I really hate bad news.  My wife just got a call.  Her older sister living in New Zealand have stomach cancer.  Google tells me her chance of surviving stomach cancer is not good, particularly since the cancer was not discovered early.  A good evening evaporated.  I don't quite know how to comfort my wife.  When she feels sick, I feel sick.  When she feels bad, I feel bad.  Spiritual Simese Twin.

I am not used to bad news like this because both side of my family are unusually healthy, everyone living well past 80 without even a hint of illness until the end.  Her family is just the opposite, her father's side rarely lived past 60; her father at 65 is breaking new ground.  Its like a fog of bad karma descended with one phone call.  I have turned on every light in the house in a vain attempt to lift our spirit.  Shadows seem darker tonight.

Much of President Roh Moo-hyun's cabinet was announced today.  So far, there are four women in his cabinet.  Biggest surprise was that Kang Goom-shil, a 46 year old woman, was appointed as the new Attorney General, first woman to hold that position.  While I am very happy to see it happen, it was a total shock.

In Korean justice system, seniority rules supreme.  So when someone is promoted for one reason or another, those with higher seniority but lower rank resigns to avoid the taboo of higher seniority taking orders from lower seniority.  Crazy, but true.

The new Attorney General has 11 years less seniority than the head of police who must take orders from her.  When the possibility of her appointment was raised, people with higher seniority than her threatened to quit (no wonder, they will have to quit anyway if they follow the tradition).  President Roh appointed her anyway and effectively said "f**k seniority".  I like his style.

US has its share of greedy opportunists and so does Korea.  This is a case of some greedy Koreans registering domain names as soon as they get a whiff of merger news.  They shame me.  The interesting part is the jurisdiction conflict between Virginia and Korean courts.  Localized trademarks and related domain names will be fountain of trouble in the future also.

Text of GLOBALSANTAFE.COM In Rem Domain Name Decision. Thanks to a Blog Reader at Skadden for forwarding a copy of the GLOBALSANTAFE.COM decision, in which the District Court in Viriginia exercised in rem jursidiction over a domain name, and ordered Verisign, the .com registry operation (located in Virginia) to cancel a domain name, despite a stay issued by a Korean court. [The Trademark Blog]

I remember Koreans getting upset a few years ago over foreigners registering popular Korean words as domain names.  If you can't grok, imagine some enterprising Iraqi registering unclesam.com.  A lot of emotions are packed into words and domain names are no different.

The death toll in recent Korean subway fire tragedy is expected to be over 200.  Most of the dead were on train 1080, not on train 1079 where the fire started.  Unbelievably, train 1080 pulled into the station while train 1079 was visibly engulfed in flame and stopped right next to it as you can see below.

After parking train 1080 next to train 1079, the driver talked with subway headquarter and was told to shutdown the train and leave.  The driver was repeated told to take the key used to activate the train.  No mention was made of the passengers.  Tragically, the train doors were closed when he took the key out and left, leaving the passengers inside.  While train doors can be opened manually in a few minutes, tests have shown that untrained person can take as much as 30 minutes to open a door.  Result is what you see below.

Knowing Korean society well, I think it is almost certain that at least one more person will die, if not suicide then by homicide.  Can anyone live with so much guilt?

Online games are so popular in Korea that its having a major impact on the young generation.  Online game items sells at as much as $10K although most good items are in the more affordable hundreds to thousands of dollars.  Also, items for sex is not unheard of.

I couldn't find any fantasy and science fiction books in Korea few years ago, but they are now commonplace thanks to online games.  Most of the popular fantasy and science fiction books are written by Korean kids and young adults who learned English words like 'item', 'inventory', 'fireball', and 'levitate', not from the English dictionary, but from the games they played.

'Avatar', another online game word, is also well known in Korea.  The word now means 'a manga-style character representing a person online'.  You can get a free generic one or buy a custom drawn one to use on your cellphones, in online chatrooms, or online games itself as textures.  Many well-known Korean figures, from politicians to CEOs, now have their own avatar as part of their publicity.  This is just one of newly elected Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's avatar.

