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Gail Kim a Korean-Canadian wrestler was recently in Seoul competing in a wrestling event here at the Olympic Stadium complex. While in Korea she took some time out to talk to Ahn, Jung-hyun on the Arirang TV talk show, Heart to Heart. Yes, I know Heart to Heart is the lamest talk show ever but they do occasionally have interesting guests such as Gail Kim.

It was an insightful interview for those who are fans of Gail Kim. She is the daughter of Korean immigrants and is from Toronto, Canada. She actually got into the wrestling profession by attending a women’s wrestling college in Ontario. I didn’t even know there was wrestling colleges but I guess there are. She even said that Korea has a women’s wrestling college. After attending the college she worked her way up through the different wrestling conferences until she finally got her big shot in 2003 by being invited to fight in her first WWE match. She won that match against the defending champion and was crowned the WWE women’s wrestling champion.

She also commented that she believed Japanese female wrestlers were more athletic while the US women wrestler are becoming more and more concerned about looks rather than ability. No big suprise there in today’s day and age. She made sure to point out that she is no sex object but an athlete. Fortunately she has the looks going for her so she does not have to worry about unemployment because of that.

When asked if wrestling is fake she just commented that it is physically real and commented no further about it. This was also her first time back to Korea in 16 years. I found that a little surprising for someone with family and cultural ties with Korea. Plus she said she still speaks Korean with her parents.

She was surprised to learn that she was, before her wrestling match in Korea, the most searched name by Korean internet users.

Finally what many of you may be wondering is if she has a boyfriend. The answer is no because she says she travels to much. So for you interested in Gail Kim it is never to late to join a wrestling school, get accepted to the WWE, and get body slammed by 300 pound monsters to impress Gail Kim. I think it would be easier to just find a Korean woman here in Korea granted she would not have breast implants.

It appears that 2ID is about to wage a war on smokers according to Warrior News.

CAMP RED CLOUD — Army officials announced Monday the formation of a special task force to eliminate the use of tobacco products on Uijeongbu Enclave installations.

Osan Air Base recently adopted a similar policy; however the garrison’s move is a first for U.S. Army installations on the peninsula.

All hell is going to break lose if smoking is outlawed on Army installations. There are just so many people that smoke in the Army. Imagine all these people going cold turkey all the sudden. I will be stuck with pissed off people with the shakes all day now instead of irritated people who miss their families and want to go home.

I don’t smoke or use any tobacco products and really think it is a bad habit just like alcohol. However, I believe soldiers should have the right to smoke which is a legal activity just like alcohol. My biggest gripe with smokers are the cigarrette butts they leave lieing around and how some people sham out of work by taking smoke breaks all the time. Division should create a policy that addresses those two problems instead of just banning smoking all together.

If the army is able to ban tobacco what is to stop the army from banning alcohol? They are both health risks, correct? Does anyone from Osan AFB know what the policy down there is for smokers? People will long forget about the curfew controversy if this becomes reality. Once again, only in 2ID. You gotta love it.

All over Korea you see Hof bars (I would use Hangul but my blog software won’t support it) that serve a variety of mainly Korean beers. I always thought the Korean word Hof was just another Korean word for beer along with maek-ju.

However, I learned something interesting today that the word Hof is actually the Koreanized version of the English word, Hope. During the Korean War many American soldiers while drinking beer at local establishments would toast before drinking with the word, Hope. The soldiers used the toast because they hoped the war would end and they could soon go home.

However, the Koreans that heard the toast of Hope, thought this was the English word for beer and the bar owners used this English word to name some of their drinking establishments after. From there the word just continued to spread to where today you have Hof bars all over Korea.

The Oranckay had a link to an interesting article in the St. Petersburg Times about the ROK Army’s deployment to Iraq.

Korea has just 3,600 soldiers in Iraq compared to 150,000 from the United States. Though they are based in the Kurdish-controlled north – by far the safest part of Iraq – the Koreans spend most of their time in an isolated, massively fortified compound.

The soldiers, some locals joke, are part of the “Coalition of the Sort of Willing.” Undaunted, the South Koreans point with pride to what they have accomplished since they began work here in November:

It is to bad the soldiers are confined to their compound. The Kurdish north is the most scenic area of Iraq and the people are extremely nice and welcoming. The ROK Army is doing what it can to assist the Kurds in the area.

A mobile clinic and base hospital that treat residents of nearby villages as well as those from Irbil, the Kurdish capital; an advanced training program for Kurdish doctors and nurses; a vocational school, still under construction, that will offer classes in computers, electronics and auto repair.

