Macho Man Randy Savage in North Korea

I came across a hilarious blog of someone just photo shopping in Macho Man Randy Savage into famous pictures.  I came across this one and had a good laugh.

Bizarrely enough, this is not the first time someone has had the humourous idea of putting Kim Jong Il and Macho Man Randy Savage together.

Here are some of my other favorite photos from the blog.

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Rain Ranked #1 Again on Time 100 Poll

And my fifth graders tell me that Rain isn't really popular anymore... I guess Korean netizens did this as a show of force and ganged up on this online poll to make Korea look important in the world.

Additionally, since a Taiwanese actor came in second on the poll, there was probably a big online rivalry happening to win this that went way over everyone else's head.

Source Times News Feed:

He's done it again, and we're not surprised. 

Korean pop star Rain has won the top spot in the TIME 100 poll, in which we asked readers to rank who they think are the world's most influential people. By the time the poll closed Thursday night, he had garnered 406,252 "influential" votes and 33,813 "not influential" votes. This is certainly not the first time Rain has taken the top spot; he won in 2006 and 2007, and placed in second in 2008. Coming in a distant second this year was Jay Chou, Taiwanese star of The Green Hornet, getting 207,239 "influential" votes. Rounding out the top three was Britain's Got Talent phenomenon Susan Boyle with 151,324 "influential" votes. The top-ranking American on the list was Beyoncé, coming in fifth.

Second place finisher, Jay Chou, was the runner-up and only got about half as many votes... So, those crazy Korean netizens went a little over-kill.

Source:

Rain garnered 406,252 votes in the online poll to rank No. 1 among 203 candidates, Time magazine said on Friday. He also previously placed first in 2006 and 2007, and in 2006 he was shortlisted to the final Time 100 and walked down the red carpet for the ceremony.

Taiwanese actor and singer Jay Chou was the runner-up on the latest list with 207,239 votes, followed by "Britain's Got Talent" sensation Susan Boyle. U.S. pop star Beyonce came in sixth, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange 11th. U.S. President Barack Obama ranked 46th.

Time is preparing its final 100 list based on the online poll and its own selection process. Last year, Olympic figure skating champion Kim Yu-na was named to the final 100.

And NMA TV has it covered...

Here is the first time I ever heard of Rain, when Stephen Colbert called him out for beating him in the Time 100 poll in 2006.

Chinese Exchange Student Murdered While Boyfriend Watches Attack on Webcam

This is highly disturbing... I also want to mention this happened in Canada, and not the United States.  I'm sure given the limited facts I have, this guy will be found shortly.

Source:

Fron CNN:

A 23-year-old exchange student, attacked in her Toronto apartment while a friend in China watched via computer webcam, was found dead there hours later, police say. 

Toronto Police on Monday identified the student as Qian (Necole) Liu of Beijing. She was talking early Friday morning to a male friend from home when a man allegedly knocked on her door, asking to use her phone, police said in a news release. 

The online witness said he saw Liu and the unknown man struggle for a time before the attacker turned off her laptop, the news release said. 

The friend in China then started a desperate bid to find out what happened, CNN-affiliate CTV reported. 

Ten hours later, police arrived at the basement apartment to find Liu's body, naked from the waist down. Her laptop was missing. 

"It was obvious that she had been dead for some period of time," Detective Sgt. Frank Skubic said in the news release. 

The cause of the death is yet to be determined, the news release said. There were no obvious signs of sexual assault or severe physical trauma, and police are awaiting toxicology reports, it said. 

Police are unsure whether Liu, an exchange student at York University, knew the man. The attacker was described as white, age 20 to 30, 6 feet tall, weighing 175 to 200 pounds, with a muscular build and medium-length brown hair, and wearing a blue crew-neck T-shirt. [...]

Oh my...

Korean Public School Cafeteria Talk

I do not generally like to disparage my school or coworkers (because they are amazing), but I thought there were some good lines in this latest text to type video by a disgruntled NEST lampooning Korean absurdities.

