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Samsung, IOC deny asking iPhone carrying Olympic athletes to cover their Apple logos

Casey Baseel
Feb 18, 2014
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The Olympics gives the world’s most talented athletes a chance to show their abilities to people all over the globe. It also gives the world’s most wealthy marketers a chance to show their products to that same audience.

Among the Games’ biggest sponsors is Samsung, whose Galaxy Note 3 was granted the title of official phone of the Sochi Olympics in thanks of its manufacturer’s generosity. Some reports are claiming that the Korean electronics maker isn’t showing a respect for healthy competition, though, by asking athletes with iPhones to make sure they cover the Apple logo when on-camera.

Why a Korean speed skating star changed his name and started racing for Russia

BUSINESS INSIDER
Feb 17, 2014

Twelve years ago, South Korea’s Ahn Hyun-soo crashed into Apolo Ohno a few feet from the finish line in the men’s short track 1000m at the Olympics.

It sparked an intense rivalry between the two skaters that peaked at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, where Hyun-soo won three gold medals to Ohno’s one.

On Saturday night in Sochi, the Hyun-soo won gold again. But now his name is Viktor Ahn, and he skates for Russia.

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Korean high schools allow “anything goes” yearbook photos, with hilarious results

Mike
Feb 17, 2014

I remember when I was a senior in high school and hung out with a sort of goofy crowd, we all spent several weeks wracking our brains trying to find a way to inject some kind of originality into our senior photos. We knew anything too outrageous or offensive would get stopped by yearbook censors, so about the only thing we could come up with was growing some dirty-looking caterpillar mustaches.

If only we’d been in Korea, where some high schools – realizing that senior year is the last time in their lives that youths really get to act like kids – allow nearly any kind of wacky individual and group photos the kids see fit to take:

Beautiful Korean woman earns a living with Internet videos of herself…eating dinner? 【Video】

Casey Baseel
Feb 4, 2014

Today, we’d like to talk to you about Seo-yeon Park, a young woman living in South Korea. Ms. Park used to have a respectable position at a business consulting firm, but being an attractive young woman, she discovered that she could attract a large audience by posting videos of herself online. Many of the people watching can’t do the things she does, others can but feel they shouldn’t. Deep down inside, though, everyone who watches Park’s videos, in which she gives herself the pleasure and satisfaction most can only dream of, secretly longs to follow her unbridled example.

Eventually, Park’s online activities, which started out as a hobby, became so encompassing that she quit her job. Her online exhibitionism is now a full-time gig for which she has adopted the stage name The Diva.

As we’re sure you’ve already guessed, Park has crossed over completely into the world of producing Internet videos of herself eating piles of delicious food, and is making a comfortable living from it.

Want to smooch (and brag about it) but missing a partner? How to take a kissing selfie alone

Krista Rogers
Feb 3, 2014

Everyone wants to feel the joy of a simple kiss; the intimacy, the passion, the physical closeness, it’s all so nice. But there are many hurdles to successful kissing – the biggest being the fact that you need a willing and kissable partner! So what about the single people of the world? How can they fill their friends’ Facebook feed with annoying photos of themselves caught in the moment and having a nice smooch?

Enter slightly eccentric Japanese blogger Keisuke Jinushi, who lives by the mantra “There’s no time like the present” and is a self-dubbed “perpetual loner”. After his hugely successful “girlfriend hand” selfies wherein he tricked the world into believing he had a real girl of his own to feed him food and wipe ketchup of his face, Keisuke now introduces us to a foolproof technique for anyone who wants to make people think they have a kissable partner! You might get a few funny stares, though…

Survey reveals that Japan’s kids would rather bake cakes and score goals than cure illnesses

Philip Kendall
Jan 28, 2014

Kids’ hopes and dreams for the future can change from one minute to the next and very often depend on the TV shows they watch and whatever their friends are talking about on any given week. But a recent survey conducted by human resource consulting company Adecco has revealed some interesting information about the future aspirations of children from Japan compared to those of kids from other eight other Asian countries.

Plastic surgery clinic in Seoul makes art out of patients’ jaw bones

Michelle Lynn Dinh
Jan 25, 2014

You like sausage, right? Of course you do. But no one ever wants to see how the sausage is made. So why did this plastic surgery clinic in Seoul think it was a good idea to display two towering columns filled with the jaw bones of their past patients? It’s enough to make you rethink your pursuit of the perfect chin.

How the meaning of “quality” differs between the U.S., Japan, Korea, and China

Casey Baseel
Jan 22, 2014

Quick, what color means “go” at a traffic signal? If you speak English, odds are you just said “green” (and if you don’t speak English, why are you here? The articles with pictures of cute girls and cool robots are in a different part of the site).

On the other hand, in Japanese that same light is considered ao, which translates as “blue.” Crazy as it may seem, the Japanese concept of the color extends all the way down to the hues of traffic signals and mountain forests. It’s just one example of how the same word can have different meanings in different cultures.

OK, so that may be true for artsy fartsy things like colors, but surely this kind of linguistic flatulence isn’t present in the world of business, right? Wrong. Even seemingly simple things like the term “quality” can have vastly different meanings depending on the nation, as one expert demonstrates by explaining the differing definitions consumers in the U.S., Japan, Korea, and China have for it.

