Government Plan To Eliminate Poverty Aims at Nuts and Berries

The Government have announced plans to punish collectors of nuts and berries in national parks with fines of up to 30 million won ($27,000) or jail terms of up to three years.

Although according to official statistics nobody in Korea is really poor – at least no-one worth speaking of – collecting nuts and berries from parks has long been a source of nutrition for the country’s homeless, who forage in the wild before sleeping out in the open for lack of anything else to consume or anywhere else to stay due to Korea’s enlightened social security policies.

Officially, the Government say the new ‘nuts and berries’ directive is aimed at preserving acorns, which are needed by “squirrels and bears” - even though the only bears in Korea are the ones held in captivity and farmed for meat and virility rituals. But unofficially a Government spokesman admitted to us that the threat of jail terms are intended to solve Korea’s chronic homelessness by finally removing these embarrassing individuals from public view, or starving them to death as an act of kindness, preferably before the G20 summit is held in the capital.

Fearing that the homeless may find alternative food sources, Seoul authorities have announced fines for people who let their dogs off their leashes in the city’s parks.

While in future jail terms as long as three years will be imposed on individuals found picking up acorns from the ground, the Government has promised that politicians caught embezzling funds, and Chaebol owners making corrupt payments, will continue to receive suspended sentences or escape punishment entirely in line with Korean cultural traditions and Constitutional guarantees that protect the rich and powerful.

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Dokdo missing on iPhone, Galaxy S

While toying with her newly-acquired iPhone, Kim, a 23-year-old Seoul college student, investigated its maps feature, and was shocked to discover that although Dokdo could be located, it wasn't given a name. "Dokdo is our territory where our people reside. Then, how come the map services do not identify its name? Does the iPhone regard Dokdo as the island of ghosts?", she foamed. "I don't know what Apple or KT think about it. When you sell a product in Korea, you have to care about local tastes. They should learn how sensitive Koreans are about the Dokdo issue."

Situated some 90 kilometers east of Korea's Ulleung Island and much further away from any Japanese island of significance, Dokdo is clearly Korean territory, but this hasn't stopped Japan, which officially regards Korea as a rogue province, trying to repeat the mistakes of its colonialist history by claiming it without any justification.

KT, Korea's largest telecoms provider, reacted angrily to Kim’s statement and threatened to sue her and her ancestors. “Chaebols do not have to care about local tastes - our right to operate a ‘you-take-what-you-get-given’ consumer policy is guaranteed by the Constitution, to demand otherwise is anti-corporate and possibly a sign of communist sympathies.” a spokesdroid told us.

Kim emailed Steve Jobs, Apple’s Chairman and CEO-for-life, to complain, but received the message back “Don’t care about Dokdok. Stop bothering us. Sent from my iPhone”.

In fact the maps on Apple's iPhone and Android devices such as the Galaxy S are provided by Google Maps, which means that as Android grows in popularity this misinformation is only going to spread.

When contacted, Google Korea said that the company makes it a rule not to identify any disputed territory and this policy applies to Dokdo. Recently, after several high-profile UFO sightings around the world, Google removed the word “Earth” from their maps, causing panic in several countries, but that was caused by an error the company said. However, they told us that the omission of Dokdo - which is a deep insult to Koreans - was intentional. Curiously, in a further insult, the Korean island of Daemado – which is currently illegally occupied by Japanese forces and incorrectly called ‘Tsushima’, is clearly labeled as ‘Tsushima’ on Google Maps despite Korea's rightful ownership of the territory. Naver however, properly marks the island as ‘Daemado’.

Members of VANK, which harasses foreign organizations and conducts cyber-attacks against them, sent thousands of emails to Google to protest the measure but to little avail. VANK intends to continue mail-bombing Google though - “If we do not continually protest, Google or others will think that we are admitting Dokdo’s sovereignty is in dispute.” said VANK’s official founder. However, in what some cyber-security experts have dubbed a ‘spectacular failure to understand the effectiveness of Google’s anti-spam technology’, he added “We will continue to clog the inbox of Google with emails or letters”.

