Korean Worker Drinks 1.5 Coffees a Day

According to The Korea Times, Kim Ji-hyun - an office worker - starts the day with a cup of coffee; and after lunch, she goes to the coffee house with her colleagues for another. Kim consumes slightly more than the average for a Korean worker - 1.5 cups per day - as coffee has become one of the most preferred drinks here.

There is about a one-in-three chance that she drinks coffee from Vietnam, a one in eight chance that it is from Brazil, and a 10 percent chance that it is Colombian.

After returning to her office she works for five more hours - without drinking any more coffee - before going out with friends for the evening. Her friends ask her about being followed by Korea Times journalists, and they agree to contact the police.

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Tax Office to Buy Stolen Data From Chinese Hackers

The National Tax Service has announced it has set aside special funds to buy bank account information stolen from Korean citizens by Chinese hackers.

The hackers, who will now be designated as overseas 'agents' of the tax office rather than as Chinese cyber-criminals, are believed to be the only people outside the families of the wealthy and middle-class who know where their money is hidden.

Last year the National Assembly approved a request from the tax service to buy stolen data because the government is under pressure to increase tax revenue in order to avoid following in the footsteps of countries such as Greece and Italy who are struggling to survive a debt crisis, although according to a spokesman for the Ministry of Factual Economy, "there is no chance of South Korea defaulting on its debts for the foreseeable future." Asked how far the Ministry could see into the future, the spokesman said it was too early to say.

"It is common for foreign tax agencies, such as in France and Germany, to acquire information through such channels. The Assembly acknowledged the need at last" said a high-ranking National Tax Service official, speaking about the need for financial transparency on condition of anonymity.

By paying bounties for stolen data, it is hoped that in addition to handing over existing financial information on Koreans, hackers will now be encouraged to speculatively hack the computers of Korean citizens in order to obtain the potential tax-free payouts from The National Tax Service's fund.

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Korea Welcomes Kim Yong’s Nomination to Head World Bank

Korea has welcomed President Obama's nomination of 52 year-old Korean-born Jim Yong Kim to the presidency of the World Bank. In a statement, Korea's presidential office said it believes Kim is the right person to carry out reforms at the World Bank because he is Korean.

There are hopes that with a Korean in charge of the World Bank and therefore the international financial system, a solution might finally be found to the troublesome issue of Korea's banks, which the Ministry of Factual Economy insists are not bankrupt. Some financial analysts have suggested that Korea's domestic banks are so under-capitalized that "one more global crisis will send them under", but the Ministry points out that the really bad banks – which were mainly in Korea's second-class city of Busan anyway - were forced to close last year, and therefore logically the ones that remained were 'less bad'.

President Obama said he believes Kim Yong is the right person to eradicate poverty worldwide. Aside from hopefully making secret support payments to Korean banks, the World Bank oversees and funds infrastructure projects to alleviate poverty in Third World countries and places such as Busan. It is thought President Obama looked for a Korean nominee to do this as he was impressed by the way Korean banks had funded massive building projects in cities like Seoul and Busan before their failure, eliminating poverty by providing people with 70 hour-per-week construction jobs.

Some in Korea's financial industry were impressed by Kim's initial refusal to release details of his college budget last year, and then ignoring student requests to provide information about all budget items exceeding $10,000 (11.3 million won), which led to critical articles in his campus newspaper and an editorial describing him as "unpopular with students".

With the United Nations already led by 67 year-old Ban Ki-moon, and the World Bank soon to be led by 52 year-old Kim Yong, global political and economic leadership are now firmly in the hands of Koreans. Critics have however pointed out that 52 year-old Kim left Korea when he was five, which technically only makes him 9.615% Korean-blooded, but the government says it will pass retrospective legislation to recognize him as a full Korean again.

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Seoul Nuke Summit Ends in "Safer World"

"I can see Sarah Palin's house from here"

The Seoul International Nuclear Summit got under way on Monday as world leaders gathered together to talk about the evils of nuclear weapons and why they had to have them. President Obama wowed SINS delegates when he arrived with his special briefcase which is believed to have over 7,000 nuclear warheads within it, although he politely declined Chinese delegates' requests to peek at the world's original briefcase bomb to see if it matched their blueprints.

Before attending the SINS, President Obama visited the DMZ, and was pictured holding binoculars at an observation post as he stared across the heavily armed border, telling reporters "I think I can see Sarah Palin's house from here." In November 2010 Red Sarah said "we've got to stand with our North Korean allies", and it is thought she maintains a holiday home there. He added that staring into North Korea's wilderness enabled him to visualize his post-presidential career next year.

