Korea: Country of Slogans

Every Korean city has some kind of English slogan ranging from passable to nonsensical. Maybe you’ve heard of “I.Seoul.U,” which we have been assured makes complete sense. I live in Suwon, so ours is “Happy Suwon” and we also occasionally see “Human City Suwon.” It is nice to know that I live in a city of human beings, rather than highly intelligent beings that simulate emotion after a long night of drinking. Some saint out there compiled a list of all the city slogans they could find.

Read the full list here

Keep in mind, this is not a joke. These are the actual slogans. Here are some highlights:

 

• Aha! Suncheon
• Amenity Seocheon
• Asiart Jeonju
• Best Gimpo
• City of Masters, Anseong
• Eco Hampyeong
• It’s Daejeon
• Jump Changnyeong
• Just Sangju
• New hope Dangjin
• Pyeongtaek Super
• Wow! Siheung
• Yes Gumi

 

 

 

20% of Korean Apartments Are Corrupt

Relevant article

Summary: “(Several government agencies) audited 8,319 of the country’s total 9,009 apartment complexes with 300 or more households each. Auditors found faults, including missing cash-flow statements, accounting omissions, construction contract violations, maintenance fund misuse and superfluous utility charges, in the financial statements of 1,610 – 19.4 percent – of the apartment complexes inspected.”

So if you live in a big apartment complex, there’s a 20% chance that you are a part of a Ponzi scheme. Most landlords have to provide proof of their financial status and show that they’re investing properly, as required by the government. The problem I have with the apartment system is the large amount of money you have to put down. For a nice apartment, you are basically giving your life savings to a stranger and saying “Hope you don’t screw me over!” Secondly, if everyone in the apartment complex said “I’m leaving, I’ll take my money now,” then I guarantee that even the legit ones wouldn’t be able to do it. Occasionally, landlords go broke and squander their tenants’ money. In this case, their property is sold to someone else and the profits are used to reimburse tenants as much as they can…but imagine if you had given someone $200,000 and you only got back $150,000. This audit basically proves that there’s nothing that the government can do to protect your investment. Realistically, these people will not be charged with much. Even if they’re imprisoned, our president will probably pardon them since financially corrupt people really help out the Korean economy.

It would be impossible to audit all of the smaller apartments, but I would guess that the percentage of corruption would be significantly higher. For example, you can deduct your rent from your year-end taxes, but my landlord specifically told me that I can’t do it. Why? He’s not paying taxes on it and if the government found out, he’d be in trouble. I think it’s a lot easier for a small place like mine with only 12 rooms in the building (a total of 5,900$ a month in rent) to skirt certain legal/ethical concerns.

Apartments are always being built. For the most part, having constant building projects keeps blue collar workers employed, but at some point there are going to be more apartments than there are people and the extortionate prices aren’t going to make sense anymore. Economists say the bubble is going to burst any day now, but they’ve been saying it for 15 years or so. If you’re Korean and you have a job, you can borrow money from the bank for your deposit. You can borrow enough to not pay monthly rent and pay on the interest. It ends up being incredibly cheap (think 250$ a month). For some reason though, many Koreans don’t want to do this. They would rather risk their own money, because most of them don’t think it’s a risk at all. The current system stagnates spending by having hundreds of people give millions of dollars to a single individual, rather than allowing them to pay a reasonable deposit (first and last month?) and spend their money buying things that they really don’t need…but maybe I’m wrong. At least 20% of apartments are spending that money, so maybe it’s okay.

New blog!

My girlfriend and I are surrendering to the silent killer, capitalism. If you would like to see some totally awesome things that we like, you should head over to:

https://totallyawesomethingsthatwelike.wordpress.com/

I’ll eventually come back to this blog, but being financially responsible comes at the cost of not doing cool things or eating nice food.

Forget Hola Unblocker (VPN Woes)

Last week, there was a post on lifehacker that laid out the case against Hola Unblocker. Read the article in the link to get an understanding of what’s been going on. Essentially, you are connecting to other peoples’ connections and they are connecting to yours and Hola has been a little less than transparent about how they use your data. You are responsible for anything they do with your connection. As far as VPNs are concerned, the general rule is “If you aren’t paying for a product, you are the product.” Hola Unblocker released a statement yesterday explaining their side of the scandal. They’ve been targeted specifically, but it’s not to say that lesser known VPNs are any safer. If it’s something that concerns you, you should pay for a VPN. See the link below for some other suggestions:

http://ramenwater.com/2012/12/28/bypass-kcsc-warning/

Yongsan Electronics Store…not that bad!

