Another weekend, another Open Thread.
Open Thread #78
Previous post: Hey baby, let’s do ‘it’ for the economy!
Next post: Old Sinchon Station
Follow Us!
Korea News via Yahoo- Korea bans Orioles' scouts after teen inks deal
- North Korea’s super-sized hotel is set to open — 23 years behind schedule
- North Korea’s super-size hotel is set to open — 23 years behind schedule
- South Korea Holds Rates for Eighth Straight Month
- South Korea Holds Interest Rate for Eighth Month as Economic Growth Slows
- Saudi 'pledges secure energy supply' to S. Korea
- The Korea Times gets taken for an intergalactic ride
- South Korea’s No. 2 Public Pension Fund to Boost Equities
- South Korea Set to Follow Australia’s Rate Pause as U.S. Revives
- South Korea’s No. 2 Public Pension Fund to Boost Equity Holdings
Buy My Seoul Guidebook!
Books and DVDs on Korea
{ 50 comments… read them below or add one }
FIRST BOAST
Hagwon spending at $30-billion buys a massive pile of fail.
http://ratemyhagwon.com/2008/12/04/korea-government-cant-curb-hagwon-costs/
What else can $30-billion buy? Any reference points?
p.s. It’s past noon! Guess we’re the early risers? Have a beautiful weekend!
For $30 bil you could buy outright GM, Ford and Chrysler, and probably have over $10 billion left, depending how well you negotiated with Chrysler’s private owners.
But that $30 bil would be $8 billion short to buy a bailout that would keep them in operations for the next 3 months. That’s called being worth more dead than alive.
look at all these Canadian liberal shits like Linkd and cm trying to out do each other with who has a more gloomy scenario for America’s economy.
Is that why they were foaming at the mouth for Obama’s election?
What’s a purely Canadian made car?
Name that Canadian car company.
look at all these Canadian liberal shits like Linkd and cm trying to out do each other with who has a more gloomy scenario for America’s economy.
Is that why they were foaming at the mouth for Obama’s election?
What’s a purely Canadian made car?
Name that Canadian car company.
The Bricklin was a cool car. I think it was “purely Canadian”.
Does anyone know what is the best GPS (English) to use in Korea? I’m looking for a christmas gift. Thanks.
#2., In the poorer area of Daejeon that I work in, Hagwons are also a form of afterschool daycare. So they aren’t exactly a total failure for those parents who have to work late and would rather their children have some sort of adult supervision under the guise of learning rather than just becoming latch-key gamers or texters.
In the U.S., my brother pays about double what parents pay here for a couple of hours of afterschool care at the Y. I know he would gladly pay less to have his kids get a bit more help in math, science, and English while countless less fortunate kids get home about 3:00 and veg out or find ways of getting into trouble.
“sunny place for shady people”
“hell of a good place to eat a banana”
Iggy Pop’s Miami? I would think that CNN could have found someone a little more reputable for this segment.
“look at all these Canadian liberal shits like Linkd and cm trying to out do each other with who has a more gloomy scenario for America’s economy.”
Yeah, we are so happy about losing our manufacturing sector in Ontario. You want gloomy scenarios for America, try just about any major media source. Not FOX News.
#4,
http://www.zenncars.com/
There used to be many Canadian car makers up until the 1930s, but given the small size of the domestic market and the tariffs imposed on Canadian cars sold in the US, it was impossible for Canadian-owned companies to remain competitive.
#9,
He’s a moron.
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/top/dst/2008/09/balance.html
“The Bricklin was a cool car. I think it was “purely Canadian”.”
The ‘owner’ was an American, Malcolm Bricklin (most of the funding came from the New Brunswick government). They only built about 3000 cars before the company closed and New Brunswick was out of 26 million dollars. I’ve actually seen a couple of these cars over the years. Brilliant design for the time.
