MetaFilter posts tagged with southkorea

"A law should serve the people, but it didn't protect me."

kliuless — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 01:12:04 -0800

In Korea, Changes in Society and Family Dynamics Drive Rise in Elderly Suicides - "The epidemic is the counterpoint to the nation's runaway economic success, which has worn away at the Confucian social contract that formed the bedrock of Korean culture for centuries."

That contract was built on the premise that parents would do almost anything to care for their children — in recent times, depleting their life savings to pay for a good education — and then would end their lives in their children's care. No Social Security system was needed. Nursing homes were rare. But as South Korea's hard-charging younger generations joined an exodus from farms to cities in recent decades, or simply found themselves working harder in the hypercompetitive environment that helped drive the nation's economic miracle, their parents were often left behind. Many elderly people now live out their final years poor, in rural areas with the melancholy feel of ghost towns.

How Capitalism Creates The Welfare State

[T]he forces that free market capitalism unleashes are precisely the forces that undermine traditional forms of community and family that once served as a traditional safety net... in South Korea, the shift has been so sudden and so incomplete that you see just how powerfully anti-family capitalism can be... The result is a generation of the elderly committing suicide at historic rates: from 1,161 in 2000 to 4,378 in 2010. The Korean government requires the elderly to ask their families for resources if they can pay for retirement funding – forcing parents to beg children to pay for their living alone – a fate they never anticipated and that violates their sense of dignity. Hence the suicides... We see the consequences far beyond the suicides of elderly Koreans. And in my bleaker moments, I wonder whether humankind will come to see this great capitalist leap forward as a huge error in human history – the moment we undid ourselves and our very environment, reaching untold material wealth as well as building societies in which loneliness, dislocation, displacement and radical insecurity cannot but increase."

Dying Alone Becomes New Normal as Japan Spurns Confucius - "Itoko Uchida, 82, was counting on the nephew she raised to support her in old age. He refused, forcing her to pay for a sponsor to join the 420,000-long queue of Japanese waiting for a nursing home bed."

Les Militaribles

Artw — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 20:55:56 -0800

A Korean airforce parody/tribute to Les Miserables

Hanawon: South Korea's Resettlement Program for North Korean Refugees

hurdy gurdy girl — Sun, 20 Jan 2013 12:28:10 -0800

North Korea has been called the world's most repressive state [previously], but every year, two to three thousand North Koreans manage to escape to South Korea. Recognizing the potential for disorientation among the refugees and disruption for South Korean society, in 1999 the government's Unification Ministry set up a mandatory resettlement program called Hanawon--"one people". (It also screens the newcomers carefully for spies.) Last year, due to growing need, the government opened another Hanawon centre. In addition to taking care of the refugees' physical needs (e.g. food, housing, clothing), Hanowan centres provide job skills training, language classes (there are some significant language differences between the North and the South) and social orientation to help prepare them for their new life. After graduation, they receive some financial and housing assistance...and then they must integrate into South Korean society. However, all is not necessarily happily-ever-after: Some are disappointed that South Korea is not the nirvana they thought it would be. Many suffer from psychological distress at the culture shock they experience. Some find they are treated as second-class citizens. Although Hanawon has received criticism that it is not doing enough for North Korean refugees, some acknowledge that there is no quick fix possible for the issues inherent in resettlement. North Korean Economy Watch weighs in with an editorial that addresses some of the common complaints.

"China sends people back to this place"

bardic — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 00:03:34 -0800

"Q: What kind of comparisons can be drawn between Asia’s underground railroad and the one in pre-Civil War America? A: The way it’s set up is similar. The safe houses and transit routes are kept secret and vary a lot. There is another similarity in that many of the people who operate on the underground railroad are ethnically Korean, just as many of the operators on the original underground railroad were free blacks." -- an interview with Melanie Kirkpatrick, author of Escape from North Korea: The Untold Story of Asia's Underground Railroad

Nicholson Baker Sings!

El Sabor Asiatico — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 09:04:09 -0800

Nicholson Baker has recorded a protest song. The South Korean government is constructing a naval base on Jeju Island, off the southern part of the Korean peninsula. Its close proximity to China and Japan makes it a strategic location, to the detriment of its residents, most of whom oppose the base. A protest movement seeks to halt construction. Baker, author of fiction and nonfiction books such as The Mezzanine, Vox, and Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper, wrote "Jeju Island Song" in support of the protest. Nicholson Baker studied briefly at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, and has performed as a substitute bassoonist with the Rochester Philharmonic, but this is his first publicly released song.

