Time of My Life

A Korean punk band’s recent show in L.A. forces an old fan to reflect on the perils of fandom.

by EUGENE YI

I gave you the time of your life!” shouted the woman, from across the bar. I blanched. My girlfriend, by my side, looked on, bemused.  I answered in the only appropriate manner.

“What?”

“I introduced you to Crying Nut! You love Crying Nut, right?” Oh right.  She had gotten me into the Los Angeles date of this year’s Seoulsonic tour, headlined by Crying Nut, the seminal Korean punk band. Apparently, she was under the impression that the band was one of my all-time favorites, when really, the group was only important to me from May 2001, when I started listening to Korean punk because it was serviceable, to June 2002, when I stopped listening to Korean punk simply because it was serviceable.

But what a high it was! Crying Nut blasted open my notion of contemporary Korean music. They affirmed a punk Korean identity, and, by proxy, my own sense of identity. They did what good art does: make us less lonely. Continue Reading »

New World Bank chief is committed to the poor
Business Day (South Africa)

Jim Yong Kim, born in South Korea, has spent his career in healthcare in developing countries. His commitment to the poor cannot be doubted.

South Korean activists detained in China: Seoul
AFP via Yahoo News

Four South Korean activists have been detained in China since March on suspicion of spying after they interviewed North Korean refugees living in hiding there, according to an anti-Pyongyang group.

South Korea’s foreign ministry confirmed the four were arrested in the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian on March 29 on charges of “endangering state security.”

Myanmar Vows to Cease Buying Weapons From North Korea
New York Times

South Korea has received assurances from Myanmar that it will no longer buy weapons from North Korea, an aide to President Lee Myung-bak said Tuesday.

N. Korea stops sending out GPS jamming signals against S. Korea: source
Yonhap News

North Korea appears to have stopped jamming satellite signals in an apparent attempt to disrupt air and maritime traffic navigation systems in parts of South Korea, a high-ranking government source in Seoul said Tuesday.

The North has been blamed for global positioning system (GPS) disruptions that affected hundreds of commercial flights and ships in and out of South Korea since April 28, although no damage was caused as all had backup navigational systems.

In China, English teaching is a whites-only club
MSNBC.com

Speak a little English and are willing to relocate? Well, you’re probably qualified to be an English-language instructor in China.

As long as you are white, that is.

New Claim in Gambling Monks Scandal
Wall Street Journal

An exiled monk who dropped a bombshell by releasing a video of eight senior monks smoking and drinking while playing poker in a hotel room detonated another explosive on Tuesday.

Seong-ho, whose real name is Jeong Han-young, told a morning radio show that two leaders at the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism, including the head monk, went to a “room salon,” or late-night drinking bar in southern Seoul, where he claimed the monks paid for sex.

Poirier expects to dismantle ‘Korean Zombie’ Jung
USA Today

Dustin Poirier believes he can draw out the Chan Sung Jung that slugged his way to a “Korean Zombie” nickname.

“He likes to get in there and throw punches, so I think if he gets hit on the chin, it’s going to go back to a brawl,” says Poirier, who will face Jung on Tuesday for the Ultimate Fighting Championship. “I’m expecting to pick him apart.”

Shin-Soo Choo is Tribe’s newest leadoff hitter
Cleveland Plain Dealer

Acta put Choo in the leadoff spot that time to get him some extra at bats. This time around, Acta is more interested in Choo’s .361 on base percentage.

“We need somebody to get on base,” said Acta. “Choo has a good on base percentage. The league average is .319.”

Jessica Jung First Pitch Fail: Korean Singer Makes Terrible Throw (VIDEO)
Huffington Post

Thanks to 23-year-old Jessica Jung, baseball fans everywhere now have a new video instructing the proper mechanics of how not to throw a baseball.

Jung is a Korean-American singer and dancer best known for her work in the nine-girl group, Girls’ Generation. Escorted to the mound by two mascots of the Seoul-based LG Twins, Jung prepares her pitch with a long wind-up before unleashing her best heat.

