English guide to Korean floor heating controls ("ondol")

Here's a simple guide to using the control panel for the ondol (온돌) floor-based heating in your Korean apartment. Winter is starting and I saw some questions about this over on Reddit and Every Expat, so hopefully this can help you out. Background Many people, whether new English teachers or tourists visiting an Airbnb, arrive in Korea and str…

Read More...

Halloween special: sexy Korean costumes from Coupang 🎃

Now here's a cultural import that I can get behind. I was doing some shopping on Coupang and got a pop up about their Halloween merchandise. Check out this massive list of stuff you can order. Costumes, masks, make-up, accessories, party supplies, candy, and yes, that on the right there is a whole category devoted to costumes for you pets . Ugh…

Read More...

Tistory blogging platform gets big update

Korean blogging platform Tistory has received a big update. Now part of Daum-Kakao, Tistory has been a longtime player in the Korean blogosphere. It recently got a refresh of modern skins/themes, and a new theme designer that looks pretty neat. It reminds me of Wix in the way it looks like you can just drag/drop chosen sections in on the homepage …

Read More...

Naver Weather Map shows fine dust forecasts and visual current conditions

Naver expands their one-box* in-results detailed information for weather. In addition to previous fine dust counts and current conditions, results will now include  predicted fine dust forecasts as well as the mini map of air quality as measured from various stations. Good to check up on whether you should bring your mask with you the next day or …

Read More...

Electric cars and Korean apartment rules - a mildly interesting dilemma

This weekend I was at an apartment complex and saw this car parked out front with a hand written note stuck under the wiper apparently left by the complex's security guard. The sign said 후면주차금지 ("No rear parking" or Park facing forwards). You can see the cars next to him are both facing forwards. That's pretty unusual given the &…

Read More...

Tribute to Jo O-ryeon

You may know about "Marine Boy" Park Tae-hwan, the darling South Korean Olympic swimmer. But you probably haven't heard of the godfather of Korean swimming, the "Asian Seal," Jo O-ryeon. Tribute to Jo O-ryeon (1952 – 2009) So I got curious after typing up an off hand comment in my last post , and did some quick googling abou…

Read More...

How big is Korea? Maps of South Korea on top of other countries

Tonight, instead of catching up on sleep, I was playing around on  The True Size Of ...  which lets you drag outlines of countries on a world map to see how they compare. All the sizes are apparently accurate and whatever and it gives you a pretty good idea of how these places stack up relatively. The takeaway of course isn't how small Korea is,…

Read More...

Simple fix for natural (reverse) scrolling in Lubuntu 18.04

Here is a simple fix for enabling natural (reverse) scrolling in Lubuntu 18.04 Background The default trackpad scrolling behavior in Lubuntu was driving me crazy. When I scroll my fingers up, I want the content to move upward, i.e. I want to scroll down the page. The default on Lubuntu, even in 18.04 is still the opposite. I feel like a fighter pi…

Read More...

Naver reveals cleaner new home screen, with voice assistant access and content reorganization

It looks like the Naver homepage refresh is almost done. Naver released a promo video showing how the app will look. Nice and clean. Here's a more upclose view: Here's the short video. Watch for yourself. [Direct link  or embedded below] You can see in the video that in addition to quick access to all basic Naver services, that cute little …

Read More...

Google Maps Street View car schedule in Korea

Google has a page that shows current worldwide street view coverage . Here's the map for Korea. It's interactive, so you can zoom all around the country to see if your area has been covered. Here's an upclose shot of the capital area. You can see little dots of coverage elsewhere even out in the sea, usually where special collections we…

Read More...