Don’t get your panties in a twist redux

This has got to be the fifth or sixth time since I came to Korea when I’ve read about some guy getting busted for stealing women’s panties. This time it’s an office worker in his 40s who was caught for stealing over 200 pieces of women’s underwear.
According to one of the English-language dailies in Korea, [...]

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Serving up Chicken, Korean-style

From the moment I had my first taste of Korean food—a hearty bowl of that famous vegetable and rice medley, Bibimbap—when I first arrived in Korea, I have been a big fan of Korean cuisine.
Over the years I have come to enjoy a variety of Korean food especially some of the spicier chigae (pronounced chee-gay) [...]

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Investigators Probed over Free Drinks and Sex

There are some times when the way the news is reported in Korea that it reads like a Franz Kafka short story or novel. Take for example this news tidbit about the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office internal affairs division investigating two officials on suspicion of receiving entertainment at a room salon (a “legal” bordello where women [...]

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Rats

The names have been changed to protect the innocent
You meet a lot of interesting people when you’ve been living overseas for as long as I have, which if you count this month is now 20 years and five months, not counting the two years I was stationed in Panama and subtracting the two months I [...]

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If you don’t succeed at first, try, try again

According to a story by AP, a 68-year-old woman in South Korea who tried to pass the written exam for a driver’s license almost daily since 2005 finally got a passing grade on her 950th try.
Cha Sa-soon persevered and passed, not with flying colors, but squeaked by with the minimum score 60 out [...]

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Want to prevent H1NI? Wear Red Underwear

Back in 1993, I knew this one Korean woman quite well who had just gotten a job. One night, not long after she had just started working, she stopped over my apartment with a small gift for me: red underwear.
“What’s with the red underwear?” I asked her.
Actually, they were red long johns, but underwear just [...]

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Tips for Teaching English in Korea

Tips for Teaching English in Korea.
 
If you are thinking about teaching English in Korea, please read this article. If you are already an ESL or EFL teacher you might want to consider teaching English in Korea.

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Someone stole my new Doc Martens!

Yesterday, I bought my first new pair of shoes in four years.
The Doc Martens that I had bought in the States back in 2005 had served my feet well. As Forrest Gump mused, “there’s an awful lot you can tell about a person by their shoes, where they’re going and where they’ve been.”
In my case [...]

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Swine Flu Paranoia in Korea: Alert Status

It was just a matter of time in South Korea when the Swine Flu paranoia reached a new high prompting authorities to raise the alert status to a “red level” the highest level.
 
There’s been at least one or two articles a day in the Korea Times—the newspaper that I read daily—about Swine Flu [...]

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Korea to replace TOEFL with their own test

In another weird and absurd story to surface about English study in South Korea, this time it’s the Minister of Education coming up with an idea to replace TOEIC and TOEFL tests in Korea.
According to an article in the country’s oldest English language newspaper, “Korea is pushing for a state-developed, standardized English test that will [...]

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