February 15, 2006 – 1:41 pm
UPDATE: Yonhap has a report in English.
ORIGINAL POST: Yankee go home? Apparently not.
Not even after an eventual reunification of the Korean Peninsula.
According to a report on negotiations between Korea and the United States on the future of the bilateral alliance, U.S. troops will remain in Korea even after unification, which the document posited would [...]
February 15, 2006 – 9:08 am
Toyota and Honda get the gasface. From MotorWeek:
The American made Hyundai Sonata is the first Korean-brand car to ever win our Best Family Sedan award; and did so with a tremendous value combination of roomy comfort, quality assembly, and most of all safety. Standard ABS, skid control, and curtain airbags, simply outclassed the mighty [...]
February 15, 2006 – 9:00 am
North Korea junkies might appreciate this ICC report on Sino-DPRK ties. From the executive summary:
China’s influence on North Korea is more than it is willing to admit but far less than outsiders tend to believe. Although it shares the international community’s denuclearisation goal, it has its own concept of how to achieve it. It [...]
February 14, 2006 – 4:15 pm
MUST SEE!!!
Came across one Korean blogger’s online gallery of photographs by Jeong Hae-chang (1907-1968), a pioneer of Korean art photography who specialized in landscape photos capturing the beauty of Korea in the 1930s. Anyway, be sure to take a look at the link–you’re unlikely to find photos that more vividly capture life in old [...]
February 14, 2006 – 2:36 pm
Abiola Lapite offers some solid commentary on Barbara Demick’s, piece in the LAT on Hines Ward and the circumstances of mixed-race individuals in Korea.
Which leads me to a very interesting report in Yonhap yesterday on the political debate on allowing mixed-race Koreans into the military. Until last year, mixed-race Koreans were barred from serving [...]
February 14, 2006 – 1:37 pm
Mark points out that cops in Spotsylvania County have apparently taken a page out of their Korean counterparts’ playbook in dealing with prostitution. Meanwhile, it would seem the prostitutes have adopted Australian business practices:
Also arrested were three women who were at the massage parlor. They are identified as 61-year-old Ja Koh Kung, Young You [...]
February 14, 2006 – 11:42 am
The Korean Foreign Ministry has announced that Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon will run for the post of United Nations secretary-general (see Yonhap for a much longer report in Korean).
I haven’t read all the analysis yet, but my initial impression is that while Ban is certainly a likable guy, the fact that a) Korea has a [...]
February 14, 2006 – 9:20 am
Serious Korean tabloid crap!
Euan Blair, the eldest son of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has reportedly fallen head-over-heels with a Korean student in the United States. The Hanguk Ilbo, quoting a Chinese newspaper, which in turn quotes the British press (and re-translated into English here. Isn’t the Internet grand?), said the 22-year-old Blair, who [...]
February 13, 2006 – 11:18 pm
By SHELTON BUMGARNER
FNY Guest Blogger
Funny how a renewed Great Game can turn a geopolitical wallflower into the belle of the ball. Mongolia is yet again in the news, this time for wanting to be the United State’s snuggle bunny given its uncomfortable proximity to the red dragon to its south and the bear just north [...]
February 11, 2006 – 10:10 pm
A University of Pittsburgh panel has cleared scientist Gerald Schatten of scientific misconduct. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
The finding by a University of Pittsburgh panel that reproductive biologist Gerald Schatten made many mistakes but did not commit scientific misconduct in his collaboration with Dr. Hwang Woo-suk struck many observers as fair.
“I think it’s obvious that [...]
February 11, 2006 – 9:26 pm
Who needs Hines Ward when you have half-Korean Brandy Grace appearing in the Lingerie Bowl?
February 11, 2006 – 9:12 pm
Great video footage!
This little ruckus between rightist and (mostly student) leftist groups over Danguk University professor Kang Jeong-koo demonstrates the importance of titles and honorifics in Korean.
February 11, 2006 – 5:38 pm
UPDATE: This blogger has MUST-SEE video footage (from YTN) taken at the contestant’s modeling “boot camp” in Yangpyeong.
ORIGINAL POST: And in more news you need to know from around the Korean Peninsula, 20-year-old Lee Pa-ni has taken first place in Spice TV’s Playboy 2006 Korea Model Contest (No. 16 in the pic to the right, [...]
February 11, 2006 – 4:05 pm
The Chosun Ilbo ran a piece on Korea’s long tradition of erotic art, from the Bronze Age to the Joseon dynasty. Pretty interesting stuff, of course.
And to do my part to educate the public at large, I link to the Dado Museum’s downloadable collection of erotic art from around the world, including a very [...]
February 10, 2006 – 7:47 pm
By SHELTON BUMGARNER
FNY Guest Blogger
Whenever I hear the name Genghis Khan, I think of James T. Kirk screaming “KHAAAAAAAN!” and that cool music as Khan’s ship and the Enterprise duked it out in that big space cloud.
But I digress.
A Khan of a different sort is yet again in the news. For a number of reasons, [...]
February 10, 2006 – 6:47 pm
Yes, that’s Gang Hye-jeong of “Welcome to Dongmakgol,” and yes, the sign reads, “The screen quota is the whole world’s Dongmakgol. Protect it.”
Ripped off from Star News.
On a positive note, Lee Yeong-ae is looking pretty good at the Berlin Film Festival. Nice hanbok.
February 10, 2006 – 2:02 pm
Without Naver.com’s real-time search word rankings, I would never have known who Jenny Shimizu was.
February 10, 2006 – 1:33 pm
Nequila of Confessions of a Silk Alley Korean kindly provided the following translation of an interview Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-moon did with French newspaper Le Figaro.
February 10, 2006 – 12:54 pm
Yonhap, referring to a piece in Stars and Stripes, has cast doubt on USFK’s management of personnel suspected of criminal activity after a private convicted of a March 2005 robbery admitted to beating and robbing a taxi driver on Christmas night. From the Stars and Stripes piece:
An Army private already under base restriction after [...]
February 8, 2006 – 2:08 pm
As you might imagine, Super Bowl MVP Hines Ward has become the object of the Korean media’s affection and a source of national pride–his name managed to become the No. 1 search word on at least one Korean Internet portal site. I don’t find this particularly odd, and at any rate, Ward’s story is [...]