Bye Bye Birdie

Knigel — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 16:59:15 -0800

Soo Bin Park in Nature has reported that South Korean highschool textbook publishers will be removing examples of evolution due to demands of creationist groups The main examples being removed are the avian ancestor Archaeopteryx as well as the evolution of the horse. According to Nature, The Society for Textbook Revise (STR) led the campaign to remove the "error" and "correct" students' world view. Biologists and other scientists claim that they weren't informed beforehand and some believe that these creationist movements are exploiting these examples to further their own agendas against evolution. KoreaBANG mentions that while some publishers have simply removed the examples, others have instead replaced the current examples with those of whale evolution. One of the biggest criticisms is that textbook writers have neglected adding research for decades. The Center for Science Education writes that the Korean scientific community is now organising a campaign to counter the creationist movement. Both the Center for Science Education and Nature suggest that support for creationism is quite high in South Korea and the evolutionary theory faces strong antipathy.

"Show You A Thing Or Two"

hermitosis — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:51:42 -0800

A very special South Korean version of "The Miracle Worker" (Part 1, Part 2), featuring music purloined from the shows Bat Boy and Legally Blonde.

The other black gold.

Nomyte — Fri, 11 May 2012 12:45:54 -0800

"Instead of poking the fish with a screwdriver to find out whether they are ready to spawn, farms now can use a biopsy or ultrasound. Mr. Han said that after years of trial and error, his team has found a way to make that determination by feeling various parts of a fish." An entrepreneur in South Korea gets closer to perfecting sturgeon aquaculture. (SLNYT)

Opposition MP lets off tear gas in parliament

Numenius — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:35:47 -0800

South Korean MP Kim Sun-dong sets off a tear gas canister in parliament to try to block passage of a free trade agreement with the US. Another video here.

Help Wanted: Busybodies With Cameras

reenum — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:08:17 -0800

People in Korea now have a new vocation available to them: snitching on other civilians for cash payouts from the government.

I beg you, crying on my knees: please, oh please, don't feed the children!

VikingSword — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 17:31:36 -0800

Seoul mayor issues ultimatum in bid to limit free school lunches. 'Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon wants to limit free school lunches to poor children and take students from wealthy families out of the gratis cafeteria line. And he warns that if voters don't back his agenda in a Wednesday referendum, he's going to quit his post.' 'In an emotional news conference Sunday, Oh wiped away tears, calling the issue so important to the nation that if his plan failed, or if too few voters cast ballots to decide the issue, he was prepared to suffer the consequence. "If my decision today can sow the seeds to bear the fruits of sustainable welfare and true democracy in the country, I have no regret even if I fade into the mists of history." Then he dropped to his knees and solemnly bowed his head, in what critics term a shameless theatrical appeal to voters. Oh needs a third of Seoul's 8 million voters to cast ballots or the referendum is void.' 'He calls the free-meal plan "welfare populism" that will unduly cost taxpayers while South Korea struggles amid a worldwide financial downturn. This week, President Lee Myung-bak, a fellow party member, said such expensive, populist programs could drag the nation into a fiscal mess similar to those troubling several European nations. "The Greek financial crisis was sparked by two major rival parties' competition for populism," Lee said during a weekly radio address broadcast nationwide. "Once the government implements a policy, it's difficult to wind it back."'

Seoul's Intellectual Pressure Cooker

reenum — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 08:00:26 -0800

Welcome to Exam Village, a neighborhood in Seoul where people live while studying for various professional entrance exams.

"I'm not a good singer, but I just like it."

zarq — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:47:30 -0800

Sung-bong Choi auditions for 코리아 갓 탤런트 (Korea's Got Talent.) (SLYT. The singing starts around 2:45. Video is unrestricted.)

KORUS FTA

Joe Beese — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 13:22:16 -0800

The Republic of Korea-United States Free Trade Agreement is the United States' first Free Trade Agreement with a major Asian economy, and its largest trade deal since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1993. It has supporters and detractors.

Welcome Home, Soldier

zizzle — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 20:10:25 -0800

"Regardless of political stance, no one can deny the joy felt upon seeing your loved ones return home safely -- WelcomeHomeBlog.com is a site celebrating that amazing feeling. Visit daily for heartwarming stories, videos and pictures of members of our courageous armed forces returning home to their families and friends..."

