An Appeal by 365 Korean Organizations to the Iraqi Group Holding a Korean National

Grok Headline matches for An Appeal by 365 Korean Organizations to the Iraqi Group Holding a Korean National

"Iraqi Terrorists Behead Korean Hostage"

"Iraqi Terrorists Behead Korean Hostage" 06/24/2004 04:50 AM

Iraqi Militants Behead Korean Hostage
(AP)

Iraqi Militants Behead Korean Hostage
(AP) 06/22/2004 12:23 PM
AP - An Iraqi militant group has beheaded its South Korean hostage, Al-Jazeera television reported Tuesday. The South Korean foreign ministry issued a statement confirming the report.

Iraqi militants reportedly behead Korean
hostage

Iraqi militants reportedly behead Korean
hostage 06/22/2004 12:32 PM

Iraqi Militants Threaten to Behead South
Korean

Iraqi Militants Threaten to Behead South
Korean 06/21/2004 01:17 AM
Reuters via Wired News Jun 21 2004 4:32AM GMT

Iraqi Militants Threaten to Behead South
Korean (Reuters)

Iraqi Militants Threaten to Behead South
Korean (Reuters) 06/20/2004 07:06 PM
Reuters - Iraqi militants threatened on Monday to behead a South Korean hostage within 24 hours to try to stop Seoul deploying 3,000 troops to northern Iraq, according to a videotape aired on Arabic television station Al Jazeera.

Iraq Group Threatens to Behead S.Korean
Hostage - TV

Iraq Group Threatens to Behead S.Korean
Hostage - TV 06/20/2004 06:52 PM
Reuters via Wired News Jun 20 2004 10:33PM GMT

Iraq Group Threatens to Behead S.Korean
Hostage - TV (Reuters)

Iraq Group Threatens to Behead S.Korean
Hostage - TV (Reuters) 06/20/2004 05:27 PM
Reuters - An Iraqi group has threatened to behead a South Korean hostage if Seoul does not end cooperation with U.S. occupying authorities, a videotape aired on Arabic television station Al Jazeera said Monday.

Zarqawi Group Says It Killed Five Iraqi
National Guard

Zarqawi Group Says It Killed Five Iraqi
National Guard 01/01/2005 08:22 AM
Reuters via Wired News Jan 1 2005 12:34PM GMT

Zarqawi Group Says It Killed Five Iraqi
National Guard (Reuters)

Zarqawi Group Says It Killed Five Iraqi
National Guard (Reuters) 01/01/2005 08:25 AM
Reuters - Militants from a group led by al Qaeda ally Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said they had killed five men and warned those who work with the U.S.-backed government they faced the same fate.

Zarqawi group executes five Iraqi
national guards: Internet

Zarqawi group executes five Iraqi
national guards: Internet 01/01/2005 08:28 PM
Xinhua News Agency Jan 1 2005 11:45PM GMT

Zarqawi group says killed five Iraqi
National Guard: website

Zarqawi group says killed five Iraqi
National Guard: website 01/02/2005 09:13 AM
Khaleejtimes.com - Sat Jan 1, 03:23 pm GMT

Tigers in the Korean DMZ?

Tigers in the Korean DMZ? 09/11/2004 12:49 PM
Xeni Jardin: Snipped from Bruce Sterling's Viridian Design email newsletter, a New York Times story about wild animals reclaiming the heavily-landmined DMZ that divides North and South Korea.

[E]nvironmentalists have recognized this area one of the most enduring symbols of the cold war and one of the most fortified and heavily mined stretches on earth as the Korean peninsula's, and possibly East Asia's, most important wildlife refuge. They have been pressing to preserve it but are feeling a special urgency now because of the growing reconciliation between the North and the South. The environmentalists fear that a South Korea that puts economic development first and a North Korea that has no environmental movement could together lead to the zone's rapid destruction as a refuge. (..)

"The DMZ is the last major vestige of Korea's natural heritage," said Kim Ke Chung, a professor at the Center for BioDiversity Research at Penn State and chairman of the DMZ Forum, an organization based in the United States that is dedicated to preserving the zone. "It's probably the only good thing to come out of the Korean War and cold war. So we have to preserve this as a nature reserve." [Bruce Sterling says: "How did the Cold War become the 'cold war' all of a sudden?]