One of Malcolm Bricklin’s latest projects was trying get Chery to produce cars for the American market. He broke of his ties with the company when he realized that it wasn’t capable of producing cars that would meet American standards.
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=5kQGAK550LE
I just finished watching on OCN the 2002 Hong Kong crime-thriller “Infernal Affairs” (無間道 – 무간도), which was the movie that Martin Scorsese’s “The Departed” was based on. I was surprised to see how much alike the two films were.
Internal Affairs III was considered the worst but featured two of my favorite ethnic Chinese actors, the amazingly talented and eternally handsome Chen Daoming (Emperor Qin Shihuang in Hero)and not-as-talented but visually pleasing Leon Lai. Internal Affairs II, the one you watched, included some very talented and yummy eye candy, Hu Jun. On the other side of the masculinity spectrum is Andy Lau, who disgraced all three. I averted my eyes and plugged my ears whenever he appeared unless one of the hotties was on screen, too.
For some reason, Asian male entertainers, except for sexually ambiguous Andy Lau, don’t seem to ripen into full masculinity until they’re about 30. Witness the transformation of Song Seung-heon, who went into the army with ordinary good looks and came out smoldering of manhood.
And for the first time, I’m drying my own cranberries. Unsweetened dried cranberries are expensive and very difficult to find. I just sampled a few, and dried cranberries aren’t as tart as fresh ones, so I have no idea why they and other fruits like blueberries and cherries get sugared up.
(#15 & #16),
“Yummy eye candy,” “hotties,” “smoldering manhood,” and then “dried cranberries”? You sound pretty kinky, Sonagi.
It does seem like a non-sequitur; I had just checked on a tray of cranberries in the oven when I typed that.
“I’m drying my own cranberries.”
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new euphemism.
(Although, “juicing my own cranberries” would seem to work better.)
Am I the only one who has noticed that Korea’s OCN station has turned into a collect of repeat, repeat, and then repeat some more crappy programming?
It shows nothing but the same old movies over and over and crappy CSI reruns. And today I noticed that they are promoting a “Classic CSI” series, which means they will start showing the CSI reruns all over again from season 1.
I try not to watch too much TV, but I do have the basic Skylife service, which I have mainly for YTN News since the few other channels on the service are just crap. However, when I get bored, I occasionally turn to OCN to watch a movie, but it is always the same stupid movies or CSI reruns. Who is the stupid jerk in charge of OCN programming?
My Skylife Basic costs me only 8,800 won a month, but I still feel like I am getting ripped off.
Regarding hagwons “ratemyhagwon”, I have noticed that elementary schools here in Korea have testing that is more like the fraudulent carney sideshows that try to hook and fool the unsuspecting.
For example, like a carney show, the first few math tests that a third grader gets look to be pretty straight-forward math. “Wow” thinks the student, when they get back good scores. This keeps up until the *BIG* test, wherein, suddenly, the test becomes more like a deliberate attempt to trick the student, even introducing certain elements that were never covered in class. I am told by the parents that the test was not created by the teacher or school too but by an outside source and the test was unavailable for the parents to look at.
Well, when the test score is suddenly *much* lower than the previous tests, the parents panic and spend money on sending their kid to a hagwon for math, thus insuring that more money goes to hagwons.
It seems that transparency in education is lacking more than in business here and it is time to follow the money trail. I am really beginning to understand just why Korean parents will beg, borrow, steal to send their kid to school outside of Korea.
Re: Skylife
Are they still asking big noses to fork out 3 years of premiums as a “deposit” before they will install the satellite and hook you up, or have they gotten more reasonable in asking only for pay-as-you-go.
R.Elgin, your observation is right on, and I don’t think anyone’s ever used the carney comparison before!
Hagwons often use real or even more difficult simulations of English assessment tests during registration (e.g. engineered questions from the TOEFL iBT).
The results are often inaccurate like you described, since they make the student appear to have less ability or less fluency than they really have.
