A Tale of Two Comics

I am a fan of the comics. When I was a kid, every Sunday I’d get the newspaper and read the comic section to get my laugh on. Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, Shoe, Wizard of ID, and Peanuts were some of my favorites. These comics usually were no more than 3 or 4 panels with a good one liner for the punch line. Sometimes they were hilarious, other times they got a tiny chuckle, but the jokes were at least understandable.

Okay so what does this have to do with Korea?

Well, I’m not here to talk about Korean comics, or manhwa (만화). I’m talking about two comics written in English that appear regularly in The Korea Herald, one of Korea’s two major English-language newspapers. (The other major English-language newspaper is The Korea Times.) The comics are Ssomi & Hobo, by Artier Lee, and ROKetship by Luke Martin. Sometimes they are funny, sometimes they are not. I appreciate that when you are trying to make a creative endeavor, often you run out of material and start scraping the bottom of the creative barrel, so while I will be critical of both of these comics, I mean no disrespect to their makers.

Cheonggyecheon – Streamside Parkland in the City Center

Tourism… For FREEEEEEEE?!?!?

Look at all the tourists!

What is the difference between a tourist spot and a tourist trap? Take this simple test:

1. Is there an admission fee?

2. Are there street vendors selling merchandise totally unrelated to the place you are visiting? (For example, a street vendor selling transformers knockoffs made in China at the base of Seoul Tower)

3. Are there street vendors selling merchandise only related to the place you are visiting? (For example, statue of liberty foam crowns that you will only ever wear once)

4. Inside the attraction, are there places to spend money (aside from vending machines)?

5. (In Korea’s case only) is there Japanese signage?

6. (In Asia’s case) Do government sponsored pictures of the attraction proudly feature white people enjoying the attraction?

7. After visiting the place, do you feel that it wasn’t quite as good as what you anticipated?

If you can answer yes to 2 or more of these questions, then odds are, the attraction is a tourist trap. In other words, the main goal of the place is to siphon money away from foreign tourists, especially Japanese people (as Japan is the closest wealthy country to Korea)

Why did I make this test? Because there is one tourist attraction in Seoul that answers “no” to all 7 of the questions. There is no reason whatsoever to believe that this place is a tourist trap, even though there are plenty of foreign tourists there taking pictures of their vertically arranged children RIGHT NOW!!!! What wonderful beautiful free of charge place is this that is that I speak of? Why, it’s Cheongyecheon, of course.

Dual Citizenship Allowed in Korea!

Image Source: Korea Times

Breaking News!

The Korea Times has reported that a piece of legislation allowing dual citizenship has passed in the national assembly. This means that it will be possible for citizens of other countries residing in Korea to naturalize as Koreans without having to renounce their other citizenship(s). This is quite amazing since in the past, even people who were dual citizens at the time of their birth had to choose a citizenship before 18. Not so anymore! Korea is definitely moving forward and recognizing the reality that in our globalized world, there needs to be flexibility in how we define citizenship and nationality. Furthermore, this encourages a shift in Korea towards a more multicultural society.

Before, I had considered naturalizing, but never seriously, because I didn’t want to give up my U.S. citizenship. Now that I may not have to, It might actually be worth my while to acquire citizenship. I have not yet found any information as to when this law takes effect, but it is definitely a step in the right direction toward joining international society!

Samsung introduces 20nm class NAND memory

Wow, what does that mean?

Well basically Samsung Electronics makes lots of cell phones and digital cameras, and these days it’s popular to make them with some kind of detachable media, usually as a flash memory card.

Chips Ahoy!!!!

This new 20 nanometer NAND card is 30 percent faster than 30 nanometer flash cards, with a reading speed of 20MB/s and write speeds of 10MB/s

Still confused?

Basically, that means less loading times, less saving times, and you can get to your stored data that much faster. Hopefully we will see the benefits of this new NAND flash card in future Samsung products.

Want to know more?

I admit that I don’t know much about flash media, only that I don’t like to wait for stuff to load or save. If you are interested, click here to learn more!

Korean DMB 2.0 service has begun!

Man, I love me some advanced cellular phone technology, and Korea is leading the world with this stuff! I explained before what you could do with DMB 2.0, and the service has now started! LG has released the world’s first DMB 2.0 enabled phone!

LG electronics has released the first DMB 2.0 enabled phone, the LG-SU420 nicknamed the cafe phone. Here’s a demonstration video showcasing all the features! It has a 3.2 inch touchscreen and 3.0 megapixel camera as well. This phone looks really cool!

http://play.tagstory.com/player/TS00@V000421344

2010 World Photonics Expo Gwangju – VISITED

The entrance of the Photonics Expo

Well what do you know, I actually found myself in Gwangju with time to actually visit the light expo and it was really amazing! It was good in all the ways that it was supposed to be, and given that I happened to be there on a weekday afternoon, I was able to enjoy it without the busy crowd that might have been there in the evening or on a weekend. I’m sure it would have been better at night, but it was still quite entertaining in the daytime. The expo was divided into several different pavilions, so I will explain about each pavilion in the order I visited them. More details after the jump!

