Displayed at a booth at “Internet of Things Fair 2014 ” in Seoul on Nov. 5, 2014, is a drone capable of transmitting real-time pictures through a long-term evolution (LTE) network. (Yonhap)
Either someone is really stupid or something was lost in translation with this story:
An Irish school teacher was turned away from a position in South Korea due to the “alcoholism nature of [her] kind”.
Katie Mulrennan, from County Kerry, had applied for a job in the capital Seoul after seeing the role advertised on Craigslist.
However, the 26-year-old received a rejection email telling her that she would not be offered the work because, as the stereotype goes, Irish people are drunks. [The Independent]
You can read more at the link, but she has since found another job.
Kim Bok-soon disliked her nose and fantasized about getting it fixed after learning of the Korean superstition that an upturned nose makes it harder to hold on to riches.
While waiting in a hair salon, she saw a magazine advertisement for a plastic surgery clinic and decided to go for it, despite her family’s objections.
In South Korea, where physical perfection is seen as a way to improve the quality of life, including job and marriage prospects, plastic surgery procedures can seem as commonplace as haircuts.
Kim’s doctor said he could turn her into a celebrity lookalike, and Kim decided to take the plunge, taking loans and spending 30 million won ($28,000) for 15 surgeries on her face over the course of a day.
When the bandages came off and she looked in the mirror, she knew something had gone horribly wrong. Only later did Kim find out her doctor was not a plastic surgery specialist. (Reuters)
You can read more about Korea’s shady plastic surgery practices at the link.
Dutch King Willem-Alexander (C) tours Gyeongbok Palace, the main royal palace during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), in downtown Seoul on Nov. 4, 2014. His wife, Queen Maxima, is at his left. (Yonhap)
The AFP has an article about how difficult the retirement years can be for the elderly in Korea:
Out of work and out of pocket, South Korean retirees are struggling to force their way back into an unwelcoming job market in an effort to supplement meagre or non-existent pensions.
But President Park Geun-Hye’s vision of a new “creative economy” seems to have little space for a generation that grew up with shipyards and steel mills rather than smartphones and start-ups.
Kim Min-Su, 69, receives a monthly pension of 590,000 ($562)– the sole source of income for him and his wife who live in a mini-apartment in Seoul.
“I wasn’t able to put much aside when I was working because nearly all of it went on raising and schooling my four kids,” Kim said after a morning spent scanning job vacancy notices at a Career Transition Centre for the elderly. (AFP)
You can read much more at the link, but something the government is trying to do is have companies pay workers less as they become older to keep them working. It seems like this will cause the unemployment of young college graduates to only become worse in Korea.
South Korean school children were the least happy among those in OECD countries, a recent survey showed.
In the latest survey, the subjective happiness index of South Korean children was 60.3 percent, which was the lowest among the OECD countries. [Korea Herald]
A tanker truck carrying sulfuric acid hit a guardrail along a local road Wednesday and overturned, spilling some of the acid into Nakdong River, South Korea’s longest river, firefighters and police said.
The truck, which had a load capacity of 25 tons, was carrying about 20,000 liters of sulfuric acid. About 200 liters of the acid spilled into the river, which passes through Gyeongsang Provinces in the country’s southeast, they added.
The 53-year-old driver of the truck suffered a minor injury.
The firefighters said they are trying to contain the spill by building an embankment to prevent more acid from flowing into the river.
Authorities said they are inspecting water from the river to determine whether the leaked sulfuric acid has negatively affected living things in the river. Sulfuric acid, which is highly corrosive, can be fatal to fish.
“As the acid that has spilled into the river has been diluted, it seemed that the accident would have little effect,” said an official at the provincial government.
The authorities said that they will continue to inspect the water in the lower region of the river to gauge the effect of the leakage for the next few days. [Yonhap]
