"L.A.'s first modern Korean restaurant?"

Or is the Los Angeles Times story, despite its inquisitive headline, merely bastardization fusion of Korean food?

I'll have more on this later, but right now I'm at the Kahala Mall Apple Store admiring the new iPads which I'm not going to get. (More on that later as well.)

Sent from my iPad

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Happy St. Patrick's Day, again! [prolly NSFW]

Another March, another St. Patrick's Day. As usual, I shall recycle earlier St. Paddy's posts. The best one, the pale imitation, and the one where I phoned it in.

(The last link includes a picture of Irish-Korean American Moon Bloodgood... Erin Goryeo Bragh!)

In the first link, I listed ways in which Koreans are the Irish of Asia, but after discussions with my friend and dorm neighbor "U" from Milano, I'm more convinced than ever that Koreans are the Italians of Asia. To wit:

1. Italy and Korea are both peninsulas. 
2. Both have a diet rich in seafood and garlic. 
3. Both are industrial heavy-hitters despite having a large portion of people who seem to take all-day siestas. 
4. They each picked the wrong horse during World War II (I kid! I kid!).
5. Parliaments that can't seem to get their shit together. 
6. Dark-haired, light-skinned beauty is the national aesthetic ideal. 
7. Most of the touristy stuff is really, really old. 
8. Loads of Catholics and a history of martyrs. 
9. Hot-headedness seems to be, if not a virtue, at least an accepted trait.
10. Abysmally low fertility rates. 
11. Have you seen people drive in Italy?
12. Bookends on the Silk Road.
13. Island volcanoes.
14. Thanks to cinema, both are heavily associated with gangsters. 
15. Pretty danged corrupt, considering how economically advanced they are. 
16. Marco Polo came back from East Asia and told the Europeans that a bunch of Korean stuff was actually Chinese (not a similarity, but I did need to get that off my chest). 
17. Despite years of learning English, Italians can't speak English worth a damn either (I kid! I kid!). 
18. In English, Korea ends with an a but Italy does not; in the native tongue, Italy's name ends with an a but Korea's does not.
19. Booth ran from a theatre to a warehouse; Oswald ran from a warehouse to a theatre.

I'll finish this post with a wildly inappropriate holiday-themed picture that is decidedly NSFW, but since it's Saturday, you shouldn't be at work anyway.

Her yellow necklace means she's open to hugging and kissing.
Her green necklace means she's "willing to do '69.'"

Erin go braless...

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This is what's wrong with America

Well, one of several things.

(Alternatively, I was going to title this post, "This is why you're fat you've got diabetes." I thought it might be too soon, but then I realized that if I waited, for others it might be too late.)

Anyway, this is something I spotted in the K-Mart down in Iwilei while looking for a bread knife.

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From the "No, I've actually never seen Jurassic Park, why do you ask?" files

ORIGINAL iPHONE POST:
I'll write more on this (I'm currently in line to get $4.25/gallon gas at Costco in Iwilei), but for now, here's the headline:

Russian and Korean Researchers Will Inject Mammoth DNA Into Elephant Eggs, Resurrecting 10,000-Year-Old Beast

This succinct email was sent from my iPhone.

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9.0 + 1

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the 9.0-magnitude Tōhoku Earthquake, the ensuing tsunami that killed many thousands, and the still ongoing nuclear disaster at Fukushima.

The tragedy has had major repercussions within Japan and elsewhere. The people of Japan — and I know this intimately from having talked with many Japanese since then — are in a funk over the future of their country as they see how many physical structures and political institutions have failed them.

There is a portion of northern Honshū where, within a twelve-mile radius of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, no humans will be allowed to live for perhaps the next half century, if then. Yet the belongings of the former residents are still there, visited occasionally by owners who try to retrieve what they can. The land has become home on the range to feral cows no longer tended by the ranchers who'd been raising them.

Many Japanese live in fear that another massive quake will soon hit Tōkyō and bring even worse disaster — and suspect that the government that apparently hid so much embarrassing bad news about Fukushima is withholding the truth about that, too.

Meanwhile, the loss of Fukushima and Japan's apparent decision to gradually shut down its nuclear facilities elsewhere, means greater pressure on the world's energy supplies, a pinch being felt from Korea to Kentucky. On the US West Coast, some claim to have spotted the first wave of toxic garbage that the tsunami ripped from Japanese coastal towns and tossed into the sea.

