New TV Show "I Want to Be Average" A Hit

A new television show, which takes ordinary people who want to remain ordinary, has proven a surprise hit with Korean audiences tiring of a society where everyone wants to be famous by singing one of the ten songs which appear on Korea's hundreds of search-for-a-star audition programs.

During filming, 24 year-old Kim stood on stage, complaining that she had arrived on the pretext of a job interview for an office assistant, and hadn't been expecting to be placed in front of TV cameras. Another contestant, 27 year-old Kim, then delighted the audience by refusing to sing and complaining that he was going to be late to meet his girlfriend. When the potential of a recording contract was offered to the next person on stage, 30 year-old Kim, he said he didn't want to be a star and was happy with his job in retail, resulting in so much laughter that two members of the audience required medical treatment.

The winner of the show, 28 year-old delivery driver Kim, eventually wowed audiences with an audacious attempt to actually escape from the TV cameras, by leaping off the stage when he realized that the package he had been asked to collect was a cover story to bring him onto the show. Security staff from S&M Entertainment guided him back, where he spent the rest of his allotted time facing away from the audience, visible only in the large mirror which staff wheeled on to the rear of the stage to allow the cameras to still catch facial close-ups.

It's believed to be the first time in Korean history that an ordinary person has tried to escape from a television program, although last year 36 year-old popular entertainer Kim Jung-hwan was sentenced to eight months in prison for missing a recording of his show, and 31 year-old actress Kim Ye-seul went AWOL from the set of her soap opera, with military police sent out to bring her back for trial for her desertion of duty.

But 28 year-old Kim is resisting attempts to turn him into an 'average idol'. After the program aired he returned to work despite S&M Entertainment's demands that he honors his contract to make public appearances in average places which have paid for them. The massive conglomerate is believed to be considering suing Kim for breach of contract. Kim denies he signed such a contract, although he admits that he did sign a document for the package he was supposed to be picking up.

But all may not be be lost for S&M. Cameras are now following an increasingly evasive Kim around Seoul, with suggestions a spin-off may produce a sleeper hit for the "I Want to Be Average" show. The company has also announced it is setting up its first 'Average Audition Cram School', to attract other Koreans interested in not becoming famous. Successful graduates are promised the possibility of winning one of S&M's lucrative 13 year 'slave contracts'.

Shares in S&M rose on the news, with the prospect that the company may be able to move beyond charging audition school fees in the saturated wannabe-star market, into the relatively undeveloped demographic of the 30% of Koreans who want to remain average that now have an outlet for their talent.

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Korea Times Says Alien Invaders From Planet Gootan Arrive November

The Korea Times has broken ranks with a massive conspiracy of silence instigated by the government and scientific community, to warn its readers that alien invaders from the planet Gootan are now expected to arrive at Earth in November to launch a massive attack.

Last year there was panic when the newspaper, Korea's oldest mainland English language publication, revealed that three giant objects - "probably outer spaceships" up to 240 kilometers in diameter were near Pluto, heading towards Earth. Shortly after, it published the first photo of the alien invaders, saying they would arrive in December 2012.

Some people are still holding out hopes that the arrival of the giant spaceships a month earlier than originally expected may indicate they are using brake parts from Hyundai Accents, and may merely be visiting to obtain spares, but Hyundai have dismissed this idea saying they do not share secrets with foreigners. The spaceships are said to now be passing Jupiter – it is not known if they have already started trying to apply their brakes.

The Korea Times says advance scouts for the Gootan invasion fleet are already visiting Earth. In September, UFOs were spotted in the skies above Daejeon and quickly declared hostile when the government admitted that nobody would travel vast interstellar distances just to visit Daejeon, when most people in Korea won't even go there from Seoul. The newspaper now says that other giant ships landed in China and the Indonesian Sea in November, although Fox News has suggested that the latter ship may have been shot down by Islamic militants.

The Korea Times also revealed that according to the lead extraterrestrial expert at SETI, Chinese officials have obtained over 1,000 secret NASA photographs depicting not only human footprints, but even a human carcass on the surface of the Moon. The official said that some of the body's bones were missing, and it was probably dropped on the Moon from an alien spaceship. But Korean space experts said NASA had taken shots of the Korean Moon landing site.

With a large scale assault said to be imminent, Korean scientists are believed to be engaged in desperate attempts to try and contact the aliens before they arrive to destroy Earth, in order to ask them what they think of bibimbap.

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Was Seollal Japanese First?

