Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with korea

Call it "Tailor Tourism"

rileyray3000 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 15:52:19 -0800

I'm thinking about taking a suit holiday. As in, going to a country where not only can I have a fun vacation, but I can get a bunch of suits made for a good price. Where should I go? When I was teaching in Korea back in 2001 I got a few suits made for me on a lark. Some were the kitschy kind of fun suits that you get made when they're 70 bucks American and you think "what the hell." In my case that was one red satin number and five iridescent sharkskin suits in colors ranging from blue to yellow to brown - all as shiny as a marine's dress shoes.

Goodfellas was one of the only American movies I saw over there. I think it left a mark.

But in addition to those suits I also got one charcoal gray suit made and one light brown one. Those two have been my standby suits ever since. I get compliments every time I wear them, they fit me perfectly and I worry about the day they finally fall apart.

Thus I've been considering a "Suit Holiday." Something where I go somewhere like South Korea, have an exotic trip, and get a bunch of suits made to take home and last me another decade.

But I'm wondering if South Korea IS the way to go here. Maybe Hong Kong? Or Taiwan? Or the Philippines? Or Indonesia? I'm totally open.

Where is the place I can get the best bang for my buck and get 5 or ten suits made to take home with me? Where would YOU go on a Suit Holiday?

Hangul help

larsks — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:13:43 -0800

Help me find someone with Hangul calligraphy skills. When I travelled to Korea to adopt our daughter, the proprietor of the store where we buy our name stamps heard that I was adopting and made a lovely calligraphy of our daughter's Korean name. I would like to find someone to make something similar for my son. We live near Boston, if that helps.

Day trips from Daegu?

pedstel — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:38:05 -0800

Daegu day trip suggestions? I'm visiting South Korea this month and will be staying with a friend in Daegu. We're spending a weekend in Seoul, but I'm looking for some fun day (or two day) trips to take while she's working. I'm into food, photography, general exploring, and any strange/fun eccentric sites or activities. I don't speak any Korean, but am fine with finding my way around on public transportation. Also, I'm on a grad student budget, so the cheaper the better...

YouTube is painfully slow at home. Help!

GilloD — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:34:25 -0800

YouTube is unbearably slow. What gives? My internet in South Korea is incredibly fast. I can swing a megabyte a second no problem. Where I am running into a problem: YouTube is at a CRAWL. It can take upwards of 45 minutes to snag a 5 minute video. Downloading a video to desktop chugs at around 9 kb/s. I was inclined to think that this was just a location issue, but it's fine at multiple other locations I've been to.

Poking my nose around the web I saw plenty of other people the world over have had this problem and every single one of them either hit a wall and got over it or had to jump some major technical hurdles to solve it. The major concern seemed to be which server YouTube was serving videos off of, although I couldn't quite make heads or tales of the very tech-y solution.

I already swapped my DNS to the OpenDNS servers as per someone's suggestion: No dice.

So, have you had this problem? How'd you solve it? Where should I start looking?

I need a kind soul in South Korea to find school records of a woman born in 1937

cda — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 14:11:52 -0800

I need a kind soul in South Korea to find school records of a woman born in 1937, to help us begin our search for the birth family of our adopted cousin. Our cousin has asked for our help in finding her Korean birth family. I thought finding her mother's school records would be a good place to start. Her father was an American soldier stationed in Korea. Her mother was a Korean woman. In 1962 my cousin's father brought her back to America, without her mother, and she knows very little about her Korean family. Her father has passed away. We do have names and birth dates of her mother, her mother's siblings and for her grandparents. It's possible her grandfather was Japanese. The family lived in Seoul, although our cousin was born in Pusan for some reason.

If you or someone you know lives in South Korea and you have an interest in history or an interest in helping adoption searches please let me know. And failing that, if you know a private investigator in Seoul who speaks English, that would be helpful.

How can I deal with rampant indoor mosquitos?

GilloD — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:51:12 -0800

How can I rid myself of indoor mosquitos? My wife and I live in a small South Korean apartment that faces the street. Right now we can't open our windows- We'll spend the rest of the night swatting mosquitos and scratching bug bites. Even with the windows closed they keep finding a way in and making my sleep miserable. To make matters worse, my bug bites BLOW UP. I've tried snuggling under the covers and jacking the AC, but then they just nibble on my face. Right now I look a bit like I lost a fight.

