Koreabridge

Nothing's Really Real Podcast: (Ep 49) Cult Survivor Tweet

Nothing's Really Real is a podcast based out of Busan, South Korea.

Amy Rose writes: 

“I was raised in a cult. You might be imagining white robes, chanting, pentagrams, prayer circles, meditating, group singing, forced sterilization, or even dixie cups of kool-aid. You'd be right about most of it ...”

Amy joins me on the podcast to tell her fascinating story, and answer as many questions as I could throw at her.

Nothing's Really Real is available anywhere you might listen to podcasts, including iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, and Stitcher.

If you enjoy the show, please share it with a friend, leave a review on iTunes, and remember I love ya.

 

 Nothing's Really Real Podcast:  Soundcloud    Stitcher    iTunesKoreabridge.net/NothingsReallyReal
 @NothingsReally

Tweet

From: https://www.facebook.com/events/350562475561017/

The Gwangan International Community Fair returns for our Sixth Edition on February 10th, always at Gorilla Brewing in Gwangalli. Come meet local vendors and service providers, shop for unique handmade goods, taste foods you can hardly find elsewhere, and most importantly, support local charities. Once again, games and activities for children will be available too -- this is meant to be a fun event for the whole community, bringing together Korean and expat friends and families. Come celebrate the New Year, Valentine's Day, your birthday, anniversary, promotion, or just come have fun and help us help others!

 

Gwangan Busan International Community Fair @ Gorilla

Korean Politeness Levels (반말, 존댓말, 높임말) | Live Class Abridged Tweet

This is a shorter version of a much longer live stream explaining politeness levels. Although not everything taught in the live stream is present here (for time), it's still an overview of the bulk of what was gone over. Let me know if I missed anything!

The post Korean Politeness Levels (반말, 존댓말, 높임말) | Live Class Abridged appeared first on Learn Korean with GO! Billy Korean.

www.GoBillyKorean.com

 

FOLLOW ME HERE:   
SUBSCRIBE BY EMAIL:

 

Tweet

Nothing's Really Real is a podcast based out of Busan, South Korea.

Independent hip-hop heavyweights, The Epic Beard Men, Sage Francis and B. Dolan, made time in Busan to be on the pod just before they wrapped the 40+ stop tour promoting their new duo and EP. We talk about the highs and lows of their tour and the loss of their dear friend and musical partner Brendan “Alias” Whitney. We also talk about back hair, physical and mental health, Justin Timberlake, being star struck, conspiracy theories, the recent shootings in America and a lot more. It’s a great conversation.

 

 

Nothing's Really Real is available anywhere you might listen to podcasts, including iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, and Stitcher.

If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend about it, leave a review on iTunes, and remember I love ya.

Tweet Canada Ball Hockey Korea (CBHK) - 2019 Spring Season

BALL HOCKEY MANIACS, LEND ME YOUR EARS...

Canada Ball Hockey Korea (CBHK) is once again recruiting a few good men and women for our 22nd season of play, which will begin this March. Old and new players alike are welcome to start registering at www.cbhk.co now. The league is limited to the first 120 people (if less than 120 people register then the cut-off will be 96) to have registered and paid. If you register and complete your payment after the league fills up you will be put on a waiting list. Don't let this happen to you!

WHEN:

2019 Spring Schedule

All games are to be played on Sundays, except for those with an * next to the date.

February 24th – Pre-season Rookie/Captain Tournament/Camp. (1st Mandatory Rookie Day).

* March 2nd - Rookie Pick-up/Camp (2nd and Final Rookie Day) followed by the League Draft.

March 3rd - Week 1

March 10th – Week 2

March 17th – Week 3

March 24th - Week 4

March 31st  – Week 5

April 7th – Week 6

April 14th -  No Games Scheduled (Make-up Day)

April 21st – Week 7

April 28th – Week 8

May 5th -  No Games Scheduled (Children’s Day Holiday)

May 12th – Week 9

May 19th  – Week 10

May 26th - Week 11

* June 1st – Playoff Preliminaries. if there are 10 teams.

June 2nd – Quarter-finals.

June 9th - Semi-finals.

* June 15th – Finals, followed by the league banquet and awards ceremony.

 

LOCATION OF THE RINK: Sports Complex, Seoul. (Central and very convenient to get too.).

DIRECTIONS TO THE RINK: A map with full directions to the rink are provided on the main page of our website.

LOCATION OF HOCKEY/OTHER SUPPLIES SHOPS: They can be found on our website under the Forum section.

CLOTHING NEEDED: Team Shirt (provided) and then whatever other exercise gear you feel comfortable in and running shoes. Nothing more. We RUN.

GEAR NEEDED: You will need at least a hockey stick. Other gear is up to you. There are league sticks that you can use if you are coming out for the first time.

TEAMS, SPONSORS AND CAPTAINS: Names of teams, sponsors and captains vary from season to season. Please refer to our website.


REGISTRATION FACTS: (What You Get)

1. Eligibility for the Spring, 2019 Entry Draft which will take place on March 2nd, 2019 at one of our sponsors bars. Each player will be drafted on to one of 10 teams and be provided beer at the draft party.

2. Team Shirt and a Mouth Guard.

3. Four months (up to 14 weeks of ball hockey INSANITY from March to June).

4. Weekly stats of all players (Goals, Assists, Points) and goalies (GAA, Wins, SO) displayed on our website.

5. Use of a communal stick when you first come out, full goalie equipment (if you are a goalie) and world class rink facilities (boards/ official size nets/faceoff circles located on the site of the 1988 Olympic Games).

6. Discounted prices and specials from our league sponsors. Please refer to the website for updates on this year's sponsors.

7. Bragging rights, if you outperform your mates.

8. A forum to build solid relationships, friendships and networking via league members and our website.

9. Being part of one of the largest expat groups in all of Korea.

10. Being part of the largest Ball Hockey Organization in all of Asia and a member of the International Street & Ball Hockey Federation (ISBHF).

11. The chance to win the CBHK CUP!!!

12. A night out with your fellow rookies, a pub crawl and team events will take place at various times throughout the season.

13. The League Banquet (Award Ceremony, Buffet, Beer and Hard Liquor) will be held on Saturday, June 15th following the Championship Games.

14. 140,000W (160,000 won if you are paying after February 15th, 2019 worth of dead weight removed from your wallet and invested into something that will DRASTICALLY improve your quality of life in Korea, socially, emotionally and physically.


Register at the league's website - www.cbhk.co ASAP to reserve your spot for this season. All league payments must be received by February 28th, 2019 (NO EXCEPTIONS). Payments can be made to:

Name: Cory Robert Pettit

Shinhan Bank (신한은행 )

Account #: 110-361-331157

PETTIT CORY ROBERT

After transferring your fee, please let him know so he can confirm receiving your payment. He can be reached at 010 6687 8144, via kakao: coryp or by email at crpcrp2@yahoo.com. Please provide your full name and payment details.

For further information please refer to our website, facebook page or email us at cbhk.info@gmail.com .

Once that's done your world just got a whole lot better.

Don't miss out on this opportunity and be ready to play some ball hockey this fall. We guarantee that it will be one of the best things you will ever do during your stay in Korea.

Check out the publicity we have received locally and internationally, which includes player testimonials regarding the league and for additional information about us as well. This is who we are.


