Reading Hangul: A Beginner’s Guide

By , January 24, 2012 4:01 pm


(This is a reprint of an earlier article, with the “How To read Hangeul” part separated out.)

Something that will make your life here easier is to learn to read Hangul (written Korean). It’s surprisingly easy to learn, as it’s phonetically based, unlike Chinese, in which you have to memorize everything. Each letter in Hangul makes a sound, and they are put together to form syllables and words. For example, ㄱ makes a sound similar to “g” or a soft “k”, ㅣ sounds like “ee” and ㅁ sounds like “m”. Put them together, and you have 김, or “kim”.

The easiest way to practice is to write out the Hangul alphabet (or print out the chart below) with the equivalent English sounds, and then go to McDonalds to read the menu. It’s easy to puzzle out the phonetics when you know what the word is supposed to sound like. For example, 함버거 is ham baw gaw (hamburger).

Knowing how to read, even if you don’t know what all the words mean, will be endlessly helpful. You’ll feel more confident getting around, and it will even help you be a better teacher. By knowing how Korean and English sounds don’t match up, you can address your kids’ pronunciation difficulties more easily.

Korean is one of the hardest languages for English speakers to learn (only Chinese and Japanese are harder), but if you put in a little effort, you can learn enough to get by. These days, many Koreans speak a little English, at least in the bigger cities, but as with traveling anywhere, making an effort to speak their language will help people be more receptive to assisting you.

Consonant sounds

ㅂ- a soft “b/p” sound like a cross between “bubble” and “puppy”

ㅃ – “P” pronounced strongly

ㅈ – “j” as in “jump”

ㅉ – “tch” as in “watch”

ㄷ- “d” as in “delicious”

ㄸ – “D” pronounced strongly

ㄱ – a hard“g” or soft “k” as in “gum”

ㄲ – a hard “K” sound

ㅅ – “s” as in “sand”, sometimes “sh” (when next to ㅣ)

ㅆ – “ss” as in “hiss”

ㅁ- “m” as in “mom”

ㄴ- “n” as in “no”

ㅇ- “ng” as in “song”, unless before a vowel (see below). Then it’s silent.

ㄹ – “l/r” – almost impossible to pronounce properly in English. It has more of an “r” or “l” sound depending on where it is in the word, and is the cause of the students’ confusion with “l” and “r” sounds. And it’s kind of rolled in the back of the mouth like with the Spanish or Scottish “r”.

ㅎ – “h” like in “hat”

ㅋ – “K” as in “Kite”

ㅌ – “t” as in “top”

ㅊ – “ch” as in “church”

ㅍ – “p” as in “pop”

Some of the cosonant sounds change if they are placed at the end of a word. As a general rule, certain consonants never end a word, which is why you’ll hear sandwich pronounced “sandwichy” or “nice” pronounced “nice-uh”. But the general pronunciation rules above will give you a sound start.

Vowel sounds

When a vowel starts the word, is used as a placeholder. So, you’ll see them written as “    ”, etc. They’re still pronounced as follows.

ㅓ – “aw” as in “awful” (anglicized as eo, like Mugeodong – “moo gaw dong”)

ㅕ- “yaw” as in “yawn” (anglicized as yeo)

ㅏ – “ah” as in “apple” (anglicized as a)

ㅑ- “yah” as in “yah, I like pie!) (anglicized as ya)

ㅐ- “ay” as in “day” (anglicized as ae)

ㅒ – “yay” as in “yay!” (anglicized as yae)

ㅔ- “eh” as in “I know, eh?” (anglicized as e)

ㅖ- “yeh” as in “yet” (anglicized as ye)

ㅣ- between the “ee” and short “i” sound (anglicized as i)

ㅗ – “oh” as in “oh my goodness” (anglicized as o)

ㅛ – “yoh” as in “yo, dawg, wassup!” (anglicized as yo)

ㅜ – “oo” as in a long “u” sound – “fruit” “tune” (anglicized as u)

ㅠ – “yoo” as in “you” (anglicized as yu)

ㅡ – “euh”, more like the short “u” sound, like “under” (anglicized as eu)

When you combine vowels, you get the “w” sound:

ㅘ – “wa” as in “water”

ㅙ – “wae” as in “way”

ㅚ – “we” as in “we”

ㅝ – “wah” as in “wander”

ㅞ – “weh” as in “wet”

ㅟ – “ wi” as in “will”

ㅢ – “ooih” as in “wit” *

Some of the sounds are so similar, that it’s difficult for non-native speakers to hear the difference.

