I’d been meaning to post about this guy for a while — he’s a Korean “folk” musician that’s been around for a while. I think he’s well outside the mainstream, and the few Koreans I’ve asked about him hadn’t heard of him. But I came across his music on a download site a while ago [...]

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A Nexen Seoul Heroes player looks out into the snowfield that is Mokdong Stadium in a photo taken earlier today. It snowed like crazy over most of Korea last night, even where I live in Ulsan, which is just about the least likely place in Korea to see snow due to its low elevation and [...]

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I’ll admit, the IOC just plain bothers me, and inevitably anything I read about it, I juxtapose it with its decision to remove baseball from the summer games. In fact, even during the recent winter games the removal of baseball crossed my mind a few times. Like when that Georgian died while he was riding [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU5wJJuxM74

Haven’t heard of the show that’s promoting itself here, but I liked this so much I’ll make a special point to download an episode.
Love the first comment on the video too…
ItsNicolebaybie2011 koreans ARE fuckin crazy, though.
Found via One Free Korea.

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Just found this while poking around on Naver. This would be from the “Pig Contest,” at Guanshan Village in Shantou City, found in China’s Guangdong province. More photos here.

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Ground was broken today on a new baseball stadium in Pohang. This is somewhat exciting for me because I live just an hour away from the city. Although to be fair I’m about an hour from Busan and Daegu as well. But potential KBO expansion is exciting and since POSCO is to Pohang as Hyundai [...]

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Haven’t posted much about the Olympics after a blistering tirade against the opening ceremonies. I watched in passing, found myself slipping into my usual passive aggressive rooting for and against Korean athletes. It’s hard not to like Yu-na, but hard to stomach most the short track skaters. And with the Chilean earthquake as the backdrop, [...]

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JC6w9hgl7c

Folks, Jackson has been “mock drafting.” Note the present continuous form. We’re not talking one mock draft, probably not two, and quite possibly 10. His wife recently posted the above video, taken just this past Friday night at 11:51 p.m. According to her Jackson had the 8th pick in the Fantasy Prof Pro PhD Pandemonium Mock Draft #7a, [...]

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LG catcher Joh In-sung and new Twins pitcher Edgar Gonzalez try to work out some differences in signs via a translator during their spring camp in Okinawa.

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Not just Uee, but I think the fact that K-pop is once again turning to American football for the 2nd time in a few months is worth noting. Here’s Uee, introduced a couple posts ago, posing for Vogue Korea vamping it up in a few sporty outfits, two of which feature football getups.
This wouldn’t be [...]

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Pink Tentacle has a post featuring Urban legends from Meiji-period Japan. My favorite is the belief that electric power lines were insulated with the blood of virgins.
Keep in mind, that during the Meji period (1868-1912) electricity was only starting to play a large role in the modernization of Japan, this following centuries of isolation. The [...]

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Been looking for a reason to post about Uee for a while. What’s Uee you say? Did I invent a new mashup of urine and pee? No, it’s 유이 (Uee) from the K-pop group After School.
She’s interesting. Yeah, I think she’s hot, but she’s also quite big, which is very unusual in Korean pop. She [...]

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“I never saw myself as other than an Olympic champion,” Orser, now 48, said. “I never imagined not winning. Canada had hosted two Olympics and had no gold medals, the only host country not to win any. I took that personally. I felt I let everyone down.” Brian Orser, New York Times Feb. 20, 2010
[...]

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Kind of interesting to think that there were people who played these games and probably viewed and felt the results in the same way that people that play Major League Baseball 2K10 (or in my case OOTP) do. I bet people used to play these games all day and keep track of a homemade league [...]

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Good interview an an Australian ABC affiliate with Busan-ite Brian Myers on North Korea and his new book The Cleanest Race. The interview is about eight minutes in length and available in audio and transcribed format. In it Myers outlines his general view of North Korea as a far-right, racist and nationalistic entity, rather than a [...]

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Came across a neat video on my usual movie torrent site – Casey at the Bat or The Fate of a Rotten Umpire is only 37 seconds long, the film is scratched, the camera is bouncing and it’s hard to make out what’s what, but…
It was also made in 1899 and filed on the lawn of [...]

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From a blog I’ve been recently enjoying called Extra! Korea. A hilarious lost in translation moment on one of Korea’s more annoying TV shows 우리 결혼했어요 (we got married). The concept of the show is that different celebrities pair up and pretend they’re married for weeks on end. Sound like fun? Yeah, me too.
On this [...]

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Very cool image put together by Bill Turianski, who does a site called billsportsmaps.com, which is filled with all kinds of interesting regional sports maps from both the past and the present. Some are delightfully obscure (NHL 1970-71 season anyone?).
Click to enlarge.

He’s also got an NPB on in the works he’s planning on posting very [...]

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These things really jumped out at me when I first moved to Korea. This is an instant coffee machine with a debt/credit system so you can pay for your coffee by using your cell phone if you, um, don’t have 200 won (20 cents).
When I first moved to Busan about six years ago Starbucks hadn’t [...]

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I hate to be a crank about the Olympics. I’m fine with the basic idea, and there were plenty of moments during the Opening Ceremonies that were memorable — K.D. Lang’s beautiful voice and all the stuff with the projected screens. I can forgive the overuse of French (of which 13% of the country speaks exclusively [...]

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