More Taco Bells Coming Soon To Korea?

I finally made it to the Taco Bell in Itaewon, Seoul last week.  I learned about it from Chris in South Korea.  It has been open already for more than two months, but the amount of business it has been consistently getting since then must be great.  I went there at 3pm on a Friday afternoon and was unable to find a place to sit down in its two floors of seating because it was so crowded.

It looks like Taco Bell is pleased with their success and are making plans to expand.  The Washington Post has the article.

SEOUL - In South Korea, where talk of the border rarely involves dinner options, Taco Bell this summer opened a restaurant, its only one in Asia. But indeed, not its first.

Taco Bell had tried Asia before, and the pair didn't get along. The chain closed its two previous South Korean franchises in the early 1990s. It then pulled out of China in 2008, restoring Asia's reputation as a continent unconquered by the taco.

Taco Bell chose Seoul for its Asian re-launch, though, for a reason that has little to do with refried beans and sour cream. Seoul appealed to Taco Bell, executives say, because few cities on Earth can better turn a novelty into a mainstream obsession. In the time it takes for other countries to warm to a new product, South Koreans have already liked it, loved it, photographed it, blogged about it and waited in 30-minute lines for it for two weeks straight.

Are Koreans really going for it?  They put their only location in Asia in the more densely populated foreign district in Korea.  When I went there, easily more than half the people eating there were foreigners.  How well they can sell tacos outside of Itaewon has yet to be established.

Far away from a customer base in the United States that knows the delights and agonies of late-night taco dining, paid for entirely with pocket change, Taco Bell seeks a higher level of trendiness in South Korea. The new store's menu appears on an LED board. Wall hangings display a succession of culinary mood words: sizzle, steam, smash.

Shin Sang Yong, chief executive officer of M2G Ltd., the company that brought the chain to South Korea, thinks Taco Bell can work here because "people are ready for something new. They've had 20 years of pizza and hamburgers." Shin envisions opening 30 South Korean franchises in the next three years. One hundred in the next six. Right now, Seoul has about 30 Mexican and Tex-Mex restaurants.

It is true.  Koreans have taken to pizza and hamburgers and their Koreanized versions, Lotteria and Mr. Pizza, are everywhere.  Why not tacos?  Slap some bad Englishee on some clever adverts of skinny Koreans celebs chowing down on a soft shell burrito supreme and every pudgy middle school kid in the country will be bugging his parents to go to a Taco Bell.

The city's three-story Taco Bell opened July 11, with 40-minute lines on the first day. Business in the first month exceeded projections by 20 percent, Shin said.

It remains to be seen whether Taco Bell will prosper here, or elsewhere in Asia, over the long term. Since Taco Bell last existed here 15 years ago, little has fundamentally changed in the way people eat. What's different is how they decide where to eat. In the world's most wired country, two of every five people, according to some estimates, maintain a blog. One of South Korea's preeminent search engines, Naver, has a special category for "powerbloggers," many of whom love writing about food. Taco Bell has held special events for these bloggers, hoping to win their approval.

"They can kill a company," said Paul Yang, general manager of M2G. "People here are very fast. One of the fastest places to pick up trends. They lead pop culture in Asia - ahead of Japan, ahead of Hong Kong."

Food trends in South Korea can start from almost anywhere. In the past few years, South Korea has had sudden love affairs with doughnuts, frozen yogurt and waffles.

Two out of every five people have a blog?  That seems impossible... or maybe not...  They do love their doughnuts and waffles.  Now, if we can only get buttermilk pancakes to catch on.  I really miss those!

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It is a cross-cultural truth that people like large quantities of sodium and fat, whether melted atop crust, sandwiched in a bun or stuffed in a tortilla. But Mexican food still faces some hurdles in Asia. Unlike other Yum! Brands franchises - KFC and Pizza Hut, in particular - Taco Bell has a limited international footprint, with just 250 stores outside the United States. Theories abound as to why Mexican food is a hard sell, but many food enthusiasts in Seoul say they think South Koreans are itching not just for Western food, but also for food that Westerners like.

