Protesting being denied a reason to protest

An article from the Chosun. 

Bereaved families of victims killed during a deadly rampage at a
front-line guard post, protest trial procedures in front of a martial
court in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, saying that the trial was wrapped
up hastily, without doing anything to relieve people's distrust .
/Yonhap

And what grave injustice were these families of the slain protesting? Private Kim Dongmin was found guilty of premeditated murder and was sentenced to death. 

Meanwhile at the courthouse, bereaved families knocked chairs around
and yelled at the court in protest at the ruling, saying the military
had manipulated the case and the trial was wrapped up hastily.

Just can't please some people, I guess. That must have been a somewhat bizarre moment for the court when they realized the people throwing the tantrum were those that had the ruling go in their favor.

I know, it was a terrible trajedy and I shouldn't belittle them considering the immense pain and agony they must be going through, but isn't protesting a trial that went exactly the way you wanted it just a tad too much?

It's a Korean thing, I guess.

Anyway, the case will be appealed and in the end I'm sure Kim will just be sentenced to life, which is as it should be in my opinion. Let him spend the rest of his long life seeing if life in prison is a step up from serving 2 years in the military. Let him rot in prison long enough for his conscience to start gnawing at him once he's mature enough to see what he's done.

Secrets of the Korean Rich

An article I found through connectkorea (pretty much a dead site these days) a long time back. I started to write up a post, saved it half-finished as a draft, and then forget about it for a while. Fortunately for all of you who yearn to be rich without having to go through the usual route of actually working hard and coming up with an innovative thought, I found it and now here it is.

While expecting the usual 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' advice that we've grown accustomed to on this topic, I was delightfully surprised to find this 'research' was from one Dr. Moon Seung-yeol who exemplifies Korea's special brand of home-grown scholarly logic. 

Some of the more entertaining entries:

3. The wealthy live longer. They say the more money you have and the higher your position, the less stress you suffer and the longer you live. But research has shown that rather than absolute size of their fortune, people’s lifespan is determined by whether they have the confidence that they are better than the rest.

Research has shown you live longer if you are confident you are better than everyone else? Is this an explanation why Korea men have the lowest lifespan among developed countries?

Anyway, that's great news for me. As a typical white American male, I assume this means I will live to the age of 150.

And do the French EVER die?

4. The wealthy respect their partners as investment consultants and advisors, rather than merely as wives or husbands.

Perhaps, but I don't think this respect gets in the way of rich ajoshis dropping a few million won a night at a dallanjujum or banging their secretaries.

5. The rich have "wealthy lines." The faces of the rich are lined owing to the fact that they are always smiling, Dr. Moon observes, apparently fixed in a rictus of permanent glee at their own success.

Kind of makes you want to start hating rich people, don't it?

Is this for real? Do rich people really have more 'smiling wrinkles' that the average Joe? My feeling is that our good 'Dr.' is just making this shit up as he goes along.

8. The wealthy invest in their children's education. The ratio of incoming Seoul National University students who are the sons of wealthy white collar workers is growing by the day.

And the less-wealthy people in Korea do not give a damn about their childrens' education?

I would replace the words 'invest in' with the word 'buy'. The rich move to Kangnam to get their kids in the best schools, shell out a lot of money on private tutors and send their children abroad to master English to see to it that their spoiled kids stay above the unwashed masses. This 'secret of the rich' sounds more like a 'fuck you' to all families of lower incomes who can't afford to compete with the well-off.

9. Red is a symbol of wealth. The color denotes passion and strength and contains hope, says Moon.

And?

How exactly is this a 'secret' of rich people's success? Do rich people claim red as their favorite color? Do rich people wear red more often (assumedly not, as #7 on Moon's list states they wear 'understated clothing')? Do they always bet on red when playing roulette? What the hell is the point here?

