http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs Fearless. Thoughtful. Witty. Canadian. And Opinionated. Thu, 03 Jul 2008 18:08:36 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en You have to marvel at a country that, when looking for a way to show its commitment to peace, chooses to blow something up. That’s North Korea, which this week detonated the cooling tower at its controversial Yongbyon nuclear reactor as a way of saying, hey, we’re laying off the ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/07/02/two-explosions/ JEJU-DO—Coincident with the US beef kerfuffle sizzling in South Korean politics right now, I’ve been learning a lot about barbecue, through marathon grill-out sessions with my American friend Mark, his trusty portable Weber and his copy of grill maestro Stephen Raichlen’s fat BBQ bible, How to Grill. According to Raichlen, when ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/06/16/lee-myung-bak-over-the-coals/ JEJU-DO—Restrictions on importing American beef into South Korea were set to be lifted this week—as of my writing this post, the government has delayed lifting the restrictions, but given no details on how long the delay will last—and from the shitstorm the move has caused, you’d think they were about ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/06/02/heres-the-beef/ JEJU-DO—History usually gives Gutenberg the credit, but some sources say Korea invented movable metal type. Good old Johannes didn’t start pouring his molds until about 1450, but in 1234, during Korea’s Goryeo period (from which the country’s present name derives), a guy named Choe Yun-ui is said to have used ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/26/found-in-translation-hangu/ JEJU-DO—I've been meaning to respond to a reader of my post on weird Korean stuff, who suggested that I should have included kimchi. There’s a good reason I didn’t. For every item on that list, I’m sure you could find at least a few Koreans to vouch for its weirdness—someone ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/05/13/korea-kimchi/ Behind the toilet isn't usually the best place to look for treasure. But at the Kimnyong Maze Park, a “symbolic hedge maze” located just outside the fishing village of Kimnyong on Jeju’s northeast coast, that’s where you’ll find it. It comes in the form of one Frederic H. Dustin, the ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/27/the-guru-of-kimnyong/ JEJU-DO—I was pleased when I clicked on the thumbnail cover of the new print issue of The Walrus and found John Reardon’s “Kim Jong Il: The Script Notes.” In planning posts for this blog, I’d recalled my trip to Beijing last October, when my fiancée and I visited a tiny ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/15/lucid-appreciation-kim-jong-il-at-the-movies/ (Formerly Ten Essential Korean Oddities; title changed because I could use $300,000.) JEJU-DO—Calling another culture’s products or practices strange is always risky business—one man’s emetic is another’s hors d’oeuvre. I always cringe at shows like Fear Factor, not because it pains me to see women with plastic boobs heave said boobs ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/10/stuff-korean-people-like/ JEJU-DO—Just weeks after the New York Philharmonic tried to bring a little harmony to Pyongyang, Kim Jong-il has once again begun making noise about attacking South Korea. In statements from Pyongyang released this week, the rotund little North Korean despot has insulted new South Korean president Lee Myung-bak, threatened “catastrophic consequences” ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/04/04/kim-jong-il-at-it-again/ JEJU-DO—One of the weirder things about living in a country as ethnically homogenous as Korea is that you constantly, and in earnest, get to refer to people as foreigners. As in, "Can you believe what that foreigner is wearing?" or "This place is lousy with foreigners!"—statements that would easily get ... http://www.walrusmagazine.com/blogs/2008/03/28/strange-crew/