The Korean government has chosen who is going to be the first Korean to launch into space:
South Korea announced Wednesday that a 30-year-old expert in artificial intelligence will be the country’s first person in space when he flies on a Russian Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station early next year.
The Ministry of Science and Technology selected Ko San, who works at the Korea Aerospace Research Institute, Vice Science Minister Chung Yoon said.
Ko, who has a master’s degree in artificial intelligence from the elite Seoul National University, beat out Yi Soo-yeon, a 29-year-old female mechanical engineer, following performance and other tests during their training in Russia. [CNN]
The Russian government is charging $30 million to put people into space, thus the question I pose is Ko really Korea’s first astronaut or it’s first space tourist? I’m leaning more towards space tourist myself.
The KBS2 expose’ of “dope smoking, low quality, foreign English teachers” lived up to the usual standards of Korean journalism. Truth be told I have known very few English teachers in Korea, but I do not think such statements as this can be substantiated with facts:
Police claim that S would even smoke marijuana into the early morning and then go to school and teach the students. Police explained that not only S but most foreign English teachers teach English by day and smoke marijuana by night. […]
The source also said, the majority of them find it easy to seduce Korean women and do drugs with them. Foreign English teachers see Korea not only as a land of opportunity but also as a perverted heaven. [translated by Korea Beat]
I seriously doubt “most” foreign English teachers smoke pot or the “majority” of them do drugs to seduce Korean women. As far as Korea being a “perverted heaven” that I can’t argue with, but it is not because of foreigners.
Michael Hurt has a good write up about the show with some quite humorous and colorful language along with a follow up posting and podcast about how the Korean media is trying to go after foreigners in regards to the fake degree scandal. He pretty much sums up the issue quite well and I encourage everyone to check it out.
Like I have always said, these things come in cycles. USFK has been very quiet so the Korean media turns its attention towards foreign English teachers. Once the Korean media gets tired of bashing English teachers they will move on to bashing 3D workers. Then after that there will probably be a few GI incidents which the Korean media can then turn their attention to again. After that the cycle just continues to repeat itself and the media usually just recycles the same old storylines over and over again. This is typical journalism in Korea.
Due to popular demand here is hopefully a more diffcult Korea Finder for everyone to try and answer. Who can name who is pictured in the painting? A bonus point if you can name what temple this painting is located in.
Here are this year’s current Korea Finder Leader’s Board:
Mark -10
Sonagi – 5
James – 2
Mike -2
Peekstr – 1
HumKor – 1
Farty – 1
Maui – 1
kcbill06 – 1
CPT Kim – 1
Tim – 1
Surabol – 1
Brendon Carr – 1
Note that who ever totals the most points at the end of the year, I will purchase for them a Korea related book or DVD of their choice using the proceeds I have accumulated by people purchasing books from Amazon.com on my website. If you like this website than please support it by buying your books, DVDs, and other products from Amazon.com from the search box on my sidebar. Thanks.
Is this man another leftist plant looking to join the Army?:
Crawfordsville Mayor John Zumer is resigning to rejoin the Army.
The 42-year-old Zumer’s last day is Sept. 23. The next day, he’ll return to active duty as an Army journalist with the rank of specialist.
Zumer has four months remaining on his term.
He lost his bid for re-election during the Democratic primary in May. He’s been mayor of the city about 40 miles northwest of Indianapolis for nearly four years.
Zumer says he’d been thinking about returning to the Army for a couple of months.
A Democratic leader said he hopes a caucus will name a replacement before Zumer’s departure. [AP]
Zumer left office after losing a primary election as the incumbent mayor which is really bad. If you read this message board, you can see some people in Crawfordsville did not like his leftist politics, he lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a failed business park, and he was plagued with his own sex scandal. The city of Crawfordsville ended up having to payoff the woman in the center of the sex scandal.
He was unpopular and this is what led to him losing the primary and so what better way to rebuild your reputation than joining the Army. He signed up as a journalist just like the Amnesty International plant Linsay Burnett who just so happened to be published in the New York Times for her anti-war opinions. Could Zumer possibly be hoping to follow Burnett’s example by going to Iraq and writing some anti-war articles with hopefully one getting picked up by the New York Times?