One rationale behind this, one of our esteemed collegues at a well known hagwon explained, was that their school system never wanted to get into a situation where their students go into a real test overconfident and actually underperform. This is apparently the death knell to a hagwon’s reputation. “Johnny goes to hagwon A, studies hard, takes real test, does worse than the school’s in-house tests.” Parents would go nuts.
There was a study–which I can’t seem to locate at the moment–that described how slight changes in perception can enhance performance. The experiment involved pole vaulters who were told they were jumping a height that they were confident of clearing, but the researchers actually raised the bar ever so slightly. The vaulters, it turned out, cleared those modified heights as well.
In the case of hagwons, one might defend the practice of giving lowered assessment results in order to “make the kids feel like they need to learn more” so that they improve their real test scores, but at the same time it is smells a lot like hedging or betting on “vaporscores”.
Imagine, if the student by attending hagwon never improved one real point. The reality is that the low entrance assessment would automatically generate a jump in score when the student takes the real test. This might be considered a fraudulent improvement in performance, no?
Up to debate…
Way off the subject – considering there is no subject on the open thread – but has anyone else noticed how particularly nasty the flu going around this year is? It literally has kicked my butt over the last couple of weeks.
gbevers
I’ve been watching OCN from the very beginning, when they started out as DCN. They are all about showing one crappy rerun after another. That’s why I don’t watch it very often, that way I get the illusion that their programs are fresh.
The guys at Skylife are a bunch of crooks. It is real easy to sign up to Skylife but as soon as you try to sign off, they will try to come up with any excuse to milk you out of money. When I told them I wanted to terminate their services, they told me that since I upgraded my service to Gold with a three year extended contract that I would have to pay them a severance fee of 150,000 won to sign off. WTF! That’s when I looked at some of the old bills they sent me. The damn bastards signed me up to Gold without my knowledge four months ago! I had my bill set up for automatic online payment, as I do with my other bills, after a while you just look at your card bills and ignore the rest of them because they pay themselves. I suggest you keep your eyes glued to the bill they send you monthly.
When I said I never signed up for gold, they tried to come up with some lame excuse that one of their subcontracted telemarketing companies had me registered as doing so. I told them I had been thinking about terminating their services since a year ago, but just finally came around to doing it now. And that because of that it would have been impossible for me to have upgraded my service. And since I never agreed to the extended contract, it was null. It took a few phone calls insisting that I will not pay the severance fee and that I be signed off immediately, but they finally gave in. They sent me a bill for the last month of my service which I paid for, knowing them they would probably come back a year later with a rolling snow ball of 연체료(a fine for missed payments?) if I didn’t. (They did that to other people.)
I searched Naver and found a long list of people victimized by Skylife. Some of them being so frustrated at the company’s inhospitality that they gave up and paid the severance fee or whatever fee they cooked up. I just hate how some companies in Korea think of their consumers as chumps they can leech money off of.
Regarding “ratemyhagwon”‘s comment:
This is as much a fraud as it is for the carney man to rig his game so that the unsuspecting mark ends up paying 20 dollars for a 2.99-dollar teddy bear. It is nothing but a parasitism upon students and their parents in Korea,
Such ranks as being worse than “jewook”‘s commentary of the Skylife fraud since the hagwon industry is bilking billions of Won out of Korean parents and the educational system. Why is it that Korean teachers can not create tests that are based upon what they have taught in the classroom!!?
Thanks for commenting upon my suspicions; this whole business is worthy of its own thread on the blog, IMHO.
“Purely Canadian car” – lol… with the number of car part factories in Canada, there is no such thing as a “Purely American” car either, wjk. But the Delorean Motor Company had a factory in Canada…
Mr. neff
”It literally has kicked my butt . . .”
I don’t think that word means what you think it means.