So, can you read this?

울산 언라인

(hint, it’s the website you’re on)

News Items – 01/18/12

By , January 18, 2012 9:58 am


Here’s a sampling of the latest news in Korea

  • Information addicts may have a tough day today. As of this writing there are less than six hours before the English portions of the giant online encyclopedia Wikipedia goes dark.  Te crowd-sourced website that always seems to have all the answers all the time will go dark for 24 hours. This will affect all pages in English in all countries, including Korea. If you’ve got something you need to look up online, do it before 3pm Korea time or you won’t get a chance again until Thursday at 3pm.  Wikipedia found Jimmy Wales says in an interview with CNN that he’s going dark to protest the severe anti-piracy laws, SOPA, now being discussed before the U.S. Congress.  Last month hosting provider GoDaddy lost nearly 30,000 website domains by customers angry with their support of the SOPA regulations. Ulsanonline.com, although a GoDaddy customer, did not jump ship. Not because GoDaddy is cool but because we just don’t have the staff to rehost our site on a moment’s notice.
  • And in the Unlikely to Happen department, South Korea will ask North Korea to repay for corn and rice supplies it loaned the country in 2000.  Fat chance that will happen.  I could be wrong, but I’m betting on a polite thumb nosing from across the DMZ on this one.
  • A sauna operator in Busan has been “advised” to allow foreigners in.  Advised. Not told. Not demanded. Not threatened with arrest for civil rights violations. Advised.  The sauna does not allow foreigners in because Korean patrons claim that

    foreign users “make the water in the bathtub dirty” and “pass on AIDS.”

    There are currently no laws against discrimination of this sort in Korea. Korea sparkling. Korea sparkle-tastic. Korea sparkle-licious.  Dynamic Korea, goddamnit Korea.

  • South Korea “accepts” the US’s oil sanctions against Iran.  Despite getting nearly 10% of the country’s petroleum needs from Iran, Seoul says it will help by cutting back to help starve the middle east nation for appearing to try to make nuclear weapons.  However, KBS Global’s headline that “Gov’t Accepts US Request to Cut Imports of Iranian Oil” is more than a bit misleading.  Even cursory reading of the article shows that Seoul will cut back, if and when it can find replacement oil. In other words, another nose-thumbing to be had.  Few Asian nations have jumped on US President Obama’s band wagon to throttle Iran into submission by cutting oil imports. Korea imports over 2M barrels of oil per day (yes, I got that statistic from Wikipedia.) To find another 200,000 barrels per day in a world where oil production has remained flat for the past five years will be difficult at best.  Seoul will likely give more than lip service to Obama’s request for pressure.

The Official Voice of North Korea

By , January 15, 2012 9:14 am


Tired of watching Korean TV?  Wore out your playstation and all its games? Spent your entire monthly budget on 맥주 과  소주 and now need something else to fill those long winter nights you’ve got?

Well, look no further for entertainment . The North Koreans are here to help. Until now there was no where to get the real skinny on the happenings in North Korea unless you read and understood Korean well. North Korea’s official newspaper has always been in Korean. Now you can enjoy the Rodong Sinmun, the official news of North Korea, without using a translation program or be concerned about whatever spin your human translator has put on the news. North Korea has launched an English version of the Rodong Sinmun.

Need to know what the Supreme Leader thinks? Read the official news. Can’t wait for the South Korean reunification ministry to tell you the news? Read it yourself.  Need all the latest gossip on Fat Boy Kim? It’s all there, ready for consumption.

And if a grain of salt is what most people would take when considering the veracity of certain news, reading the Rodong Sinmun requires an industrial-sized drum of salt. A good portion of the articles begin with alarming or astonishing headlines and then delve quickly into either vitriolic hating on the evils of South Korea and America or they pile on the praise in copious quantities for the Kim Dynasty.  One article’s headline states that “U.S. to Pull Its Forces out of S. Korea at Earliest Possible Date“  and instead of mentioning anything of the US’s intentions or plans to pull out simply drones on about how illegal and unjust it is for troops to be here and then calls for the US to withdrawl.  No pull out, no plan, no story. Another article’s headline is “Amnesty to Be Applied to Convicts in DPRK” but it doesn’t say which convicts (all of them? in perpetuity?) and then drools all over the Kims and why they are such glorious leaders.  Fun stuff.

