Here’s the monument and it’s being asked to be removed by Japanese officials, but that isn’t happening. Some officials maintain that the event didn’t happen as said by many which pushed the matter to a halt. The monument will stay. (NY Times – Monument)
So, they don’t hate each other entirely. The rocket got launched by Japan, and now Korea has a strong satellite in the sky that can monitor their Northern Korean neighbors and just about anywhere in the world. It’s the first commercial space launch for Japan which means many more will come. Just because they can, should they? Eventually, when it gets into bad hands, our local space will be an amalgam of hell. (VOA -Space Japan and Korea)
He’s back. So is the movie that didn’t fare so well. The film, Gi Joe: the Retaliation will be happening soon also starring The Rock and Bruce Willis. Here’s an interesting quote since it’s about the language barrier and how things go when one part goes wrong.
“”But I’d just forget every line – literally every single line – when I was told that I’d pronounced one word wrong while acting. Having to think that I somehow have to fix my pronunciation for that one word would just make me totally lost at the set. There’s a huge difference between making conversation in a foreign language and acting in a foreign language. I feel the most comfortable when I perform for pieces that are based on Korean culture. So I can’t help but feel that I could’ve done better if this were a Korean movie.”"
The movie will hit theaters in the summer.
Mad Cow is back. Yeah the meat looks red and good and there are plenty of beef farms everywhere in the US. Some Koreans chains are halting the US beef. “South Korea is the world’s fourth-largest importer of U.S. beef, buying 107,000 tons of the meat worth $563 million in 2011″
The benefits, or the results of eating Mad Cow tainted beef? You get a brain disease! The article makes mention that it takes 40-50 days to ship beef overseas. That’s crazy too. (WTSP – Mad Cow Beef)
That thing some people call. “The Han” is this it? In a blog post by Winston Chung written about Korean Rage. He collects many references to Korean anger. (SFGATE - Rage) The Han gets mentioned later on in the article in a quote from a previous article in the WSJ. “The suicide problem has also been linked with the Korean concept of “han,” a kind of stoicism also tied to feelings of anger and impotence that arise when facing a situation that can’t be changed. Han, deeply embedded in Korean society, has been linked to depression. “When a situation is bad and they can’t show their cool selves, Koreans tend to get frustrated, give up and take drastic choices,” says Hwang Sang-min, a professor of psychology at Yonsei University.” (WSJ – Suicides)
UFO Over South Korea. The video has over 2 million hits. It looks like a flying hat. A person from NASA says it’s space junk? Don’t you have to be in space for that?
Some of you will actually read this book but most of you won’t. This is a book called Escape From Camp 14 by Blaine Harden. Shin Dong-Hyuk is the only known escapee who was born and raised in a North Korean prison. This might be a book to check out. Here’s some questions asked about the book and answers as appeared on NPR – Escape from Camp 14.
From Engadget: “Live Park uses 3D video, holograms and augmented reality, interacting with RFID wrist bands and Kinect sensors to stitch together a continuous immersive story. You (and your avatar!) have 65 attractions, over seven themed zones, and the world’s biggest interactive 360 degree stereoscopic theater to wave, jump and shout your way through.”
Engadget also put in the press release. At $13 million for a budget, it doesn’t seem as much as you’d think. It’s built for licensing and big business. It also makes mention that it’s like Avatar!
A story about how one man, Lee Nam-yul, his weird shop and his strange quirks and habits continue no matter what. It’s tradition over modernity. He uses a straight razor from 1880, draws pictures and his shop looks disgusting. Traditional shops like these are becoming more scarce especially in the time of K-pop hair cuts, yet the idea of family continuing their family businesses is romantic and great. In a way, you’d wish there were grants or funds for people who continue traditions. (LA Times – Barber in Korea)
The idea of sending socks to a far away land via balloon is a feat. The balloons look rudimentary and folks have sent food as well to North Korea. Will they ever hear from the recipients? Will the recipients get in trouble? The messages aren’t political, and hopefully North Koreans really need socks. Yet the great piece of news? A pair of socks can be traded for 22 pounds of corn! (MSNBC – Socks)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46172516/ns/world_news-asia_pacific/t/s-korea-love-warm-socks-sent-north-balloon/#.TyblxOPUOEN
Kei Fischer’s American father met her mother in Japan as an English language teacher. They married and sired her shortly thereafter. Years later, they immigrated to the United States. “I know it sounds clichéd,” Fischer said as she related her story. It may sound like every other story where an American visits Japan and returns with a wife. There’s just one thing. Kei Fischer’s mother isn’t Japanese. She’s Korean.
She didn’t discover this until after death of her grandfather. It was then that her mother finally came clean. She deliberately passed herself as Japanese to avoid the negative stigma associated with Koreans in Post-War Japan.
Kei Fischer constitutes a marginalized minority in Japan called Zainichi. The Zainichi consist of multigenerational Koreans who immigrated to Japan after the annexation of their homeland in 1910. Some of these minorities sought economic opportunities and scholarships abroad, while several others worked as slave laborers under Japanese Imperial Rule.
Koreans eventually lost their Japanese citizenship after the dissolution of Japan’s colonial reign. Many returned to their broken homeland while others decided to stay and resume their lives in Japan. Since then, they’ve faced fiscal and prejudicial hardships resulting from institutionally discriminatory practices in Japan.
Fischer learned about this as she set out to explore this forgotten part of her life. Her journey eventually led her to the Bay Area, where she met Miho Kim. Like Fischer, Kim was a Zainichi from Japan and together they formed an organization called Eclipse Rising with other Zainichi Korean Americans. As founders, Kim and Fischer have been a driving force behind the organization, which doubles as an activist group rather than merely a club of solidarity. “[We want to] develop a Zainichi community that’s physical and recognize a unique perspective that our experiences offer that really can’t be understood beneath a lens of nation states and internationalism since we’re essentially stateless,” Kim said.
