Korean 'Mass Attacks' on Japan

[Taro Toporific]

[Caustic Saint]

Oh yes, gotta love those wacky netizens.

So powerful and mighty they've even elected a president. (The website Oh My News claims a huge role in getting Noh Moo Hyun into office, largely through mobilizing voters, spreading the word about Noh's platform and quickly responding to his critics.)

And when they're not big in politics, they big into DDOS attacks. After the crap they pulled when Jay Leno made "dog eating" jokes on the Tonight Show and the Apollo Ohno flap from the 2002 Winter Olympics, some US hosting companies banned all Korean IP addresses. (Some still do.) It's a real pain when I want to access something back in the US and have to go through an anonymizer just to view a friggin' website.

The photo on the Chosun Ilbo site of the dog restaurant is most likely not doctored. It says "gaegogi" in Korean, which is "dog meat." On Friday I passed by a "boshintang" restaurant. That's "dog soup." (Sadly, I was on the bus and not able to get a pic. I'll have to go back and find it again.)

Naver is one of the big portal sites for Korea, similar to Yahoo. Another is Daum.net.

[Alcazar]

Out of the two countries fighting each other online, I wonder which nation would have the largest amount of net-freaks to be more powerful?

On one hand, I have heard that South Korea has something like 80% of households with broadband, and their young people are just turning their minds and bodies into mush playing online gaming all day and night.

One the other hand, Japan has it's hordes of hikikomori, who need SOME purpose to their lives, so why not a war in cyberspace?

'Tittytainment' in action.........
No seriously, 'tittytainment' is real political concept I am aware of. A very modern one. Sort of a 21st Century 'bread and circuses', ala Ancient Rome, for keeping the mob entertained........
Definition: http://www.tittytainment.com/

[Taro Toporific]

Out of the two countries fighting each other online... I have heard that South Korea has something like 80% of households with broadband...One the other hand, Japan has it's hordes of hikikomori/

Total numbers of folks on broadband now favor Japan even though Korea has a higher percent. ONLY thanks to Korea, Japan has FLATRATE broadband: it was too shameful for the Japanese to have near ZERO broadband while Korea had a broadband boom a few years back and the JPN Gov't (MITI) busted evil NTTs stranglehold on the Net.

[AssKissinger]

When I lived in SK this was huge over there. There was a popular song about it and everything. Everybody was talking about it. In Japan hardly anybody has even heard of Tokdo (Korean) or Takeshima (Japanese). Basically, I think this island is rightfully Korean. Both sides have a historical claim but it's one of those things that Japan got full control of when they were the colonizers so naturally it was lost when they lost the war. Now they have land disputes with Russia, China and Korea. Losing these islands is just pill they need to be man enough to swallow. They were bad boys before and during the war and this is part of their spanking. Japan took a hard ass-whipping in the war but territorially they got off easy. They're lucky they still got Hokkaido if you think about the fact that they beat the Russians in a war around 1905 and the Russians could have been more hell bent on revenge. They probably would have been if it hadn't been for the two kabooms.

[Caustic Saint]

Total numbers of folks on broadband now favor Japan even though Korea has a higher percent. ONLY thanks to Korea, Japan has FLATRATE broadband: it was too shameful for the Japanese to have near ZERO broadband while Korea had a broadband boom a few years back and the JPN Gov't (MITI) busted evil NTTs stranglehold on the Net.

Yeah, Korea still leads the way in per capita broadband usage. The bulk of it is through Korea Telecom, but there are other providers.

Japan's leading the way with speed though.* Nothing here approaches the 100Mbit fiber you can get in Japan. ADSL services seem to top out around 8-12Mbit and VDSL can hit around 20-40Mbit, depending on where you live and how new your apartment building is. Every new building is wired for broadband from the blueprint stage up to completion, but it's generally only the highrises that get the fastest connections.

(*Korea has plans for a national 100Mbit network, but it's only plans at this point.)

[cstaylor]

Why does this remind me of that old Star Trek episode "Let that be your last battlefield"?

