- Foreign visitors to Korea have topped 7 million for the first time ever.
- On a related note, Ye Olde Chosun looks at the differences between Japanese and Chinese tourists in Korea.
- Ooo… a seven-step guide to globalizing Korean food.
- Great, another artificial stream. Why not, I guess.
- Some North Koreans are apparently worried that Kim Jong-il’s son Jong-un might be even worse than his dad.
- Singer Mina — a Marmot’s Hole favorite — has had a tough time with fame.
- OK, so I saw “2012″ last night. You could actually feel the collective gibun of the theater turn dark when it was learned (SPOILER ALERT) that while Japan and China got arks, another Northeast Asian nation would have to go swimming. Funny thing, if it ever came to something like that, God knows it will be a Korean shipbuilding company doing the actual construction.
Odds and Ends 23/11/09
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Hahahahaha…. typical.
Yeap. Typical.
Watch this video. It just about sums up everything in a neat sum up.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/1584023.....amp;play=1
Korea not very critical for US foreign policy. Korea is a Thailand of North East Asia, where Kim Jong Il in the north and King in the south have succession issues….
lol. what really can you say about this… lol.
I wouldn’t say that her plastic surgery was a rumor– vicious maybe, but certainly not a rumor. The article you link to and the previous Maxim pictures show a nose that has definitely had work done on it.
‘where Kim Jong Il in the north and King in the south have succession issues…. ‘
who did he mean by the king?
‘more women visited from Japan than men, with 61.9 percent to 38.1 percent.’
wait a minute; according to your average expat, your average japanese visitor is a male looking for prostitutes. i’m sure they’ll pull out the usual explanations of faulty data, blah, blah, blah.
cm,
I’m sure Samsung and/or Hyundai Heavy can build a better ark than the Chinese…. but the U.S. probably wouldn’t tell Korea of the impending doom because they would be worried that Korea would leak the info to the rest of the global population.
“who did he mean by the king?”
I think he meant Lee Myung Bak who is being confused by this guy. He did say “King in the South”. who else did he mean?
Wangkon, I saw that movie yesterday. The US wouldn’t hire the Koreans, they’ll hire the Chinese because number one, Chinese are cheaper, number two, Koreans protect their market and don’t buy American cars.
cm,
Well…… if you are gonna build an ark to save all of humanity… do you really want it to be built by the lowest cost provider?
WangKon, well, you don’t have any choice when you owe the Chinese a zillion dollars of borrowed money and you lose economic soverenty. This is how you pay them back.
After all, didn’t the Chinese already write half the script, as posted by Marmot below?
’script’ as in 2012 movie script.
he meant elvis. who died laughing seeing this interview.
Of course, the only big lie in the foregoing concerns the identity of those asserting that the average japanese visitor is a male looking for prostitutes. We all know that the source of that projective lie is the “average Korean
cuckoldmale”. Anyone who’s been in Korea more than 6 months and has been to places like Myeongdong, and isn’t distracted by worries about his ability to control “his” women, knows that Japanese women far outnumber men as tourists in Korea.bull! your average male english teacher likes to tell us it’s japanese men who come for the night life. it’s another linus blanket for them. japanese tourist wouldn’t go to korea because they are actually interested in the place. nope, they go for whores. that’s want they want to believe. that’s their mantra. that’s their linus blanket.
I guess a South Korean company didn’t chip in for the production. Call it the politics of disaster movies – those who pay, survive!
LOL at the Globalizing Korean food thread. Who trains these bureaucrats!?
Here’s my idea.
1) Put ENGLISH translations of the restaurant name on signage
2) Print English menus with dishes in English (rib eye in marinade rather than bulgogi)
3) when white people/non-Koreans come don’t act rude /like you’re doing them a favor
Never once heard a male English teacher say Japanese men come to Korea for the whores. We all know they go to China and Thailand for that. It’s in the Koreans dailies. It must be true.
The illustration of the stream is horrible!
Not sure why Japamese men would come here when golf is cheaper in their own country, not to mention services of a “soapy” nature.
