What is fun to do on a cold and windy October day at 3 in the afternoon? Fogging for mosquitoes — even when there are children outside. I suppose that someone in the Gwanack-gu office is trying to impress people by doing this!?
Do You Know the Poison Man?
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And today there were no mossies. Well done, fogger man.
The weird thing is that when I suggest that perhaps one might close the windows as the fogging truck roars by, everyone laughs and says,” You know when we were kids we would chase the trucks down the street.”
That explains things.
Fogger trucks…makes you nuts.
damn i used to always play outside when the fogger trucks come by. it was fun to play tag..
The fogger, now with Flintone’s vitamin C.
I wasn’t raised in Korea so I don’t know what it’s like to be in the midst (no pun) of such fantastical smoke, but in America we kids ran and ran for blocks after the Ice Cream man in a similar way. “Iaaasssccee CREAMMMM!”
Btw, I think this video by now is obligatory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TS6fqwIR18
^ Korean kids love pesticide.
abcdefg beat me to it. I was just about to post the exact same link and also add a reference to the ‘Mr. Whippy’ ice cream vans which would trawl through suburban Australia in the 70s and 80s, playing “Greensleeves” and leaving a trail of snot-nosed kids tagging after it, not unlike the Mogi Man here.
It’s just that this is the most stupid sort of thing to do, on a windy, cold, autumn day — not to mention putting this stuff out around kids.
These people are absolutely worthless yet imagine that they are performing a public service!
If only they could use these Zyklon-B trucks loaded with DDT in Africa*. Instead, Malaria surges and “the friends of the Earth” feel good about themselves. Smug alert.
* My reference is, of course, to the famous White Paper issued by the UN in about 1970. The paper stated that DDT had saved a billion (yes, ten to the ninth) lives.
R Elgin,
1) If you ever have the time or the inclination, I’d like to see you do a follow-up on your Euh Yun-dae/Dasan post. That was very stimulating. It would be interesting to compare it with the facts on the ground as it were.
2) What is the justification for the continued presence of the Mogi Man? Is it necessary, bureaucratic momentum, or what?
I wish the guy would ride through my neigbhorhood in Rio Linda (Sacramento), Calfiornia. I had a lot of mosquitos in August, September, and October despite aerial spraying of Malathion..
Penin abo, you have a good idea. The original thread that I wrote about Korea University’s step backwards has disappeared from the Marmot’s Hole, thus I’m not sure just what that means. I should do a follow-up on what is going on now at Korea U. (in particular), just for fun but I suspect that it is more “business as usual” than anything interest.
Regarding the “mogi man”, since around 1997, there has been a move away from centralized control for local Dong offices that operate under the Gu-level office in Seoul. That means the local level of bureaucracy has come to rely upon volunteers at the local level to do certain things. As a result, my part of Kwanack-gu has certain older “adjoshi”s that volunteer their time to run around and fog pesticide, without any real supervision. Once and a while, these same ignoramus will borrow a truck from the local dong office, since they just do not care, and drive around fogging during the day when there are no mosquitoes flying but there are certainly children about, who should not be exposed to any pesticide. Did I mention that the day after they fogged, some people were wearing winter coats?
Though the police again have no jurisdiction to stop this vigilante action (so they say), when I discussed this with some local women, they seem to have more power to stop these people from coming around to fog around their children. Thus, this whole business of public health and safety is a very tenuous affair, subject to the whims of whatever local adjoshi decides is right for everybody, forget the facts, science or social responsibility.
Seoul City Government is not very interested in enforcing some control over this sort of thing either because they just do not want to care since they are quite busy with their own large-scale concerns and it is not like a department store has collapsed either, i.e., it is not a BIG problem and they only handle BIG problems.
so glad to be out of korea.
as if the korean urban air isnt filthy enough without adding biocides to it.
I wish they had mogiman in nyc. Anyone who never exerienced the horror of bed bugs will not understand.
Is anyone else still having mosquito problems, even with the temperature drop?
Where’s the mogiman when you need him?
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