After he leaves office, there are hopes President Obama will choose to retire to South Korea. The Seoul International Nuclear Summit marks his third trip to this country - the first being part of a four-nation tour in November 2009, and the second being another four nation tour in November 2010. No other nation has been afforded the considerable honor of three visits by President Obama except France, and it is difficult to envisage him retiring there. Notably, Japan has only received two visits, one visit less than South Korea, making it likely that while diplomacy might not permit him from speaking publicly about the issue, President Obama favors Korea's claim over the Dokdo Islands.

Despite being encouraged to join in the SINS, the North Korean delegation failed to arrive. North Korean television said that it "would attend the Nuke Seoul event when it was ready". While satellite images suggest the Chinese proxy-state is readying a missile, intelligence estimates point to an April launch, five days after the Seoul nuke summit ended today. The South Korean military warned it would shoot down the missile if it arrived at the summit late.

In addition to discussing the issue of nuclear security, leaders at the summit were also expected to raise the issue of human rights on the Korean Peninsula after it emerged that some of their wives may have been tortured during their stay. In accordance with Korean tradition officials in Seoul had arranged for the leaders' wives to be kept out of the way while their husbands engaged in man-talk, by giving them political education classes about Korean cultural treasures and history, followed by meals of Korean food, before finally forcing them to listen to Korean pop stars singing their hit songs.

However, it later transpired that an even more serious diplomatic incident was narrowly averted when a costume delivery mix-up led to one K-pop group not appearing in front of the U.S. First Lady wearing 'blackface' as originally planned.

After massive amounts of expenditure by the government and considerable inconvenience suffered by the residents of Seoul, the final communique reached its historic conclusion - reaffirming the need to work harder to ensure a "safer world for all". Organizers hailed it as a great success, "Without the Seoul Summit, we would now live in an unsafer world. Korea has averted a disaster." said a 42 year-old spokesman.

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Foreigner Who Believed He Was a Professor Medivaced Home

A foreigner who came to Korea to work in a hagwon as a foreigner was medivaced back to United States today after doctors said there was nothing they could do for him.

Investigators say that 31 year-old Leonard Zelig's problems appear to have begun when he was given an excessive number of non-contractual – but nevertheless obligatory – classes to perform in, convincing him he really was a teacher. Having attended grad school at Florida Gulf Coast University where he attained a masters degree in Golf Management, John was soon offered a job teaching English at a minor Korean university which needed to increase the number of foreigners it employed for funding and promotional purposes.

Because university students in Korea's strictly hierarchical society generically refer to their teachers using the title 'professor', even if they graduated from American universities you don't believe actually exist, doctors believe that this, coupled with over-exposure to the academic-like environment, led to a complete mental breakdown. This resulted in him becoming convinced that he really was a professor, even though he was never invited to faculty meetings with the university's real professors who had worked hard for several years cutting and pasting from overseas research papers to create their final dissertations.

Friends still teaching in hagwon jobs said that at first they thought it was a joke "Leo started introducing himself to people in bars as a university professor," a friend told The Dokdo Times, "but then he started telling people this on message boards in Korea during the daytime when he was relatively sober, and we became really concerned for him."

An intervention was arranged but when this failed an Internet campaign was mounted to raise money for his medical evacuation back to the United States, where he could "receive a better standard of care than that provided by inferior Korean doctors". Just as it looked as though he would remain in Korea, apparently beyond treatment, a generous donation to the fund by Korean professors at his university ensured he would be able to leave.

With the money raised, Zelig had to then be convinced that he had a problem requiring treatment back home, but he insisted on staying in Korea where he said he had "important professor things to do" although he refused to elaborate. Friends then hit upon a daring plan in which they agreed to pretend to be Congressmen visiting Korea on a fact-finding tour for a few days. By the end of the week, Zelig – who had watched every episode of The West Wing twice - announced that he had to return to the White House to take control of the 'Iran situation', providing his friends with the opportunity to get him on his medivac plane, which they'd referred to as Air Force One.

After a difficult flight, in which Zelig became convinced he was a pilot and tried to seize control of the aircraft, he returned safely to the United States where doctors say he is already doing well enough to be able to live in L.A.

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New Rock DNA Technique Proves Dokdo is Korean

Dokdo City, Korean population 63,141

A new technique developed by Korean scientists which can isolate the geologic code of rocks has conclusively proven once and for all that the Korean island of Dokdo - located in the East Sea - is Korean territory.