I was reading this blog post recently when I was researching where to find a PS4 for the best price in Korea. Despite the warnings, I decided to go for myself and have a look around. If you go to Yongsan’s I-Park mall to the 6th floor, you’ll see maybe 6 or 7 booths for gamers. I really hate haggling because I know that these people are basically scraping by when you have more convenient options (Gmarket). I went around to about 5 of them and said “I’m going to pay with a card, how much can you give me the PS4, a game, and an extra controller for?” Most of the shops gave me a cash price of 440k and a card price of 470-490k for the console. Enter Prince Game:

They people working there (a woman and her husband) were really nice and gave me a really great deal compared to everyone else. Of course, they would rather I have paid cash, but they took it in stride. (Honestly, your card transaction doesn’t cost these people 50$, it’s a punishment for you making them report their income). So I shopped around and some of the other people very reluctantly agreed to match the price, but not beat it, so I went back to Prince because they didn’t try to screw me over in the first place. I won’t tell you what kind of price they gave me, but it was really good and you should go to them.

When it first came out, I can imagine people asking 650k for it. I think the xbox just came out and it was more than 700k on Gmarket. Being an early adopter is just expensive. When it comes to games, the PS4 at least is region free and when I got home, I found out it would’ve been cheaper to just buy the game online from the playstation store instead of buying the physical disc (and it would’ve come with bonus material). Anyway, it was a worthy purchase and now I don’t need friends.

English explanation of the Yogiyo app

Do you like food? Do you hate leaving your apartment? Do you hate speaking Korean on the phone? Well, thanks to the Yogiyo app, you can finally be the lazy person you secretly fear you already are. There is a really great app for ordering food called Yogiyo. Generally, I try to avoid using Korean apps, because most of them want an inappropriate amount of information from you and Korea doesn’t have a great track record of keeping your information private for long. It’s all in Korean, so someone was nice enough to explain how to use it. The above description is specifically for paying with your cell phone (the charge just shows up on your phone bill). You can also opt to pay with a card or cash when they arrive. If you want to pay with a card when they get there, click the first yellow option in slide 9 (it should say 신용카드 결제). If you want to pay with cash, select the 2nd yellow option in slide 9 (현금 결제). I would recommend using the “pay when they get here option” and you don’t even have to worry about the last two slides in the picture. Using the app still requires you to have some command of Korean if you want to know what you’re ordering. I mainly use this app because it freaks me out to order food on the phone. I just want a pizza, not a panic attack. Hope this helps.

In and around Hwacheon, (Death Wish pt. 3?)

3 day weekends call for action. My friend and I were planning on driving out to Sokcho, but it was supposed to rain on Sunday, so we decided to go somewhere a bit closer. Said friend wanted to relive some of his glory days on the mountains close to the North Korean border. I would draw you a map of our route, but believe me when I tell you that Google maps is the most worthless thing on the internet and it cannot perform its most basic function. However, I managed to drop a million pins to make this map of our route.

We went to Hwacheon after driving around the mountains for a while. I’ll be honest, some of those mountains were really boring. We got to the city and looked up what there was to do. All we saw was a polar bear and some upside down funnel at the edge of town. I looked up stuff on the internet and found this blog and contacted the owner to see what was up with Hwacheon. Well, everyone was out of town and so we were left in a ghost town, staring at that bear. I swear the bear moves. It was facing in different directions on multiple occasions, but people say that it doesn’t move.

