Did Kim Jong Il Visit East Germany in 1960?

By Adamcathcart

on  Sinologistical Violoncellist

Kim Jong Il biographers appear to be conflicted about the young man’s whereabouts in the year 1960.  Was the nineteen-year-old future leader traveling around the German Democratic Republic, or was he getting things rolling at the university in Pyongyang which still bears his father’s name?  Or perhaps both?  His official biography, in any case, has him firmly at Kim Il Sung University.

I don’t have a definitive answer, but I do have a new clue, unearthed on my last day of work in the Berlin archives earlier this month.  It’s included in a letter from Kim Il Song to East German leader Otto Grotewohl, dated 24. February 1960, in which Kim is describing some specifics of a North Korean delegation which had been invited to an East German “Frühjahrmesse [Spring Festival]” in the city of Leipzig.

Kim’s correspondence with Grotewohl is usually full of formulaic language of socialist brotherhood and gratitude and all that, but Kim seems focused here on the minutiae of the trip in a way that feels unusual to me.  The North Koreans had waited a long time to respond to Grotewohl’s original invitation (which had been sent on 30. November 1959), and Kim’s letter seems to indicate that the North Koreans had changed their minds and finally decided to send a delegation, led by DPRK Ambassador to East Germany, Pak Il Song [who is called Park Ir Sen in the documents; I need to check his romanization, however].

Keep Reading Here

Twitter just not that social, find Korean scientists

We have crawled the entire Twitter site and obtained 41.7 million user profiles, 1.47 billion social relations, 4,262 trending topics, and 106 million tweets. In its follower-following topology analysis we have found a non-power-law follower distribution, a short effective diameter, and low reciprocity, which all mark a deviation from known characteristics of human social networks . In order to identify influentials on Twitter, we have ranked users by the number of followers and by PageRank and found two rankings to be similar. Ranking by retweets differs from the previous two rankings, indicating a gap in influence inferred from the number of followers and that from the popularity of one’s tweets.

Keep Reading Here Thanks to Code in Korea

High Heel Trash Service

mikedurkee.com

If you’ve been in Korea long enough to notice peoples shoes, you’re sure to have observed the overwhelming population of high heels. Not only are there more pumps than a girl would know what to do with, but if you stop and listen… you can hear the pitter-patter of ladies walking, jogging, running, dancing, jumping, leaping, spinning, sliding, galloping, marching and probably moonwalking in high heels. They wear them everywhere! Seriously.

Keep Reading Here

Folks in South Korea upset over iPhone 4 delay

South Korea would be in the early second wave of countries receiving the iPhone 4, sometime in July. After Apple had problems making white iPhone 4 models and meeting demand for black models, they came up with a release date at the very end of July, and I reported over a week ago that South Korea had been dropped from the list.

Well, it turns out that, according to the Wall Street Journal‘s Evan Ramstad, some folks in Korea aren’t too happy about that, including the iPhone’s carrier, KT, and the ROK government whom Steve Jobs blamed for the delay:

Keep Reading Here

Driving in Korea

As many of you may have noticed, Korean driving norms appear to be very different to those in many “western” countries. Many expats I know in Korea have commented that they would be or are afraid to drive in Korea. But are Korean roads really that dangerous, why are the standards of driving different, and what effects does this have?

Changing lanes on the streets of Korea

From my point of view, and also based on some reports I heard at the recent Ajou International Trauma Conference in Seoul which I attended, the biggest difference between driving practice in Korea and “western” countries is how people interpret the laws of the road. In Korea, as opposed to countries in much of Europe and North America among many others, most drivers do not consider that traffic laws are completely binding. Those living in Korea will surely be familiar with this; it is common practice to run a red light if there is nothing directly preventing you from doing so, or to turn right or left across the road from what others may consider the “wrong side” – turning left from the right-hand lane, for example. Lack of indication and an apparent lack of forethought are also considered to be common features of driving in Korea.

Keep Reading Here

Online game obsession in Korea brings deaths and murder

Online gaming is huge in Korea. And online gaming addiction is becoming a serious problem, especially lately. People have died and killed in Korea for their online game obsession.

Consider this: the parents of a three-month old daughter were so obsessed with an online role-playing game that they neglected their little one until she starved to death.

If you like your humour black, in this case to the extreme, than you might be especially interested to know that the game they were so possessed with involved raising a girl and looking after her from birth. You really can’t make this stuff up — it would be too sensational.

The parents, both jobless, played the game — called Prius online — for 12 hours a day at a PC bang (pronounced ‘bong’, they are 24-hour computer and internet cafe’s or salons that are all over Korea), only returning once a day to feed powdered milk to their daughter (who was born prematurely). The father was 41 years old, the mother twenty-five. They met each other online.