The scientists used deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to break down the structure of rock samples taken from Dokdo. Its component elements were then compared to that of Japanese rocks left behind on the Korean Peninsula after Japan's brutal occupation which ended in a Korean victory in 1945. The elements – and therefore the geologic codes – of the two samples were completely different, proving that Dokdo is not geologically related to Japan and is therefore Korean, which everyone apart from the Japanese knew anyway.

DNA testing of Dokdo rock had been held up for several months while Dokdo City Council debated whether to allow samples to be taken from the sacred islands, because the testing process would destroy the rock, reducing the islands' size by up to 1%. But it was finally agreed that rock samples could be taken from the Japan-facing side of the easternmost island, Dongdo, which is of course the smaller of the two main Dokdo islands. Removing the rock samples means that Japan is now one inch further away from the coast of Dokdo, further weakening their already dubious territorial claim.

Last year's Tohoku earthquake had already moved Japan's main island of Honshu eight feet further away from Dokdo, as Japan gradually moves out into the Pacific, which Korean geologists agree is the best place for it. In doing so Japan will leave Dokdo behind. Since it's hardly likely Japan would leave Dokdo in the East Sea if Dokdo were truly Japanese, it demonstrates how little Japan cares about the islands because they can't even remember to take it with them when they move.

Predictably, Japanese scientists have cast doubt on the validity of Korea's scientific breakthrough, clearly fearful that the Korean island of Daemado, which is wrongly called Tsushima by occupying Japanese forces, will soon also be tested using the rock DNA technique and proven to have a Korean heritage.

Tests on the Korean island of Ieodo have so far been inconclusive because the island is currently flooded, and the Korean scientists who pioneered the science of rock DNA say that currently they are unable to get accurate results on wet rocks.

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Nuclear Workers to be Banned From Restaurants After Nuclear Accident

Visit Busan

The government is trying to reassure the public over the safety of Korean nuclear power following a complete power failure at the aging Gori-1 nuclear plant which is fortunately located in Busan, a port city 400 kilometers south of Seoul.

Last year, a power failure at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant stopped the pumps that circulate coolant water in the reactor from working. Without constant cooling, nuclear plants have an odd habit of suffering from explosions and meltdown, which is why standby generators are always used as an emergency backup. At Fukushima, these generators failed to start due to flooding from the tsunami, whereas during the accident in Busan, they failed to start due to incompetence. Both are well-known natural phenomena in their respective countries.

The South Korean government, which will shortly be hosting a 50-nation Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, said that the events at the Gori-1 nuclear plant in faraway Busan could not be described as an accident because nobody was hurt, and since the power failure was caused by an engineer making an error during a routine safety check, it was somewhat predictable. The event was also good for the local economy, with local dry cleaning companies reporting a brisk trade in uniform cleaning immediately following the accident.

The incident remained unknown about for over a month because even though by law nuclear accidents must be reported to Korea's Nuclear Safety and Security Commission within 15 minutes of them happening, officials at the Gori-1 nuclear plant decided to not to bother, partly because the power was down and the phones had stopped working. The accident remained a secret for more than a month until by chance, a member of Busan City Council overheard a conversation between plant engineers in a local restaurant who sources say were debating whether the locally caught seafood was safe after the near-meltdown.

The plant's operators, speaking from the safety of their headquarters in Seoul, say that safety is at the heart of everything they do, which is why in future for safety reasons nuclear workers will no longer be allowed in restaurants when they are not at work in case they say anything unsafe. They also denied any allegations that there was a cover-up, with a spokesman explaining that "it wasn't a secret, we just decided not to speak publicly about it, just like all those times your father beat your mother."

Gori-1 was Korea's first nuclear plant. Built by Hyundai and becoming operational in 1978, it is now well into the 34th year of its 30-year design life, making it one of the oldest Hyundais still running in Korea. The government dispute this saying that it is only 33 years old, given the fact that it was originally shut down for a year when it reached the end of its lifespan, only being restarted a year later because of power shortages, which required more risks to be taken, and the discovery that properly decommissioning the plant would cost 1 trillion won ($840 million), which nobody had.

Since being restarted, Gori-1 has suffered from a series of incidents which are publicly known about, and many more which are not. In December, blackouts occurred after the plant experienced what was described by its operators as "a temporary overvoltage". Earlier in the month, The Hankyoreh reported that employees and suppliers at the plant had conspired to install used nuclear parts as new ones in the plant. The operators said there was no cause for concern because the equipment used parts were placed into was separate from the reactor.