The DMZ Forum recently held a conference in Seoul to gather support for designating the zone a Unesco World Heritage Site, a classification that would curb all development. William B. Shore, secretary of the forum and a former fellow at the Regional Plan Association of New York, said the zone should become a center for eco-tourism as an alternative to turning it into a weekend getaway for residents of Seoul.

"People are now willing to pay large sums to see wild animals in the proper setting," Mr. Shore said. "Eco-tourism would protect the DMZ from becoming the Hamptons of South Korea." [Bruce Sterling says: "Perhaps it's possible to transform the Hamptons into a DMZ."]

reg-free Link

Korean Slavery

Korean Slavery 05/04/2004 04:47 PM
Korean Slavery - Mark A. Peterson [pdf]

Korean Bloggers

Korean Bloggers 06/05/2005 11:34 PM
Thanks to Jin Ho, Heewon, Goo Dong-Eon, Xenix, Qho, Young Wook, and BK for a very interesting dinner discussion and explaining the Korean blogging scene to me.

Korea is reported by the OECD to have the highest high-speed Internet penetration of any nation. Korea has an extremely vibrant gaming, blogging, mobile phone and youth culture scene and I was eager to find out more about what was going on. I scribbled a bunch of notes over coffee during the day and over dinner. Please excuse any errors since I have not been able to fact check everything. If you could point them out and let me update them, I would appreciate it.

According to articles in the press, there are 5-6 million blogs. These are not to be confused with hompy. Hompy (a derivative of home page) are personal home pages with photo albums, guest books, avatars, background skins, and background music. There are approximately 10 million hompy pages. In a city with a population of 10 million and a country with a population of 45 million, that's quite impressive. Companies seem to be making money selling background music and items for hompy pages. Most of the posts are focused on photos and one line comments on pages of friends. They are generally closed communities and are focused more on real-time presence-like communication rather than diary or dialog.

Cyworld, which sounded like the leader for hompys has a feature they call "scratch scrap". This allows you to copy/paste content from other web pages easily to your hompy. On of the problems that I see with this is that this simple built-in feature does not provide a link back to the original source. It is rumored engineers who designed this left and joined Naver, one of the leading blog companies and created a similar feature for them. Generally speaking, it sounded like people don't link very much. They are still mostly plain html and not css + xhtml. There seemed to be some trackback implementation, but it is not yet as widely used as in the US or Japan. As far as I could tell, none of the blog systems used any of the standard APIs, and some had RSS feeds. Blogs and hompys don't seem to be pinging any pinger sites, which makes them nearly invisible to the outside world. In addition, many sites block search engine bots from crawling hompys and blogs.

It appears that one of the biggest problems is that there are several 800 pound gorilla type portals that remind me of AOL during it's powerful years. They try to create walled gardens of users. With millions of bloggers and hompy users in each community, they are focused more on integrating inside of their portals than open standards or linking across portals. There are some independent blog services and aggregators, but they still seem to be focused on community and somewhat inward facing networks. A not-so-visibile majority of blogs in Japan and the US are also this way, but the public facing citizen journalist or pundit-style blogs seem to be very sparse in Korea.

One of the reasons might be due to the success of OhmyNews. I visited OhmyNews as well, and they are truly an online newspaper powerhouse. You can read about them in detail in Dan Gillmor's We the Media, but they are a edited news website with droves of citizen journalists who submit articles. They have courses in writing for the citizen journalists, tip jars that people can pay them through, editors to help with the important stories, lots of influence and visibility and offline community activities. I can imagine that someone who had something political or pundit-like to say might easily choose to write for OhmyNews than to start a blog. This doesn't describe everything, but I'm sure that OhmyNews has attracted a fair number of the potential media blogger types.

I still have a lot to learn but the incredible difference in the blogging scene and the apparent happiness with what the people had considering the widespread adoption made me wonder if the Korean blogs would ever look like American or Japanese blogs. (Many aspects of the Japanese blogging scene seem to be following in the footsteps of the US blogging scene, albeit with some differences.)