Officially, there have been 15,850 deaths but there are still 3287 people missing. Some six thousand more were injured. In a country of 128 million, the 1 in 6000 who likely lost their lives were concentrated in a narrow band of communities that are physically, economically, and psychologically devastated. Whole neighborhoods wiped out, families with maybe a single survivor who is now wracked with guilt and despair, family members and friends still wondering about the fate of those who have not yet been accounted for (and probably never will be). Requiescant in pace.

I can't even begin to imagine what this might feel like. The people of northern Honshū, all the people of Japan, still need our help. My link to helping them through the Korean Red Cross is still at right (the one toward the top with the heart). It is still a time to reach out to a neighbor in need.

Seventy-three-year-old Teruko Sato prays at the site where the body of her son Shoichi was found. He died while helping evacuate elderly residents of his village of Kesencho. [source]

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The US is really trying to get its allies on board with sanctions against Iran aimed at ending its possible nuclear weapons program. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton specifically cited South Korea in her plea to join the US effort:

The Obama administration said Friday it was helping South Korea and other nations look for new energy sources to wean themselves from Iranian oil so they can contribute to a U.S.-led effort to chip away at the $100 billion in oil revenues Tehran earned last year.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the goals of U.S. sanctions against Iran are simple: to stop the flow of cash to Tehran and demonstrate global unity against the Islamic republic's nuclear program.

American legislation demands countries around the world cut their oil intake from Iran, but Asian countries that purchase the majority of Iranian oil are resisting severe changes that might hurt their economies.

"No country understands the threat of nuclear weapons from a neighbor better than" South Korea, Clinton said after a meeting at the State Department with South Korean Foreign Minister Kim Sung-hwan.

"We recognize the difficult decisions and even the sacrifices that we are asking from other countries in order to increase this pressure on Iran," she told reporters. "Reining in a dangerous government is not easy."

U.S. efforts to get Asian countries, allies and competitors alike, to cut their oil imports from Iran have been difficult. In 2011, Japan, South Korea, India and China accounted for 60 percent of Iran's oil sales.

South Korea and Japan have been seeking waivers for a US law on Iranian sanctions that goes into effect soon. Mrs Clinton also said China needs to stop repatriating North Korean refugees.

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Man from Nowhere going to Hollywood

The Weinstein Brothers have announced that their Dimension Films will do a remake of The Man From Nowhere (Korean title: Ajŏshi, 아저씨), the highest grossing Korean film of 2010. It stars Won Bin, most famous to Western audiences for his role in the Korean War epic Taegŭkki Hwinallimyŏ (Brotherhood):

"We have always been huge action and martial arts fans and are getting back into the genre in a big way with 'The Man From Nowhere,'" Bob Weinstein, The Weinstein Company's co-chairman, said in a statement. "It's a slick, fast-paced action thriller anchored by a strong emotional relationship that audiences are going to love."

Metropolitician is fond of saying "ajoshis ruin everything." All I can say, considering the track record* of Korean films reworked into Hollywood pictures, I hope someone doesn't ruin Ajŏshi.

* See The Lake House, My Sassy Girl, and The Uninvited. Or don't. Only Juno, an unauthorized and unacknowledged remake of Jenny, Juno (or at least an adaptation), was arguably better than the Korean original.

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In Hawaii, yesterday was the day after tomorrow

Remember the opening of The Day After Tomorrow, the documentary feature film highlighting what could happen if the Earth warmed enough to suddenly shut off the Gulf Stream that's part of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation that keeps the northern latitudes from Ice Age temperatures? Los Angeles was plagued by a sudden outburst of tornadoes, something that is unheard of in the Golden State.

Not what you usually imagine
when you think of Hawaii+ice.

Well, we in Hawaii have been having some wicked winter weather. It's been chilly and we've had some nasty thunderstorms, the cool kind that shake the ground for quite a few seconds (setting off car alarms) after lightning has struck very close to where you live. Meanwhile, the lack of sun and the excess of wind have made daytime conditions quite a bit chillier than usual.

Temperature drops into the low sixties are not that uncommon in January or February (or even March), but we've been getting three-inch hailstones and an actual tornado hitting the northeastern side of Oahu (my island). It started as a water spout (a rarity here) and went inland.

It struck Lanikai, a place where I occasionally go kayaking and biking and not far from where Hawaii-born Barack Hussein Obama often vacations. It was nothing like the horrific and deadly rash of unseasonal tornadoes that recently struck the Midwest, but it did do some damage.

If I start to see a nerdy Jake Gyllenhaal chatting up Emmy Rossum, I'm gonna be real worried.

