Links for June 2018

Hold on to your butts kids, because it's time for another link roundup, and boy do I have some goodies for you this month. Here's the list of stuff I read in June that interested me.


Links for June 2018


This Korean life




Tech stuff




Miscellaneous 


  • ‘Disco pang pang’ DJs booked for sexual harassment - To be fair, from what I've seen, the whole point of riding a Disco Pang Pang is to be sexually harassed. If you have no idea what this is, imagine a giant salad spinner, but instead of lettuce it's people. Not just any people usually, but specifically horny college and high school couples. The point is they spin it and force people to the sides and together, where you can cop a feel under the pretense of "trying to hang on" and they also bounce the damn thing, flinging people in the air and to the center, so that large chested girls' and short-skirt wearing girls get exposure. Crude insults from the D.J. are also par for the course. My favorites, while watching in awe one night, were comments like "hey there, red sweater girl, you better hold on to that pole. Your boyfriend sure doesn't have much there you can hold on to!" and "somebody split up those 2 girls over there, they both have massive things that are going to tilt the ride and make a crash." If you're black, there is a 100% chance they will make some comment like "it's so dark tonight, we can't see you!" You'll never catch me on those things. But fat middle ageish men are not exactly their target audience either. I'm curious if these kind of comments are the "sexual harassment" the article is talking about. 
  • Judge issues landmark decision after Google Translate tricked a man into giving consent to police – BGR - Not Korea related but very interesting. I wonder what would happen if a foreigner got booked for something and police tried using Papago, which already has a phrasebook for common police questions built in, and it contains some very odd choices. 
  • Google accused of not filtering obscene photos - Haha, love how they call them "surreptitious street snapshots" in English (flowery much?) but leave the actual trigger keyword 길거리 몰카 right there in the screen shot. Not sure why they think Google ought to be filtering this kind of thing. They claim "protection of minors" but not like minors won't be seeing this on the street. They are literally street shots. Plus half of them come from photos.chosun.com haha. Look kids, if you're a teen getting off to shots of women in miniskirts, Godspeed. It was the mail order catalog in my day. I agree with preventing minors from accessing hard-core content, but this is just senseless Google bashing. Like how there's a fake snake there too. 
  • LGBT Fans Find A Safe Haven In K-Pop - Apparently some K-pop fans think the word "이상하게" in Twice's lyrics was actually chosen because when pronounced out loud, it sounds like a coded "Is Sana gay?" in English. Boy, talk about wishful thinking. Reminds me of the great 니가/nigga fiasco of 2008. 


Sejong City wild news


You don't hear much about Sejong City, but boy this month had some doozies. A piece prasing it as a fertile slow-city, a massive tragedy, and a bizarre B-movie (see what I did there?) in the making:



Korea Herald's big push for... geomancy?






Top article of the month


Korea Times | Why do workers choose not to do their best?

I just liked this for the hilarious quotes that absolutely anyone who works in Korea will sympathize with:

"Even if I had finished everything, I just remain quiet because if I bring up some new topic to my superior around this time, that becomes my next task, forcing me to stay and do overtime," Jung said. 

Forty-five percent of the 914 employees surveyed said they chose not to exercise their full potential at work because "doing good work just leads to more work". 

"I'm not performing at my best because I'm forced to take on many different tasks at once. This makes it difficult to properly focus on one main task,"


Quotable quotes



...the island will be an example of tolerance and harmony
A Nobel laureate’s spiritual return to Jeju 

Probably not the most ideal time to describe it that way, given the Yemeni refugee sentiment of late.


Sometimes, drunk people throw up in the trash cans.
City grapples with trash after banning food on buses 

Well if they're for liquid waste and they drain into the sewer... sounds like perfect puke recepticles to me. Just need to make them able to deal with some "extra chunky" type hurl. Better than letting loose right there on the sidewalk or gutter. Saw a guy slip in a street pizza once. I thanked God, and probably so did he, that he just slid a bit and didn't fall right in it on his ass.


A 9-year-old boy was left hanging, attached to the wire 10 meters up in the air, for an hour until he was eventually rescued by emergency services.
Kid stuck in the air from zip-line failure in Gyeonggi 

Well kid, you wanted an extreme experience. You sure got one.


Police said Friday that Yoon has admitted to the crime and said he was "out of his mind and haunted by a ghost."
Police say suspect in US Embassy car crash has history of mental illness 

So... the ghost told you to crash your car into the US Embassy?


Feminist activists took to the streets of Gangnam, marching, removing their tops and yelling “My body is not porn” before being stopped by police. The members of “Fire Femi Action” carried out a shirtless protest at Facebook Korea’s headquarters in Yeoksam-dong in Seoul’s Gangnam district, denouncing Facebook’s policy that automatically deleted photos of topless women. Ten women who participated in the protest removed their tops in front of photojournalists who were at the scene of the demonstration.
Activists Claim “My Body is Not Porn!” 

Not sure how posing topless in front of publicity cameras shows that your body isn't porn. Maybe I'm crazy, but that sounds pretty much like the exact definition of porn. The photos are easily searchable online by the way. Not that I checked.


The conclusions of a study team from Ewha Womans University in Seoul were that students who were female, consumed alcohol, had lower academic performance, did not feel refreshed in the morning and went to sleep after midnight were at a significantly higher risk of smartphone addiction.
Girls more prone to smartphone addiction than boys: study 

Well you could just as easily argue that smartphone addiction causes lower academic performance, going to sleep past midnight, lower academic performance, and alcohol consumption.


Po-sam was quite an elaborate and brutal act. On the day before the wedding, a young boy (most likely a poor boy with no family) would be lured into the bride-to-be's home where he would be forced to take part in a mock wedding. Once the sham ceremony was concluded, the boy was quickly strangled in the belief that his death fulfilled the prophecy of the woman becoming a widow.
Till death do us part 

Holy shit. I'm not a moral prescriptivist or anything but, come on.


However, police believe that the elderly man did not intend to hinder the election campaign, as he has a “tendency to set things on fire,” according to his family, and is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Man arrested for setting fire to 11 campaign flyers 

Oh well thank God he's not politically active, and he has an equal opportunity tendency to set things on fire. Can't be accused of bigotry if you try to kill all types of people. #nolivesmatter


He stole only from vehicles with the side mirrors unfolded, according to the police investigation. The suspect reportedly said, “Cars that had the side mirrors left unfolded were often open. I committed the crime for living expenses.”
Suspect targeted goods at parking lots 

Haha, this guy is a mini genius. In Korea, most car side mirrors fold in automatically. If they didn't, that means either the car is at least 10 years old (which you could tell easily enough just from the appearance) or it means the car was left unlocked. Clever guy.


Korean Air’s reputation may be in the gutter due to ongoing investigations into its owner family, but it’s hiring.
Korean Air hiring flight attendants-INSIDE Korea JoongAng Daily

Haha now that's a promising lead!

Done


And that's it for this month folks. Boy that took longer than I expected. Maybe I ought to quit this. Or just post the link list only and leave out my witty comments.

Happy July 1st. Not sure if I prefer the extreme heat of last week, or the constant pouring rain of this week. Would rather be on a beach this summer snoozing in an oversized beach chair. Oh well. See



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