It’s true that Koreans are not nearly so freaked-out about US beef as they were a month or two ago. The numbers are changing. ROKDrop writes that: With pictures of people lining up outside of meat markets with coolers in hand to buy US beef undoubtedly public opinion is going to shift greatly in favor of US beef. Well, yes, that’s true. And yet… Amusingly, or depressingly, I’m not sure which, both the Joongang Ilbo and the Maeil Gyeongjae (Daily Economics) have already had to issue apologies for using staged photos with fake consumers to accompany stories on the, er, …
Tag: politics
V and the Protesters
Some of the protesters have been using references to V for Vendetta during the demonstrations. Turns out Scott went up and talked to them, and asked whether they knew that V is an anarchist, or that the V sign is an inverted anarchy symbol. They didn’t. Scott thinks they’re “retards” who are guilty of “ethnocentric cultural misappropriation,” and that “they think that going to a massive anti-government demonstration is cosplay and means nothing serious in the end…” and that I’m being patronizing in excusing this. I disagree. Wanna know why?
Drunken Manslaughter Trip in Cambodia
Next time someone throws around the stereotype about how Westerners in Korea are drunken sots who behave badly, remind them of that Korean guy who went drunk driving in Cambodia in July 2008, killed a family, and refused to tell his name to the cops (and anyway cannot speak English or Khmer). Ask them when was the last time a Westerner did that in Korea. Seriously, ask them. And don’t accept the thing about the tank and the two schoolgirls on the country road back in 2002: the drivers weren’t drunk, two girls is not a whole family, and it …
Gin Lane & Soju-ro: Part 1 — The Preamble
Right, so I said this would be a long time in coming, but yesterday afternoon and evening — during my train ride in and out of Seoul, as well as during a couple of breaks I took when the humidity and heat and human density proved too much for me at the protest I attended — I all but inhaled Jessica Warner’s Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason, a kind of legal and cultural history of the Gin Craze that swept through the poorer classes in London in the first half of the 1700s (and, to use …
Fovea &c.
I’m collaborating with a classmate from Clarion West (shall I out you, sir?). The working title, which my collaboratron said was a placeholder but I rather like, is “Fovea.” Yeah, I had to look it up, too. It is what looks to be my first story involving, you know, space suits, landing on a seemingly deserted planetoid, dangerous hunters in pursuit… sorta space-adventurey, really, though with all kinds of other themes and stuff bubbling beneath the surface, and I’m feeling like I ought to check out some older, spacey SF, since I read and write so little of that stuff. …