The 2nd day of the trip was a lot better. The roads were a lot more enjoyable and the scenery was better. Specially, 460->31->46 was the best stretch of road to drive on. I think this is my last big trip though. My gear box is all kinds of broken now and I’m dreading the bill. I’ve put 14,000km on my bike since I bought it 2 1/2 years ago. I was told I should just push it into a river and forget about it since I’ve spent more repairing it than I purchased it for. Here are some pictures:

more stuff

that bear moves

lake time in Hwacheon

surveying the land

sculpture

Hwacheon funnel trumpet

some stuff

tunnel driving

Dam

World Peace Bell

Otter

Shake hands with Desmond Tutu

Dam

Awesome Korean Anti-Marijuana PSA’s

In one of my adult classes, we were discussing the legalization of marijuana in Colorado and I was very surprised by some of the things they were saying. “Doesn’t it make you lose your mind and see things?” and “Don’t you become really violent?” It sounded like their teachers must have described the effects of taking LSD, PCP, and cocaine all at the same time and just said “Yeah, that’s what the pot is like.” Anyway, these videos are pretty enjoyable even if you don’t speak Korean. It’s one video broken up into two parts and the second one is where all the crazy stuff happens.

If You Go to North Korea for Vacation, You Are a Bad Person

On a recent reddit post on the /r/korea sub, someone was asking if visiting North Korea would cause them any problems in the future, because of passport stamps, etc. The answer is “No…but if you go to North Korea, you are a bad person.”

I think at some point everyone who lives here thinks it would be interesting to go. That is a natural reaction, but I think that upon further thought that most moral people decide against. Consider that your money would pay to perpetuate the suffering and misery of other human beings. Before going, I think people should have to listen to a North Korean refugee talk about their experiences in prison camps and how their families are probably either dead or in camps now because of their escape. We know so much about how brutal the regime is, so why would you be complicit in supporting their actions with your money? Before you say “Oh, but it’s not that much money,” just know that as much as 30% of the country’s revenue comes from tourism.

Again, it’s one thing to be interested in going, and it’s a different thing to follow through. It’s not a vacation. It’s a cheap thrill so that you can tell someone a story at parties. I told someone it’s like someone saying “The Khmer Rouge are pretty messed up, I’d love to see that in action.” There’s definitely a moral component, and while you can say that you don’t support it with your words, you are still supporting it with your money if you go. Just watch the Vice Guide to North Korea and expect to do the exact same things. There are better places to spend your money if you want to have an actual vacation.

Levee Brewery, Suwon

Recently, Suwon added a micro brewery to its roster of awesome things. The Levee Brewery started up last year and currently has 5 beers on tap, with a list of about 7 others to be added in the coming months. There are good things and bad things about the place so far.

Good thing #1: They are trying to make a micro brewery in Suwon. With the horrible reputation that Korea has for making really crappy beer, the tides are finally starting to shift with the relaxing of laws. The former laws crippled any attempt of entering the market without an endless supply of chaebol money. I think they’re still a bit harsh, but at least it allows businesses like this to open, even if national distribution isn’t really on the table yet.

Good thing #2: It seems like they’re doing alright and will be around for a while. This will give them time to evolve and move on to more interesting beers in the long run.

Bad thing #1: The decor needs help. It’s a brewery/bar, but everything is a bit too new looking to be a bar and it currently has a faux rusticity about it. The lighting really bothered me because there’s just too much of it. It’s really bright for a bar and sort of feels like a restaurant.

Bad thing #2: The current selection of beer is a little weak. Like I said, there are 10 more that are going to be made in the future and some of them sound very exciting (whisky ale). The current offerings appeal to a more Korean palate, which makes sense since they have to ween people off of crap.

I tried two beers. I had the Castle Rye and the Pale Ale. I’ve had nothing but Indica IPA for the past year or so, so I’m a bit biased in what I like beer to taste like (bitter/hoppy). So to me, I thought the beers were a bit weak tasting. Like I said before though, it’s in their best interests to please the local neighborhood Koreans to build a client base. There aren’t too many foreigners that live around the area, so it’s go to attract a local base to survive. A lot of people in the foreigner community really like their beers, though, so don’t take my opinion too seriously. I’m really excited that they have an IPA, as well as an American pale ale, on schedule. They also have food (pizza and sausages), a pool table, and dartboards. I think it’s definitely worth going to and seeing for yourself.

UPDATE: They’ve added the IPA beer as of January 30th, 2014.

It’s located in Mangpo-dong, so if you live in or near Yeongtong, it’s pretty close. Click on the map link for a pretty good idea of how to get there. You can take any bus towards Blooming Apartments (if anyone knows what those are specifically, then leave a comment) and their site says that you can get their by taxi if the driver is in a good mood.

MAP