Either someone is really stupid or something was lost in translation with this story:
An Irish school teacher was turned away from a position in South Korea due to the “alcoholism nature of [her] kind”.
Katie Mulrennan, from County Kerry, had applied for a job in the capital Seoul after seeing the role advertised on Craigslist.
However, the 26-year-old received a rejection email telling her that she would not be offered the work because, as the stereotype goes, Irish people are drunks. [The Independent]
You can read more at the link, but she has since found another job.
Kim Bok-soon disliked her nose and fantasized about getting it fixed after learning of the Korean superstition that an upturned nose makes it harder to hold on to riches.
While waiting in a hair salon, she saw a magazine advertisement for a plastic surgery clinic and decided to go for it, despite her family’s objections.
In South Korea, where physical perfection is seen as a way to improve the quality of life, including job and marriage prospects, plastic surgery procedures can seem as commonplace as haircuts.
Kim’s doctor said he could turn her into a celebrity lookalike, and Kim decided to take the plunge, taking loans and spending 30 million won ($28,000) for 15 surgeries on her face over the course of a day.
When the bandages came off and she looked in the mirror, she knew something had gone horribly wrong. Only later did Kim find out her doctor was not a plastic surgery specialist. (Reuters)
You can read more about Korea’s shady plastic surgery practices at the link.
The AFP has an article about how difficult the retirement years can be for the elderly in Korea:
Out of work and out of pocket, South Korean retirees are struggling to force their way back into an unwelcoming job market in an effort to supplement meagre or non-existent pensions.
But President Park Geun-Hye’s vision of a new “creative economy” seems to have little space for a generation that grew up with shipyards and steel mills rather than smartphones and start-ups.
Kim Min-Su, 69, receives a monthly pension of 590,000 ($562)– the sole source of income for him and his wife who live in a mini-apartment in Seoul.
“I wasn’t able to put much aside when I was working because nearly all of it went on raising and schooling my four kids,” Kim said after a morning spent scanning job vacancy notices at a Career Transition Centre for the elderly. (AFP)
You can read much more at the link, but something the government is trying to do is have companies pay workers less as they become older to keep them working. It seems like this will cause the unemployment of young college graduates to only become worse in Korea.
South Korean school children were the least happy among those in OECD countries, a recent survey showed.
In the latest survey, the subjective happiness index of South Korean children was 60.3 percent, which was the lowest among the OECD countries. [Korea Herald]
Here is a perfect example of why the safety and cheating culture that is pervasive in South Korea is so hard to change:
In this Sept. 5, 2014 photo, Ryu Young-joon speaks during an interview at Kangwon National University Hospital in Cuncheon, South Korea. Ryu, the whistle-blower who exposed breakthrough cloning research as a devastating fake says South Korea is still dominated by the values that allowed science fraudster Hwang Woo-suk to become an almost untouchable national hero. (AP Photo/Joyce Lee)
The whistleblower who exposed breakthrough cloning research as a devastating fake says South Korea is still dominated by the values that allowed science fraudster Hwang Woo-suk to become an almost untouchable national hero.
In an interview with The Associated Press after almost a decade of silence, Ryu Young-joon, one of Hwang’s former researchers, said the cost of telling the truth still weighs on him but he doesn’t regret his decision to out Hwang as a false prophet.
The revelations in 2005 rocked South Korea which had celebrated Hwang’s research as a historic achievement, focused unfavorable attention on the country and diminished the reputation of its scientific establishment. The memory of the scandal is still painful today and Hwang, though convicted of embezzlement and violating bioethical laws, discredited and relegated to the scientific backwater of pet cloning, retains a loyal following among sections of the public and media.
In the nearly 10 years since Hwang’s accomplishments were found to be built on lies, Ryu feels little has changed in a society where cozy ties between government, business, the media and academics stifle criticism and foster blind nationalism. And junior researchers still face great pressure to produce the results their scientific mentors want and lack a formal channel for whistleblowing.
