Dear Kushibo

Ah, what's in today's mail bag?

Hey, Kushibo,

I totally need your help. I was out taking pictures of the beautiful Seoul scenery, just collecting digital memories of my time in this wonderful country. Well, some ice queen desperately in need of a good lay got upset that I was taking pictures of her and she called a cop over. He forced me to show the pictures I had taken and — horror of horrors — the camera's viewing settings just happened to be on super close-up, so all these innocent pictures I'd taken looked like crotch shots and butts. 

Now they're getting ready to throw the book at me. Instead of one phone call, they're giving me one email, because this is the most wired country in the world, a technological marvel. I heard you're media-connected, so I was hoping you could make a call and get me temporarily listed as a Chosun Ilbo staff photographer so they'll let me off and this will all be behind me. 

If that doesn't work, can you please get your buddy Brendon Carr to defend me. He doesn't care for my kind, but I know he'll do it if you ask. And try to get a discount, if you can, because by helping me he's giving back to the community.

My flight leaves tomorrow, so they have to let me go. I'm an American citizen, and it's legal in the U.S. of A. to allegedly take pictures of college-age women's Y-spots.

Sincerely,
Shutterbuggery in Shinchon

P.S. The food here in prison sucks. They're feeding us yukkaejang. 

P.P.S. Sorry for all those times I attacked you at Korea Beat and Hub of Sparkle with multiple user names (I think they're called "socks"), plus all the fake kushibo posts. Won't happen again. 

Help!

Dear Shutterbuggery, 

You stupid fu¢k. Lose this email address and don't ever contact me again. 

Yours,

Kushibo

Helpful things from the Interwebs

Just some stuff I found while looking for other stuff...

1. How to survive a plane crash. Useful information, I suppose, if you're in a plane crash. Actually, it's more about how to survive after the crash. First rule: Don't trust Ben.
   
2. The best ice creams available in the US for under 150 calories. So good, you can eat three or four of them!
3. Why they make you turn off your portable devices during takeoff and landing. 
4. Cell phone-using drivers kill thousands of people in the US each year
5. A miles-long stretch of mystery goo in the Arctic Ocean
6. A soft-core porn erotic retelling of Pirates of the Caribbean. Enjoy it on your iPhone.
   

Below is the NSFW* trailer to the Pirates video.



* Well, not safe where I work. You might work in a brothel.

Teachers + gambling = you in the news

Courtesy of Korea Beat, we have the story of Korean educators getting busted for gambling. And not really high-stakes gambling either, about 1000 won per point in go-stop.

As I mentioned at KB, this is interesting because it combines two things that I’ve mentioned frequently to put all the supposedly “xenophobic” news in perspective.

First, that Korean nationals are often arrested due to anti-gambling laws. Indeed, when the Poker-8 were arrested, a lot of commenters were claiming only foreigners are caught up in anti-gambling efforts, even though I and others were citing cases that contradicted this.

Anyway, the second thing is that these arrestees are teachers. Indeed, it underscores a part of the big picture that the K-blogs tend to miss: that the media assault on foreign teachers is part of an overriding social and journalistic theme in Korean society that teachers in general in Korea (both foreign and local) have been abusing their position of trust and privilege that neo-Confucian society has accorded them.

KoreaBeat noted, by the way, that one difference in this recent news of the educators in Poryŏng (Boryeong) and that of the Poker-8, is that those Korean teachers were not arrested for drugs (actually, only two of the Poker-8 were). And that means this is as good a time as any for the hopelessly innocent Kushibo to ask what the hell this is supposed to be:

That's a screen shot from the news video of the Poker-8's arrest, something found on the premises there.

I just realized iPhone and iPorn would sound the same in Korean

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Um, nice flowers

Any excuse to put up pictures of 전지현...

I will say that I particularly like this look. Whether Asians or Caucasians, etc., I am especially partial to the light skin and dark hair look. But considering the strategically placed flora on the dress in the first picture, I might be a tad embarrassed to take Miss Chŏn out to a nice restaurant wearing that. Or am I just a lascivious pyŏntae? 