Anger has mounted within Korea today after Korean scientists reported that Seollal – the Korean Lunar New Year which is now celebrated around the world – had occurred in Japan an hour before it being rightfully enjoyed by Korea. The scientists said that the new moon, which marks the beginning of a new and prosperous year for all South Koreans except disabled and gay people, was claimed in Tokyo at 5.54pm Korea Standard Time, before there was even chance for it to become properly dark on the peninsula.

The use of the first new moon of the lunar year is believed to be part of a plot by the Japanese government to reduce the moon's prosperous effect in Korea, destabilizing the Korean economy and causing unharmonious feelings in a country famous for its morning calm and harmonious social order. The Ministry of Strategy and Finance says that as a result of Japan's actions, Korea's per-capita income for the new lunar year is expected to now fall short of the government's earlier forecast, especially for employees working for large corporations, and perceptions of social inequality may wrongly grow.

Tensions between Korea and the country it defeated at the end of the Second World War have increased in recent months after Tokyo once again falsely claimed the Korean territory of Dokdo, saying it was Japanese even though the islands - which are home to over 50,000 Koreans - has no Japanese residents.

Korea introduced culture to Japan. 'Ajikgi' and 'Wang In' are the two Koreans recorded in the earliest Japanese historical records for having brought their superior culture and Chinese writing to the Japanese. But during the Meiji Restoration the Japanese government attempted a systematic cover-up of Japan's Korean-based culture and switched to the Gregorian Calendar in order to repress Seollal in Japan and harass Japanese Koreans and Korean descendents including the Emperor and his family.

Shockingly, Japan does not even recognize the importance of lunar new year now and is believed to have taken the new moon just because it was there, and to deprive Korea of its use. Kim, a 25 year-old office worker voiced the reaction of many on the deserted streets of Seoul, saying that it was typical of the Japanese to take something from Korea and then "not value it."

The government has said it will look into placing moon spotters on high mountains in the east of the country, or building a large tower in Korea's easternmost province of Dokdo, to ensure that in future years Koreans are able to claim the new moon before the Japanese.

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Exclusive: Microsoft Plans Massive Cyber Attack Against South Korea

Following the death of North Korean leader King Jong-il last month, South Korea's telecommunications regulator warned people against possible cyber attacks in retaliation for them not wailing enough, with the nation's cyber alert level raised to the third highest level – known as "pretending-to-watch" - from its forth-highest level known as "head-in-the-ground".

But now open sources close to the government say they have uncovered a plot to launch a massive cyber attack against South Korea this month, not by North Korea but instead by Microsoft, who are believed to be ready to automatically update all users of Internet Explorer (IE) to the latest version of the web browser.

With many Koreans still using Internet Explorer 6, which was launched in 2001, and many Korean websites only designed to work on that version of IE, a sudden jump forward by several versions and over eleven years is likely to lead to the complete collapse of South Korea's Windows-dependent infrastructure as sites from banking to air-traffic control stop functioning. Hospitals have been warned to prepare for a massive influx of casualties from Korea's IT industry as web designers are suddenly asked to learn something new.

When questioned, Microsoft claimed its attack against South Korea was actually part of an initiative to improve security online, and some foreign experts claim that global Internet security would be improved if Korea was removed from the online world. But many in the Korean government believe that the planned attack is actually in retaliation for the government's announcement in August that it was going to develop its own indigenous operating system, known as K-OS.

At the time the development of K-OS was called the first move in Korea's 'software war' against foreign IT companies and their non-Korean technologies, as Korea tried to develop its own software industry based on the success of earlier government supported projects such as K-DOS and the Mangul Word Processr (HWP).

It is not known when Microsoft will start its attack. The company said updates to IE6 would be applied without Korea's knowledge to help beat scammers catching people out with fake updates. When the attack begins, the telecommunications regulator says it may raised the nation's cyber alert to Level 2 - '404 Not Found'.

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'Organized Crime Ring Members Control Korea'

Members of an organized crime ring have taken the helm of the government for the past 24 years, police said Wednesday.

They used taxes collected from people to operate the government as a fund for their crime ring, a spokesman said, adding that the chief of the group and his cronies worked as the the president and various ministers one after another.

The Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency said it was seeking to arrest nine members of the "SKY" group on charges of violence and organizing a crime ring. They spent about 370 trillion won from the public purse for the benefit of their group, including holding a series of events and parties.

The group's head, 84, who was identified only by his surname Kim, is believed to have taken the office of President in 1997. After his term ended, other gang members were chosen to succeed him.

He is accused of exerting influence-peddling to make his cronies ministers and place them in various positions of power in the country. "Ordinary people knew they were political gangsters but did nothing about it nor reported it to the police for fear of revenge attacks" a police officer said.

Police are also investigating allegations that gangsters have gained control of councils in other regions.

