Giant Robot Store and GR2 News

K-pop has been establishing a New World Order for the past few years, infiltrating youth culture across the globe with easy to recreate group choreography, anorexia inspiration, fashion less freaky than Harajuku girls, and daring men’s hairstyles that capture 90s goth girl chic. In Mongolia, boys get haircuts (and dye-jobs) to look like Korean stars, and girls memorize lyrics and dance moves to perform chart topping songs. Politicians and culture keepers here bemoan the proliferation of K-pop and all it brings with it. They say the dramas (there’s bound to be a show dubbed in Mongolian airing on at least three tv channels at any given time) have negative themes about family and the fashions are objectionable, but they’re probably just sick of hearing their grandkids play the same Girls Generation song on their Samsung Galaxy over and over and over. Outside of the Asia-Pacific region, Brazil has taken to K-pop in a big way, fueled by the internet and international Korean television channels. Pre-dating PSY, K-pop has been a profitable South Korean export that’s helped keep the domestic music industry afloat. Massive concerts, fan conventions, and websites worhsipping K-pop and its ever-changing favorites are growing in number. The Korea Herald shares this story about a Brazilian K-pop fan who just carried out the inevitable, undergoing plastic surgery to look like his “Oriental” idols. In your reconstructed FACE, Korean cosmetic surgery industry!!
Continue reading
KoreaBang shares a story about a Korean teenager who went nuts, did something horrible and then talked about it online.  He raped a girl, killed her, dismembered her, and posted pics for his friends. The terrible things that are happening in the world are absolutely exhausting. We’ve got technology to share the things that we do, the news that we hear, and the feelings we have about it all, but where’s the technology to stop horrible things from happening? I’d prefer the kind that doesn’t make us all criminals and track our every move, but maybe that’s asking for too much…
Continue reading
KoreaBang shares a story about a Korean teenager who went nuts, did something horrible and then talked about it online.  He raped a girl, killed her, dismembered her, and posted pics for his friends. The terrible things that are happening in the world are absolutely exhausting. We’ve got technology to share the things that we do, the news that we hear, and the feelings we have about it all, but where’s the technology to stop horrible things from happening? I’d prefer the kind that doesn’t make us all criminals and track our every move, but maybe that’s asking for too much…
Continue reading
Last month South Korea elected its first female president. Seems progressive enough, but Park Geun-hye is a fiercely conservative daughter of a dictatorial former president. It was a passionate race to the finish, and her two liberal opponents at one point were going to band together to take her down, but they couldn’t agree on who should step down. Like Japan, the Korean people chose a conservative candidate to guide them through these recent troubled economic times, convinced they are the key to recovery. Unlike Japan, South Korean voters came out in droves on election day. Now South Koreans are lining up outside Park’s “Center for Proposals for the People’s Happiness”. As she transitions into power, downsizing government, chopping budgets, and hiring and firing, she has established this center (open until February 8th) to hear what the people want. Citizens are lining up (and camping out) to get their submissions in. Five officials will review the suggestions as they come in, and present the cream of the crop to the transition committee. It’s promised that some of the ideas presented will be put into action. Maybe someone will step up and request a South Korean Death Star, so the Republic can gain some street cred in the space race. That would make North Korea SO mad. So far the suggestions have been echoes of the requests made during the election, and campaign promises made by Park to make life better for the poor, the elderly and small businesses. There have also been less lofty requests to do things like shake her hand. There was also a request to make sex offenders wear giant, identifying barcodes at all times. Maybe a QR code would be more useful, and just imagine the fabric pattern possibilities!  
Continue reading