In fact, from the four categories of pages available, Editorial, Article, Commentary and Documents, it was difficult to discern one from the other. What should be a news article was really an editorial. What purports to be an “Information Bulletin” in the documents section is nothing more than a diatribe on the wonders of the various Kims.

English teachers should be consoled by this news. Whenever reunification happens, there will likely be a great need for your services in the north. Although the official newspaper contained mostly correct grammar (there are a few tweaks needed), the biggest errors in English were run-on sentences, particularly when effusing on the Kims,  and failure to understand the difference between nouns such as news  and opinion.

Bits and Bytes – 1/11/12

By , January 11, 2012 9:33 am


Here are some of the headlines from our little home away from home:

  • First up, in the “what a surprise” category, is the Korea Herald’s article on Multicultural students at risk of being bullied. Given a nation that prides itself on inbreeding purity of blood it’s no wonder things like this happen. Students who have one non-Korean parent have come under fire in several places around the country simply because of their mixed heritage. Many have quit school rather than face the bullying. And unless something is done to change the mindset of Koreans, it’s going to get worse.  Just in  2008 to 2009, the number of multicultural students increased almost 54% to nearly 108,000. Consequently, the Nam-gu Ulsan Police Dept has gotten started and is asking for information on any known cases of bullying or racism.  (Kudos to the Nam-gu cops for getting out there early!) If you have  relevant information to share, please contact Aaron Corn via the facebook group, Ulsan Parents Club.  Another option to help reduce this terrible affliction is to marry a Korean yourself, have plenty of babies (the government would like that and would pay a lot of your costs as the national birth rate is way too low) and breed them out of this silly “purity” crap.
  • Also in education news, a “Students Rights” ordinance is back in discussion after being thrown out by a new political appointee. The ordinance would prohibit discrimination based on, among other things, sexual orientation. So rather than deal with humans as they are, the government decided it would be in the best interest of citizens to scrap the ordinance, despite having a good number of people in favor of it.  The Hanky has (yet another) scathing editorial on the students’ rights issue.
  • In media news, MBC reporters are trying to oust a few top reporters for biased and substandard reporting. Jeon Yeong-bae, head of the Reporting Headquarters and Mun Cheol-ho, head of the Reporting Department are under attack. For Jeon, its the second time he’s been singled out for bad behavior.
  • South Korea is on top again in the business of ship building.  in 2011, Korea signed contracts for more gross tonnage of ships than any other nation on the planet, including China, which has been busy making megatons themselves. The Chinese were the leaders in 2009 and 2010 but Korea is back in the lead with a staggering 13.5 million tons of shipping signed for, most of which is built here in Ulsan and nearby Goeje Island.
  • The USA is still working very hard to get South Korea to reduce it’s imports of Iranian oil. America wants to punish Iran economically for trying, what they say, is to build nuclear weapons. Iran, however, says it only wants peaceful nuclear power. The sanctions are meant to hobble Iran into submission, but if they go to far the sanctions will impact South Korea as well. Almost 10% of the petroleum imported into Korea comes from Iran and there just aren’t that many places to buy oil these days. Cutting back on that much oil will be a major problem for Korea unless they can wrangle a waiver from the USA’s heavy-handed politics. Not getting a waiver and not cutting back on Iranian oil will also be a problem for Korea as they will get the stink-eye from the USA for not playing along in their world domination schemes.
  • And finally, Korean conglomerate Samsung has been nominated for the Public Eye Award, a prize given to those who damage people and the environment the most.  Public Eye supports

    claimed that Samsung caused cancer among its workers by using highly concentrated toxic substances in the process of manufacturing semiconductors in its factories.

    However, with Japan’s Tepco in the running for the award, it’s going to be a tough race to the bottom. Tepco was/is responsible for the massive failure of the Fukushima nuclear power plant after last March’s devastating earthquake and tsunami.

New Year, Round 2

By , January 6, 2012 6:56 pm


For those of you who had great aspirations of starting off 2012 right – you know, eat healthier, get fit, be nicer, get up before noon even if you start work at 3 – but have had trouble keeping your resolutions, you’re in luck! Here in Korea, you get two shots at a fresh start to a New Year, thanks to using both the Gregorian and Lunar calendars.