South Korea, said Ryu, is still obsessed with joining the ranks of advanced countries and to achieve that end, many people believe it is acceptable to sacrifice ethics, safety and other concerns.
“Mr. Hwang is not a peculiar person. He is a portrait of us. He shows the South Korean society as it is,” Ryu said. “Most people believe that if we play by the rules, we can’t catch up with the advanced economies.” [Associated Press via the Korea Economic Reader]
You can read the rest at the link, but what I find ironic about South Korean society being so caught up in catching up with advanced economies is that South Korea already is an advanced economy. The country economically has caught up and now it is time for Korean culture to change to realize this.
What is really sad about this is that Ryu instead of being thanked for exposing this fraud nearly a decade ago was demonized and lost his job. Even after learning of the fraud the then Roh Moo-hyun administration tried to cover it up. After the fraud could not be covered up, many Koreans still viewed Hwang as a national hero instead of the fraud that he was.
You can read more about Hwang’s fraud by digging back into the ROK Drop archives at the below links:
The competitive gaming industry in South Korea is incredibly popular:
Top video game players in South Korea are household names. Millions of people tune in to watch game competitions on television. The largest Internet portal, Naver, has its own section covering the results.
Competitive video gaming is now taking off in places like the United States, attracting thousands of people to major events. But in South Korea, more than anywhere else, it has already oozed into mainstream culture. Couples going to game clubs is about as common as couples going to the movies.
Time and again, South Korea has provided glimpses of technology-related transformations before they expand globally, including widespread broadband availability and smartphone adoption. The country has also led in professional video game competitions, often called e-sports, creating organized leagues, training well-financed professional teams and filling giant stadiums with frenzied fans to cheer on their favorite players.
Such excitement was on display in Seoul on Sunday, when more than 40,000 fans filled the outdoor soccer stadium used for the 2002 World Cup semifinal to watch the world championship for League of Legends, one of the world’s most popular games. On stage, two teams of five players sat in front of computers wielding mouse and keyboard to control fantastical characters in a campaign to destroy the opposing team’s base. Three huge screens displayed the action. [NY Times]
You can read more at the link, but even more impressively according to the article there was a Starcraft tournament in Busan that drew an amazing 100,000 fans. As popular as competitive gaming is in Korea I do not see it ever reaching the same level in the US.
Two years ago, when Mrs. Lee’s 20-year-old son was found to have lied on his college application papers and later got expelled from his university, she was furious. But she wasn’t angry because he had acted immorally; rather, she was more upset because, in her mind, it was useless to blame him for something everyone else did, too.
“In Gangnam, everyone does this,” Lee reportedly told police. “Why is he the only one getting in trouble?”
Further investigation proved that her son, surnamed Sohn, also had an accomplice – his teacher.
When authorities looked into the case, they found that Sohn had received an undeserved award in an art competition for a piece he hadn’t created. His teacher switched the boy’s name with another student and submitted the work on Sohn’s behalf.
His teacher recommendation letter also included details of volunteer work he had never completed.
Sohn applied to college in the early admissions process, which assesses an applicant’s transcripts, extracurricular activities, academic awards, volunteer work, recommendation letters and grades.
In Korea, regular admissions normally evaluate applicants’ scores on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), a standardized exam held every November. Thirty-five percent of the seats available at local colleges next year will be chosen via regular admissions, while the remaining 65 percent will be selected through early admissions.
One in every four early admissions slots will be determined through criteria similar to that which determined Sohn’s admission. But if Sohn’s case is any indication, university officials are mostly helpless to verify certain information, and similar fabrications often fly under the radar.
“There’s really not much we can do but believe whatever documents were authorized by the high school,” said one university admissions officer, who asked for anonymity. “It’s hard to tell which paper was fabricated when you have students and teachers collaborating in the scheme.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]
You can read more at the link, but probably most disturbing about this is that the teachers are helping the students to lie on the applications.