“They are very polite and good,” says Ako Abbas Nader, who has served as a translator for the past month. “They are working for us, and we will work for them.”

South Korea also has contributed an undisclosed sum for local road-paving projects. The work is done by Iraqi companies but supervised by Korean engineers.

The Koreans say they are contributing to the economy by hiring scores of Kurds as drivers, translators and the like. But in a region where no one speaks Korean, soldiers and locals use a complicated system to communicate. Typically, a Kurdish interpreter translates from Kurdish into English, and a Korean interpreter then translates from English into Korean.

It’s to bad that the US media is providing more information about the ROK Army’s deployment than the Korean media. Koreans should be proud of the contribution they are making to democracy in the region. However, they cannot show much pride if they don’t know what is going on with their own soldiers there.

Andrei Lankov North Korea Zone has written another interesting article, but this time it is for the Korea Times. This article is about the development of the Korean bus industry throughout the last century. What I found the most interesting about the article is this excerpt:

Initially the city-owned bus company had 10 vehicles. These were Japanese-made, each seating 12 passengers and painted black. The crew consisted of a driver and a female conductor. The idea of a female conductor was a novelty. It was believed that they were introduced in order to lure passengers from the competing tram company. Only good-looking girls needed apply.

The trick obviously worked: there were stories about students who fell for a bus girl and spent huge amounts of money on tickets just to ride and have an opportunity to look at her. The bus company presumably did not mind such fee-paying romances.

Isn’t interesting that even decades ago the Koreans used Show Girls to sell something? For those not familar with Korea, businesses here often use young, scantily clad, dancing girls to sell products out in the streets and also inside the stores. I’m sure the women long ago on these buses weren’t scantily clad, but it is interesting to see how this practice evolved over the years.

Saturday morning opened up with a needed snow storm. In the 2ID area we have had snow flurries so far this year but nothing significant. This weekend’s storm actually left about 3-4 inches of snow on the ground.

Once it stopped snowing my wife and I decided to hike up a nearby mountain. It seemed everyone else had the same idea because as soon as we stepped out of our apartment everyone else was heading for the mountain too.

Something I found interesting hiking up the mountain was seeing the impact the Korean drama Winter Sonata has had on the public. I saw a few couples reinacting scenes from the well known drama such as walking in each other footprints or trying to balance themselves on a log. You would have to see the drama to understand what I’m talking about.

On one slope of the mountain there was a really nice park where you could see older Koreans doing breathing and stretching exercises while the children were having a big snow ball fight with their parents while others played on the swings. All in all a really nice day to be in Korea.

The theme the past year in Japan has been “Pure Love” or Jun-al in Japanese. According to the Japan Times this crazes was started by the hit Korean drama Winter Sonata.

2004 was the year of jun-ai (pure love), epitomized by the huge popularity of Yon-sama (the reverential nickname for Bae Yong Joon, star of the hit Korean drama “Winter Sonata”) and a craze for sentimental love stories that gripped the nation from Hokkaido to the Okinawa.
So what exactly is a jun-ai relationship? Well, it should be platonic or, at most, include just one sexual encounter. A jun-ai couple should also be faced by many obstacles contrived to keep them apart and pining for a romantic reunion. Jun-ai quotient also rises if it’s a hatsukoi (first love) situation — a pair who fell in love when they were 15 and somehow managed to keep those nascent emotions intact in spite of the passage of time.

The Japanese set great store on the hatsukoi thing, being convinced that the purest love comes when one has never loved before. For this reason hatsukoi is considered sacrosanct, a treasure that will never be tarnished with petty problems that inevitably plague a relationship between seasoned lovers.

What I found the most interesting about this article was how Japanese men and women view each other.

What a lot of women say, however, is that the young men of this country are too thick to understand this need for emotional drama. Twenty nine-year-old Minako says resignedly: “Kono kuni no otokowa fukami ga nakute nijigenteki sugiru” (The men in this country have no depth and are too two-dimensional).

Men are also bound by tradition: For a long time, any Japanese male who spewed forth about kojinteki kanjyou (personal feelings) was considered a big-time wimp and a loser. However, recognizing society’s need for men to hone their verbal skills, many companies now encourage their male employees to participate in company-sponsored communications classes. Whether this new trend will transform them all into Japanified versions of “Yon-sama” remains to be seen.

Sounds like Japan needs to import the metrosexual lifestyle.

This Japan Times article about relationships between Japanese women and westerners is quite interesting given the fact that Japan has actually published manuals about meeting foreign men.