Recruiting the Top-Third

l33tpolicywonk — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 10:07:35 -0800

Top-performing nations recruit 100% of their new teachers from the top third. In the US, it's 23% - and 14% of high poverty schools. A new study by McKinsey and Company examines what Finland, Singapore and South Korea do to attract top graduates to teaching, including selective admissions to teacher training, competitive compensation, a more professionalized work environment, cultural respect and greater opportunities for advancement. Doing the same in the US would cost roughly $180 billion a year. Related: Previously from McKinsey - How the world's best performing school systems come out on top Malcolm Gladwell - Predicting success in football and teaching (Previously) The New Teacher Project - The Widget Effect: Our National Failure to Acknowledge and Act on Differences in Teacher Effectiveness

The Director, the Actress, the Dictator, and the Monster who was Hungry for Iron

filthy light thief — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:08:09 -0800

Shin Sang-ok (1926 - 2006) was a Korean movie writer, director and producer, who studied film in Japan and returned to South Korea, where he gained fame and became the uncontested leader of the film industry in the 1960s, in a time when regulations on the industry limited other studios. In the 1970s under the Fourth Republic of South Korea, the film industry was even further limited, which lead to Shin's studio being closed. Things went from bad to worse, when "the Orson Welles of South Korea" was kidnapped by request of Kim Jong Il, the son of North Korea's dictator, Kim Il Sung. The reason? Kim Jong Il wanted the nation's film industry to promote the virtues of the Korea Workers' Party to a world-wide audience. After being imprisoned for four years, Shin was reunited with his ex-wife (who was also a captive of North Korea) and the given relative freedom, producing seven films in North Korea. While setting up a distribution deal to share Kim Jong Il's vision with a broader audience for a Godzilla-like monster movie, Shin and his wife escaped and sought political asylum in the United States. Their freedom was possible because of that last film for Kim, entitled Pulgasari. But Shin's life in movies was not over yet. Shin Sang-ok was born in the northeastern part of the Korean Peninsula, when Korea was under Japanese rule. Shin went on to study at the Tokyo Fine Arts School. His first artistic undertakings were paintings in Western styles, which Sing likened to Western painting to film, because "[in Western paintings] you have close-ups, deep fields -- Eastern painting is more 'faded' as we say. So I think that as a painter I already had a film director's vocation," though he went on to note that he incorporated the emptiness of Eastern paintings into his films, "working on symmetry and dissymmetry." Shin was the assistant production designer for the first Korean film made post-occupation entitled Viva Freedom! in 1946. Shin brought synchronized sound, Cinemascope, and the zoom lens to South Korea and made at least two films per year in the 1950s and 60s, becoming known as the prince of Korean cinema. His film company, Shin Studios, produced some 300 movies in the 1960s. Shin won the Best Picture category of the prestegious national Grand Bell Awards four of the first seven years the award was given. His style is one of formal precision, making use of landscapes to counter human constructs, and he had a "dependence on female characters and [a] thematic concern for the plight of women in Korean social history" that was unique for the time. In another bold moment in film, Shin is often credited as presenting the first Korean on-screen kiss in Flowers in Hell (1958), but this credit was claimed four years earlier, by the film The Hand of Destiny (Unmyeong-ui son). Though Shin and his films flourished in the 1960s, it was a harsh time for cinema in South Korea, due to the Motion Picture Law that went into effect in January 1962. These new regulations limited the total number of Korean film companies to 16 (down from 71), required films to be commercial by design and ordered companies to produce at least 15 films per year, amongst other regulations. The requirements became more harsh in the mid- to late-70s, and Shin's studio lost it's license in 1975, in a time when most of the remaining companies went bankrupt. To the north, Kim Il-sung ruled North Korea, and his son was tasked with creating a national cinema that embodied the spirit of the people's revolution. In 1973, Kim Jong-Il wrote a 330 page book entitled On the Art of the Cinema. The younger Kim was not pleased with the efforts of Mt. Paektu Creative Group, the North Korean company charged with film production, and saw the turn of events culminate in 1978 as a chance for North Korea to nab Shin and his former wife, actress Choi Eun-hee (also spelled Choi Eun-hie or Eun-hiu). There are differing stories of the abduction, one telling of North Korean agents who posed as film agents or producers to lure the low-on-luck Shin and his ex-wife to a meeting at the Repulse Bay hotel where the couple was kidnapped together. Another version is that the couple were captured individually days apart, or Choi was abducted first and Shin went in search of Choi, and was captured six months later. However it happened, the Shin and Choi were separately held captive for years. At one point, Shin attempted to starve himself to death. When officials force-fed him through a funnel, a guard told Mr Shin that he was the first attempted suicide he'd ever seen saved, so he must be very important. Shin and Choi didn't know the other had been captured and were alive in captivity in North Korea until October 19, 1983, when Kim Jong Il brought the couple into his office to talk about his reason for bringing them