“your average male english teacher likes to tell us it’s japanese men who come for the night life.” 13 of living in Japan and Korea and I’ve never heard anyone, let alone an expat English teacher, insinuate that Japanese men come to Korea for the night life. Thailand, PI, China, sure… Korea draws the shoppers and drama addicts and those be, umm, mostly chicks.
The whole globalizing Korean food thing was a bit odd though. I understand the sentiment, “it’d be nice of more people knew and appreciated real Korean food.” But the whole “guidance from above” idea seems way off the mark; just struck me as grandiose without any chance of seeing those 7 steps realized. I did like the book that was mentioned though – showing the local cuisine from each province. I think Korean restauranteures abroad will do better if they keep it simple and focus on a local specialty instead of having 113 different entrees available like your average Chinese restaurant in the states, almost all of which end up being more polynesian in flavor than Chinese.
belay my last…13 “years” that is
Somebody just sent me this link:
http://www.chinasmack.com/stor.....reactions/
It appears some of the Chinese netizens didn’t like “2012,” either. Pretty funny stuff… including, I guess, the Chinese netizen meme for Korea:
About that movie… First rate special effects, outright ridiculous plot.
Really, who cares? Disaster movies are so 1995. Besides, I refuse to see the movie on principal. The producers of this stinker are probably behind the internet meme about the end of the world occurring in 2012 according to the Mayan calendar. Mayans have actually been quoted as saying it’s bullshit if that’s not enough proof for you that the life on Earth will most probably end when the sun dies in a few billion years (long after were all dead and humans have evolved into something else).
Rob, you should have waited and posted a link to your brother’s review of this movie…Then again, I doubt he’ll bother to see it. He’s got better taste than that.
…principle…I just love typos.
2012 was such a stupid movie. Good special effects, best seen on the big screen, but what a stupid movie. The core of it lacks meat and could have been written by a middle-school student. Stupid!
Oh come on guys, although it was stupid, the movie was fun. That was the whole goal of the movie, to bring actions to life. I just wished it was in 3D.
“the only big lie in the foregoing concerns the identity of those asserting that the average japanese visitor is a male looking for prostitutes.”
Check your facts, pawi
-Since the Winter Sonata boom like 7 years ago, it’s been widely and easily observable that Japanese women are the most numerous tourist.
-The 2004 anti-prostitution laws have taken a chunk out of the sex trade.
- Bluejives was the one who always asserted that the world’s oldest profession was introduced to Korea’s innocent shores by occupying powers. I don’t think a single “expat” has said anything like what you claim they have.
Hell, I won’t see it because High Fidelity and Gross Point Blank were too many years ago.
Just a thought, (I may be wrong)
With the exchange rate the way it is, sure lots of Japanese hotties come over, but before the global economy tanked and Korea used its juxtaposition next to China to keep its currency weak and spending to keep it weak, it WAS Japanmen coming over for holiday, investment, and pussy. That has been the “Korean Way” for a long time. Japanese birds buying brands and eating korean ‘bap’ is a brand NEW trend.
‘With the exchange rate the way it is, sure lots of Japanese hotties come over’ lone english teacher
just like i told you, expat mantra. the japanese don’t go to korea because of interest, they go because of the exchange rate. you see, your average english teacher who feels aggrieved needs everybody else to feel aggrieved for him. he cannot accept other people having a positive interest in korea when he’s had his feelings hurt.
ah the english teacher, he thinks the world revolves around him.
My favorate comment from the site Rob linked to:
http://www.chinasmack.com/stor.....ment-43456
“I’m an American working in Beijing who went to see “2012″ in Sanlitun….
Those who saw insults to the Chinese baffle me. It’s a pity that some Chinese are so insecure that they see insults everywhere. Here’s a news flash: The world is not preoccupied with China. Maybe that is what really fuels these complaints about insults. Would those who feel “insulted” prefer to be mocked rather than not thought about at all?”
Hahahaha…. just replace China and Chinese with Korea and Koreans and Sanlitun with Myongdong or Seongdong in Seoul!
