Tuesday March 11
18:07
The First Korean In Space Will…
…disappear into the toilet for a quick cigarette.
I don’t tend to read newspapers, so I don’t often pick up on what’s topical. Approving Seoul Buffoon for The Korean Blog List, however, I came across this:
Expert comments on Korea’s space lady
It so happens that a 29-year-old female mechanical engineer has replaced Seoul’s original choice as the first South Korean in space…and the reactions on the Internet blogs are amazing!
From The Korea Times:
The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology told a news conference that Russia’s Federal Space Agency asked for Ko San’s replacement, as the 31-year-old repeatedly broke training protocol by taking sensitive training material outside of the Russian space center. Back-up candidate Yi So-yeon will take over.
“The main reason for the cut is Ko made two consecutive security violations,” said Lee Sang-mok, the head of the ministry’s space technology bureau, adding that both events appeared unintentional.
He explained that the Russians regard abiding by the rules as critical since even a small and innocent mistake could lead to serious consequences in space.
The authorities have taken a decision for whatever reason… and the experts opinions are out in full flow. It is a free for all on the Korean blogs. Some male chauvinists are upset that it is a woman who will be the first Korean…
My first thought? My deep and insightful comment on Korean society and the implications of this decision?
What are the Russian’s going to say when they find out the Korean is smoking in the toilet of the shuttle in space?
From all the times I’ve been flying, I’ve only ever seen someone trying to smoke in an airplane twice. Both times it was a Korean. No toilet is sacred. No number of no-smoking signs. No number of announcements.
Not even Space may prevent it.
Thursday March 6
14:08
An American girl’s thoughts on why Americans want bigger knobs
I sent my American friend - a black American girl who used to live in Tokyo and had a Korean boyfriend while here - the content of my 2003 post “Do Koreans really have smaller penises than Westerners?” that I mentioned last week. I told her it reminded me of her ;)
Her reply was so funny, I have to print it in full here. Interesting she mentions India - it’s something that Steve mentioned in the comments last week (my American friend hasn’t seen the comments).
Here is her reply:
I am glad to hear recollections of me are associated with Korean penises as well. Flattering really. I like this American girl, she actually had the balls to ask a question I’m sure many people think about. I STILL need to know about Indian cocks but have yet to be provided with the opportunity to find out myself. I should just offer to drop my panties for the next attractive Indian male I come across.
You just HATE America. There are many reasons to contribute to your discovery regrading Korean/Asian penises versus American penises, I’ll contribute some of my thoughts for your American hating pompous British mind to ponder:
1) Korean and Chinese, (I’ll include Japanese as well) women JUST DO NOT tell their men that they have small penises, and choose the easier and more pleasurable alternative of sleeping around with gaijin men with more notable genitalia. That would also explain why they feel a strong need to obtain Black men with dicks of monstrous proportions.
2) American men tend to be overweight, and therefore have stomachs that hang over their cocks and gives them a smaller appearance, and also have poor blood circulation and low stamina that creates the reoccuring problem of limp dicks.
3) Americans are just power hungry, overly and unneccessarily masculine, greedy, and always want bigger, better, and stronger. This extends to the male genetalia.
4) American women are just honest and unabashedly can admit size does indeed matter.
If I can think of any more reasons I’ll be sure to let you know.
You’ve got to love this girl.
Oh, and I don’t think I HATE America. I just like to BASH it every now and then.
Monday March 3
16:58
The Korean Blog List - Revamped
The big new for me today is the release of the revamped Korean Blog List.
I set up The Korean Blog List years ago, when I was in Hong Kong. At that time there was just a handful of bloggers writing about Korea - but over time the number grew and grew, and The Korean Blog List struggled - the “one page” format scrolled on and on forever; maintaining the link quality was a nightmare; there was no possibility to search by location.
Over the last week I have completely recoded The Korean Blog List from scratch. It is now in a much better position to expand, with the ability to report bad links, bloggers to update their own listings, etc. As bloggers update their registration details to add where they are living and their nationalities, I’ll introduce browse/search by location and nationality.
I should have spent more time on The Korean Blog List before, but I didn’t have the time. Now I do, and I have some cool things planned.
Thursday February 28
13:10
A Slice Of Lemon Soju History
Searching to see whether Google has picked up on the fact that I’ve started writing again, I came across a webpage with a link to one my old posts).
Curious, I re-read the post.. and it made me smile. Ahh.. those were the days in Korea ;)
Since my old blogs are no longer public, I’m going to reproduce the post again here. A piece of Lemon Soju history.
28th July 2003: Do Koreans really have smaller penises than Westerners?
A week or so ago an American girl approached Mike and I in a bar on the pretense of interviewing foreign teachers about their experiences in Korea to ask the question: Do Koreans really have smaller penises than Westerners?
You may remember I wrote about it before. Again, why she should think Mike and I would know the answer to this, I don’t know. A bit of simple active market research would have given her her answer.
Well I think I’ve have found her answer. And thankfully it didn’t even involve looking at any guys penises. Maybe she had some intuition about approaching us after all.
Every day I receive about 100 pieces of junk mail.
In that junk mail guaranteed about 20% will be adverts for Viagra or for some online pharmacy offering Viagra or for some way to add an inch to your penis.
Every single one of those junk mails has one thing in common. They all originate in America. They are all targeted towards Americans.