ARTICLES:

1. Hockey For Expats Goes Beyond The Ice
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=044&aid=0000078160&

2. Big Rock Teams
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=044&aid=0000078159&

3. Sticks Clash In Seoul Season Finale
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=044&aid=0000079202&

4. Hockey Holds Preseason Draft
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=044&aid=0000080436&

5. Ball Hockey Season Set to Commence
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2010/05/177_50693.html

6. Hockey Season Starts Sunday
http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=044&aid=0000084966

7. New Ball Hockey Season Starts
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2010/02/177_39273.html

8. Hockey League Oasis in Korea Is Platform for All
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/special/2009/12/177_57307.html

9. Hockey League Hits Its Stride
http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100226000062
 

10. Where Canadians Go, So To Does Hockey
http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100607001779

11. Still Got Game - Age Doesn't Stop Player From Giving His All In Hockey by league member Jon Rabiroff

http://www.stripes.com/lifestyle/still-got-game-1.102455

12. Canada Ball Hockey League Set To Start Fall Season
http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20100817000568

13. Ball hockey Cup Brings Korean, Hong Kong Expatriates Together
http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20101012000602

14. Canada hockey league gets ball rolling for spring season
http://www.koreaherald.com/lifestyle/Detail.jsp?newsMLId=20120207000795

15. Canadian Stories - Embassy of Canada Newsletter
http://www.myzenic.com/html/canada/201001/newsletter_eng.html

16. Hockey Community Grows in Seoul
http://nwww.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20130108000658

17. Ball Hockey In Korea Gears Up For Season 10
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/01/177_128505.html

18. A Brief History of Canada Ball Hockey Korea (CBHK)

http://www.isbhf.com/de/news-w1/news-w67/ball-hockey-korea--w541/

19. Hockey Day Spreads Love of Sport to Kids

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20161110001032

20. Korean Team Wins Asia Ball Hockey Tourney

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20161122000891

We have also been featured in the following printed and online publications:

1. Eloquence Magazine
2. Groove Magazine (in print and online at www.groovekorea.com ( ball hockey links can be found at 
(http://groovekorea.com/?s=cbhk)

3. 10 Magazine: www.10mag.com
4. Seoulist: seoulistmag.com

5. KBS Radio

6. TBS Radio

7. FM Radio

 

VIDEOS and PHOTOS: (Numerous clips/videos and photos of league members and league games can be found online)

1. www.youtube.com Type " CBHK " into the search box. You will find clips of league games, promotions and events by a number of current and past league members as well as interviews by Rajnesh Sharma.

2.Facebook – CBHK – Canada Ball Hockey Korea (photos and videos).

WEBSITE:
1.www.cbhk.co

AWESOME AWESOME POWER!!!!
GAME ON!!!!

The South Korean Right in the Wilderness, part 1: Modernizing the Libe Tweet

This is a re-post of an essay I wrote for the Korean Dong-A Daily newspaper.

So exactly no one in the English-speaking cares much about this topic. Everyone wants to talk about Trump and Kim and North Korean nuclear weapons. I get it.

But I do think it is fascinating thinking about how the South Korean right will come back from the wilderness where it now is. Its last president was so corrupt, she was impeached. The conservative party – the Liberty Korea Party – then got trounced in the presidential election of 2017 and then again the local elections of 2018.

Unfortunately, it is still dominated by dead-enders for the last president, conspiracy theorists, and mccarthyites. So here is my advice for bringing the LKP back from the dead. South Korea, like any other country, needs a robust opposition party, so the LKP’s implosion is not actually a good thing even if you dislike its policies.

The full essay follows the jump…

 

The main conservative party in South Korea – the Liberty Korea Party – is in disarray. President Park Geun-Hye, a former member of the LKP’s predecessor party, the New Frontier Party, is now in prison for an enormous corruption scandal. She is the only South Korean president to be successfully impeached and removed.

Further blows fell in q uick succession. The LKP candidate for president in 2017, Hong Jun-Pyo, received only 24%, beaten badly by current president Moon Jae-In with 41% of the vote. In the local elections of summer 2018, the LKP was beaten badly again. Even previous conservative strongholds feel to the left. No less than the mayoralty of Busan is now held by the Democratic Party.

These poor electoral fortunes are not surprising. Park’s fall from grace tainted her whole party. One expects a ‘wave election’ – an election where the opposition enjoys a ‘wave’ of support – in the wake of such a massive scandal. When US President Richard Nixon was nearly impeached and then forced from office in 1974, his Republican party also suffered a wave election in favor of the opposition Democrats.

So the LKP’s bitter fate of the last two years is not unexpected, but no less painful. The LKP is now in what American analysis of political parties calls ‘the wilderness.’ The party is almost completely out of power. It is unpopular. Its ideology, mostly focused on anti-communism and a general promotion of Korean business through the chaebol, is out of fashion as new issues such as détente with North Korea, yellow dust, migration, or Hell Chosun have arisen.

The party is tired, and its ideas stale. I see this everyday teaching undergraduate students at a major Korean university. The LKP needs a substantial re-think to make itself relevant to contemporary issues and start winning elections again. Two famous exemplars of such re-modelling are Britain’s Tony Blair and America’s Bill Clinton. Both took charge of left-wing parties too liberal to get elected. Both re-fashioned them, successfully, to be newly competitive in changed circumstances.

What might the LKP do to modernize itself and start winning again? How might it re-connect with voters after the embarrassment of Park Geun-Hye? How can it push back against the likeable Moon, who is a vast improvement in seriousness, affability, and clean politics over his corrupted, aristocratic predecessor?

First, the LKP needs to recognize that Park Geun-Hye is, in fact, guilty and does, in fact, deserve to be in prison. This is a far greater problem among LKP voters than one would imagine given the Park was impeached by a huge majority of the National Assembly and the full consensus of the Constitutional Court. The ‘Parksamo’ nevertheless hang on, protesting at events in Seoul and spreading conspiracy theories that her removal was some kind of North Korean plot. I have received hundreds of emails from South Korean conservatives asking me to promote this idea in my writing, and I have been genuinely disturbed by how many otherwise serious Korean conservative acquaintances have trafficked in such conspiracies. The party will never move on until accepts what a large majority of the South Korean population and South Korea’s institutions have long since realized – that Park was grossly corrupted and rightfully removed by due process.

Second, the LKP needs new policy ideas which speak to current issues better. For too long South Korean conservatives have coasted on a lazy, conspiratorial anti-communism and vague promotionalism of ‘Korea, Inc.’ Anti-communism will necessarily remain; conservative voters are – correctly in my mind – anti-North Korean, pro-unification, and anxious about Moon’s détente efforts. However the McCarthyism and red-baiting which have traditionally defined the South Korean right needs to go. A vote the Democratic party is not a vote for North Korea; South Korean leftists are not communist fellow-travelers; and Moon is not being manipulated by Pyongyang.

Besides a more mature anti-communism, the South Korean right must somehow speak to new issues. Its blunt promotion of growth understood as the success of the chaebol and a trade surplus is old-fashioned and out of step with a wealthier, modern South Korea where lifestyle issues are now major concerns. South Korea needs better growth, not just more. South Korea needs cleaner energy to clean the air and water, rather than simply blaming, incorrectly, China for its yellow dust problem. South Korea needs safer driving and cleaner streets. The ‘Hell Chosun’ problem drives Korean youth overseas. Corruption is far too high for a G-20 economy with aspirations to a serious middle power role. And household debt is astronomically high, given the highly speculative nature of the real-estate market here. A crashing birth-rate means Korea’s population will start contracting by 2020. Migration, which is likely the only way to turn this problem around, is barely discussed.

Clever, fresh proposals regarding these issues would be good for the South Korean public and good for the LKP. The Democratic Party has generally flubbed these concerns too – South Korea’s air is still terrible – and Ahn Chul Soo’s People’s Party, which briefly seemed interested in these middle-class lifestyle issues, has imploded. There is substantial political space here for an LKP revival.

Third, younger and female candidates would help the LKP. Far too many LKP candidates are aged men. Hong briefly tried to market himself in the campaign as the ‘Donald Trump of Korea.’ That would be a disaster for a respectable conservatism in Korea. If the LKP comes back ‘Trumpized’ from its wilderness period, that will alienate the young and women.

There is some good news. Hong did better than everyone thought in 2017. At the beginning of that presidential election, the LKP polled in the single digits. Everyone thought the race was between Ahn and Moon. Hong turned around what might have been epochal defeat. Instead, he climbed into second place. Ahn did not manage to turn the People’s party into the second party of Korea and the leader of the opposition. Ahn has once again drifted out of Korean politics, leaving the LKP as the primary opposition party. And Moon’s approval rating is dropping.

Korea, like all democracies, needs healthy opposition parties to hold the government party accountable. Let’s just hope that the LKP rebuilds itself as the modernized conservative party South Korea needs, rather than a Trumpist clone trafficking in reactionary politics.

Robert E Kelly
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science & Diplomacy
Pusan National University

@Robert_E_Kelly

 

About Me

About this Blog

C.V.

Publications

Terms and Abbreviations

What I am Reading Now

Subscribe 

 

 

Nohting's Really Real Podcast: (Ep 50) The Konner Blunt Report Tweet

Nothing's Really Real is a podcast based out of Busan, South Korea, where we talk about art, music, comedy ... and anything else.

