I’ve just made a desktop wallpaper in 한글 so it’d be easy for me to look at the wallpaper and study.

Link is available here for downloading.

Inside Korea

Complete control by the government.

Thank god for Wikipedia.

Dubeolshik is the most common Hangul keyboard layout in use in South Korea. Pressing the Ha/En key once switches between Hangul as shown, and English.

In contrast to Chinese and Japanese, Korean is typed the same way as Western languages. There are two major kinds of keyboard layouts: dubeolsik and sebeolsik. Dubeolsik, based on the QWERTY keyboard, is more commonly used. While Korean consonants and vowels (jamo) are grouped together into syllabic grids when written, the script is essentially alphabetical, and therefore typing in Korean is quite simple for someone who understands the Korean alphabet Hangul. Each jamo is assigned to a single key. As the user types letters, the computer automatically groups them into syllabic characters. Given a sequence of jamo, there is only one unambiguous way letters can be validly grouped into syllables, so this grouping is done seamlessly by the computer, with the result that Korean can be typed in the same way as English or any other alphabetical language.

Great!

Perfect! I’ve found a great learning tool to learn Korean characters.

http://www.aeriagloris.com/LearnKorean/

Off I go.

Saw this from a friend’s blog. I’m beginning to wonder why Asians are so good at skating? probably because our legs tend to be short and strong.

She skated like it’s nothing to her!

Learned something new about this guy from my native country. He scored a 210 on the IQ test.

From Wikipedia,

Kim Ung-Yong (born March 7, 1963) is a Korean former child prodigy. He scored a 210 IQ on the Stanford-Binet test according to the Guinness Book of World Records. He began to learn differential calculus at the age of three. He was able to read and write in Japanese, Korean, German, and English by his fourth birthday. At the age of four, on November 2, 1967, he solved complicated differential and integral calculus problems on Japanese television, demonstrated his proficiency in German, English, Japanese, and Korean, and composed poetry.

Kim was a guest student of physics at Hanyang University from the age of three until he was six.[1]. At the age of seven he was invited to the United States by NASA.[1]. He finished his university studies, eventually getting a Ph.D in physics at Colorado State University [1] before he was 15. In 1974, during his university studies, he began his research work at NASA[1] and continued this work until his return to Korea in 1978.

When he returned to Korea, he decided to switch from physics to civil engineering and eventually received a doctorate in that field. Kim was offered the chance to study at the most prestigious universities in Korea, but instead chose to attend a provincial university.

As of 2007 he also serves as adjunct faculty at Chungbuk National University.

I still wonder why Koreans tend to be smart. Four languages by his fourth birthday? Shit and that makes it no excuse for me not to learn how to read/write Korean. At least I know two languages, ASL and English. :-)

In Japan, a yen among women for `Seoulmate’

TOKYO — Thin and gorgeous in a slinky black dress and Mikimoto pearls, with a diamond Tiffany pendant, 26-year-old Kazumi Yoshimura already has looks, cash and accessories. There’s only one thing this single Japanese woman says she needs to find eternal bliss–a Korean man.

The Italians of Asia

Entertainment industry leaders in Seoul credit the phenomenon to good marketing coupled with an uncanny response throughout Asia to the expressive nature of the South Koreans–long dubbed the Italians of Asia. A hearty diet and two years of forced military duty, industry leaders and fans insist, have also made young South Korean men among the buffest in Asia. Most important, however, has been the South Korean entertainment industry’s perfection of the strong, silent type on screen–typically rich, kind men with coincidentally striking looks and a tendency to shower women with unconditional love.

Very interesting article!

This forum thread is amusing.

“I want a Korean boyfriend” from D-addicts forum

I’ve always thought that Korean males aren’t very desirable but it appears that I may be wrong.

Some excerpts from the thread:

I live in Korea and I happen to think the reason why Koreans are the most desired Asian males is simply because they tend to be the tallest well-known Asian. I’m not claiming that they are the tallest Asians, period; however, they ARE significantly taller than the majority of people I saw in Japan and Taiwan, and according to official statistics, they are a good deal taller than the average Vietnamese and Thai as well. Given the many different people in China, I’m sure that a few groups of them will be taller than Koreans, but the thing is that they are not well-known among Westernised Asian drama fans.

Korean men, unlike Japanese or South East Asian men (I think.. though admittedly, I don’t know much about South East Asia. Correct me if I’m wrong), also have to complete a mandatory military service lasting for over 2 years. During that time, their bodies achieve a level of fitness that is hard to find in any other Asian country I have visited and many stay fit well after their military service.