Mongolian neo-Nazis

Courtesy of The Marmot's Hole (he'll read Time Asia so you don't have to), we have Mongolian neo-Nazis. 

Fascination with Nazi-era chic? Anger about foreigners mixing with local girls? Beating up said foreigners? Why, it's the Korean Wave! (I kid. I kid. I kid because I love... to kid.)

[above: Tse Bar, a Nazi bar in Mongolia whose owner can't find the H key. Full-sized Mongolian in Nazi uniform, only $139 on Ebay. Er... Nazis in glass boxes shouldn't throw scones. Okay, I've got nothing.]

Seriously, though, this is hardly surprising, given the fascination — almost fetishization — of Nazi-era chic in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Mongolia's neo-Nazis actually committing violence in solidarity with the Nazis' eugenics and racist views is a new thing. 

Still, criticize East Asia's economic powerhouses all you want for this, but it's not as bad as having real neo-Nazis actually committing real violence. Just sayin'. 

A total partial eclipse of the heart Hub

Arvinsign complains that all the icky weather on the peninsula lately may mean that he'll miss the partial solar eclipse that is to arrive on Friday evening at 7:18 p.m. The eclipse will be at its maximum at 7:37, three minutes before sunset, when 27% of the sun will be blocked.

Look on the bright side, Arv: Looking at solar eclipses is one of two things that can make you go blind if you do it too often.

[above: Every few years, ancient peoples in the Japanese archipelago, lacking a full understanding of astronomy, were terrified to witness the deity Pakkuman crossing the sky. To stave off the horror, they would try to throw fruit in its path, lest it come down to earth and devour the virgins or the town, or at least the least skanky of the villagers. Giant gold balls positioned in front of him were thought to give the celestial being the power to vanquish ghosts that had been plaguing the town. Millennia later, men from Ōta, Japan, would harness this legend, developing a popular video game. Okay, I frankly don't know where the hell I'm going with this, so I'll just stop now.]

Yonhap on dishonest taxis

Believe it or not, kiddies, the Korean media does contain a lot of stories about Koreans behaving badly, including taxi drivers ripping off Japanese tourists, which is the justification for expanding the "international taxis."

While "international taxi" sounds better than "foreigner taxis," I just don't have the heart to tell Korea National Tourism Organization that an "international taxi" would be one that takes the passenger from one country to another. I just don't.

Ah, taxis are the last refuge of bad English. I still recall the days of the Intercourse Discomfort Reporting Center.

No more H1N1 counts

With ninety-two new cases, including dozens that were not directly transmitted from abroad, the Ministry of Health, Welfare, and Family Affairs has decided to stop counting the number of new cases of so-called "swine flu." The government still plans to set aside 175 billion won for flu vaccinations, which it expects to be ready in November. 

HABO 2 — North Koreans who need to learn English

HABO as in "help a brother out." The personal narrative of a lot of Anglophones in Korea —non-kyopo and kyopo alike, including a lot of non-English teachers — is that they're here "helping out Korea" and doing some good. While that's true for a lot of people I know, it's easy to see that for at least a few it's a b.s. rationalization of their, ahem, bohemian lifestyle. 

Anyhoo, if you'd really like to do something that would help, go find a school or organization helping to resettled North Korean refugees. They need your help with English, not only to get ahead in the workplace but even just to get by living in Korean cities today. 

Kim Jong-il's grandson spotted at Rain concert

It's on Fox News, so it must be true. [UPDATE: The Korea Times also has it, so it must really really be true.] 

This purportedly happened in Macau, where the fourteen-year-old was with four South Korean buddies. The kid is the son of prodigal son Kim Jong-nam, a man who seems hell-bent on pissing off his dad, so this report may mean nothing except that the global media has decided to make Kim Jong-il and his brood the new Michael Jackson, who himself was the new Princess Diana. Perhaps it's a good thing that the paparazzi's ability to literally hound famous people to death is being directed at the Dear Leader. 

