Quick post to share this hilarious Korean phrase: 외계인 고문, literally "alien torture". And yes, that's alien like a man from outer space, not the alien as in your Korean Alien Registration Card.
I had to do a double take to see if I was understanding that right. Turns out this phrase appears sometimes in Korean news headlines discussing amazing new advances in technology - advances so amazing and bewildering, so seemingly beyond the ordinary tech that we're used to, that we must have captured an alien somehow and tortured him until he revealed his secrets!
The NamuWiki page for the phrase suggests one possible origin (or at least an early documented use) might have been a sci-fi short story from the 1980s where humans capture an alien and get it to confess the source of its technology with a neat twist ending I won't spoil here.
I saw this phrase in a headline today about a concept device from Samsung, a sort of wrap-around bendable smartphone that can serve as a bracelet while also capable of being folded flat to use as a smartphone. Pretty wild piece of tech, for sure.
Lee Jae-yong's Samsung unveils an "alien torture" bracelet-phone you can wrap around your wrist
 |
| Image: Insight screenshot |
I had to do a double take to see if I was understanding that right. Turns out this phrase appears sometimes in Korean news headlines discussing amazing new advances in technology - advances so amazing and bewildering, so seemingly beyond the ordinary tech that we're used to, that we must have captured an alien somehow and tortured him until he revealed his secrets!
 |
| Other news articles showing the "alien torture" phrase |
The NamuWiki page for the phrase suggests one possible origin (or at least an early documented use) might have been a sci-fi short story from the 1980s where humans capture an alien and get it to confess the source of its technology with a neat twist ending I won't spoil here.
I wonder what other neat secrets all these aliens will reveal under threat of torture. How do you torture an alien anyway? Google's Gemini gave me some generic crap about how harming any life form is unacceptable. ChatGPT meanwhile suggested:
Genetic Manipulation: If human's genetic engineering has advanced to a level where they can temporarily alter the alien's genetic structure, by inducing pain or discomfort through genetic modifications, humans might coerce the alien into revealing vital information.
Not bad. Mutate him into having his butt empty its contents directly into his mouth until he shows us how to mine Bitcoin at light speed. Welcome to Earth!
Comments