Category: Korean

Old and Out

It is funny how human mind eagerly relates multiple independent events.  I read an in-dept report on age discrimination in Korean companies this morning (I got up early ;-).  Five minutes later, I found Dave blogging about age card and whether one stops learning at 22.  Well, learning does stop early in Korea.  Maybe not 22, but 30 at the latest for most Koreans.

Koreans studies hard when they are young, reaching unreal nightmarish pace toward end of highschool.  During college, they relax and discover the joy of being an adult, drinking and getting laid.  Engineers are an exception.  They basically do what US engineers do except there is a greater chance of being enslaved by professors on some quasi-commercial projects.

Once they start working, they are too busy to do anything except work, eat, drink, and sleep (order is significant).  Thanks to Internet, now they are starting to enjoy activities outside work during work hour (understandable since they obviously can't cut down further on eating, drinking, and sleeping).  Is there time for learning?  Hardly.  To survive in Korea, you have to invest a lot of time in socializing because social networks takes precedence over education in Korea.  Now you know why there are so many cafes and bars in Korea.

When they reach 40, they are already on the way out.  If they have not made executive management by mid-40, they will eventually be forced to retire early.  At Samsung, retirement age is 55.  Just a week ago, a large Korean IT company asked me to lead an engineering team in Korea.  I told them I wasn't too excited about the prospect.  No kidding.

An example of Polarization in Emergent Democracy?

An ongoing controversy in Korea over a NEIS, a major initiative to overhaul Korean education infrastructure's aging information systems.  Two national organization of teachers are fighting each other over ideological grounds, primarily privacy, with the government caught in the middle.  Neither group is willing to accept the government's decision forcing Vice Education Minister to flip-flop several times with no end in sight.

What I find interesting here is that two major groups emerged, both highly dependent on the Web and mobile networks for organization and communication.  The two groups are not likely to merge at any time and, even if they do, another oppositional group is likely to emerge.

I wonder if divergent events like this, caused by polarization, have been considered appropriately in Joi's vision of Emergent Democracy?  I mean, a lame duck government caught in the tides of power-struggle between competing social groups is not exactly my dream of a New Democracy.

Here are some NEIS related news in English:

Here is an interesting little article related to polarization of social structures: Divided We Stand???  The article also mentions a paper (PDF) written by Ron Burt.  Here is a kicker quote from Ron:

"[A tightly closed network] amplifies predispositions, creating a structural arthritis in which people cannot learn what they do not already know."

Daily Korea News in English

Here are links to sites where you can get daily or weekly news about Korea in English language.  I thought it might be helpful.

Arirang TV is more like TV Guide for Korean entertainment content, but it's useful for getting a feel for what Koreans are watching and listening to.

Three Gorges

The Three Gorges Dam in China, biggest dam ever, is being filled.  I regret not having been to Three Gorges for I'll never see it in my life time.  When I was growing up in Korea, I read about the Three Gorges from the classic Chinese novel Three Kingdoms (a book read by every single Korean at least once) and other Chinese novels translated into Korean.  The place was well known for its beauty and history of battles raged around the area.

The Chinese govenment is destroying not only the environment, but also history and tourism.  It's worse than filling Grand Canyon.

Sunday B-B-Q

I am having some friends over today for a Korean B-B-Q.  Yumm!  Great weather too.  Blue sky with not a single cloud.  You folks have a great weekend too.

On Three, Commercialize!

Online Music Service Association (rough translation) in Korea announced on May 28th that nine of its member companies will start charging money for music as of July 1st.  It is interesting to see nine companies doing it together.  Price fixing might be the next step IMHO.

Commercial use of WiFi in Korea

I just read about an interesting use of WiFi in a Korean newspaper.

Old Seoul was much smaller and was surrounded by walls with four gates at each of the compass points.  Areas near the gates (with the exception of the North Gate for obvious reasons) flourished commercely even after the walls came down and gates lost their meaning.  At East Gate (Dong-Dae-Moon) and South Gate (Nam-Dae-Moon), small stores banded toegether and formed large shopping districts which does business practically around the clock.

Hundreds of tiny stores selling amazing array of goods at rock-bottom prices is enough to draw buyers from all around the countries as well as people from near-by countries like Japan and China looking for bargains.  But getting them online was a nightmare.

Nam-Dae-Moon merchants have just agreed upon a plan, with financial support from Seoul city planners, to use WiFi to get every store online, forming a federated online shopping portal.  Orders are received online and forwared to each store via a WiFi-equiped PDA and delivered by a common shipping service.

With all the potential technincal and social problems along with tight $1 million dollar budget, they got plenty of headaches ahead.  But, if they succeed, we should see similar Wireless Market Districts popping up everywhere in and around Korea.

Update: I just had a fiendish thought.  Many of those stores selling similar goods are located near each other to form product-oriented shopping sub-districts in a nice mixture of co-operation and competition.  I wonder if the competition part could spark a WiFi hacker wars by sons and daughters of those shop owners.  With tools like ettercap Joi Ito pointed out recently, a hacker for one store can interefere with online orders going to another store.

Since problems attract solutions, Nam-Dae-Moon project will be one interesting WiFi hotspot to watch.

Korea Blogs

Korea Bloggers are, as I define it, bloggers who blog about Korea in English.  Korean Bloggers are bloggers who blog in Korean language.  Confused yet?  Thanks to Hoon (who has a wacky site), I found a list of Korea Bloggers.  Most of them are either English-speaking foreigners living in Korea or Koreans living in English-speaking countries.  Yeah, I am starting to get confused too.

Family News

My father, well into his 70s, was mentioned in an OhmyNews article (in Korean language; my father is the one wearing sunglasses in the photo) for demanding a public apology from Kim Young-Sam, a former Korean President.  My father is known to outside Korean political circle as Grandfather Egg (rough translation) because he egged Kim Young-Sam three years ago.  I admire my father's energy.  Go Daddy Go!

This is a good example of the new citizen-reporter driven media's power.  This article was reported by a citizen reporter and contains substantial detail, something which mainstream journalists would not have had the time nor space to report on.

Another key change brought by the new media is increased longetivity of public attention.  News reported by citizen reporters live on far longer than news reported by professionals because each story is personal to the citizen reporter and he can dedicate far more time than his professional coutnerpart.  News can go on for months or years before and after the public notices.

This will make a significant impact on countries like Korea where even its citizens admit to having an unusually short attention-span.  Politicians frequently took advantage of this by flushing stories they don't want off the frontpage with some other 'frontpage worthy' news.  But now, they are helpless.  I mean, what are you gonna do when a story just refuses to die?

Origin of SARS?

Some UK scientists are claiming that SARS came from out of space.  While SARS from STARS makes an eye-catching headline, I think wild animals, as claimed by a HK scientist, are more likely the source.  Wild animals are popular in Far East as health-food.  [I wonder what cannibals' concept of healthfood was?]

I remember being fed amazing array of horrible stuff when I was little by my father who took up hunting to vent his political frustrations.  Imagine waking in darkness and being forced to eat something that taste horrible.  The worst part is in the morning.  I would yell, "Mom!  I have blood all over my face!"  And my mother would say, "Your dad gave you fresh deer blood last night."  Urgh.

When we immigrated to American, the variety got wilder.  Wild turkeys, pigs, deers, peasants, and bears.  Thank goodness there is a hunting limit on bears.  Bear-skins stink real bad too.  When my dad finally gave up hunting, I was overjoyed.  After all that, I can now eat only beef and chicken.  Lamb?  Rabbit?  Whoa, they are too exotic for me!