The Marmot's Hole

What was that? You want to chip in an F-15 or two?

by Robert Koehler on February 6, 2012

Time to kick the tires and light the fires—the JoongAng Ilbo has given us the green light to wack the Syrians:

Now the international community must persuade and pressure Russia and China to change their actions. If they persist in having their way, the rest of the world must come up with ways to force Assad to step down without the cooperation of Russia and China.

For example, the global community can give positive consideration to the idea of providing weapons to the Syrian rebels. Furthermore, the United States, the EU and Middle Eastern nations should push ahead with air raids on Syrian troops to disrupt their ruthless attacks on civilians, just as the NATO-led alliance did in Libya. Dictators’ atrocities must be stopped. The international community must stand up to a massive anti-humanitarian crime once again.

It’s almost bombs-away at the Kyunghyang, too.

Of course, what I’m NOT hearing is offers to contribute a fighter wing or two to help. Seeing how the “international community” has this great responsibility and all…

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Not sure if this really qualifies as ‘anti-Americanism’

by Robert Koehler on February 6, 2012

Was just scanning the headlines at the Korea Times when this caught my eye:

“Opposition pushes anti-US sentiment as elections near”

Ooo, sexy. The problem is, though, the article doesn’t really talk about “anti-Americanism.”

It’s about the Democratic United Party’s pushing opposition to the KORUS FTA ahead of the election.

One could argue this is hypocritical (it was Roh Moo-hyun who signed the deal in the first place), cynical (I seriously doubt a DUP-led government would annul the agreement) and potentially disastrous (on the off-chance that they ARE serious), but “anti-American”?

Not that I really doubt the DUP’s willingness to cynically play anti-Americanism, but wouldn’t it be best first to let the party actually engage in said anti-Americanism?

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North Korean accordionists take on ‘Take On Me’

by Robert Koehler on February 6, 2012

Oh yeah, play it, comrades!

Hey, that’s almost as cool as the Reel Big Fish cover. And reportedly, it’s legit.

(HT to Stephen Sheiko)

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Some stuff at my photoblog

by Robert Koehler on February 6, 2012

Here are some photo & travel links, and here are some snaps of Sunday’s trip to Cheorwon.

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Open Thread #228

by Robert Koehler on February 4, 2012

Keep warm, folks. And enjoy the weekend.

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A couple of fun links

by Robert Koehler on February 3, 2012

- In the LA Times, check out John M. Glionna’s story on barber Lee Nam-yul. Nice photos by this Matt Douma fellow, too.

- At the Huffington Post, John R. Eperjesi writes about Korean mountains and talks with Roger Shepherd, one of the authors of “Baekdu-daegan Trail: Hiking Korea’s Mountain Spine” and founder of Hike Korea. Oh, Shepherd will be holding a photo exhibit at Gwanghwamun Station Gallery on Feb 17—22: check out some of his beautiful shots of mountains in both South and North Korea here.

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Cat and Mouse and Prez Lee

by Bobby McGill on February 3, 2012

From the KT today:

“Drawings of a cat and a computer mouse decorating the packs of KT&G’s Raison Blue cigarettes are the talk of the town as people joke that the computer mouse brings to mind President Lee Myung-bak.”

Read the rest for yourself and see the accompanying photo. The first thing I noticed about the cat is that it looks like it’s breaking wind or as we say back home, “cutting the cheese.”

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Harvard, Princeton targeted in Asian-American discrimination probe

by Robert Koehler on February 3, 2012

Bloomberg reports that the US Education Department is “probing complaints that Harvard University and Princeton University discriminate against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions.”

Here you go:

The new complaints, along with a case appealed last September to the U.S. Supreme Court challenging preferences for blacks and Hispanics in college admissions, may stir up the longstanding debate about whether elite universities discriminate against Asian-Americans, the nation’s fastest- growing and most affluent racial category.

Like Jews in the first half of the 20th century, who faced quotas at Harvard, Princeton, and other Ivy League schools, Asian-Americans are over-represented at top universities relative to their population, yet must meet a higher standard than other applicants based on measures such as test scores and high school grades, according to several academic studies.

Let the fun begin.

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Moonies (including Washington Times chairman!) crossed DMZ on condolence visit to North Korea?

by Robert Koehler on February 3, 2012

It has been belatedly confirmed that three Korean-Americans—Unification Church international president Moon Hyung-jin, Pyeonghwa Motors CEO Park Sang-kwon and Washington Times chairman Douglas D.M. Joo—crossed the DMZ on Dec 24 and visited Pyongyang to offer condolences for the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Now, Yonhap suggests that the government kept quiet the fact that the visit—which came two days prior to Kim Dae-jung’s widow and the Hyundai chairwoman’s visit to North Korea—was made via the inter-Korean border by Kaesong. In fact, the Unification Ministry at the time said they learned of the visit via North Korean media reports, when in fact the government had opened the land route across the DMZ for the men, explaining that since the men were American, they could visit North Korea anyway through China, so why opened up the DMZ for them.

