like to join or attend on Thursday.

I emailed around regarding the legality of participating in such an event, which might be construed as political activity and thereby prohibited by the terms of our E-2 visas. The answer I got was that it wouldn't be illegal, but that it would be a long, expensive battle to prove one's innocense should an employer try to do something. For anyone who would like to pay a visit, the prison is in Yuseong-gu. Those with any questions can contact Andrew O'Donnell directly at 010-9866-9130.

"Stroller Moms" in some trouble again.

The "Stroller Moms" are in trouble again, says the Korea Times.

Forty-four moms face a summons for their alleged violation of the law on rallies during last year's candlelit vigils against the import of American beef.

Last week, police asked the members of an online community, dubbed ``Stroller Moms Corps,'' to present themselves at Jongno Police Station in central Seoul soon, according to police and the members, Monday.

The mothers took part in the candlelit demonstrations with their babies in strollers last year. Clashes between riot police and protesters usually did not happen when the mothers were present, as both sides tried to protect the babies.

Police said that the mothers are suspected of having violated the law on rallies and obstructed traffic by illegally occupying and marching on the streets on May 29 and 31.

We heard about this last September, too. From the KT back then:

``Stroller Moms Corps,'' and booked one of them, 37-year-old Yu, without physical detention on alleged violation of the law on rallies and traffic obstruction. They will summon the other two soon.

The community members and other mothers took part in the rallies with their babies in strollers. Clashes between riot police and protesters usually did not happen when the mothers were present, as both sides tried to protect the children.

Investigators visited the home of one of the members, Yang, and showed her husband photos of her, which police took at the demonstration for evidence.

``I, mother of three children, participated in the rally as I wished to leave safe food and quality education to my kids, but I did not know that I would have to pay a huge cost. We mothers, carrying babies in strollers and holding candles, neither destroyed patrol buses, nor wielded steel pipes,'' Yang, 34-year-old housewife, said on portal site Daum.

From the original KT article:

Police said the probe is separate from that into three community organizers, who were summoned last September for leading the ``illegal'' protests. One of them was booked without physical detention for standing in front of demonstrators and confronting police's water cannon with her baby in a stroller, making police unable to forcibly disperse the demonstrators.

You'll remember that in the middle of last year's Mad Bull Shit, these mothers were . . . um, doing this:

At around 1:40 p.m. June 26, police stationed two water canon vehicles in front of Saemoonan Church, downtown Seoul. It was to dismiss the protestors overcrowding the road.

As the police prepared for a second spurt after spouting water for 10 minutes, a housewife suddenly approached the water canon vehicles pushing forth a baby buggy with her child in it.

The police requested the mother to move aside to the footpath, but she stayed right there saying, “I’ll only move aside after the water canon vehicles move away.”

Last June an internet user commented:

I’m in tears. I’m touched by the desperateness of the mother who stood in front of the water canon cars with her dear child.

Protesting American beef because it could be dangerous to their families . . . by putting their babies in front of water cannons. Fail.

This week's installment in the Joongang Ilbo.

For this week's installment in the Joongang Ilbo I couldn't find a single post with enough usable comments, so I had to patch together a few different ones. The comment I especially liked was from Kyle on the post about the recent Yonhap hit-piece on native speaker English teachers:

I have a question for those of you who are native English teachers in Korea. How does this media bias affect your daily life? Obviously it’s upsetting to read. But do people mention it to you or ask you about it often? Co-workers? I’m just wondering how much (if any) of this angst could be ameliorated by not reading this junk from the media.

I know that was asked in an earlier post, but I couldn't find it on Friday when I was piecing the column together. I concluded the piece with another quotation from Kyle, which was edited a little in the article:

I've never asked my coworkers about their suspicions or preconceptions of my character. They've never probed. Maybe I'm just lucky. If they do harbor negatve suspicions, which may well be the case, there's nothing I can do about that other than be the best techer I can be and show a positive, enthusiastic attitude. They'll know they're wrong. Kill 'em with kindness, as someone once said.

The Soju Sonsangnim had some thoughts on the issue.

