Jason Williams is retiring.

The Korean remembers all the legendary Lakers - Kings games of the late 90s~early 00s, and watching J-Will's career start was a rare treat. The man had an amazing court vision, and ballhandling skills like no other. If he did not decline so rapidly in his later years, he would have been just as good as Steve Nash.



Thank you for the memories J-Will. Hope your retirement life is spent well.

Ask a Korean! News! - North Korean Arcades are Incredibly Sad

You are a strapping North Korean child. Your parents are middling officers of the Central Party, so you have escaped the dire starvation that afflicts the peasants. Heck, you might even have some coins to spend. It's been a long day of saluting, marching, shooting, and singing the glory of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader. Now you are bored. What do you do?

Go to the arcade, of course.



March to the nearest "Hall of Entertainment", which is frankly fancier than any "Entertainment Room" (direct translation of 오락실, South Korean term for arcade) that the Korean has ever visited. Most of the arcades in South Korea are in a cramped, sunless basement. North Korean arcade seems to be large, well-ventilated, and sunny. All thanks to the Dear Leader.

Let's see what's inside.

Okay, the racing game looks a little crowded, that's okay....



Who needs car racing when you can play the most AWESOME torpedo firing game????



The submarine got captured by the South Joseon Puppets (남조선 괴뢰)? That's ok, you can bomb the imperialists from the air instead.


Once their buildings are bombed, shoot them with your handgun.



Even grown-ups are getting ready for the day of reckoning.



When it gets real sunny, some machines need ventilation as well.


In all seriousness, the Korean does not know what to think about these pictures. They are mind-blowing. On one hand, the crappiness of the games are pretty incredible. They all look like some old machines at a motel in a town called Bumfuck in a Big Square State, where Ryu and Ken fight in crazy technicolor caused by the deteriorating monitor. And why can't North Koreans come up with a more attractive Korean font than the ones that look like it was written with a calligraphy brush?

On the other hand, it is still interesting that at least some North Korean children (and adults, apparently) get to play video games. The Korean feels that in many ways, the 2-bit arcade games of the 1980s were superior to all the fancy stuff that the kids play now. And North Koreans get to enjoy it, for whatever that's worth.

Incredible pictures (and the most apt headline) from Gizmodo, via UK: Resistance. Many thanks to the Korean Brother for sending the link.

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

Good article on New York Times about how to deal with different cultures.

Can you tell the Korean has been catching up with Deadspin lately?

Well, today is a story of a high school football team that won the game by repeatedly calling the opposing players n----- until the other team quit, and the story of the same high school principal saying his team would have been better off not playing teams "out of the area".

The Korean still stands by his belief that America is the least racist country in the world, but like one commenter on that post said, sometimes it feels like that is not saying much.

Today will be remembered as the day when House Republicans euthanized John McCain's miserable campaign.

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.