Since the Lunar and Gregorian calendars don’t exactly match up, the Lunar holiday dates tend to fluctuate, hence Easter happening any time in March or April. Lunar New Year, or 설날 (Seollal) is no exception. This year it falls on January 23rd, which is a Monday. Koreans take the days surrounding Seollal off, primarily as preparation and travel days.

Everyone's heading to The Grandmother's House

Much like Chuseok, the feast of thanksgiving and paying homage to the ancestors held in Sept/Oct, Seollal is a time for families to gather together, usually at The Grandmother’s House, which is either in

Gyeonggu or Busan, according to the diaries of almost every young student I ever taught. (I always picture The Grandmother as a kindly old lady, with her graying hair tied up in a bun, a permanent smile on her wrinkled face, and an apron tied around her stooped, rounded frame. Kind of like the old 할모니 (halmony is ‘grandmother’ in Korean) who sells bondaegi and squid off that street cart in Shinae in the evenings, come to think of it.)

The Grandmother

 

Marty wrote a thorough that article  explains all of the traditions and rituals that take place on Lunar New Years.

If you aren’t close enough to your Korean friends to get yourself invited to a family celebration, you can find lots of other ways to celebrate this changing of the year.

Plan ahead – Keep in mind that many people travel on the days surrounding Seollal, so the roads will be very busy, and the buses and trains booked well in advance. Don’t expect to turn up at the station and get a ticket, like you can most days.

Watch the sunrise at the beach – We in Ulsan are in a lucky position, as we are both south and east enough to catch some of the earliest rays of sunshine to hit the Eurasian continent on New Year’s morning. While this is a much bigger tradition for Koreans on the morning of January 1st, the sunrise is no less beautiful on Seollal morning – but Gangeolgot point, or Jinha beach (the two most popular locations) will be less crowded.

 

See, that's pretty no matter what day you see it!

Take advantage of the lack of crowds – While many businesses and tourist attractions will be closed for the day of Seollal, some remain open, but mostly empty. This is definitely the best day to hit the ski slopes around Korea, though it is becoming busier each year as younger Koreans take a pass on the traditions of old. Wherever you plan to go, call ahead (either the site, or Korean tourist information) to make sure it’ll be open. Some places, such as Ulsan Grand Park, will often put out some of the toys for games traditionally played on Seollal, like that standing see-saw where you have to jump, or the “throw the arrows into the kimchi pot” game. These are free for people to try out.

High 1 on Seollal

High 1 on Not Seollal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Eat some traditional Seollal food – As Marty explains in his article, there is often a meaning behind the type of food eaten for Seollal. The women of a Korean family usually spend the entire day before cooking and preparing the food, not only for the family, but also for the Je Sa rites for their ancestors. Common New Year food includes ddeokguk (rice cake soup), galbijim (braised short ribs), japchae (glass noodles with thinly sliced veggies), and pajeon (savoury pancakes with green onions).

Food for the Ancestors

Discover what the Year of the Dragon means to you – Check out your Eastern Zodiac reading for 2012, and see how the Year of the Water Dragon, or Black Dragon, will affect your fortunes. Apparently, this will be an energetic year, after the peaceful Year of the Rabbit (apparently this zodiac doesn’t apply to Arabic regions…). It’s a good year to get married, have children or start a business, and Dragon years bring good fortune and happiness (according to this site).

 

Restart your New Year’s Resolutions – Here’s your chance, if you’ve been less-than-successful in keeping your resolutions so far. The days are getting brighter, the temperatures will begin to rise, and it might not be as much of a challenge to get to the gym, or go out for a run as it was in the cold, dark of January.

 

However you chose to celebrate Seollal, here’s hoping the Year of the Water Dragon is a good one for all of us!

News Odds and Ends – 1/5/2012

By , January 5, 2012 2:10 pm


A few newsworthy items from around the country:

