Swine Flu in Korea

Swine flu paranoia seems to be running rampant in Korea these days judging from some of the articles I have come across in the Korea Times.
In one article it was reported that “as the number of people infected with Influenza A has surpassed 3,000 in South Korea, more schools have postponed the beginning [...]

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Lost in space?

South Korea launched its first rocket today after having failed to launch it last week due to a software glitch. However, the satellite on top of the Russian-made rocket failed to reach orbit according to an article in the Korea Times:
“South Korea’s first space rocket successfully lifted off from the country’s launch pad on the [...]

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I shook Kim Dae-jung’s hand

I found it somewhat amusing back in January 1993, when I started teaching at Yonsei University in western Seoul that my apartment (actually a room in a boarding house located in Yonhui-dong) was a few homes away from soon to be former president Roh Tae-woo’s house and a few blocks away from another former Korean [...]

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Boiling Mad

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, or in the case of a 33-year-old woman in Busan, hell hath no fury like a woman who suspects her husband of committing adultery and then pours boiling oil on him while he is asleep.
According to police in Busan, the wife boiled the oil and poured it [...]

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Where’s the (US) beef?

Obviously not on Korean actress Kim Min-sun’s plate for some time because she has been sued by a U.S. beef importer for 300-million-won ($250,000) compensation “for allegedly misleading the public into a boycott of their product and damaging sales” according to an article in the Korea Times today.
You might recall or perhaps heard of the [...]

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Stealing a kiss? How about hypnotizing for one?

A modern-day Svengali, in this case, a 32-year-old Korean man, was fined for attempting to hypnotize a woman and then kiss her.
According to the Seoul Central District Court last week, Mr. Park (very rarely in Korean newspapers do they give the full name; unless it is a foreigner) an employee (supposedly a hypnotist according to [...]

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Panty Raids in Korea

In all the years that I have lived in Korea I have come across stories about men stealing women’s underwear for various proclivities—perverted or not—from clotheslines, laundry racks and rooms, but never an all-out panty raid. And not like the one reported in the Korea Times this week:
Conflicts are deepening between female and male students [...]

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Way to go Bill!

Unless you haven’t heard the news already, former President Bill Clinton has won the freedom of two American journalists who were sentenced to hard labor in North Korea. Clinton had gone to Pyongyang this past Tuesday to see what he could do about having the North release Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who have been [...]

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You know it’s summer in Korea…

When the newspapers all run the same photo of a crowded beach around the same time. In fact, it’s a photograph similar to ones used in the past.
In this year’s photo (borrowed from the Korea Times) of crowded Haeundae Beach near Pusan the beach does not seem as crowded as it has in the past. [...]

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Remember North Korea?

A few months ago, with North Korea flexing its muscles and firing off a few missiles, it looked like the Norks were not playing a high stakes of chicken to see who would flinch first. Indeed, when Pyongyang announced they were restarting one of its nuclear reactors, the Korean peninsula was thrown into the throes [...]

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