(Source: Retrogasm {NSFW})
Apologies for the lack of posts this week everyone, but I was in a bad car accident a few days ago, and had to be rushed into surgery. The car was a complete write-off too.
Fortunately through, the car in question was *cough* actually only a few centimeters long, left on my my bedroom floor by my daughters for me to slip on and nearly break my toe :D And I’m happy to report that my injuries are healing nicely, even if I am going to be hobbling around for next week or so!
Announcements
— Gangnam Style Flash Mob, COEX, Sunday November 18, 1:30-3:30pm (Seoul Convention Bureau)
— KUMFA is looking for 5 volunteers to watch kids during their meeting this Sunday, November 18th, 11-3pm (Tales of Wonderlost)
Body Image, Health
— What is the fascination with (Korean) Cosmetic Surgery? (I’m No Picasso)
Censorship, Media
— Manufactured Girl Power: Female Empowerment in a Male-Powered Industry (Seoulbeats)
— IU, Eunhyuk, and the Imaginary Korean Netizen Backlash (Seoulbeats)
— Block B’s friendly trolling turns into a controversy because netizens have no friends (Asian Junkie)
— Arirang produces documentary to try and show a positive message about expats in Korea (Action Against MBC Korea)
— Food porn, reborn! (Scribblings of the Metropolitician)
— How is Media Manipulated (I’m No Picasso)
— China slams “distorted” view of copyright piracy problem (Reuters)
Crime
— Ladies, Do You Find Korea to be Dangerous? (I’m No Picasso)
— Man Arrested for Sexually Harassing Wonder Girls’ Sohee (Omona They Didn’t)
— [Special reportage part V] The exploitation of teen runaways (The Hankyoreh)
— An unholy home of incest (The Marmot’s Hole)
— More N.Korean Defectors Turn to Crime (The Chosun Ilbo)
Dating, Relationships, Marriage
— Gay(?) Dating in Korea Tip #3: There Will Be Coyness (The Kimchi Queen)
— The town with 200 women marrying foreign men (Vietnam.net)
— Vietnamese learn to become S. Koreans’ wives (Tuoitre News)
— Naturalization called off for past ‘misbehavior’ (Korea Joongang Daily)
— It’s Not Like on TV: “80% of Korean Men Without a Car and Home of Their Own Never Find Love” (Rocketnews24)
— 4 Good things and 4 Bad things about International Marriage (Korean Mom Lily’s Life Style)
— How to Attract Protesters to Your Wedding (Scene Asia)
— Oxytocin keeps committed men away from attractive women (io9)
Education, Parenting, Demographics
— Elite education not a surefire path to success (The Korea Herald)
— In case you’ve forgotten, most foreign English teachers aren’t certified teachers (Gusts of Popular Feeling)
— 24 Seoul districts rebel on day care (Korea Joongang Daily)
— Tiger mom madness: fake passports, fake schools, and even fake marriages (Korea Law Today)
— Aging Japan: How can the world’s most elderly society overcome its demographic crisis? (Al Jazeera)
Economics, Politics, Workplaces, Ladygate
— Female leadership gains ground in auto industry (The Korea Herald)
— GM Korea likes ladies in office (Korea Joongang Daily)
— Samsung now hires more women, underprivileged (Korea Joongang Daily)
— More women strive to break through glass ceiling in Korea’s financial sector (Yonhap)
— Park rapped for being not feminine enough (The Korea Times)
— Viewpoint: What Chinese women really need (BBC)
Gangnam Style
— Žižek: Why Gangnam Destroyed Bieber (Youtube)
— K-Pop Star PSY: I Would Teach President Obama ‘Gangnam Style’(Korea BANG)
— Gangnam Style isn’t a one-off – Major music industry report says future pop sensations will be YouTube-driven globalised acts from Asia and South America (The Independent)
— Heidi Klum And Psy Do “Gangnam Style” For The MTV EMAs (Buzzfeed)
— Psy to perform and receive an award at the ‘American Music Awards’ (Allkpop)
— Anish Kapoor to make Gangnam Style video (The Telegraph)
— “Psy & Madonna – Gangnam Style x Give It To Me” Live Performance (Youtube)
— “Gangnam Style” Drops to #5 on Billboard Hot 100, But That’s Okay… (Omona They Didn’t)