11. The wealthy look south. Even in the most expensive locations like the Tower Palace in Seoul's Gangnam district, prices can differ by up to W600-700 million (about US$ 600,000-700,000) depending on the direction the apartment faces. The most expensive ones face south. Anyone who has lived in a north-facing apartment in the northern hemisphere knows why.

Ok, rich people pay more for houses/apartments that face south, thus getting more sunlight. What other shocking 'secrets' of rich people will Dr. Moon tell us about next? That they prefer BMWs to Ticos? They usually eat in expensive restaurants rather than Mcdonalds? They don't buy their Rolexes from some guy selling watches out of a suitcase by the subway station? They wipe their asses with pricey 2 ply toilet paper rather than bargain brands? 

Unless Dr. Moon is alluding to geomancy, I'm not sure of the relevance of this information.

12. The wealthy are born in mid-winter. Four out of ten of Korea's wealthy were born in winter according to the Gregorian calendar. This phenomenon holds true outside of Korea as well. 10 of the 40 self-made men selected by the business magazine Fortune were born between late December and late January.

Shocking. I thought they would all be born in the year of the Pig, in accordance with ancient Chinese superstition wisdom.

Interesting trivia though. A little note to the good doctor, however. Coincidences happen, especially with a low sample size. If I flipped a coin ten times, it is not out of the question for heads to come up 8 times out of 10 in one particular stretch. However, if I continue to flip that same coin a few hundred more times, soon we will see that our early 'finding' was wrong. Let some competent researchers who know what it means to conduct a study with true random sampling and appropriate sample size and I'm sure we'll find that this is bullshit.

I looked up the birth months of the top 10 richest men of all time and only one, Paul Allen, was born in December or January.  Warren Buffett was born in August, as was Lawrence J. Ellison and John Jacob Astor. Cornelius Vanderbilt was born in November, as was Andrew Carnegie. And the richest man in the history of the world, John D. Rockefeller, was born in July (the same birth month as this decidely unrich blog author).

Hmm, according to my 'research' it is better to be born in July or August. Could have fooled me.

By the way, though Donald Trump was born in June, a hairdresser capable
of taming that abomination on his head is still yet to be born.

 

Here's another example of this silly kind of research, suggesting that people who's surnames are on the first half of the alphabet are more likely to be rich (I can just see millions of Koreans named "Park" and "Seo" scrambling to change their names to "Choi" now).
  
Would you like to learn more about how to become rich? Dr. Moon is a 'consultant' who runs his own 'Rich School' program for morons   enterprising people who believe that such 'success' programs can actually do something (other than make the person running said program richer).

Someone please tell me that this entire article is not just a paid-for advertisement by the good Dr. Moon. That's one characteristic of wealth he did NOT mention: knowing the value of sleazy and shameless self-promotion.

Kimchi Folklore--Bird Flu Virus cure

Sales of kimchi and sauerkraut have reportedly spiked due to claims that kimchi can fight the Bird Flu virus.

An agriculture official at the Korean Embassy in Washington, Kim Jae-su, said despite growing concern over the hygiene and safety of kimchi in Korea following a recent parasite scare, many U.S. media reported the virtue of kimchi in treating bird flu, and sauerkraut manufacturers were trying to boost sales by riding on the coattails of that popularity.

The 'virtue' of kimchi in treating bird flu is based on ONE research study that the researchers themselves admitted was not conclusive. That was back in March and things have been fairly quiet since then, which seems more than a little odd. The only thing I found was this and this. (basically, a month ago they shipped off some special 'kimchi-feed' to an Indonesian zoo. Why wait for scientific verification before making a little money, eh?)

But even if no further research comes out to prove the theory, or even if research comes out that disproves the theory (though I doubt the Korean media would be bothered to report on it), the myth that kimchi cures yet another deadly disease will be etched onto the collective consciousness of the Korean people.

This lady's name just happens to be Adi Kimchi. She's a professor in a cancer research institute.

Hasn't anyone told her that to find the cure to cancer she has only to look to her surname? I mean, could God give her a bigger clue to solve the mystery of her chosen life's work?

