Open Thread #255: The 2-0 Edition

Congratulations on being exempt from military service… if ever there was motivation to beat Japan, it was that! Tempers were up during the game, certainly, but those two goals were flawless!

What’s funny about the japanese trolling over this is that they forgot that the women’s team won a silver. The Korean women’s team didn’t even get to the olympics. Combined overall men’s and women’s Japan did better. Apparently the women’s silver doesn’t count for anything.

The future bodes well for the Korean side. If I understand correctly, this was an under 23 squad with a few exceptions. So, now with the international exposure the Koreans may find new contracts coming from stronger European clubs. Increased European experience, the stress of looming military duties washed away, and the confidence building of this tournament should provide a very competitive side entering the WC in two years….

at least ki sung yong wasn’t up to his monkey antics this time…

anybody the latest in Korean insensitivity at the new burger place called burger mine in HBC?

heres a pic of it

http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd138/rockyracoon2/711-1.jpg

hmmmmm i love the smell of napalm with my burger!!!

best ron paul ad ever http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9B0giJLlEU

Mitt’s going to make his VP announcement tomorrow

please may it be Michelle Bachman or Herman Cain, heck Ryan would be a good one too

@10 rrac. I actually think that is quite cool. It’s almost ‘Banksyesque’, it’s certainly challenging, but not offensive.

Team Korea are doing a stunning job this Olympics, really very good indeed and they certainly have some real talent emerging in their footie team. After the lacklustre performances of their main international squad, it’s heartening to see Korea do so well, the future of Korean football is looking bright.

My only disappointment with the Olympics so far is team GB doing such a shit job in the BMX! In both the mens and the womens BMX they were totally outclassed. Considering how amazing the British cycling has generally been to lose out so much on the BMX leaves a bit of a bitter taste.
One of the coolest things I’ve heard a few times from various British athletes is how they were ‘gutted to just get a silver!’ That shows just how high the level of British sport is these days. Nothing wrong with a silver medal, though a gold is obviously the ultimate goal.

I think the Olympics so far have been one of the best ever. Brilliant performances by so many people from so many countries.

It has been a good weekend so far, and the weather is so much nicer than it has been recently. Much cooler than earlier in the week.

Korea is in a much superior league compared to Japan.

The Korean football players displayed classy football.

The Japanese team played very poorly and their offense was very weak.

Part way through the game I thought Korea might get a red card. Especially the way the captain argued the yellow card against him. Just shut up and live with it. Great first goal though. Way to out maneuver not just one, two or three defenders, but four.

Most people probably already know about this but for those not in Korea who want to watch Korean TV, I recommend Solive

http://www.mysolive.tv/

It’s $30 for a year; you download their application/player which allows you to watch numerous channels in delayed time (depending on your time difference with Korea). I put the app on my wife’s laptop and ran a HDMI cable to our 52″ TV and she’s been able to keep up with all her favorite shows. When we got here last year, we got the Korean language package that Direct TV offers but for the most part, it sucks.

@21: Other than having KBS, which our Direct Tv doesn’t have for some reason, how does this differ?

Congratulations Japan on winning Bronze medal in women’s volleyball, Japan vs. S. Korea!

I’d hope S. Korea arrange more programs that wider population could enjoy physical activities. S. Korea has put too much emphasis on elite sports. S. Korea might expand social physical education programs that general population could participate in.

I understand the need for a First Lady properly turned out, but it seems KJU underestimated his wife’s affection for haute couture – one wonders if she bought it herself or if it’s a (gasp!) Chinese knockoff.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/north-korean-food-shortages-clash-with-first-ladys-handbag/article4472802/

I am not at all surprised that those are the only things you saw.

I knew that display would get some sort second look from the authorities. Maybe they should also look into discouraging the fans from waving the imperial Japanese flag at a soccer tournament involving a team from Korea

Dude makes me want to visit Danyang!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLyFPQalIbw

This Olympics is also the fall of the “Traditional Powers”. In Taekwondo, Korea only got a Gold and a Silver; In Judo, Japan was 4th in medal standing; In Fencing, only Italy was the traditional power with significant performances; In Archery, an Italian team beat an American team, which beat the Korean team; In soccer, Japan won against Spain, Korea won against Britain, and Mexico won against Brazil – and so on and so on.