So, question: What can I do INDOORS to rid myself of/deter mosquitos? I have no idea how they're getting in. I sealed every crack and loose panel I could find and we haven't cracked a window in weeks. I'm a little weirded by DEET and definitley don't want to spray it around indoors. What're my other options?

Bonus Q: What's the life cycle of a mosquito? It's starting to cool down a bit, when is it safe to open the windows again?

Proxy? VPN? How can I fool download services into thinking I'm from the USA?

GilloD — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 02:01:23 -0800

Proxies, VPNs and restrictions, oh my! How can an American dude in South Korea get his Hulu, Steam and Direct2Drive on. More inside. I'm an American dude who is living in South Korea, as you can tell from my recent AskMeFi history. Here's a new kink: I got this sweet, sweet gaming laptop. I like to play games. And unlike other dudes, I like to pay for them. I have the $ to spend, I like to support the safe, lgal alternative to piracy.

Problem: I can't spend it. Many Steam games aren't available outside the US. Same with Direct2Drive. The vast majority of titles aren't purchasable with a Korean credit card. More, if I try to use my American card I get a warning like "The billing address you're using doesn't match the country you're buying from".

So, ugh. I thought we all liked capitalism and here I am trying to spend money and I literally CANNOT GIVE IT AWAY. Recently I've had friends 'Gift' me the game which lifts this restriction, but I feel bad putting them on the spot.

So: Proxy? Proxies are slow, yeah? Are there pay-for proxies that are quicker? WHat about VPNs? What are my options for tricking websites into thinking I'm coming from the US. I'm not against shelling out a monthly fee to have access to a service like this. Suggestions?

teach me how to teach, please!

acidic — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:58:57 -0800

How do I become an amazing, inspiring, organized, respected, and effective teacher? What did your favorite teacher do that set him/her apart? Your tips, anecdotes, and resources (particularly online) are appreciated. I'm a fresh college grad and I've been thrown into teaching without any training. Luckily, I love it; however, I definitely need to learn some basic classroom management principles before the honeymoon period is over and the students lose respect for my authority. Furthermore, I'm idealistic enough that I want to strive to be an extraordinary, life-changing teacher even though most colleagues in my situation (teaching English in Korea) seem content with not much more than mediocrity. I have great kids, more than half of whom are in an elite track and only speak English while on school property, so I'm looking less for English-in-Korea advice (although I'll take that too) and more for foreign language or general teaching advice.

Some things that I don't really know how to deal with: kids who refuse to speak, ultra-rambunctious baby einsteins, the loner in every class who is semi-bullied by his peers, kid who won't stop talking or goofing off, what to do when the entire class seems to make a silent pact to ignore my instructions...

i teach 2nd through 8th grade. FYI: While I don't participate, my school does practice corporal punishment according to a formula I haven't figured out. It seems that most days the principal will deliver anywhere from one to ten strokes of a ruler per student as punishment for homework mistakes, although sometimes he'll walk in, scare everyone, then leave. The students both dread and sort of enjoy this, as a benchmark for punishments I could have the authority to enforce.

Links to excellent teacher communities or blogs would be awesome too!

Bonus question: for the teachers out there, how do you find satisfaction and intellectual stimulation in this profession? I find it extremely fulfilling now and expect this to improve as I become better, but it seems that burnout could arise quite unexpectedly.

How can I control an out-of-control classroom?

GilloD — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:01:22 -0800

Controlling classroom behavior: Theory/practice? More inside! So, my wife and I made it to South Korea safe and sound. We're having a killer time! The only problem is, uh, the job we came here to do. A classic story: Teaching English in Korea turns out to be more like Keep Busy in English. For younger kids I've been able to manage with a combination of Powerpoints and lesson-focused activities to keep them occupied, if not entirely attentive.

Older kids (5th/6th grade) are a nightmare. They get up and run around, they throw things, they howl in Korean and no amount of my desperate English pleadings can seem to bring them around.

My 5th grade co-teacher doesn't even show up to class most of time. My 6th grade teacher is MUCH better, but she's reallly discouraged by what's going on and is taking an enormous personal stake in their behavior.