together in North Korea. Choi Eun-hee smuggled in a small tape recorder and captured a "tirade-like monologue" that lasted more than two hours (source: PDF / Google Quick View). Younger Kim then threw the reunited couple a party, complete with live bands. His goal: improve the country's films while maintaining control over the North Korean people. He was limited in destinations for educating his film makers (East Germany to study editing, Czechoslovakia to study Camera technology, and the Soviet Union to learn directing), as the rest of the nations with advanced film technologies and methodologies were enemy states. With these limitations, he had no choice but to bring the shining stars of South Korean cinema to his country, strongly suggest that they re-marry and start making some good films for North Korea. To this end, the younger Kim gave the couple access to his heavily guarded film archive, home to 15,000 copies of films and 250 employees including voice actors, translators, subtitle specialists, projectionists, and recording specialists, all serving the film maker, critic and fanatical collector that was Kim, and the few people he allowed to visit the archive. Kim gave them millions a year for professional or personal use, access to state-of-the-art technology, even allowing Shin to blow up a train for a more realistic movie, within days of making the request ("This is only possible in North Korea. It's the first time I experienced a film shoot so spectacular." -- Shin), with constant supervision to ensure that Shin and Choi wouldn't wander too far off. In total, Shin advised on the production of 13 movies and directed seven during his time in North Korea. Shin even counted one of his films from North Korea amongst the highlights of his career. Runaway is considered to be his best film of the seven he direct in North Korea, if not his whole career. The last film that Shin Sang-ok directed for Kim Jong Il was a movie entitled Pulgasari, which on the surface may seem like kitchy communist version Godzilla, but is in fact based on Korean tradition of a little creature made of rice that devours all the metal in the world. The movie adaptation featured a literal army of North Korean soldiers and members of the kaiju factory that was Toho Studio, including special effects master Teruyoshi Nakano and the newest man in the Godzilla suit, Kenpachiro Satsuma. In the efforts to distribute the movie to a broader audience (or maybe to set the stage for filming a movie about Genghis Khan in Budapest), Kim Jong Il allowed Shin and Choi to travel to Europe, with the usual entourage of North Korean overseers. While in Vienna, Austria, the couple were able to elude their keepers in a taxi chase, ending with Shin and Choi seeking refuge in a US Embassy. The were in the United States in 1986, where they shared the conversation with Kim (that Choi recorded years earlier) to verify their story of being captive and to provide the US government some insight into Kim's domain. North Korean officials continued to say that the couple went north of their own free will, and in North Korea, officials issued contradictory statements. One declared that they were thieves whose only goal was to embezzle North Korean funds. The other brought the incident full circle, insisting that the couple had been "kidnapped by the South Koreans and the Americans." While in the United States, Shin used the pseudonym Simon S. Sheen, and he lived in Southern California for some while. Under his newly assumed name, he worked on the three 3 Ninjas sequels, the last of which featured Hulk Hogan. Shin, as Sheen, also wrote a new version of the Pulgasari story, The Legend (or Adventures) of Galgameth (YT, also on Hulu), which was in the same kid-friendly zone of the 3 Ninjas films, unlike the original Pulgasari. Shin returned to Seoul in 2002, where he started a film center to assist film directors in South Korea, and was named an honorary professor at Sungkyul University where he spent time teaching. Shin Sang-ok died in 2006, survived by his wife, actress Choi Un-hee, two sons and two daughters, and a legacy of film. His funeral was attended by numerous stars and fans, and he was posthumously awarded the Geum-gwan (Gold Crown) Medal, the highest order of Cultural Merit. Addendum Choi Eun-hee deserves her own attention and praise, independent of her husband, but details in English are sparse. Prior to being in movies, Choi was in a theater troupe, abducted by North Korean troops to perform in propaganda plays, escaping only to perform propaganda for South Korea. She left an abusive husband and false rumors of infidelity behind and married a rising director, Shin Sang-ok, and became his muse. Choi was not always in front of the camera, as she became Korea's third female director and head of a film academy. Life was not good to her in the 1970s, culminating in her kidnap by North Korean agents. The movie of Pulgasari made by Shin and company in North Korea was not the first film adaptation of the little rice-creature with a never-ending appetite for metal. The first known film came out in 1962, known as Bulgasari, but little information is available on this version. To add to the confusion, the 1985 movie Pulgasari is also listed as Bulgasari. The 1985 film was released by ADV in 2001 on VHS, after years of bootleg copies floating around. Unfortunately, the movie is back into obscurity, were it not for Google Video and the internet at large. (See also: Pulgasari, previously.) If you can't get a copy of On the Art of Cinema or don't have the chance to visit Kim Jong Il's movie museum in North Korea (with a heavy emphasis on the works of Kim), you can check out the shorter, newer volume by Kim entitled The Cinema and Directing (PDF, 83 pgs, 1987), courtesy of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The Future of Border Defense: Robot Sentries