It seems to me that a lot of expats become embittered when they involve themselves in South Korean issues. Why not avoid the stress and anger that empathy causes by focusing on the things that matter in your life? I can see becoming involved in Korean politics as a way to avoid the cabin fever that often arises when you’ve exhausted all other avenues of entertainment, but it doesn’t seem worth the trouble to me.

I've often asked myself how my life in Korea would be different if I just never paid attention to the newspapers, blogs, and messageboards. It's tough to really answer the question "How does this media bias affect your daily life?" Except for that one time, I've never really dealt with morons who were openly affected by it. Certainly some parents, students, and colleagues are influenced by what they see and hear in the news, especially when it comes from sources they ought to trust, but it's pure speculation how the barrage of negative portrayals have affected the audience. And I'm talking here about day-to-day life, among the people we work with and otherwise encounter during the day, not about the legislation that Gusts of Popular Feeling has shown, and the so-called "Wagner Report" has claimed, has been influenced by media portrayals of native speaker English teachers.

Three dead, seven sick in Suncheon after drinking tainted makkoli.

An excerpt from the Korea Times yesterday evening, which has the wrong picture accompanying:

An elderly woman died after drinking ``makgeolli,'' a traditional rice wine, that was suspected of being poisoned. Three others are receiving medical treatment.

The four people in their 50s and 70s broke down vomiting after having the wine together at a riverside in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, around 9:10 a.m. Monday. They were taking a break during a clean-up operation led by the local ward office.

Among them, a 56-year-old, identified as Choi, died while being transferred to the hospital. Two others are unconscious, while another woman, who spat out the liquor because of the bad smell, is suffering from a stomachache and receiving treatment.

The victims had been participating in the clean-up work since 8 a.m. Choi brought two bottles of makgeolli from her home and bought three more bottles to share with her colleagues. They drank the wine brought from her home first. The wine in question had a strong odor and blue color, according to police.

The most recent article, though, from this morning says three are dead and seven sick.

The ridiculous catchphrases, the rude "yep" answers, the haircut . . . is this a comedy show or middle school?

Christ Almighty, if you've never taught middle school students in Korea, this clip from "골드미스가 간다" replicates nicely how irritating it can get sometimes. In this segment some adjummas have visited an English Village and a comedienne is trying to get through the immigration counter. Needless to say she fails and gets escorted out by some black guys. If anybody needs a bamboo sword across the back it's her.

Imported vibrators to penetrate Korean market.

I checked my Google Reader real quick to make sure nobody else used that joke. From the Korea Times:

The Supreme Court Monday turned down an appellate court's ruling that put on hold the import of vibrators, saying they don't challenge sexual morality or human dignity.

The court sent the case back to the appellate court for a review, with the final ruling expected late this month.

In 2007, an unidentified company importing penis-shaped vibrators filed the suit against the customs office at Incheon International Airport after the customs clearance for the imports was put on hold. The customs office has claimed the ``obscene'' products provoke sexual desires and undermine sexual morality and human dignity.

``The products are shaped like a penis. But it's different from real ones in size and detail so it's unacceptable that they apparently provoke sexual desires of lay people at a glance, humiliate people, and undermine human dignity,'' the top court said in a ruling statement.

More creepy camerawork from the Chosun Ilbo.

Basically, if you're a white woman in Korea and you go anywhere near a bikini, the Chosun Ilbo will find you.

Suncheon back on the lookout for illegal teachers.

Over the past week or two these banners went up again, alerting citizens to be on the lookout for native speaker English teachers giving private lessons illegally.



We first saw these in February, and this time they have gone up in multiple locations around Suncheon. This one was taken across the street from NC Outlet and the apartment complex where many native speaker English teachers are housed. The banner reads:

Intensive Control Period of Foreigners' Illegal Extracurricular Work For Forced Repatriation
[원어민 불법 과외 적발시 본국 강제소환 집중단속기간]

As you can see the phone numbers on the bottom are for the Yeosu Immigration Office, the Suncheon Office of Education, and the Suncheon Hakwon Association. It goes without saying that you should always be wary of strangers approaching you to teach private lessons, as they not only lead to headaches but also violate the terms of our E-2 visas and can thus lead to deportation. While many Koreans don't seem to know it's illegal, there's always the possibility that the person asking you is hoping to trick you and cash in.