PS: Yes, I suppose blood is thicker than water (as are investments, of which the Unification Church has several in North Korea), but still, does anyone else find it unseemly that the chairman of one a conservative-leaning American newspaper is paying condolences to the North Koreans?

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Chris Golightly is one angry white dude

by Robert Koehler on February 3, 2012

Chris Golightly, an American contestant on the Korean talent program “Superstar K,” is really, really mad about allegations that he slept with about 10 members of his online fan club. So angry, in fact, that he’s posting angry messages on Facebook and threatening to release photos.

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Korea only 13th drunkest nation in the world

by Robert Koehler on February 3, 2012

Or so says a WHO report, apparently.

13th place is a bit disappointing, of course, but on the positive side, I believe Korea was the only non-European nation in the top 25. And they beat the Irish (#15).

You can read the report in .pdf form here. I do question what it means, though, when Mongolia—a nation whose own Health Ministry put male alcoholism rates at 22% in 2006—can fly under the radar.

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Meet Saenuri Party

by thekorean on February 3, 2012

This is it — the Grand National Party is no more. The artist formerly known as GNP announced that it is changing its name to Saenuri Party. Suggested by a renowned advertisement copywriter hired by the (former) GNP, “sae nuri” is supposed to mean “new world” or “new nation” in Korean.

Apparently, (former) GNP’s Emergency Response Committee almost unanimously opposed the name. One ERC member complained that it sounded like a dog’s name. (And not just any dog – Roh Moo-Hyun’s dog’s name was Nuri.) Yet at the end of the day, the copywriter, backed by Park Geun-Hye and (former) GNP leadership, carried the day.

Unsurprisingly, derisions are, ahem, flying in. “Sae” can also mean “bird,” which gives the critics ample ammunition for “bird brain”-related jokes. (Check out this article for the picture of Saenuri’s new logo proposed by an Internet critic, replacing the red dot in the current GNP logo with the red Angry Bird.) “Nuri” can remind one of the verb “nurida,” i.e. “to enjoy the spoils” — a fitting name for a party of fat cats, according to the critics. Even the conservative pundit Jo Gap-Je joined the fun, calling the name “fit for a kindergarten” and pointing out that “nuri” could also mean “locust” in traditional Korean.

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Broken arrows and crooked dicks

by Robert Koehler on February 2, 2012

First the film “Dogani” sparked outrage about the light sentences handed out to sex offenders.

Now the film “Broken Arrow” (based on this incident) is highlighting public distrust in the judiciary.

Of course, when you read rulings like this*, it’s not hard to understand why that distrust exists. Stories such as this, of a judge virtually getting sacked in a move widely believed (rightly or wrongly) to be retaliation for said judge’s posting of nasty comments about President Lee Myung-bak on Facebook, don’t help, either (see the Hankyoreh editorial here).

*As John Francis Power pointed out Twitter, as outrageous as the “crooked dick” ruling might seem, there’s a lot we don’t know, and it’s easy to judge sentencing as an observer. I suppose we could also point out that if Duke has taught us anything—that is, besides that in a college setting and with the right coaching, whiteboys can still play good basketball—it’s that we shouldn’t rush to convict in sexual assault cases.

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And if you need more ‘SNSD on Letterman’ commentary…

by Robert Koehler on February 2, 2012

I direct you to Mike’s post at Scribblings of the Metropolitician.

Here’s what I’ll say about K-pop. As with most pop music, I hate it—a lot of it is manufactured bubble-gum crap. On the plus side, though, unlike with American pop music, I’ve never dispaired for the future of civilization after listening to a K-pop song. In that regard, I wish it luck in the States, “codes” or no “codes.”

I’m going to listen to some Kim Kwang-seok now…

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Speaking of comely Asian lasses…

by Robert Koehler on February 2, 2012

Scanning the news, I got a glimps of Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar.

Wow. Just wow.

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What was that? Where’s the video for SNSD on Letterman?

by Robert Koehler on February 1, 2012

Why, here it is:

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The ‘crooked dick’ defense? Really?

by Robert Koehler on February 1, 2012

While I’m usually inclined to roll my eyes when reading stuff like this (see also here), sometimes I read a headline and think, “Hmm, maybe she’s got a point.”

An SNU doctoral student convicted in his first trial of continuously sexually assaulting a female masters student whose thesis he was supervising was let off on appeal last month after his defense team—led by a former court president—argued that since his penis was severely bent to one side, sex could not have taken place without the active assistance of the woman.

Making matters worse, the Kyunghyang reported that the victim was ostrocized in her research room after the incident, and that her supervising professor coaxed her to settle. Claims had been made that during the trial, she had been asked questions that made her feel shame, too.

This has SNU students thinking of the 2010 film “Dogani,” which sparked outrage at the light sentences handed out to perpetrators of sexual assault.