Some of the magazines have taken the subject a step further and include real how-to manyuaru (manuals) with such titles as: “Gaijin Daalin wo Getto Suru Killaa Item (Killer Items That Will Get a Gaijin Darling)” and “Gaijin to no Renai wo Kekkon ni Musubitsukeruniwa (How to Convert a Gaijin Love Affair into Marriage).” Most of these instruct women to combine the traditional yamatonadeshiko (stereotypically demure Japanese woman) with gendaiteki tsuyosa (modern-day strength). For example, a gaijin hunter should carry a hand-ironed handkerchief at all times, but she should also be able to voice her opinion on current affairs, preferably in English. (Oddly, there’s no mention that in order to do so, she should subscribe to this paper).

I particularly like the stereotype given to western men in Japan:

In any case, the manuals seem to be working since statistics show that the number of marriages between Japanese women and foreign men has doubled (8,158 couples in 2003) over the past 20 years. For many women, foreign men represent everything naisu (nice) that Japanese just can’t (or won’t) provide. Top on everyone’s list is the conviction that foreign men are sweeter and more romantic, that they will keep saying “I love you” well into middle age. And if the daalin is from the U.S. or Europe, he will of course, smilingly share the burden of kaji (household chores) and ikuji (child-raising) and be home by 8 p.m. — at the latest. Chances are the daalin will take her back to his home country to live in luxury, and most importantly, their children will have the coveted daburu kokuseki (double nationalities). There it is, the scenario of the ultimate kachigumi (winning team).

Even Korean men have a favorable stereotype:

Interestingly, Japanese women choose Korean men over any other nationality, followed by American. Experts say the Yonsama Ninki (Bae Yong Joon popularity) may have something to do with this. But according to my girlfriends, they’ve always suspected that Kankoku no otoko wa jyounetsuteki de ichizu (Korean men are passionate and faithful), much more so than the cold, distant, absent Japanese male.

Why would someone even need a manual on meeting western men to begin with? Most single western men are probably trying to meet Japanese women anyway. I wonder if Korea has any manuals on meeting western men like the English Spectrum guys had for Korean women? I wonder if that would make the same amount of headlines? It would be interesting anyway to see Korean women’s point of view on meeting western men.

North Korea is going around making inflammatory claims about possessing nuclear weapons again according to a Korea Times report.

The North made the claim to an American congressional delegation which visited the communist country Jan. 11-14, Radio Free Asia reported on Saturday. The U.S. government radio station said that Curt Weldon, who headed the delegation, revealed the North’s claim in a forum held in Washington on Wednesday. According to the radio station, the North told the congressional delegation that through the cases of India, Pakistan and Israel, it had learnt that the possession of nuclear arms was the only means to thwart external attacks. It also told the delegation that the North had no intention of keeping its nuclear program in the long term and wished to maintain friendly relations with the U.S.

Here is the most interesting part of the article:

There looms the strong possibility, though denied by Washington, that the U.S. will take the issue to the Security Council of the United Nations if the North keeps playing with the six-party negotiations. If the case is referred to the U.N. governing body, it may plunge the peninsula into heightened tensions for an indefinite period, thus impeding the expansion of inter-Korean relations. But without doubt, the North will suffer the most because of various sanctions that the Security Council will inevitably impose against the Pyongyang regime.

In this regard, the North ought to return to the negotiating table immediately so as to diplomatically settle the nuclear confrontation with the U.S. and restore peace and stability to the peninsula. Time is rapidly running out for the North.

Reading this I begin to wonder why the UN hasn’t already demanded that they be solve this crisis like they demanded in Iraq? It can be easily argued that the Kim Jong Il regime is as oppressive as the Saddam Hussein regime or even worse. The people in North Korea are already starving more than the Iraqis ever did. They both got illicit weapons programs the subject of concern of the US. These are just some of the similarities between the two situations. According to the Iraq paradyme the UN believes all international disputes should be settled through the context of the UN. So why isn’t Kofi Annan not demanding that the UN handle this?

The only reason I can think of is that North Korea has no oil and nobody is getting any lucrative kick backs from the regime like what was happening in Iraq with the UN Food For Oil scandal. So in the interest of promoting international cooperation I propose the perfect compromise using the same “successful” logic in relieving the suffering of the Iraqi people by the UN.

