Korea will be under the influence of powerful typhoon Nepartak from Sunday, said the state weather agency on Thursday.
“The super typhoon is forecast to influence all parts of Korea while passing the west coast of the peninsula,” the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) said Thursday.
Nepartak, which was 510 kilometers southeast of Taipei as of 9 a.m. Thursday, is moving west-northwest and expected to strike Shanghai on Saturday.
The typhoon will then keep advancing north, reaching the Korean Peninsula at the weekend.
“We forecast that heavy rain will start in Korea under the influence of Nepartak on Sunday,” the agency said. “But there is a possibility that the typhoon could be downgraded to a tropical storm when it hits China.” [Korea Times]
You can read more at the link, but everyone in the ROK stay safe this weekend.
What an embarrassment for the Park administration if they did in fact plagiarize the new national slogan. Even if they did not plagiarize it they still should have been aware that a major country like France was already using the slogan:
Rep. Sohn Hye-won says during the Minjoo Party’s interim leadership meeting on Wednesday that the government’s “Creative Korea” slogan and its logo design plagiarized the “Creative France” campaign of Business France. [NEWSIS]The Park Geun-hye administration’s newly created national slogan celebrating Korean creativity was plagiarized from a French campaign, an opposition lawmaker and renowned designer said Wednesday.
Rep. Sohn Hye-won of the Minjoo Party of Korea said during the interim leadership meeting in the morning that the government’s “Creative Korea” slogan and its logo design plagiarized the “Creative France” campaign of Business France, a French national agency promoting international investment in the country.
“Using the word ‘creative’ in front of the name of the country in the slogan, and using the red and blue colors in the logo design, are blatant acts of plagiarism,” Sohn said. “It is especially embarrassing that the plagiarized slogan is celebrating creativity.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but it is pretty ironic that a slogan pushing creativity was possibly plagiarized.
What is it with South Korea and horrible slogans?:
The government on Monday officially adopted “Creative Korea” as South Korea’s new national slogan and promote it internationally to highlight the importance the country places on fostering creativity.
The country had used “Dynamic Korea,” as its official slogan ahead of the 2002 South Korea-Japan World Cup.
The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism chose the new slogan based on public polls that singled out “creativity,” “passion and “harmony” as the three main keywords that can best identify Korea, and listened to opinions from local and foreign experts.
The ministry said while “passion” was the driving force of building today’s Korea from the ashes of the 1950-53 Korean War, “creativity” is a value that the country should pursue to move itself forward to cope with changing demands of the time.
To promote the image, the government will launch a national brand campaign on foreign news media outlets such as CNN and BBC and its overseas missions and relevant organizations, including Korean cultural centers and the Korea Tourism Organization. [Yonhap]
This issue between the ROK government and Google continues:
South Korea will not give Google a license to use South Korean maps unless the company blurs out sensitive military installations on its mapping service, Defense Minister Han Min-koo said Wednesday.
Earlier this month, the United States search engine provider requested permission from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to access South Korea-supplied maps as part of efforts to upgrade its Google Maps service on South Korea.
It was Google’s second attempt to gain access to South Korean maps following its first unsuccessful trial in 2010.
“Because of (security) concerns, security-related ministries are insisting that (a license) would be possible only after proper measures are taken,” Han told the parliamentary committee on defense affairs, indicating key military facilities should be blurred out first before Google is allowed to use South Korean maps. [Yonhap]
This study would have been more interesting if the follow up question was if they were having sex with someone else:
In a poll of 1,090 male and female adults nationwide, 784 married and 306 unmarried, 38.2 percent of respondents said they have sex once a month or less. An adult that has sex that infrequently is considered “sexless.”
For married respondents, the sexless percentage was slightly lower at 35.1 percent. Married people who have sex twice or three times a month comprised 30.4 percent of the respondents, followed by 19.2 percent who have sex once a week.
For married people in their 50s, 43.9 percent said they have no sexual relationship with their partners.
And yet nearly all respondents – 93.9 percent – said intimate physical interaction was a vital aspect of their lives and relationships with others.
Mr. Yoon, a 39-year-old office worker, is also in the sexless category, which he finds kind of natural.
“Since my wife gave birth a year ago, I haven’t had sex,” said Yoon, who lives in Seoul and has been married for three and a half years. “I would say the biggest reason is her pregnancy as she needed time to recover from giving birth.”
Yoon said such a way of life is common among his friends, especially after five years of marriage, and some even within two years, he said.
“My mother-in-law lives with us to take care of the baby, and that also hampers our ability to have sexual contact,” Yoon said. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
According to this survey working as a mascot in front of a store in the sweltering heat is the worst summer job in South Korea:
Standing outside a shop in a full-size mascot costume trying to entice customers inside is the worst summer job in Korea, according to a survey.
Part-time job portal website Albamon released the results of a survey asking 1,340 student workers what they thought were the best and worst part-time jobs for the summer.
Of the respondents, 30.3 percent of replied that their nightmare job was working as a mascot in a giant, sweltering costume.
Meanwhile, 19.5 percent of respondents chose parking attendant as the worst job. They said that high temperatures in parking lots as well as harmful vehicle emissions made the job unpleasant. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but I once worked at a restaurant a long time ago as a teenager and one of my jobs was be the guy that would wear a bear costume to promote the restaurant or go to catered events. The mascot gear fortunately had a little fan inside of it, but when that fan was not working it was incredibly hot to wear so I can understand why this is an undesirable summer job in South Korea. However, I would rather do that than be a parking attendant smelling exhaust all day.
