Couple Let Baby Starve To Death While Raising Virtual Baby Online

tumblrisforlulz:

gnate1:

A Korean couple allowed their child to starve to death because of their addiction to raising a ‘virtual’ child in a Second-Life-style game online known as Prius, reports say.

Kim Yoo-chul, 41, and Choi Mi-sun, 25, would feed their three-month-old baby only when not at 12-hour-online sessions in a local internet café. The pair were obsessed with raising their internet child, called Anima, resulting in the neglect of their unnamed real daughter.

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I DIED AT THE TITLE

Ughhh.  My sister showed me this.  :[  Not good media attention for Korea.

Keep Right in Subway Stations From October

Seoul City will change the walking direction of subway stations to lead citizens to walk right, instead of long-time habit of left, from October.

Directional signs of the escalators, moving walkways and subway stations will be changed this month.

The city will change directions of 1,109 escalators in 163 stations out of total 1,523 escalators in 203 stations and 20 moving walks in six stations of 24 in eight stations. It will also revise the directions in 52 transfer stations to encourage walking right.

The city will also start a campaign for walking right through in-train broadcasting and display boards. On the first day, helper will guide subway users to keep right.

“Subway station is one of the most crowded public places and introducing the walking right culture at the stations will help changing the walking directions,” a city official said. “However, the most important thing is for citizens to change the habit and we expect voluntary participation of citizens in changing walking direction.”

The government is trying to change the old walking habit for several reasons. First, as the traffic is driving right, pedestrians should walk right as well but walking left was introduced in 1921 under the Japanese colonial rule.

Secondly, most Koreans are right-handed and walking right is more convenient for those people. Currently, entrance of airports, revolving doors and pedestrian crossings are operated for walking right. The Korea Transport Institute says psychological burden will be reduced 13-18 percent when walk right. It also expects the switch to increase walking speed 1.2-1.7 fold, reduce pedestrian collisions 7-24 percent and pedestrian density 19-58 percent.

“It is unreasonable to encourage walk left when cars drive right,” said a researcher of the institute. According to the institute, traffic accidents involving pedestrians will be reduced about 20 percent when they walk facing the oncoming vehicular traffic.

Gah!  After getting used to walking on the left this past year, and in a city where people always walk on the left, they’re just gonna go and change it?  This also seems like it’s going to be way more of a hassle to change the habits of the millions of people who ride the Seoul subway everyday than it would be to just leave it.  Weird.

(link)

Most-Read Naver Articles of the Week — September 6, 2009

seoulo:

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Top 10 in society (사회).

1. 10 situations when you absolutely must wash your hands, with a helpful illustration of how to do so.

2. Swine flu.

3. Swine flu.

4. Swine flu.

5. Swine flu.

6. 21-year old Ms. A, member of a “popular girl group”, had the misfortune of naked pictures of her being disseminated on the internet. Police are investigating.

7. Swine flu.

8. Swine flu.

9. Swine flu.

10. What you should tell your family about… you guessed it… swine flu.

Naver is basically like Google or Yahoo in Korea.  These were the top articles last week.  I’m guessing it’s probably the same back in the States?  This week my boss started checking ALL the hundreds of kids’ temperatures at my school when they walk into the lobby.. using the same ear thermometer.  Gross.

oh, see, koreans really CAN get swine flu!

Kim Hyun Joong from Boys Over Flowers caught “the flu”.  My students told me yesterday, and I guess it’s true.  The kids also went on to tell me all the people they knew in real life or friends of friends who had caught it, yet I don’t know any… Clearly, Korea, it is a dirty foreigner disease.  Pshh.

Americans probably won’t care, but geeeeez.

source.

“On the official 2PM fancafe, leader Jaebeom announced that he will be officially quitting 2PM. JYPE has just confirmed this is true.

This decision was made after his recent Myspace controversy was blown out of hand. Jaebeom will be leaving Korea today at 6:30pm KST.”

So because of some uppity Koreans, this poor guy’s career is over.  There was also a petition made in support of him committing suicide.  What the hell???  I’m not that emotionally-invested in the group, but it’s pretty lame that some comments made four years ago on MySpace pretty much ruined this guy’s life.  I wonder what will happen to 2pm?  And if Jae will get picked up by an American label?

if tl;dr, see bottom

bigbangandkpop:

It will not be easy for 2PM member JaeBum, who has been criticised for his offending messages written on his MySpace page, to get out of the public eye and criticisms.

With that, JYP Entertainment has gone with the situation, and had decided accordingly not to have JaeBum appear in the media’s eye for the time being.

He will be put on a self-discipline period for the time being.

This will also have a significant effect for the group’s upcoming album to be release early-October. With that JYP’s representative said on 7th September, “For the time being, 2PM will not have any broadcast schedule, and all scheduled events will also be cancelled. But the recording for their album and dance practice will still continue accordingly.”

JYP’s representative also said, “The messages which JaeBum wrote in 2005 on his own MySpace page is just an exaggeration to his friends back in the States. But because of the way and his language of expressing his ideas, he has received many disagreements and unhappiness from the mass public.  Currently JaeBum is reflecting on his wrong in the dormitary and he is also skipping meals. He understands the magnitude of his mistake.”

Before this, many netizens are calling for him to be banned from broadcast shows and even from the group.

JYP’s stance:

Park Jinyoung, representative of JYP Entertainment, has spoken up about Jaebum’s future activities with 2PM. “Although, we feel very guilty and sorry for all the people who have been disappointed by Park Jaebum’s past mistakes, I will not be taking him out of the group. Many people have been suggesting ideas of banning Park Jaebum out of 2PM, but that will never happen. We believe that he has done something wrong, but as a whole, we do not think it is enough to be taking his dreams and goals away from him. This was not a decision made by only the JYPE staff, but it was something all of the fellow 2PM members have agreed to.”

This was long, but basically the lead guy of a big K-Pop group (2pm) is Korean-American.  He got recruited to train for this group several years ago as a teenager, since K-Pop managements typically sign contracts with young kids before they are old enough to realize they are handing their lives over.

Anyway, when he first got to Korea, he hated it and had left posts on his friends’ Myspaces about how Korea is “gay” and whatever.  Big deal, he was like 16.  This week, though, crazy “netizens” as they are called here, found these posts and have been flipping their shit.  People get really obsessive about Korean pop culture, so if someone messes up, or gets a girlfriend, or does anything to upset the public, they are screwed.  So a ton of people are demanding that he get sent back to America, and dropped from the group.  Even though just a few days ago, these same people were fawning over him.

There is also a such thing as an “anti-fan” in Asian pop.  This isn’t just someone who dislikes a person or performer, but actually hates them and does what they can to bring them and their fans down.  These people are all kinds of crazy.

I haven’t been reading too much on this Jae Bum situation, so I don’t know all the deets, but damn.  I am glad I’m not famous in Korea.

someone forgot to put their brain in today

I found this article on CNN about the looming apocalypse in 2012.

“Theories about what might happen range from solar storms triggering volcano eruptions to a polar reversal that will make the Earth spin in the opposite direction.“ 

Seriously???  Why are people this desperate to give up rational thought because of some creepy doomsday obsession?  Do we need to have some impending disaster every ten or so years because we’re too lazy to deal with our own responsibilities and would rather hope that the world is ending instead of dealing with our problems?  I’m kind of dreading the months leading up to December 2012.  

Thank you CNN for reminding me how crazy the world is.