After the country suffered a major power blackout last year and watched Japan turn away from the nuclear power it has relied on for decades, the focus is shifting from finding ways to generate large amounts of power to efficient management of power resources.

Enter the so-called smart grid. Korea is one of the few countries that has already adopted the concept and is testing the system out. However, some analysts argue that the government needs to be more aggressive in pushing forward the development of a smart grid system.

The Ministry of Knowledge Economy first introduced a long-term plan for a digital system for electricity supply, dubbed the smart grid, in 2009. It’s set to announce a more specific five-year plan at the end of this month.

The larger framework will stay the same: efficient energy use and further commercialization of new technologies. The detailed plan will shed more light on how that will be done, including the development of battery systems with larger capacities that can store energy for homes and factories, according to the official at the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.

A smart grid is a digitally enhanced electrical grid that gathers, distributes and acts on information about both electricity providers and consumers in order to improve the efficiency of electricity services. It is supposed to minimize the waste or loss of electricity in the course of its delivery.

“Many people still are not familiar with the idea and it will take time for the system to be widely commercialized,” said Son Jong-cheon, director of the Korea Smart Grid Institute’s policy planning team. Currently, there is one town testing the technology on Jeju Island, and other small test centers across the nation.

The system will better predict energy demand of each type of consumer, including homes, office buildings and factories, and prevent the kind of blackout that occurred last September due to a spike in electricity demand.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

Smartphones now account for more than half of all South Korea’s mobile phones following the iPhone’s belated debut in the tech-savvy country in late 2009, industry figures showed.

According to the data from the three telecom companies, the number of smartphone subscribers hit 26.77 million late last week, 50.9 per cent of the total 52.55 million mobile phone users.

“The wide popularity of smartphones has transformed not only our daily lives but also society in general,” said Seok Je-Beom, director at Korea Communications Commission.

“It adds innovations to how work gets done in companies as well as creating new markets,” he said.

South Koreans were introduced to smartphones relatively late, with Apple’s iPhone approved only in September 2009 because of privacy concerns over some of its features. Since then they have been growing at lightning speed, with free wireless networks and cutting-edge gadgets widely available.

South Korea was one of the world’s most wired societies, with 95 per cent of homes using broadband Internet. It also has the world’s top Internet download speeds, according to a study released by Pando Networks. [Borneo Post]

The International Exposition Yeosu Korea 2012 kicked off with a glitzy opening ceremony last night with thousands of political and business leaders from home and abroad gathering in this otherwise serene, small port city.

President Lee Myung-bak and top leaders and their spouses of 13 foreign countries or international organizations – including Peruvian President Ollanta Humala and his wife Nadine, Denmark Crown Prince Frederik Andre Henrik Christian and his wife Crown Princess Mary Elizabeth Donaldson – attended the opening ceremony held at the Big-O stage on the waters off the Yeosu New Port.

Park Geun-hye, leader of the ruling Saenuri Party and Park Jie-won, floor leader of the largest opposition Democratic United Party, were among other guests, along with Chung Eui-seon, vice chairman of Hyundai Motor, Kang Ho-moon, Samsung Electronics vice chairman, and SK Chairman Chey Tae-won.

“The long-awaited moment of the opening of Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea has arrived,” declared Vincent G. Loscertales, secretary general of the Bureau International des Expositions, during the opening ceremony that started at 6 p.m.

“After many years of preparation, challenges and efforts on the part of the organizers and participants, we have reached the momentous day of the beginning of three months of celebrations and discussions on the critical theme of the sustainability of our oceans and coasts,” Loscertales said.

Since winning the hosting rights in November 2007, Korea has prepared for the 93-day international event with the ambition of joining the ranks of other maritime powerhouses. The event’s official launch for the public is today.

Themed the “Living Ocean and Coast: Diversity of Resources and Sustainable Activities,” the Yeosu Expo is bidding to stage a first-ever ocean expo, and part of the events will be held on the coast or against its backdrop.

Kang Dong-suk, chairman of the organizing committee of the Yeosu Expo, hopes it will be the most dazzling in the 160 years of World Expo history.

“The organizing committee has made its utmost efforts to prepare exhibitions that will showcase the preciousness and endless possibilities of the ocean, the expo’s theme,” Kang said during a welcoming speech at the opening ceremony.