Seriously, though, given Kim Jong-nam's status as on the outs with his family, it's not clear if this really is of any substance at all, except to demonstrate how obsessed with North Korea some western media has become. 

The boy's father paid $1400 for the tickets to see 비 — and that to me is the most shocking thing in the article. I hope they were Hong Kong dollars.

[left: "Bi" was once short for "biracial relationship with bisexual Megan Fox," but now it can mean "bi-Korean friendship." Really, who was the genius who told him to Romanize his name as "Bi"? "Pi" would have been better, or "Bee," but probably not "Pee."]

[below: Justin Timberlake, also known as "The American Bi." His status as the US counterpart to Rain contractually obligates him to pose for hundreds of photos each week with his shirt off. Oh, and let me be the first to say: "Photoshop!" Oh, and please excuse the blog while I try to shift to an entirely different dynamic of young, heterosexual women.]

Color me skeptical — for now (Or: You can't spell "pancreatic condition" without C,O,R,E,A)

Joshua at One Free Korea has an interesting piece on the beginning of the end of Kim Jong-il, in the wake of reports that KJI may have pancreatic cancer. I wonder, though, how reliable is the pancreatic cancer claim? 

I'm sometimes too skeptical and contrarian for my own good. But to me it seems indeed that the media (South Korean, Japanese, American, and European) are trying to play doctor and guess at what has befallen the Dear Leader based on photographs we have. The pancreatic cancer theory, owing to the difficulty in treating it, is especially juicy because it goes to the prospect of a leadership structural change coming very, very soon. But is there substantial evidence of it?

[left: One can see how thin and frail Kim Jong-il looks in this KCNA file photo of the Dear Leader turning off the lights in his office. Contrast that with his porcine and vibrant visage from his 2005 album cover (below).]

In the absence of pancreatic cancer or some other enervating medical condition, his dramatic weight loss and slow gait are easily explained as the result of having experienced and then recovered from a debilitating stroke, and I'm amazed at how few people seem to recognize that. It's like they don't want that simplest of explanations to be true, because they don't point to an earlier demise. 

But it remains that even in the absence of any other looming medical problems, the thinness and the weak appearance would persist until death by some other unrelated cause (old age, a bullet to the head, another stroke, being thrown under a bus, etc.).

Strokes caused by blood clots are like being shot with a bullet: Like bullets, the same blood clot doesn't attack you twice (except for that nasty bullet that shot JFK several times), so once you've survived its effects then you only need worry about the next one coming. No doubt the Dear Leader probably is imbibing more Coumadin than cognac these days, lest he get another stroke that could off him completely.

I'm not saying I don't believe the pancreatic story, only that we've seen so many speculations passed off as reliable (or rather, as reliable as we have at the moment), yet he's still here. I think the stroke he likely suffered last year has piqued the global media enough that they are looking for medical problems to pin on him. It's almost as if they are trying to will him into the grave with their reports of his bad health. (And while that would be a silly expectation to have, I think the reports could will people into being better prepared for his death.)

And just like the goofy pile-on of news about North Korea around the time of the DDoS (dramatic distributed denial of service) attacks, I wonder if something something is not up somewhere. I'm skeptical of anything anyone says about almost everything.

In the meantime, I have no evidence to doubt the pancreatic cancer claim either. All I'm doing is saying that I'm skeptical of the Latest Kim Jong-il Deadly Illness Claim™ of the day, doled out like the K-blogs and the Korean media have become something of a National Enquirer. Again, Kim Jong-il's dramatic weight loss and unsteady step are a natural and common outcome of what we are already fairly certain he has gone through, and that event failed to kill him. The media should recognize that and stop foisting on the public other theories for why he has lost all that weight unless there is substantial backing for it.

Holy freakin' crap!

Having lived in a neighborhood where one year the water rose to chest level throughout the entire area, which turned me into a displaced person for a few days (where's my KBS money?!), seeing pictures of flood damage always gets my heart rate going just a bit. 

Anyway, courtesy of Korea Beat, here's a post-flood scene in Pusan. 

My plan this afternoon is to write a children's story based on this picture, which I will call The Little Forklift That Could.