After the latest incident, the international community begged Korea to end its nuclear program, but Seoul says that given Busan's geographical location and its prevailing winds, if a meltdown occurs it will most likely dump radioactive fallout on Japan, not Korea.

Government officials also pointed out that the new Gori-3 and Gori-4 plants which are expected to become operational in 2012 and 2014 will be better able to showcase Korea's nuclear technology to other countries for export purposes. There had been some criticism of the decision to build more nuclear plants next to Gori-1, but addressing the concerns a government spokesman said that "one of the lessons from the Fukushima nuclear disaster is that if you're going to have an accident, it's better that it all happens in one place."

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Method Found Around FTA Agreements

The results of signing of two major Free Trade Agreements last year shocked many Koreans who had been assured it would open up foreign markets to Korean products and had not understood that the reverse would also be true.

With opposition politicians promising to cancel the FTAs as soon as they came to power, and some even promising to go so far as to stop the free entry of goods from Lesser Korea into Seoul, it seemed only a matter of waiting for the next elections before Korea could renege on its recently signed international agreements.

But now there is hope that Korea may not have to wait to cancel these dubious foreign deals, as the Seoul Metropolitan Government says it has found a way around the free trade deals, with the unveiling of a plan to ban the sale of foreign-made products in the Insa-dong district of the city.

Insa-dong was designated as a historical 'cultural district' for tourists in 2002, but in recent years officials have become concerned about the overflow of low-quality goods – mostly from China of course – which are flooding its streets, washing away helpless Korean crafts which would otherwise be bought by foreign visitors. Speaking about the deluge of foreign goods, a 48 year-old ward office official named Kim said "We worry foreign visitors may mistake the low-quality ones as Korean products."

If Insa-dong plan is successful, officials are hoping to expand the ban on the sale of foreign goods to the rest of Seoul, which is also a tourist destination, and then the rest of Korea, in which tourists have been occasionally spotted and hunted for sport.

Legal experts are concerned that the proposal may still be illegal until Korea's FTA deals can be canceled, but under a compromise proposal Seoul has suggested it could instead allow the sale of foreign products on alternate days. "It doesn't seem unreasonable that Korea should only allow foreign guest products to be sold half of the time, with the other half of the time being reserved exclusively for Korean products." said 57 year-old Kim, a Ministry spokesman. Under the scheme, foreign products would be removed from shelves one day before returning the next, except on holidays and in the two weeks before Christmas, since there are concerns these special Korean days are being diluted by foreign influences.

The Ministry of Culture said that Korea was not hostile to foreign products, but they had to know their place.

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China Attacks Korean Island of Ieodo

Beautiful Korean island of Ieodo

China has launched a brutal and unprovoked attack against the Korean Island of Ieodo, which is Korean territory. The attack came from a top maritime official in Beijing, who claimed the island is in waters under Chinese control. China claims that all the water from its coast up to the beaches of every other nation in the Pacific belong to it.

Despite the clear fact that Ieodo is Korean territory – it even has a Korean name - China has long coveted the place known as "Korea's treasure island, belonging to Jeju with beautiful myths and ocean research station". It was first inhabited on January 26, 2001 according to the Department of Modernized History at Korea International University, but had been claimed in Korean legends for hundreds of years prior to this under the name of Parangdo. There are no mentions of either Ieodo or Parangdo in Chinese history, yet bizarrely China appears to have now invented a claim to this Korean island.

Unfortunately, the so-called United Nations refuses to condemn China's aggressive attempts at territorial expansion on a technicality – the island of Ieodo currently lies submerged under 4.6 meters of water, and according to this heavily Chinese-influenced foreign organization, countries cannot claim underwater islands outside their coastal waters as belonging to them. Incredibly, this would appear to rule out Korea's claim to its own island, but there is a widespread belief in Korea that the U.N. is just bitter because they didn't think of claiming it first. The U.N. now refuses to confirm Korea's claim, and has instead chosen to insult the Korean people by continually referring to the island as 'a submerged rock'.

According to the Ministry of Really Korean Territories, Ieodo is not a submerged rock, but really is an island – as proved by the name Ieo-do - "do" is the Korean word for island. "If Ieodo were not an island, why would we have called it Ieo Island?" asked a Ministry official, "That would just be idiotic – do foreigners really think Koreans are that ridiculous?" he added. The Ministry accepts that the island of Ieodo is currently submerged under 4.6 meters of water, "But this is because it is currently flooded." said the official.