zarq — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:25:24 -0800

The Korean DMZ (pdf) / PLZ has been a hot tourist attraction for years, featuring must-see sites like the Third Infiltration Tunnel, Dora Observatory, the Dora Mountain Train Station, the Freedom Bridge and the Imjingak Tourist Site, complete with its statue of Harry Truman. And now, South Korea's border with North Korea -- the most heavily militarized border on Earth, -- will be patrolled by killer robots. South Korea first began testing stationary robot units intended for the DMZ in 2007, but it appears as if previous versions did not perform to expectations. AOL News: Countries Look to Robot Armies for Border Defense PopMech: Top 5 Bomb-Packing, Gun-Toting War Bots the U.S. Doesn’t Have

Queer Science

Asparagirl — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 23:58:50 -0800

Less than two weeks after a controversial paper came to light advocating the pre-natal treatment of some female fetuses with a hormone to make their behavior more stereotypically female (previously discussed here) comes news of actual animal research on causing the opposite inclination. By knocking out the fucose mutarotase gene, scientists in South Korea have apparently created "Lesbian mice" who prefer other female mice and who resist the attempts of male mice to mate with them. Article abstract, and coverage by The Telegraph.

'The younger Kim is only 27 years old and is apparently fond of shooting things, having majored artillery in Kim Il-Sung University.'

ignignokt — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:14:51 -0800

On March 26, 2010, the ROKS Cheonan, a South Korean navy ship, exploded and sunk, killing at least forty sailors. On May 19, an international investigation team concluded that a North Korean torpedo sunk the Cheonan. What does this mean for the Koreas and the world? It's not clear, but Ask a Korean provides a brief, yet historically contextualized dossier on this issue. Previously: North Korean expert (and former North Korean) Joo Seong-Ha's column on responding to the sinking, written before the investigation was completed.

Asaekkiga

MetaMonkey — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 22:44:26 -0800

Asaekkiga a comic by Yang Young Soon

The Economist: The World in 2010

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:09:43 -0800

In 2010, Obama will have a miserable year, NATO may lose in Afghanistan, the UK gets a regime change, China needs to chill, India's factories will overtake its farms, Europe risks becoming an irrelevant museum, the stimulus will need an exit strategy, the G20 will see a challenge from the "G2", African football will unite Korea, conflict over natural resources will grow, Sarkozy will be unloved and unrivalled, the kids will come together to solve the world's problems (because their elders are unable), technology will grow ever more ubiquitous, we'll all charge our phones via USB, MBAs will be uncool, the Space Shuttle will be put to rest, and Somalia will be the worst country in the world. And so the Tens begin.

The Economist: The World in 2010. Previously: 2009, 2008, 2007. How did we do last time around? Guest contributions: President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso lines up Europe's priorities President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev argues for dialogue and cooperation President of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed wants his island nation to remain above water President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono would like for Islam and the West to live in harmony President of South Africa Jacob Zuma says Africa should rise to the occasion Director-General of the World Health Organisation Margaret Chan predicts the development of the flu pandemic Managing director of the International Monetary Fund Dominique Strauss-Kahn explains how to prevent another crisis CEO of Yahoo! Carol Bartz believes business leaders should tap into the information flood Chairman of HSBC Stephen Green argues that the financial sector should welcome emerging economies CEO of Fiat Group and Chrysler Group Sergio Marchionne thinks greener cars require bolder action CEO/CTO of SpaceX Elon Musk says the private sector should handle space travel

"I have owed too many people..."

