I had to chuckle at some of the comments left on YouTube about how they need to get these riot police to the UK and Egypt.

Staff of Hackers Group, one of the best-known English test preparation services in Korea, have been indicted on charges of illegally recording questions from official English language proficiency tests. Prosecutors said Hackers Group mobilized around 50 staff to record test questions over a four-year period.

“Through organized efforts to leak test questions, Hackers Group was able to achieve W100 billion (US$1=W1,122) in annual sales and W36 billion in net profit just eight years after its establishment,” a prosecution spokesman said. Lax attitudes to copyrights that pervade Korean society and the belief that any means are justified to achieve high standardized test scores are the reasons such abuses continue, he added.  [Chosun Ilbo]

You can read more at the link but they made in profit roughly $36 million in US dollars over 8 years with their English preparatory business.  There is definitely big money being made in Korea in the English teaching industry.

An ongoing racial dispute in Dallas, Texas, involving a Korean-American gas station owner and the local African-American community draws our concern for its possible impact on the life of the Korean immigrants in the area and elsewhere. Reasonable efforts should be made to prevent mistakes by individuals from causing unnecessary racial clashes.

A Park, who runs a gas station and a convenience store in the predominantly black South Dallas, seems to have somewhat antagonized poorer customers for his refusal to accept debit cards for transactions below $10 and relatively high gas prices. An argument occurred on Dec. 9 between Park and Jeffrey Muhammad, a minister at the local Nation of Islam mosque, when the latter wanted to use his debit card for a $5 purchase.

An online news report by an Asian-American activist group said Muhammad admitted he told the gas station owner to “go back to China.” But the black minister claimed he said so only after the Asian-American owner told him that he was a slave and should go back to Africa. Park asserted Muhammad made the slurs to him first, calling him a “Chinaman.”

Skirmishes took place incessantly around Park’s gas station as the local NAACP joined the Nation of Islam believers in their demonstrations to prevent African-American customers from patronizing the place. Injuries resulted when Dallas police tried to disperse demonstrators and part of them went to City Hall to protest. Police took special precautionary measures on Martin Luther King Day, Jan. 16, to ensure no violent incident by parade participants.

Since the Rodney King riot in Los Angeles in 1994, racial tension has existed in the United States between the minority communities. It is regrettable that some African-American activists deliberately arouse antagonism toward other immigrant groups to promote solidarity in their own society. African-American activists are calling for a boycott of Asian-American businesses, claiming that “foreigners” are taking away jobs from “locals.”  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the Korea Herald link as well as a whole lot more on this issue posted over at the Marmot’s Hole.

I think local politics has more to do with this story than the racial comments because if customers are unhappy about not being able to use a debit card for purchases under $10 or the price of gas then go to another gas station.  It isn’t like there isn’t other gas stations in Dallas.

The U.S. is set to import antiquated firearms from South Korea that were previously banned from entry, officials here said Thursday.

Defense ministry officials said the United States has approved imports of M1 Garrand rifles, which were used by U.S. forces during the 1950-53 Korean War.

“The U.S. sent an approval letter in September last year,” a ministry official said. “The U.S. will be willing to review legal procedures once we seek to export the rifles.”

The official added that an exporter will be selected in an open bid at the end of this month at the earliest.

In 2010, the U.S. State Department rescinded a 2009 decision permitting Seoul to ship more than 87,000 M1 Garrands and about 770,000 M1 Carbines to the U.S. for possible distribution to U.S. gun collectors. Washington then said the decision was based on concerns of illicit use of the rifles.

Another ministry official said M1 rifles are viewed as collectibles among antique collectors in the United States.  [Korea Herald]

Is it just me or is it ridiculous that the US government was against the import of these rifles because of a fear of illicit use of these rifles?  Some how I don’t expect LA street gangs to be doing drive by shootings with an M1 Garand.  What is even more ridiculous is that the US government was allowing the sale of high powered weapons in the US to be trafficked to Mexican drug cartels while stopping the import of the M1′s from Korea.

- A snowshoer who was lost in a blizzard for two days on Washington state’s Mount Rainier said he stayed alive by digging out a snow tunnel and burning dollar bills for warmth.

Yong Chun Kim, 66, of Tacoma, said he carried a lighter and other emergency supplies and burned personal items: extra socks, Band-Aids, toothbruash, packaging, and lastly $1 and $5 bills from his wallet.

Kim, who served in the South Korean military in the Vietnam War, told KOMO-TV in Seattle that skills he learned as a soldier helped him survive. He said he wasn’t scared. He kept waiting for the sounds of the helicopter _ though severe weather conditions prevented park officials from using one to search for Kim.

“I’m a lucky man, a really lucky man,” he said in an interview Tuesday afternoon from his home.  [Korea Herald]

You can read more at the link, but Mr. Kim seems like quite a guy being a veteran of the Vietnam War and a cancer survivor to add to his survival experience.

A U.S. court has upheld a 2008 ruling to grant political asylum to a former South Korean intelligence agent who claims to face threats from both South and North Korea, sources here said Tuesday.

Kim Ki-sam, who left South Korea’s state spy agency in 2000, applied for asylum in the U.S. in 2003, saying he would face persecution and prosecution if he was forced to return to South Korea because he had revealed information about secret operations to help then-President Kim Dae-jung win the Nobel Peace Prize.   [Yonhap]

ROK Heads may remember that Kim Dae-jung was only able to get the North Koreans to agree to the summit due to a $500 million bribe that was disclosed by Kim Ki-sam.  He also revealed other illegal activity that was going on at the time under the Kim Dae-jung administration.