Teachers of the world: What's your advice? Based on previous hive-mind suggestion, I proposed an incentive system. The biggest problem to me seems to be that one or two especially coy troublemakers can ruin the whole class. By focusing on the behavior of the whole class (I have about 300 students per grade, nearly a 1000 in total, so per-student evaluation is not really doable), we can hopefully mitigate those troublemakers by providing an incentive to ignore their tricks.

Does that make sense? Does anyone have further advice on implementing an executing incentive systems? Is an incentive system the wrong way to go on this?

Show me Korea.

acidic — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:31:57 -0800

I'm moving to South Korea in a month, and I'm looking for films, books, and art to inspire and direct my wanderings around the country. Documentaries, thrillers, fiction, poetry, anything. No constraints, really-- if you have a great Korean cookbook, I want to know that too-- and while I am interested in the Korean War and North Korea, the reason I'm asking this question is the vast majority of films and books I'm familiar with are about those two subjects!

Help me out of Seoul and back to LA

klangklangston — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 06:05:53 -0800

Still in Korea: Due to a bit of stupidity and bad luck, I missed my flight back to LA. What now? I realize that I should not have relied on my brother's sense of time, nor his gauge of distance, nor accepted his assurances that we could be later than I thought we could. So, now I'm here, Orbitz (whom I booked the flight through) seems to be fairly useless for the moment, as they want to wait until the LA offices of China Air are open in order to shift the ticket. The next available flight (according to the website) leaves Tuesday, though the China Air folks said on the phone that there were no flights out for a week. I'm kinda freaking out and want advice on what to do, how to best minimize the financial damage of this fuck-up (I'm dirt poor) and how to avoid clubbing my brother to death as I assume that deportation flights are not booked with budget in mind.

How do I teach English to a bunch of South Korean 4th graders?

GilloD — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 12:52:33 -0800

In about a month I'm going to be teaching English to a bunch of 4th grade South Korean kids. Awesome. However, I've never taught anything, let alone a language. I'm looking for books, courses, tips, tricks, suggestions and anything else that might give me a little confidence. I do have a BA in English, so I'm not stumbling around going, "Hey, what's a verb?", but I probably stop somewhere around diagramming a sentence. Reports from friends there vary from, "They gave me a book and told me to teach from it" to "I showed up and had to write an entire curriculum". So, better safe than sorry. I have a few weeks, so I'm looking to just get a sense of what would work for a bunch of 4th grade kids and give me a little peace of mind.

Books would be fine, videos of lessons might be better. Stuff online, stuff in the real world. I'll take a look at all of it!

Also, general advice on leading a classroom and being a teacher-figure is well appreciated!

Japan and Korea--so small but so big

Knigel — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:33:50 -0800

Japan & South Korea Filter: Please help me find things to do in Fukuoka, Japan and suggest places to go as I travel back through South Korea's Busan, Daegu, and finally Gyeongju. I am leaving today for Busan (South Korea), and then will be taking a boat across to Fukuoka of which I will spend three days exploring. After I will return back to Busan and work my way back near Seoul by train and other modes of transportation. I have about seven days total. On my way back I'd like to go to Daegu, Gyeonju, Ulsan, and other places.

I would really like to see as much as I can and do as much as possible during my rampage into Japan and across Korea. What should I see? What should I do? I will be traveling with one fun guy. We are adventurous and want diversity. We wanted to check out places along the train line, but are willing to go a bit of a ways from it. We've been waiting a long time to delve deeper into South Korea

Tell me about moving to South Korea.

GilloD — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:26:09 -0800

We're moving to South Korea! We've never been to Asia! Tell us what to expect! More inside! (!!) So, my wife and I will be moving to South Korea at the end of August to teach English in Gwangmyeongnam. We're excited about this! We've both traveled extensively across Europe, the USA, South America and a little bit of Northern Africa. We've lived in rural middle America and have made Brooklyn our home for the last year. So, we're not too spooked about packing up and moving someplace foreign.

However, there are a lot of mysteries involved. I guess what we're looking for is "101, Welcome to South Korea" starters kit. I poked around MeFi and found some posts, but they were all a few years old. I wanted to make sure we were up to date. We've also donea ton of reading, but, well. That's reading.