Lots of “firsts” being recorded, lots of upset victories.

Is South Korea a currency manipulator? Inquiring minds [in Japan] want to know…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/07/13/who-are-the-biggest-currency-manipulators/

Answer: Not really…

#40,
listening too much to those internet trolls? Eh?
Korea is becoming a destination for medical tourism.

european style? maybe middle eastern style too. you aint the only people w big noses or light skin. heck you aint even the only people who have blond hair. get over yourself. its getting tiresome.

aint never said that but if it makes you feel better, white men are handsome. problem is, many are not. thats where the yahoo comes into the picture. lost in the shuffle.

It is amusing the banal word “imperial” still survived in the 21 Century when naming a country. I know that’s the elegant word often advocated by high-class people.

You think that its funny that a territory with an emperor is called an empire!

You must be in hysterics Monaco is called a principality.

Something for our MH cracker crowd to think about:

1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.”

2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.

3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.

4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.

5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.

6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.

7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.

8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.

9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.

10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

It’s called fighting racism with racism. Hint: it doesn’t work.

Stan Lee reading a graphic novel about Yi Soon-shin.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=4247798644188&set=a.1530154904793.76842.1562364436&type=1&relevant_count=1&ref=nf

@50-53. That was actually a serious column by an academic, great fisking material though it was. Weakest thing I’ve ever seen on The Atlantic.

Chinese landed on Diaoyu island:

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/15/china-japan-diaoyu-idINL4E8JF27820120815

Russia also sent navy ship to Kurils:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/video/2012-08/15/c_131787064.htm

Japan has no friend in Asia. And Mitt Romney said “We are not Japan. We are not going to be a nation that suffers in decline and distress for a decade or a century. We’re on the cusp of a very different economic future than the one people have seen over the past three years.”

http://www.politico.com/blogs/burns-haberman/2012/08/romney-we-are-not-japan-131531.html

…they signed over Korean to Japan. Fuck ‘em.

If Korea presented their claim over Dokdo by saying, ‘we want this territory as recompense for Japan’s un-warranted occupation of Korea’ they’d garner a lot more respect.

In lying, mis-representing, indoctrinating and demanding people do likewise, they simply put people’s back up. Why have they failed to realised this?

It’s not big until the Taiwanese animators at NMA says it’s big:

http://www.nma.tv/psy-gangnam-dance-part-2-justin-bieber-appearance/

@R. Elgin

Here is the youtube version.

For those of you who have lived in China/traveled to China/is Chinese, I have a friend who’s coming over to the States to have a wedding with his new wife (who’s a Chinese citizen), and they’re requesting gifts that are small so that they can take it back to China. I’m concerned about the Chinese Customs, so any gift ideas from the crowd that won’t get them snagged by customs at the airport?

I miss YB. He does have a bit of a tragic love life so perhaps he’s recovering from one of those. He would wax nostalgic about how Fiats are a piece of crap that will fall apart faster than a handle on fake Italian luxury luggage, etc.

DLB,

I take it that you like big boats, but small cars.

If I wanna save gas, I’d rather get this:

http://www.infinitiusa.com/m/hybrid

From a facebook Page I got to — it is that of a western man in Seoul:

“”It’s been 3 years of tolerance, cultural sensitivity, and patience, but progress is actually reversing itself, and I’m done waiting for society to give a fuck, so I guess I should write something, and hope people pay attention. I have a female Korean friend here who just left the city. Her father is an affluent dermatologist who, on Sunday, proceeded to beat the shit out of her for several minutes as she lie in the fetal position sobbing on the ground for help. She’s 29 and lived over a decade in the United States, attending middle school through University there. She returned to Korea to “get to know him again” after he and her mother divorced as a child due to – YOU GUESSED IT – domestic violence.

So, as this “Korean father” (what all of my Korean friends who have heard this story referred to him as…) was displacing his animosity onto his adult, educated, beautiful daughter, her stepmother entered the room and halfheartedly told him to “stop” ***while closing the blinds so no one could see*** (probably the most f&*#ed up part of the story, to me). This girl called me minutes later, unable to speak due to the legitimate fear of aggravating him and further injury, and sobbed as I asked her a series of “yes or no” questions that she responded to in a whisper. Because of what I do and my role with women here in teaching free self defense classes, and the book that I helped Danny Kessler write about Personal Safety last year, Angels With Attitude, I get calls from time to time – sometimes from people I know, sometimes about people, and sometimes from people I barely know.

