Naver Map features updated Joseon-era palace imagery

Naver Maps is featuring some updated high-quality indoor streetview-type imagery to celebrate Liberation Day. Several palaces and museums from Chosun times can be examined in full 360 panorama mode in Naver Map. Most imagery is from the last month or so and is highly detailed, so you can zoom in. Here's one of several promo images Naver highli…

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Korean Liberation Day (광복절) 2018 commemorative logos from Daum, Google, Naver, Nate

Today is Korean Liberation Day (광복절), celebrating the kicking out of the Japanese and reinstatement of a Korean nation after the colonial period. Or what we call " V-J Day ." Just for fun, here are some of the commemorative logos the portals have put up for today. This day has a partisan divide of course. Right-wingers tend to favor this d…

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Sam Hammington's son William in LGU+/Naver commercial

Your favorite foreigner-in-Korea, Sam Hammington, is in a new commercial promoting a collaboration between LG U+ TV service and Naver's translation service Papago. You can use a special smart-TV version of the Papago app to get translations if you're a U+ customer. The name of the service is " U+tv 아이들나라 2.0 " (Kids' Country 2.…

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Update on Saya, the CGI Japanese girl, and my doomsday predictions

I wanted to share some updated photos of the CGI creation "Saya" and spew some predictions about what this kind of tech means. Saya Not related to Korea at all, but you might remember way back in 2015 reading some news about a CGI-rendered fictional Japanese girl called "Saya," created by your typical wacky Japanese couple. Her…

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Links from July 2018

Time for another good old link roundup. Here's plenty on the list for this month. Interesting stuff I read about Korea in July that you might be interested in too. Links from July 2018 Life and Issues in Korea Fourth Hangeul Idea Award to be held  - Over now but could have been good chance to pitch your idea. Here was mine : a phone game where yo…

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Naver V Live app update: autoplay, PIP, casting, etc.

"V" Live (or VLIVE ), is getting an update with some new features. VLive is Naver's K-pop focused video and live-streaming app. The new updates include: Autoplay, so you can keep the hallyu going all day long Fan Board categories, so you can jump right to the types of discussions you want instead of wading through an unorganized mass of…

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View and convert Hangul (.hwp) files online with Cloud HWP Viewer

Here's yet another simple way to view Hangul (.hwp) files without having the Hancom Office suite installed. All you have to do is drag and drop the document and Cloud HWP Viewer converts it for you immediately all in the browser. Note: this is one of several methods for working with HWP files. You may also want to see my other posts on  opening H…

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Kakao Map gets English language turn-by-turn navigation

FYI: KakaoMap has now added English language voice directions to their turn-by-turn navigation. As posted in their changelog , version 1.3.4 of the app includes a vibrant and upbeat English female voice directing you where to turn and warning you of upcoming hazards. I'm not going to lie, I like her voice. It's more pleasant than the Naver …

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Top Korean YouTube channels for 1st half of 2018

The official YouTube blog posted a list of the most popular channels for the first half of 2018. They discuss in depth about the rise in the popularity of official K-pop channels on YouTube. But I'm sure all the usual K-pop news sites will talk about that. Of note was that they included a top-20 list with all the K-pop and kids' stuff remo…

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Always search Google in English by making Google NCR your default search engine

Here's a simple way to set your browser so that you always get pure English results, no matter what. This can be done by switching the standard Google search engine for their "No Country Redirect" version which is still active and takes just a Chrome preferences tweak. Change Chrome's search URL to Google NCR Go to Chrome's se…

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