Some general Q's and then I'll just say, "Tell me what you wish you'd known":

We'll be teaching in a public school, so hopefully we'll be spared some hagwon hijinks. Still, are we likely to be screwed on this? What's the public school experience like? I'll be teaching Elementary, my wife will be in a high school. How liberal are they with vacation etc.? Are there a lot of "federal" holidays?

Stuff we should bring: I've been told deodorant and clothes that fit. Anything else?

As far as laptops go- I'm guessing we'll need new power supplies? Or will a converter do the trick? (I fried my Powerbook once in Germany. Maybe it was coincidental)

Are there things we should start learning now? Stuff we should start preparing for?

The won: Down, now back up a bit. A bad currency to hold on to? We'll make about 2.1 mil a month, each. What're living expenses like? Utilities?

I guess I secretly have an enormous number of tiny questions that are part of a big question: What's it like? What do you wish you'd been ready for?

Hard Labor

josher71 — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:43:14 -0800

The two journalists that were convicted in North Korea were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor. What does "hard labor" mean in this situation?

좋은 한영사전 알습니까?

non-kneebiter — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:06:15 -0800

Looking for a cheap, non-romanized Korean-English dictionary. My brother is looking for a Korean-English dictionary and has had trouble finding one to his liking. His specifications:

-non-romanized and not a phrasebook
-electronic or book
if electronic, non-speaking; without color screen or mp3 player
-including hanja (Chinese characters)
-cheap (< $80)
-used is acceptable

Any suggestions of what brands to look for or websites/ bookstores to check out? Also useful would be shops IN SEOUL where good dictionaries can be found.

Cheers!

Where should I look?

kinakomochi — Mon, 25 May 2009 14:56:26 -0800

[CareerFilter?] Help me make the most of my time in Korea (plan for career, have fun) I will be traveling to Korea from next month and plan on staying for 6 months to half a year. I'm still a college student with no degree, but my degree should be complete by January of next year. I figure after my stint in Korea I will return to the states for about a year before trying to head back and find work.

I am seeking advice on making connections and opportunities for myself in Korea that will:
1. Put me in a position to speak a lot of Korean
2. Help me gain usable work experience that I can use later looking for a career abroad (probably Korea or Japan)

I'm particularly interested in Hospitality type jobs but anything will do. I have about a year experience working in a higher class hotel as a bellman/concierge.

Basically I want to create connections that I can use later to establish myself. I don't mind low wages and hard work as long as it pays off in the long run. I'd work for free just to get the language practice.

A little about me: native English speaker, fairly fluent in Japanese and intermediate-advanced Korean. I don't have many other marketable skills other than being able to put out a lot of raw effort.

Long shot sub-question: Any anecdotes/advice about rock climbing and punk rock in Seoul would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

The hardest won manhattan ever

smartyboots — Sun, 24 May 2009 00:32:34 -0800

Where can a Manhattan lover find bitters in Daegue, South Korea? My brother is in Daegue, anxiously awaiting his firstborn. He got some good bourbon at the duty-free, and even managed to track down sweet vermouth and maraschino cherries - where can he find bitters? Or better yet, where can he find a Korean equivalent? Any tips as to what might be an acceptable substitute?

Difficulty level - not that high. He's fluent in Korean, he just needs to know what he's looking for.

A Few Questions About ESL in Korea

Chasuk — Fri, 22 May 2009 00:54:43 -0800

I'm going to be teaching in Korea soon, so I'm looking to ask people who have already done it (perhaps are currently doing it) a few burning questions. I've googled these questions extensively, but never found answers that were both unambiguous and current. First, the matter of cell phones. I don't require anything fancy, but I'm hoping for inexpensive. What are your recommendations? Second, TEFL courses. I'm only interested in the online varieties. Are they worth it, and, if so, which companies do you recommend? Third, I would like to ship books and a few other things to myself on the cheap. Recommendations? Fourth, banking. Has anyone had experience with ING Direct, or similar? I would like to make it simple to pay stateside bills. Lastly, my goatee. Will it likely cause me any problems with my employer?

I'm sorry for the plethora of questions, but I'm leaving soon.