I hear she actually smells rather pleasant, by the way.

Anyhoo, sauerkraut has the same bacteria strain that researchers extracted from kimchi for their research (conducted on sick chickens, by the way. I guess they couldn't get the chickens to eat kimchi in its normal, stinky state).

If this research actually pans out, which choice do you think the average westerner will choose?

A. Spicy cabbage that smells and tastes like it was left to rot in a jar for several months (because, well, it was) and leaves your breath with that sharp 'garlicious' tang that makes the ladies weak at the knees (and stomach)?

B. A product they are already familiar with that DOESN'T stink up the entire refrigerator, despite being placed in 5 separately sealed airtight containers?

The best thing about sauerkraut, of course, is that it is often encountered in the vacinity of a big piece of greasy meat and copious amounts of German beer.

--

More from the article:

“Last year, when kimchi drew attention for its efficacy in curing SARS, which hit Southeast Asia, the U.S. media took no interest,” Kim said.

The first clause of that sentence is 100% 황소똥. There never was a single study that even suggested kimchi could do anything for curing or preventing SARS. It was a complete fabrication of the Korean media (not the scientific community in Korea, save for a few people trying to pass themselves off as scientists) that I've already covered in detail here. If the U.S. media took no interest in that piece of uber-nationalistic folklore, well, then I guess it's nice to know that occasionally they can do something right.

This pic has no real relation to this post, other than the fact that I got it from a site called 'kimchiLand.org.

This is the only kind of Corean nationalism I am interested in seeing.

And if sketchings don't do it for you, how about a picture of a doll some girl named 'Kimchi Girl'? Kimchi girl is the one on the right, by the way. The other is Pattie.

She has taken the pics off of her blog. You'll have to type 'kimchi girl' into a search engine to find the rest of this fascinating collection.

--

But who am I to tell you kimchi doesn't cure and/or prevent everything from AIDS to the Black Death? Join the Faith and double up on your kimchi if you feel you must. Oh, and make sure it isn't any of that poisonous Chinese kimchi (especially the kind that comes from Korean companies that moved their plants over to China to take advantage of the more 'reasonable' wages and health standards the Chinese pride themselves on).

As for me, I'll stick with my own proven diet of Burger King Whoppers, galbi, 'Mexican' fried chicken and the occasional Krispykreme doughnut that has kept me free for 30+ years from AIDS, SARS, bird flu, and every other disease save the common cold and flu. Say what you will, but I've got just as much 'proof' that my diet fights every serious disease known to man as kimchi does for it.

Selected Comments from the original post

If I were the type to whack off to sketches, I'd definitely whack off to the sketch of the large-eyed Korean chick wearing a flag.

Then again, the fact that the flag has been drawn incorrectly is something of a turnoff. Take a look at the trigrams and the orientation of the t'ae-geuk in the middle. What sort of dumbass cartoon bitch wears a badly drawn Korean flag? I bet the artist was Japanese.

Meat unbeaten,

Kevin

Posted by: Kevin Kim | November 12, 2005 at 08:02 AM

Now, Honourable Pooper, since when does something in Korea have to have one shard of proof in order to be believed by 100% of the population. If "Professor" Kim Mum-fuk said it, it was on TV and and it strokes Korean nationalism, it is Gospel, even it if makes Korea a laughing stock.

Probably the best example is "fan death." There was never a single Korean I have ever met that did not completely believe in it. I worked in Daegu for serveral years which is known for blast-furnace summers. A class of very smart seniors told me "be sure never to sleep with the fan on." I replied that that was pure poppy-cock and a gasp ensued. When I further informed them that I slept with the a/c on full blast a look of panic ensued. When I returned to work on Monday one student told me "I am surprised you lived through the weekend."

Posted by: kimchipig | November 12, 2005 at 10:28 AM

Kim Jae-su. Jae-su. That's another classic name. I am compiling a list of cruel Korean names to give my children if I ever have them.