Get ready for another round of “Hate America”
http://kai03.qwest.com/WindowsLive/Media/News/NewsDetail.aspx?cat=International&id=D94TJ7800@news.ap.org&client=gadget&qid=1E0203AD6A905D59204B512AFFFFFFFF
The Texas A&M University system has a approved a new program that will pay (reimbuse?) the tuition and mandatory fees for incoming freshmen who maintain a 2.5 grade-point average and whose families make an annual income of $30,000 or less. It is called the “System Promise Program.”
It sounds like a good program to me.
A little light Sunday night reading, CHINA’S FOREIGN POLICY AND‘‘SOFT POWER’’ IN SOUTH AMERICA, ASIA, AND AFRICA, prepared for the Senate’s Committee on foreign relations (Joe Biden, Chairman). Some highlights below.
To many observers, the policy implications for the United States call for continued and reinvigorated U.S. engagement in East Asia to counter Chinese soft power and active participation in building the economic and political/security architecture of the region. With Japan and South Korea, much of Chinese soft power actually is being generated by Japanese and South Koreans, themselves, through trade and investment flows. Among these countries, soft power effects go both ways. Although unlikely at this time, an East Asian organization similar to the Chinese dominated Shanghai Cooperation Organization is clearly not in the U.S. interest. The current U.S. hub and spoke strategy of negotiating free trade agreements and security arrangements with individual countries in Asia is one way to ensure that the U.S. presence remains strong, but the U.S. insistence on ”gold standard” provisions in its bilateral FTAs that require major changes in domestic laws has caused resentment when compared with China’s ”non-interventionist” approach...
…Beijing is seen to have advantages over the United States in that its overseas activities and investments are conducted by strong, well-funded state-owned companies. These large PRC government activities attract much international attention and give a ”hard” edge to PRC soft power. The United States has little to match such centrally directed initiatives, particularly in the wake of years of U.S. budget cutbacks in—and in the case of the U.S. Information Agency, the termination of—high-profile U.S. international public diplomacy programs…
…The PRC also is thought to reap soft-power advantages by having much of its foreign investment carried out by its strong stateowned sector. These state corporations lack transparency, have deep pockets backed by government assets, and operate without the constraints that come with having to issue a corporate annual report. Unlike U.S. corporations investing overseas, who lack this close government patronage and in addition must answer to their shareholders, PRC state-owned companies have the luxury of being able to take a longer-term, strategic view—one more closely integrated with national priorities—without having to demonstrate immediate profits…
The odd stuff you find surfing the web:
http://www.filination.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/78256645.jpg
(The picture compares Korean, chinese, and Japanese faces.)
Jewook,
If only more people who feel victimized by Skylife would call up the Consumer Protection Board, Skylife would soon decide it’s not worth the hassle of an extra 150,000 to go through the complaint process each and every time (especially when they will have to pay up in the end).
I used them for an Internet purchase that went sour. And despite all the companiy’s protestation of how imossible it was to give me a refund blah blah blah, the CPB got my money back within 2 days of filing my complaint.
Want more? The full text of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ essay in next January’s Foreign Affairs. I assume basically all he says is in agreement with the thoughts of the President-elect. Some of my favorite lines below (some seems pretty obvious to anyone not chugging red pills up in the balcony with Wedge and Carr, but keep in mind that this is coming from Bush’s SecDef. Also, very unlike a typical bureaucrat, he is calling for money to be transferred AWAY from his domain and TOWARD the diplomatic corps:
…What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign — a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation. Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against terrorists and other extremists. But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit.