Update:

4- jaz @ June 2, 2005 10:43 AM

hey joi. the function is called "scrap," not "scratch"
what it allows you to do is to display a particular post from someone's mini-hompy (cyworld) - if the permission setting of that post is set to "allow scrap" - not from just any website. there's a watermark-like feature that goes with it, which displays the original author's name and the link back to the origianl mini-hompy.

Sorry about the error. I was told however, that most bloggers and hompyiers didn't cite or link. Someone said that the big portals encouraged because it allowed all of the content to be searched inside the portal, rather than offsite. Does anyone have any more information on this?

Comment - TrackBack

Korean Archery

Korean Archery 08/22/2004 09:18 PM

South Korea's continuing dominance in archery is amazing but, like the effect of monopoly on economy, I think overdominance is starting to hurt international archery competitions.

IMHO, countries overdominating a field of sports should share it's knowhows and training programs with rest of the world, particularly with those countries that never had a chance to win an olympic medal.  For example, South Korean archery association should offer archery scholarships for amateur archers from third-world countries.  I am sure Korean companies like Samsung and LG will be glad to sponsor such scholarship programs.

Imagine the joy everyone will feel when those athletes win their countries' first olympic medal.  I also think such programs are far more rewarding than traditional international aids and foreign relation efforts.

SK Telecom: Korean for Wireless

SK Telecom: Korean for Wireless 06/15/2004 10:00 AM
Business Week Jun 15 2004 2:25PM GMT

Hacker cracks 6 Korean s

Hacker cracks 6 Korean s 06/21/2004 07:05 PM
Techzonez Jun 21 2004 11:23PM GMT

Korean Robots to Help War in Iraq

Korean Robots to Help War in Iraq 05/11/2004 05:14 AM
Hankooki May 11 2004 9:22AM GMT

"South Korean Beheaded"

"South Korean Beheaded" 06/24/2004 11:11 AM

Korean Wave (aka Hanlyu)

Korean Wave (aka Hanlyu) 04/17/2005 10:47 AM

Korea has started to emerge as a c ultural powerhouse in asia, in a trend called Ha nlyu ( Korean Wave) which threatens to overshadow even Hollywood and American pop culture.  Korean movies, music, and games are increasingly taking the top spots in popularity charts in china, japan, and south eastern asia countries and it's TV programs are starting to sweep TV primetime slots in those countries.  For example, Jewel in the Palace (google), a Korean drama about an apprentice in the royal kitchen who became the nation's first female royal physician, was watched by more than 40% of the TV audiences in Hong Kong last month.

As a Korean-American, all this is amazing because I still find most Korean movies and dramas not very interesting.  My guess is that Korean cultural goods are popular because they:

• are more familiar to eastern countries than western culture.
• are not burdened by animosity against Japan
• are of relatively high quality
• offer more bang for the buck

While greedy copycat producers are still busy churning out trash in Korea, overall quality seems to be improving at a fast pace still so I think the trend will continue for a while.

Microsoft Gives S. Korean Education
$8.7M

Microsoft Gives S. Korean Education
$8.7M 07/06/2004 11:27 AM
AP via ABCNEWS.com Jul 6 2004 3:39PM GMT

Symmetricom Supports Korean 3G

Symmetricom Supports Korean 3G 08/17/2004 11:06 AM
Unstrung.com Aug 17 2004 3:48PM GMT

Motorola's Korean Image

Motorola's Korean Image 12/10/2003 06:58 AM
Digital Chosunilbo Dec 10 2003 6:25AM ET

Korean USB Memory Startup

Korean USB Memory Startup 09/24/2004 07:22 AM

A Korean startup with a line of patented USB memory stick products is looking for US partners.  Their product is selling well in Korea but they don't know where the cluetrain stops are in the US so they need help.

I get a lot of requests like this but this is the first time I posted about it.  Why?  Because it's one of those father's friend's son type of thing.  Not as thick as blood but near enough to motivate me to move a few more extra muscles than usual.

Korean Bipedal Robot Kit

Korean Bipedal Robot Kit 07/09/2004 05:09 PM

North Korean nukes

North Korean nukes 04/13/2004 02:02 PM
North Korean Nuclear Devices. "Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani scientist who sold nuclear technology around the world, has told his interrogators that during a trip to North Korea five years ago he was taken to a secret underground nuclear plant and shown what he described as three nuclear devices."