Here’s the part where I get really angry – I wish I could also say “surprised”, but alas… She called the police later that day, from a location just outside of her apartment, where her father couldn’t see them and wouldn’t know that they had been called, again out of fear of further violence in case they were unwilling to help. She was wise to do this, apparently, as the police, after seeing her already darkening bruises on her “hip”, arms, wrists, shins, knees, and thighs (pluralization noted, with regret)- gave her advice for living straight out of a medieval castle when they told her to “be nicer to her father in the future”, and “not anger him so much”. No possibility of intervention, no possibility of fines, no possibility of legal retribution, no possibility of safety or even an escort in and out – at least not in reality. I imagine it’s on paper somewhere, written ambiguously, with only a superficial punishment for the offending party available – after a battle in court, but on the street or in the dimly lit hallway, when women have to hear the beat of the wardrum against the walls and floors day after day, those boys in blue with their adorable neon vests couldn’t give less of a shit what happens to the women they share a society with, and either cannot or will not intervene to help.

She went in with a female friend yesterday, on Monday (the only promise I asked her to make was not to go alone), and packed frantically as her stepmother tried to alert her father in time for him to make it home from his clinic. They got her things out and into a taxi in time, got them to her friend’s apartment, packed them, and waited for the spare key to her car to arrive from Seoul, because he had taken the other one to prevent her from leaving. She found her car this afternoon and after 48 hours she is safely on her way to another city.

This story has a tolerable ending despite the fact that Korea’s legal and political systems are far more likely to enact legislation that manipulates statistics than they are to actually protect or value the safety and self respect of their women. It is far more likely to repaint that 1995 Kia or Hyundai and call it “new”, rather than be honest about the hopelessness going on under the hood, scrap it, and buy a new one. And perhaps obsessively checking their bangs in the mirror every 5 seconds, wearing jeans so tight that they restrict bloodflow, and heels so high that barbie would refuse out of fear for her plastic ankles is a symptom of a larger problem – the fact that *appearances have trumped health and well being*. Unless and until these priorities are reversed, and women and men agree that women in Korea have a right to be safe and secure, especially in their own homes, and can own the spike in violent crime that this will cause in their precious criminal statistics and standing internationally, the quiet sobbing and secluded misery will continue, behind closed doors – where Korea has openly stated that it belongs through its legislative actions, again and again and again.

My only warning is that violent crime against women in Korea is a rabbit hole. Once you go down that research pipeline, and start reading and learning and listening about the Korea that happens exclusively to women, behind closed doors, in alleys, and in taxis, your perceptions of the safety and security of women here will not be the same. I am actually afraid, in even just posting this note/article, of visa and immigration related repercussions for me, simply for holding this opinion, advocating research, and disseminating a factual account of what recently transpired for a personal friend, that you will absolutely never hear about in any media in the country. An interesting question for Korean adult students, by the way: Question 1: “How many times have you read about a western man raping a Korean woman in the newspapers, or heard about it on TV?”Answers usually range from 5 – 50, depending on age and programming preference, and it’s almost always a story relating to (the extremely small percentage of sexually violent) military personnel stationed in Korea.

Question 2: “How many times have you read about a Korean man raping a western woman in the newspapers, or heard about it on TV?”Answers usually range from Zero – 2.

Yet I know a dozen stories – recounted for me personally, often in tears – by women who were raped by Korean men, from landlords to stalkers to students, AND REPORTED IT. This begs the question, 어떻게???This is the worst kind of editing – editing perceptions by suppressing facts. This is the “Creation Science” of criminal statistics, because it’s not just the Newspapers that are getting fudged numbers, it’s the National Statistics that are wrong, and these agencies are perfectly aware of this agenda – as well as where the safety of women here falls in a hierarchy of priorities. I’ll give you a hint – it’s several levels below “looking good”, “advocating for Dokdo”, “beating Japan in soccer”, and “the price of groceries”. My bottom line is this – Be careful out there, ladies. Korea’s made it quite clear that you’re on your own. “”

ah the white man: a hero in his own mind. pathetic.