kkokkodalk — Thu, 28 May 2009 21:19:36 -0800

Former South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun committed suicide on May 23. The former president jumped from a cliff in his hometown, where he had retired to. A country mourns (video and articles 1, 2), and clashes (more, WSJ), over the legacy of the former human rights attorney who fought for the rights of student protesters and against the corrupt presidencies of the 80s, had his presidency saved by protests and activism in the electronic age, and at the end of his life found himself being investigated for bribery. Roh practiced law, during the corrupt governments of former presidents Chun Doo-hwan (see also Gwangju Massacre) and Roh Tae-woo. He set up his platform as being part of a new era of clean and open politics (video of an ad Roh ran during his campaign, where he plays upon the theme of being for the people and against corruption of the old by singing the famed protest song "Sang Rok Su." The ad says that "the people are the president," and talks about how much Roh is indebted to the public who supported him in hardship, like when he didn't have money to run, and there were people who sent him their piggy banks. His campaign line is drawn as being a new president for a new Korea), and broke from his Millenium Democratic party to start the Yullin Uri Dang (“Our Open Party”), even though his political career was continuously plagued with accusations of incompetence and corruption of those around him. In 2004, Roh’s support for the Uri Party created an opportunity for the opposition party to vote to impeach him on charges of electioneering and incompetence. However, the impeachment also created an opportunity for a new chapter in Korean civic behavior, showing the potential of the fully-wired constituency of Korea as many supporters gathered online to voice their dissension and spread the message while organizing protests (video showing actor Moon Sung-geun giving a speech to protesters where he says the government "sees the people only as bugs" and asks for people to keep fighting against "the final gasp" of corruption, that the Korean people "have fought for with their lives" until now) and candlelight vigils. Videos and images spread of those in the assembly who supported Roh attempting to physically block the impeachment. spread online, and images of an assemblywoman dragged from her seat (4:58 in the video), as well as the triumphant looks of those of the Han Nara party, especially the grinning face of Park Geun-hye (5:37 in the video, daughter of former president Park Chung-hee, which made her involvement in the impeachment even more open to negative interpretation for those who found it undemocratic) further cast the opposition in a bad light when compared to images of Roh's despairing supporters who attempted stop proceedings even until the last minute by throwing objects (during the struggle, one politician even declares "I'm photographing all of this with my phone!"). In one of the more violent incidents, a man crashed his car into the National Assembly and set it on fire in protest. On May 14, 2004, the impeachment decision was overturned and Roh was reinstated as President. He eventually retired to his hometown of Bongha Village, however, political scandal followed him even after he left office. An investigation revealed that records were missing, in particular, several terabytes worth of records disappeared before incoming president Lee Myung-bak took office. Roh eventually returned the missing records, and the scandal went away, but in early 2009, bribery allegations were brought up. On May 23, 2009, Roh took a lone body guard with him on a hike to Owl’s Rock in his home village, where he fell. He sustained injuries that sent him to a hospital in Busan, where he died. Many gathered around Bongha Village, which became a tourist spot after the president broke tradition to retire there, to pay their respects to the former president, even some major websites have taken on grayscale coloring to show their respects. And Kim Jong-il (the two previously met) sent his condolences.

North Korea threatens, again

NoraReed — Tue, 26 May 2009 22:19:31 -0800

North Korea announces it will no longer abide by the ceasefire that ended the Korean war. Previously. BreakingNews on Twitter announces this. Confirmed by Yonhap, Malaysian Insider and Reuters.

The Plot Sickens

bardic — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 06:20:23 -0800

South Korea has one of the world's highest suicide rates (previously). The phenomenon has been acute in the entertainment world. In the past two years, over ten Korean celebrities (mostly actors, actresses, and singers) have taken their own lives. Most of them were under 30. The latest death was that of 26 year-old actress Jang Ja-yeon, star of the popular comedy-drama "Boys Over Flowers." Initial reports stated that Jang's death was yet another in a tragic line of Korean celebrities succumbing to depression due to the pressures of stardom and (according to one foreign commenter) the inability to "admit that there is a lot of intense depression and mental illness in Korea." But there's also an emerging twist in Jang's death. Her suicide note has been found, and it turns out that her death wasn't due to relative intangibles of depression and mental illness. In fact, she was allegedly being beaten and raped by various higher-ups in the Korean entertainment business, and the names of the guilty are beginning to come out (one of whom has apparently fled to Japan).