JanimeS Forum: Social

Since the Japanese nuclear reactor accident, Korea has been one of dominant donators for aids.

However, recently, Japanese government has begun a dispute for Liancourt Rocks (Dokdo) again. Of course, as usual, Korean government fought back fiercely.

There have been an unconfirmed event that Japanese prime minister talked to himself in a near whisper tone, stating that "I wish I could refuse Korea's donation."

It is an unconfirmed event but the source began with a Japanese blogger who claimed he heard the prime minister making such a statement.

It's been a shocker for many Koreans who believed the blogger. However, this event remains to be unconfirmed as Japanese prime minister denied making such a statement.
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"무상급식" means free meals for students at school.

Of course, it sounds nice for parents who no longer have to pay anything at all. I am sure any modern democracy country has debated this at least once since the last decade.

Free meal or not?

In Korea, free meals for student project took off about a month ago (based on the time of this article). And the result is not pretty.

Partially thanks to rising oil price.

Budget is fixed and food prices have been raising. Compromises had to be made. Such results were sacking employees by about 5% as well as lowering quality of meals.
In detail, if a school chooses the free-meal project, they receive a fixed budget from local government. The fixed budget is 2457 won per meal. 2457 won translates to whooping 2.23 US dollars. Now, this 2.23 US dollars must include pay for employees involved in providing the meals also.
The guideline for the free-meal project enforces that 1892 won must be spent for food. (1892 won = 1.72 US) About 330 (30 US cents) won is used for drinks. (Milk and so on) The remaining tiny margin would be used to pay employees.

Of course, logically, the first compromise schools made was reducing number of employees involved in providing the free meals.

Fine, if must, compromise should be made. But look at the lower quality meal. It has a small chunk of kimchi, and a (fastfood) hotdog (without any sauce), and what appears to be rice? But it looks faded and dark gray. Is that food growing kids should be eating? Even convicted criminals in prisons get better quality food.

Before the free-meal project took off, each schools had a choice of negotiating with parents for better quality meals. In other words, good schools were able to afford much better meals compared to poor public schools.

Now, I must remind you that this is not mandatory. Schools are able to opt-out. But increasing amount of schools have been choosing the free-meal project since parents welcomed it. Free's good.

Free is always good.

The thing is, however, that everything has a catch. Nothing in life is really free because compromises will be made somewhere. Sometimes, you notice such compromises. Sometimes you don't - which makes you think that free seems to be really free.

In this case, you can clearly notice compromises.


Source : A lot. Type "무상급식" in any (Korean friendly) search engine, such as Naver.com Yahoo.com Google.com etc
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Source: me (Sura)

If you have some common knowledge regarding Korea, you would know that Koreans and kimchi are inseparable.

Whether one's poor or rich, kimchi is nevertheless served on almost all meals for Koreans.

And there is something else that's very tightly tied with Koreans.
Ir's ramen (Noodle).

For Koreans, ramen and kimchi are the two most common meals. If one leads a busy life, it's common to see them cook a ramen and eat with kimchi. Cooking ramen takes as short as 5 minutes. Although it is considered fast food, some Korean ramen makers use healthier ingredients for their ramen products since so many Koreans rely on them for daily quick meals.

There is one specific raman maker called "Samyang". It is a part of a giant food cooperation in Korea. ( https://www.samyangfood.co.kr/ ) Some of their best selling ramen products make a loss for them since they refuse to use low quality ingredients and use no food additive.

Samyang CEO once said, "Our people(Koreans) eat our ramen products every single day. I am not going to put my people's health on jeopardy just because I need to make a profit. I can make profits elsewhere."
Currently, their samyang raman product lineup results them net loss every year because they maintain their low price yet uses high quality ingredients.

There are "healthy" ramen products as well but with higher price tag. The variety of ramen can be mind boggling. There are just so many flavors. Kimchi ramen is the most popular one. Many of flavors are spicy ones.
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Source : I read this on a random Korean blog. The blog itself states that this survey was conducted in Japan.
The sample pool was 500 Japanese adult women. Material status did not matter.
http://kr.blog.yahoo.com/anitrue/23531


The question was brutally simple in context.

Which man would you marry if you could -

1. An ugly dud with high wealth.
2. A handsome dude but piss poor.

Result was 395 women (79%) voted for #1. 105(21%) women chose #2. 6 women chose not to answer.

There were some comments on the survey. To sum it up, its points were -

1. Love cannot sustain marriages.

2. Men work. Therefore, they are generally not at home most of time. We (women) get to see them at night, at bed, and perhaps for a short moment in morning. Therefore, appearance doesn't matter as long as he is capable of bringing in good income.

3. Ugly men are more likely to care for their wives than handsome guys. In fact, handsome guys are likely to have an affair rather.

4. If I do marry some handsome guy, chances are that I will likely be badmouthed by women in the area. I don't want that.

5. So what if the guy's a fat ugly guy? If he brings in lots of money, that issue can be solved by calling few hosts. Money solves all problems.
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What do you think?

For those who have little idea of Koreans, you will likely say that war is no good and innocents will be killed as a result.

But a lot of South Koreans have been voicing up for a total war against North. And I am one of the supporters of the war even if it may cost my life all together.

Korea unification is a dream for many Koreans, and we know one thing for certain. Unification is going to cost lives. South Korea itself is too small, and the whole continent has been pretty much fully developed. Meanwhile, North remains completed undeveloped. South Korea industry has been drooling on North for many years.

I, as a just mere citizen of South Korea, want to go and see Baekdu Mountain myself. http://en.wikipedia....Baekdu_Mountain
And I personally want to see Korea unified before my death.