A trip to Busan's Chinatown.

Last weekend I took a trip to sunny, funny Busan and was talked into doing something other than playing on Haeundae Beach. We paid a visit to Busan's Chinatown, located across the street from Busan Station and accessible via exit 1 of the subway stop of the same name.








There are four gates at each entrance. Here's one, with a second one visible at the other end of the street.




There's some information in what might be described as English on the Busan tourism homepage, which says that the Chinese consulate was established here in 1884 and that one of the Chinese restaurants has had a brush with fame:

It is the location of film, named, "Old Boy", its main character(Minsik Choi) has eaten with dumpling for 15 years. There are lots of Chinese restaurant which does not serve the black noodle, and you will need some attention.

But at this point I should mention that the area is now referred to as "Choryang shopping area for foreigners." In case you don't believe me, here's the sign, with Busan Station in the background.




We realized pretty quickly that it wasn't much of a Chinatown since most of the signs were in languages other than Chinese, and all but three of the foreigners we saw that afternoon weren't speaking Chinese. From a LifeinKorea profile:

Texas Street is to Busan what Itaewon-dong is to Seoul. Located near the harbor and Busan train station, many stores here cater to foreigners, selling blankets, hand bags, shoes, clothes, and leather goods.

. . .

Recently, it was named formally as "Commercial street for foreigners." In recent years, signs in English have been replaced by Cyrillic ones to cater to the influx of Russian sailors since the establishment of dilpomatic ties between the two countries. Many shops and bars have also sprung up to cater to a new boom of Chinese speaking tourists who now come in greater numbers.

You can buy big clothes (큰옷) here:



There were hardly any people out on Saturday afternoon.






Here's a place to get a phone if you're Filipino, Chinese, or a speaker of another language I can't read.



This restaurant serves lamb, beef, and dog.



I hear the side dishes are good.



This club, "Hollywood," doesn't permit Koreans inside, as seen from the sign that reads "내국인 출입금지."




Oh, and I should also point out that when I googled around in preparation for this post, a few days after the visit, I learned that the main street of Chinatown is commonly known as "Texas Street" and is the notorious red-light district of Busan.

From a Korean Tourism Organization profile:

Commonly known as Texas Street (with the caveat that “it is no longer known as Texas Street”), the place once catered to American GIs and their carnal desires. Today, it still caters to a foreign community — mostly Russian sailors and Chinese immigrants — but its enduring reputation as an unseemly area is now apparently undeserved. It’s rarely very crowded and those who venture there will discover several reasonably priced Russian restaurants, two Filipino karaoke rooms with some of the better pop song lists in the city, and a cluster of upscale Chinese restaurants on what is known as Shanghai Street at the far east end of the street.

From Abby Off-Air:

Despite the oriental moniker, once I ventured past the red lanterns hanging around the perimeter I began to wonder if I had somehow detrained in Vladivostok. The area may be the closest thing Busan has to a Chinatown, but it's every bit as much Russian sailorville, Southeast Asian prostitiuteburg, and American GI City. I suppose it's just like me to unknowlingly head straight for the seediest part of town, and then start taking pictures.

From a 2002 magazine article in Busan Beat, about the foreign food there:

Texas Street is a shopping/entertainment district for foreigners, mainly Russians, and a fair sprinkling of Asians, Europeans, and North and South Americans, depending on the ships passing through. By day, it‘s fairly innocuous; the shops hawk clothing, appliances, and tourist kitsch, and homesick sailors shop for long-distance telephone cards. By night, the “entertainment” kicks into gear, and the street belongs to the hopelessly normal and the normally hopeless, the vitally unusual and the unusually vital.

Everyone seems to agree that Texas Street somehow “caters” to people, though many seem unaware that this “catering” is also very much of the gastronomical kind. Many Busanites were overjoyed when the big foreign restaurants opened in Haeundae Beach, and these quickly became popular feeding grounds. What is less known is that Texas Street has had more variety for years. You won‘t find megachains, but lots of Mom and Pop. No Starbucks, but plenty of Bang for your Buck. No Indian or Vietnamese, but you‘ll find a variety of Russian, Filipino, Chinese, and Western—from posh eatery to no-frill grill—to choose from.

My quick search through my Google Reader only picked up a couple hits, but as you probably figured, Chris in South Korea has been there:

What makes this area interesting isn't what it is today - it's what it's been. During the Korean war, this area was known as Texas Street, a red-light / entertainment district described as "a hive of activity, a hybrid of Korea and the west" by the Moon guidebook I've come to depend on. Since then, it's essentially been taken over by Russians - notice the Cyrillic on the right side of the sign above. 'Foreigners' in this area are just as likely to speak Russian or Chinese as they are English - in fact there's a small Chinatown around, although I didn't find it through random wandering. Whatever language they speak, Busan has tried to bring some respectability to the area and renamed it the Choryang Street for Foreigners. It's now considered a tourist destination by the city, an area that will continue to draw foreigners in from all around the world.

All in all it was kind of a disappointment, mostly because we had expected an actual Chinatown. The neighborhood we found was vacant and a little sleazy, and not something you'd really want to go out of your way to visit. But Chris writes:

Choryang Street for Foreigners is worth a quick visit, and since it's so conveniant to the rest of town (again, across the street from Busan Station), it's easy to pop in and peek around for a couple of hours. My only suggestion is to be aware of it's past reputation as a red-light district - while the area is being cleaned slowly, it's not as cleaned up as you might like. Be prepared to smile and nod through some of the more questionable looking types during the evening hours; during the daytime they're not out, however.

Anyway, here are a few other pictures from that weekend.



I love these things. It's a car elevator, under construction, a solution to the demand for parking when there's not enough space for a large parking garage. I would like to see these used more back home.




You'll remember this from earlier in the week:



And Haeundae Beach on Sunday morning.

The fourth installment from Choi Hui-seon in the Chosun Ilbo.

The fourth article in four days from "intern" Choi Hui-seon is atop the Chosun Ilbo homepage tonight, this one looking at "unqualified" native speaker English teachers.

* Update: Translated by Korea Beat.

The "Dokdo Cruise English Camp."

Called both "Dokdo Cruise English Camp" and "The Dokdo Cruise Camp" (독도 크루즈 어린이 영어캠프) it's run through the Korea Times newspaper. It's for elementary school students in grades four through six, and though the page says there will be foreign elementary school students as well, I haven't found anything else about that on the Korean-language page. It costs 770,000 won; that's about US$608 or 58,367 yen. There will be four sessions of 120 students in July and August, each running four nights and five days, and each following this program. It looks like they're scheduled for the Dokdo tour on Thursday morning. Actually this article lays out the program a little more, and says that they'll be at Korea Maritime University in Busan from Monday through Wednesday, and will board the Hanaraho on Wednesday evening. Yeah, the enthusiasm for Dokdo is tiring, but these summer camps are usually pretty fun, and I'd sure like to do an English camp where you snorkle, swim, and go rafting.

You can find teachers' profiles on the page---I knew one of them several years ago---and I came across a job ad on WorknPlay:

#4 SUMMER CAMP POSITION

Date: July 27th- Aug 21st
Location: Busan
Salary: 2.7 ~ negotiable
*Maximum teaching hours per day : 3 hrs
*Lots of marine sports.
*Weekend free !
*Acommodation & Food provided
* We stay in the Cruise from Wed-Fri and go to Dokdo

Suncheon school principal stabs himself outside the house of a local newspaper reporter.

Strange story out of Suncheon, as a 59-year-old principal of an elementary school in Suncheon went to Gwangju late Wednesday night and stabbed himself in the stomach outside the house of a local newspaper reporter. The principal was being investigated by the Suncheon Office of Education for having an affair with a teacher, based on some purchases made on the school credit card says CNB News, and went to the reporter's house after the investigation wrapped up at 10:00 PM, under the pretense of setting the record straight. The principal survived and was taken to a St. Carollo Hospital in Suncheon and later moved to Chonnam University Hospital in Gwangju.