We eat tasty, steaming Korean poo cakes

Casey Baseel
Jan 17, 2014

It’s been a little more than a year since we reported on ttongsul, or Korean feces wine. And while many of our readers enjoyed sampling the beverage vicariously through the five victims brave young ladies we recruited for the taste test, others took us to task for not having our regular staff knock back a glass of dookie-liqueur.

In an attempt at penance, we traveled to Korea to snack on poo-shaped cakes.

Korean soldier convicted for washing gun in the laundry

Master Blaster
Jan 11, 2014

Last November, a man enlisted in the Republic of Korea Armed Forces was serving his final day before he was scheduled to be discharged. He just had one last order: clean his personal combat equipment – including his firearm – for inspection.

Apparently feeling burdened with this final duty, he must have been looking for a quick fix when – perhaps thinking “Why not kill two birds with one stone?” – he decided to wash his gun in with the laundry. What could possibly go wrong?

Michael Bay loses it on stage, pretty much ruins Samsung’s CES presentation

Philip Kendall
Jan 7, 2014

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2014 is currently underway over in Las Vegas, giving the industry’s big players a chance to flaunt their wares and drum up publicity for the coming year. With so much shiny new tech on show, it will be difficult to pick an overall winner, but Samsung’s presentation earlier today with special guest world-famous director Michael Bay will no doubt go down as most memorable, though not as the South Korean company might have hoped.

There to discuss Samsung’s gorgeous new 150-inch curved TV set, the Transformers director fluffed his lines and promptly marched off stage, leaving executive vice president Joe Stinziano with little left to do but ask the audience to thank Mr. Bay for coming, prompting one of the most awkward rounds of applause in CES history.

Samsung offers us TV the way it’s meant to be seen: on a 110-inch monster screen

Master Blaster
Jan 3, 2014

You know that feeling when you’re watching Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and think to yourself, “this is great, but I really wish I could see Lisa Vanderpump’s face seven times its actual size”?

As luck would have it, just a few days ago, Samsung began selling a 110-inch UltraHD4K monster of a TV. That means your dreams can be a reality as long as you live in the right place and have the necessary funds–and we have a feeling it’d be totally worth it because as well as boasting amazing picture quality, this thing is absolutely enormous.

The newest member of the Sailor Moon cast: Iron Man!?

Preston Phro
Jan 1, 2014

One of the most iconic scenes from the recent Iron Man films is that of the Jarvis-infused suit attaching itself to Tony Stark as the billionaire walks, falls, or just stands around looking sexy. It might be one of the coolest ways of getting dressed in the history of cinema, but, if we’re being honest, we always thought something could be done to make it appeal a bit more to shojo anime fans.

Well, thanks to a team of South Korean college students, our dreams have been answered…and we can finally find out what a Sailor Moon-style Iron Man transformation would look like. Spoiler alert: Freaking amazing!

Korean woman goes under the knife 120 times in pursuit of perfection

Mike
Dec 19, 2013

We’ve already covered South Korea’s attitudes about plastic surgery; basically, that it’s considered at worst a necessary evil for some folks to get ahead in life.

That cultural attitude has led the country to be widely considered the world cosmetic surgery capital, and has even led a handful, like this obsessed woman, to spend years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars artificially perfecting their appearance.

Bedroom tents helping South Koreans keep warm this winter

Scott R Dixon
Dec 3, 2013

We here at RocketNews24 are no strangers to finding new ways to both keep warm and save a few yen on our heating bill through the harsh winter months, but our friends in South Korea, encouraged by a recent unusually cold spurt, have found an ingenious way to lower their thermostat and stay toasty all night—indoor tents. And the tents are becoming so popular that some retailers are selling out!

Tiger in park causes scare in Korea

Joan Coello
Nov 24, 2013

We all know the police face dangerous situations chasing armed criminals and speeding vehicles, but sometimes, the dangerous opponents they face are barely even human.

Recently, the police in Busan, Korea, received a call reporting sightings of a tiger in a park. It’s common knowledge that tigers are ferocious animals, so the police rushed to the scene at once. But a twist of events left them in a very awkward situation.

South Korea busts smugglers for “diet pills” containing human flesh

Scott R Dixon
Nov 4, 2013

Back in 2011, news reports that Chinese-made “health supplements” contained ground-up corpses of babies and fetuses shocked the world. Unfortunately, this macabre story continues as some of the so-called “human flesh capsules” have made their way into South Korea again. Even though there has been a heavy crackdown on these kind of black market “medicine,” Korean authorities arrested two Chinese men last month for smuggling the gruesome pills and then reselling them as “diet supplements.”

South Korean netizens fume over president’s footwear faux pas

Scott R Dixon
Oct 31, 2013

South Korean netizens are apparently up in arms over their president’s choice of shoes that she wore when throwing the opening pitch of the third game of the Korean Series baseball tournament in Seoul on October 27. Her fashion crime? President Park Guen Hye had the “audacity” to show up wearing a Japanese brand of sneakers!

Who would the U.S. back in a Japanese-Korean war? South Korean netizens debate

Scott R Dixon
Oct 22, 2013

If Japan and South Korea were on Facebook, there is no doubt that their relationship status would be “it’s complicated.” Between territorial spats, historical disputes and arguing over a pop star’s table manners, these two countries have a lot of uncomfortable diplomatic moments. But they do have one very major thing in common—mutual defense treaties with the United States. Although we doubt (and very much hope) that Tokyo and Seoul never resort to war to solve these issues, some South Korean netizens recently took to the Internet to ponder who Uncle Sam would back in such a fight.