Happy Buddha’s Birthday to all. Here is a link to a few pictures taken on the way to the little temple on top of Kwanak-san in Seoul.

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The whole story was a little weird in the first place. It just got weirder. There actually appears to be some history behind it and the story is a bit more complex then one would think off hand.

It turns out that Tak Kyung-hyun’s Japanese name is Fumihiro Mitsuyama and he’s the subject of a Japanese documentary and two Japanese movies. The people at Japan Probe wrote about him almost a year ago here. He was the main character in the 2001 film titled “Hotaru” (Firefly) and was the basis of another character for the recent Kamikaze movie “Ore wa, kimi no tame ni koso shini ni iku” (For Those We Love) which was, get this, based on a novel written by controversial and ultra-nationalistic Tokyo governor Shintaro Ishihara. The same site also has a youtube of the documentary.

Truly strange. Excuse me while cognitive dissonance sets it.

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Check out Mike Breen’s take on the students demonstrating against US beef. Quite funny, and ultimately asks some intriguing questions. Here’s a sample:

I must confess my first thought upon being confronted with protestors last Friday night and on reading the subsequent coverage was to link their rather ill thought-through cause to other historical moments of popular stupidity, such as when people used the rails of the first train track between Seoul and Incheon as a cooling pillow in summer, with predictably distressing results.

But that would be unkind. Sarcasm will not help liberate Korea’s youth from the peculiar education that robs them of both their childhood and their faculty for critical thinking.

Read the rest on your own.

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Today’s Working Daze cartoon.

(HT to Phrasskin)

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We now have an outbreak of avian influenza at a bird farm in Gwangjin-gu, Seoul.

Authorities have confirmed it to be the H5NI strain that can be fatal to humans.

The lesson of this story? Chicken and beef can kill. Eat dog — it’s good for you. And stock up on your kimchi.

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A 41-year-old cattle farmer in Hampyeong killed himself after attempting to beat his Filipino wife and three children to death with a farm implement.

And leave it to the Hankyoreh to connect it with US beef imports.

(HT to Western Confucian)

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Okay, not really, but the picture is deserving of some kind of (attempt at a) witty remark.  It’s not every day you get a image of the two greatest living oligopolists of their respective countries conspiring with each other.

Anyways, looks like Bill Gates came to Korea on Tuesday to meet with LMB, business leaders and talk about the future of the Internet and IT industries.  He also came to town bearing gifts with an a promise to invest $147 million in Korea over the next five years.

Later that day, Bill Gates and Chung Mong-Koo announced an agreementby Microsoft and Hyundai-Kia to work together to develop a version of Microsoft’s “Sync,” the voice activated system currently used by some Ford (in North America) and Fiat (in Europe) cars.  That’s fine by me as long as my car’s engine doesn’t stall in the middle of the highway because Microsoft’s software inexplicably decides to, uh- stop working.

Update: Evidently, PC Magazine thinks the MS/Hyundai alliance is a good idea.  We’ll get cars with better cockpits, more multimedia integration and cheaper GPS systems.

I love ComputerWorld’s sub headline: “Hate Vista, laugh at Zune, dismiss Windows Mobile? You just might love Microsoft’s Windows for cars.”

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The Korea Times today reports that foreign investment has all but evaporated in the wake of five years of Roh Moo Hyun’s government and its handling of foreign-investment bête noire Lone Star Funds. Well, duh.

Bad news for hub dreamers:

“I don’t think Korea can change in the near future to reverse the poor FDI trend,” [former Morgan Stanley Asia economist Andy] Xie said.

“Korea may be unwilling to make the changes to attract FDI,” he added. “Korea may never become a truly open economy. The mere fact that people always talk about foreign versus local means that the economy cannot be truly open.”

See also this topic, and a handy chart showing the decline in net FDI, at Korea Law Blog.

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John Kennedy of Globalvoicesonline.org has posted interesting look at a Chinese exchange troll, allegedly living here in Korea, who claims that Koreans are now persecuting Chinese students — the same ones who were only trying to protect the “sacred flame” (sure). While this poster’s grasp on reality is blatantly distorted, some of the Chinese comments are pretty funny because it seems that quite a few Chinese know what dung smells like as well and they waste no time calling bs on it.

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Park Kyung-ni(ree), one of the most important Korean novelists has passed. Her masterwork entitled “The Land” (toji) is believed to be the summation of modern Korean literature. The first two sections have been translated into English and can be found here.

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