Books, mangas, animations, clothes, songs, and hairstyles in Korea are all affected by online games.  Its just mind boggling.  I haven't figured out whether its some peculiar trait in Korean culture that made this happen or some duplicatable factors.  Spread of 'PC-Bang' (Korean style Internet Cafe) in China and LA suggests that it can be duplicated, although those places haven't gone as crazy as Korea.

He isn't mentally retarted, just partially paralyzed from an eastern medicne treatment gone bad.  He tried to kill himself manytimes.  Feeling suicidal, he thought it would be unfair to die alone, so he decided to take some with him.  125 died, but he didn't.

While improvements are being made, most Koreans are not kind toward handicaps and looks down at them as if they are sub-human.  I have seen people yelling and cursing at handicaps because they were too slow to get off the bus.  While I don't condone what he did, things must have been unbearable for him.  He probably would have preferred being fully paralyzed since he wouldn't have been humiliated everyday as he tried to go about his daily business as best as he could with his half-paralyzed body.

[I'll end the day with another dose of Korea related post.]  For some reason, Korean politicians visit Hoover Institution whenever they lose a Presidential Election.  This time, its two: Hwae-Chang Lee and Mong-Joon Jung.

Mr. Jung is a son of the founder of Hyundai and a Vice President of FIFA, the organization behind WorldCup.  At one point, he led int he polls, but lost out to Moo-Hyun No in an informal poll-based runoff to unify candidacy against Hwae-Chang Lee.  He helped Mr. No until the last hours and then quit because he was upset with Mr. No.  Needless to say, he became a laughing stock the next day when the Presidential Election results came in.  Mr. Jung is supposedly going to Hoover Institution to do some research into Asian politic.

Mr. Lee was the former leader of Han-Na-Ra-Dang, the conservative party in Korea with a large majority over others.  He is a prosecutor turned politician with a striking lack of charisma.  Still, everyone expected him to win until the few weeks of the Election.  After losing, Mr. Lee also announced that he is going to Hoover Institution to do research.

My opinion is that Korean politicians are using the Hoover Institution as a sort of political bandage or medal.  I don't know what kind of research Hoover Institution is doing on Korea, but I have yet to come across a useful Hoover report related to Korea.  Hey, if you Hoover guys want to do research about Korean politic, try going there to smell Kimchee and drink Soju.

Korean way of measuring a man is to get him drunk and see how he behave.  This is because Koreans tend to hide their inner thoughts and feelings.  Same method is used to communicate thoughts and feelings that violate normally strict social and business hierarchies.

While drunk, a subordinate can tell his boss what he really thinks of him.  Next day, the abused boss can't broach drunk behavior because doing so will embarrass the subordinate, a taboo of sort.  Even if the boss is stupid enough to ignore taboos, what can he do if the subordinate say "I don't remember."  Inability to remember drunk behavior is called 'cut film' and happens very frequently among Korean men because Koreans drink hard when they drink.  How hard?   I think Korea's only competition is Russia.  Its pretty bad, but thats how Koreans make friends and relieve stress.

This unusual 'feedback' system exists because Korean society is very forgiving toward what you do and say while drunk.  Even the law is suspended to some degree, allowing one make up for abuses to people and property with a sincere apology and other amends the morning after.  Although very unhealthy, the system seems to works.

There is another Don Park in blogspace!  He is a Western Park, while I am an Eastern Park.  As long as its not Don't Park, we are all right.  I just noticed that this blog comes up first when I google 'Don Park'.  Cool.  A sheet metal factory in Canada is third just beating out the other Don Park in blogspace.  Top 'Don' is Don Knuth of "Art of Computer Programming" fame.  I do feel a kinship with people named Don and Koreans with 'Do' in their name.

I chose Don as my 'American name' because my Korean first name is 'Do' as in Tae-Kwon-Do.  'Do' character is pronounced 'Tao' in China and means 'Way' or 'Road'.  I append 'n' to 'Do' to get 'Don' which I interpret as 'Person of the Way'.  No wonder I feel comfortable in 'empty' Zen temples.  No, this is not why I never asks for directions.