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:

1. Kimchi
2. Allowing smoking in the toilets
3. Soju
4. DMB TV reception in the shuttle
5. Enabling MSN messenger so that So-yeong can chat when she is supposed to be working

;)