Episode 50. My guest is Konner Blunt. He is the host of his own podcast based out of Daegu, The Blunt Report.

Surprisingly, we hardly spend any time talking about podcasting, and end up having a really positive and flowing conversation about death, debating people online, our significance in the universe, and worry ... among other things.

Konner was very thoughtful when he decided what story to tell for his memory if regret and I have a feeling he’s gonna bring a few of you to tears.

The podcast is available most anywhere you might listen to podcasts, including iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play or Stitcher.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes, tell a friend about it, and remember I love ya.

 Nothing's Really Real Podcast:  Soundcloud    Stitcher    iTunes @NothingsReally

Tweet

ReLEx Smile: The Future of Laser Eye Surgery

In 2019 we’re not yet in the business of space exploration or active stem cell therapy, however, we are at the forefront of the exciting and incredibly advanced changes in the field of vision correction.

The newest revolutionary technique providing patients a new eyesight in a fast and effective manner, is called the ReLEx SMILE surgery. With the minimally invasive treatment, it is now possible to perform an eye surgery through a keyhole operation, without the need of separating a corneal flap from the eye, as it used to be in LASIK.

Whereas in earlier days a whole door needed to be opened, nowadays, the operation can be performed through the keyhole. This means that the ReLEx technique is a completely new method in the world of eye laser surgery. The execution of this very complex procedure obviously requires specialist skills that you can get at BGN Eye Hospital, that has been performing SMILE procedure for over 7 years and has experience of over 350,0000 refractive surgeries.

As during surgery only a small incision of 2 mm is done on the cornea, recovery process of the ReLEx method is remarkably smoother than for the other techniques. Immediately after the intervention the eye starts healing. For most patients, the eye recovers so fast that in the evening they are capable already of reading the subtitles on TV. Within 24 hours patients can get back to normal activities, working or studying. As well as patients can back to all kinds of activities including swimming, sport, sauna and ball games as soon as after 1 week.

ReLEx SMILE is also a great solution for patients with a thinner cornea, because this technique doesn’t require the creation of a corneal flap as it is the case with LASIK. Therefore, the treatment is less dependent on the thickness of the cornea.

The reason why only limited deviations can be corrected with the traditional laser eye surgeries is that the higher the deviation, the more tissue needs to be removed from the cornea. For some patients, the cornea is not thick enough to remove the necessary tissue after the creation of the corneal flap. As the ReLEx SMILE treatment is performed through an extremely precise miniscule hole at the side of the eye, the front side of the cornea remains intact, allowing for the treatment of larger deviations. Therefore, the method can be applied on a larger number of patients.

Eye Dryness was also one of the main issues for patients who did LASIK or LASEK surgeries. SMILE, as a minimally invasive surgery shows much less dryness after surgery compared to conventional refractive surgery techniques.

During ReLEx method, the state-of-the-art Carl Zeiss VisuMax laser is used. This is the only femtosecond laser that limits the pressure on the eyes (this is why you don’t feel anything during the treatment) and which is more precise than any other laser.

The revolutionary approach and technology used in SMILE greatly improves safety, speed, and effectiveness of the procedure, and as result makes for a patient experience that is extremely hard to beat — now, or in the future.

If you would like to learn more about ReLEX SMILE surgery, or book a free vision correction consultation to check if you are a candidate for a refractive surgery, contact BGN Eye Hospital at:

tel. 010-7670-3995

kakao: eye1004bgnbusan

email: maria@bgnhospital.com

https://www.facebook.com/eyehospitalinkorea/

https://www.facebook.com/lasikinbusan/

Currently BGN Eye Hospital offers 2019 promotional prices for all types of Laser Vision Correction Surgeries, including ReLEx SMILE, LASIK and LASEK starting from 990,000 KRW

Flickr’s ReBirth Tweet

Flickr for me was my starting point as a photographer. It was way way back in 2006 when I first started uploading my photos and I really haven’t stopped. Flickr has served me as a backup and as a portfolio for many years. Flickr was always a place for photography and photos… good or bad.

I watched flickr go through some low times and slowly slide into obscurity. Sites like 500px and instagram came in and pushed Flickr further away to the point were few were using it and the groups were dead. Yet, flickr somehow stuck around. It got handed off to different people who promised to make it better or at least “what it was” and then nothing happened.

Now, we see that Smugmug has picked up the torch and is planning to do something with Flickr. What that is, I am not sure at this stage in the game. However, those with a free account are seeing the first of many changes. This being the recent limitation of the free accounts to 1000 photos.

While this may have made a number of people angry, the fact of the matter is that for Flickr to work, it has to be profitable. Before you you start talking about greed and whatnot, you have to be realistic. Flickr was dying a slow death. Smugmug wants to improve the platform but that takes money. Money is something that Flickr is losing on a daily basis. Hence why there is a shift towards paid accounts.

Why Flickr? Why Now?

Flickr is like a homebase for me. It is ad free (for pro subscribers) and doesn’t have that “like/unlike” thing that instagram has. It was for photography and full of photographers, at least it was 5 to 10 years ago. For me it just has a familiar feel and I appreciate that.

My most recent addition to the explore page.

I think that people are now getting disillusioned with sites like instagram and they are looking for a place that is more about the photos than the places or products in them. I feel that photographers are also looking for a place to chat about lenses and share their photos with said lens.

The groups in Flickr were great. There was a group for just about everything! From your favourite lens to city-based photo clubs. These were not just hashtags but actual groups where people went to discuss everything related to that topic and plan meetups.

This terrible image is my most viewed image on flickr. It has 23,954 views thanks to an inclusion on one of those strange places lists.

This is something that is missing from instagram and even 500px. There is not a sense of community. Facebook groups have come a long way and for most part have replaced the need for groups but if you look at how Flickr organizes the topics you can see there are differences. Again, Flickr is geared more towards photography than social networking in my opinion. Which possibly is a reason why people abandoned it for facebook and instagram if you think about it.

The other thing to point out is that Flickr has been around and many sites still accept imports, uploads, and embeds from Flickr. A huge plus is also the fact that you can export directly from Lightroom simply and easily. The export dialogue has a number of specific settings that you can customize like the watermark that you now see in my images on Flickr. Somehow Flickr retained some usefulness especially since you can’t export to Facebook from lightroom anymore.

Lessons from 500px

Smugmug needs to look at sites like 500px and see what worked and what went wrong. A number of years ago, 500px was THE photography site to be on. It had all of the trappings that photographers craved. It also seemed to be a huge improvement over the then dying Flickr, or so we thought.

There are many photographers who gained their following from 500px but many more complained about the system used to get to the top. From their acquisition by VCG to shutting down their online marketplace last July, it has left a lot of photographers wondering about the future of 500px.

In many regards, 500px has fallen from grace and it would be important if not critical for Smugmug to figure out why. For many years, 500px reigned supreme with portfolios, websites, and a market places that help photographers make money. Now, I can find little value in even maintaining my profile.

The Future of Flickr

What I would like to see is more life being brought back to the platform. As Nicolesy points out in her article, many of the groups are long since dead. I am not just talking inactive but dead as in the last discussion ended 5 years ago… So yeah, more energy and people are needed.

I would also like to see a more community-based approach to the renewal. If they started working with photographers around the world and figuring out what they wanted or what would work for them would be a start. While I like seeing input from celebrity photographers like Trey Ratcliff, I feel the success of the platform depends on the regular photographer’s input and enthusiasm. Fan appeal is one thing but when people feel apart of and appreciated by a site that they use could be a game changer.

My second most popular image. With over 20,000 views thanks to explore. What this means in reality? Not much.

The other thing that I hope they stay away from is trying to emulate instagram. It’s been done and done to death. I would love to see the Smugmug team sit down and restore what is currently broken and drive towards building Flickr into something beyond what it was and beyond another ad-filled social network full of boomerang vids of people drinking starbucks coffees.

With regards for the app, I think that they can ditch camera unless they do something REALLY special with it or partner with an app like camera+ to make it stand out. Otherwise just focus on streamlining the user experience.

Personally, I hope that this fresh perspective can breathe new life into Flickr. I never really had a problem with the platform or the app. Fact is, the only thing that I really didn’t care for was explore. That was simply because the algorithm seemed to favour either coffee, cats, or lego.

So if your photo managed to get picked up by explore it was not really a mark of excellence because the 5 photos next to yours were snapshots of a latte with a lego figure on the edge.