…The most likely catastrophic threats to the U.S. homeland — for example, that of a U.S. city being poisoned or reduced to rubble by a terrorist attack — are more likely to emanate from failing states than from aggressor states. The kinds of capabilities needed to deal with these scenarios cannot be considered exotic distractions or temporary diversions. The United States does not have the luxury of opting out because these scenarios do not conform to preferred notions of the American way of war…
…When it comes to procurement, for the better part of five decades, the trend has gone toward lower numbers as technology gains have made each system more capable. In recent years, these platforms have grown ever more baroque, have become ever more costly, are taking longer to build, and are being fielded in ever-dwindling quantities. Given that resources are not unlimited, the dynamic of exchanging numbers for capability is perhaps reaching a point of diminishing returns. A given ship or aircraft, no matter how capable or well equipped, can be in only one place at one time…
…In Iraq, an army that was basically a smaller version of the United States’ Cold War force over time became an effective instrument of counterinsurgency. But that transition came at a frightful human, financial, and political cost. For every heroic and resourceful innovation by troops and commanders on the battlefield, there was some institutional shortcoming at the Pentagon they had to overcome…
…We should look askance at idealistic, triumphalist, or ethnocentric notions of future conflict that aspire to transcend the immutable principles and ugly realities of war, that imagine it is possible to cow, shock, or awe an enemy into submission, instead of tracking enemies down hilltop by hilltop, house by house, block by bloody block. As General William Tecumseh Sherman said, “Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
Damn, got caught on that red/blue pill color metaphor. Reality is a slippery thing….
Believe me, only foreigners get hosed by companies here in Korea. For the locals, it’s the other way around — the Korean consumer is the most demanding, crazy, and obstreperous in the world. In my experience, it is the Korean consumer who abuses the company.
Not only do they not put up with “abuse” (except, of course, the grand abuse of “Korea First” anti-import policies), Korean consumers won’t stand for being expected to take responsibility for any of their actions or choices. And the Consumer Protection Board aids and abets this behavior. The basic Korean appetite for anti-capitalist thought doesn’t help; every situation gets viewed through the prism of Company bad, consumer good no matter the actual facts.
And not every customer is right. You don’t know how many wacky criminal misadventures by “aggrieved consumers” I’ve had to deal with over the years. I’ve had clients’ offices vandalized, employees attacked, cars wrecked, and homes invaded. One insurance crook tried to run down a client who denied his claim for a mysterious factory fire. Last weekend a client’s sales manager’s home was vandalized and his life threatened. In every case, the police and prosecutorial response to the customer’s out of line behavior has been incredibly weak. He’s a customer and he’s angry? Well, the company must have done something. (Especially when it’s clear the customer is wrong.) The crazier the customer, the more “right” he is.
So by all means — if Skylife is upsetting you in any way, or you just want some money, go to the Consumer Protection Board and get what you want. Everybody else does.
You bring up good points.
Govt & Business abuses the worker
Korean mothers abuse businesses
and the cycle continues
The cycle of repression as well as the lawlessness of Korea really needs to be changed in order for Korea to become a developed country.
Sounds very similar to the tactics of AOL, whose ‘free’ trial CDs used to litter retail businesses and restaurants. It took me three long phone calls, one over an hour, to wade through their stall tactics and excuses before I was finally able to cancel. Cheers to the angry consumers who filed a successful class action suit against them.
Brendon Carr
“Believe me, only foreigners get hosed by companies here in Korea. For the locals, it’s the other way around — the Korean consumer is the most demanding, crazy, and obstreperous in the world. In my experience, it is the Korean consumer who abuses the company.”
Well you are right in that a lot of times it is the Korean consumer that is over demanding and abusive against companies. But Korean consumers get screwed over a lot also. Most of the victims of Skylife are Koreans like me. I was in the minority of people not dumb enough pay the severance fee or whatever, a lot of people did pay it because they were to lazy to put up a fight or go to the Consumer Protection Board. R. Elgin also gives a example Koreans getting duped by the hagwon industry “bilking billions of Won out of Korean parents and the educational system.” Many Korean hagwons are not genuine education facilities, they are businesses putting the bottom dollar at top priority. And many companies that provide communication services like to slip in extras under the radar, knowing full well that most consumers who have their bills set up for automatic online payment don’t pay attention to details and only realize several months later that they have been paying for special services they never signed up for.
