http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200.....ler_eatery

Apprently, now India is making a name for itself in the ’strangely-themed bars’ category.

Somehow, I never quite ‘got’ the whole nostalgia for the countryside thing. Maybe I just never bought into the notion of clean country living, summer days down by the old fishin’ hole, girls dressed in ‘Daisy Duke’ shorts… Even if true, I’m pretty sure such things would be outweighed by waking up at the crack of dawn to put in hours of back-breaking labor until sunset, the poor personal hygeine, the short life-expectancy (what’s so ‘well-being’ about country life?) And of course, just like the whole ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ image of country life we have in America is a bunch of BS, so is the image in the South of the North being some sort of pastoral paradise. North Korea was at one time one of the most heavily industrialized countries on the planet, with most of its people still working in factories (although they produce relatively little, given the energy and raw materials shortages). On the other hand, I suppose if you really wanted to experience depression-era living, Korean-style, there would be no better place than North Korea. Heck… South Korea has an underdeveloped, undermodernized agricultural sector, too. Why don’t these people step out and see that sometime, if they have such a hankering for ‘clean country living’? I suppose it just wouldn’t be the same without the smoke from all the factories (with absolutely no pollution controls) billowing about and adding a bit more mercury content to these peoples’ already-addled brains.

Anyhow, at least this manifestation of South Korea’s penchant for bad taste isn’t likely to incite any Jewish groups to write angry letters like several other establishments (and commercials — dancing Hitler with snack cake, anyone?) have. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure there are plenty of people down at the local VFW that will have a word or two to say if they ever catch wind of it.

I’m thinking of opening a bar here in America called ‘Tojo’s.’ We’ll dress the male bartenders like Kamikaze and the female bartenders in hanbok. (Just kidding! No firebombs, please!)

Quite apart from any misguided Southern notion of the North as a wayward, sickly relative, there is, perhaps, a more acute sense of nostalgia for the countryside — and of something being lost amid the South’s breakneck development — than one might find elsewhere. Movies such as 집으로 and Welcome to Donkmagkeol tap into this, and there is even something of a “back to the land” movement taking place among some professionals, according to
this article,
among others.

I mean this constructively, not critically, but the way you worded it, I think it’s easy for someone to think you mean the same actual people, not people who are tied together by some other characteristic (in this case, being Korean businesspeople).

A lot of the arguments about the hypocrisy of a certain group of people often stem from critics pointing out something that has happened within a group, and then a completely contradictory thing that has also happened, without acknowledging that the two acts may have been from two different sets of people who, in actuality, may not agree on the matter at all.

Okay. Editor mode off.

Sonagi, that is the Heinz 57 Romanization system.

“Ouri Chib”

Which romanization system is that?

A few years back some bar owners got the idea that having Nazi-themed bars were really cool enough to make money.

They weren’t.

Now, some of the same enterprising businessmen have caught upon the meme of “well-being” and the natural, unpolluted oasis that is North Korea ™ and have discovered how it can be sold as a concept to sophisticated, world-weary South Koreans.

Are you saying that the same people who opened up the infamous Nazi-themed bars in the 1990s are the same people now opening up the DPRK-themed establishments?