Posted by: Joel | November 12, 2005 at 04:20 PM

Koreans and their kimchi. The national identity is completely tied up with the rotting cabbage. "No, we didn't invent physics, rock 'n roll, baseball, skyscrapers, logic, etc etc, but we do a mean stinky vegetable side dish!"

Posted by: Sharon Stoned | November 12, 2005 at 05:16 PM

Morning pooper! Just to let you know that my blog has moved due to being hacked by a couple of morons! Does anybody know the medicinal value of this blood sucking practise in Korea that leaves marks similar to giant love bites? Apparently the blood is bad and black in colour..........

Posted by: leone | November 12, 2005 at 06:59 PM

If the U.S. media took no interest in that piece of uber-nationalistic folklore, well, then I guess it's nice to know that occasionally they can do something right.

Priceless.

Posted by: Curzon | November 13, 2005 at 08:30 PM

the flag chick looks like lee hyo-ri, which equals the plainest looking "hot" girl in history.

Posted by: P. | November 14, 2005 at 06:44 AM

This doesn't have anything to do with kimchi, or it has everything to do with it, you decide:

http://www.davesdaily.com/pictures/317-peepee.htm

Posted by: Giant Panda | November 15, 2005 at 02:29 AM

KTU Sunshine

All photos and captions swiped from Korea Times, which, by the by, is now 17.4% less shitty since Lee Kyoung Hee stopped writing editorials (or whatever the hell you called what she did).

"This is a part of a controversial video posted on the Web site of the
Korean Teachers’ and Education Workers’ Union. The video criticizes the Asia-Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, the U.S.-led Iraq war, and the free
trade agreements."

It's nice to see that the good people at KTU are working hard to bring Korea into the world of globalization. I'm not sure exactly what the Iraq war has to do with free trade and APEC, but then I guess I wasn't properly educatified.

If you wonder where this fine group of educators gets their marching orders inspiration, check out this wonderful curriculum from other fine examples of teachers in Korea.

Now who says that Chung Dong Young should be criticized for protecting a patriotic regime like that?

"Members of a civic coalition, including a
students’ parents group, call on unionized teachers to accept a new
teacher evaluation system during a press conference in central Seoul,
Tuesday. The system will allow students and their parents to evaluate
teachers’ performance at 48 schools nationwide on a trial basis."
  /Yonhap

Naturally, the KTU is threatening to go on a mass strike to thwart this attempt to actually make them accountable for what they do in the classroom.

"However, the Ministry of Education and Human
Resources Development said that it will take strong action against any
attempt by the union to walk out during their working days to
participate in the demonstration."

Hmm, could 'strong action' possibly indicate a good beatin'? Please? Come on Roh, look how they ridicule your noble image. Doesn't that make you want to see some heads cracked open? At least just a few?

Where do these KTU people come from? Unless I am mistaken (and honestly, what are the odds of that happening?) most hail from Cholla province. Here's another guy who originally hails from Cholla (me thinks, I should probably look that up rather than just assume he hails from the same place as where his father is buried, but folks, this is just a fuckin blog and I ain't exactly paid by the hour here...)

What is this, you say? A Korean-American originally from Cholla province stabbing the good ol' USA in the back? Unpossible!

A little tip to US immigration officials: When considering whether or not to grant citizenship or a visa to a South Korean and you see the word "Cholla" anywhere on his* personal documents, just veto it right there and send him back to the "We Hate Everyone and We Don't Even Think Much of Ourselves!" demo he just recently came from.

*Yes, I intentionally use the male pronoun here. If the applicant is female, the authorities should follow standard protocol by only letting her into the country if she's hot.

Tick Tock

Like most people, I keep a list of the top 30 or so people in the world I would most like to see die a spectacularly gruesome death*.

For the past decade or so Kim Jong-il has been in the top three (he alternates with Bob Saget and Bill Keane, the writer of Family Circle).