  • The new leader of one of the famous “Axis of Evil” countries, Kim Jong-Un has called South Korean president Lee Myung-Bak the “Chieftain of Evil.”  There’s a Mother of all Evils lurking somewhere nearby.
  • And speaking of Evil, the next country in line for the West’s anti-Islamic regime changing plan, Iran, is getting hit hard by sanctions. Both Korean and Japan, both solid supporters of the Evil West’s plans for middle east domination, are hoping the sanctions don’t come down to energy. Should the Evil West wish to continue Iran’s punishment by adding energy products to the sanctions, Korea and Japan are stuck between a rock and hard place. Both import a large percentage of their energy needs from Iran but unless they can swing a waiver – and no one knows how, yet – they’ll be forced to either help the Evil West in other ways or be punished economically for not enforcing sanctions on Iran.
  • Despite Korea’s extreme dependence on foreign energy, particular the kind that makes automobiles run, the country hasn’t quite taken fuel conservation to heart. Although they have been available in Korea for a few years, hybrid cars are just not selling well. A combination of high price and mistrust of the durability of such new technology is putting off buyers. We’ll see how well they embrace the new technology if the sanctions against buying Iranian oil take place.
  • In other economic news, Korea has decided that it will spend nearly half its yearly budget in just the first 3 months of 2012. Part of that decision comes from election year politics (you gotta keep the folks at home happy if you wanna keep your cushy government job) and the belief that the world economy will improve by the 2nd half. They’re betting that they’ll find the extra money the country will need later. Nearly 70% of the country’s budget will be gone by mid year. And  I thought it was illegal for Koreans to gamble.
  • Last year the government named and shamed private universities and colleges for bad practices. Some of those practices included keeping students on the books and getting government subsidies when the students were no longer at the school. For Shame!  This year, the government has spanked another 11 institutions for bad practices and will no longer allow them to admit foreign students. Bad practices in this case include students who were illegal immigrants, or the schools worry more about the money they got in subsidies than actually providing an education. Still looking for the full list of the bad ones.
  • Also in education news, hagwons will be forced to close by 10pm. The rules were enforced earlier for private academies in Seoul but it will now be enforced in Ulsan and other cities in the provinces.
  • And in the Spreading Korean Culture Abroad category, the best of the medical tourism providers were given awards last month.
  • Koreans still can’t explain kimchi well enough to the rest of the world.  A number of restaurants in New York were given fines and citations for violating food health and safety regulations by not keeping kimchi chilled.  The restaurant owners argue that kimchi is acidic and therefore does not need to be refrigerated. Health inspectors said prove it. Restaurant owners said they’re too  busy serving kimchi. This issue has really put them in a pickle. Some owners are red hot angry about it. Others have sour faces.

A New Map in Town

By , December 31, 2011 11:43 am


A portion of the old Mugeodong map, with far tooo many places now gone and new ones in their place

Maps are fun. Or they can be a pain in the rear.  When Ulsanonline.com was first published our maps were vintage, extraordinarily large, slow to download, and very difficult to keep updated.  Some of them, sadly enough, are still in existence.  When a new restaurant or pub gets reviewed, we should update the maps to reflect the location of these places, but it just wasn’t that easy to do.  A lot of our hand-edited maps are out of date – businesses come and go quite rapidly here. Matching the previous mapmaker’s fonts and graphics was the least of our problems. Things just got too crowded and after nearly three years in business there wasn’t room on the maps for all the things that make Ulsan…Coolsan.

Fortunately, companies like Google make nifty tools that geeks like me can dork around with and keep my techno-wizardry skills up to date while at the same time fulfilling a need for our readers.  There’s a new map in town and you can find it right above this article in the Maps sub-menu. It’s the Dining and Drinking Map.  Whenever a restaurant, pub, bar or nightclub gets written up in either our Restaurant or Nightlife sections, we simply  add the latitude and longitude of the establishment to a  separate file on the site and the map is automagically (I love that word) updated with an icon to show the new location.  Click on the icon and it will give you a popup with the name of the business. Click on the ‘More Info’ link below it and it will take you to the review itself. That’s way easier for us since we don’t have to photoshop the hell out of an old, outdated (some of them are circa 2006)

The all new, fancy, techno-wizard Dining and Drinking Map

map to show you where it is. And it’s easier for you since Google’s newest map tools are super fast, even for smart phones, and far easier to scroll and zoom your way around to see what is where. If you’re on an iPhone or Android, going to the reviews is very fast as our restaurant and nightlife sections have been optimized for mobile phones. For convenience, I’ve placed separate icons on the map for dining establishments or drinking establishments, either of which can be turned on or off to reduce the clutter.  It would be very easy to add new categories, such as stores, parks, or anything else folks want mapped.

Feel free to add comments on this article or on our facebook page for new categories you’d like to see mapped.   Also, since most of the map locations are close approximations, its quite possible they could be way off the mark. If you discover a place that isn’t located correctly please let us know that as well.

For you techno-philes, here’s the details of how this map works. The rest of you may safely ignore this.