Other parts of their mission statement include cultivating stronger relationships with other oppressed groups like the LGBT community, Burakumin (‘untouchables’ in Japan), Okinawans, and Ainu among others. In addition to this, they campaign for the peaceful reunification between North and South Korea. As wide reaching as this objective is, it maintains the consistent focus of supporting, empowering, and granting further rights to Japanese minority groups like them. “We’re really fighting the root cause of structural racism within Japan because that’s the only way we can really bring resolution to what has perpetrated this subjucation of Zainichi,” Kim said. She further related her experiences as a Zainichi to those of the Japanese Americans interned during World War II. “Being immortalized, criminalized, and banished, your entitlement taken from under your feet overnight.”
Some of their past activities included a recap of their 2010 U.S.-Japan Solidarity Tour. They hosted this as a joint holiday party at the School of Unity and Liberation Office in Oakland, California on December 16th, 2010. The participants of this tour reported the findings of their 9-day long trip where they met the political prisoner Kazuo Ishikawa, The Burakumin Liberation League, Women’s Active Museum On War and Peace for Korea’s “comfort women,” The Funreai House community center for minorities living in Japan, and the Iju-ren solidarity network for migrant workers. In addition to this, Fischer and Kim had the opportunity to visit Pyong Yang, North Korea, in 2008. They rallied to stop the Korea US-Free Trade Agreement with other on January 14th, 2011 in front of Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s office in San Francisco under the pretense that it would sacrifice jobs and further erode workers’ rights.
These combined activities have brought the members of Eclipse Rising a long way from where they once stood. The days of passing and living in shame are as foregone as their history in Japan. This isn’t to say that their historical and emotional scars are effaced, but no longer are they hiding in the shadows and as a result moved beyond their previous state of victimhood to taking a stand for others.
It’s merely a jacket like those below. It’s the North Face Himilayan Down Parka that’s $500. You can be the victim of an armed robbery or better yet, you could pose as the boss of a gang. Particularly funny is the except from a blog post that labels each style of jacket. The lower priced ones will label you as a loser. We wonder what Marmot and Patagonia think. (CNNgo – North Face)
The posters appear to similar as the one that got put in as a full page Wall Street Journal advertisement by singer and professor in Korea. This article by Japan Probe goes on to talk about both sides. A) the event that happened during war time B) the Japanese responses including what reparations were paid.
From Japan Probe, “When the comfort women issue gained international attention in the 1990′s, the Japanese government decided that it was a special case. Despite the fact that the previous treaty had legally settled the reparations issue and despite the fact that South Korea had paid compensation to the women, measures were taken to provide additional aid to former comfort women. Directly paying reparations would violate the 1965 agreement, so the Japanese government instead established the Asian Women’s Fund to raise funds and deliver compensation payments.” There’s plenty more and it’s also nice of them to mention that their article isn’t meant to belittle the suffering of the “comfort women”.
Coffee culture isn’t just a Euro or American thing, it’s hit Japan for sure, but also Korea. Where tea is often thought of as the hot beverage of choice, it’s slowly being crept upon by coffee. Part of the thanks might be a TV show. Balita.com writes: “A wildly popular 2007 TV series called The 1st Shop of Coffee Prince, for example, has been widely credited for kickstarting the coffee craze in the country, as much of the drama unfolded in a coffee shop. The series was also dubbed over in Spanish and aired in countries like Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.”
Korean American Coffee houses are already evident and growing. Shops are appearing in Los Angeles over the last year or two boasting hand crafted coffees. Meanwhile, there’s been more appearances of coffee in Korean dramas and the coffee consumption is growing.
Korean Comfort Woman statue. It’s sitting in front of the Japanese embassy in Korea. Yes, their plight is still under owned and the number 200,000 is alarming. It’s the 1000th rally and now there’s a daily reminder in the form of a statue of a serene sitting Korean woman. This might not be the greatest place to protest, but it is easy to go home after a full day of getting their message out. Great idea on the statue. (BBC – Comfort Woman Statue)
Kraze Burger pronounced “Crazy” is on it’s way to a US city near you. It’s a Korean burger chain but the burgers look very deluxe and fancy. Will it work? It’s located in Bethesda, Maryland. They’re using Eames chairs with the dowel legs in one photo. Their website, their burgers, their everything doesn’t seem to stand out as much as the many above average burger places. How will they compete?
You’d wish this has guns, or something that would keep prisoners in, but instead, this is just a cute looking robot that rolls around and observes prison cells. At 850,000, you’d hope that this would be used as a weapon rather than a remote control car! (Digital Trends – S Korea Robots)
Grieving and missing your deceased friend or family member? Get the ashes, stuff them into beads, and make a necklace. It’s filled with sad stories about people missing their loved ones enough to make jewelry with their remains inside. This quote by AP mentions, “A law passed in 2000 requires anyone burying their dead after 2000 to remove the grave 60 years after burial.” That means, something needs to get done with the rotted up corpse. Beads, yes that’s the answer. People say Japan is weird? (AP - Korea Death Beads)
The calendar says 11/11/11, which means one thing in South Korea: Pepero Day. They call it Pepero Day because these skinny, chocolate covered biscuits resemble the numbers that make up the date 11/11. It’s huge holiday over there, with markets and convenient stores decked out with fancy displays and gift baskets of these snacks, a knock off of the more familiar Pocky brand. The concept is that you gift boxes of these confectionary treats to your significant other as a symbol of your affection. Barf, right? As if we need another commercialized holiday to set a standard for how we hang in our relationships. Even the Asian markets here in the States gave into the South Korean craze this year. The photo above wasn’t even half of the display that I saw while shopping for groceries yesterday.