The Yeosu event, he said, will “provide an opportunity to address the challenges of climate change faced by the international community and propose the ocean as the vision for the sustainable development of humankind in the 21st century.”   [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link but I visited Yeosu last summer and stayed at the main resort that people attending the Expo would be staying at as well as the Expo site.  Yeosu is a nice city and I am sure the Expo will executed magnificently, but I just don’t think hosting the Expo in Yeosu is going to make it the internationally recognized city the government is hoping the event will make it, but I guess we will see.

Recent photo of Pak's gas station (Courtesy of Cortney Strube)

“The idea of one group exploiting another group of people has been around for some time,” says Mark Keam, the first ever Korean-American delegate in the Virginia state legislature. “The fact it happens means certain stereotypes come into play.”

Those stereotypes, he believes, are the key to understanding why racially charged expletives and derogatory terms were traded between Pak and Muhammad. Part of the problem, he suggests, comes from a complex mix of 50-plus-year-old Koreans who are educated but don’t speak English, finding themselves surrounded by people they consider lesser-educated. For the African-Americans living in the communities where Korean-owned businesses set up, there tends to be a feeling that money is taken away from their areas by people who do not even live there.

Among Koreans, he says, “there is more of a class-based attitude”; among blacks “a strong sense of resentment and inequality.”

“It’s not a question of changing one person’s mind,” Keam reckons. “It’s a question of education.”

Greg Howard, a reporter at the Dallas Observer who covered the protest, sees things through a similar prism. “What you see is basically two populations of people who have been disenfranchised,” he says.

In urban areas like South Dallas, he goes on, black communities who have been there for generations and have been fighting inequality for hundreds of years see a wave of more recent immigrants — in this case Korean — moving into their areas and robbing them of what they view as “opportunity.”

“They are like, ‘This is not fair. Why don’t we have these shops,’” observes Howard, himself black. “I disagree with this because there is a belief that what Jeffrey Muhammad said — that white power gives money to Koreans to exploit blacks — that is not how a business survives. But these are still the conclusions people are coming to.”  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link but I think representative Keam makes some good points.  Many of the older Korean immigrants in the US lived through military dictatorships in South Korea, did mandatory military service, went through various North Korean provocations, some served in the Vietnam War and most importantly many lived in poverty before coming to the US.  Their parents survived Japanese colonial occupation, World War II, and the Korean War and all the devastation that came with it.  Many of these Korean immigrants have lived through extreme adversity so I think they have little patience for people who complain about adversity they face in their lives.  Maybe I am wrong what do other people think?

Greg Howard from the Dallas Observer I have a lot of respect for since he is the reporter that did real investigative journalism to uncover how blacks in Dallas were duped by Jeffrey Muhammad.  However, I do disagree with him on Korean-Americans being disenfranchised in America.  I think they may be tired of being targeted by race hustlers looking to create animosity between the black and Korean communities for their own cynical political reasons.  I think Korean-American small business owners just want to be left alone and be able to work hard and run successful businesses in order to advance themselves and most importantly increase the educational opportunities for their children.

If anything black leaders should be encouraging people in their communities to follow the examples of Korean-Americans instead of demonizing them.  Think about how many of these Korean immigrants don’t even speak English and don’t understand the culture and yet they come to the US, open a business, work hard, and advance themselves despite these disadvantages.  Why can’t people of any racial background born in the US that has the advantage of speaking the language and understanding the culture not replicate what many Korean immigrants are doing?  Once again maybe I am wrong, what does everyone else think?

South Korea has stepped up customs inspections to stop the smuggling from China of pills made from dead human fetuses or deceased infants, a report said on Sunday.

The illegal importing to South Korea of “human-flesh” capsules — taken by men who believe it enhances sexual performance but which could pose serious health hazards — has increased since the first case was detected in August.

South Korean customs have so far uncovered 35 attempts to bring in a total of 17,451 capsules in travelers’ luggage or by mail, the Yonhap news agency said.

The pills are contaminated with “super bacteria” and other disease-causing organisms, Yonhap said, quoting customs officials. Some pills were hidden in capsules of legitimate drugs to disguise their contents.  [Jakarta Globe]

This makes me wonder how many of these pills are made from the fetuses of forced abortions in China?

 Nine people were killed, including two foreigners, and 10 others injured when a fire raged through a karaoke facility in Busan, police said Sunday. The death toll could rise as two of the injured are in critical condition.

The blaze broke out in one of the 26 rooms at the karaoke lounge on the third floor of a six-story building in the southeastern port city around 8:55 p.m. Saturday, causing smoke to spread quickly through the facility and customers to panic, witnesses and police said.