If that happened he would instantly repair his political reputation with the left and be set to further his political ambitions after leaving the military. Only time will tell if he is another Beauchamp, Hutto, or Burnett, but I will be watching.
People raised their eyebrows when Choi Chang-hyun unveiled his plan to travel 1,500 kilometers from the southeastern city of Daegu to Imjingak pavilion near the inter-Korean border in 1999.
The 42-year-old, who suffers from cerebral palsy, however, did more than that.
After completing his first electric wheelchair journey, he crossed the American continent over 112 days in 2001 and the Japanese islands in 2003 to demonstrate his hope for the success of the summer Universiade in Daegu that year.
The native of Daegu said he was recently informed that he will be listed next year in the Guinness Book of World Records for his latest and longest wheelchair journey of 26,000 kilometers through 31 European countries and Morocco. He travelled at an average speed of 13 kilometers per hour. [Korea.net]
Read the whole thing, but it is pretty impressive what Choi has accomplished and what he hopes to do next.
For anyone that has ever wondered how the Australian Defence Force recruits soldiers here is a television ad for you to ponder:
It is not bad, but it makes the ADF seem too much like the Peace Corps instead of being soldiers. I think the ADF could learn something from the Canadian military where ads like this one have increased recruitment by 25%. The Canadians were able to do this because instead of pandering to people who aren’t going to join the military anyway with the peacekeeping military nonsense, the Canadian military is actually targeting the demographic you want to join the military, people looking to fight.
Is it any wonder why Canada recruitment numbers have increased while the ADF continues to face recruiting shortages?
Here is another article from the media with no mention of the acquittal of US Marines in the Haditha incident.
A major general and two senior officers have been disciplined for their roles in investigating the deaths of 24 Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha in 2005, the Marine Corps said Wednesday.
Maj. Gen. Richard A. Huck, former commanding general of the 2nd Marine Division, has received a letter of censure from the secretary of the Navy for the "actions he took and failed to take" in response to the killings.
The statement from the Marine Corps does not elaborate.
Col. Stephen W. Davis and Col. Robert G. Sokoloski also received letters of censure.
Davis was cited for failure to take action when informed about the slayings. Sokoloski was cited for unsatisfactory performance of his duties. [Elliot Spagat, AP]
The article only mentions the censure of senior officers over the handling of the incident and the last remaining court martial of the Marine involved in the incident. All of the other Marines have been acquitted, which probably means this last Marine faces a good chance at being acquitted as well. However you would not know such key facts from reading the AP article because they are totally ignored.
Then again when has the media ever been concerned about simply reporting facts? They are about promoting storylines and they did everything they could to promote their storyline of heartless Marines killing poor innocent Iraqis in Haditha for no reason. Now that the storyline has been shattered it is best not to mention the acquittals in order to keep the storyline alive in the minds of the general public who are not closely following the case.
South Korea said Tuesday it found bones, banned because as a mad cow disease prevention, in the latest shipment of American beef and will revoke import approval for JSP Swift’s plant in Grand Island, the U.S. packing plant that processed it.
The packing plant was already suspended from shipping meat to South Korea since July, said JSP Swift spokesman Marco Sampaio. The latest shipment was sent before the Grand Island was suspended for a similar violation in July […]
South Korea’s Agriculture and Forestry Ministry said rib bones were found Monday in one box of a 15.5-ton shipment that arrived in South Korea on Aug. 10.
The ministry said it will send the entire shipment back to the United States. [Journal Star]
At this rate there won’t be any meat packing companies left in the US to ship beef to South Korea.
North Korea remains on a list of states that sponsor terrorism, a senior U.S. diplomat said Tuesday, dismissing North Korean claims that Washington decided to remove the designation.
“No, they haven’t been taken off the terrorism list,” Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill told Japanese reporters as he arrived in Australia‘s business capital for a meeting of Pacific Rim nations. A State Department press officer separately confirmed the remarks.
Hill’s comments were the first U.S. denial since North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement carried Monday by the country’s official news agency, said that Washington decided to scotch the terror designation and with it related economic sanctions. [Charles Hutzler, AP]
What still worries me though is that there may be a grain of truth to this such as Christopher Hill promising to fast track them off the terrorism list by allowing them for example to not have to come clean on the Japanese abduction issue.
