Pansori (aka P'ansori) is a genre of Korean folk music produced by travelling musicians, a singer accompanied by a lone drummer. Rooted in seventeenth century folk tales, by the 1960's, Pansori was in danger of dying out completely, when the director Im Kwon-taek made the film Sopyonje.
posted on Jul 3, 2008 - View this thread

These days, spice is integral to ideas of kimchi in both the West and Korea—it’s always a funny game trying to convince various restaurant ladies here that I can, in fact, eat kimchi without spewing two ribbons of fire from my nostrils, thereby singing the wallpaper and confirming their suspicions that we white folks are just a bunch of food pussies. “Maeun-kot” (“spicy shit!”), they say, making flamey-flamey motions with their hands; “Yes,” I say, “Maeun umshik-ul chal mogoyo” (“I can eat spicy food, no lie, please stop looking at me like I’m a recalcitrant goat who’s about to try to eat a roll of barbed wire”).
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

Russian car magazine "Autoreview" has posted photos of a 1978 Korean Air Lines (KAL) forced landing to accompany an article about the Land Rover Defender pickup that was used to haul equipment at that time. Apparently, Korean Air Lines is not amused (Korean) by this effort to dig up the past. More photos. Via the always awesome Marmot's Hole.
posted on Jun 5, 2008 - View this thread

They Chose China is a documentary about the 22 western POWs who chose to defect to China after the Korean War armistice.
posted on May 18, 2008 - View this thread

Attention drummers! Want to take all the attention away from the rest of the band... then just watch this masterclass. (SLYT)
posted on Apr 4, 2008 - View this thread

Today on Penn Jillette's video blog he mentions a hilarious crew of Koreans have ripped off an old Penn and Teller trick.
posted on Feb 28, 2008 - View this thread

Cheju Love Land (NSFW). A comment in a recent MeTa thread reminded me of this (ahem) expose. It's linked on stavros’ OutsideInKorea site [previously on MeFi].
posted on Feb 23, 2008 - View this thread

Celebrate by wearing your best hanbok! Like Paris Hilton. Or Venus Williams. Or random Korean celebs. Don't forget to dress the dog! Koreans wear traditional dress, hanbok, during the holidays and for major events such as weddings or funerals. Designers continue to reinterpret it, while colorful variations on styles of centuries past make their way to films and TV. The movie is Untold Scandal, the TV drama is Hwang Jin Yi.
posted on Feb 7, 2008 - View this thread

Japanese places and people photographed by Felice Beato, a pioneer 19th century photographer who documented the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the Anglo-French military intervention in China before opening a studio in Yokohama in 1863. He also seems to have been the first photographer in Korea.Wikipedia NYPL archive First two links are units in MIT's Visualizing Cultures project.
posted on Jan 23, 2008 - View this thread

Super funny money turning up on the world stage
Along with pranks going on in the gulf this week, some funny stuff going on with US Currency as well - Perhaps part of the explanation of the seemingly endless run on gold?
posted on Jan 13, 2008 - View this thread

PISA results are in. Finland and Canada high five and make awkward polite bows and gestures towards The Far East. For education policy Programme for International Student Assessment is the research about how 15-year old students are being educated. Briefings for UK and US. Results escape easy answers, but you might test your theory against interactive data tool.
posted on Dec 4, 2007 - View this thread

Halloween Subway Where? Korea, of course!
posted on Oct 26, 2007 - View this thread

The French Fry Coated Hot Dog and other artisan hot dogs from Korea.
posted on Oct 9, 2007 - View this thread

Epaksa. Or Dr. Lee (a.k.a "Sinbaram" Epaksa). Purveyor of "Techno Ponchak". It's a mixture of electronic music with "ponchak," a dismissive, onomatopoeic reference to a Korean musical style known as "teuroteu" (trot). [More inside.]
posted on Sep 5, 2007 - View this thread

Seoul: Then and Now. Photos Part 2. Anyang: Then and Now.
posted on Aug 6, 2007 - View this thread

Formerly 23, now 22 Korean Christian missionaries have been taken hostage in Afghanistan. The group's leader and pastor was killed on his 42nd birthday. Hostages have been taken before in Afghanistan, but a video on YouTube, perhaps connected with the missionaries, has been creating a stir. Here.
posted on Jul 26, 2007 - View this thread

You got served! ...by taekwondo black belts? The Korean Tigers is a taekwondo demonstration team that also try to have fun. But chereographing with pop stars and dancing? Considering that one of Korea's older traditional martial arts is taekyon, a martial art which reflects some aspects of traditional Korean dance and music, dancing doesn't seem so far-fetched for Korean martial arts.
posted on Jul 12, 2007 - View this thread

Live, From Outer Space: rural fires [1, 2], The Haze in China [1 ,2, 3] and its movement, aerosols, and the brothers carbon monoxide [a photochemical smog agent] and carbon dioxide.
posted on Apr 14, 2007 - View this thread