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Hyundai Ends Legal Battle Against Hyundai

Hyundai and Hyundai have agreed to end all legal disputes stemming from the purchase of local construction company Hyundai by Hyundai last year.

Hyundai had originally owned the bankrupt construction company - Hyundai - before it was handed over to banks in a debt for equity swap. After the banks had turned the business around Hyundai was picked as the prospective buyer so the whole cycle of running it into the ground could begin again, but it then lost the right to buy the company when separately, Hyundai raised doubts about Hyundai's ability to come up with the 4.96 trillion won necessary to pay creditors.

At a tense meeting last year in January, eight major creditors had approved a proposal to sign a memorandum of understanding to sell Hyundai to Hyundai after Hyundai lost out its rights to purchase the company. In response, Hyundai promised to file a series of lawsuits against the creditors of Hyundai to prevent Hyundai signing a new memorandum of understanding with Hyundai.

But Hyundai said last week it was dropping the charges of 'spreading lies' and defamation against Hyundai. In response, Hyundai said it would also end several countersuits against Hyundai.

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2012 Marks 5,000 Years of Hangeul

2012 will mark the 5,000th birthday of the written Korean language the Korean government have announced. Hanguel, or Hangul, is acknowledged as the most scientific language in the world.

But the anniversary carries mixed emotions for Hangul scientists, who say they need to do more to educate uneducated people about the true origins of the written language. Many people still believe that Hangeul was developed by King Sejong the Great in 1446, and incredibly this is still taught in many school textbooks. However, as many educated people know, this was simply a story introduced by the Japanese colonial administration during its occupation of Korea in order to make the Korean language, which is better than Japanese, look younger and not properly tested.

The King Sejong story dates back to 1940, when so-called researchers working during the Japanese occupation say they discovered what they claimed was an 'original' and 'only remaining' copy of the Hunmin Jeongeum Haerye, a volume of commentary and detailed explanations of exceptions to the Hunmin Jeongeum – the original promulgation of Hangul. The work was dated to 1446 - based on a typewritten published date in the front cover of the book - which the occupying Japanese administration said proved that the actual announcement of Hangeul which preceded it was made a week earlier, on Tuesday.

Unfortunately the Japanese were successful in their rewriting of history, and the government is reluctant to correct Korea's history textbooks because it has always maintained that anything printed in a Korean school textbook is either true or will become true by the act of being taught to children in classrooms. In fact, it is widely believed that textbook changes have become even more difficult in recent years because of the strengthening of the 'goodfact' movement over those seeking to indoctrinate the young and impressionable with so-called 'hardfacts', as the goodfact movement has benefited from government campaigns urging citizens to be more positive and find easier and more efficient ways of doing things.

Korea has also come under pressure not to claim Hangul's true 5,000 year old heritage by the Chinese government, who have said that any attempt to correctly prove that Hangeul is older than written Chinese – which is a later derivative of Hangeul – would result in a strong diplomatic protest, possibly involving the reluctant and peaceful use of its nuclear weapons.

Some in the government say that Hangul's 5,000 year old history was always a goodfact and should never have been suppressed by successive local administrations after the Japanese were defeated by a popular Korean uprising in 1945, but reversing this oversight would now be an embarrassment, and questions would be asked, which is against the current government's policies.

But Hangeul scientists are still urging the government to promote the true origins of Hangul, by reinstating Hangul Day as a public holiday. The holiday was removed in 1991 because of pressure from Korea's largest corporations to increase the number of working days, in order to ensure that corporate leaders could better enjoy their playboy lifestyles and not face the trauma of going out shopping only to find all the stores and restaurants closed.

Last year was a mixed one for Hangeul. Apart from it being Korean, one of its greatest advantages is that it is generally held that illiterate people and foreigners can learn it in less than an hour, so last year the Korean government set out to teach illiterate tribes in Bolivia and Indonesia Korea's written language, offering them either some interesting beads or tens of million dollars in aid money, which could aid them to buy alcohol and prostitutes from outside civilization. But in Indonesia the plan failed partly over the level of money the leaders of the Cia-Cia tribe wanted, and partly after the tribe realized Hangeul had no ‘soft-c’ sound meaning that the tribe would have to change its name. The tribe has since reverted to representing its spoken language using written English, the language of illiterates. But in better news last year, Hangeul domain names were introduced, which prevented foreigners from accessing Korean websites which adopted the system.

The earliest examples of Hangul - which prove the true 5,000 year old history of the language - can still be found in caves near Daegu, although it is not presently possible to visit the caves because the local government is housing poor people there for the winter. Since nobody wants to go to Daegu in summer, instead a Hangeul Museum will be opened next year in Seoul, just in time for Hangul's 5001st anniversary.

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