Be White? Why can't Yuna just be Korean?

Smoothie King Korea is starting to use 2010 Vancouver Olympic Figure Skating Champion Yuna Kim in advertisements. They’ve developed the Yuna Smoothie, which according to the website says it contains bananas, strawberries, oranges, and Yuna powder. I wonder what Yuna powder could possibly be?

The slogan of the ad is “be white.”

I like Yuna Kim, and I know this advertisment isn’t telling Koreans to strive to be white people, but I can only imagine the laughter from my friends if this were shown in the U.S. I wonder what be white is supposed to mean then. I assume it has something to do with snow.

After some research, I found a video about the TV commercial shows that the full campaign is called be white 2018, which means that it’s somehow tied in with Pyeongchang, Korea’s 2018 Winter Olympics bid.

Funny though!

http://www.youtube.com/v/9950xCa2Dbo&hl=en_US&fs=1&

Korean Golfer Y.E. Yang, Jeju’s proud son

Y.E. Yang hits the ball out of the bunker.

Most of my articles seem to be about places, food, or technology, but I think it’s important to do an article about some people now and then. I am personally not a fan of professional golf. In fact after Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, I couldn’t name for you any other professional golfers that play currently. The other two professional golfers that I can name are old (Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus). So why is it that this person caught my eye?

Well, if there’s one thing I can say about the Korean media, it’s that they love their sports heroes. And the media has been rife with the recent success of the golfer Y. E. Yang, who after defeating Tiger Woods to become the 2009 PGA champion, won the 2010 Volvo China Open. He has the distinction of being the first Asian golfer to win a major (which I assume means a major competition.) Also, because of my article on Jeju, one of my readers suggested I write something about Yang.

Digital View on the Seoul Subway

Digital View in a Seoul Subway Station

I have to admit, I am a technology geek, and for that, it appears I am totally in the right country. I hereby present to you digital view – the future of subway navigation! Digital View was created by Daum, one of Korea’s leading internet portals. It has been installed almost everywhere in the Seoul Subway System

What is Digital View?

Well, think of it as a smartphone, only much much larger, and free. Do you see that gigantic screen? It is 100% touchscreen! I don’t know if the real purpose of Digital View is to navigate the subway and find your way around the city, or if it is just to show off how awesome Korean advanced technology is, but it serves both purposes very well.

What can it do?

I’m actually still learning about this myself. I’ve only fooled around with Digital View when I was waiting for the subway. I’ve found these features:

Subway Navigation: So in a huge subway system with so many interlocking lines it’s possible that the trip with the fewest transfers is actually longer than the one with more. With Digital View, you can click your start and ending stations, and it will optimize the route for you, showing you on the map how to go, and where to transfer.

Satellite View Map: Much like Google Earth, Daum also displays satellite imaging of the city. (actually I later found that it’s the whole country on the map, more on that later.) Once you get out of the subway, if you want to know how to go to a specific building, and what the building looks like, Digital View has already been there.

Phone: Digital View has a telephone. You can use T-money to pay for your calls on the telephone. (T-money is a kind of electronic money that can be used to ride busses and subways that usually comes in card form.) This is funny because some cellular phones here contain a T-money function, so it’s entirely possible that someone wishing to make a T-money call on Digital View will hold their cellular phone on the T-money panel for payment.

Information: You can get news, weather, and financial information from Digital View.

There are probably other things that it can do that I have not quite figured out yet. There’s a guy who writes a blog called Letters from Seoul who uploaded a video to youtube about Digital View. I am shamelessly using his video here because it shows all of the features.

http://www.youtube.com/v/oLJogJdbMXg&hl=en_US&fs=1&

When I was playing with Digital View, I found that the map extends further than just Seoul. It actually shows the whole country. I wanted to see Digital View’s stance on the territorial dispute over Dokdo, Korea’s easternmost point. After about 3 minutes of wiping the map further and further eastward, I found it!

Hey Look! I found Dokdo in Digital View!

Jeju Island – Korea's Island Paradise

Korea’s largest and most beautiful island. While I have not been to Jeju Island in the past two years, I have been there before; once for a vacation, and once for work. Both times I was in awe of Jeju’s intrinsic beauty. The island, like much of Korea’s other regions is home to its own dialect, so for someone who has learned to speak Korean in Seoul (ME), it’s awfully difficult to understand speech from people who have a dialect. I suppose it would be something similar to someone who studied and learned to speak standard English American English as a second language being dropped in a cockney speaking district of London, or sent to rural New Zealand, or the American South. (Yee Haw!) Fear not though, unlike Busan, the people in Jeju aren’t so in envy of Seoul overly proud of their cultural distinctiveness that they won’t revert to Standard Korean to accommodate people who don’t understand them (which I assume includes native Koreans). Jeju is indeed an ideal location for a vacation! In fact’ it’s the most popular destination for Koreans to go on a honeymoon!