Still, as far as Hollywood messing with Hawaii goes, I'd rather go with the Day After Tomorrow scenario than that of 2012.

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[updated] Todd Park is next brick in Korean America's wall of kyopos

The Obama administration has named Todd Park, the guy behind healthcare.gov (a site I use frequently, and so should you) as the new Chief Technology Officer.

From the White House blog (the real one, not the one that was a porn site, until 2004):

I’m very excited that President Obama today is appointing Todd Park as the new U.S. Chief Technology Officer, with the important task of applying the newest technology and latest advances to make the Federal government work better for the American people.

For nearly three years, Todd has served as CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, where he was a hugely energetic force for positive change. He led the successful execution of an array of breakthrough initiatives, including the creation of HealthCare.gov, the first website to provide consumers with a comprehensive inventory of public and private health insurance plans available across the Nation by zip code in a single, easy-to-use tool.

On his first full day in office, President Obama created the position of “Chief Technology Officer” to help modernize a Federal government relying too heavily on 20th century technology, and to better use technological tools to address a wide range of national challenges.

If you're not sure what the nation's science officer does, just think Spock or T'Pol and occasionally Harry Kim, only in the present and for an entire country.

Here's more on Mr Park from Bloomberg:

You don’t normally find serial entrepreneurs working for the U.S. government. But Todd Park, who co-founded three companies by the time he was 36, believes he can help make Americans healthier.

Park, now 39, is the first chief technology officer hired by the Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid and oversees the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health, among other agencies. He is the “entrepreneur-in-residence,” nudging the agency to open its vast stores of data to spur innovative ideas.

Park is teaching the normally plodding government agency how to think and act like a Silicon Valley startup: Get new products to market quickly, study customer reaction, and then make adjustments to find the best solution for that need. It’s right out of the entrepreneur’s handbook, except that Park has 313 million customers—the population of the U.S.

“He is not a Washington guy,” says O’Reilly Media founder Tim O’Rilley, who calls Park one of the most powerful data scientists around. “He’s a technology guy who is trying to figure out how to make the health-care system work.”

And work fast. Ninety days after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, Park and a team launched healthcare.gov, a website that helps consumers find health coverage plans from a database of all public and private plans by Zip Code (other sites are not comprehensive).

“It is possible to be entrepreneurial in the U.S. government,” says Park, who has been at HHS for two and a half years. “It’s possible for government to execute major projects at Silicon Valley speed.”

Nerdocracy will save America.

This succinct email (originally) was sent from my iPhone.

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Roundup of iPad 3 rumors

We don't know if it will be called the iPad3 or the iPad2S or (thanks to a lawsuit from a Chinese manufacturer claiming they'd trademarked the name "iPad") the iSlice1, so for the purpose of succinct discussion, we're going to call it the iPadX.

It is not enough for the iPadX to have a retina screen, since its competitors are already on their tail. No, the iPadX will with shrinking-man-retina displays, where the screen's resolution will be so sharp that you cannot detect individual pixels at a distance about the length of your extended hand even if you were inadvertently shrunken in an industrial shrinking accident where you found yourself sitting on top of an iPadX. (This is important because Apple has bought out some company's shrink ray process and is considering incorporating in future post-Siri hardware, just as soon as they can get enough Chinese workers to volunteer for a certain assignment and teach them all English.) Scientists may not agree on what exactly a "retina display" is at that level, but it's something like 1,028,000x960,000.

Apple was roundly criticized for ripping off its customers by calling the iPhone5 the iPhone4S, even though the iPhone4 was called the iPhone 3Gs and no one bitched about that. Apple wants to avoid this problem altogether, so the new iPadX will be called the iPad7. Or iPadπ.

iPads will come in colors. It helps you reveal who you are.

Apple was also also criticized for coming out with an iPhone 4S that looked exactly like the iPhone 4. If it looks exactly the same, the hipsters groused, how will people know we're cool and hip if we buy one? (Samsung wisely picked up on this and made it a theme of their commercials, even though I had the idea first. Samsung is nothing if not derivative.) Sure, it's a flat tablet and the design of the iPad2 is already a work of art, but if the iPadX looks the same, proverbially heads will explode. Consequently, the iPadX will have fins. Though they initially appear to be just ornamental, Apple insists they have a functional purpose; they don't yet know what it is, but after millions buy them and do God knows what with them, one of them will figure it out.

All this extra stuff will be heavy, so efforts must be made to lighten the load. In the past, Apple has gone with titanium, which they replaced with aluminum. My sources in Shanghai say the iPad3 will be made from helium.