Udine 2012 Review: UNBOWED
Twitch Film

Following its release earlier this year during the lunar day holiday, Unbowed met with much the same reaction as last year’s Silenced. They were both incendiary courtroom dramas based on real events that became big commercial and critical hits while also serving to open up long overdue national dialogues about Korea’s justice system and its rampant cronyism. In fact, in the space of just a few months there were three high profile Korean courtroom dramas that connected with audiences, the other being The Client (2011), itself a strong feature which also alluded to problems in the country’s legal system but was mostly a generic (and fictional) piece.

CIA agent on using his wife to smuggle equipment … and how ALL North Koreans are obsessed with porn
The Daily Mail (U.K.)

He learned about blood feuds from Afghan tribal leaders and he learned that al Qaeda terrorists and enemy agents from North Korea all have a weakness for porn.

Crumpton said: ‘I never met a North Korean that did not like pornography.’

Telling interviewer Lara Logan what he would have to do in his line of work, Crumpton said: ‘Supplying porn to a North Korean official to entice them to spy for America, along with money or whatever else it might take. Well, for me the answer was yes, I was willing to do that.’

South Korean report details alleged abuses at North Korea’s prison camps
Washington Post

A South Korean government-funded human rights group has released a series of raw firsthand accounts of North Korea’s political prison camps, Seoul’s first comprehensive attempt to catalogue the atrocities that Pyongyang denies take place.

The 381-page report, based on about 200 face-to-face interviews with defectors who survived the camps, is a significant step for a South Korean government that has long remained quiet about the human rights abuses of its neighbor.

North Korea’s Kim Jong Un issues rare public drubbing — of a roller coaster
MSNBC.com

This just in: North Korea is not a paradise in some ways — and this news comes from Pyongyang’s official mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency.

On Wednesday, KCNA reported that newly anointed leader Kim Jong Un had visited an amusement park where he scolded park officials for poor upkeep of the park, according to the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea.

N. Korea executed at least three over cannibalism: think tank
Yonhap News

North Korea has held public executions of at least three people on charges of cannibalism in recent years, a South Korean state-run institute said Thursday, the latest development that could support what has long been rumored in the isolated country.

There have been accounts among North Korean defectors in the South that some North Koreans ate and sold human flesh during the massive famine in the late 1990s that was estimated to have killed 2 million people.

Study: Outside media changing N. Korean worldview
AP via Google News

The growing availability of news media and cellphones in reclusive North Korea likely forced it to admit within hours that its long-range rocket launch last month was a failure, the U.S. human rights envoy to the country said Thursday.

The envoy, Robert King, was speaking at the launch of a U.S. government-funded study that says North Koreans now have unprecedented exposure to foreign media, giving them a more positive impression of the outside world.

Casino company analyst pleads guilty in $860,000 slot scheme
Las Vegas Review-Journal

As an analyst for the state’s largest casino company, Tony Ahn was a trusted employee who had access to valuable players club information.

But federal court documents show that Ahn, 27, betrayed that trust in 2009, hatching an elaborate slot machine scheme from within the company, then known as MGM Mirage, to unlawfully win $863,895 .

Ahn used his company position to identify regular customers with unused free play points, transferred the points to counterfeit players club cards and recruited people to gamble with the cards at the company’s casinos along the Strip, the court documents allege.

Ridgefield man pleads guilty to conspiring to defraud banks of more than $1.1M
Bergen County Record (N.J.)

A Ridgefield man pleaded guilty Wednesday to conspiring to defraud banks by obtaining loans for companies that didn’t exist — part of a larger scheme that authorities say netted more than $1.1 million for an identity theft and fraud ring.

Hong G. Cho, 55, pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in Newark to one count of conspiracy to commit bank fraud. Authorities said he conspired with an Edgewater woman to steal $115,000 from three Bergen County banks in 2007.

Palisades Park monument to WWII ‘comfort women’ sparks historical tug-of-war
Bergen County Record

Three Korean lawmakers on Wednesday placed bouquets of white chrysanthemums near a stone monu­ment in Palisades Park dedicated to “comfort women” — more than 200,000 Asians who were reportedly forced into sexual slavery by Japanese soldiers before and during World War II.