I entered Jong-il's personal data on the death clock site and found out that about this time 9 years from now Kim Jong-il should leave his Worker's Paradise behind to join his father in another Paradise (not much different in many ways than how North Korea is now, I'm sure). 

The exact date the site gave me was Thursday, November 27th, 2014.

Now wouldn't that be a Thanksgiving to remember?

That date may be wrong though, as I'm unsure of his Body Mass Index. I know that he is a manly 5 foot 3 inches, but I couldn't find his body weight and just guessed. If anyone knows, please inform me and I'll reenter the numbers and adjust the above date if needed.

Humble Proposal

Once we have the exact date determined, I propose that the Kor-Blogger community hold an annual "Ding Dong the Dictator will soon be Dead" party to mark the upcoming Happy Day.

I further propose that this celebration be held in a pub in Seoul, since as we all know, anyone who is anyone already lives here (our 'provincial' blogger friends such as Nomad and Joel are certainly welcome to come as well, just as long as each of you promises to put on a clean shirt and try not to embarrass us by spitting, scratching yourselves, or doing any other act of uncivilized behavior you might have picked up from the locals).

It's the final scene, fat boy. Here's hoping you go out painfully and shamefully.

[Picture taken from Comedy Central's "Kim Jong-il Must Die." Anyone heard anything about this? Looks like a hoot.]

*Preferably caught on video, so I can download and edit them primarily by speeding them up and dubbing in cartoon sound effects at appropriate moments,
tastefully done, of course

Comments on original post


Comments

Sure, we can all meet at a pub, but I'll have to go Muslim and order a Coke.


Kevin
teetotaling asshole

Posted by: Kevin Kim | November 02, 2005 at 01:03 AM

Is it just coincidence that on the day this is posted your blog is blocked by my (south) Korean ISP ? (given that it was only for 5 odd hours I am guessing that it probably was :).

I'd have a beer to see young Kim kickin it with his old man.

Posted by: Hojuin | November 02, 2005 at 01:20 AM

Shirt? Who the hell wears shirts? It's bare feet and overalls or nothing. Oh...and did you say I had to come to Seoul for this? Do they still allow oxcarts on the highway?

And you better lay off the coffee - that's 2 posts within the last week.

Posted by: Nomad | November 02, 2005 at 09:58 PM

You should start a pool on the date - 10,000 won per?

Posted by: Richardson | November 03, 2005 at 05:54 AM

They need to start a companion website for women:

THE DEATH COCK

Enter your age, body stats, and weight to determine when, if ever, you will next be fucked.


Kevin

Posted by: Kevin Kim | November 04, 2005 at 10:48 PM

If I can't touch my own junk under the guise of scratching then what's the fun in going out in public. I'd just as soon stay home with my sister and my goat.

On a side note I saw this article and thought of you:

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/eastasia/view/177041/1/.html

Well I didn't think about you, I thought about your gaywatch.

Posted by: Joel | November 05, 2005 at 12:05 AM

Masturbation, beastiality, incest, and homosexuality all in one comment - way to go, Joel!

Posted by: Nomad | November 05, 2005 at 12:41 AM

On behalf of us country folk everywhere. :)

Posted by: Joel | November 05, 2005 at 04:06 AM

I thought the Cunt Tree Folk were mythical! Day-yamn!


Kevin
life is like a box of chalk clits

Posted by: Kevin Kim | November 07, 2005 at 05:47 AM

Nomad, we don't allow oxcarts, but I'm sure you can find one of them country buses (you know, the kind that allows you to bring on chickens and as many pounds of vegetables and grains as you can carry on your head) to bring you to the big city.

Joel, the Gaywatch team has been notified. My regards to the goat.

And finally, Kevin, thanks as always for helping me making my blog such a classy joint. [see what happens when you deprive a young man of alcohol?]

Posted by: partypooper | November 07, 2005 at 05:09 PM