"A crowd draws a crowd," said Daniel Gray, a Seoul resident and food blogger who offers Korean cooking classes and restaurant tours. "The fact that the foreigners start to go there, there's a huge line around the block - everybody sees that."

Taco Bell's menu, for now, is simple: burritos, tacos, nachos, quesadillas and other demonstrations of nacho cheese engineering, such as the Fries BellGrande, which consists of fries, sour cream, cheese and meat all layered together.

Yang says the restaurant might soon put up a sign showing newcomers how to properly eat a taco; so far, he has noticed South Koreans struggle to angle their heads, leading to a "taco at the wrong orientation," and spillage of ingredients.

Several young women sat on the second floor of Seoul's Taco Bell one recent evening, devoted equally to consuming and photographing their food. Jung Ji Yoon, a 20-year-old college student, said that she had eaten at Taco Bell several times this summer, finding the taste to be "good - especially compared to the price."

I want to see these picture boards explaining to Koreans how to eat tacos.

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KPOP Korral - [4Minute] - Huh

The girl group 4Minute consists of the members Nam JiHyun (남지현), Heo Gayoon (허가윤), Jeon Jiyoon (전지윤), Kim Hyun-Ah (김현아), and Kwon Sohyun (권소현).  They were created by Cube Entertainment in 2009 and have had a string of successful hits in a row.

The hype with this group surrounded Hyuna, who is a former member of the group Wonder Girls.  She left that group to form this group and is considered their leader.  The group recently has been promoting their music abroad in Thailand and the Phillipines, but they still are on the charts in Korea with their recent hits Huh and I My Me Mine.  I am a fan of both videos, but I think Huh is the better of the two.

Huh is supposed to be a response when you are laughed at, like "Huh! That's what you think!"

As far as KPOP live performances go, they are above the crowd.  The dances are fun and they look good.  Five is also a manageable number of girls.  When I see nine to eleven on stage I feel a little bombarded.

I hope they keep making more hits.  Things look bright for them.

A Growing Labor Movement in China?

For the first time in its modern economic history, China is beginning to show signs of labor shortages.  This has emboldened workers who are beginning to recognize their worth to the world's fastest growing economy.

Is the beginnings of a new labor movement taking hold in China?  Strikes have been breaking out across the country and workers are demanding better conditions, fewer hours, and more pay.  Because of recently passed legal legislation to help workers and the increasing shortage of manual labor, the strikes have been successful.

Al Jazeera's 101 East did a twenty minute special about this.

Geez, don't these Chinese workers sound like a bunch of communists asserting their workers' rights and demanding a more fair share for their labor?
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North Korea Planning Biggest Military Parade Ever

Why not?  Kim Jong-il is getting ready to hand over power, why not plan the biggest military parade ever?  That'll inspire the millions of starving people living without hope and cheer.  I guess my only question is why would they ever have a military parade that was not the biggest one they have ever had?  Seems like every parade they have should then be the biggest one ever... or else how can you measure progress in your society?

Here's a taste of what NK parade's are like, and then Yonhap has the story.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

SEOUL, Sept. 26 (Yonhap) -- North Korea is gearing up for an unprecedented-scale military parade apparently to mark an upcoming national event, multiple government sources here said Sunday.

A number of troops, missiles, armored vehicles and artillery rockets have been converging on the Mirim Airbase in Pyongyang since July 12, while as many as 10,000 soldiers have rehearsed for a parade that will be inspected by leader Kim Jong-il, the sources said, requesting anonymity.

The sources said it may become North Korea's largest-ever military parade in that the number of troops mobilized is more than double the size in previous events.

"Judging from the current preparations, it is likely to be a large-scale event different from previous years," said a source monitoring North Korea affairs.