The moving tribute, however, comes just days after four officials from Japan’s Liberal Democratic Par­ty claimed that there is no proof sex slaves existed and asked for the mon­ument’s removal, saying it portrayed historical inaccuracies, Palisades Park Mayor James Rotundo said. Historical accounts, interviews and testimonials, however, document the story of the comfort women.

Giffords’ surgeon to speak at graduation
Arizona Daily Wildcat (Univ. of Arizona)

Dr. Peter Rhee, one of two surgeons who operated on former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the chief of the University of Arizona Medical Center trauma division, will speak at the undergraduate commencement ceremony on Saturday to remind attendees that every day is a good day.

Roy Choi Goes Vegetarian
NewYorker.com

The restaurants will stay open, and the old standbys will remain unchanged. Using more vegetables is, at least for now, mainly a culinary challenge. “Now everything I do, I’m trying to cook in vegetable state of mind, and if meat flies in meat flies in,” he said. “I’m like a boxer tying one arm behind my back, to see if I can knock you out.” Now at Chego, instead of just the Beefy T;—prime rib in chili fried rice—Choi is serving the Leafy T, featuring tofu. A special named MCA, in honor Adam Yauch, of the Beastie Boys, who died last week, is a rice bowl with mushrooms, cauliflower, and asparagus.

Cheezburger Creator Launches SimpleHoney To Find Hotels You’ll Love
Tech Crunch

Without being there, it’s hard to tell what a hotel is really like.

That’s what a startup called SimpleHoney is trying to solve. It was co-founded by Eric Nakagawa (a software developer who created the famous Icanhascheezburger blog) and Joyce Kim (a former corporate attorney who was previously CEO of Korean pop music site Soompi.com and is probably best-known to the startup community as co-host of the GigaOm Show).

South Korea’s foreign-born: The lovable Ms Lee
The Economist

MENTION Jasmine Lee at the Philippine market in Seoul’s Hyehwa-dong district, and faces instantly brighten. Ms Lee, born in the Philippines, recently became the first foreign-born South Korean to win a seat in the National Assembly, running for the ruling Saenuri party. “Everybody loves her”, says a Filipina stallholder selling cassava cakes.

Well, not quite everybody. After Ms Lee’s election last month, thousands of virulent Twitter messages labelled her a “mail-order bride” and plenty worse. The local media responded with a bout of soul-searching over the scourge of racism.

Soldier gets 6 years in prison for rape of South Korean teen
Stars and Stripes

A three-judge panel on Wednesday sentenced a U.S. soldier to six years in prison for raping a South Korean teenager in September.

Pvt. Kevin Robinson was found guilty of raping the 17-year-old at her residence in Seoul after a night of drinking. He also was convicted of larceny for stealing the victim’s laptop.

South Korea set to launch multi-billion-dollar expo
AFP via Google News

After four years of work and $10 billion in investment, an international expo will open Saturday at a glittering hi-tech venue on the site of a former dusty cement terminal in South Korea.

A total of 104 nations and 10 international organisations will stage exhibitions over the next three months in the city of Yeosu under the theme of “The Living Ocean and Coast”.

Tackling the Entertainment Industry’s Dark Corners
Wall Street Journal

Korea’s would-be stars, take note: The industry you are going to venture into will be a bit safer, if not more favorable.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said on Wednesday that it will tidy up some of the messiness of the entertainment industry, in conjunction with the Korea Entertainment Producers’ Association.

Spicy Food Fight: Fukuburger vs. Kalbi Burger
LA Weekly

A drive down Wilton Avenue led us to Koreatown’s Kalbi Burger, a strip mall diner that specializes in Korean-fusion burgers. When kimchi first met taco all those years ago, did anyone doubt that burgers would follow suit? The most recent addition to Kalbi’s list of creations, which include a banh mi burger and one involving sautéed kimchi and thousand island dressing, is the spicy “Jeju Do” Burger for $6.95, a pork burger named after the tiny island south of Korean famous for its fatty and succulent black pigs.

Benson Henderson vs. Frankie Edgar 2 Official as UFC 150 Headliner
MMA Weekly via Yahoo Sports

The Mile High City will welcome a main event rematch between Benson Henderson and Frankie Edgar as they headline UFC 150 on August 11. Henderson and Edgar will head to Denver for their second fight, as confirmed by UFC president Dana White on Tuesday.

Comical, creepy or kind of cool? A night in the countryside at 7 wacko Korean pensions
CNNGo

These Korean pensions are not in Seoul, but somewhere out there, with glow-in-the-dark walls, weird murals and beds shaped like beer cans, shoes and jail cells.

Seoul to Pyongyang: Time to Pay Your Debts
The Wall Street Journal

The loan, worth a total of $720 million, covers 2.6 million tons of rice and corn sent in six tranches as part of a deal forged under the “sunshine” policy of previous South Korean administrations. The loan was given at an interest rate of 1% and the North promised to redeem it over 20 years following a 10-year grace period.

It’s a reasonable bet that a country that uses all of its scarce hard currency for spending on the military and the ruling elite won’t be rushing to meet its repayment obligations, particularly given its obvious hatred of the current South Korean regime.

The North’s state media has ratcheted up its hate-fueled rants against the Lee Myung-bak administration in the South in recent weeks for perceived disrespect of the ruling Kim dynasty.

Through a glass darkly: North Korea seen by train
AFP

Going by train from China across the North Korean countryside to capital Pyongyang offers a relatively unscripted view onto what is arguably the most closed-off nation in the world. Visits by foreigners to the land of “Juche”, the country’s home-grown ideology of self-reliance, are stage managed down to the last detail, but through a train window one can capture fleeting images of life behind the façade.

Editorial: ‘Beyond Debate’
New York Times

The New York Times published an editorial decrying a federal appeals court’s ruling that former Bush Administration attorney John Yoo’s drafted legal policies which allowed harsh treatment of prisoners defined as “enemy combatants.”

LA collects $2.65M in taxes owed by hotel
The San Francisco Chronicle

The Los Angeles city attorney’s office says his office has collected $2.65 million in unpaid taxes from a bankrupt Koreatown hotel. In a release Thursday, City Attorney Carmen Trutanich says the Wilshire Hotel has satisfied its debts.

Google to hold K-pop Concert
Yahoo! Entertainment (Singapore)

It was revealed that Google will be hosting a concert at their Mountain View, California headquarters and stars such as SNSD, DBSK, Super Junior as well as KARA, SISTAR, MBLAQ, B2ST, and the Wonder Girls will be performing.

Seminary takes pride in true English-only curriculum, student diversity
Yonhap News

Torch Trinity Graduate University, situated in a business hub in southern Seoul, is the only university in the metropolis with an English focus. While far smaller than its peers with approximately 600 students, the school has drawn students from 32 different countries. Its draw, according to school officials, is its genuine and intentional English-only curriculum.

Other prestigious universities in the country have enticed international students with English-only programs in an attempt to become more globalized. But compared to Torch Trinity, the programs are more like an “afterthought.” A 26-year-old student complained that in English lectures, professors blend English and Korean, and will keep students after class for Korean instruction.

Chinese upset in kimchi cabbage row
Korea Times

Chinese cabbage has been the name for the main ingredient for the Korean side dish kimchi. But now Koreans are establishing sovereignty over what they eat by having an international naming organization almost decide to call it “kimchi cabbage.”

Of course, there are grounds for the name change with the change in appearance, but Chinese netizens are upset at the adjective indicating the nationality of the vegetable being withdrawn and are showing their displeasure.

Girls’ Generation Splinter Group Enters Billboard 200
Billboard.com

A common move with popular K-Pop groups on hiatus is to split themselves into other projects. In particular, the sub-unit concept has proven popular with members able to experiment to bring something fresh for fans. Girls’ Generation created the sub-unit Girls’ Generation – TTS (also known as Taetiseo) who this week became the highest charting K-Pop act on the Billboard 200 with their EP “Twinkle” — at No. 126 on this week’s Billboard 200 with 3,000 copies sold according to Nielsen SoundScan.