Apple is also working on the next-next generation of iPad. My sources say they are currently working on a two-piece iPad that consists of glasses that contain a tiny screen in the lower half of the lens, plus a Bluetooth trackpad you keep in your pocket. It will be released to consumers as soon as they can figure out how to make users look like they're not masturbating in public.

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Useful ideologues

Christine Ahn, Pyongyang's man at the Huffington Post, has penned another piece on the Korean Peninsula. This one talks about the prospect of a "Korean spring," which is also its title.

Now, one might think that's it's all about the prospect of North Koreans throwing off their yokes and taking down the government (something I surmised is much more possible ever since the botched currency reform of two years ago). But she dismisses that right away, owing to the regime's survivability through transfers of power and difficult global and local conditions.

No, this "Korean spring" is primarily about the south. And she talks up opposition to the base on Cheju-do (which someone else at the HuffPo called "imperialism") as a sign of that impending Korean spring.

Owing to a work assignment, I didn't have time for an eloquent fisking, so I left a note that hinted at a general "Christine Ahn is a Pyongyang plant on the take" kind of comment:

Christine Ahn seems to have missed the southern half's "Korean spring." It was 1987.

Ms Ahn's either incredibly naïve about the Pyongyang regime or she's carrying water for them. I'm not sure which is worse from someone trying influence HuffPost readers' opinionsabout a geopolitically important region they may not be so familiar with.

It'd take hours to school Ms Ahn on why she's wrong, but at least I'll say that what happens in South Korea doesn't so much affect North Korea as much as it provides a pretext: North Korea needs a constant adversary as its raison d'être, and if it didn't have it with the South, the US, or Japan, it would invent it. In fact, it often does.

I'm all for waiting to see where North Korea will go with Kim Jong-un at the helm, but let's not pretend it's already arrived at a happy place, or even that it's well on the way. The same regime that kills its own people in untold numbers so that the elite can maintain power is not likely to change overnight.

In the meantime, South Korea must stay strong. It needs a strong military deterrent, which is the purpose of the Cheju-do base. Yeah, it sucks that we have to keep standing militaries, but the alternative when one can't defend their own borders is far worse. We've seen that in 1950-53, when Ms Ahn's poor, misunderstood North Koreans started a war whose casualties were in the millions.

Yes, you've heard me say this before. But that's because you've heard Christine say that before.

Really, the HuffPo needs some new Korea experts.

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Random mention of Korea in American entertainment media of the day

That could be anything.

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[UPDATED with video] Orange County crime Story of the Day: Saehan Bank incident

In an upscale part of Buena Park (the buena part of Buena Park), near Fullerton which has become a tony Korean-American enclave, a branch of Saehan Bank was held up at gunpoint by a kyopo man, although everyone except one bank employee was allowed to leave.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Police identified the gunman who was critically wounded during a hostage standoff at an Orange County bank as 55-year-old Myung Jae Kim, according to KNBC-TV Channel 4.

Kim appears to have targeted the bank’s manager, Michelle Kwon, taking her as a hostage instead of trying to commit robbery, police said.

Kim reportedly entered Buena Park’s Saehan Bank late Thursday morning, brandishing a weapon pointed to the ground. He ordered all of the employees and six customers out of the bank, but had Kwon stay behind, police said.

A tense standoff began, with police using a robot to deliver a phone so negotiators could talk to Kim.

At about 3 p.m., police shot Kim when he appeared in front of a glass door with a gun pointed at Kwon. He apparently went to the door trying to retrieve an item that he demanded from police, who refused to say what the item was. Kim was critically wounded and taken to the UC Irvine trauma center. Kwon escaped unharmed.

Good to see the robots are good for something other than putting English teachers out of work. Anyway, somewhere else they were saying that this particular gunman knew that particular bank employee and wanted her to compensate for the $240K that was supposedly taken from his safe deposit box at Hanmi Bank in Garden Grove (what we in OC call Koreatown). That is what triggered this violent act.

[UPDATE: The safe deposit box stuff is being reported in Korean-language media, but I haven't seen it in the actual articles in English-language media, only here and there in the comments sections.]

Anyway, things like this (or that nastiness in Atlanta) may be an indictator of what we should expect initially if guns were ever made widely available in Korea.

Note: I was nodding off when I originally wrote all this; I'm pleased that it generally makes sense.

What's that? SWAT's that!

UPDATE 2:
I've added video from Los Angeles ABC affiliation KABC:



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