Most of the fatal victims died from inhaling toxic gases, police said. The dead include two foreigners, one of them a 20-year-old Sri Lankan national. The identity of the other was not available.

Police said smoke apparently made customers unable to find exits and led to the large toll.  [Yonhap]

The last mass casualty fire in Busan happened in 2009 when 10 people including  Japanese tourists died in that fire.

But that day was a rage, he and others in the community say, fueled by years of high unemployment, abuse and neglect by police, and rising tension with recently arrived Korean store owners.

“We wanted jobs around here, we wanted respect and we didn’t get none of that. And then the police just harassed us all the time,” says Sharon McSwain, who for 22 of her 45 years has lived within walking distance of the intersection where Denny was attacked. He was saved by a black truck driver who rushed out to help after seeing the brutal beating on television.

Tensions in the community had been running high before the riot, fueled in part by the case of a Korean grocer who shot to death a black teenager she had accused of trying to steal a bottle of orange juice. The grocer, Soon Ja Du, was convicted of manslaughter for killing 15-year-old Latasha Harlins, but received a sentence of only probation and community service.

Like King’s beating, the shooting had been captured on videotape, by Du’s store surveillance camera. The images stoked the anger.  (….)

On April 29, 1992, it seemed Holliday’s videotape would be the key evidence leading to a guilty verdict against the officers. When they were instead acquitted, violence erupted immediately.

Police, seemingly caught off-guard, were quickly outnumbered by rioters and retreated. As the uprising spread to the city’s Koreatown area, shop owners armed themselves and engaged in running gun battles with looters.

“I think we did the right thing,” said attorney David Kim, who had gone on Korean-language radio to encourage people to take up arms because the police weren’t protecting them. [Associated Press]

Also here is an article from a local radio station in LA that goes into greater depth in regards to the Korean-American community in LA and the effects of the riots.

UPDATE: More good reading about the LA Riots and the Korean-American community can be read over at Kushibo’s site, the Marmot’s Hole, and Ask A Korean as well.

Most mornings, when the slanted dawn light hits the nearby Tower Palace luxury high-rises, Cho Su-ja can’t help but stare, struck by their grandeur.

The 72-year-old grandmother lives in a two-room shack with plastic flooring, sandwiched between other shacks built from planks of wood, corrugated tin, castoff door frames and bamboo screens, like a jumble of shipwrecks.

But Cho doesn’t envy her wealthy neighbors, not one bit.

She’s proud to be one of the original inhabitants of Guyrong village, a ramshackle shantytown sprawling alongside the exclusive Gangnam area, the highest-priced real estate in South Korea.

And she’s fighting efforts by Seoul officials to bulldoze her community of 1,200 shacks and move her and 2,000 others into low-income apartments that will be part of a new mixed-use community to be built on the same site.

“I love it here, to get on my hands and knees and plant my flowers in the spring,” she said. “I open my door to the sweet smell of acacia flowers. This area may not look like much, but to me it’s heaven. And I’m not leaving it for any matchbox apartment.”

For decades, the village has been a catchall for South Korea’s down and out, a collection of outcasts who turned no one away. There are women whose husbands died suddenly, leaving them to raise their children alone; couples who lost jobs and businesses and had nowhere else to turn; men without work, homes or families because of alcohol or bad luck.  [Seattle Times]

You can read the rest at the link but the article does discuss the increasing income disparity between the wealthy and poor in Korea.

 South Korea has found a 17th century nautical chart made by a British explorer marking the expanse of water between Korea and Japan as the Sea of Korea.

The chart drawn by Sir Robert Dudley in 1646 was revealed just a week ahead of a general assembly meeting of the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) scheduled for April 23 through 27 in Monaco, which may possibly change the name of the waters currently named as the Sea of Japan.

South Korea wants the IHO to concurrently call the waters the East Sea, as it is known to Koreans, and the Sea of Japan, saying the original Sea of Korea name was changed after Japan colonized Korea in the early 19th century. Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945.

Japan registered the name Sea of Japan with the IHO in the early 1920s.

It is the first time a 17th century map has shown the waters separating the countries as the Sea of Korea, although similar maps from later periods exist.

“It is the first kind of map made in the 17th century, although we have several maps made in the 18th and 19th centuries,” said emeritus professor Kim Mun-gil of the Busan University of Foreign Studies. “The Japanese in charge of the chart at the cultural center have acknowledged that Japan began using the name, Sea of Japan, only in the 19th century.”  [Yonhap]

Does anyone know how commonly the name Sea of Korea was used before the 19th century?