The bottomline here is that the future of Flickr rests on the proverbial knife-edge. The changes that Smugmug makes could change the industry or go the way Google+ did. If you remember, Google+ was all the rage in the photography circles and poof! people left it to die.

I am hopeful for a future for Flickr. If handled correctly with the right vision then we could see this being a new era for the site. If they screw it up, then just let it die this time as I don’t think anyone can help if smugmug can’t.

The post Flickr’s ReBirth appeared first on The Sajin.

• Jason Teale Photography Home
• Flickr

 

Tweet

The Electronic Village Online 2019

 

For five weeks in January and February, TESOL experts and participants from around the world engage in collaborative online discussions or hands-on virtual workshops of professional and scholarly benefit. These sessions bring together participants for a longer period of time than is permitted by land-based professional development conventions and allow a fuller development of ideas than is otherwise possible.

 

Sessions are free and open to anyone around the globe. It is not necessary to be a TESOL or IATEFL member nor to attend the TESOL

Convention in order to participate. All you need is access to the Internet.

 

We invite you to choose a session from this year's offerings listed below. Please inform your colleagues about this unparalleled professional development opportunity!

 

1. The EVO 2019 Coordination Team
2. EVO Communities
3. REGISTRATION IS FROM JANUARY 7 TO JANUARY 13, 2019
4. Sessions 2019
   1. Basic_Linguistics_for_English_language_teachers
   2. CEFR Vs. Assessment:  How can new revisions help?
   3. Classroom-based Research for Professional Development
   4. Escape the Room
   5. Flipped Learning for Language Teaching
   6. Getting_Online as a teacherpreneur
   7. ICT4ELT2019
   8. Job oriented Training for ESP Teachers and sharing their findings globally and locally
   9. EVO Minecraft MOOC (EVOMC19)
   10. Moodle 4 Teachers (Teaching Online)
   11. Mother tongue use in the ESL classroom
   12. PBL all-round learning experience for ESL
   13. QR Codes in Action
   14. Teaching EFL to Young Learners
   15. Techno CLIL 2019
   16. Teaching Pronunciation Differently

 

 

 

The EVO 2019 Coordination Team

  

 

EVO Communities

 

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/electronicvillageonline/

• Google community: https://plus.google.com/communities/111480622949886401755?sqinv=YlRLQXQ1b2NONHRsdW1yVE5tZU1zM2hxbFkyaURn

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/electronicVO

• Mailing list: https://tinyletter.com/electronicvillageonline

• Moderators PD: http://evo-training.pbworks.com/w/page/127652966/FrontPageEVO19PD 

 

The Electronic Village Online Hashtag is:  #evosessions   

Click on the title of a session below to view the complete session description. You will find instructions on how to join the session on that page.

 

REGISTRATION IS FROM JANUARY 7 TO JANUARY 13, 2019

 

• The sessions begin on January 13th but are held asynchronously; that is, you can log in, begin reading, and join the email discussion of the materials. However, most sessions have some synchronous activities where you gather for a live meeting on your topic of study.  See your session's syllabus of weekly activities for details.
• EVO19 Kickoff!  January 12, 2019 at 2 UTC (9:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Please check your timezone here: https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=EVO19+Kickoff&iso=20190112T09&p1=250&ah=1&am=30 and join our meeting https://zoom.us/j/417142783 

 

Sessions 2019

 

----> Due to the time involved, we very strongly recommend that you sign up for no more than two sessions.

 

 

Click on the title of the session to find out more and left how to join. 

 

Click on the title of the session (left) to find out 

more and lean how to join.

Session

Moderators

Basic_Linguistics_for_
English_language_teachers

 

These sessions are intended to encourage English language teachers to reflect upon their knowledge of linguistics and how it affects their classrooms. Over five weeks, moderators will present a bird’s eye view of aspects of linguistics (word formation, pronunciation, vocabulary, language and culture, etc.) while interacting with the participants and helping them generate practice through discussions and reflection in order to adapt resources to their teaching contexts.

 

 

Carmen Medina

Lana Hiasat

Roslyn Billy

 

CEFR Vs. Assessment: 
How can new revisions help?

CEFR has settled rules for determining students' language levels. Yet what is the relation between it and assessment? What are the new clarifications/descriptors added through the recently published CEFR revisions? Can these really promote teachers' assessment of their students' classwork and their lesson plans as well? Is there a place for technology also? Let's look it up!!

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

Aya EL Wakil 

Maha Hassan 

Classroom-based Research
for Professional Development

 

This EVO Project provides a hands-on introduction to inquiry-based teacher development, especially (though not exclusively) for teachers working in difficult circumstances (large classes, low-resource classrooms, etc.). The project takes participants through different stages of teacher-research, engaging them in practical activities which will gradually build their confidence in this area.

 

Hashtag: #tresearch

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

Dikilitas,Kenan

Saglam, Asli Lidice Gokturk  

Chapagain, Babita Sharma

Eraldemir Tuyan, Seden

Evans, Michelle

Ghazal, Sadeqa

Mazzei, Ruben

Serra, Mariana

Loreto Aliaga

Casalini, Lidia

Escape the Room

 

An escape room is an adventure game set within a confined space in which players solve puzzles to unlock the door. Originally a videogame, you can now find non-virtual versions in cities all over the world. Players are given a set time limit during which they unveil a story and attempt to get out of the room. In order to do so, the players have to solve a variety of puzzles, riddles and other challenges in order to find keys and combinations to open locks. Escape rooms have started to be introduced to education as they can be easily adapted to a variety of subjects and provide plenty of opportunities for learning. They can be exciting, intense and a lot of fun. Teamwork and communication is key, which means they are ideal for language learning and teaching too. During this EVO session we would like to explore different aspects of escape rooms and other puzzles, looking how you can use them for language learning and teaching. Participants are invited to join in to get tips and tricks on how to turn their classrooms into escape rooms.

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS  

Graham Stanley

Heike Philp

Dr. Randall Sadler

 

 

Flipped Learning for Language Teaching

 

This five-week online workshop is designed for both those new to flipped learning and those who are already flipping their classes. The goal of flipped learning is to reach every student every day in a meaningful way. In flipped learning, the group learning space is revitalized and turned into a fertile environment for students to engage actively and creatively with learning. Thus, participants in the session will gain further insight into the concepts and processes of flipped learning in order to transform their pedagogical practice and will also learn about tools to enhance direct instruction and individual learning. Of course, whenever possible, the workshop employs a flipped approach!

 

Sponsors: 

TESOL CALL-IS

Screencast-o-matic

John Graney

Jeff Magoto

Katja Auffret

Martha Ramírez 

Carolina R. Buitrago

Juliana Díaz

Diana Salazar

Gabriela Garibotto

Birgit Jensen

Getting_Online as a teacherpreneur

 

If you want to be an independent online teacher and set up your own website or platform, this session is where you need to be. This session is about  technical knowledge for novice to intermediate level users. Starting with understanding the working of internet, programming requirements for getting online,  to challenges related to cyber security while being online. We shall also get an insight into the aspects of cyber bullying among students.

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

Harshita Kapoor

Nellie Deutsch

 
 ICT4ELT2019

 

Designed by a seasoned team of  long standing EVO moderators and participants, ICT4ELT (Information and Communication Technology for English Language Teachers) is a session for teachers who want to explore how computers and computer technology could be useful in their teaching but do not know where to start.

If you want to liven up your classroom with technology, come and join us!

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

Ayat Tawel 

Jose Antonio Da Silva

Marijana Smolcec

Sneza Filipovic

Efrossini Zoniou

Sanja Bozinovic

Angiolini Tiziana

Svetlana Obenausova

 

Job oriented Training for ESP Teachers and sharing their findings globally and locally

 

 

The central mission of any University and college is to achieve excellence in the undergraduate and graduate education, they provide superior and comprehensive educational opportunities at various levels to students and professionals, they contribute to the advancement of society and nation through creative activity, scholarly development of new knowledge, research, and public service.

