Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
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
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200 counties in 10 years? Okhwan Yoon is protesting or more so, calling attention to the 60 year division of North and South Korea. This man caught the eye of a Little Rock TV Station. He’s not a fame whore at all, perhaps a guy who walks to the beat of his own drum and is making a difference even if it’s just by making people think.
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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.
A decade has passed since Al Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center. Multiple news sources have commemorated the event as a moment of self-reflection in which America and the world have evolved–for better or worse–in the Post-9/11 world. Salon ran a story by Matt Zoller Seitz describing some of the ways in which popular culture changed and reacted to the event. We know about America. How did the rest of Asia fare? Mark Austin recalled what it was like in the newsroom at the Daily Yomiuri when both planes struck America’s shoulders. Nothing too interesting to tell and as far as I know, no one has openly recalled on this anniversary of anniversaries how the War on Terror influenced Japanese pop culture. Let’s start with cinema. Battle Royale II: Requiem contained several less than subtle references to the landscape of the time. The most unsettling part about the sequel is that the survivors of the first film formed their own terrorist cell called the “Wild Seven.” The movie veered dangerously close to glorifying terrorism and resistance as a mode of existential relevancy. For video games, Konami released Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, shortly after the attacks. The moral ambiguity of the terrorist antagonists of the game didn’t cause any substantial changes or delays. However, developer Hideo Kojima had to make some last minute changes to the script and cut scenes where downtown “Arsenal Gear” devastated Ellis Island and downtown Manhattan. He further more removed a scene where the American flag fell on the Solidus’s corpse. Additionally, Japan’s Hip Hop scene had a few words of their own to say on the matter. The controversial rap group, King Giddra, released their single, “911,” on the first anniversary of the attack. They criticized the hypocrisy of America’s War on Terror and the Japanese government’s complicity in America’s grand agenda. With the exception of Hideo Kojima, these twoexamples represent a moment in which America’s position in the world came into question. To a certain extent, I wonder whether it marked a moment where Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution on the country’s pacifism came into question. As we all remember, 9/11 eventually led to the Iraq War and then Prime Minister Koizumi supported the invasion with a provision of troops from the Japanese Self Defense Force. America’s inability to secure an immediate victory further called the article’s legitimacy into doubt. If America couldn’t protect itself or prevail as a super power, then how are they going to safeguard Japan? No sooner than this, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe called for a review of the constitution in 2007 to endow Japan with a stronger role in the world and bolster the country’s national pride. What I’m getting at is that 9/11 may have temporarily thrown the ball further into the Japanese Right’s court. K Dub Shine of King Giddra possessed some right wing views of his own. He produced the soundtrack to the Sakura of Madness film where a Neo-Tojo gang targets...
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Forget that lunatic Oakland preacher’s new deadline for the Rapture; the cyber doom of both Japan and South Korea may be this Monday! Yes, apparently South Korean internet users are using the occasion of Gwangbokjeol, the holiday which celebrates Korea’s independence from Japanese colonial rule, to implement a massive attack against Japanese websites which say unfavorable or damaging things about South Koreans and their country. (Wait, didn’t we just report a story about tensions between Japan and Korea? Oh yeah, that was yesterday, when the controversy was about too many Korean dramas on Japanese TV.) Anyway, in response to the anticipated Korean cyber-attack, Japanese internet geeks are planning a counterattack, also massive, against South Korean government and civic websites that advocate for South Korean sovereignty over the hotly-disputed Dokdo (Takeshima in Japanese) Islets. Whatever the reasons each side has for cyber-attacking the other, it looks like the next three days are going to be a huge mess on the parts of the internet connecting Japan and Korea. Oh, and did we mention one of the reasons for this dust-up is a female Korean mixed martial artist got beaten up by three Japanese comedians on live TV? It’s never easy between South Korea and Japan, is it? (The Korea Times – Japan-Korea Cyber-War This Monday) For details on the Korean martial artist vs. Japanese comedians incident, click over to New American Media.
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