Expats seem to think that how extreme Koreans act is unique… well, methinks there are 1.25 billion more people who act in similarly extreme and xenophobic ways…
Speaking of “globalizing” Korean food, Korean-Hawaiian taco truck in Seattle (and their 돼지 불고기 taco) named best food cart in the U.S. by Good Morning America:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Week.....amp;page=1
“Globalization” of Korean food as a long way to go. In comparison, there are 3000 Indian restaurants in the UK and 41000 Chinese restaurants in the US (4 times the number of McDonald’s…Mention that to the next person who asks if Americans eat hamburgers every day).
This is true. It’s also true that Rome wasn’t built in a day… but one can celebrate the construction of the Pozzuoli Flavian Amphitheater before the advent of the Colosseum.
“just like i told you, expat mantra. the japanese don’t go to korea because of interest, they go because of the exchange rate. you see, your average english teacher who feels aggrieved needs everybody else to feel aggrieved for him. he cannot accept other people having a positive interest in korea when he’s had his feelings hurt.
ah the english teacher, he thinks the world revolves around him.”
As if. I really couldn’t care less about who comes to Korea on vacation and what destination Japanese tourists travel to. But, I could sure think of a couple of people who are far more obnoxious than young Japanese office workers.
“This is true. It’s also true that Rome wasn’t built in a day… but one can celebrate the construction of the Pozzuoli Flavian Amphitheater before the advent of the Colosseum.”
Actually, the Colosseum was built before the Pozzuoli.
(Nothing to celebrate, either. The Pozzuoli wasn’t named after a famous actor…not to say that the Colosseum was used for good clean family entertainment, or, at least, not according to our definition of it.)
Bugger. Research department out to lunch on that one.
If Japanese and Chinese make up the lion’s share of foreign tourists to Korea, does that imply that 2MB’s naming of a European to head the KNTO signals a government desire for more non-Asian tourists? You’d think a tourist is a tourist is a tourist, wherever they’re coming from.
DLB
As long as they pay in yen, Euros or yuan. I guess they will still take dollars… for the time being.
Didn’t you get the memo, DLB? Lee CHarm is a “Korean”. LOL
I do recall a post here a few years back that included a 20~30 year old scanned article from Time or Newsweek or something about how at that time Japanese men came to Seoul in droves to buy them some punani. It was in interesting read, but partly because of the contrast between then and now. I should say though, that article was probably more accurate about Korea than pawi’s image of what goes on here. I’m starting to wonder if he’s ever set foot on the peninsula.
cmm,
That depends. Did pawi live in the peninsula before or after puberty?
‘than pawi’s image of what goes on here’
i’m just repeating expat mantra.
“Expats seem to think that how extreme Koreans act is unique… well, methinks there are 1.25 billion more people who act in similarly extreme and xenophobic ways…”
Add Taiwan into that mix. Taiwanese netizens are blaming the Koreans for Taiwan’s uncompetitive DRAM industry. They’re swearing and shaking their fists in the cyberspace, at the Koreans who are blissfully unaware.
where do you find this info, cm? could you provide any links?
Korean language:
http://toplake.tistory.com/ent.....%EC%B2%B44
http://k.daum.net/qna/view.html?qid=3bQuc
English language:
http://muninn.net/blog/2008/07.....aiwan.html
http://briandeutsch.blogspot.c.....aiwan.html
The Mayans were wrong. Their world ended centuries ago.
Silly Mayans! 2012 was wishful thinking!
I was somewhat chagrined to see that there is yet another artificial stream under construction, this one along the Namsan running course on the north side of the mountain.
This stream might turn out to be nice, but the walking/jogging course is already good as it is. It doesn’t need to be improved. Don’t gild the lily, in other words.
The stream is due to be completed in the spring, according to the signs up in the area. Couldn’t find anything about it on the Internet, though.
“before the global economy tanked” – “Japanese birds buying brands and eating korean ‘bap’ is a brand NEW trend.”
Rubbish, I was advised years ago where to hang in Myeongdong / Lotte to bumpt into Japanese totty on shopping sprees…sans husbands…
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