 

Universities and Colleges prefer to hiring their faculty with an additional value and that is ESP Knowledge It must be due to students' majors and related digital skills for delivering classes  But the higher education organizations have a great shortage of those specialists The only way is to educate and train potential ESP Teachers in online pieces of training

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

Ozimova Halima

Tohir Sultanov

Mavjuda Shakhakimova 

Gulnoza Egamova

Yokut Sharipova

Odil Quvvatov

Kalanov Ulugbek

Tohtasinov  Dilshod

Sherzod Gulomov

Siroj 

Zumratkhon Shukurova

Guzal Zahidova 

Mansurkhonov Kamoliddin

Galina Suleymanova

EVO Minecraft MOOC (EVOMC19)

 

 

 

This session will invite interested teachers to join us in playing Minecraft, learning all we can about playing alone and together, and how Minecraft is being used effectively in language learning. We'll learn by doing and from one another. We'll continue where we left off last year, 

Google+ Community

 

Join us if you are  

• A teacher with a gaming problem - A teacher who wants to learn how to gamify your students' learning environment but aren't quite sure how it works
• A gamer with a teaching problem - Already a gamer with some ideas about how you would like to leverage your skill and your proclivities in your classroom? You've come to the right place.
• A teacher of gamers with a learning problem - Do you think your students would like to play a game like Minecraft but aren't sure how to make it fit your curriculum? Fortunately, your curriculum is somewhere in Minecraft already. Join us and we'll help you figure out how and where? 

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

Maha Abdelmoneim

Rose Bard

Don Carroll

Jane Chien

David Dodgson

Kim Harrison 

Jeff Kuhn

Beth O'Connell

Mircea Patrascu

Heike Philp

Dakota Redstone

Aaron Schwartz

Filip Smolčec

Mariana Smolčec

Vance Stevens

Bobbi Stevens

 

#evomc19

 

 

Moodle 4 Teachers 
(Teaching Online)

 

 

Do you want to use technology in your face-to-faces or fully online classes, but don't want your students to go all over the place? Do you want to have an online course with links to websites, discussions, activities, Youtube videos, and grades in one place? Do you want to award your students digital badges and certificates, then this session is for you.  M4TEVO19 session will take place on the latest Moodle 3.5 website with Zoom and WizIQ for the live online classes. 

 

Participants will learn how to add content, develop activities, and engage learners. They will work collaboratively to design and develop their own Moodle course. Participants will learn to communicate online, create video tutorials using screencast-o-matic and learn by teaching.

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS

Nellie Deutsch

 

 

#m4tevo19

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mother tongue use in the ESL classroom

This session promotes judicious use of the mother tongue in EFL classrooms as a way to strengthen the link between theory and practice. Participants reflect on their own teaching and implement optimal mother tongue strategies in an attempt to create a learning environment that values all languages and cultures and which builds upon existing language knowledge.

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

 

Georgios Neokleous

Anna Krulatz  

 

 

  

PBL all-round learning experience for ESL

 

PBL (Project Based Learning) engages students in a learning process that promotes not only the knowledge of the language but also allows students to develop competencies that they will later need in life. It ensures that the students will be able to do something with the language rather than just to know about the language. This methodology provides a real, challenging and engaging environment for students that learn a second language. Students are encouraged to overcome a challenge that can only be achieved if they master the skills the teacher targets when developing the project. 

Over the five weeks, participants will plan a project that can be carried into their classrooms

PBL – ESL – student`s motivation –
authentic learning experiences

 

Sponsors: 

Saint Paul's School. Profesorado de Inglés

Escuela Normal Superior Arturo Capdevilla   

Maria Laura Mas

Paula Penelas

Fernanda Pascuet 

 

QR Codes in Action

 

QR Codes are everywhere and they are all in “action” but have you thought about using them with your students?As teachers we need to start to think outside the box and start using them in our classes in new and creative ways. Therefore, we will be looking at different methods to create and use them in class in a fun way. This session hopefully will inspire everyone about these magical codes and add another string to your professional bow. So join us to combine ease, speed and creativity to enrich your lessons.

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS

 

 

 

Sibel Taskin Simsek

Nezaket Köymen Özgirin

Nellie Deutsch

 

 

 

 

 

#QRCODESINACTION

Teaching EFL to Young Learners

 

Develop lessons and activities for young learners and teens This session is full of practical ideas on how to Teach English to Young Learners and Teens(TEFL2YL) from around the world using storytelling, drama, board games, action songs, and art with limited resource classroom activities. 

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

 

Nellie Deutsch

Judy Wong

Charles Goodger 

Julie Pratten Kacmaz

Sheryl McCoy

Nives Torresi

 

#TEFL2YL

Techno CLIL 2019

 

 

CLIL – Content and Language Integrated Learning - is a "dual focus" methodology, fostering the development of language competences and the delivery of subject content at the same time. It refers to the learning of a curricular subject in a foreign language, with great advantages in terms of students' learning outcomes and cognitive processes. CLIL is spreading more and more, as an integrated part of school curricula in many countries. In order to implement this innovative approach, the role of teacher training is essential. This EVO session is aimed at spreading CLIL methodology, combining teaching strategies and technical tools and eliciting reflections and discussions among teachers from all over the world. It is important to share good practices from the different countries and learn from other colleagues through synchronous and asynchronous web meetings. Webinars with national and international CLIL experts will be a highlight of this session.

 

 A Moodle platform will be used for this session. 

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS

 

Daniela Cuccurullo

Letizia Cinganotto 

 

Teaching Pronunciation Differently

 

All teachers have tried to teach pronunciation using 'listen and repeat', and most of us have found the results unsatisfactory.

But there is a different way, which works very well.

The 'Articulatory Approach' teaches students what to do with their mouths to sound right.

Join us to explore how to teach pronunciation this way. 

 

Sponsor: TESOL CALL-IS 

Roslyn Young

Piers Messum

Carrie Terry

Arizio Sweeting 

 

#tpd19

 

 

The Rise of Korean Dramas Tweet

Often when the general public discusses Korean popular culture, and the Hallyu Wave that rose from it, they are usually talking about K-pop front, right, and center. But did you know that, long before K-pop was popular among listeners and fans outside of Korea, it was Korean dramas that were breaking bank abroad? Among these Korean dramas was, most notably, Winter Sonata. This drama was a massive hit among the generation before us.

Can't read Korean yet? Click here to learn for free in about 90 minutes!

But that was only the beginning for K-drama’s rise. They did take a bit of a back seat in the early 2000s to let the music industry expand and explore internationally. But almost every year, there seemed to be at least one Korean drama catching the attention of international viewers. There was Full House, Coffee Prince, Boys Over Flowers, and The Secret Garden, just to name a few, that were drawing the love of not just Koreans, but from other Asian countries as well. My Love from the Star, a Korean drama that was released a few years later, caused a frenzy among its Chinese viewers, even setting new trends and habits with the Chinese public interested in Korean popular culture.

However, as important and integral as the Asian audience as a whole has been to k-drama’s rise, it’s often said that you haven’t actually made it until you’ve made it with the West. And while Korean dramas had definitely made it in Asia, they were far from breaking through in Europe and in USA. Why is that?

 

One obvious answer to the question is the language barrier. Though the Western audience speaks far more languages than just English, none of them is exactly fluent in Korean. Unfortunate, since it’s a great way to learn the language. That, coupled with the lack of broadcasting deals with the local broadcasters, ensured that these Korean dramas were not even going to be broadcasted on any of the Western channels. In other words, they were only available online. And being available online only also meant that often there were no subtitles that readily came with it. 

That started changing with DramaFever and Viki, plus a couple of other streaming services that followed. Not only did they offer streaming episodes from popular Korean dramas online, but they also came with subtitles. Each of these websites started off with fan made subtitles, with several Korean drama fans working together to ensure the highest quality and accuracy. Through sites such as these, the accessibility to Korean dramas became more widespread, and thus their viewership and popularity began growing more diverse. DramaFever unfortunately shut down recently, but Viki is still going strong, allowing its viewers dramas from other East Asian regions as well.

The services of the likes of DramaFever were largely what ensured that the Korean dramas could finally break through in Europe and USA. While they’re not yet as common spread as Hollywood produced contents, they are making waves, and they are gaining more and more viewers each passing day.

 

So, what exactly is so captivating about these Korean dramas for the hype of k-drama rise to take place? Though there are a variety of different types of dramas existing out there, from periodical dramas to medical and crime shows, the most popular genre among the Korean drama lovers is by far the love stories illustrated in at least one drama shown every night of the week. There are typically two different types of leads: the rich boy meets poor girl type, or the older woman meets younger guy type. And no matter how many times this simple basis is recycled, the audiences will gladly eat it up!

But while the basis may seem awfully similar every other time, there are still enough changes to each premise to make the Korean drama a whole new, fun watching experience. With all the ridiculous twists, turns, love triangles, and episode ending cliffhangers, it is not too far off to compare Korean dramas to telenovelas. However, it is not fair to the industry to say that every drama is formed around the same tropes, though it is correct in the case of many. After all, there are several that derive from the premise enough to bypass the comparison, such as My Love From Another Star. However, as the Korean drama loving audience also loves romance to an equal degree, it is extremely uncommon to see dramas without romance as the driving force, even if the settings may wildly change, from high school to historical eras.

That does not mean that all hope is lost for those who are not interested in romance. Over the years the Korean dramas have gotten more diverse, with new hospital and police dramas popping up all the time. They have even begun making Korean versions of popular American TV shows such as Criminal Minds!

Just a few years ago, there may have been a point in the recent years where the Korean dramas seemed to land in a rut, where innovation had gotten lost and instead the same formula was being used over and over again. But luckily for the fans of Korean dramas, it seems like the creators are getting their creativity back, having recently began coming up with great and more innovative Korean dramas again. One such example is The Goblin, which ran in early 2017.

Now that we’ve covered some of the history and current state of Korean dramas, we would love to hear from you. What is your favorite Korean drama? What is the upcoming drama you are most excited to see next? Let us know in the comments below!

 

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto

The post The Rise of Korean Dramas appeared first on 90 Day Korean®.

Learn to read Korean and be having simple conversations, taking taxis and ordering in Korean within a week with our FREE Hangeul Hacks series: http://www.90DayKorean.com/learn

Korean lessons   *  Korean Phrases    *    Korean Vocabulary *   Learn Korean   *    Learn Korean alphabet   *   Learn Korean fast   *  Motivation    *   Study Korean  

 

Please share, help Korean spread! 

 

 

Nothing's Really Real Podcast: (Ep 42) Babopalooza Tweet

Nothing's Really Real is a podcast based out of Busan, South Korea.

(Episode 42) Babopalooza was a sketch comedy show held on December 1st and 2nd of 2006 in Busan, South Korea. A little over a week later, nine of the foreign performers began being arrested, interrogated and in some cases drug tested by the International Crime Division of the Korean police force.

Chris Tharp and Sam Hazelton were two of those performers, and they join me on this episode to discuss the show, why they were arrested, and beyond.

Nothing's Really Real is available anywhere you might listen to podcasts, including iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher.

If you enjoy the show, please tell a friend about it, leave a review on itunes, and remember I love ya.

 

Tweet

From: https://www.facebook.com/events/582879665487860

As many of you know, this past October, Antony Jackson, a vital and giving member of the Busan Expat Community for 20 years, passed away suddenly, leaving behind a legacy of creativity and friendship as well as a loving wife, Yeo Ju, and son, Tae Bin. He had particularly close ties to the KSU and Gwangan areas as a frequent organizer, participant, and attendee of so many of the events that have been held over the years--his Halloween costumes were legendary, his trivia teams won more often than they lost, and he had a willing ear and sage (but blunt) advice for everyone he met. Our community is going to miss his presence tremendously. Antony's family and close friends have helped put together a special Art Benefit and Memorial for him to be held at HQ on Sunday, December 23rd.

Antony passed away at a relatively young age, and his plans of working to support his family and to put his son through university are gone. Tae Bin is an aspiring graphic artist who plans to develop his craft at Sheridan College, Canada. He will work and apply for scholarships, but we would like to help him and his mother out this holiday season through this fundraiser in memory of Antony.

Antony was an incredible artist with a large portfolio of work, and we will have a selection of prints of his sketch work available in return for a donation. A donation of 20,000 won will get you one print, and a donation of 50,000 or more will get you three prints. In addition, HQ will be donating 10% of our total sales for the day. All of these donations will be placed in a Canadian Savings Bond until Tae Bin can attend university. 

We will also have a curated group of speakers and musicians to talk about Antony's life and what he meant to them. This stage of the evening will start at 7:00, and will be organized as follows:

Kenneth May - Speaker
Robert Coates - Guitar
Bradley McMaster - Speaker
Jesse Cull - Speaker
Denis Parnell - Speaker
Gino Brann - Song
Anthony Velasquez - Story
Jeff Lebow - Speaker
Day Kate - Speaker
Mike Ventola - Song

If you did not know Antony, you are still welcome to come and celebrate and remember.

Remembering Antony

GoFundMe to Support Antony's Family

 

Photos & Videos

Art

Writings

Remembrances

 

What You Need To Know About Korean Men’s Fashion Tweet

These days, Korean men are no longer known only as the ‘feminine’ singers and dancers of a boy group. Nor do they only exist as the emotionally twisted yet charming lead of a Korean drama, the one who will sweep the heroine off their feet. Instead, those who have visited South Korea, especially the capital of Seoul, are now gushing over the everyday guys seen on the streets. What might be about them that’s capturing the attention of people watchers everywhere? The simple answer is: the Korean men’s fashion.

That is, a typical Korean man dresses incredibly well! Though fashion is usually known as an interest for women, in Korea, it is definitely common for both genders to pay attention to their outfits. And not just when fashion week enters town! That makes for some great attire for people watchers to notice and even take inspiration from. It also makes shopping in Seoul more fun for men since there will be stylish options available for them as well. But what exactly does the Korean men’s fashion scene look like? What are the trendy style genres to go for in Seoul?

 

Can't read Korean yet? Click here to learn for free in about 60 minutes!

 

Skinny Bottoms Are IN

Whether we’re talking about jeans or other types of pants, Jonas Brothers aren’t the only ones with a liking to thigh hugging bottoms. You may have seen a lot of Korean boy groups on TV dressed in pants so skinny you wonder how they breathe in them – but your everyday Korean man will not be shy to wear such pants either! And not just in black, either; it’s totally fine to add some color to the outfit!

 

Did Someone Say Ripped Jeans?

Yes, indeed, Korean men love jeans with rips here and there every bit as much as Korean women do. Just throw on a pair of ripped jeans with a basic t-shirt, form hugging long sleeved tee, or a sweater, and you’ve got yourself the perfect effortless and yet stylish outfit!

 

The Shirt Under a Knit Look Isn’t Just for Professors

When you think of wearing a knit or a basic sweater with a shirt underneath, a middle aged college professor might be the first thing to pop into your mind. But actually it’s a very popular look among Korean men in their 20s and 30s, especially for a date night. It’s casual enough not to look silly, but put together enough to charm the ladies.

 

Or Just Go with the Shirt

Another typical date look for a Korean man is to wear a shirt, any kind of a shirt, and pair it up with jeans or slacks. Again, a relatively low effort look to go for, but one that is incredibly easy to look good in. Men who care for their appearance might dress up in a variation of this just for a night out with their boys as well, especially if the destination is Gangnam.

 

Loafers and Boots

Though many Korean men love the comfort of a classic pair of sneakers, or the ease of canvas shoes, sometimes they’re not the most stylish choice for the outfit. Sometimes a man just needs that good pair of black loafers and boots to go with their look, especially the combination of boots with skinny jeans. And Korean men also do not shy away from their shoes being equipped with a bit of heel. Why not look a little taller while you’re at it?

 

The Coat Matters As Well

Leather jackets, denim jackets, and colorful blazers exist in every Korean man’s closet for the fall and spring seasons. As for winter? A knee-length woolen winter coat is where it’s at! Another prevalent winter trend among Korean men, albeit not as stylish one, is to wear the puffiest North Face jumper one could possibly get their hands on. Well, at least you’ll stay warm!

 

Better Yet – Just Suit it Up!

If you happen to have an office job in Korea, chances are you will have to wear a suit on a daily basis. It’s not usually the preferred outfit choice for a Korean man, but it’s really tough not to look good while wearing one. So if you are one of those in this situation, why not just embrace it? Sure, it’s not as comfortable as a hoodie and sweatpants, but everyone around you is guaranteed to swoon!

 

Casual Fashion

There’s casual, and then there’s casual fashion. In this case, we’re not talking about you throwing on the first items you could find on the clothes rack. We’re talking about an easy-to-wear, relaxed fit, as casual as it can get look that’s actually carefully calculated and put together. To achieve this look, you’ll wear loose pants, and anything from loose jeans to sweatpants goes. The top will also be loose, and can be of any style and color you choose. Though, be sure to have at least one item be of a subtle and earthy color.