One of my top complaints of working in a Korean public school are mandatory school events that require me to stay past 4:30 and nobody tells me about them about them until the day of.  Sometimes it is a volleyball game.  Sometimes it is a staff retreat.  Sometimes it is a welcome dinner.  Regardless, I can NEVER get my coteachers to tell me when these will happen until the day they happen.

Now, I am not married, but I have a girlfriend and friends and frequently do have plans in my evenings.  I do not have kids, but someday I might and many of my coworkers do.  How can it be that "Korean culture" includes planning staff dinners and retreats that require mandatory unpaid overtime and nobody is allowed to know about them until the day of?  It is infuriating...

South Korean Police Find $10 Million US Buried in a Garlic Field

Hot damn, I think I need to quit this teaching gig I have and start digging up garlic fields full-time!

Source:

South Korean police found 11.08 billion won, or $10.2 million, in cash buried in a garlic field and suspect the money came from illegal Internet gambling gains, Yonhap News Agency said Monday. 

Quoting police, Yonhap said an illegal online gambling site set up by two brothers in 2008 produced more than 17 billion won in profits and they asked a brother-in-law to hide the money. 

The brother-in-law, 53, hid part of the money in his garlic farm in Gimje, about 262 kilometers southwest of Seoul, and skimmed 280 million won for his personal use. 

He later falsely accused an excavator who helped him do landscaping work in the garlic field of stealing 700 million won. 

The excavator filed a complaint with the police last Friday, prompting a police investigation that eventually uncovered the piles of cash in the garlic field. 

The younger brother has been put behind bars for operating the online gambling business, while the elder brother has fled and is now wanted by police, Yonhap said.

Wow, all that money from illegal internet gambling.  They should have quit when they were ahead.

Alcohol Causes Cancer!? Of course...

Hey!  Who would have thought that introducing small quantities of a poisonous substance into your body on a frequent basis to purposely impair motor skills and brain function would over a long duration of time increase your chances of developing cancer?  uggg... I don't think this will slow down the Koreans one bit.  They haven't even started to pretend like they'll stop smoking and smoking was linked to cancer half a century ago.

Source:

A new study says alcohol helps cause a substantial number of cancer cases. 

The study done in Europe looked at 100,000 men and 250,000 women. It found that drinking too much alcohol can be blamed for causing ten percent of cancers in men and three percent in women. 

Experts say smoking has long been known to be a cancer cause, but they say not enough attention has been paid to the cancer risk alcohol poses. 

Researchers found alcohol was most likely to increase the risk of mouth, throat and esophageal cancer.

Anyone want to go out and get a drink with me this weekend?  This news is really bumming me out and I need something to take my mind off it.

KPOP Korral - [UV w/ J.Y. Park] - Itaewon Freedom

I cannot find much about this group on the internet.  UV is a recently formed two man group consisting of Yoo Sae Yoon and Muzie.  They teamed up with producer and singer J.Y. Park (박진영) for this song and this video.  The song is titled "Itaewon Freedom" and it is a fusion of disco and retro 80s.

It is certainly one of the more distinct kpop videos I have ever seen.  If you don't know, Itaewon is the foreigner district in Seoul and I am guessing these guys were trying to capture the feel of the place in the 80s.

Specila thanks to Brian for finding this for me!  Itaewon Freedom is a parody/tribute video to "Harlem Desire" by the London Boys.  Check it out.

The 10 Worst Chants/Songs/Story Time/Role Plays of the Old Public Elementary School English Curriculum

If you have in the past taught English at the elementary school level in South Korea, then you are probably familiar with the textbook characters Jinho, Nami, Mrs. Smith, Peter, Joon, and Ann.  Millions of South Korean children over the last decade have learned English from this text book series and it was finally changed this year to an updated version designed for three hours of English instruction a week instead of two hours a week.

The expressions, vocab, and 98% of all the grammar in these books was acceptable. The problem with these books was the production value and quality of the videos. There were also some awkward cultural moments and just bizarre choices made for settings and situations. The accompanying CD-ROM for the books looked like it was best designed to run on Windows 98, and here it was still being used in 2010.  The main dialogues were pretty good and had nice animation (see here and here).  Some of the songs were decent as well, but just about all of the chants, role plays and story time activities in the text books were worthless.