I use an XML file that maintains a list of all the articles we’ve done in restaurants or nightlife. In the file is the title of the business, a URL to the article and the lat/long. For example, my new favorite hamburger joint, Toolbox, is listed as

  <place>
<name category=”restaurant”>Toolbox</name>
<lat>35482304</lat>
<long>129420254</long>
<link>http://ulsanonline.com/restaurant_guide/?p=948</link>
</place>

XML makes it easy to parse the file for all the pertinent data. The category on the name determines the icon type, such as dining or drinking or whatever else I want to map. The latitude and longitude, measured in micro-degrees, can be easily obtained from Google Maps  and placed into the file. The link field is a URL that goes straight to the article. Once the XML is parsed, I used Google Maps Javascript API to declare the map, center it on Ulsan, and place the data into custom markers.  Nifty and clean. The only things that’s missing is English-language place names on the map itself, which Google only seems to do at the -Gu level and above.

News from around Korea – 12/272011

By , December 27, 2011 11:00 am


With Christmas over and done with, now is a nice time to reflect on the rest of the news from around the peninsula.

  • First up, is a Christmas related story. The Hankyoreh has a nice picture of the birthplace of Jesus – in Korea.  Kudos to the Hanky for not making this a serious piece and even put it into their entertainment section.
  • With 2012 right around the corner, a slew of “best of” and “worst of” the current year are upon us.  The Dong-A Ilbo presents its list of best sellers from 2011.  Big winners include the Hyundai Grandeur sedan, the Samsung Galaxy S smartphone, smartphone app Kakao Talk, the Apple iPad2 and Steve Jobs’  biography.
  • Early last week, a British ship, the Thor Liberty, was impounded in Finland for carrying explosives and US-made Patriot air defense missiles to China. While the early stages of a currency and trade war between China and the west has already begun and what many fear will be a hot war eventually, shipping high tech gear to China is not real smart.  Turns out that may have been a case of mistaken destination. The ship was scheduled to arrive in South Korea before heading to its final destination in Shanghai, China.   The Korea Herald reports the missiles, 2nd hand sales from Germany, will be brought here to Korea. The Chosun Ilbo, however, reports that the ship has already been released in Finland but the missiles were impounded.
  • If you thought the problem of Korean school children committing suicide because of poor grades serious enough, the Korean Herald would like to add to your astonishment.  Bullying of a student in Daegu has resulted in a 14 year old boy taking his life. The boy was forced by his classmates to

    play an online game using their IDs and punishing him when he failed to meet their expectations by wrapping a radio cord around his neck and dragging him, as well as forcing him to eat crumbs off the floor.

    The school as well as parents have been taking heat for not noticing the bullying behavior. The Ministry of Education plans to disperse 1800 counselors to schools to help stave off the problem and provide an outlet for those bullied. My question is where did these kids find the time to do any bullying in the land of 24-hour education?

  • And finally, a piece not so much about Korea per se, but globalization in general. According to Forbes, manufacturing is not where the money is. A lot of people have assumed that when the west began outsourcing their manufacturing to China that a lot of the capital flowed there as well. Not true, according to the online magazine. When examining Apple, they found that the biggest part of the value was in design, software and  retailing. Manufacturing for the various Apple products was a mere 2% of the entire pie while raw materials and profit margin were the highest. South Korea took its share of Apple iPhone products of nearly 7.5% in just the retail end of things.  The abstract says this:

    Bringing high-volume electronics assembly back to the U.S. is not the path to “good jobs” or economic growth.

    This is exactly what conservatives want to hear about globalization and exactly what those opposed deplore – that those manufacturing jobs would have paid salaries back home and instead simply lined corporate pockets.

    Those who decry the decline of U.S. manufacturing too often point at the offshoring of assembly for electronics goods like the iPhone. Our analysis here and elsewhere makes clear that there is simply little value in electronics assembly.

    Well, of course, when you pay the average Chinese a few dollars a day there’s little value in that. Pay western salaries to have it done, (thereby providing jobs and a rising local economy near them) and I bet those numbers reflect a little more value in manufacture and a little less in profit margin. There are lies, damned lies and statistics. Make what you will of them.