 

Now that we’ve got the Korean men’s fashion styles covered, we can move onto the next burning question: Where to shop for the most authentic look?

 

87MM

This is a popular fashion brand directed towards men, founded by three big male model names in the Korean fashion industry. With this brand, you can hit the nail on the head with the casual fashion look.

 

HOMFEM

With this brand, you can find clothes that ooze comfort and trendy street style. The clothes are best described as modern and minimalistic. Combining them with other brands will bring about any trend categorized above.

 

PLAC

From Plac, you can also discover all sorts of styles and colors. But first and foremost, this is the place to go for your new pair of jeans.

 

STREET SHOPS

Though there may not be as many street shops out there covering the fashion needs of men as there are for women, it’s the best way to go for affordable fashion. Especially the shopping in Hongdae, Edae, and Myeongdong are great for finding smaller local brands. The clothes may not be as edgy as higher end fashion brands, but they’re definitely not lacking in style.

 

So are you ready to take the lessons of Korean men’s fashion to heart? Which Korean celebrity do you think is the most fashionable? Let us know in the comments below!

 

Photo Credit: BigStockPhoto

The post What You Need To Know About Korean Men’s Fashion appeared first on 90 Day Korean®.

Learn to read Korean and be having simple conversations, taking taxis and ordering in Korean within a week with our FREE Hangeul Hacks series: http://www.90DayKorean.com/learn

Korean lessons   *  Korean Phrases    *    Korean Vocabulary *   Learn Korean   *    Learn Korean alphabet   *   Learn Korean fast   *  Motivation    *   Study Korean  

 

Please share, help Korean spread! 

 

 

Tweet

From: https://www.facebook.com/events/2068775363421305/

Card sharks and gambling novices alike, 

On December 14th, the bars of Gwangan Beach are putting on a Poker Run Pub Crawl to help the family of Antony Jackson, a great friend of the Busan expat community who passed away in October. Never been to a Poker Run and have no idea how to play cards? Don't worry because NO POKER PLAYING SKILL IS REQUIRED!!! 

You will have from 6:00 until 1:00 AM to pop into each of the bars. At your first bar, buy a Poker Run Ticket for 5000 won**. At each bar, after you buy any drink or food item, you will be given one token. Give the Poker Run volunteer your token and you'll be able to draw one card from a standard 52 card deck. The resulting card will be drawn on your Poker Run ticket. Once you visit and get a card at each bar, you will have a full 5 card poker hand. Turn in your completed ticket at your final bar and you're good to go!

You can also have one re-draw at each bar for an extra 3000 won**. 

There will be big prizes for the Top Three Hands of the Night. Plus Plus when you turn in your completed ticket to the final bar you come to, you'll be eligible for a raffle--so even if you've got an awful hand, you've still got a chance to win big!

Best Hand of the Night: 40,000 in Bar Credit at Each Bar (200,000 TOTAL!!!)

Second Best Hand of the Night: 20,000 in Bar Credit at Each Bar

Third Best Hand of the Night: 10,000 in Bar Credit at Each Bar

Three Raffle Winners: A Free Shot at Each Bar (except at Galmegi, where they'll give you a free beer instead)

***100 PERCENT OF THE MONEY RAISED FROM THE TICKETS AND RE-DRAWS WILL BE GIVEN TO HELP THE FAMILY OF ANTONY JACKSON. 

Antony Jackson has been a member of the Busan expat community for 20 years. He gave his time freely to the community hosting trivia nights, contributing to Poetry Plus and other arts events, building and fixing computers for friends and strangers, and just generally being a supportive source of wisdom and guidance for so many old-timers and newcomers here.

Unfortunately, this stalwart of our community passed suddenly in October. More importantly, his family is without him. Antony passed away at a relatively young age, and his plans of working to support his family and to put his son Tae Bin through university are gone. Tae Bin is an aspiring graphic artist who plans to develop his craft at Sheridan College, Canada. He will work and apply for scholarships, but we would like to help him and his mother out this holiday season through this fundraiser in memory of Antony.***

My Thoughts on the US Midterm Tweet

This essay is a re-post of a post I wrote for the Lowy Institute before the election explaining my vote against Donald Trump’s Republican party. This post went viral on Twitter; thank you.

One thing I wish I had emphasized more in retrospect is that Trump is turning the GOP into the National Front. I mention that in the essay, but the more I think about Trump’s impact on the Republicans, the more I think the National Front is the right model for where the GOP is going. The NF is a lot like Trump himself: semi-authoritarian, racist, gangsterish, flirting with anti-semitism. No wonder Bannon and Marine LePen get on so well.

I say all this as a deeply disaffected lifelong registered Republican. I voted a straight Democratic ticket this week just because of Trump’s threat to America’s institutions. I figure I will stay a registered Republican for the 2020 primary, to vote against Trump there. But if Trump wins re-election, I see no choice but to register as a Democrat. The GOP will be unrecognizable at that point – basically the American National Front by 2024. I imagine a lot of other center-right natsec types are probably thinking the same. This whole thing is so depressing, because the US actually needs a coherent center-right party as a part of checks-and-balances in a two-party system.

The full essay is after the jump…

 

One of the worst clichés of US politics is that the next election is the most important ever/in your lifetime/in recent history, and so on. When I worked in US politics in the 1990s, I heard this all time. Americans are bewitched by the notion that elections represent major turning points in national life. American news coverage flogs this notion relentlessly – likely to drive up viewership by inflating the stakes – and election gurus in the US like Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, and James Carville have built careers around this idea.

Midterm elections are generally spared this overwrought breathlessness. Without the presidency at stake, that impact is automatically lower. But most presidential elections in retrospect are not hugely consequential either. Something that happens regularly every four years cannot be special by definition. When I think of US elections since the Cold War, the only two that in retrospect leap out as the ‘most important in my lifetime’ are 2004 and 2016.

2004 was critical, because the American war in Iraq was on the ballot, as well as a president who had lost the popular vote in 2000. George W. Bush’s 2004 victory solidified both the legitimacy of his presidency after the deeply divisive Florida recount, and the continuance of America’s most misbegotten conflict since Vietnam.

But 2016 must be the most important post-Cold War American election. The US elected a deeply unserious reality TV star who has since trafficked authoritarianism and far-right social themes few thought Americans would respond to in the 21st century. Donald Trump has brought to the fore far more racism than most white American elites thought was out there in American life. Trump has also exposed an authoritarian temptation in the US population which almost no one thought possible in the world’s oldest democracy. Trump has governed as a fairly orthodox Republican, but he was elected with aggressively reactionary themes which startled everyone and revealed greater fragility in US democracy than anyone thought, especially after the rather banal, centrist Barack Obama presidency.

This is the closest the US has come to an authoritarian in the presidency in its history – no, Donald Trump is not an authoritarian or fascist, but he is closer to that position than any of his predecessors. When I speak before business audiences in East Asia, I am routinely asked if Trump is America’s Mussolini or wants to be a dictator. Trump’s language on Twitter, such as calling the media ‘the enemy of the people,’ is frequently semi-authoritarian. And the recent decision to end birthright citizenship, a constitutional right in the 14th Amendment, via executive order is an astonishing act of authoritarian overreach which will almost certainly land his administration in court.

Trump is also remaking the Republican party in his own image, which increasingly looks like the semi-fascist National Rally (formerly the National Front) in France. The US has never had a blood-and-soil nationalist party, but if one watches Trumpist media, most obvious Fox News, in the weeks running up to next week’s midterm election, the messaging is drenched in racialism, if not openly racist.

Hence, the 2018 midterm has emerged as the most important midterm election in a long time, certainly in my lifetime. This is the first time since 2016 for American voters to respond to Trumpism as a governing philosophy rather than just campaign sloganeering. If the Republican party’s majority survives in the Congress, Trump, Congressional Republicans, and GOP voters will take this as a validation of the Trumpist turn of 2016. Non-Trump Republicans like Jeff Flake and Paul Ryan will continue to quit. They will be replaced by Trumpish National Front-style politicians. Trump himself will double-down on the racial and ‘deep state’ themes that seem to be rewarding him so richly. And Trump voters will feel themselves liberated from ‘political correctness’ to be more openly racially provocative in public, as in Charlottesville last year.