I already posted last month the ten worst dialogues (look and speak 2).  It received a lot of interest and several people asked if I could post some of the other content from the CR-roms.

South Korea prides itself on how much of a priority they have on investment in education. The teachers here are excellent, classrooms have no shortages of supplies, lots of useful technology available, new English classrooms and language learning facilities, etc. But the problem was that for nearly a decade everything revolved around these horrible, horrible textbooks.

These are the worst 10 chants, songs, story time activities, or role plays of the 5th and 6th grade curriculums:

#10 - Grade 5, Ch 15 - Role Play "Dude, wanna join the band?"

#9 - Grade 6, Ch 8 - Let's Chant "Asian people actually say ping-pang-pong?"

#8 - Grade 5, Ch 9 - Role Play "Nero's pencil is huge."

#7 - Grade 5, Ch 4 - Let's Chant "Can a tower be beautiful?"

#6 - Grade 6, Ch 9 - Story Time "Peter Pan was an excellent ice skater."

#5 - Grade 5, Ch 12 - Let's Chant "Kids love being kept overnight at the future house."

#4 - Grade 6, Ch 12 - Role Play "Jack's such a good bucket holder."

#3 - Grade 6, Ch 14 - Role Play "Snake snubs Prince."

#2 - Grade 6, Ch 14 - Song "I shower and sleep with my shoes on."

#1 - Grade 6, Ch 1 - Role Play "Uganda knows good fashion!"

Creepy Classroom Pledge Scene in Homefront

Homefront is a recently released video game that takes place in the not too distant future and North Korea has become the most powerful nation on Earth and has conquered the United States.  The premise of the game is that you are a resistance fighter in America trying to expel the North Korean occupiers.

Here is a creepy Easter Egg clip you can find in the game.

If you want a Korean's opinion of this game, check out Ask the Korean.  Here is the backstory trailer for the game.

You Got a Snow Day? Ha! Korea's got Radioactive Rain Days!

If you teach in South Korea and spend any amount of time on Facebook, you probably saw people posting like crazy about the potential scare of radioactive rain drifting west from Japan to the Korean peninsula.  The government has been doing everything it can to calm fears and assure people there is no possibility of radioactive rain:

Heavy rains, expected to fall Thursday, will not contain radioactive materials released directly from the crippled Japanese nuclear plant, Korea’s weather agency said Wednesday. 

Citizens here have expressed concerns over “radioactive rainfall” that would continue for a prolonged period following the widening nuclear crisis in quake-hit Japan. 

Adding to the atomic fears, weather agencies in Norway and Germany, respectively, warned earlier this week that radioactive materials will reach the Korean Peninsula in the coming five days. 

However, the Korea Meteorological Administration on Wednesday dismissed the overseas forecasts, saying the air current near the nuclear power plant has shifted to east. [...]

Despite the confidence that the Korean government has that the rain will not contain dangerous levels of radioactive particles, hundreds of schools across Korea shut their doors today and told their students to stay home and stay away from the rain.  Strange indeed for school officials to be cancelling school if there actually is no danger...

Source VOA News:

Showers on the Korean peninsula prompted some schools to close Thursday. Many parents were worried about exposing children to "radioactive rain." They were not reassured by South Korean authorities, who said there is no risk to children, even if some radioactive particles might be detected in rain water.

Fears about radiation in rain prompted classes to be canceled at some schools in South Korea. In Gyeonggi province, 125 kindergartens and elementary schools gave students the day off.
A spokesman for the provincial education office, Cho Byung-lae, says all institutions there were asked to curtail outdoor activities, but it was left up to school principals to decide whether to cancel instruction. 

Cho says they did not decide to close schools because of radiation, calling that a rather remote risk. But, he explains because there was such strong concern expressed by many parents, school authorities decided to relieve their anxiety. [...]

I wouldn't mind getting some more days off work.  Last year was the great swince flu scare, and not it is radioactive rain... geesh...