#74,

- Osaka provincial officer arrested for assaulting a woman in her 20′s at a first date: ２０代女性にわいせつ　大阪府職員“初デート”で逮捕

- A man arrested for assaulting his cohabitant college woman student for 12 hours<a href="http://sankei.jp.msn.com/affairs/news/120815/crm12081508550000-n1.htm同居の女子大生を“休憩”はさみ１２時間殴る蹴る ＤＶ男逮捕

- Hagwon instructor arrested for running a website selling secret videotaping of naked high school girls: 塾講師、女子高生の裸撮影…サイトで有料公開か

- City Hall officer in Sapporo city arrested for perverse behavior upon 2 teenage girls少女２人にいかがわしい行為　淫行容疑で市職員ら逮捕　北海道

- Increased number of perverse teachers arrested for secret videotaping naked women. Hot summer effect?: 猛暑の影響？校内にヘンタイ大量発生中

- 36 year-old office worker arrested for assault a woman of 20′s at a park in Tokyo: 板橋区の公園で20代女性に乱暴、鼻骨折る　36歳会社員逮捕

- High school teacher arrested for breaking into a hotel for secret videotaping of men’s bathroom:男湯盗撮目的でホテルに侵入の疑い　高校教諭を逮捕

I would like to enlist more delightful news as needed.

“It’s been 3 years of tolerance, cultural sensitivity, and patience, but progress is actually reversing itself, and I’m done waiting for society to give a fuck…”

Who ever wrote this would have been angry if he lived in the U.S. in the 1950′s where the police also gave the benefit of the doubt to the man and not the wife who had a black eye and a broken nose.

Not saying any of this isn’t wrong. Not all all, but it’s also wrong to condemn an entire country/people/society for this one event. What a tool.

Domestic Violence, in any country, is a terrible thing. That really as my only point. Rape stats are under-reported in both our countries, I’m sure.

My word, the things young ladies put in their mouths these days – if I didn’t know better, I’d think that was a chocolate corn dog.

http://lifestyle.ca.msn.com/real-life/inner-you/do-i-look-fat-in-this-country-a-look-at-beauty-ideals-in-korean-culture-1

That really as my only point.

I believe that as much as I believe that Q is only concerned about the Japanese people’s well-being when he posts stuff about radiation from Fukushima.

“UCLA published a study, ‘Eating walnuts daily may improve sperm quality.’”

What a squirrelly finding! Sounds nutty to me — I mean, c’mon!

Jeffery Hodges

* * *

Statutory rape could not be punished in Nagano because there is no regulation that prohibit having sex with minors under 18 years old:

http://mainichi.jp/select/news/20120720k0000e040225000c.html

I’ll bet that study was funded by the California Walnut Growers’ Association, Jeffery.

Domestic violence occurs in every country. What Pineforest seems to be most upset about is the police handling of the victim, plus the longstanding media bias for reporting crimes committed by foreigners against Koreans while overlooking crimes committed by Koreans against foreigners. While I was in Korea, I observed that the only violent crimes against foreigners covered in the KT or KH were ones that were already covered in the Stars and Stripes, so the Korean English papers felt the need to provide “fair and balanced news” to foreign readers. A glaring example of selective Korean media coverage is the murder of the Suncheon High School teacher back in the mid-90s. The only Korean media coverage was a letter to the editor by a friend of the murder victim. None of my Korean friends knew about the murder, so apparently it had received little or no coverage in the Korean language press. The rise of K-blogs was a game changer, forcing the Korean media to provide even more “fair and balanced news” about incidents involving foreigers as victims.

A glaring example of selective Korean media coverage is the murder of the Suncheon High School teacher back in the mid-90s. The only Korean media coverage was a letter to the editor by a friend of the murder victim.

I am so sorry to hear that. It is sad that happened to him or her. I sincerely hope foreigners better treated in Korea.

Q, nearly all murder victims in Korea are Koreans killed by other Koreans, and an American in Korea is much less at risk of being murdered than an American in the US. The problem here is that the Korean media deliberately chose not to cover the murder of the American English teacher for whatever reasons. Meanwhile, less serious crimes against Koreans like theft were routinely covered in the English papers.

Sadly, the Fiat 500c is not available in Korea. I would like one myself.