Mongdori

The only thing cooler than a water gun fight on a hot summer day has to be a virtual water gun fight in an air conditioned room on a hot summer day. Nexon have taken their Kart Rider characters and put them into a 3rd person water gun shooter called Bubble Fighter. The game has just started its closed beta phase. Here is the teaser video that makes me really want to remember what my old Kart Rider username and password were:

One of the easiest ways to gain social acceptance in Korea is to agree that the island of Dokdo is Korean territory, not Japanese. But you may still wonder if Korea's rebellious and deep-voiced death metal scene also supports the popular notion the Dokdo is "우리 땅". I think this video answers that question:

A brief look at the glamorous life of phone English customers:

Here's a seasonally appropriate song by the band Doctor Fish which asks the question "Why bother buying an air conditioner if you're too cheap to use it?"

One thing foreigners often complain about in Korea is how shirts sold here have English writing on them, not Hangul. Usually, this writing is completely random and meaningless, such that wearing it back home would make you look like an idiot. But you can find shirts with Hangul on them occasionally. Here is a line of shirts from Basic House that lets people know you can read Korean, as well as support the Korean olympic archery team:

This summer, one of the most unavoidable songs has been the Wondergirls' "So Hot". Though not as catchy as their previous hit "Tell Me", it's still managed to obsess the youth of Korea with it's tongue-in-cheek lyrics, and has spawned an endless amount of UCC videos on the net. Here's one of them, vaguely reminding me of an old Weird Al song:

You know the janitor's robbing them blind when the employees of this bank in 동천동 all turn to the right:

There are a lot of interesting people in the world. One of them is 쇼리 (Showry), a hopefully soon to be rising star. In this clip, she is showing off some of her drama skills by reading scenes from a book called 내가 사랑하는 사람 (I Am a Person in Love).

Here's an interesting animation from a series called 못 박는 남자, 못 박히는 여자, which translates to "Nail Driving Man, Nail Driven into Woman." The title of this episode is 아픈 버릇, or "Painful Habits."

Life can be difficult for a woman smoker in Korea. It's still considered bad form for a woman to smoke in public, which drives most women to smoke in bathrooms or just at home alone. But Korean women have good reasons to smoke. The biggest reason being all the drama they must face in their lives. Here is a video by singer 란 pleading for understanding of the Korean smoking female:

Here's a breakdown of some of the latest updates to the site:

Geotagged Threads:
You may now include custom maps of Korea in your forum and job posts. You will see a link to the tool to make your maps when you post a new message. Here is an example of a map you can create:

var xcenter=parseInt("380928");var ycenter=parseInt("399360");var zoom=parseInt("11");var xmark=parseInt("466944");var ymark=parseInt("418816");var label="Hidden Treasure?";var popup44763="" + label + "";var mapObj44763 = new NMap(document.getElementById("mapContainer44763"),500,408);var infowin44763 = new NInfoWindow();mapObj44763.setCenterAndZoom(new NPoint(xcenter,ycenter),zoom);mapObj44763.addOverlay(infowin44763);var iconUrl = "http://www.mongdori.com/images/nmapMarker.gif";var icon = new NIcon(iconUrl, new NSize(15,14));var mpos = new NPoint(xmark,ymark);var marker = new NMark(mpos,icon);mapObj44763.addOverlay(marker);NEvent.addListener(marker,"mouseover",function(mpos){infowin44763.set(mpos,popup44763);infowin44763.showWindow()});NEvent.addListener(marker,"mouseout",function(){infowin44763.hideWindow();});var save = new NSaveBtn();var zoom =new NZoomControl();zoom.setAlign("left");zoom.setValign("bottom");save.setValign("top");mapObj44763.addControl(save);mapObj44763.addControl(zoom);

Job Board Open API:
You can now query the job board with custom searches and receive an XML formatted document. In other words, you can be updated of things like the latest part-time jobs in and around Seoul by entering that search's RSS feed into your Google Reader.

Trackbacks:
All new threads in now have trackback addresses now. There will be a slight delay in trackbacks accepted as I'm finalizing some anti-spam measures.

I hope these updates can prove useful to some people. I had to make some underlying changes to the site to make Naver Maps work with Firefox (Naver Maps has compliance issues), but I think I've worked through all the bugs. If you notice any display issues with other browsers, please let me know.

Nothing says more about a person than the coffee they drink. Only true gentlemen know the satisfaction of opening a packet of Maxim Mocha Gold Mild and breathing in the aroma of powdered milk and sugar. Now, Maxim brings the craftsmanship of their instant coffee to the realm of cans. Introducing Maxim Espresso, only for those with mature tastes:

A while back, flavor packet company 다시다 introduced us to their carnivorous bunny mascot. It now seems that mutant bunny wasn't alone, and his kind have multiplied and congregated in their own little village. Has the unabated and unnatural feeding of beef stock to rabbits produced some sort of Mad Bunny disease?

If you've worked as a teacher, then you've probably formed a negative opinion about eraser shavings. Students, especially the error-prone ones, always leave behind heaps of them. Furthermore, just wiping them off the desk and onto the floor where they can blend in (and add traction) proves difficult because of their sticky nature. However, there are some interesting things you can do with all those eraser scraps. Here's someone who's found a way to make art with them:



The Korean word for eraser shavings is 지우개밥, but in this video, she uses the word 지우개똥, meaning "eraser poop." A nice way to tell someone to clean up there eraser shavings would be to say "지우개밥 먹어", meaning "eat your eraser-bap!"

Here's another video showing some of the differences in vocabulary between South and North Korea. Who would have thought that you could go to the beauty salon and order a fried head, or that bell peppers would be called lion peppers?

Just when I thought the Tecktonik was the best thing to come out of Europe since Las Ketchup, along come Étude House spokesmodels 장근석 and Go A-ra to completely kill the irony:

Even Lee Myung-bak knows that the best way to defend against a Zerg attack is to build your supply depots in a way that blocks easy entry into your base:

One problem with teaching English as a second language is that many students often lack motivation. Since corporal punishment is currently out of fashion, teachers must come up with new and inventive ways of keeping their students' attention. Here's one technique from a Japanese game show that's sure to keep your students studying their vocabulary:

For those who like surrealism, here's an interesting interchange between students and riot police that took place at one of the predominately peaceful rallies against U.S. Beef and president Lee Myung-bak:



The quote at the end reads: "Before we used to hurl rocks, these days we toss snacks"

Here's a funny parody of a recent Pepsi ad, showing what the ad would look like if it were made in Korea:



Poor Ronaldhino. For reference, here is Pepsi's orginal version: