It contains DHA of high-nutrition !!

December 11, 2006 5:52 AM

Take a cyber tour of the Nong Shim factory! Yay! Warning: Portions may require ActiveX control. Includes sound, especially music, voice, and a chime every few seconds. Discontinue use if you experience any of the following: overstimulation, understimulation, rage, anguish, nausea, seizure, uncontrollable craving for shrimp crackers, or an erection lasting more than four hours.
posted by thirteenkiller (11 comments total)

If anything will put a fire in your belly, the irradiated ingredients will.
posted by Smart Dalek at 5:57 AM on December 11, 2006

Arrr it's cuteness + geekiness + QUALITY , I immediately learned they produce quality and obsessive jingles in equal amounts !

It is so much inspection goodness it makes control freaks cum !
posted by elpapacito at 6:06 AM on December 11, 2006

And as Safe-T Rider would no doubt say:

Converor belts ain't for jumpin around
you gotta keep your feet planted
right onto the ground

If your hair's in a bow
you really oughta know
near industrial equipment
you don't shake to and fro

You might wanna wear a skirt
when you go to work
but you're gonna need shoes and more
on the factory floor"
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:12 AM on December 11, 2006

Thanks, thirteenkiller. This is fun. It has its own particular sort of weirdness, quite distinct from Japanese media weirdness, or Chinese media weirdness. Interesting!
posted by flapjax at midnite at 6:35 AM on December 11, 2006

My god! I love Nong Shim ramen - "kimchi" flavour is where it's at. Best. Junk food. Ever.
posted by C.Batt at 9:56 AM on December 11, 2006

c. batt - YES. shim ramyun yay!!
posted by sergeant sandwich at 3:42 PM on December 11, 2006

I think future cultures wil look back at this the same way that we look back at dances round the maypole.
posted by lalochezia at 7:17 PM on December 11, 2006

Couple of things. Every single Korean corporate website looks like this -- massive, pervasive use of Flash, particularly in the lookalike menu elements and animations. Flashing ads, usually Flash and often with full video. This is one of thousands -- not sure what made it stand out for you, other than ramyeon is a tasty (but direly unhealthy) treat.

The majority of sites also use ActiveX controls -- it is literally impossible to do any banking, most shopping or much else unless you bend over and allow installation of a bewildering array of them. I flatten and reinstall the OS on my wife's laptop with regularity for this very reason. Most Korean commercial sites don't work worth a damn on anything but IE, either (only in part because of the ActiveX madness), although that's getting slightly better these days. You can get away with Firefox with maybe 30 or 40 percent of the sites these days, if you don't want to do anything but browse.

Almost without fail, though, Korean sites ask for your national registration number to do anything transactional, after, of course, you've installed the 2 or 3 required ActiveX controls. Problem there being that the validation scripts they use to check the formats only allow the format used for Korean citizen registration numbers, and the foreigner registration numbers that us expats have simply aren't recognized.

The amusing -- and annoying thing -- is that Paypal is now using the same sort of validation to allow deposits to Korean bank accounts (which is a change from last year). Predictably, non-citizen numbers are not recognized. No doubt they got the relevant code from a Korean government agency that is blissfully unaware of the problem.

I was thinking about doing a tour of some of the most over-the-top Korean commercial sites as a post. Not sure if I'll bother, now, though.

Also: ramen is the romanization of the Japanese word. Nong shim (농심) is a Korean company. The Korean word (라면) is romanized ramyeon (where the 'a' sounds like 'ah' and the 'eo' sounds like 'uh' - schwa, basically). 면 (myeon) is just one of the words for noodle(s).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:38 PM on December 11, 2006

I was thinking about doing a tour of some of the most over-the-top Korean commercial sites as a post

How about linking to some of them here, stav, in this thread? If you've got the time to throw a few of 'em out here, I'd be interested in seeing them, and I'm sure some other folks would as well. Then we could all benefit from your higher level of familiarity with this sort of thing, being as how you're located in Korea and all.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:02 AM on December 12, 2006

Well, here's another of my favorites. It was better when I could find the videos, though.
posted by thirteenkiller at 4:54 AM on December 12, 2006

this is great. i lived on shin ramyun throughout college... now i know where it comes from.
posted by mokujin at 8:01 AM on December 12, 2006