LGBT, Sexuality
— If IU is 20 and in Spring, Why is Ga-In the One Blossoming? (The One Shots)
— Notes on a K-pop Scandal with the ‘Korean Nation’s Little Sister’ (Asianaut)
— The Myth of IU’s Innocent Image (The Mind Reels)
— IU probably getting Super Junior’s Eunhyuk’s dick, company denies everything but netizens don’t care (Asian Junkie)
— Female Celebrity Accidentally Tweets Intimate Photo (Korea BANG)
— K-Pop darling IU may have some explaining to do (The Marmot’s Hole)
— SM Entertainment declines to comment on IU-Eunhyuk scandal (Omona They Didn’t)
— South Koreans Launch Condoms Into North Korea (Business Insider)
— Reading List: Representation, Politics, Ethics: Rethinking Homosexuality in Contemporary Korean Cinema and Discourses (The Kimchi Queen)
— Goo Hara’s pre-debut underaged sex scandal and it’s relevancy now (Omona They Didn’t)
Pop Culture
— THE SEEYA: Now CCM is Just Grasping at Straws (Seoulbeats)
— French TV documentary on Kpop (Omona They Didn’t)
— Driving Freely Through the World: Cosmopolitanism in K-Pop (IASPM-US)
— SM’s Embedded Ads: The Case For and Against Them (Seoulbeats)
— “Playing with Girls’ Generation” Tokyo Concert – Fan Fashion Pictures (Tokyo Fashion)
— Seoul searching: how politics plays out in South Korean cinema (The Guardian)
— “9Muses of Star Empire” Documentary Teaser! (Omona They Didn’t)
— Open World Entertainment CEO Jang Seok Woo admits to all charges against him (Asian Junkie)
— The Black Ocean of My Seoul (Seoulbeats)
(Links are not necessarily endorsements)
The Grand Narrative 
Wow, I hope you are alright. I love your site, btw. Please take time to heal, and take care of your family.
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Thanks very much. Just in case my attempts at humor got the better of me and I’ve left any readers confused though, I’m fine really. Just minus most of one big toenail, and my daughters of one of their toy cars!
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Erk, I just reread it, and realized that I DID give completely the wrong impression. Sorry about that, I’ll edit that right way!
Update: Done.
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I’m suprised about this 80% figure. Maybe it is such a minority of Korean men that don’t actually have a car and home that it is a small number in the end. Well, it’s not like I haven’t seen women judge a man by his car in Europe as well (not saying that women are more shallow).
Well, at least I got one such Korean man off the streets ;)
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I think the figure needs to be taken with a very big grain of salt. As a friend sarcastically put it, “Obviously NO Korean men live in the capital, where buying an apt. is expensive as hell and you’ll never get a parking space should you somehow be food enough to drive in Seoul.” This, despite it being the 2nd biggest city on the planet…!
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I like your friend :)
Yeah, I was also wondering about that “never find love”. Never is a long time.
As always, there are plently of interesting stories to read here, thanks for posting them. And hope your toes recover quickly.
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Gee. A less dramatic introduction could have saved me the #mental# double take.
Heh, hope you recover soon.
And teach your kiddies about proper parking of toy cars ;)
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Sorry about overdoing the joke. Blame a friend of mine for putting the idea in my head!
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Back a few months when word came out about Jang, Seok-woo there was one English newspaper that suggested the age of consent in S. Korea was above 13 years old, which was thought to be not the case unless something was missing? Do we know the age of consent in S. Korea?
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