Korean News

This morning I watched KBS News (they broadcast it here on the mulitcultural channel...with a few subititles for guys like me). It looks like one Saturday a month Korean kids will be free of school! This is a pretty amazing thing, and comes on the heels of workers getting Saturdays off at many companies. Some kids have nowhere to go (since their parent are stil doing the 6, 6.5 or 7 day workweek thing, but for many of them they may actually have time to see their parents (especially their Dad) and play and, well, be a kid. The downside is many parents will probably sign them up for 학원/hagwon (after school/tutor) classes (which means they have to work harder and longer to fund the things) and it looks as if the time 'lost' to these vacations needs to be made up in the rest of the month. Saturday is usually 6 hours of school (as opposed to the 8-9 they usually go through) so the additional time each day might be worth it.

In the North, there are some high level soccer/football games going on in Pyoungyang (I can never get straight which league is in which series of games or qualifying rounds). The matches were televised (although not in the North) and there was even advertising (including that of Samsung and Hyundai) on the sidelines. Sure, the Northern players had to get their uniforms and shoes donated from the South and they lost to Bahrain, but at least they got out there. Word has it, though, that the crowd (which was not full of Red Devils as Southern mobs are) was 'mobilized' by the government to make a good showing...and the lot of them were dressed in brown and grey--also, not surprising, there were no close-up shots of the attendees.

Also in news about the North, they are finally going to get a phone line set up between it and the ROK (Republic of Korea, the official name of South Korea--if you think Republic means the North just remember that the U.S.is a Republic too). Apparently they've been using some sort of satellite system or copper routed through Japan to talk with each other for the last 60 years. This was fine until Kaesong (which is a joint economic zone) and its need for a better communication system than semaphore. Apparently, it took 30 minutes and horrendous cost to make a call. Funny thing, in the news broadcast they even noted the area codes of the phone line (011-8585 for calling the North, 869 for calling the South) which, in my books, is a pretty weird detail to have in the story--do they think that people watching mihgt somehow get accesss to these lines and need this kind of information?

And, as is typical in Korea: more people are opting for plastic surgery and Koreans are emulating one of their favorite stars by committing suicide. A typical day in the neighborhood.