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No More Cool T-Shirts For Korea – South Korea and the Growing problem with Credit Cards

by R. Elgin on February 1, 2012

Imagine that you have been buying cool T-shirts from an American company for several years and in 2012, you go to place another online order for a custom T-shirt but, when you try to select your country for shipping, South Korea is no longer listed. Imagine that the company you have ordered from many times in the past no longer sells to Korea because of “a large number of fraudulent transactions that we have received from that region in the past”.
This is just what happened recently when I went to purchase another T-shirt from the very cool designbyhumans.com site. The customer service representative was nice enough to explain that due to a large amount of credit card fraud, Korea is off their list of countries that they do business with. I had to ask just what could have happened that would influence a company to ban doing business with an entire country!?

To understand this better, we should look at the recent history of the credit card in South Korea. Credit card usage in South Korea began in 1969 with Samsung/Shinsegae but really became commonplace in 1987 and with the revised tax law in 1999, credit cards were for mainstream use(cite).
Since that time, problems have risen that have caused economic trouble for Korea. Koreans fell in love with using the credit card, so much so that in 2002 women in mini-skirts were hawking cards on the sidewalks, in the subway, on the college campus. South Koreans had 148 million credit cards — an average of 4 credit cards per person by the end of 2002 (cite).
The real start down the slippery slope of Korean debt came with Kim Dae Jung’s use of credit cards to improve the Korean economy. The government issued annual tax rebates based on the amount of purchases, and required all retailers to accept credit cards. Each time a consumer used a credit card, the transaction was entered into a lottery that awarded cash prizes(cite). As with any deal with Satan, this too-good-to-be-true economic surge came with a price – the interest rate for credit card overdue payments was incredibly high, and if you were unable to pay back your overdue loan within six months, the total amount to pay back doubled. Naturally, the average fellow thought “hey, why not take out another credit card to pay off the others that are due” and this in turn lead to disaster. According to Kim Yeong-Seon:

As more and more people failed to make payments, credit card companies began to limit the number of new accounts and prohibit cash advances, causing countless numbers of Koreans to default on their credit card debt.

As the credit crisis worsened, crime rates, especially robberies and assaults, began to increase throughout the country. In March 2002, police arrested four college students for attempting to rob a bank using automatic rifles. According to the police, the students said they needed money to pay off $11,300 in debts they had accumulated buying a car, brand-name clothes and luxury goods for their girlfriends. Stories of suicides by those who faced extraordinary financial difficulties also began to appear in the media. As of the end of 2003, about 4 million South Koreans – nearly 10 percent of the entire population – had defaulted on credit card debt.

Even LG Card ran out of cash in 2003, bringing it to the verge of bankruptcy. The government started a Credit Recovery Supporting Service that enabled people to reschedule their debt and the credit companies changed their business practices so that within three years time the credit crisis had been averted.
Now, moving forward in time, we have almost the same conditions here again. Koreans now own more than 100 million credit cards – nearly the same number as in 2002 and South Koreans now owe more money as a percentage of their disposable income than Americans did at the start of the sub-prime crisis, and a lot more than they did at the outset of Korea’s last credit card crisis in 2003 (cite). Despite financial authorities’ strong measures against excessive credit card use, South Koreans are expected to have charged a total of 540-trillion won on credit last year. The amount will be the second highest annual credit spending since credit card transactions were first recorded (cite). As per Jasper Kim from the Asia-Pacific Global Research Group in Seoul, “Korea has a unique debt problem, it has nearly $1 trillion (USD) worth of personal debt, half of which are credit cards and a notable portion dealing with mortgages”. . . Combined with the steadily increasing household debt, this is a problem that could easily lead to an economic disaster for most people in South Korea.

Source: Financial Times

Though this abundance of credit cards is a real threat to the economy here, the real problem and reason that I can no longer order T-shirts from South Korea is the lax security involving credit card usage in Korea and the resulting explosion of credit card fraud. Recently Korean organized crime has been behind illegal online gambling and credit card fraud operations out of the Philippines. Various countries and hackers such as Shin Un-Sun (and his group) ran a sophisticated hacking operation out of the Philippines, hacking various large Korean corporations as well as the Korean stock exchange itself (cite). Cards are usually cloned by criminals, in various countries, and then criminals come to Korea to shop or go online to shop and this is very easy since no card verification takes place. Nowadays anyone use can use a card in Seoul without signing a credit slip and without any identification or signature verification. Due to this incredibly relaxed atmosphere in South Korea and the use of cards with easily copied magnetic stripes, credit card fraud has become pandemic.
Though the Financial Supervisory Service in South Korea has just now declared that credit cards with the magnetic stripe – the easiest cards to clone and commit fraud with – are to be replaced by cards that contain an embedded chip (chip and PIN system), this comes only after a tremendous amount of fraud has taken place. Though chip credit cards have been around since 2003, more than 20 million magnetic strip cards are still being used in the market (cite). The chip and PIN system though has already been hacked in Europe and changes will need to be made to the existing technology here in Korea to avoid what has already been a growing problem in Europe.
Meanwhile, I still wonder if I can just mail designbyhumans a twenty-dollar bill instead of dealing with an American bank.

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