Tim Kawakami is an excellent sports writer cover Bay Area sports, including Oakland Raiders. Here, he recalls a conversation with Al Davis, owner of the Raiders.

It was at the press conference announcing the hiring of Kiffin. Afterwards I was talking to Al, and remarked that I thought it was a strange hire, given that Kiffin was so young and had no head coaching experience. Al didn't like that, and said: 'I'll bet you don't even know who Deng Xiaoping was.' I was like, what? What does that have to do with anything? Al pressed it. 'Who is Deng Xiaoping?' So I thought for a minute, and said, 'Well, if I'm not mistaken, wasn't he the General Secretary of the Chinese government during the Tiananmen Square massacre?' And Al repiles, 'But what can you tell me about him other than that? See? You don't even know anything about your own culture.' I said, 'Al, I'm Japanese-American, not Chinese.' And Al said, 'Ohh, geez. I bet you're going to kill me on that now.' It all happened in front of about 20 reporters, so I didn't have to.

The Korean wonders if Davis was trying to invoke Deng's famous quote, "I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat. It's a good cat so long as it catches mice." At any rate, poor execution Al, just like your team.

Source: Deadspin

The Korean once wrote about Korean men's drinking habits. As it turns out, Korean women are not too far behind either.

From Korea Beat.

Recent testimony from the surviving members of Unit 731 reveals that live human experimentations, such as vivisection without anesthesia, were performed on American and British prisoners as well. Roughly 5,000 people, including 1,203 independence fighters, died as test subjects for Unit 731. (Article in Korean, but click for the picture -- the man on the table is still alive.)

The taint of WWII-era Germany is so strong that, more than 60 years later, there are some Americans protesting the naming rights of a German company to a new Giants/Jets stadium. This is after the company recognized its past and paid millions in restitution. The Korean thinks the protest is somewhat silly, but he cannot help but compare how taint-free Japanese companies are.

Rather cool article on Dong-A Ilbo: Recently revealed documents from the U.S. National Archives say there were some 80 Koreans who served at the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency, in the 1940s. These Koreans were focused on various covert operations to sabotage the Japanese war efforts during World War II. (Article in Korean.)

Here is an interesting survey: HSBC ranked best countries for expats, and Singapore ranked top, followed by U.S. and UAE.

Ask A Korean! News: KFC - Not from Kentucky

There are so many delicious Korean foods, but you probably wouldn't have guessed that fried chicken is one of them. Well, Korean fried chicken is really unlike any other in the world, and it's finally available in New York. The New York Times carried an article about Korean-style fried chicken places that are now popping up in New York, and it's currently the third most emailed article in the Food Section. Here is a snippet of the article:

"For crunch, American-style fried chicken relies on a thick, well-seasoned crust, often made even thicker by soaking the chicken pieces beforehand in buttermilk. When that crust is nubbly and evenly browned, and the chicken meat is cooked through, the chicken is sublime. But too often, the flesh is still raw when the crust is cooked, or the skin never cooks all the way through, leaving a flabby layer of skin between the meat and the crust.

Korean-style fried chicken is radically different, reflecting an Asian frying technique that renders out the fat in the skin, transforming it into a thin, crackly and almost transparent crust. (Chinese cooks call this “paper fried chicken.”) The chicken is unseasoned, barely dredged in very fine flour and then dipped into a thin batter before going into the fryer."

After the chicken is fried, Koreans either eat it plain or have it basted (not drenched!) with sweet and spicy garlic sauce. It was one of the Korean Family's favorite foods, and it's finally available in New York!

Naturally, the Korean and the Korean Girlfriend will visit one of them tonight. See you all at K-town.

Got a question or a comment for the Korean? Email away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Met Opera Attendees to be Suffocated by a Pair of Garlic Breaths

To the delight of classical music-loving Koreans everywhere, (the Korean included, having no choice as the Korean Girlfriend is a classical musician,) the Metropolitan Opera in New York will feature two Korean headliners in this year's production of La Traviata. Hei-Kyung Hong will play Violetta, the main heroine, while Wookyung Kim will play Alfredo, her suiter. (Photo picked up from Dong-A Ilbo.) The Korean finds it hilarious that Hong and Kim, playing lovers, are 47 and 29 years old, respectively. Not since Anna Nicole Smith and her late oil tycoon husband did a relationship so twisted and gross exist. This will be Met Opera debut for Kim. According to Dong-A Ilbo article, this will be the first time Asians take both male and female leading roles on the same stage in the Met's 127 year history.

As the Korean sees it, this is one of the examples of Koreans out-white-ing white people in an effort to emulate them. (Here is an earlier post about this topic.) At any venerable conservatory in the U.S., (and perhaps in the world,) Koreans are bursting out of seams singing, dancing, or playing some sort of instrument. As Margaret Cho remarked, she was the first Korean who stood on the stage of Carnegie Hall without a violin. But that by no means takes anything away from Hong and Kim's accomplishments as artists, and kudos from the Korean goes to them. If you are in New York and interested in opera sort of thing, please go watch since La Traviata is a classic. Since the Korean already saw La Traviata, he is more excited about the First Emperor, with Placido Domingo as Emperor Qin.

Ask A Korean! News: A Competitor????!!!!!

It has been brought to the Korean's attention that there is a competitor to this blog, and it indeed is a formidable one. Take a look.

Every post is simply brilliant, so here is a short example:

Posted November 12, 2006 (Juche 95)

Dear Mr. B,

Living under the Imperialist American Regime has wreaked havoc on my follicles!! Where does Dear Leader get his amazing hairdo?

With respect,

Tori S.

Dear Tori

We are so sorry to hear how much you suffer under the imperialist regime. We hope one day you will be set free like a flock of doves.Regarding our dear leader's amazing sense of style, he has his own official hairstylist. His name is Chon Hoon-Dae, and he has been dressing dear leader's hair since 1982. We are not too sure who had done his hair before that, but this is the man responsible for making dear leader glow like a shining light to all mankind.

Han See-Na

Citizen of Pyongyang


Man, how the hell am I supposed to compete with this? I think I am gonna send an email too...

Dear Pyongyang Citizen,

My name is The Korean, and I am the host of a very popular blog called Ask A Korean! Here is my blog - http://askakorean.blogspot.com. I am sure you won't be able to see my blog immdeiately since the imperialist America is blocking your Internet access to the world, but I am certain that your friend in the west who runs your website can tell you that both your website and my blog work for the same purpose -- enlightening the world of beautiful and brilliant Korean people.

However, I regret to tell you that I, the Korean, oppressed in thoughts and imagination by the imperialist American education, cannot even begin to match your comedic genius. There is simply no way. You are inspired by the shining light to the world that is Dear Leader and I am but a bug, blinded by being in His presence. I once heard that Dear Leader lost his virginity before his father, the Great Leader, did. Is that true? All I ever wanted to do was to give people a few laughs while they learn something about the glorious Korean people, but now I realize I am as inadequate as the South Korean economy, which may have given you the rice you are eating but could not make you as happy as Dear Leader.

How could I learn the style of great prose that you employ? I tried reading the work of the Great Leader, available freely at the library of my university, but his divine comedic genius was such that I could not read more than a sentence before bursting out belly laughs that last for hours. How do I resist the urge to laugh, and make people laugh instead?

I will be looking forward to your response. Now I must go and clean my refrigerator of my leftovers. If you are wondering, leftover is something one has when one has too much food. It's a shameful occurrence that I am sure hardly occurs in beautiful North Korea, but it happens quite frequently in the oppressed city of New York.

Sincerely,

The Korean

Fingers crossed for a response!

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Ask away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Hellllll Yeahhhhhh

Samsung, the fantastic Korean electronics company that sells out-of-style cell phones to unwitting American buyers, developed a thing that can be described by no other word than AWESOME: a sentry robot that fires machine gun.

Ask A Korean! News: Portrait of Mail-Order Brides

First, a call for help. The Korean is somewhat discouraged by the slow flow of questions. Send in questions! Tell your friends! Thank you so much :)

Remember in one of the last Ask A Korean! News that I would talk more about the mail-order brides? Well here it is. Below is some excerpt from the report by Presidential Advisory Committee on Correcting Wealth Gap and Discrminiation, titled "International Marriage Brokerage System: Field Study at Vietnam".

At 2004, 11.4 percent of all marriages in Korea were between a Korean and a non-Korean. The number is as high as 27 percent in rural areas. Vietnamese women are a major subject of such marriages between Korean men and foreign women.

Usually Korean men are flown out to Vietnam for as long as 7 days or as short as 3 days, during which meeting, wedding, and honeymoon all take place. Korean men meet as few as 20~30 women or as many as 200~300 women per meeting. Between 5 to 10 Vietnamese women file into a room, the Korean man picks one among them, and the process is repeated for second and third round until one is chosen. Only at the last stage the man learns the age, edcuation, home town, family members, occupation, height, weight of the woman; the woman learns the man's occupation, economic standing and marriage history.

One Korean man who went through the process said: "it was very difficult to choose one among so many women after seeing them just for a moment. I was so nervous and no one really stood out. I was so hesitating that the marriage broker just picked one for me."

From the woman's side, it is virtually impossible to reject the marriage since being chosen already entails stiff competition; if she ever rejects, the "brokers" disadvantage her by never arranging her to meet another man. She also has to risk false information from the man's side about his occupation, etc. One woman recounted being told that her husband was a machinist earning $2,000 a month, only to find out that he was a daily laborer at a construction site when she came to Korea.

It is illegal in Vietnam to broker marriage for profit. Therefore this entire process is done underground. Smaller operations have around 15~30 women, and larger ones have 60~100 women. The women who are recruited are mostly from the southern, rural parts of Vietnam and generally are 19 to 25 year old primary school graduates. All women live together in a dormitory run by the broker. The women are charged with the cost of the dormitory, to be paid by their future husbands. The meeting takes place the day after the Korean man arrives Vietnam; the women (again, as many as 300 of them) are transported very early morning to avoid police detection. However, if the police ever catches them, it is their individual responsibility to run as best as she can, since the broker will assume no responsibility.

Officially the whole process costs around $10,000 (the Korean said in the earlier post that the cost was around $2,000. The Korean apologizes to the disappointed prospective buyers) for a Korean man to take a Vietnamese woman. The Korean brokerage company takes $6,500 and the rest goes to the Vietnamese brokers. Usually the Korean man gives to the bride's parents $500 as a dowery. But after taking out brokerage fee and so on, the actual amount that goes to the parents is about $180.

It takes 2~3 months for the women to obtain the entry visa for Korea. During that time the women learn Korean language, cooking Korean food and Korean manners. The cost of those lessons are again charged on the women.

Once the Vietnamese women come to Korea, they often suffer from domestic violence and jealous husbands who fear that they would run away. One woman said "As soon as I arrived at Korea my husband took away my passport and choked me. I am so afraid of him." Another woman said "I was hit by my husband three days after I entered the country. He demanded sex after coming home drunk; when I refused, he hit me in the face, pulled my hair and spat on my face."

Got a question or comment for the Korean? Ask away at askakorean@hotmail.com.

Ask A Korean! News: Koreans, the Most Evolved Humans

The Korean has long been aware of his people's prowess in the gaming world, and its effects in preventing our handsome men getting laid. But, as it turns out, those brilliant Korean virgins were not taking themselves out of the gene pool; rather, they have been investing their time evolving themselves so that they make a lasting contribution to the said gene pool.

Too much old kimchi? Hear me out. National Geographic (as reported by Dong-A Ilbo) aired a documentary called World Cyber Games, in which they observed a pro gamer compared to a civilian. In playing a game, a civilian operated the keyboard/mouse roughly 100 times a minute. Mr. Seo Jihoon, the pro gamer, operated them around 370 times a minute.

(An aside: pro gamers in Korea earn as much as 200 million won, or $200,000 a year. You just feel richer being a Korean.)

Even better is the comparison of CT scan of the two people's brains. Look at the picture above first. The civilian only relies on the frontal lobe of his brain, whereas Mr. Seo uses his frontal lobe as well as his temporal lobe. Frontal lobe controls your vision; temporal lobe controls muscle memory and intuitions. In other words, Mr. Seo goes beyond his vision to play his games - he uses a whole other part of his brain! Amazing.

So next time when your Korean friend kicks your ass in Starcraft, don't be mad - you're just evolutionarily inferior. It's the natural way.

Ask A Korean! News: The (Literally) Growing Race Problem in Korea

Ask a Korean! News will be different from any Korean news you can get from the U.S. It will pick up some news that Korean newspapers reported that the Korean thinks to be significant. Here is the first of the series.

I know all Asians look alike. They kinda do. But surely the most ignorant reader of this thing can probably tell the difference between East Asians (Korean, Japanese, Chinese), Southeast Asians (Vietnamese, Thai, Filipino) and South Asians (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi). With that in mind, check the above picture of adorable Korean children.

"Wait, what?! Those three in the middle are clearly not Korean at all! Do you mock my Asian-differentiating skills, the Korean?" would be the reaction of... (surprise) Koreans who live in Korea. And there begins this discussion.

Korea has always been a homogeneous country, and race relation was never much of a problem since, well, you need two races to fight each other. (Not to say Koreans were a peaceful lot. Oh no. They fought amongst themselves for other stupid reasons, like being from the eastern regions versus the western ones. But that's for another day.) A few times when Korea ever had foreign races on the peninsula, those foreign races usually tried to take over the country. Hence Korean people have a strong xenophobic streak.

Fast forward to early 1990s. Korea is now fully industrialized, and has been pretty well off for quite some time. Most people have migrated to the city for jobs and excitement, and the rural areas have become emptier and emptier until only old people, their first born sons, and cattle are left. The firstborns can't leave the family farm, so they're stuck. Problem is, they gotta get married and continue the family line. But no Korean women in their right minds would stick around the farms. So what to do?

Enter: the time-honored tradition of mail-order brides! Fine ladies from modest backgrounds in Vietnam, Philippines, and Thailand, for about $2,000, are shipped out to Korea for the sole purpose of marrying these dudes, having fed the bullshit that farmers are among the highest-earning, most respected professions in Korea. More and more came each year until one-third of all married men in the rural area are married to a foreign-born woman, according to a recent report. Amazing, isn't it?

(True story: when traveling around rural parts of Korea, the Korean saw advertisement that proclaimed "You don't have to pay until you're satisfied!" So if the mail-orderer was not satisfied, he can ship the lady back! I wonder if it's like a computer software, where you can't return it anymore if you took off the shrinkwrap. Okay, that's just disgusting. Let's move on.)

The fuckedupness of this situation has many levels. Domestic violence is a big problem, and so is unilateral divorce or abandonment. Still another is what to do with the "Kosian" children. (Korean + Asian, the terms Koreans use nowadays, as if Koreans are not Asian!) Since the phenomenon of mail-order bride began about 15 years ago, there are now enough interracial children to make up as much as half of the children going to school.

I don't want even to imagine what these children would go through as they grow up. As bad as race relations is in America, it still is the best in the world. Unless Koreans do something to radically change their attitude toward foreignors and interracial people (unlikely), wide-scale race riots a la Los Angeles or Paris in about 20 years is a virtual certainty.