Records show that 20,000 years ago during the last ice age, Ieodo rose 126 meters out of the water because sea levels were 130 meters lower. As the ice melted Ieodo gradually flooded until it was submerged, but the fact that Koreans call it an island suggests it may have been named and inhabited by Koreans around 18,000 B.C. - far predating China's first claim to the Korean island which was made in 2011 A.D. Some say it may even be the origin of the legend of Atlantis.

Last year the Society of Ieodo Research held its first international conference on the island. After careful consideration of the facts, they concluded that China's claim to the Korean territory was "merit-less, manipulative, lazy and unclean". No Chinese people attended the conference because delegates had to stand on specially constructed conference tables with only their heads protruding above the water on the island to allow speaking, and because Chinese people are smaller than Koreans it was thought it would be unsafe to invite them.

Ieodo currently has two permanent Korean residents who are served by a 8.2 billion won ferry which was launched in November. The 33-meter-long Haeyang Nuri is the first ship in the world to be equipped with an "air bumper" designed to protect it from collisions with much larger vessels, just in case that should happen for some reason.

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Exclusive: Ahn Cheol-soo to Announce Presidential Run During Ides of March

'Friends, Seoulites, countrymen'

The Dokdo Times has learned that 50 year-old Ahn Cheol-soo, who bestrides the narrow Korean world like a Colossus, will announce his candidacy for President of the Republic during the Ides of March, tomorrow on March 15th. In doing so, Ahn will become the last person in Korea to realize he is going to run for the highest office in Korea, having conducted a game of political RoK-tease over the last several months that political analysts have called the greatest non-campaign election campaign in Korea's short democratic history.

Last year Ahn was accused of manipulating the stock market in a case which goes back to 2001 but as everyone does it, it wasn't thought to be a problem until he ventured into the political arena where it could be used against him. Ahn's increasing public pronouncements and concert tour titled "I'm not running for office but..." in which he gave a series of lectures complaining about things that upset him, seemed to make his aspirations to power clear and led to calls for him to be formally charged. Prosecutors are now said to be looking into the case. But ironically analysts believe the move has forced Ahn's hand, and he now the die is cast and he has to run for office in order to enjoy the immunity from public prosecution that Korean politicians enjoy by convention.

Ahn has received popular support for his non-campaign. In one huge rally recently, the common herd tried to offer him a makeshift crown to the Republic of Korea, but he refused it three times, though some observers noted each time gentler than the last, the third time lingering on it. Ahn later said the incident was mere foolery, but the rabble had shouted, clapped their hands, held up their phones and exhaled such an amount of stinking breath when Ahn refused it that it almost choked him, for he swooned and fell down at it.

Earlier this year Ahn, Korea's foremost anti-virus entrepreneur, star of television's hit comedy Community and movie blockbuster series, The Hangover, traveled to kiss the ring of Bill Gates – whose frequently compromised operating system he credited with laying the foundations for his successful business. Gates is believed to have said that he had no opinion on Ahn running – widely seen to be a signal clearing Ahn and indicating that everyone else in the Microsoft-dominated Korean IT industry should support him.

Officially, Ahn's meeting with Bill Gates was to seek guidance on the founding of a charitable foundation which would be used to raise his political profile prior to an election. Gates was said to have told Ahn not to just donate money but also to use it to try and seek to resolve some kind of social conflict with it, and Ahn reportedly said that he would never have thought of that and was glad to have traveled half-way around the world for this revelation, which was widely reported in the media. Ahn denied the trip was an election non-campaign stunt, saying that men willingly believe what they wish.

Believing that a successful run for office will mysteriously help his huge anti-virus empire which stretches from Busan in the south to Seoul in the North, plebeian investors have rushed to buy AhnLab stock, making Ahn even richer.

In recent months rival politicians have promised government initiatives to bolster Korea's cyber defenses after incursions by Chinese barbarian tribes repeatedly breached the Republic's Internet borders - a move that could ultimately hurt AhnLab as its business is largely based on citizens needing to protect themselves. But Ahn has made no such campaign promise, "because officially he is not campaigning", according to a spokesman for his campaign team.

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War: South Korea Launches Assault Against North

You can't fight in here

South Korea has finally launched an attack against North Korea, after years of provocations which have included the sinking of the warship Cheonan and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.

