Archive for: November 2009

The Waiguoren’s Archives : November 2009

• 30     DoCoMo and KTF to make a new Android phone

• 30     Anti-Korean Manga Causes Controversy

• 30     Sam’s Blog-10 Things I Hate About Korea

• 29     Join Waiguoren’s Weblog On Twitter!

• 28     Why Is Korean Wave Popular In China?

• 28     What is the first Korean movie to receive criminal charges for sexually explicit content?

• 27     Learning Korean

• 26      Local hospitals allowed to attract foreign patients

• 26     Google Korea to “Koreanize” its Home Page

• 25      WonderGirls, Big Bang and Goo Joon Pyo appear on students’ test papers

• 25     Apple’s iPhone to be launched in South Korea this week

• 24     What is the first Korean movie?

• 23     Cheongdam Fortune Teller 청담보살 2009

• 23     Tragedia in passerella: Daul Kim, modella e suicida a vent’anni

• 22     Korean News Feeds

• 21     Daul Kim:Say hi to stressful korean books.

• 21     Model Daul Kim Found Dead

• 20     Korea Weather Forecast

• 18     Korean Soju

• 13     Korea Search Engines Directories

• 12     Koreans’ Love Affair with Quick Foods

• 12     The Korean Wave in China

• 11      Gov’t Standardizes Foreign Names for Korean Food

• 11      Samsung Bada is Yet Another Mobile Platform

• 11      Cyworld US Doesn’t Know “Graceful Sunset”

• 09      N.Korea Ends Experiment with TV Commercials

• 07      Korean Blog Services

• 06      Korea Traffic Cams, CCTV

• 05      Korean Mobile Blog

• 04      Bacchus-D vs. Red Bull: The Difference

• 02      Minerva saga continues with lawsuits

• 01      The Grand Narrative, Great Blog to follow

DoCoMo and KTF to make a new Android phone

Posted on androidauthority.com

Source:androidauthority

Japanese carrier NTT DoCoMo and Korean carrier KTF have decided to jointly create an Android smartphone. While it is true, many well known phone manufacturers have announced forthcoming Android devices, and this device will not come until 2009, the significance of this announcement is two-fold.”

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Anti-Korean Manga Causes Controversy

Posted on animenewsnetwork.com  on 2005-08-16

Mainichi reports “Kenkanryu,” a new manga whose title translates “Hating Things South Korean,” has become a best seller in Japan and is causing controversy in a country already suffering from image problems with its Asian neighbors.

Despite anti-Japanese sentiment in Korea, Korean exports, particularly TV dramas, have become very popular in Japan in recent years.

Byon Jil-il, managing editor of the Tokyo-based “Korea Report,” said that he isn’t surprised by the manga’s success, stating that “Kenkanryu” effectively “taps into” sentiments of resistance against the Korean cultural imports.

Kenkanryu tell the story of a Japanese student who becomes interested in Japan-Korea relations when the two countries co-host the 2002 World Cup of Soccer. The boy joins his university’s history club and debates the two countries’ past issues with Japanese born Koreans. He goes on to denounce the Japanese government’s apparent weakness in the face of Korean demands related to Japan’s 1910 annexation of Korea, comfort women and territorial disputes.

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Sam’s Blog-10 Things I Hate About Korea

Posted on samuelduncan.blogspot.com

As any insightful person should be able to tell, I love Korea and the Korean people deeply. I have a good life here, and Koreans have been very good to me. The positives of living here far outweigh the negatives, so don’t read too much into what I’m about to say.

This post been inspired by me having my Christmas plans ruined by my disorganised inconsiderate school, which has put me in a foul mood, and has meant that certain little things about this place are really annoying me at the moment.

A lot of them are specific to Seoul, but to me Seoul is Korea, as I haven’t lived anywhere else.

“Made from 100% Quality Korean Genes”

Also, when I state that “Koreans are…” I understand that I am making a generalisation, and that generalisations are always bad. If you want to argue with me, argue with what I am saying and prove me wrong, don’t pull me up because I don’t have time to qualify every statement that I make.

The only reason I am making these comments at all is that the last time I ranted and raved, in an email I never should have sent, about a particular country I unintentionally offended a lot of people who I care about and disrespected their hospitality. That was not my intention then, nor it it my intention now.

If you are a Korean reading this, please understand that I think Korea is a great country, and that this is just me letting off some steam.

In no particular order:

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Why Is Korean Wave Popular In China?

It is also referred to as “Hallyu” (Hangul: 한류; Hanja: 韓流; RR: Hallyu), from the Korean pronunciation. The term was coined in China in mid-1999 by Beijing journalists surprised by the fast growing popularity of South Koreans and South Korean goods in China.

Nowadays, Korean culture is influencing young Chinese people very much, and it is called “Korean Wave”. Why is Korean Wave so popular?

Source : pds10.egloos.com

Firstly, South Korea is a close and friendly neighbour of our China. The wars between two countries were before more than 1000 years. For the past one thousand years, the two nations have been on familiar terms. In the Ming Dynasty, Chinese army supported Korea and fought against Toyotomi Hideyoshi (豐臣秀吉)’s army of Japan. Later, the Ming Empire was destroyed by the Manchus, but the Lee Dynasty (李朝) of Korea still kept the year-title (年号) “Chongzhen” (崇祯) which was the year-title of the last emperor of Ming, and Korean still kept the hair-style and clothing-style of the Ming Dynasty. In more than two hundred years, Korean prepared in secret for supporting Chinese people to expel Manchu invaders. Our Chinese have a word “Friends in adversity”, and Korea was such a friend. Even if in the future the two nations have some conflicts, we can’t forget the past sincere friendship.

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What is the first Korean movie to receive criminal charges for sexually explicit content?

koreafilm.org

What is the first Korean movie to receive criminal charges for sexually explicit content?

The Empty Dream ( Chunmong ) (Yu Hyeon-mok, 1965 )

It’s < The Empty Dream ( Chunmong )> >, a 1965 film directed by Yu Hyeon-mok. A translation of the Japanese movie < Daydream>, the film stars Shin Seong-il, Park Am, and Park Soo-jeong, a rising female star of her times. The film is experimental and far-out to the point where even director Yu Hyeon-mok himself classified it as an experimental piece. A man runs into an actress during his visit to the dentist. Lying in the doctor’s chair, he falls into a deep sleep after receiving a shot of Novocain and starts dreaming. In his dream, he sees the actress and his dentist, and the dentist abuses the actress mentally and physically. His attempts to rescue the actress fail each time and he wakes up. Awake from his dream, he steps outside the hospital and he and the actress shake hands before parting. The film has a frame structure and the mise en scne is very expressive and fantastic like that of German expressionist films.

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Learning Korean

Thanks to  korea.net

Learning Korean

	Pronouncing Korean correctly	Online Korean language education from the National Institute of the Korean Language
	Korean Through English	Basic Korean course from the International Korean Language Foundation
	Korean Lecture	Free online lessons in Korean language for beginners and advanced learners. Prepare for your trip to South Korea by learning Korean.
	KBS World Radio – Hangeul page	Introduction of Hangeul and basic phrases in 9 languages including English, German, French, Spanish, Arabic, Russian, Indonesian, Chinese and Japanese
	Let’s learn Hangeul	An online version of the popular language curriculum produced by the Korean government
	Learn Korean and Speak Korean	A site for learning Korean online, includes tutorials and a student help forum
	Learn Korean	Structured lessons per level, good for beginners
	Gangnam Gu Korean Language Center	A language program by the ward office
	Korean studies at Sogang	Offers introductory, novice and intermediate online courses. All lessons include Hanguel text, Romanizations and sound files. Requires free registration

Local hospitals allowed to attract foreign patients

Posted on korea.net

It looks as if more foreigners will come to Korea to receive medical treatment, as the government has decided to allow local hospitals to attract international patients on their own in medical tourism promotion drives.

According to the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs, local hospitals and clinics will be able to advertise and work with travel agencies and the like to attract potential patients from abroad to seek a host of medical procedures in Korea starting Friday (May 1).

However, hospitals and clinics will be banned from attracting patients in cooperation with insurance companies.

This revision in medical-related law seeks to promote Korea as a destination for medical tourism.

In addition, the new policy is designed to help decrease the 65 billion won (US$48.1 million) deficit that the country’s medical service sector posts every year, and to eventually boost competitiveness of local hospitals, since they will have to raise the quality of their treatment in order to survive more fierce competition in the future.

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Google Korea to “Koreanize” its Home Page

Posted on koreainformationsociety

The Korea Times yesterday notes that Google Korea plans to “Koreanize” its home page!   The article notes that Naver has a 66 percent share of the search market and Daum is in second place with 20 percent.  Meanwhile, Google has only 2.2 percent of the Korean search market.  The article also points out that Google’s strength has been simplicity, but that now it is ready to compromise that to make its web page more attractive to Korean users who “have grown accustomed to fancy websites crowded with features.”  The article then proceeds to discuss the load time factor, or how long it takes Google’s home page to load.  Everyone knows that Google favors speed.   Number three of its “Ten Things” states that “Fast is better than slow.”
All of this is interesting, but I don’t think it gets to the central point of explaining why Google has such a minuscule market share in Korea.  For insight into that, do a search of this blog for “Google” and read one of my earlier posts on the topic, including this one.    I’d like to repeat some of the main points.

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