The KimcheeGI reports a coming mess: SEOUL, Jan. 14 (Yonhap) — The government’s planned crackdown on rampant illegal online downloading of music, movie and games has driven the country’s Internet users into a state of confusion. In South Korea, about 36 million people use Internet, or 68.2 percent of the country’s population. Many of them have personal homepages or blogs containing downloaded music files and lyrics of pop songs and postings from other Internet sites. It has become a part of their daily life to swap music and movie files using peer-to-peer (PSP) programs. I have to wonder if it …

Whilst spelunking the Marmot’s Hole (the history section) I followed a chain of links to this beautiful essay: Gyungbok (or Kyungbok) Palace: History, Controversy, Geomancy – by Minsoo Kang. It’s definitely worth a look, and I shall hold it in my mind when I am reworking the draft of the novel which, come hell or high water, I will finish this week. (Er, I hope, tonight.)

… to be a fly on the wall during the discussions leading up to this publication: The Korea Times : Korea, China, Japan to Publish Joint History Textbook in May. I’d have given a lot, believe me.

The old (and illegal) practice of playing Korean oompah music (known as bbongjjak) and dancing on buses is the subject of a recent funny post by

I’m doing a little more research for my ghost story, and quickly coming to the conclusion there’s almost no good place to set the story… I can’t seem to find information on any particular locale where UN Troops wouldn’t have been stationed or died. I think I’ll just have to go with some kind of explanation that, “There were some who died here, they just didn’t survive as ghosts in this particular town.” Anyway, during my researches I came across this animated Quicktime map that shows different front lines and areas of occupation during 27 different stages of the Korean …