The desire for Korea unification feels similar to the desire of Korea winning FIFA worldcup. In 2002, when Korea went as far as semi-finals, a lot of people cried, actually tears ran through cheeks of many Koreans.
I was there. I saw them.

5.000.000 Koreans gathered in Seoul (on a single spot. That's a lot of people. And the announcers themselves shed tears on live TV.) and cried when they won the right for semi-final. I personally don't know why we (The Koreans) tend to do this, but we do tend to do this sort of thing. This strange desire feels very similar for Korea unification.

'No matter what...'
'Even if it means my life...'
kept ringing my head regarding Korea unification and winning FIFA worldcup.

To be brutally honest, if my single life can earn the blessing for Korea team to win FIFA worldcup, I'd be very glad to let go of my life.

But under one condition, I want to see them win before my life is taken away.

These two mysterious desires, you wouldn't know unless you are a Korean who was born in Korea and spent your whole life in Korea.
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What would you say if you were denied of entry to a night club because your height is too short ?

Certain "famous" / "renowned" night clubs in Seoul deny entry of "losers" who are shorter than about 180cm(ish) which is about 6ft. For females, the limit is 165cm. If a girl's shorter than that, she's out.

Yes, they define "losers" by height. They also deny entry of "fat" people.

If that is not a sign of rotting society, I don't know what else would be.

Source : Me. I saw youngsters being denied of entry to night clubs due to their height and weight.
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I am sure you've read many news about it if you are one of those who actually read news on net or TV.

For those who don't know, North Koea fired shells on a small isle with a small South Korean establishment near demilitarized zone. There were small casualties ( relatively speaking ). Two died and about 18 were injured.

This is the most bold move from North since sinking of a Korean warship although North firmly denied that they sunk the warship despite of indisputable evidences. ( A North Korean warhead was found from the ship.)

You can read the incident in full details with some political remarks all over the web, so I am not going to into that direction. Instead, I will write my opinion on this as a native Korean.

I personally see North Korea as a bully without guts. They bully South Korea but can't act because North doesn't have what it takes to start a real fight.

Having said that, if a war does break out, it would mean that Korea will finally be unified, and whether I will survive the war or not is uncertain.
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Source : http://kr.news.yahoo...&newssetid=1352

One day, Mr A finished his dinner in a common restaurant, and he noticed a tissue that seemed rather unusual. The tissue had numerous phone numbers printed on it. It said, "24 hours cafe"
He asked a waiter why people would want coffee in middle of night. The waiter replied saying he really had no idea. The waiter continued and said that all the phone numbers pointed at a same cafe and that they made coffee deliveries when normal cafes would be closed.

Mr A also saw the tissue from a pub as well. Becoming curious, he called one of the numbers. A female answered and asked what kind of coffee Mr A would want. Then, she said the price was XX for X hours.

At this point, Mr A realized what it was all about. It was prostitution disguised as 24-hour cafe. However, it wasn't "disguised" because they indeed delivered coffee, and they would only perform service if requested.

Recently, Korean government has been hitting hard on red district in Seoul, and it seems the sex industry has found a new way to spread. They are trying to blend in with normal businesses.

A Korean citizen criticised the government, saying that having a clear red district was better since all prostitution businesses were confined within red zone, but now with the government trying to burn the red zone down, the sex industry is trying to blend into normal businesses and be found virtually everywhere.

It is the mothers who are worried more than others because they fear what their children might see and learn from such cafes.
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Source : http://www.hankyung....582607&intype=1

Yu Jin ( 유진 ) is a Korean actress. She has recently confessed that she had gone through few cosmetic surgeries. She says cosmetic surgery is nothing to be ashamed of and claimed that she needed to receive surgeries due to her job.

Cosmetic surgeries are heavily looked down upon since it creates fake beauty. However, many women receive plastic surgeries and hide it as hard as possible. And when a woman is revealed to have undergone cosmetic surgeries, the media will bombard her negatively.

Yu Jin claims that she is against total face modifications but supports partial cosmetic surgeries to correct facial errors that may haunt women forever.
She says that Korean's tendency to look down on every cosmetic surgery cases needs to be corrected.
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Have you ever thought about consequence of warez ?

Warez include downloading music, games, e-books, and raws illegally. Have you ever thought about what might happen if almost everyone used warez ?

A little less than two decades ago, there was a software gaming company called Sonnori ( 손노리 ) in Korea. This company was responsible for pretty much every Korean RPG PC games in the era.

Astonishia Story (RPG, now available in PSP) was Sonnori's one of famous games when they started out. Since then they release a few more games that remain exclusively in Korea.

This was also an era for warez in Korea. Warez was increasingly all over the Internet and it became only more aggressive, ripping and uploading games only hours after its release.

Sonnori suffered heavily from warez to a point of bankruptcy. The president of Sonnori had personally asked Korean users to have a mercy on them and released their last game in 2001 and hoped to come back.

However, warez uploaders showed no mercy and the company filed bankruptcy shortly after.

Sonnori was Korea's biggest PC gaming company and with its demise, Korean PC gaming market declined sharply and quickly.

Time now is 2010 now and Korean PC offline gaming has completedly (as in 100%) died. All Korean software companies now exclusively focus on MMORPGs since it is much harder to steal it.

Korean PC offline gaming market completely died. However, I'd say this is an isolated case since Korea gaming market was relatively small compared to the world's market. However, what happened to Korea PC offline gaming market could well happen to the world market. It will just take longer since scale is much larger. Maybe, something will be done to counter this.
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