Feeling nostalgic for those old school Soviet shindigs? Westerners are welcome to North Korea's Arirang Mass Games. Tickets are on sale now. Will tourist dollars/euros be the undoing of North Korea?
posted on Apr 12, 2007 - View this thread

A good write-up on a different kind of fried chicken. [via nytimes.com] Registration-free link here.
posted on Feb 7, 2007 - View this thread

In Korea, you use Windows and IE, or you're out of luck. MeFi's own Gen Kanai writes about the Microsoft lock-in in South Korea. It is also a monoculture in other ways, of course, but in a country of 48 million where internet usage has risen from 9 million in 1999 to 35 million today, that leads the world in broadband penetration, some lessons for the rest of the world about the dangers of monopoly might be learned.
posted on Feb 1, 2007 - View this thread

A Year in Pyongyang.
posted on Jan 20, 2007 - View this thread

At the end of the Korean War, James Veneris was an American POW awaiting repatriation. But when his time came, he—along with twenty other Americans and a Briton—declined to leave and chose to cast his lot with Mao and the Chinese Communist Party. Over time, almost all of these men became disillusioned with Marxism and eventually returned to their homelands. The Cold War that informed their decisions has become a chapter in the history books but the story of Western defectors to the Communist bloc is just now being written.
posted on Jan 4, 2007 - View this thread

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 on Dec 11, 2006 - View this thread

Pyongyang Rocks! If you are a band playing any kind of rock, including heavy metal, then you can participate in 'ROCK FOR PEACE' in North Korea. What a blast!
posted on Nov 8, 2006 - View this thread

Issac Asimov's first Law of Robotics has been broken.
posted on Nov 3, 2006 - View this thread

Newsfilter: North Korea's response to a toothless UN resolution may be a second nuclear test. With military solutions pretty much off the table, it may be up to rival factions within the DPRK to topple the regime. NK coups have been discussed here before, and the end result may not be as pretty as one would hope, but maybe this time the Chinese have had enough.
posted on Oct 17, 2006 - View this thread

Air samples over North Korea show no radiation "It is possible there was no radiological data. That could be the case if: the North Koreans successfully sealed the site; it was such a small detonation and so deep underground there was no escape of nuclear debris; or the test was actually conventional explosives."
posted on Oct 13, 2006 - View this thread

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations adopted a bipartisan resolution to ask the Japanese government to formally apologize for sexually enslaving up to 200,000 "comfort women" in Imperial brothels during its colonial occupation of Asia from 1932 through the end of World War II. Many were tortured and raped, and only about 30% survived WWII. Japan has stated repeatedly that even though the brothels were established by military policy, the imperial government was not directly involved in operating them. Taking responsibility would be an admission that they committed war crimes -- slavery and trafficking in women and children -- and could give victims a legal basis to sue for reparations.

H Res. 759 does not ask Japan to provide reparations, but it does push them to unambiguously acknowledge what happened and educate future generations, (full text) rather than continue the current practice of denying what really happened. Previously on MeFi.
posted on Sep 15, 2006 - View this thread

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi defies opposition, makes annual controversial trip to Yasukuni Shrine. Naturally, China and Korea are not amused. Adding to the drama and sparking debate amongst the Japanese is a recently discovered private journal of former Emperor Hirohito that reveals Hirohito stopped visiting the shrine in the 1970's when he learned that 14 class A war criminals had been secretly interred. Those 14 Class A war criminals are the focus of the controversy, and many Japanese are discussing having the remains of those men removed from Yasukuni.
posted on Aug 14, 2006 - View this thread

I've long felt that the U.S. of A. "jumped the shark" as a country when we rejected the Metric System. The price of gasoline would still be under a dollar (per liter). Yet, we'd drive less because a short 20 mile trip would become a long 32 km trip. Then there's the most important measurement of all [maybe NSFW animated graph], providing us with the joy of 12.9(!) while we try to ignore that Japan is .1 ahead of us and France is .1 more than South Africa. (And is that Korean average North or South?)
posted on Aug 14, 2006 - View this thread

OutsideIn Korea - brought to the world by our own stavrosthewonderchicken. He asked what you would like to see on the site here. Now sit back while he brings it to you. Or not. Probably not, now I think about it. In any case, the man writes like a demon on crack (except twice as interesting) and, whether or not you have the slightest interest in Korea, you will be entertained by the stories. If you follow his personal site, you know what to expect. If you have never read his writings before, strap in, you're in for a bumpy ride.
posted on Aug 14, 2006 - View this thread

Art Under Control in North Korea. A slide show from Jane Portal's book by the same name (Reaktion Books, May 2005). You can find an essay by Portal here.
posted on Jul 17, 2006 - View this thread

Newsfilter: North Korea tests at least two smaller missiles, and one long-range which was unsuccessful, failing in flight. Bush says last week: "Should they launch a missile, that will cause various -- we would apply various pressures. ... I believe it is best that I do not discuss what specific pressures we were talking about."
posted on Jul 4, 2006 - View this thread