The North's powerful Workers' Party plans to convene a rare conference of representatives on Tuesday and will also celebrate the 65th founding anniversary on Oct. 10.

Another source said that among weapons to be deployed at the air base is movable missile launch pads, which indicate the secretive North may show off its various missiles during the parade.

"We are not in the stage yet to talk specifically about equipment but missile-related equipment is on display," the source said.

A North Korean defector, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said about 5,000 troops usually take part in parades organized by the North's military.

"Given the scale of the event this time, however, chances are high that it will be arranged by the National Defense Commission and attended by Kim Jong-il," he said.

Anyone else think it is strange that we need a North Korean defector to remain anonymous to pass us valuable information such as how many of their soldiers participate in military parades?
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Japan's Currency Move Could Effect Won

If you are like me, you probably do not go more than a week without checking the exchange rate between Won and Dollars.  Here is a graph for the exchange rate over the last two years.

The crazy up and down spikes in the beginning was the start of the global recession.  Korea deliberately devalued its currency by nearly a third to protect itself.  But Korea and Asia in general pulled out of the recession pretty quickly.  The won was then doing fantastic in the spring time.  Then that boat sank and it shook the market.  People actually thought there might be war this time and the currency took a hit.

However, since the summer elections in Korea ended and the quiting down of the Cheonan sinking, the Won has been on the move again in the right direction.  Business Week wrote an article talking about the dynamics at play between Japan and Korea and their currency control policies.

Will Korea follow Japan's lead and weaken its currency? Speculation about Korean won intervention has circulated among currency traders in Seoul since Sept. 15, when Japan sold enough of its own currency to drive the yen down 2.5 percent in one day. "We think the Bank of Japan will intervene in the yen until it hits 88 per dollar," says Yun Se Min, a Seoul-based currency trader at Busan Bank. "This will provoke the Korean central bank to intervene." The yen is trading around 84 to the dollar: The cheaper it gets, the more affordable its exports will be, especially in the U.S.

It's a little hard to figure out why the Koreans expect an intervention by the Bank of Korea. True, at almost 1160 to the greenback today, the won is 27 percent stronger than at its weakest point in March of last year, when the global economy was in terrible shape. Compared to its strongest point in the fall of 2007, though, the won is still almost 30 percent weaker. Though the median estimate of currency strategists is for the won to strengthen another 9 percent through 2011, that would still leave it weaker than three years ago.

Meanwhile, Korea is thriving. Aided in part by a weak won, Korea's exports will probably increase 26 percent this year, according to the government. Investors have pushed the benchmark Kospi Index up 9 percent this year: Japan's Nikkei has dropped 9 percent.

Yet the Koreans are starting to worry. All those repatriated profits and portfolio fund dollars have pushed the won up over 3 percent in September, making it Asia's best performer. "The most critical factor is whether the won remains at the current level," says Cho Hwan Eik, president of the Seoul-based Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency. He adds that export growth may start to slow in the fourth quarter if the won gets much stronger. "We're not in a safe zone," he says. Lee Seung Woo, a consumer electronics analyst at Shingyoung Securities in Seoul, says that with demand for personal computers and televisions weak, a stronger won would be a further burden for Korean tech companies.

The won faces "the strongest appreciation pressures" in the region, according to a Sept. 13 report by Goldman Sachs (GS). If the won does keep strengthening—and if a weaker yen makes archrival Japan more competitive—pressure will mount on Seoul to act.

The bottom line: The Korean won has remained surprisingly weak for two years, giving Korean exporters an edge. Now it is strengthening.

Every country in the world wants to sell their products to the United States.  What will happen when the United States is no longer able to buy them?  The United States itself wants to devalue its currency in relation to the Chinese because of staggering trade deficits.  Unemployment remains high in the states and people cannot buy as much.  I think Korea and Japan should be reformulating their strategies.

Here's to hoping the Won stays strong!

Japan's Elderly Problem and Nursing Crisis

Al Jazeera posted two reports about Japan that share many parallels with Korea.  Modernized, urban living and longer lifespans have led to an increasing problem of what to do with the all the old people.

It has always been tradition in Japan that children take care of their parents in old age and continue to live together.  Respect for the elderly has always been a supreme virtue.  However, many factors are changing this such as parents having fewer or no children, or children having to work demanding jobs that leave them unable to care for their parents.

Within forty years, 25% of Japan's population will be over the age of 75.  They currently have 40,000 citizens over the age of 100.  They have a lot of old people, and are struggling to keep track of them and care for them.

The report mentioned the man who was thought to be Japan's oldest living man, Sogen Kato.  He was thought to be 111 years old, but police eventually discovered two months ago that he had died over thirty years ago and his body lay mummified in his bed.  His family had been committing pension fraud.

This led to a national hunt in Japan for its elderly and it was discovered that 230,000 centenarians (people who are 100 years or older) were in fact dead and the government did not know.  Many elderly have been dying alone and uncared for and Japanese society is struggling to address this.

The rise in Japan's aging population is also coming at the same time as a massive nursing shortage.  There is a nursing shortage in every industrialized country, because the pay is low and the work is hard.  A Japanese nurse's death, Nobuo Miuro, was even declared a "karoshi" or a death by overwork because the job can be so demanding.

The nursing shortage in Japan is officially at 15,000 but could just as well be as high as 60,000.  This has led to a pilot program of letting foreign nurses move to Japan to work.  They have come from Indonesia and the Philippines and there are only 254 of them.  They recently had to take a Japanese standardized nursing exam to stay in the country (entirely in Japanese) and only three were able to pass it.  Many Japanese do not know what the answer is to this problem, but they do not think it is foreign nurses.

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70 Million Fat People in India and Growing

The popularity of oily and sweet foods combined with a modern life style (driving everywhere and sitting in front of a computer for eight hours) has led to a staggering rise in obesity in urban areas of India.

According to RT, researchers claim that Indian people genetically are at a greater risk of becoming overweight than other people around the world... is that really true?  Interesting thoughts...

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Steve Jobs Might Be A Ninja

An unusual internet hoax has caught on and gone so far as to force Apple to have to come out and publicly deny it.  Longer story found here on CNN.

Huffington Post has the gist:

Apple called a report that CEO Steve Jobs was stopped at the Kansai International Airport for trying to bring Ninja throwing stars aboard his flight "pure fiction".

Jobs may not be a secret Ninja, but that hasn't stopped Jimmy Lai's Next Media Animation from imagining (and animating) the alleged airport altercation.

The Taiwanese studio created a short video that shows how a Ninja Steve Jobs might have reacted to airport security finding his cache of Ninja stars. Watch the original video atNMA.com, or see it below.

Here is the video:

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KPOP Korral - [After School] - Bang

One of the most popular songs of 2010 so far has been the song Bang(뱅) by After School (애프터스쿨).  This group currently has eight members and they are Park Kahi (박지영), Kim Jung Ah (김정아), Lee Joo Yeon (이주연), Rebecca Kim (김레베카), Uee (김유진), Im Jin Ah (임진아), Oh Hye Rin (오혜린), and Park Soo Young (박수영).  The are under the Pledis Entertainment label and their website can be found here.

This video oozes sex appeal.  It also projects a high level of confidence and fierceness that is rarely observed from a female KPOP group.  Even though it is so overtly sexual, it is in no way promoting the Asian-female sexual stereotypes of being submissive and weak.  This is some of KPOP's best in my opinion.

Additionally, the girls of After School gave some phenomenal live performances for this song.  Of all the live performances that I have observed by any group on youtube thus far this year, this has been the best one.  Someone tell me if the link goes dead and I'll find it again.

