Occidentalism

“The International Finance Center (IFC) in Yeouido is struggling to attract tenants for its two newly-opened office towers, denting Seoul City’s ambitious plan to make it Northeast Asia’s financial hub.

Seoul City signed a contract with AIG Real Estate allowing the latter to use the IFC site for 99 years in return for paying annual rent. From 2006 to 2010, AIG did not pay rent but from 2011 through 2017, it is required to pay 1 percent of the site’s appraised value.”

If Asia is a bicycle wheel, then the Hub of Asia is presumably Hong Kong.

Korea is on the rim.

Lee Hyo-sik, Korea Times, 26 November 2012

A Korean woman had more success in the Korean courts than Lone Star in dealing with Korean financial products, as is related in the following story.

A 35-year-old Korean woman met a 33 year old Korean man through a friendly movie-going group in May 2010.

They dated until March 2011 then married in July 2011, after the Korean man artfully pretended that he had graduated from the economics departments of a leading private university in Seoul, was working for a trading company and had an apartment in Sillim-dong in southern Seoul.

After demanding a divorce the woman took the case to court and was awarded compensation of 67 million won ($60,000), including money spent on the wedding.

Korea Times, 26 November 2012

“A Korean court recently denied the request of the Korean Medical Association (KMA) to ban the Oriental Medicine Doctors Union from changing its name to the Association of Korean Medicine.

Oriental medicine doctors had been using the name the Association of Korean Oriental Medicine, but they changed the name to the Association of Korean Medicine in March … the KMA is adamant that the names are easily confused.”

Yoon Ja-young, Korea Times, 23 November 2012

People all over the Korean Peninsula laughed this off saying: “Do you think Koreans are so gullible? What next? You think people can be conned into believing that Starpreya is the same as Starbucks? Or that BMW Room Salon is Bavarian Motor Werke Room Salon? Totally, laughable. Everyone knows that this is just a marketing gimmick. Like saying a Hyundai has lower fuel consumption than a Honda.”

Scooter on the sidewalk

Ran over me

The cops just looked

Don’t care ‘bout me

.

They only thinking of a restaurant

that’s got glass tables

They can watch the girls

While they are …ing

.

Scooters on the sidewalks

Cops just can’t stop it

.

Every day all over the country

It’s just like Vietnam

Don’t give a stuff about

the humble pedestrian

.

Only care about themselves

Just a thousand reflections

of their own sweet selves, selves, selves

Scooters on the sidewalks

Scooters on the sidewalks

Scooters on the sidewalks

Tossing out pamphlets

Of girls sitting on glass tables

Doing things for ajeossi

Ajeossi laps it up

And says it’s fun

Gets on the table

Drops his daks

And waves his bum

.

Scooter man on the sidewalk, admiring his reflection, in his wing mirror, scooter man …

“In 1992, the city of Songtan and USFK signed an off limits agreement stating that they would ban soldiers from any establishments in the area that violated the law in terms of sanitation, health care, fire safety, or general safety.

Pyeongtaek asked the USFK to scrap the agreement in 1997 after continued complaints that it was an illegitimate exercise of authority by USFK. But USFK continues operating the system by itself – another ongoing form of sovereignty violation.”

The Hankyoreh, 13 July 2012 © 2012 The Hankyoreh Media Company

Sovereignty violation? Sovereignty violation? The only sovereignty violation is that the second sentence may as well read: “Pyeongyang ordered USFK to scrap the agreement in 1997 after continued complaints that it was an illegitimate exercise of authority by USFK. “

“North Korea’s state-run media has issued rare criticism of a Chinese mining company that accused it of being a “nightmare” to do business with.

Chinese firm Xiyang was working on an iron ore venture, but said it stopped after facing unreasonable demands.

Xiyang failed to honour investment promises and was to blame, KCNA news agency says.

A North Korean spokesman issued a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) saying that Xiyang “is chiefly to blame from the legal point of view”.

“It [Xiyang] has carried out only 50% of its investment obligations though almost four years have past since the contract took effect,” the spokesman said.

Xiyang said it invested more than $37m (£23.32m) on the project, but shelved it after North Korea asked for significant changes to the contract.

The company also said that North Korea violated its own investment laws, telling Reuters news agency that it had been “cheated”.

“They just don’t have the conditions for foreigners to invest. They say they welcome investment but they don’t have the legal or social foundations,” Wu Xisheng, vice-general manager, told Reuters.”

BBC 5 September 2012

In the summer time when the weather is high
You can chase right up and touch the sky
When the weather’s right
You got wastewater, you got wastewater on your mind
If you have a drink, take it to a lab
And see what you can find

MUNGO JERRY

So Cool

Piano Cascade, an artificial waterfall and children’s playground relies on water from Namyangju City’s Hwado Sewage Disposal Plant. Piano Cascade has about 190,000 visitors per year; children included.

At least 10,000 tonnes of untreated wastewater has been poured into a tributary of the Han River and Paldang Lake since 1997 after Namyangju City installed a secret wastewater outlet.

Joongang Daily, 22 August 2012

After South Korea beat Japan 2-0 in the bronze medal play-off last Friday, Korean footballer Park Jong-woo ran around, holding up a sign with the Korean national flag and a slogan saying: 독도우리땅 (Dokdo Our Land).

The Dokdo Rocks are known as Takeshima in Japan and have been disputed territory between Japan and Korea for more than half a century.

The Korean Olympic Committee claims that it was not Park’s sign, but a flag he had seized from a fan, stressing that the provocative incident was not preplanned.

The IOC committee said it would withhold the bronze medal from Park until the case is reviewed by FIFA.

The statutes of both the IOC and FIFA prohibit political statements by athletes and players.

Joachim Won’s barrister, Winston Terracini, SC, said: ”It’s a very satisfying result and Mr Won, through his legal representatives, had offered to plead guilty to manslaughter from the very beginning but the Crown rejected it.”

Joachim Won came home from work sick in May 2010 to find his 44-year-old wife, Anna, having sex with his friend Hyung Mo Lee.

Won, then 56, went to the kitchen, grabbed a knife, and stabbed Mr Lee, 48, seven times, allegedly shouting ”you must die” or ”he must die”.

The Crown prosecutor, Paul Lynch, said the affair between Mrs Won and Mr Lee began after they and their spouses began playing golf together through a Korean social group called the Fantastic Association in 2008.

Mr Lee’s wife suspected the affair after finding explicit pictures on his phone and Mr Lee admitted to his wife that he was having a relationship with Mrs Won when she confronted him in late 2009.

Mr Lynch said soon after Mr Lee’s wife confronted Mrs Won in a car park at Eastwood, telling her: ”I know everything”.

By Easter 2010, Mr Won and his wife were having marriage problems and began sleeping in separate rooms.

Several weeks later, Mr Lee, who was unemployed (백수), offered to do some painting work (Lee must have been watching too many Benny Hill re-runs whilst unemployed) at the Won’s Pendle Hill home.

The defence of provocation was abolished in Tasmania in 2003 and Victoria in 2005, following a recommendation by the Victorian Law Reform Commission which found the law ”partly legitimates killings committed in anger”.

Read all about it in the Sydeny Morning Herald

Green hat, we all know what that means in Chinese culture

GI Korea at ROK Drop asked his readers to accept The Kushibo Challenge.

“How would everybody feel if our buddy Kushibo was parking by the Aloha Tower and got beat down by a bunch of Kiwis?”

USS Crommelin at Aloha Tower

http://rokdrop.com/2012/07/09/update-on-the-osan-handcuff-scandal/

Some droll replies:

tbonetylr
11:58 pm on July 9th, 201214
“How would everybody feel if our buddy Kushibo was parking by the Aloha Tower and got beat down by a bunch of Kiwis?”

Bobby Ray
1:05 am on July 10th, 201216
“How would everybody feel if our buddy Kushibo was parking by the Aloha Tower and got beat down by a bunch of Kiwis?”
Maybe it would knock some manners into that boy’s head. I never saw nobody run his mouth with such uninformed nonsense and then not have the common courtesy to apologize when he was found out to be all kinds of wrong.

Glans
3:07 am on July 10th, 201220
Bobby Ray, beating a guy up doesn’t help him. ChickenHead beat me up, and now I’m a retard.

Stephen
3:58 am on July 10th, 201221
kushibo would enjoy it, if Nora did the beating.

+++

Reminded me of The Nora Challenge almost exactly six years ago.

They smack him down here,
They smack him down there,
They smack him down, damn near everywhere,
That ubiquitous, faintly ridiculous, kushibo.

Chinasmack has a story of two (suspected) Korean men beating up two young Chinese women.

“In the video, the two young women who were beaten up can be seen initially on the far left side of the counter deciding on what to order. There appears to be three open registers, and the two potentially Korean-speaking men appear to have initially lined up at the left register, while another man had lined up at the rightmost register.

The women walked over from the far left to queue up behind the young woman at the “center” open register. After that woman is served, the two young women who were beaten walk forward to order and that is when the allegedly Korean men, who are used to the Korean male privilege concept of Korean males being always served first, start yelling and then attack the two young Chinese women.”

allegedly-korean-men-beat-up-chinese-girls-at-chengdu-kfc