영국사람

Fun times!

It’s been an interesting few weeks. I attended an SBS recording some time ago, as my Father-in-law was invited on to compete in a sushi competition. I’ve decided to use my better judgement here and simply say that the Father-in-law lost to a chef from an expensive Gangnam restaurant who arrived with a huge entourage. Despite “losing”, they still went with my Father-in-law’s sushi for the publicity shots, commercials, and to lead the show. Yeah…

도전자! 초밥계의 살아있는 전설! 故박정희, 전두환 전 대통령이 반한 그 맛! 경력 46년의 김성태(64) 도전자!

Whilst I was pissed at the editing, I did like that they called the old man a “Living legend”. Yeah… that pretty much sums him up. Perhaps one day, my wife would let me tell his story here.

Although we spent a few hours recording, and the cameras were in my face every time I bothered to say or do anything, they limited me to a 2-second cut where I mangled some Korean. I didn’t really want to say anything in Korean for the cameras as I know the Korean TV shows love to make us foreigners look like arses, but hey… it made the family happy!

I also did an interview for the Midnight Runner Podcast a few weeks ago, where I spent a little time talking about AFEK. Despite a few Ringo gags, people seem to have responded well to it. The Midnight Runner invested in a few facebook ads, and there has been a huge influx of new members since. That podcast was largely responsible for adding 20% to our numbers, so a BIG thank you to Mr. Midnight Runner for that!

KOREA TIMES REPORTER: Easiest job in the world?

I saw a posting up on Dave’s ESL Cafe this week that prompted me to copy/paste a KT story up on my facebook page so that others may mock it: Jessica Simpson Farts During Business Meeting. In the first sentence, they left the line “A source tells US Weekly…” that lets us know that this is not first hand news. A quick Google shows the full extent of the plagiarism.

EXCLUSIVE: Oops! Jessica Simpson Farts During Business Meeting

It is a straight lift of this story. All they have done is copied the responses, removing the reference to her ‘stink ass’ and Dutch Ovens, and hey presto, article formed and ready to be credited to mook@koreatimes.co.kr

Is that all?

Actually no… I decided to see if this was common place in the “People” section of the newspaper, so I took a glance over other recent news.

There is another story up there about a (very) young mother in China. The KT have cited their source and then copied (almost word for word) the original article, all credit to mook@koreatimes.co.kr

They have a picture up there that is obviously unrelated to the story. Well… obvious to all but us Brits. It shows former Coronation Street star Tina O’Brien. Many years ago, her character on the soap had a teen pregnancy, though one look at that picture will show you that she is in no way a child star any more…

So why use the picture of an adult Tina O’Brien? The enterprising mook@koreatimes.co.kr was being diligent and hard-working! You see, changing a headline from  “Tina O’Brien starts smoking again – less than a year after fronting quit campaign for NHS” [Mail Online] to “Non-Smoking Campaign Model Caught Smoking” is all you need to do to create an entirely new piece that in no way needs crediting.

From the mail article, Mook was able to acquire photographs for both the “China” and “Smoking” stories, and as we all know, cropping the copyright information from a photograph is a ‘cunning’ way to avoid paying for their use.

Mook is not the only person doing this. The Learning Times (International News) section of the website may as well be renamed “Yoinked”. I sampled 5 random articles, and they had all been taken verbatim from other publications with no attempt made to credit the original source.

Arseholes!

And no, this is not about ATEK!

There has been a lot of reporting in the news this week about the Korean woman who was kidnapped and soon murdered in Yemen, along with a group of other foreigners. Her family quicly moved to get the body back to Korea, and provide her with a funeral. Her family are arseholes.

The woman has been portayed in the media here as an aid worker, travelling alone. The impression my wife got was that she was a student. The news is reported by arseholes.

The dirty little secret, the thing that her family are not speaking of, and that the newspapers are not reporting, is that the woman was kidnapped along with her husband, referred to in the Korean press as “one Briton”. Whilst he is feared dead, there is still no body. Without considering what his wishes may be, or waiting to have the funerals together, the Korean family have claimed the body and her funeral is being held on Sunday.

Arseholes! Arseholes! Arseholes!

Korean broadcaster to face criminal charges over lies that led to US Beef fiasco.

The US beef hysteria in South Korea were given a huge credibility boost in the early days by the airing of a TV show (PD notebook – kind of like 60 minutes, but without the integrity) highlighting the dangers of importing beef from the US. This was a great piece of journalism that touched the country and perfectly illustrated just how dangerous the meat could be. Except it didn’t. The show was riddled with lies and inaccuracies.

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