Traditional Korean Music

Traditional Korean Music 04/07/2005 03:24 AM

I enjoy all kinds of music but I particularly enjoy traditional korean music.  If you are interested in listening to some, the best album to get started with is the OST album for the Korean movie Sopyonje.  It starts with a bamboo flute instrumental titled Thousand Year-Old Crane.  The instrument is called daekoom, my favorite instrument, which sounds similar to shakuhachi although I think it's deeper and coarser in a satisfying way that sooths the aching inside walls of your heart.  Then it moves on to several pansori songs which to me sounds like a fusion of rap and opera.  I just love pansori!  The only problem is that the CD might be difficult to find outside Korea.

Doubts over N Korean bombs

Doubts over N Korean bombs 01/22/2004 03:10 AM
A top US scientist who visited North Korea says he left "unconvinced" it could develop a nuclear bomb.

Korean General Elections

Korean General Elections 04/15/2004 09:09 PM

As expected, pro-government Uri Party got 152 seats out of 299, which gives them the majority.  Han-nara (Grand National) Party lost its majority position but still managed to eek out a respectable showing, thanks to the daughter of a former dictator who took control of the party just weeks before the election.  It's funny how conservatives prefer the nostalgic certainty of iron-clad rule by dictators over euphoric optimism of liberals.  Min-noh (Democratic Labor) Party emerged in the third place, making the ultra-liberal pro-labor party a political force to be reckoned with.

National Assembly seats after ballot counting[As of 1:00 a.m.]

Party	Before	Now
Uri Party	49	152
Grand National Party	137	121
Millennium Democratic Party	61	9
Democratic Labor Party	0	10
United Liberal Democrats	10	4
Others	14	3

Korean Google Blog

Korean Google Blog 10/03/2002 01:42 PM
Seok Wan Yang is tracking Google in Korean. I don't speak Korean, but it looks helpful....

eBay ups Korean stake

eBay ups Korean stake 09/01/2004 04:36 AM
In brief Mopping up the minorities

Gov't considering redenomination of
Korean won

Gov't considering redenomination of
Korean won 09/16/2004 11:32 AM
Maekyung Internet Sep 16 2004 3:15PM GMT

S Korean president makes apology

S Korean president makes apology 05/14/2004 11:59 PM
President Roh Moo-hyun apologises to the people after being cleared of impeachment charges and reinstated.

S. Korean Court Reinstates President Roh
(AP)

S. Korean Court Reinstates President Roh
(AP) 05/13/2004 09:28 PM
AP - South Korea's Constitutional Court reinstated impeached President Roh Moo-hyun in a historic ruling Friday, rejecting a parliamentary move to oust the embattled leader.

Korean Software Registration Tops
100,000

Korean Software Registration Tops
100,000 06/28/2004 04:50 AM
Hankooki Jun 28 2004 9:04AM GMT

The North Korean Uranium Challenge

The North Korean Uranium Challenge 05/23/2004 09:01 PM
North Korea may be engaging in exactly the kind of nuclear proliferation that President Bush says he went to war in Iraq to halt.

Korean Digital City plans

Korean Digital City plans 08/07/2004 08:58 PM

Here's another one of those governmment run digital city projects that were so popular back in the 90's. We worked on two projects like this - OhDaiba (in the Tokyo Bay) and Trieste.

Singapore is the model for all this. Malmo, Sweden, Berlin, the Nirvana project in Utah - these are the folks who will be Broadband Mechanics' customers in the coming years.

These folks will provide their version of DLAs to their citizens. Each country, city, culture and angle will create their own unique DLA experience - but they'll all share the same standards for micro-content, etc.

Oh yah - DLA stands for digital lifestyle aggregator.

Korean Scientist Accused of Plagiarism

Korean Scientist Accused of Plagiarism 01/04/2004 06:14 AM
Hankooki Jan 4 2004 4:35AM ET

OSDL Signs First Korean Member

OSDL Signs First Korean Member 03/22/2005 03:45 PM

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An Appeal by 365 Korean Organizations to the Iraqi Group Holding a Korean National

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