Wal-Mart fails in South Korea. As a student of business and a resident of Asia, I am fascinated by the examples of "foreign" businesses who either succeed or fail in Asian markets. Recently, Vodafone failed in Japan but in a strange twist has signed a J-V with Softbank to keep their presence in Japan. eBay failed in Japan as did Memoirs of a Geisha. I'd love to have a discussion on the successes AND failures of non-Asian businesses in Asian markets and what, if any, lessons can be taken away for those of us who are in Asian markets or wish to enter Asian markets. (Yes, I realize that "Asia" is too broad of a region but I don't want to limit the discussion to just one nation.)
posted on May 24, 2006 - View this thread

The "Axe Murder Incident" On Wednesday 18 August 1976 at 1040 hours in the morning, a United Nations Command (UNC) work force of five Korean Service Corps (KSC) personnel accompanied by and UNC security force...started to prune a large tree in the vicinity of UNC Check Point #3...Lieutenant Pak then shouted "MI KUN UL CHU KI GI CHA." Translated, it means, "Kill the U.S. Aggressors."; the UNC security force was attacked by a superior force of 30 KPA guards wielding pick handles, knives, clubs, and axes.
posted on Mar 14, 2006 - View this thread

Crazy breakdancers from Korea - one minute of annoying lead in followed by two and a half minutes of cool moves.
posted on Feb 27, 2006 - View this thread

"The Korean Saving Private Ryan," or Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War (2004). Reviews. Plot synopsis (spoilers). Box Office: Over 20% of South Korea saw this film.
posted on Feb 16, 2006 - View this thread

Nam June Paik passed away on Sunday. We'll read educated commentaries in the next few days, but what I most affectionately remember about him is how his work made me laugh happily during the 70s and 80s. A precursor of video art, he was the first to use plugged tv sets as building blocks in the most playful ways. His TV Buddha is arguably an unsurpassed classic (a motionless moving image, an outside observation of an inner meditation, even -why not?- a premonition of a blogger) (this last one is a joke: I told you Paik made me laugh). R.I.P.
posted on Jan 30, 2006 - View this thread

Korea to unveil Police Robots in 5 years. This project is being spearheaded by KAIST. Whom the team at engadget visited early last year. Some of KAIST's earlier robots, Ahra and Maru.
posted on Jan 18, 2006 - View this thread

Watercolor galleries from Korea (2,3,4,5).
posted on Sep 9, 2005 - View this thread

KilroyWasHere.org -- Come for the kilroy, stay for the story upon story from a time when the U.S. really was fighting for democracy. (Links upon links too, if that's your thing.)
posted on Aug 4, 2005 - View this thread

The atom bomb is 60. It's very popular now and becoming more so daily. The most recent nuclear nation to threaten to use theirs is China. The U.S, Europe, and the U.S.S.R. got through a half century Cold War without immolating themselves. Will South and East Asia be as successful and/or lucky in the near future?
posted on Jul 16, 2005 - View this thread

Fan Death is death resulting from hypothermia or lack of oxygen, caused by the vortex that is created by an electric fan, or air conditioning in closed rooms. Strangely, it only occurs in South Korea.
posted on Jul 1, 2005 - View this thread

Today, Bush met with Kang Chol Hwan, a survivor of the North Korean prison camps and author of The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a book Bush has read and given to his staffers.
posted on Jun 14, 2005 - View this thread

Stories from a prison in South Korea, told by an English teacher imprisoned for teaching without a license. Punishment: deportation. But if a prisoner can't collect wages due, then the prisoner can't buy a plane ticket and stays jailed, where the prisoner can't make money, until such time as the prisoner can afford a plane ticket, ad infinitum. Part one. "The massive Mongolian sings beautifully. A sad falsetto—I imagine it to be about missing a faraway homeland of vast, green pastures, endless fertile grasslands, deserts and broad skies." Part two. "He should really go to a hospital outside of the detention center, but…he would have to pay for any medical treatment outside.…If he spends any money on medical bills he would have less money for buying his airplane ticket home. So he must go untreated."
posted on May 18, 2005 - View this thread

Metropolis ex nihilo? Construction of New Songdo City, South Korea, is now underway. Within 10 years, a fully planned city of 100,000 people will spring up on a man-made island. It is intended to be a new, multi-national commercial hub for its booming Asian region. The developers say all the right things - cultural facilities, mixed use buildings, ample greenspace, etc. - but can a diverse, livable city really be so easily manufactured?
posted on Apr 20, 2005 - View this thread

Aerial Propaganda Leaflet Database. Propaganda from WWI to Operation Iraqi Freedom, including many safe conduct passes. Also, leaflets from the Korean War & Vietnam, Sefton Delmer's "Black Propaganda Radio, and even some NSFW (work, not war) propaganda. Come On Boys, Himmler For President!
posted on Mar 9, 2005 - View this thread

The beginning of the end for Dear Leader? This Times (of London) report is filled with telling details.
posted on Feb 1, 2005 - View this thread

The beginning of the end for Dear Leader? This Times (of London) report is filled with telling details.
posted on Feb 1, 2005 - View this thread