VANK describes themselves as “a non-governmental organization dedicated to promoting a positive image of Korea”, although it always achieves the exact opposite. Some have suggested VANK (which some foreigners call the ‘Various Agents of North Korea’) may be a front for North Korean intelligence services attempting to make other countries less sympathetic towards South Korea when it is invaded by the North in 2012.

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Dokdo missing on iPhone, Galaxy S – Korea Times

Government Seeks to Put Overseas Koreans Out of Business

The Korean Government has announced a plan to put overseas Koreans out of business in revenge for them emigrating from the country.

A pilot test of the plan will begin in Manhattan, New York, where Government researchers concluded there were a high number of small Korean restaurants run by people who have abandoned the motherland. Under the scheme, the Government will open a huge Korean restaurant which will be owned and run by the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries in Seoul. It is hoped that this ‘mega-restaurant’, subsidized by Korean taxpayers, will put the smaller independent Korean restaurant owners out of business. A senior source in the Ministry told us that once the Koreans in New York are put out of business, it is hoped that they will have no choice but to return to Korea.

Because driving overseas Koreans out of business may be perceived as wrong by Korean voters, the Government is officially calling the move part of a wider project to globalize Korean food, which is known as ‘hansik’ in Korea. Under the slogan “Come and get hansik”, the Government is hoping New Yorkers will stop visiting restaurants run by people who have betrayed their country, and the restaurant’s catchy name “Globalized Korean Government International Superior Safe Food Wellbeing Ubiquitous Dokdo Is Korean Territory Restaurant” will see people flocking through the doors.

The move has caused some debate in Seoul political circles however. Since there are already a large number Korean restaurants in New York which are promoting Korean food, some politicians doubt that Korean taxpayers are going to fall for such a flimsy cover story, even if it is dressed up in nationalist language, which usually prevents voters from thinking on the grounds that independent thought is unpatriotic. So far though, the tightly controlled media has pushed the Government line and ensured there is no dissent. The Dokdo Times, which falls outside Seoul's tough media restrictions due to Dokdo's older laws taking precedent over Republic of Korea law, can reveal the restaurant is expected to lose approximately $5 million per year.

44-year-old Kim, who runs the nearby Kum Gang Restaurant, admitted he was worried that the Government-run restaurant would use taxpayer money to subsidize food and drive him out of business, but he’s hopeful that much like Korean politics, the restaurant would ultimately fail due to rampant corruption, nepotism and appallingly slow service. He also doubts the Government’s explanation that it is opening the restaurant to promote Korean food. “We’ve been around for more than 20 years. Does the government think we haven’t tried all kinds of measures?”

Indeed, according to one prominent New York restaurant critic who has recently had to seek police protection and can not therefore be named, Korean food is always destined to remain a niche because “it really isn’t that great”, but Korean people are unable to accept the idea that it doesn’t particularly appeal to Western palates. “When several month-old cabbage is considered the signature dish of your cuisine, Korean food is always going to be a tough sell” he is reported as saying before he went into hiding. The Government admitted that the old cabbage, which is called kimchi in Korea, will be part of every dish on the menu.

If the restaurant is a success the Government is planning to open similar schemes in other cities where Koreans living overseas operate restaurants, and eventually they hope to use Korean taxpayer money to put more expatriate Koreans out of business. A move into the U.S. convenience store business is already secretly being trialled in Los Angeles. With each restaurant projected to lose $5 million per year, the Government estimates it can open 1,000 such restaurants around the world before the amount exceeds the annual budgetary loss to corruption and reaches a level which might incur public scrutiny. However, as the project is aimed at people who have betrayed the Republic by leaving, the expenditure might eventually be given a blanket 'National Security' heading in Government accounts to disguise its actual use.

Off the record, the Minister of Culture told us that he hopes to send a strong message to Koreans everywhere that traitors who leave Korea in order to try and build a better life for themselves “will be hunted down like dogs - which also taste very nice even though we aren’t supposed to talk about that any more.” In an extremely rare concession to foreign sentiment, dogmeat will officially be omitted from the New York menu.

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'Too many Korean restaurants in NY'