’30 Rock’: Margaret Cho Returns As Kim Jong Il
Huffington Post

Kim Jong Il may be long gone, but Margaret Cho isn’t.

According to Laughspin, the comidienne is returning to on the May 17 episode of “30 Rock” (8:30 p.m. ET on NBC), as well as the show’s season finale for another run as former North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il.

Kim Yu-na Includes Cross-Dressing in New Ice Show
Chosun Ilbo

Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na hosts an ice show “All That Skate Spring 2012″ at a rink at Olympic Park’s Gymnasium in Seoul for three days from Friday.

Kim will skate to Canadian singer Michael Bublé’s “All of Me” as a finale of the first act before the intermission. She will be dressed as a man and use props such as a hat. In the second act, she will unveil a new gala program to “Someone Like You” by British pop star Adele.

Kim withdraws from Wells Fargo with wrist injury
AP via The Sacramento Bee

Anthony Kim withdrew from the third straight tournament Friday at the Wells Fargo Championship.

Kim told PGA Tour officials that he had pain in his right wrist and elbow, along with the left thumb, which he had surgery on two years ago. He said this week there was no structural damage, but he couldn’t shake the injury.

Kim said he would review his options before deciding whether to complete next week in The Players Championship.

Lee Chung-yong closing in on Bolton return
ESPN.com

Bolton winger Lee Chung-Yong is set to feature for Wanderers’ reserves on Friday as he continues his recovery from the broken leg he suffered last summer.

The behind-closed-doors match marks another important step in Lee’s rehabilitation, although Bolton boss Owen Coyle remains reluctant to speculate as to whether Lee might play a part for the first-team before the end of the season.

Kimchi Taco Truck Opens Washington Avenue Restaurant
Patch.com (Brooklyn, N.Y.)

Prospect Heights fans of Kimchi Taco Truck no longer have to go to Manhattan for their Korean-Mexican-fusion fix. The widely popular mobile lunch spot opened a brick-and-mortar location Thursday evening.

The new spot, dubbed Kimchi Grill, located at 766 Washington Ave. between Park and Sterling places, will primarily sell the kimchi tacos, bowls and cheesesteaks sold from the truck But it will also offer a Korean fried chicken taco, something that is too involved to serve regularly on the truck, said owner Phillip Lee.

FuseBox, a Korean-Style Izakaya, Opens Today in Oakland
Grub Street San Francisco

Korean-American restaurant FuseBox (2311A Magnolia Street), which we first mentioned back in December, finally opened today after a few delays in West Oakland. The owners are calling it a “kkochi-gui pub,” with kkochi-gui being the Korean term for grilled skewers.

Dyer, Kang lead Biscuits
Montgomery Advertiser (Ala.)

Kyeong Kang homered, knocked in three runs and scored twice for Montgomery. Kang’s solo blast in the fifth inning was his seventh of the season. He’s homered in three straight games.

Kang also homered in three straight games for Montgomery in July 2011, marking the 13th time it has happened in Biscuits history. None has made it four straight. Kang hit a two-run double as part of Montgomery’s six-run, four-hit third inning Thursday.

Indie singer Sam Kang’s new video for “Love Drama” utilizes stop-motion effects created from more than 3,000 photos that were printed and individually cut out. Co-directors Joe Cheung and Vu Hoang spent seven painstaking months making the video with the help of some friends. Continue Reading »

WED's Links: Asian Ams grab Obama’s attention, Jenna Ushkowitz, SK's 1st Chemical Castration Pedophile; Uglydoll Makers http://t.co/w9gRr0sH

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Just a reminder, the SMTOWN live streaming K-pop concert is going on ... right now! http://t.co/JywXQ91F

I uploaded a @YouTube video http://t.co/NnQFpSdq SMTOWN World Tour - EXO, SHINEE, f(x) Performance P.2