On the possible nature of things

By , December 25, 2011 12:58 am


Support the “Occupy movement” they say. “Why?” might be your question and a reasonable question it is as any question these days is a good one. Humanity has become impotent in its ability to ask the right questions, simply asking questions is an art diminishing by the decade. My current country of presence is a perfect example of simply accepting the status quo without questioning. The west on the other hand is an example of blatant fear and in many instances denial of the need to ask questions while at the same time it chastises those who do. Hardly any of those looking down on the occupiers asks the most simple of questions “Why?” for they assume that they already know the answer as it has been provided to them by means of various types of media and questioning is unnecessary. The handful of people Occupying are labeled many things, but one thing they cannot be labeled as is inept at asking the right questions.

I had a sit down with a friend a few months ago, engrossed in the most wonderful of after work mixed with dim lights, chill tunes and cold beer stupors, discussing world affairs as we saw them when he objectively inquired if all my extreme revelations may have been acquired within a relatively recent past or whether I had been harboring these opinions for longer than my existence within the past half decade. I had no clear answer to his question and come to understand now that it really doesn’t matter when certain thoughts had occurred to me, for why should it?

In reality only recently have I started to read more, listen more and investigate more and without blowing up my analytical limitations into “a life’s work” I’d like to share a piece of it, may you do with it what you like, this including the administrator of this wonderful website who by now may have realized that this piece is anything but about the city in which we live. I believe, however, that it does affect the people of this city on a personal level and as such I see this to be a fit topic. If after reading you still think what you do, well that’s your problem. This is meant to inspire a positive awareness of our existence on this planet, something that many have been trying to do for several decades now, but here I’d like to put my, possibly new to some, spin on reality.

Ok here we go. Place these purple glasses on your nose. Now you should be able to see the world in a different light, at least for as long as your eyes can follow the black symbols on this page.

Imagine that there is a group of people, we’ll call them group A for a easy way to follow along, who decided to benefit from another group of people, group B, by providing them with goods and services. Occasionally the members of group A went about their business in a scrupulous ways, abandoning ethics, rights and wrongs and focusing on only one possible outcome of their endeavors, namely the before mentioned benefits. The people in group B willingly accepted the terms proposed and what was being given, as the benefits were felt to be mutual. So essentially willingly, although unwittingly, they too were part of the scrupulous process of abandoning ethics and rights and wrongs all out of sheer ignorance. Now you must also imagine a group C, you didn’t think you could just get away with thinking that everything in life actually is black and white did ya? Group C has a vested interest in both group A and B since directly and indirectly group C benefits from both groups. Group C is a powerful group of people but wields it’s power in a profusely acceptable way, and although this has been far from so in the past, in today’s world the past misjudgments of group C have long been pushed under the couch and are slowly disintegrating into the remains of the strewn about dust bunnies. Group C has been very public in its diligently successful effort to perpetuate its power across the centuries, without missing a step mind you, but in a much brighter, sunnier and promising but no less feared way. It’s important to mark that since the power of group C has been spanning across centuries and generations of people, group C’s ability at keeping secrets has obviously been increasingly potent. To add colour to this collage imagine a fourth group, group D, which came about out of spite for group C. The people of group D came together with the same idea in mind and a common goal, which was to undermine in their own right, the doings of group C.

I realize by now that this may read like something from a study but bear with me and you may have something to think about. Labels will soon be provided but based on some unfamiliar to me part of the literary tradition I am attempting to build suspense and commitment on part of the reader.

Group D, although quite open in its beginnings, has managed to “go under”, who knows maybe it is Australia, and maintained somewhat of a sinister aura about its legendary existence. Group D has strived to gather as much power onto its side as possible, and being very successful in these pursuits it has also been able to access information beyond the reaches of group B, who seem to be making up 99% of the group equation. Group D also came to realize that while the mutually beneficial partnership between groups A and B was on some levels good for all groups, it was devastatingly damaging to the planet i.e. life in general, and essentially the groups themselves. With this in mind group D decided to do something about it, and their plan was to save the planet.

Now you must understand that although group D is extremely powerful, it is miniscule in its numbers compared to group A and even more so the immense numbers of group B. Group D has been observing groups A and B while they wallowed in their own creations, their own filth and destruction. It has observed the rise and fall of groups and individuals. It has watched history being written, read, re-written, re-read, with hardly any shift in the doings of those who read still blissfully oblivious in their happiness of material goods steering towards their own destruction as well as the destruction of the planet inhabited by groups C and D, same place. There is another group, group E, but honestly that is hardly worth mentioning as it doesn’t really have a voice on the scene, not one that is being listened to very well by the majority of the groups, or rather the majority of the 99% of the groups.