3 students in Gwangyang tested positive for TB in May.

News comes out now that three students at a Gwangyang high school were found with tuberculosis during testing back in May.

School in Jeonju closed because of swine flu.

From the Chosun Ilbo:

An elementary school in North Jeolla Province has decided temporarily to close its doors after a confirmed case of swine flu there. A sixth grader contracted the virus after a school trip to Australia, but teachers and students who accompanied the boy have tested negative. This marks the first school closure in Korea over the H1N1 flu virus.

But, the Korea Herald says the school is in Jeollanam-do.

Chosun Ilbo reports 10 foreign English teachers busted for gambling, drugs.

Near the top of the Chosun Ilbo website this morning, accompanied with the three Choi Hui-seon articles, is news that "drug-taking foreign English teachers" have been busted in Seoul for gambling and, well, taking drugs. This has been circulating on some other blogs, so visit The Marmot's Hole, Monster Island, and Korea Beat for more discussion. Michael Hurt, the man behind Korean Media Watch, has interviewed those busted, and posted the .mp3 here. Monster Island has blogged his reaction to interview; an excerpt:

The audio is all kinds of stupid. The supposedly objective "Korean Media Watch" is feeding lines and editorializing, and if it's the interviewer's voice I'm hearing, offering at least a little inaccurate information.

You've got the professional poker player saying that's what he does for a living — bad move. You've got them admitting inadvertently that they have played these games in the past, perhaps regularly, and they have a whole set up (extra decks of cards to replace missing cards) that indicates it's a serious endeavor.

And then there's the whole part about how the Korean police should understand that Texas Hold 'Em is common in North America, no big deal, and they should understand the culture.

And then there's the whole thing about how "we're foreigners" so we can gamble anywhere in Korea anyway.

Ignorance and arrogance, driving a self-serving justification of having done something illegal. But it should be okay, though, because they're foreigners.

Indeed, the interview, and the things I've seen from Korean Media Watch thus far, are anything but unbiased. Robert Koehler's take:

Busting guys for a home poker game seems rather petty, but I really could have used less of the whole “Oh, the Koreans don’t understand Texas Holdem/concept of a tournament/poker is a game of skill” stuff. They don’t have to understand — it’s the accused that need to “understand” whether or not Korean law regards poker as gambling.

I’d also say they made some pretty major accusations against the police. Would like to hear what the police have to say about it.

These accusations include falsifying drug tests and forcing the suspects to make false confessions.

The first news of this trickled out a day earlier, as The Ruby Canary wrote that

Jim went into Seoul to hang out with a teacher friend he made in an interesting transaction buying a motercycle. He learned some interesting news about a group of teachers that work at his friend’s school. Apparently one of the guys had set up an “event” on facebook inviting other teachers over for a rowdy game of poker. They were halfway though the game, which did include some wagers of won just between friends, when a fully decked-out police force entered the apartment, arrested the guys playing the game, and the last we heard they had been in jail since Friday night. The friend heard they are being deported for illegal gambling.

So the word is out that the cops troll facebook for things to nail foreign teachers with. I have a hard time chalking this one up to cultural differences. I don’t think there many folks besides extremely conservative religious types who would consider an inside game of poker true gambling.

I've listened to the interview and read through most of the commentary available, and I have to say that while I've demonstrated a sympathy to foreigners being mistreated by the authorities, this group seems excessively annoying, ignorant, arrogant, and imbibed with a sense of entitlement. Around 10:50:

Also, I'm here right onw on a tourist visa, and I have a plane ticket to leave the country in two weeks to go home, and the offier said that because of what happened I'm not allowed to leave the country, I have to change my planet ticket, and just stay here until they feel the investigation is over. Which obviously I can't do, I can't just sit around not working, waiting for them to ask me questions.

[Interviewer: And all this for essentially a poker game.]

Yes. Amongst friends.

