I’ve Got You Under My Korean-English Dictionary

A lot of Westerners I know balk at the way Korean high schools regulate all kinds of things in their students’ lives — hairstyle and coloring, an absence of piercings, and so on are all required at most high schools. Kids with hair that is too long risk having their hair cut on the spot [...]

Starbucks Nespot No Movement? Help!

UPDATE (Friday, 20 February, 2009): Starbucks called me the day after I posted this, and it looks like the problem may have been fixed since I last tried. (Or partially fixed, with more fixing to come?) Read the followup-post here.

ORIGINAL POST: I personally find it annoying that Starbucks Korea offers (with partner NESPOT) free wifi [...]

How to Mess Up Your Kid, or, Is There a Korean Kids Help Phone?

“How was your dinner?” the shop lady asked me.
I sputtered, in Korean, “The food was good, but this crazy… crazy… this crazy b-i-t-c-h messed up my whole evening. You know, if this were Canada, I’d call the cops. And the cops would come, and it wouldn’t be easy for her. She would have a problem.” [...]

Shepherds and Sheep

Those of you who knows your Canterbury Tales well don’t need the exact line I’m thinking of in that title, so I won’t give it here, since it would be overstatement. Or, well, no, not really, but it would be not-nice understatement, anyway.
I’m struck, in reading the work of schoolteachers who are trying to write [...]

The Supreme Irony

Just a reminder, folks. If you’re here on an E-2 visa, it is indeed illegal for you to do editing work on the side.
And from what I’m told, you don’t even need to be paid for it to be illegal enough for you to get into trouble: doing things on a volunteer basis still requires [...]

On the Ajumma Slain in North Korea, and Anti-Communist Paranoia in the South

Well, I heard about this when I got home last night, and when I got up this morning, I found that Marmot’s Hole had a post up on the story.
The comment thread, and a subsequent post by Andy Jackson (and its comments), were of course filled to the brim with vitriolic snark on the recent [...]

Inept Security Theater

It’s one thing when people have to put up with security theater in the airports of the world, but my sense is that, unlike one might expect, the Korean airport security have not quite upped the ante on pointless and officious ritual. It’s possible to get through security relatively quickly. Though, uh, that might not [...]

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