At the moment, it is still possible to argue that Trump is an ‘accidental president.’ He lost the popular vote, apparently did not want to win, does not take the job seriously, and does not seem to have much of a policy agenda beyond his grievances – ‘owning the libs,’ attacking anything Obama did, feathering the nest of the Trump conglomerate. But victory this fall would end this option for dismissing Trump. If 2018 and 2020 do not deliver a sharp rebuke to the GOP – not just Trump, but the GOP in general – the Trumpist turn will continue. The GOP will become even more extreme than it is now, especially on race and constitutional norms of fair play.

As asymmetric polarization worsens, the country will become increasingly ungovernable. Trump’s constant race-baiting will worsen race-relations, and the GOP will drift toward a National Front-like white party dependent on an aging racist coalition. As these voters pass away, the minoritarian Trump coalition will prove itself unable to win races without constitutionally gimmickry. Under Mitch McConnell and Trump, the GOP has already experimented with questionable constitutional maneuvers, such as extremely strict voter identification laws, leaving a Supreme Court seat purposefully unfilled, militarizing the border, government shut-downs and debt default threats to blackmail Democrats, endless filibustering, and so on. All this will worsen, and the GOP in power will increasingly spark constitutional crises.

Entrenched minoritarian Republican rule, especially of a harsh, Trump-National Front variety, will also likely breed a backlash on the left. Indeed if Trump wins the 2020 presidential election without the popular vote, a constitutional rupture may loom. That would be the third time in just twenty years – 2000 and 2016 also – that the Electoral College has thrown the election to the GOP which otherwise would have lost. The American left may well feel that America’s governing institutions are structurally tilted against them and blocking their earned victory. That a Trumpized GOP will refuse to govern as a center-right party congnizant of the narrow margin of its victory will make this anger on the left even worse. How will it respond? On the streets if it does not believe it can win elections?

I say all this as a life-long registered Republican. I have voted in GOP primaries since I was 18. I have been a general election swing voter since the GOP began to radicalize under Bush II, but I never switched party registration, because I figured the GOP needed someone to vote for moderates in the primaries. While this was uncomfortable under Bush and then Sarah Palin, under Trump it is a disaster. I voted a straight Democratic ticket (via absentee) for the first time in my life in this election, including for one candidate I believe is inferior to his GOP opponent. But this is absolutely necessary, and I hope any American readers will do the same. Donald Trump is a threat to both American democracy and liberalism. He is turning the Republican party into the racist, semi-authoritarian National Front. He needs to be decisively defeated at the ballot box this week and in 2020. The best way to do that is to vote mechanically for Democrats under Trumpism is defeated.

Robert E Kelly
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science & Diplomacy
Pusan National University

@Robert_E_Kelly

 

About Me

About this Blog

C.V.

Publications

Terms and Abbreviations

What I am Reading Now

Subscribe 

 

 

LTW: Military dodgers now O.K. if conscientious TweetS.Korean Supreme Court ruled moral scruples and religious beliefs are valid reasons to refuse compulsory military service in a verdict on a Johovah's Witness defendant charged for refusing to join the military. S.Korean law required all able bodied men between 18 and 35 to serve two years in the military, or face maximum 3 years in prison. More than 19,000 conscientious objectors have been criminally punished since 1950, and majority of them were Johovah's Witness who cite Isaiah 1:4 that says, "Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore." Conservatives criticized the verdict, saying it will bring sense of loss to Korean men who fought in the military to defend the nation from Kim dynasty in the north.



Korean men join military only because it is their sacred duty, evidenced by 3,000 Korean Won ($5) a month pay, no typo, when I joined the army in 1982. My father served in the Air Force in the 50's. My brother was stationed near DMZ for 30 months. Though they don't have to because of their Canadian citizenship, my first son volunteered the army to be sent to South Sudan to fight off insurgents and so did my 2nd son to serve in the Air Force. The term "conscientious objectors" better change to different words my proud family suddenly turned into "unconscientious" SOBs with the Supreme Court decision on Nov 1.

20/20 vision at any age? Yes, it is possible. Tweet

Sponsored Post

20/20 vision at any age? Yes, it is possible.

Nowadays modern society is unimaginable without smartphones and computers, and while more and more people find themselves inseparable from them, cases of eye problems are also increasing. Myopia, Astigmatism and Hyperopia at younger age and Presbiopya and Cataracts at older age create a great need for professional and affordable eye treatment.

BGN Eye Hospital is a general eye hospital that provides all kinds of ophthalmological treatment including LASIK & LASEK Laser vision correction, ICL surgeries, Cataract and Presbyopia correcting multifocal IOL surgeries, Glaucoma and Retina diseases treatment, comprehensive Eye check-ups and Dream Lenses.

If you suffer from poor vision due to astigmatism, myopia or hyperopia, Lasik surgery is a great choice to toss out your spectacles while you are in Korea! LASIK is an eye procedure that permanently changes the shape of the cornea in order to improve vision and reduce person’s dependency on glasses or contact lenses. This is a safe, painless and fast procedure that is chosen by millions of patients all over the world. Why choose to do it in Korea? The main reasons would be most advanced technologies, absolutely safe and fast procedure and very affordable prices compared to United States, Western Europe, or other countries, that have well-developed medical technologies. BGN Eye Hospital promotional prices for Lasik&Lasek laser vision correction surgeries start as low as 990,000 krw.

Besides, great service is also one of the reasons you should consider having your vision correction in Korea.

BGN Eye Hospital Busan offers free examination and consultation for Lasik surgery, which is the fastest way to find out whether you are a right candidate for Laser vision correction. Comprehensive Examination and consultation takes 1,5 hour, and you will receive all recommendations for the surgery that is the most suitable for you.

BGN Eye Hospital also provides a free 1 night business hotel service for people from other cities, who would like to have Lasik surgery. Examination and surgery dates are customized according to patients need, as well as one day examination and surgery is also possible, for those, who cannot afford spending much time at the hospital.

And what are the solutions for those who are not candidates for Lasik anymore?

Sometime after 40 most people begin to notice the effects of Presbyopia. Presbyopia is a loss of elasticity in the lens which makes it more difficult to focus on things. The crystalline lens becomes less able to adjust properly to focus on nearby objects. Another common problem is cataracts, which is a clouding of the normally clear lens of your eye. Cataracts develop slowly over time and affect people over age of 45 — about half of the population develop cataracts by age 60 in one or both eyes.

Just 20 years ago, it was almost a dream to have perfect vision both close up, at intermediate and far distances after cataract surgery, but now there is a solution. Modern Multifocal and Trifocal Lenses are lenses that have different powers in the center of the lens and another power at the border. These different zones of lens power work together to provide the eye with near, intermediate and far distance vision.

Subsequently, Multifocal Lens can correct Nearsightedness, Farsightedness, Astigmatism and Presbyopia. Besides modern trifocal Intraocular lenses help patients see with reduced glares and halos at night compared with other types of conventional lenses.

This is why the implantation of the intraocular lens is the most suitable solution for patients over 40 years old, who suffer from high level of myopia. In difference with ICL surgery, which can only correct a high degree of myopia and astigmatism up to -20 dioptres, multifocal lenses will help you to get rid of presbyopia (age related long-sightedness) forever as well.

BGN EyeHospital offers a customized choice of IOL for each patient depending on their needs (correction of myopia, presbyopia, astigmatism).

Refractive lens replacement surgery (IOL surgery) is carried out after 40 years old and is partially or fully (private insurance) covered by insurance. Prices for multifocal IOL surgeries start as low as 1,750,000* (*in case of having NHIC insurance)

Therefore the cost of the surgery becomes very attractive. Not to mention that you invest in your 20/20 vision once for all, because after the lens replacement surgery occurrence of cataract is impossible, and operation is performed only once in a lifetime.

BGN Eye Hospital always makes maximum efforts to provide the best service for its patients, that`s why we also provide direct billing service for international insurances, such as Bupa Global, CIGNA, AETNA, GBG group and other global providers. Direct billing service is provided both for inpatient and outpatient services for our patients.

BGN Eye Hospital is currently offering Laser Vision Correction and Presbyopia Multifocal IOL surgeries discounts for international patients, find more information by contacting them on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/eyehospitalinkorea/ , or give them a call about a free consultation or appointment booking at 010-3030-0327/maria@bgnhospital.com