Around 15:40:

One of the questions that they asked me was "Did you know this was illegal in Korea?" And I said, "I gamble in the casinos, I'm a foreigner. I saw no reason why I wouldn't be able to gamble with my friends at my house, we're all foreigners."

Around 16:00:

They didn't understand that it was a small stakes game. Korea sensationalizes gambling in their television and movies and they didn't understand that, like, tons of money wasn't going itno the pot every hand. So, basically, I told her "yeah, I gamble all the time. I gamble at my friend's house."

It remains to be seen the role Facebook had in this, but it bears repeating that you should be careful what you post to the site. Drinking, partying, and dating don't disqualify one from being a good teacher, though we've that foreign teachers at a bar can make national news. Hell, go run a Naver search for 원어민강사 and look at the first image result. I won't preach to you, because you're all big boys and girls and you've all read that employers back home use google to find out more about their employees and applicants. There have been articles about objectionable content on teachers' forums like ESL Cafe, English Spectrum, and Korea Bridge in the news in recent years, so it shouldn't be surprising that authorities are clued-in to Facebook. I'll leave it up to you whether you want party pictures of yourself available for the public to see, whether you trust your Facebook friends to keep them private, though it should go without saying that you shouldn't advertise your illegal activities, or become indignant when these illegal activities are punished.

(Updated) Now a THIRD article against NSETs from Choe Hui-seon in the Chosun Ilbo.

The Chosun Ilbo has posted a third article from intern reporter Choe Hui-seon about the foreign English teacher menace. We've already seen installments one and two, making this the third such hit piece by the writer in three days.

* Update: I put this up yesterday evening and noticed today that the latest article was already being discussed. Kushibo has linked the guy's blog, and has a good post on this here. His videos have been posted on Dave's ESL Cafe a few times, and even the scholars there don't like him. Said one commenter in January, 2008:

This dumbass will be responsible for the next hammer dropping on all of you. Good luck dealing with the fallout.

The guy's clearly a real scumbag, and assholes like that really have no business in the classroom.

I don't sit here and pretend we're all upstanding citizens nor do I stand up for guys like this, although some disagree. "[Brian] lives in a happy world where we're all halo-crowned cherubs," is how one guy put it. I'm offended by news coverage like this, it's true, but I'm also offended by the people who feed it. What bothers me is that one of the largest papers in the country picks up a blog that Robert Koehler says averages two hits a day, and uses it as part of an effort to disparage the entire group. I like what kushibo has to say, and will include an excerpt:

Tell me why you should give a rat's ass about the press highlighting [the blogger] Colonel Fernandez. Not only is he breaking the law, he's making all kinds of English teachers look suspect because, realistically, it's plausible that any of them could have a fake diploma. And yeah, he is reinforcing the meme that Korea is a place for dishonest people to come and make money. This is not a meme Koreans collectively pulled out of their ass.

And in the end, if you're an English teacher, isn't this guy affecting your livelihood? Is it better for you if anyone can come in and throw some money his way and get a degree?

And will go on to say that as long as we're being vigilant about negative coverage, how about investing as much effort into cleaning up our own image? (The debate about who actually controls the English industry is for another time.) But clearly this reporter is on a mission, one that isn't simply thinking about the children.

"Education ministry officials formed the largest group on the list of civil servants who were caught paying for sex."

That's not good news.

According to data submitted by the National Police Agency to Rep. Chang Je-won of the ruling Grand National Party, a total of 229 government officials were caught involved in prostitution last year.

Of them, 93 were local government officials and 42 education-related officials, including those at education offices in provinces and cities.

By ministry, the education ministry accounted for the largest number of 19, followed by the now-defunct Ministry of Information and Communications (Korea Communications Commission) with 17, and the National Police Agency with 15.

Cute wild cats in the middle of the road.

There's a photo gallery on the Chosun Ilbo website of a mother 살쾡이 (or 삵) and three kittens in the middle of the street in Yeongam county.




They're a wild cat native to, among other places, Korea, and called "Leopard cats" in English. I mentioned these cats briefly in a post two weeks ago. An Acorn in the Dog's Food has a good follow-up to that.