Nothing dramatic or theatrical like the Sopranos — mostly what one might call “arbitraging” cigarette price difference between New York City and Virginia (although there is a mention of an almost comical “hitman” recruitment attempt):
The astonishing discovery came during a two-year investigation into a Korean organized crime ring based in Annandale that trafficked in untaxed [...]

Yesterday I linked to nostalgic Korean tunes from the 70’s. The third one I linked was Cho Yong-Pil’s “Come Back to Pusan Port.” While I was looking for some more video material on Korea, I found the following, which is certainly a different performance of that song:

Yes, that is an African-American expatriate (”Jero”) in Japan, dressed [...]

Since things are a bit slow right now, I hope Richardson will let me indulge in a bit of nostalgia for the bygone K-pop music.
I wrote earlier of a famous song called “That Person of That Time” (”그때 그사람”) by Shim Soo-Bong (심수봉). The link in the original entry disappeared, so I found the song [...]

Remember the mad protests about American beef in South Korea? The mass hysteria of biblical proportions (”cats and dogs living together!”) that gripped the country and led to its otherwise sensible president to apologize regarding the “hurried” negotiation over resumption of the importation of American beef?
Well, now, apparently, American beef is welcome in ROK again:
Now, [...]

[Update 11/19/08] Apparently, Korea is not the only “gun-free” society to experience knife killings. Some demented, resenful criminal in Japan is going around knifing people to death. Where is the anti-knife outrage?
[Original Post] Although Richardson and I do not speak for each other, we generally share similar views about many things, including Korea-related topics and, [...]

South Korea has a “unification observatory” (통일전망대) along the DMZ at either coast. Odusan Observatory is on the west coast, while Goseong Unification Observatory is on the east coast, 60-70 km north of Sokcho. I’ve been to both an Goseong is by far my favorite; I prefer the views as well as the relatively sparsely [...]

During this vacation we spent several days over the Chusok Holiday (추석, Korea’s harvest thanksgiving) at my mother-in-law’s home in the farm country outside Tae-an, very near the west coast. For the first time on a trip to Korea, I didn’t spend any time in Seoul, aside from transiting through the express bus terminal, which [...]

There is the “song room” (노래방), the “video room” (비디오방), and now the “kiss room” (키스방).
Yes, that’s right – you can pay for a young lady to kiss you in a private room (Korean). Apparently, it’s becoming a popular method for female college students to earn some cash for tuition. Additional services do [...]

In a previous post on Pyongyang Soju being imported to the U.S., I used pics from a bottle I have, which was purchased in South Korea. Jason Perlow of Off the Broiler sampled some Pyongyang Soju at a Korean restaurant in New Jersey and has photos of the updated labels (looks like it was $5.99 [...]

A good number of South Koreans seem to confuse democracy with truly mindless mass protesting based on blatantly false information that could easily be debunked but rarely is, at least by South Koreans themselves. The uproar, this time, ostensibly began over bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), better known as Mad Cow Disease, which causes a [...]