The assault took place in Switzerland at a meeting of the so-called United Nations. Footage from the Yonhap news agency showed several South Korean lawmakers trying to grab a North Korean diplomat who was leaving the room having rejected a report critical of his country's human rights record. Bystanders said that "a brief physical clash occurred between the two sides" with one South Korean lawmaker shouting "Premier Kim Jong-un is a degenerate atheist scum!"

While many South Koreans have died in recent attacks by the North, it is the repatriation to a certain death of North Korean escapees by the Chinese which has particularly incensed the South Korean lawmakers and finally provoked them into action. “It is one thing for one Korean to kill another Korean, but it is totally unacceptable to have Chinese killing Koreans, even if it's by proxy”, said a source close to the delegation.

There had been hopes that other U.N. member countries would join in the attack, but this time South Korea was left to conduct the assault alone. America's failure to act will particularly worry Seoul, which is increasingly concerned that U.S. forces are stationed in Korea for display purposes only, and will not assist South Korea when the North, backed by China, launches a full-scale war, which is scheduled for 2014.

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Japan Demands Korea Take 'Fundamental Measures' On Peacetime Sex Slavery

Japan urged Korea on Friday to resolve a long-running grievance regarding women who have been forced into sexual slavery on the peninsula, pressing Seoul to take "fundamental measures" for the victims. The issue was discussed in detail when the South Korean Foreign Vice Minister held talks with his Japanese counterpart last week, officials said.

During the talks, Japan called on the Korean government to "take fundamental measures that are acceptable to the victims", and to "have genuine courage and wisdom to develop the bilateral partnership in a future-oriented way while looking squarely at its past wrongdoings", a senor vice ministry official said on condition of anonymity.

According to statistics, up to 200,000 women, mostly Asians, have been coerced into sexual servitude in Korean massage parlors, barber shops, bars, clubs and 'love motels'. These sex slaves are euphemistically called "comfort women" by Korean politicians, and the practice is abstractly referred to as "human trafficking". According to the "2010 Sex Trades Survey" by Seoul International University's Institute for Gender Research, around 35,000 businesses are reportedly brokering sex industry services in 45 areas nationwide, often from 'trafficked' women.

Japan has pressed Korea to resolve the issue through apology and compensation for the Asian women on a humanitarian level, but Seoul refuses to do so. It is not known how many Japanese sex slaves are in Korea, although most of them are believed to be from China, Vietnam, and several other even less significant countries.

Korean politicians have continued to attack Japan's wartime sex slavery while the plight of comfort women in Korea are ignored, demanding that Japan pay substantial compensation to the victims. Last year, Korea's Ministry of Patriots and Veterans' Affairs finally agreed to pay compensation of 5,000 won ($4.48) to the families of Korean soldiers who died fighting in the 1950-53 Korean War. But when Japan offered to pay Korean comfort women the same amount, the Korean government called the offer an "outrageous insult to the Korean people".

However, the legal situation in Korea is far from clear. The South Korean government only passed an anti-sex trafficking law in 2004 - the "Act on the Punishment of Intermediating in the Sex Trade and Associated Acts" - which for the first time made it illegal to buy or sell women. While morally reprehensible - as the law cannot be backdated legal experts suggest it could technically make Japan's wartime sex-trafficking legal under Korean law as they took place before 2004.

But senior officials in Seoul are said to be fearful that if the campaign against Japan is dropped, campaigners will turn their attention to domestic sex-slavery, which has now been illegal for eight years, in a move that will detrimentally impact on the lives of many Korean politicians.

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Seoul Seeks to Stabilize Prices in Service Sector

Korea will increase its monitoring of inflationary trends in the private service sector as price hikes in the segment could directly hit the livelihoods of ordinary citizens, the finance ministry said Friday. So far, the rising price of prostitutes has only affected politicians due to their frequency of use of such private services.

"In that a large portion of household expenditures is spent on buying private services, we should look into price trends in the sector for ordinary people," the ministry said in a press release after holding an all night anti-inflation meeting.

In a related move, the ministry added that it will send teams tasked with monitoring prostitutes to a total of 16 cities and provinces as part of efforts to help the central government's push to keep prices under control.

The measure is the latest in a series of government-led price control efforts in a sector which is regarded as a major gauge of Korean inflation. Prostitutes' prices rose 3.1 percent in February from a year earlier, slowing from a 3.4 percent gain in January, but they still gained 0.4 percent compared to a month ago, of which 0.217 percent was last night alone.

