Category: Uncategorized

This first McDonald’s franchise is currently being constructed in Dongducheon.  You can read more about it over at Korea Noodles.

Kim Kyong-hui (inside the red circle), the aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is shown on state television on Oct. 12, 2014, reinforcing views that she hasn’t been removed from the country’s power elite despite the execution of her once powerful husband, Jang Song-thaek. (Yonhap)

This photo released by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Oct. 8, 2014, shows an officer of the Dongmyeong Unit, a South Korean military contingent serving as U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon, teaching the Korean alphabet Hangeul to Lebanese college students. The unit will receive the prime minister’s award on Hangeul Day, which falls on Oct. 9. (Photo courtesy of JCS) (Yonhap)

Via a reader tip comes this story about a man in Korea trying to commit insurance fraud by running at a car and bashing his head into the windshield.  Unfortunately for him the driver had a dashcam installed:

When he reaches the car, he leaps onto the hood in a superhero-esque dive and bashes his head into the windscreen.

The glass smashes and the man collapses onto the road.

It appears the opportunist was attempting to get some sort of payout for his efforts, earning him the label of an ‘insurance scammer’ in the video description.

The bizarre act was caught on a video camera mounted on the dashboard of the car.

Insurance fraud is a growing problem in South Korea. According to a recent study from the Insurance Research Centre, an average of 156 people are caught in car insurance fraud schemes in South Korea every day, with the amount of money involved totalling KRW1.18 trillion (AU$1.8 billion) over the last five years. [Daily Mail]

You can read more and see the video of this incident at the link.  According to this Insurance Research Center link on average 156 people are caught a day trying to commit insurance fraud in South Korea.  For those driving in South Korea it appears installing a dashcam is a good idea.

Make of this what you will:

Young troops suffer from erectile dysfunction at nearly three times the rate of civilians their own age, according to a new study out of the University of Southern California.

In a study published recently in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, 33 percent of 367 active-duty men surveyed reported symptoms of erectile dysfunction, or ED, while 8.4 percent reported probable sexual dysfunction, or SD — issues unrelated to erections that include low sex drive and ejaculation problems.

All the troops surveyed were age 40 and below. [Army Times]

You can read more at the link.

Here is another example of the mixed messages that the US military continues to send to servicemembers:

A handful of Jack Daniel’s-branded gathering places draw whiskey drinkers and other patrons in sports arenas, stadiums like Wrigley Field, even in Dubai International Airport.

You might not expect to see such an establishment inside the gates of an Army base. As of Friday, you’d be wrong.

The Jack Daniels’ Lounge opens that afternoon at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, taking the place of the Lanyard, a bar last renovated during the Reagan administration. [Army Times]

You can read more at the link, but this promotion of Jack Daniel’s goes against the message the Army has been sending to the troops to stop the promotion of alcohol that is a key factor in DUIs and sexual assaults that has caused so much criticism of the military. The 7th Air Force in Korea has launched an anti-alcohol jihad where personnel are banned from drinking their first 30-days in country while other military units have banned alcohol in the barracks. On deployment personnel cannot drink at all. While all these anti-alcohol efforts are going on the DoD is busy
promoting a beer company during the Super Bowl and now a whiskey company in the middle of Ft. Sill.

Here is a veteran’s response to Senator John Walsh’s claim that PTSD is to blame for him committing plagiarism:

What really upsets me is Walsh’s use of post-traumatic stress disorder to defend academic dishonesty. It has the potential to further distort society’s understanding of mental trauma and create space for veterans to misuse their diagnoses in any number of situations, academic or otherwise. [New York Times]

Read the rest at the link.

I highly recommend everyone read OFK’s take on all the recent US initiatives regarding North Korea.  He offers an interesting option that I hadn’t thought of before regarding the influencing of the South Korean election, but could the Bush Administration be that clever?

Last month the IDF made headlines with former female soldiers appearing in a sexy commercial and photo spread in Maxim magazine.  Well now here is a video of current serving female Israeli soldiers:

As you can see the IDF has no shortage of good looking women with guns. 

HT: Fortress Australia