chop-socky!

Introducing... the utterly brilliant Bruce Lee Remixer! Do not die before you have checked this out.

roh, roh, roh: the vote

Lazing around in bed yesterday morning, I flicked on the TV and skipped to channel 50, CNN. Bugger, I thought; sports news. Mind you, this Korean wrestling is kind of intriguing - dozens of combatants in business suits in a free-for-all slugfest with no obvious audience or referee. Is this what they mean when they chant "Korea Team Fighting"? Of course, as the mental mist started to dissipate I realised I was witnessing the vote to impeach dodgy-dealin' President Roh. A bunch of ne'er-do-wells from the Uri party had blockaded the speaker's podium and these Korean MPs were going nuts! Punches were thrown, grown men were on the floor bawling their eyes out - John Prescott would have had a field day. Once the speaker had decked a few scallywags and muscled his way to the podium the vote was taken and he announced the result amid a shower of improvised projectiles including shoes, chairs and a huge wooden ballot box. The vote was 193-2 - "Take the dough" Roh had slipped on a landslide and landed up to his eyeballs in shit. Now, I don't pretend to know what (if any) implications this has for me, but AFN, the US Army TV channel, was advising its viewers generally to stick away from large numbers of Koreans, and for the next six months the Prime Minister gets to be addressed as Mr (interim) President. What surprised me even more was that, though it was one of the top stories on the BBC, CNN, MSN and just about every other international news website, there was (and still is) no sign of the story on The Guardian's website. Apparently the story is of less international importance than "Historical sauce: lessons from silent naughties" and "You are your supermarket: Stuart Jeffries on why your choice of supermarket says more about you than you think" (which was, incidentally, headline number three).

Well, the Korean headlines promised civil unrest, and civil unrest we got. The locals, no strangers to slogan-chanting, had all dug out their candles and banners and descended on a spot right between us and where we were going shopping today, which was of course fine and dandy by me, particularly as we got to see Korean people focusing their attention on something other than their mobile phones. What was scary though were the busloads - and I mean literally thousands - of riot police, who seemed at times to outnumber the protesters. They were milling about smoking cigarettes, anxiously fidgeting with their batons and pepper spray. Clearly they meant business, None of our business, though, so we merrily pranced past them and went clothes shopping.

In fact, the only instances of actual unrest of the civil kind that we encountered today were two incidents whose connection to the impeachment of President Roh was at least tenuous. The first comprised an old drunk geezer who totally wiped out outside Cinnabon. I watched on in disgust as people acted as if he were just a phantom presence - one guy actually stepped over him. I went out and picked the guy up - once the weigook had got involved, there seemed to be a mass social loss of face as several people suddenly seemed very concerned and stepped up to help. Incredible. Still, he didn't seem too grateful. He was bundled into a taxi and despatched to somewhere with soup and comfy blankets. The second encounter involved two wasted girls having a blazing fight in a bank. Well, one was fighting, the other was slumped unconscious under the ATM. Being young and attractive, and therefore not invisible, they had attracted an impressively large audience, and in stark contrast to the drunken ajushi, everyone seemed to want to lend a helping grope... er, hand. I love performance theatre.

i am woman, hear me chant patriotic slogans

I found this gem in today's Korea Times. It's great to see that even Uncle Kim is getting into the spirit of feminism...

N. Korea Marks Women's Day

SEOUL (AFP) - Stalinist North Korea marked World Women's Day Monday with a call for women to give birth to more children and take a leading role in reviving the country's moribund economy.

"Women have the heavy duty of providing the succeeding generation of the military-oriented revolution," the North's ruling party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said in an editorial monitored by Yonhap news agency.

It highlighted the example of a mother who raised eight sons as soldiers loyal to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

"The Korean women are a powerful force of building a great prosperous powerful nation," the editorial said.

seedy rom?

There are now literally tens more pictures for you to marvel at, all specially selected and hand-picked from the finest memory cards, left to mature in traditional hard drives and refined by our resident team of Photoshop experts.

I feel something should be said about Korean supermarkets. Just as any simple task in this country can be transformed into a wacky adventure, grocery shopping is no exception. Now, I don't get down to Lotte Mart too often, given that I cook about once a week, but whenever I do I am always struck by the sheer volume of superfluous staff. There's a lady employed to put your 500 won piece into a trolley, and two more to put stickers on anything you bring into the shop to prove you haven't just nicked it. Then there are guys whose job seems to be to glide around on "Heelies" (trainers with wheels in the heels), and countless oddbods to try and flog you bread, sanitary towels, kimchi, and all the other products you would never associate with impulse buying. Most of these are the legendary "space girls" - pretty college students kitted out in tiny PVC costumes and leg-warmers - so no complaints from this corner. On top of this, there are ajumas cooking up free samples, and legions of fruit and vegetable merchants yelling into microphones, as well as the (actually necessary) shop assistants. In a supermarket where you see gridlock even in the cycling accessories section, one can't help but feel they just get in the way, when half the shins you take out are attached to people sporting "Hi! I'm Gavin" badges.

The tradition of "service" is extended to the extreme in these places. Common sense, as usual, goes out the window when deciding what comes free with what. Whereas at home you might expect to see a razor with some free, say, shaving gel, here it's just as likely to be a small bag of lentils or a paintbrush. A classic example: sat on the subway with Marcy this weekend, she opened her new pack of CD-Rs to find a small bag of seeds. Now whether this is a piece of supreme punnery on the part of the office supplies store or just further affirmation of South Korea's proud status as a logic-free zone we will never know.

Janelle: Hi there! She doesn't do thinking - her brain has turned to sugary mush from socialising exclusively with six-year-old Korean children.

Rich: It's weird to think there are still people I know in Manchester doing the same old things. Must get myself up there (or at least we should all meet up somewhere) when I'm back in Blighty. And for the record, we don't need Kid Koala in Korea. We've got... er... "DJ Beejay".......... Bastards! How could you?

a place for foreign pregnancy

James just left town, so it's time for a heads-up. As my North American (i.e. all of my) friends here might put it. Well, I think he had a pretty good time, experiencing the sheer oddity of day-to-day life in Seoul - the feeling of utter lack of responsibility, the craziness of Club Night, and all the little everyday occurrences which come together to create a trippy kind of ambience. It's a shame he never got to do two of the essential Korean experiences: visiting the DMZ, and Saturday night in Itaewon.

In fact, there's a grim story behind Itaewon:

"According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Itaewon has had two different sets of Chinese characters representing its name. One set used I (meaning different or foreign) and T'ae (meaning pregnancy or conception)... [The ever-popular Japanese army] raped the female monks and burned the temple when they left, leaving the female monks homeless. Several of the monks became pregnant and built a tent house where they gave birth to the children. People started to call the place It'aewon , a place for foreign pregnancy."

Horrendous as this is, the fact that Itaewon means "a place for foreign pregnancy" raised a hearty ironic chuckle. Talk about history repeating...

James also got to experience the peninsula's "batty" weather in full - it was pissing it down monsoon-style when he got here, and the day before he left there was a 6-hour blizzard totalling twenty inches of snow! A week prior to that we'd been basking on a sub-tropical island dotted with palm trees.

Yes, the Jeju-do trip was fantastic. It's a volcanic island populated with throroughly decent people and lots of, er, horses. One taxi driver was so excited at me speaking to him in Korean that he gave us a discount and followed us into the museum. I thought he was going to start hyperventilating and need an emergency tracheotomy - seems we really made his day. Or decade. The staff at the Crowne Plaza Hotel (a well plush hotel for £30 a night) were literally falling over themselves to help us - James more than once nearly got a faceful of coffee from jittery waitresses. This is a surprisingly regular occurrence here, even in American-style restaurants. I always try to imagine what's being said in their little hushed waitress conversations: "...Do you think they can use chopsticks? What if it's too spicy for them? Maybe we should put some ketchup on their kimchi..."

Most of the time we just bummed around, but we did get out to one of the lava tubes - massive tunnels where the melted rock looks like chocolate mousse. It was prime Bond baddie territory. The main attraction was supposed to be a rock shaped like a turtle, but to be honest it was more just the experience of being in a big tube cut out by a jet of molten rock which I found interesting. That and the weird textures of the stone. I would have quite liked to have followed the tunnel to its natural conclusion - surely the centre of the earth? Would have saved James a packet on his onward trip to Australia - but there was an ajuma with a barrier blocking the way.

On the Sunday night we were determined to rip up Jeju City, so we embarked on a mission to find the Playhouse Bar. Using my highly refined Lonely Planet skills, we found it pretty quickly, but it was sadly closed, so we moved on to the university area determined to find English teachers. Sure enough, suckered in by her attractive Korean friend (who promptly disappeared with some accountantish Korean geezer), we spent the evening with a rather irritating Landon gel called Anita. Anyhow, we made the best of it, necking a truckload of beer and killer bekseju at a Noraebang, where we stayed, belting out the choicest tunes J-Lo has to offer, until 4am.

Now my story is told, I'm off to Itaewon to create a new one. I'll try to avoid being chalked up as another foreign impregnator. Jeju-do photos up soon.