It is also feared that the tensions brewing over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program could drive up the price of oil in South Korea, which depends heavily on the product in massage parlors, which are designed to hide Korea's widespread prostitution industry from foreign tourists.

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Is US Military in South Korea for ‘Display Purposes Only’?

Controversy is brewing after a leaked memo reportedly sent from Washington to Seoul appeared to remind the South Korean government to treat North Korea carefully as US military forces stations in the southern nation were for "display purposes only".

The US has stood by and watched as the warship Cheonan was sunk, and Yeonpyeong Island was shelled, responding with low key offers to North Korea of talks and food aid rather than the kind of belligerent saber-rattling which it is used to be known for and which so impressed the Soviets.

In recent years the US military has specialized in weapons and tactics aimed at fighting much weaker opponents that make the tax-dollar burning military-industrial complex look good, but the idea that it good fight a conventional war against a well-armed opponent is mostly PR, according to experts. Washington is said to be fearful of Beijing, after accusing the communist nation of taking its lunch money.

But the US has for understanding for its careful handling of the American military in Korea. "It loses its value if you take it out of its box" said a senior official.

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Korea to Start Daily Space Weather Alert Services

Korea's National Radar Research Agency (RRA) said today it will start offering three-day space weather forecasts for the general public from last Friday. It is hoped that they will be more accurate than their terrestrial forecasts, which have successfully forecast twelve out of the last two typhoons to hit Korea, increasing the overall statistical accuracy rate of the entire service.

Last year, the RRA in conjunction with the Korean Meteorological Agency (KMA) were criticized for announcing in early September that "Summer is over", the day before three weeks of unrelenting heat hit the nation. But the KMA claimed the forecast was almost correct because only the word "not" was missing from their prediction, making the forecast 75% accurate.

According to their latest space weather forecast, today will be very cold with bright sunshine all day - and all night - with no wind and only a 24% chance of precipitation. It is expected that these conditions will continue for at least the next week, and possibly longer.

The move to start space weather forecasts has been controversial. Recently the Korean government has been debating the issue of how far up above the Earth Korean airspace extends. If the new forecasts show that the space above Korea doesn't experience four seasons, it will add weight to the idea that Korean territory is vertically limited, although Korea's horizontal claims will be unaffected. But it is thought vital that Korea starts forecasting Korean space weather in order to prove its territorial claims which extend at least as far as Proxima Centauri.

The KMA has also announced that the weather in Dokdo for the rest of the month is expected to be "Korean". The forecast is expected to be correct because the weather over Dokdo is always Korean, and scientists have concluded that Dokdo never suffers from Japanese-style weather – yet more clear proof that Dokdo really is Korean territory.

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Man Caught Helping Poor People "May Be Crazy"

Police said a 37 year-old man caught giving away flat-screen TVs to homeless people may require a psychiatric evaluation as he is showing abnormal behavior. They also charged him with living on the street even though he has a family, a criminal offense in Korea even though polls consistently show that many see the option as preferable to sitting through another Chuseok dinner listening to in-laws pretending how much better their lives are.

The man had obtained the TVs from the walls of hospitals and restaurants, where they largely played adverts in loops to disinterested patients and customers, interspersed by the occasional reality program or soap opera. Without the televisions to interfere with their mental processes, it's said that many people quickly became sick of the high bills they were paying in the hospitals and restaurants, which had previously gone unnoticed. Conversely, the homeless, who typically live in abandoned buildings or Seoul's subway system, said the TVs had given them a welcome distraction from their poverty-stricken lives and a sense that there was still a chance for them to be part of the Korean Dream.

The Korean Dream, a beneficial psychological phenomenon designated as Intangible Cultural Property Number 4, is typically available to graduates of prestigious universities and the children of political and business leaders, but it was never intended to be shared by the lesser people, and Seoul's wealthy elite were angered by the TVs for the homeless project which they said lowered the prestige their own TVs gave them.

The flat-screen TV case evokes the memory of Korea's legendary 34 year-old heroic outlaw known only by his surname Kim, who shot to fame in the 12th century after he began a campaign of robbing from the rich and giving to the poor, which later provided the inspiration for the British copycat outlaw, Robin Hood. Little is known about "Robin' Kim", because he was much better at being a mysterious outlaw than his inferior British rival, but when he was eventually betrayed by his wife's mother and brought to trial, the court famously established the Korean legal principle that anyone helping poor people at the expense of the rich is probably mentally ill and should spend the remainder of their life in a psychiatric facility, as Robin Kim did.