So group D comes up with a plan to save the existence of the planet, and the groups living on it. It’s a diabolical plan as it’s contrived upon ideals which essentially serve their own survivalist interests, which may or may not help the members of other groups, dependant on group D’s roster of new membership. Group D openly states that it does what’s best of individuals, but that it is not an altruistic group, which essentially means that they’re willing to save those who are willing to follow them, but that they aren’t ready to stick their necks out for anyone unwilling to see the knife.

Now this is a touchy question, and one people don’t readily want to address, but one which has deep importance. I have a feeling that the following might offend some but the reality is out there and those need to deal with it. Imagine this scenario. You’re on a boat, you, your partner and your offspring. Imagine that you are the last of your species, and once you’re gone there will be nothing left. Imagine that the boat is sinking and the only way you can stop it is by displacing one of the individuals. Who will be the displaced one?

This is an emotionally tough decision to make, but luckily group D doesn’t deal in emotions but rather logic. As prescribed by logic, attachment, love and the like are secondary to the preservation of the species and as such group D will chose to keep aboard those capable of reproduction, and please don’t assume that I haven’t acknowledged the existence of incestuous relations and the complications of such offspring. This is merely a very simplified example of a much too complicated matter to be covered in these few paragraphs.

Keeping group D’s thought process in mind, wouldn’t it be relatively easy to see their need to eliminate the potential threat created by groups A and B? The need to eliminate both groups in order to preserve the planet and group E, since although group E is not being listened to very actively by the majority of the 99% of the groups, the fact is written in stone that group D is very much aware of the voiceless group E and sees that group as irreplaceable while groups A and B as well as C are expendable.

From a sober perspective, and I do mean sober, what group D is trying to accomplish is rather chivalry. A big task, a hard weighing responsibility, but hey someone’s gotta do it. The majority of the other 99% sure as hell don’t seem to be able to get their shit together, and at this rate the end of all groups is inevitable and although all groups know it, it seems that only group D is actually on its way of doing something about it.

So, as an individual, what group would you choose to join? Group A and B happily living in a world where ignorance is bliss with only a small portion of its members aware of the inevitable demise of its own species and struggling in an attempt to make the remainder aware?; group C openly enigmatic with connection reaching far beyond group A’s and B’s comprehension, what other influences this particular group may have is rather, mystical?; group D willing to take drastic actions in the name of preservation of the species?; or the voiceless yet irreplaceable group E?

How here’s the plot:

If you said A, you are a corporation. If you said B, you are some part of the acclaimed 99%. If you said C, you are the church. If you said D you are the Illuminati. If you said E, you are an animal, a wild beast that loves life and all that it brings, well not in that sense cause animals function on instinct alone….don’t they? But hey, you’ve got no voice so who cares.

If all of this is confusing take the description and plot it back along the rumble to see if it makes better sense. Oh and by the way, the earth is F, or Alpha, or whatever. She will have her voice heard, but it would be sad if it wasn’t in our life time.

Facebook and Ulsanonline

By , December 21, 2011 11:01 am


UlsanOnline.com has been in business for three years now. And for most of that time we’ve been an open site with full access for anyone with a facebook account to login and write articles, make comments, publish stories – whatever.  That’s been working quite well…until now.

We use WordPress as the backend for several sections of our site, including the news, restaurants, nightlife, travel and fiction. And we’ve been using a WordPress plugin called Facebook Opengraph that allows your Facebook credentials to enable access to these sections as an author, commentator, or simply to like or share.

As is the case with nearly all off-the-shelf (OTS) applications there comes a time when they stop working when combined into specific configurations. Given that there are multiple operating systems (Windows, MAC, Linux, Android, iPhone), browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari), plugins, networks and the myriad other things that go into the actual experience of you, the reader, viewing a webpage, it’s a wonder we’re able to do as much as we have for so long.  Well, we’ve hit that not-so-sweet spot now and our Facebook plugin, combined with the latest incantation of WordPress, has bedeviled things and have stopped working.  Not completely, just not well. I don’t have a fix and things are going to sporadically work or not work, depending on which function – writing an article, commenting or liking – you attempt.

There ain’t but one geek on this site, and I’ll fix things just as quickly as I can. In the meanwhile, bear with me.  I’ll post  again when it looks as if we’ve reached a point where things are behaving as intended.

If you have any programming ability, specifically PHP or Javascript, and wish to help, please contact me.