Why doesn’t the UN create the Food for Missiles program! The UN could sell Kim Jong Il’s missiles on the international arms market and then give the money to the regime for the purposes of buying food and medicine for the suffering North Korean people or Kim could just build palaces like Saddam did. According to the Iraq paradyme either option is okay. Then the officials involved in selling the missiles could get kick backs from the regime for their efforts. Saddam gave oil vouchers as kick backs, maybe Kim Jong Il could give heroin vouchers or kickbacks of counterfeit US money. Whatever works. After all this is for the sake of international relations. Mostly everybody wins with this scenario. Kim gets the source of hard revenue he has been seeking, the UN gets to call the shots, officials are making money from kick backs, South Korea doesn’t have to worry about the collapse of the North, the US can put the North Korean crisis on the back burner for a while, and the North Korean people, well not much really changes for them.

However if the US threatens to attack the country still, then demand inspections after inspections and cast the Americans as unilateralists. It would be important to keep the Food for Missiles program operarating after all because without it so many of the North Korean people would suffer. Well mainly just the Nork military would suffer; the civilian people who cares about them anyway? This is all for the sake of international relations and goodwill. There is nothing more important than that. Well besides lining ones own pockets, that is pretty important too.

Martial arts action movie star Jackie Chan was in Korea recently promoting his latest movie, New Police Story. Last week he spent some time with Ahn Jung-hyun of Arirang Channel’s Heart to Heart talk show and had some interesting things to say.

Most notably he mentioned that he dated a Korean woman for eight years.

A- Now we want to talk about your special ties with Korea. I understand that you used to live here for a short while.

JC- In five years total, just in and out in and out. Even though I have–my family was in Australia. In Hong Kong just by myself so nothing to do like uh…Chinese New Year I just flew in by myself.

A- Why? (laughing slyly)

JC- (laughing) For my girlfriend. (a little embarrassed)

A- Ah ha! (laughing)

JC- You have to ask “why?” (laughing) You think I’m dumb just by myself here in New Year in the snow? haha

A- Well I wanted to hear you say that!

JC- Hahaha, (nodding) yeah at that time I had a very very good Korean girlfriend. Yeah, for 8 years. And…in the old days–I don’t know you remember or not, Korean women, very hard to get out of the country. There’s no way they can get out. And also, not like now, everybody have telephone everyone can call. No, you have to go umm…company. Telephone company. To book! I’m talking about….almost 30 years ago. Thirty years ago! Then book. Then what time you come back Jackie. Then come back 4 o’clock then sit there until “Jackie Chan!” “Yes?” “Booth number 2” “Oh, ok” (mimes holding the phone) “Jackie?” “Yes.” Just like that. Then when you have time, fly in to see her. Yeah. So I lean a lot of Korean from her. So in the old day when I speak, I speak like a woman because the only way she teach me. (grinning) And after, when I go back to Hong Kong continue make a film…and I run out of money, and I….even call is expensive. (shaking his head) But…face to face I can speak a lot of Korean. But on the phone? Difficult! You know, always like “Mo heyo? Ha poyo? Toah? Choa? Nanea saeyo?” (hanging up the “phone”) Then two days later call again same thing! Then…slowly slowly slowly (parting his hands ending in a shrug) didn’t call anymore.

A- Mmm…so that’s how you split up.

JC- Mm. Now I think she..she get better life now. She get married, have children…

Jackie also mentioned that he liked to sing old Korean songs but did not like modern Korean music because it is to Americanized.

A- (laughing) You speak Korean quite well.

JC- Used to be. Yen ha leh. Yen ha leh. I speak very…I think…30% Korean. But now, forget. Because at that time I love Korean song. Because I love Korean culture. Like what? (sings a bit of two Korean songs) I learn Korean song to learn how to speak Korean. That’s the best way. Yeah. Like today, nothing to learn anymore. When I look at Korean song everybody yo! yoyoyoh! (rapping) Uh! I rather see the old day! In the old day really can learn! That’s a Korean culture. But now (shrugging) I look at all the song is American culture! Everybody copying American song. We copy Korean song. Yeah. Nothing to learn anymore.

When ask about his favorite Korean movies, he said he like Old Boy best and really wanted to meet the writer of the movie. He also said he cried watching Going Home and he really liked the movie Tae Guki.

Throughout the interview Jackie demonstrated his Korean language abilities and displayed his typical charm and humor. Definitely an interesting interview worth checking out if you are a Jackie Chan fan like I am.Jackie also did a show on SBS, toured a fish market with actress Kim Hee-sun, and did some charity work during his stay in Korea. He pretty much did everything right in winning the public over in Korea. I’m confident his new movie is going to do very well here.