South Korea & iPhones -- Yes or No?

Chasuk — Thu, 14 May 2009 21:26:36 -0800

South Korea and iPhones. Are they a good mix? Can I use them or buy them there? I'm moving to South Korea soon, and I don't want to invest in an iPhone if it will be useless there. I've Goggled it extensively and found lots of contradictory information. Does anyone know the true story?

2C-i

ed\26h — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:48:43 -0800

What is the legal status of the designer drug 2C-i in South Korea?

Jumping into the deepend again

Knigel — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 19:41:37 -0800

KOREA FILTER: Help me decide if I should leave my current Korean university and move to Seoul to focus on Korean language learning. I have come upon a fork in the road and would greatly appreciate any advice. I am Canadian exchange student trying to decide if I should stay a third semester at my country-side Korean university or move to a Seoul university/academy. I am a bit atypical since I am in Korea as a student and not as a teacher; therefore, I need to be a little bit more money cautious and careful with my choices. I actually have it pretty well now where I am so want to make sure I do things right if I’m going to change.

I am on my second semester here at Soon Chun Hyang University which is in Asan and quite far away from everything. The biggest problem is that there are many cultural exchange courses that I feel to be a waste of time for my own goals and would like to focus entirely on Korean language courses. At this time my university looks after me quite well with free tuition and many other perks. They also help me with my student visa.

This has all been fine; however, I believe I have gained as much as I can and feel that I should move on. If I leave my university I will have to apply for a new visa and I do not know exactly how this works. Does any body know how many extensions one can get on a visa and how easy it is to switch between student and tourist visas and perhaps back again? Currently my student visa is for one year but I’d like to stay two years total (or more). What might be the best way to do this? I don’t know if I should enroll in a university language program and get a student visa or get a tourist visa and find other kinds of classes.

If I move to Seoul I would like to find good Korean language courses. Does anyone have any recommendations of universities or academies? Also, does anyone know how many hours one needs to be enrolled in classes for a student visa or what the other restrictions are? Do academies count or only universities?

I will also need a place to stay if I move to Seoul; therefore, I am curious as to how easy it is to find an apartment and where and how to look. Does anyone have any experience with this? I was thinking around Hong-dae area; however, I am fully open. As it is now, I spend at least three hours travelling one way to Seoul once or twice a weekend, so I won’t mind travelling a bit in the future to work or wherever.

Although I am here as a student I would like to be able to teach in the future so if anyone knows of any reputable TESOL or similar courses that are of high quality and that I can do online I would love to know of them. I suspect that I won’t find anything too good since these types of classes would seem to need classroom and hands-on experience to be successful; however, I’d like know if my notion is correct or not.

Lastly, if I am to move to Seoul I will have to deal with this cough that has been hounding me since I got here. The pollution is killing me and I really need to find a good doctor how will help me find out what is wrong and won’t just throw medication at me. Anyone know where I might find a good doctor who can also speak English?

This is all hard to put into words, but I thank everyone for taking the time to help me. I appreciate it~

Is it technologically feasible to shoot down a North Korean rocket/ ICBM?

crazyray — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:15:48 -0800

Could the US or Japan shoot down the missile that North Korea is planning on launching next week? In recent news reports such as this one, and this one, it is clear that the US is not planning on shooting down the missile North Korea is firing for the somewhat dubious stated purpose of a satellite launch.

My question is a bit more direct: Regardless of intent, are the US ships in the area, specifically the ones with Aegis systems, actually capable of shooting down and destroying a multi-stage rocket? In other words, regardless of whether we decided to do so, is it even technically feasible to do so?

Before I get arrested...

RufusW — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:39:05 -0800

Is online poker illegal in South Korea? My Google-fu is failing me. It seems that gambling is illegal but skill games aren't.

I would be playing at home but really want to get my fix of cards in this PC Bang.

Thanks for any help guys.....

Contemporary Korean Lit in English?

jwucd — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:38:25 -0800

I'm interested in modern Korean Literature, but am having a difficult time finding English translations of contemporary Korean authors (last 20 years). I'm primarily interested in novelists, but also short stories and memoirs. I'm aware there are a few anthologies of short stories. Who has been translated? Who of those is the best, in your opinion? Thanks.