[kurohinge1]

Korea stamps on Japanese Protests

... postage stamps released in Seoul depicting birds and plants on Dokdo island, which Japan calls Takeshima. South Korea's foreign ministry said Tuesday it had rejected a request from Japan to scrap the release of the stamps that have triggered angry exchanges between Seoul and Tokyo. Photo: AFP

[AssKissinger]

Korea sucks. Why did they decide to change the spelling of every place in the whole country? And they even do this geeky shit spelling Korea with a 'C'. Guess what dickheads! English isn't your language. You can't tell us how to spell your name anymore than we can tell you how to right 'miguk sarum' (American) with those goofy circles and lines.

[Caustic Saint]

Korea sucks. Why did they decide to change the spelling of every place in the whole country?

They changed romanization systems. Why they did that, I'm not sure, but it's what led to "Taegu" becoming "Daegu" and "Pusan" becoming "Busan."

The "Korea with a 'C'" thing I'm not quite sure about. First time I saw that was around World Cup time in 2002. I heard some stuff about how "that's how it's supposed to be spelled," but that didn't make a damned bit of sense to me. Considering that in Korean the name of the country is "Dae han min guk," I think the "K or C" question is pretty irrelevant.

Can we argue about the "East Sea" now too?

[Taro Toporific]

Why they did that, I'm not sure, but it's what led to "Taegu" becoming "Daegu" and "Pusan" becoming "Busan."

Ok, but does it sound like "Pusan" or "Busan" or is it irrelevant like Mt. Fuiji vs Mt. huji?

[Caustic Saint]

Why they did that, I'm not sure, but it's what led to "Taegu" becoming "Daegu" and "Pusan" becoming "Busan."

Ok, but does it sound like "Pusan" or "Busan" or is it irrelevant like Mt. Fuiji vs Mt. huji?

"P" and "B" are represented by different characters in Korean. (Though the "B" character is sometimes romanized to a "P.") When Koreans say it, it sounds more like "Busan," but since many foreigners got used to it as "Pusan," you hear that from a lot of them.

It's mostly irrelevant, but you'll occasionally find a local who gets a tad snippy if you say it with the "P" sound.

[Caustic Saint]

Gets Selling Out Stamps!

People line up to buy Dokdo postage stamps early in the morning at the post office in Gwanghwamun, Seoul on Friday. Currently being sold at 2,820 post offices across the nation, all 1,874,000 stamps were sold within three hours.

No, I didn't get any.

[Taro Toporific]

Korea stamps on Japanese Protests
Photo: AFP

The following is a good background story from the Washington Post on the whole mess, plus the an interesting China angle. It's a great read!

Kicking Up the Dust of History
China Makes Novel Claim to Ancient Kingdom, and Both Koreas Balk[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36733-2004Jan21.html]
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, January 22, 2004]
SEOUL -- The kingdom of Goguryeo ruled a broad swath of the Korean Peninsula and Manchuria for almost 700 years, spreading Buddhism to new Asian peoples and flourishing into what Koreans still consider to be one of their grandest ancestral civilizations....
... The South Koreans, for instance, were furious when the Japanese government officially protested a decision by the postal service here to issue stamps with the flora and fauna of the Tokdo islands -- occupied by South Korea since the 1950s but long claimed by Japan, which refers to the island group as Takeshima. South Koreans snapped up more than 2 million of the stamps in less a few hours this week, and North Korea's official news service called Japan's request "an ignominious statement by the Japanese whose marrow is full of ambition for territorial aggrandizement and hostility towards the Korean people."
Scholars from North and South Korea also held a rare joint meeting in Pyongyang last year to launch a project to change the English-language spelling of Korea to Corea, arguing that the Japanese forced the demeaning "K" on the peninsula when it was occupied by the Imperial Army in the early 20th century. Both Koreas insist Japan wanted to come first in English alphabetical order.

[Buraku]

[Buraku]

Japanese ni-chaneru heads seem to be getting active on youtube describing how savage Koreans are
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOSqF1A3PwY

[Tsuru]

Hahahah check out the young mother putting the groceries in her (Italian) car...priceless

[Buraku]

Cyber bullying rises in S Korea
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/6112754.stm