Friday April 11
10:01
Korean Space Priorities
Jon has a piece about the blast off of The First Korean In Space, Yi So-yeong. He comments:
Arirang mentions her plans to introduce her country’s traditional food and beverages such as kimchi specially developed and packaged for space to the crew aboard the ISS.
I once worked as a consultant for a Korean film producer wanting to film in Scotland.
Of all the things he could have been worried about - weather, permission for filming, getting the crew and equipment there, grants - the thing that most concerned him was: How can I get Kimchi for my crew? Koreans need their Kimchi for work.
It made me laugh that the same dialema also faced the organisers of this space mission. I imagine the list of priorities was:
- Kimchi
- Allowing smoking in the toilets
- Soju
- DMB TV reception in the shuttle
- Enabling MSN messenger so that So-yeong can chat when she is supposed to be working
;)
Let’s not forget special, zero-gravity playing cards, so that she could teach the Russian cosmonauts Go-stop.