South Korean customs officials say they have arrested eight men over a scheme to allegedly smuggle gold out of the country by hiding it in their rectums.

The Korea Customs Service said Monday the men allegedly transformed $260,000 in gold bars into small beads and smuggled them in their rectums to Japan two times in 2010 to avoid import taxes.

South Korea says Japanese custom officials caught the men on their second attempt and sent them home after imposing fines. Later, one of the suspects allegedly orchestrated an unsuccessful bid to smuggle gold bars from Mongolia to Hong Kong using a similar method.

Meanwhile, South Korean officials gathered evidence against them at home. They say the suspects recently admitted to the smuggling after initial denials.  [Associated Press]

 For Korean immigrants, dry cleaners and video stores were once considered the fast lane to the American Dream. But times have changed and so has the ticket to success.

Now, new businesses are beating out traditionally popular ones to meet people’s changing lifestyles.

“Sticking to the old formula isn’t going to work forever,” says Kim Nam-soo, who runs two dry cleaners in New York and New Jersey.

More than 15 years into the business, Nam downsized his store count from four to two in recent years due to shrinking sales.

There are currently about 39,000 dry cleaners nationwide, according to industry estimates, and roughly half are operated by Koreans.   [Korea Times]

The rest of the article goes on to explain how Korean immigrants are moving away from the businesses they traditionally operate and instead  are opening bakeries, frozen yogurt shops, pet care units and postpartum care centers.

The Korea Communications Commission on Thursday reported its plans for the New Year to President Lee Myung-bak. The plans include introducing a ban on the collection and use of resident registration numbers online and reconsidering the implementation of real name-based use of the Internet. The real name-based system, criticized for violating freedom of expression online, is at a crossroads of possibly being scrapped after five years implementation.

Real Name-based Internet Use

Under this rule, netizens must identify themselves when posting messages online. This is to prevent people, cloaked under anonymity, from posting vicious remarks, spreading false rumors and adhering to other irresponsible actions. It’s a reasonable rationale. In fact, real name use was first adopted due to the excessive side effects of vicious online postings. A case in point was the death of top actress Choi Jin-sil who took her life as she agonized over hateful online comments. The real name mandate was introduced in July 2007 to affect major domestic portals whose number of users exceeds a certain level.

Under Review

It’s said that the real name regulation is “under review” but it’s likely that it could be scrapped. The commission explains, “Since 2010, social networking sites such as Twitter has rapidly spread and the Internet communication environment has markedly changed. This prompts calls to improve related laws and regulations and reviewing the real name Internet use is inevitable.”   [KBS Global]

You can read more at the link, but I have conflicted feelings on this because I can definitely understand why the Korean government implemented the real name system due to the false lies and smears posted online that help lead to the mad cow riots of 2008.   However, there are so many ways around the real name system that I don’t think it serves much use anymore.  I think the Korean government would do better going after the lies and smears spread by mainstream journalists than random people on the Internet.  This leads to my next point that anyone advocating for a real name system should also be advocating against allowing journalists to use anonymous sources, because really what is the difference?

Police said Tuesday they will reinvestigate the death of a young conscripted policeman who they had announced was killed in a rescue operation during last summer’s massive floods, following allegations that the story was fabricated.

The Gyeonggi Provincial Police Agency said the reinvestigation was launched earlier in the day over the death of 21-year-old officer Cho Min-soo, whose body was recovered in late July after he was swept away in flood waters in Dongducheon, north of Seoul.

The reexamination followed the local daily Chosun Ilbo’s report over a fellow policeman’s recounting of Cho’s death, suggesting the police agency fabricated the death in order to cover up their poor disaster-control decisions. He said the officer was trying to escape from a makeshift police lodging hit by torrents of rain.

The government had posthumously awarded Cho a medal in recognition of his rescue efforts after the police announced that he was killed while trying to rescue a flood-stricken civilian, though he was soon to be discharged from his two-year mandatory service at the agency. He was buried at the national cemetery in Daejeon.  As they relaunched the probe following the one conducted just after his death, the provincial police agency vowed to respond with stern punishment if the story is found to be a fabrication.

National Police Agency Commissioner General Cho Hyun-oh also called on the provincial agency to look into the allegation thoroughly.

However, Park Sang-yoong, who was the head of Dongducheon Police Agency at the time of the death, denied the allegations, claiming the news report is groundless.  [Yonhap]

Here is the initial report from the Korea Herald about what happened this past summer:

A conscripted policeman was found dead in Dongducheon, north of Seoul, early Thursday after being swept away in flash floods while trying to rescue a drowning civilian.

Jo Min-su, 21, was lost in the rapids at around 9:35 p.m. Wednesday while trying to save a man hanging onto a fence of a U.S. army base in the swelled waters of Shincheon Stream.

His body was found about 5 hours later, some 100 meters downstream from the spot where he went missing.

The stranded man was rescued by Jo’s colleagues and U.S. forces.  [Korea Herald]

It seems like it would be pretty easy to get to the bottom of this by interviewing the stranded man and the US forces involved with the rescue.  Any ROK Heads from Dongducheon heard anything in regards to what happened with this case?