Yes there are wheeler dealers (companies) here that try to take advantage of foreigners, but fellow Koreans aren’t spared either and we get the chump treatment just as often.
back to the dearth of first run tv shows, super action is running “starship troopers” right now for like the 5000th time since i’ve been here, yeah i love the shower scene but come on. also on fox channel i can name that law and order svu in less than 10 seconds
then again koreans were never known for their creativity
Brendon,
I don’t advocate taking advantage of the system. If I’m getting a raw deal, I speak up. If I’m not, I’m not going to lie or exagerate the sitution to get 서비스.
If you have a LEGITIMATE beef, you should speak up. The situations you listed, the company got hosed… no customer should be able to act so out of control and still be seen as the good guy.
Of course, I’m sure all the Korean customers who were acting the 미친놈 thought they had a legitimate beef, too, I suppose. Their actions are more than a little out of proportion with the company’s “transgression”.
No way I’d ever work in the service industry. Too many entitlement wackos out there.
@Brendon:
US companies also have to deal with fradulent claims, threats, and violence from customers.
Mr. Carr, I think US consumers have it better than ROK consumers.
Returns are easier.
You can bank better on the rebates actually being rebates.
Should I mention food quality?–US govt will tell you which company has failed to meet the standard. The Korean govt will just say “moh-gi-up”. So, everyone just avoids all the ramens.
Let’s talk Hyundais. Koreans buy lower quality at a higher price. This only benefits the manufacturer.
Prices are also generally lower for the US consumer. Just take gasoline for example.
You can yell and scream at have it your way to a certain extent in South Korea.
But, overall, I think the consumers have an advantage in the US&A.
Maybe so but my focus is upon the local elementary school that uses these test, created by an outside source (hagwons), that are designed in such a manner that they encourage failure on every big exam so as to dupe parents into using a hagwon. Someone that is immune to death threats over the telephone needs to exam this in public education but now I am really seeing just how much a problem for Korea this is, considering the Ministry of Education.
My own belief is that the cost of mollifying the crazies is lumped on top of the cost of paying bribes to politicians, and sky-high rents to the landowners, so that the Korean consumer is substantially impoverished by the system here.
I guess we should congratulate the Arizona Cardinals on their first division title in 33 years. Only gbevers remembers the last time they won one in 1975.
Their next task is to finish the season with a winning record, which has only happened once since they moved from St Louis. With one game remaining against the NFC West they should manage that, although they’ll probably finish 3-7 versus the rest of the league.
Best not to mention the Big 12, but Ball State totally fumbled their chances for a perfect season. They collapsed completely after a botched TD call went against them. Letterman will have to go back to talking about the weather.
For those of you care, Suwon won the K-League, beating FC Seoul. For those of you from non-caring countries (Canada, Korea, New Zealand, USA) that’s the one with the round white ball that you kick.
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/c0cf508ff8/prop-8-the-musical-starring-jack-black-john-c-reilly-and-many-more-from-fod-team-jack-black-craig-robinson-john-c-reilly-and-rashida-jones
Wow, now Hollywood wants to equate eating shrimp with letting men have butt sex.
They’re already jumping the gun on divorces in gay ‘marriages’, too.
Hollywood and gays are friends.
Is that Margaret Cho?
Sinner.
you can construct any argument you want with bits and pieces from the Bible, and say whatever you want.
in that way, it is a unique book.
Moon Sunmyung and innumerable Protestant cult leaders have been doing the same thing these Hollywood activists are doing.
what they lack is Holy Spirit. Instead, they have the evil spirit(Holly Spirit)?
admittedly, Hocus pocus talk for the faithless.
you guys don’t like it when Korean entertainers spew anti-American things, but act as if the smartest people on earth were talking to you, when Hollywood folk pull the same gig.
The Desert Rats do seem to be backing their way into the playoffs, though, don’t they?
And no, let’s not talk about the Big 12. #$!@&! Tigers.
You must log in to post a comment.