Category: Korea-General Topics

Another mass casualty incident involving a Korean boat has occurred:

The Coast Guard, Navy and civilians combined their efforts Monday to search for eight people still missing from a capsized fishing boat off the country’s south coast but no progress was made, officials said.

The death toll from the accident stood at 10, with eight people still unaccounted for and three others rescued, the Korea Coast Guard said.

The 9.77-ton boat called the Dolgorae, or Dolphin, was found about 6:25 a.m. Sunday near Chuja Island, north of the southern resort island of Jeju, the maritime security agency said. The boat lost contact with another chartered fishing boat around 7:38 p.m. Saturday, about half an hour after it left Chuja for Haenam, South Jeolla Province, it said.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

Below is a good read in the Financial Times about Cheju’s female divers called “haenyeo” for those that have not read about them before.  I think what will end the haenyo tradition is the small pay the hard work earns.  A top haenyeo earns up to $25,000 a year, most earn half that number according to the article requiring them to often work second jobs as farmers:

Each of the elderly women utters a distinctive cry as they surface around me from the bitterly cold East China Sea, clutching fistfuls of seaweed. From my left comes a sound like the bleating of a goat; ahead, a determined groan of endurance. All of them are whistling too, an ancient technique to expel carbon dioxide from the lungs. Occasionally, the wetsuit-clad grandmothers exchange a few words after depositing their seaweed in sacks tied to orange buoys beside them. But none of them rests for more than a minute before plunging to the seabed once more — a rhythm they maintain for five hours.

These are the haenyeo (sea women) of South Korea’s Jeju island, who have dived in search of seaweed and shellfish since at least the 17th century. Their work is one of the country’s most celebrated traditions but one that many islanders fear could soon be consigned to the past.

Traditionally a job handed down from mother to daughter, haenyeo life has been shunned in recent decades by nearly all the girls born in Jeju’s seaside villages, who have tended to favour more comfortable lives in the island’s two cities or on the mainland. From more than 14,000 in the 1970s, the number of haenyeo has dwindled to fewer than 4,500 today.  [Financial Times]

You can read the rest at the link and I recommend watching the video included with the article as well.

Below is a post I thought some of you may find of interest from Reddit Korea in regards to a man visiting Korea for the first time with his Korean fiance’.  I think his concerns of confrontations with other Koreans due to being with a Korean female is overstated.  10 years ago I think this is more of a concern, but no longer.  It doesn’t mean however that it won’t happen.  If something was going to happen it would more than likely be on the subway with some older drunk ajeosi.  It is best just to walk away and not get into a confrontation with one of these people which is best advice I can give.  Something that may take some getting used to though is the stares.  I get this even when not with my wife, but it is even worse when I am with my wife.  Anyone else have an opinion on this?

My Korean fiance and I are going to Korea soon and she is freaking out as she heard stories about locals (usually (old) men) expressing hate towards Korean girls that date foreigners.

She left Korea when she was very young, but still speaks perfect Korean and understands the culture fairly well.

The things she is scared of are…. 1. her extended family judging her for dating a white male as it is considered “prostitute-like” 2. Strangers on the street verbally abusing/staring at/swearing at her for being with a white guy. 3. People assuming that I am a white-trashy dude who is with her for cheap sex.

She says that every single one of her Korean friends (all three of them :p)that visited Korea with her Caucasian husband/bf got verbally abused on the train/bus by total strangers and apparently one of them has been physically attacked by an old man on the train in Seoul.

I find it hard to believe that it is that bad and want to know how true this is.

• Do they really hate Korean girls dating outside their own nationality? If so, why is that?

• What are the chances of noticing/experiencing the hate towards us when we visit Korea?

• What can we do to minimise the chance of getting physically/verbally abused?  [Reddit Korea]

Half of Korean College Graduates Live with Parents http://t.co/7wDw07qTCn

— The Grand Narrative (@JamesTurnbull) September 1, 2015

I am sure this news is probably not surprising to most people who are familiar with South Korea.  I am also sure most people in Korea know the hyper competitiveness is what is causing the high suicide rate, but little will probably be done to correct it:

An average of 29.1 people per 100,000 in South Korea committed suicides in 2012, exceeding the OECD average of 12, according to the OECD Health Data 2015.

The countries of Hungary followed next with 19.4 people per 100,000 taking their own lives and then Japan with 18.7 percent.

Korea has been posting a sharp increase in its suicide rate since 2000. While suicide rate in Japan remains high, it has been on the decline since 2010.

Suicide is a major concern in the nation; it is also cited as the top cause of death among teens and young people in 2013. [Korea Times]

It looks like it will be a rainy week for everyone in South Korea as Typhoon Goni passes through:

Typhoon Goni is expected to strike Japan’s southern island Kyushu and move north along the East Sea.

The Korea Meteorological Administration forecast Sunday that the 15th typhoon of the season will hit Kyushu on Tuesday morning before moving northeast to pass the East Sea near Dokdo Islet on Wednesday.

The weather agency forecasts the typhoon will bring rain to Jeju Island and the eastern parts of Korea on Monday.

Rains are expected for the entire nation on Tuesday, with strong winds and heavy rains of up to 200 millimeters expected for the coastal areas of the East Sea.

The tropical storm is also expected to bring strong winds and waves in the southern and eastern seas, putting residents in the coastal areas on alert.  [KBS World Radio]

First of all you have to be stupid to believe you are being drafted into the military based on a random text message that pops up on your phone.  With that said the prankster deserves whatever punishment the authorities give him:

South Korean police vowed Sunday to sternly take action against the spread of groundless draft rumors amid escalating tensions between the two Koreas.

The move came after a series of false conscription text messages and rumors were massively circulated after the North fired artillery across the border last Thursday.

A 23-year-old college student surnamed Kim was arrested Thursday for spreading massive draft texts. The message said “discharged men aged between 21 and 33 will be drafted once the war is imminent,” adding that all should check their designated military camp’s website on the ministry’s homepage once the war declaration is confirmed. The message was sent under the name of the Defense Ministry.

Kim reportedly claimed that it was a prank. [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link.

As cheap as plastic surgery already is in South Korea, it is about to get even cheaper:

The plastic surgery capital of the world is stepping up its game to attract even more clients.

South Korea is now offering tax breaks to tourists for undergoing cosmetic surgery procedures. The government plans to give 10 percent of the costs back to these consumers.

The procedures listed in the new policy include breast augmentation, liposuction, nose jobs and liposuction just to name a few according to Bloomberg News.

The motive behind the plan is to boost tourism after the industry was hit hard during the Middle Eastern Respiratory Virus (MERS) outbreak in which 36 lives were lost and hundreds more were infected. In fact, the country saw a 40 percent drop in tourists compared to a year before in the month of June.

Relative to other nations, South Korea has the highest amount of plastic surgeries done per capita — almost double that of the United States, which is second on the list — according to the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery.  [Korea Times]

#ROK stages Nation Wide civil defense drillhttp://t.co/9nQcK9tF6h

— Nathan J Hunt (@ISNJH) August 19, 2015

Anonymous Joe writing over at the Marmot’s Hole thinks so:

My immediate, one word reaction to Park’s statement is dismay.

Park followed the formula of her previous year’s address and that of her predecessor by ignoring America’s contributions, only crediting the “selfless struggle” of  “the Korean people” who “at last achieved the liberation of their fatherland.”  She offered not even a hint that America and 8 million American soldiers actually did the liberating in the Korean people’s  selfless struggle for liberation.

(Here’s Park’s sole reference to America, Americans, or the United States:  “As the recent normalization of ties between the United States and Cuba and the Iranian nuclear deal attest, the international community is in the midst of a sweeping tide of change and cooperation.  But North Korea is treading the opposite path.”)

Park’s speech with it’s overarching emphasis on the economy rather than liberation, freedom, and democracy had the nuts and bolts of a state of the union address.  Rather than sing to the lofty aspirations of a maturing democratic republic, Park got weighed down by graven consumer goods and electronic gadgets:  “Today, we have become a country producing some of the world’s finest electronic goods, automobiles, steel, ships and petrochemical products, and we stand tall as an economic powerhouse with export figures that are the sixth largest in the world.”

Given that Park had omitted America’s role in Korea’s liberation, she  obviously could not articulate the role that America played in the miracle on the Han.  Apparently, no thanks is necessary.  [Marmot’s Hole]

You can read the whole posting at the link, but yes she should have at least mentioned something about the sacrifice of US servicemembers to defeat Imperial Japan.  With all the complaining about revisionist history taught in Japan it is little things like this that cause Koreans to have little credibility when they do the same thing.  With that all said I am not in the least surprised by Park’s speech.  Like many recent ROK leaders she does not want to appear to be an American lapdog as the North Koreans and the leftists in Korea like to paint conservative ROK politicians.  Likewise I believe many South Koreans do not like to be reminded that their liberation from the Japanese was the result of foreigners and not by themselves.

What does everyone else think, should President Park have included the US’s role in Korea’s liberation in her speech?