Japanese Men Resist Sex Appeal of Girls' Generation For Now

Arguably the most successful Korean pop music group of the last two years has been Girls' Generation (AKA SNSD 소녀시대).  Continuing the growing trend of KPOP successes such as Wonder Girls and Rain, they are trying to expand their influence to foreign markets beyond Korea.

Girl's Generation has successfully landed in Japan:

Korea's top pop group Girls' Generation has been welcomed enthusiastically in Japan. 

The girl band's debut single "Genie" released Wednesday topped the music video chart of Japan's iTunes on the day of its release as well as the video clip and ring tone charts on Japan's largest music site Music.jp and largest mobile site Recochoku. 

The number of pre-orders for "Genie" has exceeded 80,000, and there is still a rush of additional orders after the release. 

Their plan was simple.  Drop in these nine clones of the same gorgeous Korean woman, dress them in skimpy sailor outfits, and let the men of Japan wet themselves with excitement.  Only, that is not what has happened.  Young Japanese women appear to be going crazy for SNSD and not the young men as was planned.

Korean girl groups are attracting more fervent admirers among their own sex in Japan than from the young men they are ostensibly manufactured to appeal to. About 80 percent of the audience at the debut showcase of Girls' Generation at the Ariake Coliseum in Tokyo on Aug. 25 were female, from teenagers to women in their 30s. Plenty of them even sported Girls' Generation outfits.

Things are much the same with other Korean girl groups like 4 Minute, Kara and Brown Eyed Girls. Management agencies admit that even though the bands were meant to target male fans, more than half of the fans are young girls. In Korea, girl bands have traditionally been popular among men of all ages, from teens to those in their 50s.

Why are the girls of Japan going for Korean popstars?  The Chosun Ilbo gave some analysis.

AKB 48 and Morning Musume are the leading Japanese girl bands this year. Dressed in frilly princess dresses and much given to winsome smiles, they dance and sing to routines mainly choreographed with dainty movements of hands and feet. But Korean girl groups have a bolder, more dynamic image. They wear angular uniforms or tight skinny jeans, and dance to choreography that uses the whole body. On stage, they appear confident and charismatic.

Kim Young-min of agency SM Entertainment said, "Japanese girls who've had enough of Japanese girl bands that strictly appeal to men's protective instincts seem to take bolder Korean girl groups as a role model."

I know absolutely nothing about JPOP.  But I already thought Korean women were kind of "dainty" compared to Western pop stars.  I guess when compared to China or Japan, the women of Korea do appear more confident and dynamic.  Never thought of that before...

Thanks to their notoriously grueling training, Korean girl groups tend to be better at dancing and singing than Japanese ones. Members of Korean girl bands go through an average of three to six years of training, while Japanese girls get just six months to a year. 

Japanese management agencies recently shifted from quality to quantity, on the assumption that anyone can become an "idol" with the right marketing support. AKB 48, as the name suggests, has 48 members who perform a daily gig for fans in a small theatre in Tokyo's Akihabara. Often members are launched straight off the street and then learn on the job due to these schedules.

Wow!  All subjective analysis!  I love it!  I keep hearing about KPOP stars who trained for six years... and I just do not buy it.  A year sounds about right, but they have got to stop telling people that they have been training for six years, it is not fooling anyone.

Oricon, the Japanese equivalent to charts provider Billboard, recently said Japanese girls in their teens and 20s are taking to Korean girl bands during a lull for Korean boy bands.  Bands such as TVXQ, Big Bang and SHINee turned Japanese girls on to K-pop, with the number of Japanese TVXQ fans estimated at over 300,000.

Apparently sexy Korean men have already opened the door in Japan for girl KPOP groups.  Young Japanese girls first watched clips of groups like TVXQ, Big Bang, and SHINee, and now they want to be like confident and sexy Korean women.  Hmmm... maybe... it's a theory in the works...

They released a Japanese version of their song, "Genie" and are promoting it now in Japan.  

Here it is: