Category: Wacky Stuff

The Chung family has sold their second dry cleaning business in the aftermath of the $54 million dollar pants lawsuit:

The owners of the dry cleaning shop made famous after they were sued for millions because of a lost pair of pants said Wednesday they have sold a second of their three stores.

The Chung family said they sold the shop involved in the dispute because of revenue loss and the emotional toll from the lawsuit.

In June, the family successfully defended a suit filed by Roy Pearson, a family court judge who sued the cleaners for $54 million in damages for a pair of missing pants.

While the legal fees were covered by fund-raisers, the Chungs have lost business because of the lawsuit and because Pearson posted flyers critical of the cleaners around the neighborhood, according to the Chungs’ lawyer.

At one point, Soo and Jin Chung owned three stores as a part of their dry cleaning chain, but they said in a statement issued Wednesday they were forced to sell two of the stores because of financial losses stemming from the infamous lawsuit. The first store was sold last year.

"This is a truly tragic example of how devastating frivolous litigation can be to the American people and to small businesses," the family’s lawyer, Christopher Manning, said in the statement. "This family has poured its heart and soul into their dry cleaning stores only to have their dreams crushed by Roy Pearson’s lawsuit."

Pearson is appealing the decision.  [CNN Money]

Considering they lost business despite the publicity they received from the lawsuit makes me wonder if there is any racial undertones to the fact they lost business.  Maybe someone reading this familar with where the Chung’s business locations in the D.C. area can comment on that.  You can read more over at the Marmot’s Hole.

Seriously I don’t know who is worse, the Korean protesters who put the handicapped guy in the wheelchair in the middle of the protest or the cops that beat him down, arrested him, and took him to jail:

I don’t understand Korean all that well so native speakers feel free to make any corrections, but what I make from this is that the protesters are protesting outside a government education office demanding better treatment of handicapped students in Korea.  Things turned ugly when the protesters demanded that the handicapped guy they had with them be allowed into the government building to use the toilet.  The police would not allow the handicapped person into the building to use the toilet and as you saw in the video all hell breaks loose. 

Japan Probe is reporting that the war over ” The Sea that Cannot Be Named” has a new front, Google Ads:

I came across the following advertisement today while viewing a site that had Google Ads:

The ad link led to http://eastsea.koreanblog.com, which appears to be a small free blog set up by someone. There is only one post on the blog, parroting the usual ultranationalist Korean argument against the international usage of the name “Sea of Japan.”

This guys blog is low budget and cheesy. You would think that if you are willing to put up the money to buy a Google Ad you would at least put a half way decent webpage together. Additionally the last time the webpage was updated was in 2004. Can this issue get any more stupid?

Take a look at this picture of a Lee Byung-hun concert in Japan:

Do you notice anything strange about it?  If you haven’t noticed anything strange yet, then click here to find out what is missing in this picture.

Thanks to the Bass Hole for pointing out this stupid foreigner trick:

A Korean broke into a bank in Hamburg, Germany and held hostages for three hours before he was arrested by German special police on July 28, according to the internet edition of a German daily paper, Build.

The Korean, identified only as K, entered the Sparkasse bank in Alsdorf, Hamburg at 7:50 a.m. and confronted police, taking two female hostages, before he was arrested by police MEK (Mobiles Einsatzkommando), the newspaper said. The hostages were released right before the police began rescue operations.

What nothing about “running amok” in the article? Is that terminology only for taxi cab related incidents and not bank robberies?

Today I had something really weird happen. This afternoon there was a knock at the door my wife answered the door where she began to engage in a conversation with a middle aged Korean woman. They began to argue and I asked my wife what they were arguing about. I came to find out that the woman on our door was a Scientology recruiter trying to enlist my wife. My wife is a die hard Christian so she was getting worked up by the Scientology sales pitch.

The recruiter was happy to see me though because she must of realized she wasn’t getting anywhere with my wife and tried to convince me about the wonders of Scientology. One of her claims were that Scientologists were some of the first people on the scene in Taegu after the subway fire a few years back and they rescued many lives. I checked out her claim on the internet and she is slightly correct:

In the same month Church of Scientology Volunteer Ministers went to the aid of the Sakhalin victims, they also served in the aftermath of the huge explosion that rocked Taegu, a large city in southern South Korea. A construction site gas main had blown up, killing and injuring scores of people, including children.

One Scientologist and a student from the university where he teaches English were among the Volunteer Ministers who hurried to the scene of the accident to give assists. Dozens of children who were distraught at the start told the professor and his student after the assists that they were calmer, relieved and no longer afraid.

She also claimed that Scientologists were aiding with the tsunami disaster. Which I also found to be true. However, when I asked her if the Scientologists were just aiding the disaster victims to gain more members, she just commented that if people in the region wanted to join after their aid efforts that is perfectly acceptable. I personally find it reprehensible that any religion would use the tsunami relief effort as a method to recruit more members to their religion.

So what exactly is Scientology? If you are interested you can clikck here to find out more about it, but it appears just to be nothing more than a cult based around the teachings from the books by L. Ron Hubbard. I found a Fox News report about Scientology that claims that the Scientology is a cult and brings up the names of many of the movie stars that practice Scientology such as Goldie Hawn, John Travolta, and Tom Cruise. Allegedly Scientology is what broke up his marriage to Nicole Kidman.

I was curious about Scientology in Korea and I asked the woman how many Koreans practice Scientology and she just told me many are joining every day. I take that to mean not many. So I checked it out on the internet and found on a Scientology website that there is in fact 443 Scientologists in Korea. 401 of them are based out of Seoul.

During my research also found out that Hubbard had a connection to Korea. He was a military policeman here in 1946 and was discharged from the Navy following his tour here. While here in Korea he preached his Scientology philosophy and worked to create converts. It looks like they are still trying to create converts here; it just isn’t going to be me.

Take what you want from these pictures but I do find them quite interesting and I’m sure you will to.

I was playing a children’s game and an orgy broke out!

I have seen wrestlers do this before to make weight.

This picture doesn’t need a comment.

For some reason in Korea the laws of gravity just do not apply to odashi. Take for example the picture to the right. Odashi can just drive around with two cars piled on the back of his truck with minimum bracing with no fear of them falling over into the road. The same thing can be said for the thousands of Bongo trucks that drive around every day in Korea with oversized loads of everything from chickens, toilets, and furniture piled up in the back up to 12 feet hight with minimal ropes and bracing to hold it in place.

For whatever reason the stuff does not fall. You can actually see the loads swaying in the wind back and forth and yet they do not fall. Odashi will even pile propane tanks on the back of little motorcycles that drive all over the sidewalks and swerve to avoid pedestrians. Yet none of these propane tanks ever fall of the motorcycles. How does he do it? Is there some secret odashi gravity warping device on sale at E-Mart? If an American tried to pile the stuff on his truck like odashi does it would all fall over once the vehicle began moving. I don’t know what it is but the mystery of odashi’s gravity defying abilities.

Today I saw some rather strange things on my way to Dongducheon. I was stopped at a light in Uijongbu when this presumably drunk ajimma was walking down the sidewalk kicking trash cans, the side of a building, and cars. She kept walking up the sidewalk and approached a telephone pole and head butted it! I couldn’t believe it. However the solid head butt she gave that pole sobered her up real quick because she quit kicking things. Then later we saw a broke down car in the middle of the road blocking traffic. Three ambulances and a police car responded to the broken down car. They must have nothing better to do.

Then later in the drive my driver saw flashing lights again and thought maybe another ambulance or a police car was responding to the broken down car. No it was the KTF internet man! This guy had his service car decked out with police lights and siren. He was hauling ass down the road to presumably respond to an internet emergency! Just imagine how many more people would jump off of buildings in this country if their internet didn’t get repaired in a timely fashion to play Starcraft again. Watching the KTF squad car fly down the road made think of Jim Carry in the movie Dumb and Dumber. I just picture the KTF guy flying into a parking lot and jumping out with his badge and saying, “It’s okay, I’m the KTF man.” I hope other companies don’t pick up on this guy because pretty soon everybody in this country will have squad cars with lights and sirens so they to can cut through traffic. I’m just wondering if there is some law that allows the internet repairman to have a squad car? Is losing your internet for a while enough of emergency to warrant a squad car? I guess if you are a Starcraft gamer it is.

Then when we got to Dongducheon some old lady flashed us as we were driving by. In Dongducheon I have seen plenty of weird things but never an old ajimma flashing me. Now I can say I have seen that to. Now all I need is an adashi to flash me and I can say I have officially seen it all in this country.

Anyone who has driven on Korean roads knows that they are extremely dangerous and almost follow a Darwinian survival of the fittest philosophy. The undisputed king of the food chain on the Korean roads are the Terminator semi-trucks and the public buses. These oversized behemoths will run you over and cut you off without a second thought. The next tier of Kings of the Road would be all the taxis in Korea.

All the taxi drivers have some unwritten pass to break any and all traffic laws. I have never seen a cab driver ever get ticketed for committing a traffic violation. On the Korean roads, we GI’s have learned to always yield to these guys and let them have the road. However, my battalion commander learned that another vehicle that another vehicle also has earned a higher place on the highway food chain. My battalion commander’s driver merged his vehicle in front of a tow truck cutting him off. He didn’t think anything of it until the tow truck pulled up along side of him and the driver began to curse him out in Korean.

My battalion commander’s driver is a Korean-American so he understood everything the guy said. The driver yelled back at him and the tow truck driver got more angry and cut off my battalion commander. They ended up stopping at a stop light and the tow truck driver then put his vehicle in reverse and slammed my battalion commander’s vehicle repeatedly with his tow truck and the driver then called the police saying he had been rear ended by some American GIs at a stop light. Fortunately my battalion commander’s driver could speak Korean and rounded up some witnesses at the scene to speak with the police varifying their accounts. Initially the Korean police were going to give my commander a ticket before the witnesses gave their side of the story and the Korean police changed their minds. If my commander did not have a Korean speaking driver he probably would have been found guilty of rear ending the tow truck. Fortunately they were not but the police let the tow truck driver go.

Didn’t he committ assault by attacking my commander with a tow truck? If an American did that their would be a candle light vigil demanding my commander be tried in a Korean civilian court for assault. Once again assaulting an American soldier is not a problem here because it is open season on us here. But for future reference, I am never going to cut off another tow truck driver. They have moved up the highway food chain.