I’ve never seen a single email in Korean or English offering a natural or unnatural way to extend your penis, or a way to keep it up, to Koreans.
I can only draw one conclusion from this. It’s not the Koreans who have the small penises.
Now I’m sorry if that’s offensive to any Americans, but lets look at the evidence.
Every day 20 pieces of junk mail about extending or keeping limp American penises hard.
Every day no such mail about Korean knobs.
Now you could say that America is a larger country, so would generate more mails. On the other hand, Korea has the highest internet penetration (pun not intended, but I like it anyway) of any country in the world, so you would expect a lot of junk mails in Korea.
However, even ignoring internet penetration, we can see the population of the countries is irrelevant. The USA is the third largest country in the world, with a population of about 280 million. South Korea is the 25th largest country in the world, with a population of about 45 million.
So South Korea has 6 times less people. Let’s even up the junk figure by multiplying the 0 of South Korea by 6.
Still 20 v 0.
You could also say that Korea doesn’t yet have Viagra. Fine. But even before Viagra, the ratio was the same. Now the herbal cures have been replaced by Viagra.
You could say that I don’t have a specific Korean email address. But one of my emails has ’soju’ as the domain. The other is a dot com and isn’t specifically American. I have a Yahoo Hong Kong (.com.hk) email yet I don’t receive Chinese junk about small dicks, only American Junk. My friends with Korean email addresses experience the same ratio as above.
I can come to no other conclusion than Koreans don’t need Viagra or penis extensions. Maybe it’s the Kimchi working its magic again.
And I have one piece of advice for Bush. If you don’t want the world to think that your country is full of people with small limp penises, do something to stop America’s junk mail polluting the world. Something a bit more effective than what you’ve done to stop America’s pollutants polluting the world.
Tuesday February 26
15:26
Korea drives me NUTS, but I still adore it
Korea is a country that sometimes drives me NUTS - like today - but it’s also a country that I cannot help but adore.
Underneath the insanity, the people have a heart of gold, and they will break rules and go out of their way to help you. They are human. I remember seeing two guys get into a fight during the world cup - and when the police stepped in, the police just stopped the fight, helped the guys calm down, and then told them to move on. If that was Britain, those guys would have been banged up (and probably buggered).
When faced with a crazy situation in Korea, you can reason with people, explain to them how silly the rules are, suggest strange ways around things - and they will go out of their way to help you (with the exception of Immigration, who seem to be on a planet of their own). Well, they will go out of their way to help me - but maybe that’s because I know how to give as good as I get in Korean.
It’s the complete opposite situation in Japan. Japan is a totally rule based society. If there’s a rule that even makes no sense, Japanese will still follow it to the letter - unless there’s a rule which allows them to break rules.
Today was a classic example of Korean craziness.
Before I left Korea, I switched my phone to KTF. With KTF it’s possible to sign up for the 문자메신저Plus service and be able to send and receive SMS/MMS messages via the KTF internet site, and via an application you can download to your PC. The important thing is that your phone doesn’t need to be switch on to do it (unlike the service from SKT).
For the last 18 months, it has worked swimmingly. When I’m in Japan, I can exchange SMS with my Korean friends from my PC. When I visit Korea, I just switch on my phone and use it as normal.
Yes, for the last 18 months it has worked swimmingly. Until today.
Today when I logged in I was told I needed to receive a confirmation number sent to my phone before I could continue to use the service (인증번호). Why? God knows - no actually, this being Korea, probably he doesn’t know either. It doesn’t even seem to be related to the KTF move from “Magicn.com” to “Show.co.kr”, because that happened last month, nor the KTF Message Manager up(down)grade. It’s just random. Fuzzy logic. It’s Korea.
To my astonishment, KTF have English customer service. For anyone needing the number (and for my future record), it is: +82-2-2190-1180. From inside Korea: 02-2190-1108.
At first, they didn’t help much. I was told by the English speaking woman that there’s “no way” to get around the confirmation number. I explained that the point of the service is to be able to send and receive messages without a phone being involved, hence it doesn’t make sense to block all the international customers use the service. Still “no way” around it - and when I asked to speak to her manager, I was told “I don’t have a supervisor”.
“So you run the office yourself, do you?” Of course she doesn’t.
Lots of pursuasion later (”I’m paying money for this service and you’ve blocked me from using it” / “We’ve not blocked you” / “Yes you have, because it’s impossible for me to login” / “There’s nothing we can do” / “Well the number that I have to enter must be in your system, so tell me it so that I can continue to use the service” / etc), and after numerous comments that there’s no way around it, she agreed to look further into it and call me back.
Which she did. To ask for my password. It makes me laugh that Koreans give out information like that so easily - African scammers counld make a fortune if they just learnt Korean. I didn’t tell, of course.
We did eventually come to a solution though (by this time, we had resorted to her speaking in Korean and me speaking in English): She transferred my number to a spare phone she had, then I requested the confirmation number to be sent, she read it to me, I typed it into the website, and then she transferred my number back to my phone.
So now I can send and receive Korean SMS from my PC again, and I’ve lived through another crazy pointless farce. But the good thing is that it reminded me that crazy as Korea may be at times, because of that craziness, Koreans have some flexibility. It will probably always drive me NUTS, but today it made me happy that I took time to understand how Korean people work, and to understand the country.