Open Thread: Memorial Day Mayhem
Memorial Day weekend, start of the summer beach season and mayhem. (Will next month’s Open Threads become jejune?)
View ArticleBeating The Rap – Not Just for Rappers
Yoo Seung-jun is a former Korean (American) pop star and was one of the biggest selling artists in Korean history, selling over 5 million records in the country. Yoo’s career in South Korea abruptly...
View ArticleUS Defense ships Live Anthrax by mistake to South Korea
Korean media (Chosun article here) are reporting on a revelation that live anthrax was shipped by mistake to Joint United States Forces Korea Portal and Integrated Threat Recognition Program (ITRP) at...
View ArticleAn Insult that was Criminal
Suwon District Court sentenced four months in prison to two “Ilbe” members who were convicted of criminal insult. The insult unfolded in this manner: one defendant, last named Kim, purchased the school...
View ArticleUnited Nations to ROK: Testing Foreigners for AIDS to check ‘values and...
Several years back, an English teacher refused to take a second test for AIDS because she believed the testing was “discriminatory and an affront to her dignity” and was refused a contract renewal by...
View ArticleFlaming Flags
Seoul Metropolitan Police filed on May 31 for an arrest warrant against a 24-year old Korean man, identified only by his surname Kim, for flag desecration. According to the Hankyoreh, Kim “burned a...
View ArticleA Chinese Sewol?
Reports from several news sources report that a Chinese cruise ship has capsized and sunk on the Yangtze River in the midst of a storm. 458 people were aboard, at least eight have been rescuced and...
View ArticleMERS Goes Viral
Korea, from news broadcasts to casual conversations, seems to be all MERS all the time. Korea’s media have covered angles from the effect on the economy and tourism to the government’s inadequate...
View ArticleKorean Robots Are the Future – 2.6 Billion USD Worth
A KAIST robotics team has done well enough at a recent DARPA robotics competition and came away with first place and a 2-million dollar prize: A team of roboticists from the Korea Advanced Institute of...
View ArticleHarvard-Stanford Math Prodigy Hoax
The widely circulated story of a “Korean high-school student (who) has set the enviable record of attending both Harvard and Stanford universities” is a hoax. Local and some international media outlets...
View ArticleGetting Green, Getting High and Spying on The Kids
Seoul will get a new park and its pretty high up. A long unused highway overpass by Seoul Station will be remolded into a “sky garden”, facilitating pedestrian space and harboring a local collection of...
View ArticleMore Shizzilistic Science from the DPRK
The Associated Press has reported that the DPRK has a cure and preventative for MERS, SARS, HIV/AIDS and likely the Ebola virus (cite). . . . The official Korean Central News Agency said scientists...
View ArticleJune: Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism Month
Eric Talmadge of the Associated Press has posted an interesting article on June, in the DPRK, as being the “Struggle Against U.S. Imperialism Month”, wherein the official history of the state’s...
View ArticleOpen Thread: June 27, 2015
A rare double rainbow sighting made the news this week. I hope to someday see such in Seoul.
View ArticleAnti-gay marriage protesters and the current address of the Korean right wing
As the world is celebrating the verdict of making gay marriage legal across the US, Koreans are also joining in the celebration . What is interesting, however is the hodge-podge mixture that is shown...
View ArticleThe comically tragic case of Kim Ryeonhee
This article is very long, but it was somewhere between a hilarious and an interesting read. To summarize, 46-year-old Kim Ryeonhee, landed at Incheon airport on September 16, 2011. By her own account,...
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