Keep Reading Here

Seoul Sounds

About Seoul Sound Project

Idea: It’s always been said that a picture can tell a thousand words, but what about everything else?  What about all those things that not even words can express?  I’ve been living in Seoul for the past year and have begun to collect sounds in an attempt to capture what is uniquely and distinctly Seoul.

Sounds: Every entry can be heard by clicking the play button on the audio player below each picture.  You can also download the sounds by right-clicking on the title at the end of each post and selecting ‘Download Linked File.’

Equipment: All the sounds posted have been recorded using my fancy new Olympus LS-10 handheld Linear PCM Recorder.  I bought it when I was back in the States, and haven’t totally figured it out yet, so hopefully you’ll see an improvement in the samples as time goes on.

Continue Reading  HERE

Thanks to Steve and  Seoul Sound , I really like this Blog

Couples in Korea

Ok, not being in a relationship and feeling a bit “different”  in this country … this was something that I noticed the first days being in Seoul.

Everybody seems to have a relationship?

Couples everywhere xD Back in the Netherlands you wouldn’t see that as much as you do over here.
Couples holding hands, taking pictures, giggling, cuddling … you know what I mean… Sometimes you just can’t take it, lol. Especially when I was with a few people at Namsan Tower which is a spot where a lot of couples go because of the romantic ambiance and the opportunity to have a locker hung up a wall with a message on it.
Oh my … the amount of couples is crazy.
But yea what can I do about it, I can act like a loser blogging about this (HA) but I envy them … I’m happy for those people. Of course I asked about this phenomena in Korea and one of the answers I got was the fact that Koreans need people around them. They just ‘need’  someone.

Thanks to nandoinkorea.com

Naver’s Kids

Naver’s Kids

Jr.Naver is the largest children’s portal in Korea, with 4 million
subscribers and 1.3 million unique visitors per day. It offers spe-
cialized educational content for children, such as Homework
Helper, which was restructured to comply with the school curricu-
lum, and Preschool, which makes learning fun for preschool chil-
dren. Jr.Naver also offers a variety of content for children to use
with their parents, such as Children’s Song World, Fairy Tale
Travel, and Parents’ Room, as well as entertainment services like
Animal Farm and Game Land.

Source NhnCorp 
  Junior Naver
Naver portal for kids, search, cafes, book learning and gaming, such as parents provide guidance. 
http://jr.naver.com/ 
 
  Junior Naver Animal Farm
Virtual animals to raise, farm, decorating, item store, point games, animals, schools, and provides kukingsyap. 
http://farm.jr.naver.com/ 
 
  Junior Naver panirum
Children Myspace, ahyitemsyap, point games, including Fannie service story. 
http://panyroom.jr.naver.com/ 
  
 Junior Naver Music Box
The latest music video, singer, dictionaries, singers, quizzes, provides cartoon. 
http://jr.naver.com/songbang/ 
 
  Junior Naver Avatar Land
Jyunibeo ahbatasyap, avatar, show off, the album boasts, Avatars and more. 
http://avatar.jr.naver.com/ 
  
  Junior Naver dinosaur country
Dinosaur types and characteristics, habitat, dinosaur encyclopedia, provides images and information.
http://jr.naver.com/dinosaurs/ 

The Junior Naver gabenol
Gabenol educational services, Kabe introduction, configuration and characteristics of play, learning videos and more.

http://parents.jr.naver.com/gabe/ 
  
  
 Junior Naver shake the world
Toddlers, nursery, learning, listening and providing thematic shake, shake offering creative guidance and more.
http://parents.jr.naver.com/kidsong/ 
  

World Junior Naver children
Hangul, English, math, art, creativity, games, development, test provide a test.
http://study.jr.naver.com/babystudy/ 
  
  
 Junior Naver fairy tale journey
Classic fairy tales, fairy tales, original fairy tales, Aesop’s fables, fairy tales provide unusual.
http://parents.jr.naver.com/donghwa/

North Korean super health and energy drink

The magic elixir will make you smarter, prevent geriatric diseases and protect your skin from wrinkles. Side-effects? Lighter skin.

Taking a break from building nuclear bombs, sending folks off to the gulags and threatening war “at any minute” with South Korea, North Korea announced Friday that it has developed a super energy drink that will boost your brain cells, make you smarter, prevent brain infarction and protect your aging skin from wrinkles and unsightly black spots. What’s more, there are no side-effects except that for some folks with a bit of melanin, it will lighten their complexion. But that could be construed as a good thing.

According to medial reports, the super anti-oxidation drink contains 60 kinds of “microelements” extracted from more than 30 species of plants. The official KCNA claimed the magic elixir had attracted “much interest from Chinese, German and other businessmen” at a trade fair in Pyongyang last month.

“It, with effects of both preventive and curative treatment, helps improve mental and retentive faculties by multiplying brain cells,” KCNA said, according to the BBC.

Keep Reading Here (hanopolis.com)