Since then, Korean society has been modeled on the principle of taking from the poor to give to the rich, backed by an increasingly sophisticated propaganda machine which convinces the poor that they actually aren't. Under the circumstances, police say that the taking of the TVs from the rich was not only therefore counter-cultural any mentally unbalanced, but it also possibly represented a sophisticated attempt to encourage rebellion among others by depriving them of their required daily amount of television exposure.

The Ministry of Justice has again warned people against helping people of lesser social status, even if it wrongly seems the right thing to do. "Anyone thinking of helping the poor should go to hospital immediately." said a 59 year-old government spokesman.

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Urgent: Hungry North Korea Agrees to Suspend Nuclear Program For Dinner

North Korea has agreed to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for food aid so that its leaders and scientists can have dinner.

U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, braved heavy sniping from Fox News while approaching a podium to make the announcement, describing the move as a "major breakthrough" which heralded peace in our time. South Korean liberal populists said it proved the value of continued engagement with the North, despite earlier misunderstandings which were the fault of South Korean conservatives.

The U.S. and South Korea are hopeful that the North Korea's nuclear program suspension in exchange for food will lead to a permanent solution to the tense situation with the Pyongyang regime, which could even lead to a permanent peace treaty and a normalization of relations between the two Koreas. "It would be great not to have to live in fear of having our islands bombed and ships sunk by a nuclear-armed neighbor" said a senior South Korean official.

Intelligence experts say that after dinner, North Korea is likely to feel tired, forget what nuclear weapons research it was doing in the afternoon, and maybe go out to catch a movie before returning home to bed.

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Urgent: North Korea Resumes Nuclear Program After Eating

North Korea, which earlier today agreed to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for food aid so that its leaders and scientists could have lunch, has reportedly resumed work on the project in contravention of the earlier deal which was hailed at the time as a "major breakthrough" in North-South relations.

North Korea said that while the food had arrived from the South, it had failed to be delivered within 30 minutes, which meant that it should be free of any conditions. South Korea denied that any such preconditions had been agreed, and that the North had to pay in political promises which helped the poll ratings of the South's governing party, even if these so called 'credit promises' where later subject to charge-backs or processing failures after elections were held.

Officials from the South offered to meet their Northern counterparts, possibly with a view to offering a discount on a future aid deal, but this angered Pyongyang which called it "an aggressive move towards the Democratic People's Republic of Korea which clearly showed the Southern puppet government was preparing an imminent invasion." Pyongyang also accused Seoul of breaching North Korea's border by sending aid trucks, disguised as aid trucks, across the demilitarized zone, threatening a "sacred war" against the South in retaliation.

Seoul had already expressed its sympathies to the North Korean people after failing to send sufficient amounts of side dishes with the food aid, but Pyongyang said that the lunchtime events proved Seoul could not be trusted and it was resuming its nuclear program. U.S. President Barack Obama, in a rare inter-election pronouncement, said he was "disappointed" by the North Korean move, but South Korean officials are hopeful that they can still engage with the North and prevent further military attacks against the defenseless nation.

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Urgent: Hungry North Korea Agrees to Suspend Nuclear Program For Lunch

North Korea has agreed to suspend its nuclear program in exchange for food aid so that its leaders and scientists can have lunch.

U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton, braved sniper fire from Fox News while approaching a podium to make the announcement, describing the move as a "major breakthrough" which heralded peace in our time. South Korean liberal populists said it finally proved the value of their "Sunshine Policy" engagement with the belligerent aggressor nation, while conservative elements denied the North's conciliatory gesture was caused by Sunshine, but instead by Rain, who has recently joined the military and now stands on the border every day singing his greatest hits.

The attempt to weaponize K-pop led to protests from North Korea earlier this year which said it would engulf Seoul in a 'sea of fire' if Rain wasn't silenced, but when the threats fell on deaf ears Pyongyang later offered to pay Seoul money or send food to make him stop.

The U.S. and South Korea are hopeful that the North Korea's lunchtime nuclear program suspension in exchange for food will lead to a permanent solution to the tense situation with the Pyongyang regime, which could even herald a permanent peace treaty and a normalization of relations between the two Korea's. "It would be great not to have to live in fear of having our islands bombed and ships sunk by a nuclear-armed neighbor" said a senior South Korean official.

Intelligence experts say that after lunch, North Korea is likely to feel tired, forget what nuclear weapons research it was doing in the morning, and maybe have a sleep.

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