I actually met 2 German girls in Seoul who have completed half a year of Chinese language study in Beijing and have travelled extensively through China and Japan. They looked at me starry-eyed and said, “Korea is incredible. The country has Asian men with broad backs and shoulders!!”

I work as the assistant manager of a student housing apartment complex near a major university. We have A LOT of international students and quite a lot of them are Korean. I sit at my desk and get treated to eye candy all day long. I live on site and get a really good discount on my rent. Maybe I should get an I want a korean boyfriend t-shirt and start innocently wearing it at home but outside of work. See what happens? ^_^

It’s true that Korean males tend to have broad shoulders and jaws too. They also become muscular easily after a few weeks of weightlifting. Cool, I’m proud of my country but I’m still very much American inside. :-)

Why do Koreans love this kind of tragedy?

After thinking about it for a while, I need to go visit Korea again. Even better, it’d be so awesome if I could move to Korea like for a year and find something to do. Perhaps try to improve deaf awareness or be a Deaf advocate like I notice there was no Asian hockey team participating in the Deaf Winter Olympics.

Obviously inspired by the movie, Joint Security Area, which they created a fake set of the border between North and South Korea.

Looks like North Korea won. The clapping of Kim Jong-Il was funny as hell.

Looks like Barbie is going international as she begins to sport a Korean garb.

This is the first time in Barbie’s 45-year career that she will be getting the Korean treatment. Korean Barbie will be on exhibition in Seoul from Dec. 10 - Jan. 28 at the Seoul Arts Center to mark her 45th birthday. —kineda.com

Here are some pics of my Korean family when I visited in 2001. Cool fact: my sister is deaf.

http://joi.ito.com/archives/2005/06/02/korean_bloggers.html

What�s with us, the koreans, that are drawn to blogging? The article says there�s over 5 million korean blogs and one of the commenters think Xanga blog is at least 40% asians. Dammit, I am not fluent enough to be able to read korean blogs. Wonder what do they usually rave/rant on about? Also, this article said Korea has the highest penetration to the high-speed internet with more than 12 million subscribers out of 16 million population or 24.9 people out of every 100 have a broadband connection. That is a LOT.

I remember watching a korean movie about the teacher/student rival (the title name is �Lonely Rivals�). In that movie, one 5th grader brought her cellphone which has a camera inside and her teacher got into a bad mood and hand-slapped one classmate (common sight if you watch a lot of korean movies/dramas). You guess it, ofc, the teacher got videotaped by the cameraphone and that 5th grader went home and released it over the internet. Then, the movie got really interesting. So, that part showed me how tech-saavy their culture is and how young they are doing it. When I was in 5th grade, the only thing I carried was my batman lunch box and internet connection didn�t even exist. Boy, am I sounding like my dad, his I-didn�t-have-what-you-have-now lectures.

I don’t recall Korea being a tech powerhouse a while ago so it’s amazing to me to see how fast Korea is gaining in this trend and is starting to become more competitive with other nations like Japan. I wonder how long before people will stop associating Korea with cheap products like Kia or Hyundai and become into a brand quality like Sony or Honda.

See the subject above? I’ve stuffed my stomach with buffet foods (courtesy of Korean foods) in the two days span. One on Friday night and last Sunday. There’s something so American about buffets. If you wanna know why more and more Americans are becoming obese, look no further than buffet places.

We love the idea that we can EAT for all we want and with that psychological effect, we CRAM as much as we can into our stomachs so the money we paid for the buffet would be better spent. We love the word—unlimited—so we have unlimited data plans for our pagers, and remember when AOL starts offering unlimited hours plan? We all jumped on this bandwagon and remain logged till computer monitors get burned.

So, buffets also means unlimited foods and we pretend we have bottomless stomachs and fill them in. As soon as we realize our stomachs are no longer bottomless, we start spitting out comments like “I’m gonna throw up!”, “My stomach is gonna burst open!”, “Oh, I gotta make a dump! Where’s the bathroom!?”. Isn’t that sound sad, doesn’t it?

One pro thing about the buffet, actually two things, is you can try a small portion of the dish and see if you like it or not instead of blind-order the dish and pray that you’ll like the dish. Second thing is that you don’t have to wait for your order to arrive and you can quickly look at all the foods and decide which one you’ll eat first. My dad would often fall victim to a bad dish or wrong order—maybe it wasn’t large enough or it simply tastes awful—and you’re basically stuck with your order unless you’re bold enough and demand another order.

So, what’s my point? While buffets may be a convenient way to “preview” choices of dishes, it lies at the root why Americans are becoming heavier everyday.

Tonight, I gotta hit the gym and burn those buffet calories to avoid becoming into yet another obese American.