By Iwazaru

“GOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAL!” or NOT.
Late in the first half of its second-round game with Germany, England was behind 2-1 when Frank Lampard blasted a shot off the crossbar. The ball came down at least a foot inside the goal line, but referee Jorge Larrionda (now booted from the Cup just like England) called for play to continue. Replays (a tool rejected by Fifa so far) confirmed the ball was across the line in another embarrassing incident for the game.

By Lee Scott

In part one, I briefly described my (and my wife’s) experience with fertility treatment here in South Korea. It is my belief that my wife and I would never have conceived a child by natural means. Because of this fact, there is a school of thought that tells us that means that we should not have had a child. Of course, that doesn’t take into consideration alternative means of raising children—adoption, for example.

My wife and I talked about the possibility of adopting a baby; in Korea, it is highly unusual. Koreans have a very conservative view about biological relationships between parents and children.

By Andy Morris
In case you’ve been hiding in a cave for the last eight years, in 2002 Korea and Japan co-hosted the World Cup. Such a decision was surprising—no nation had co-hosted before—but what was more surprising was the performance of the national team. They powered through the groups, the knockouts and the quarter finals before losing to Germany in the semis. Now, some cynical people think that FIFA were lenient on the Taeguk Warriors because they were a host country. However, I’m a more optimistic person—I truly believe it was a combination of leniency and dumb luck that pushed the Korea national team through to the semis.

Whatever it may be, during that surrealistic run in 2002 the country was abuzz with nationalist, flag-waving fanaticism, the likes of which one almost certainly could not see in any other country in the world—aside from North Korea (though this was not a staged event for the agitprop machine)—where even procreation skyrocketed like a mini baby boom.

By Edward Elric

On the streets of Si Lom weekend markets are being held, where all the tourist swag and urban bric-a-brac are bought and sold at prices that now seem to be about making up for lost business. In the background lively music drones out and the hope is that people feel secure again and even have their normality back. I don’t mean to sound cynical as I’m overjoyed to be able to walk the streets again without worry about the army and the bullets. During the trouble I couldn’t get much further than my local 7/11…

This concert will raise funds for two non-profit organizations (NPOs), 꿈을키우는집, an orphanage in Suwon, and 우리집, a North Korean refugee center in Ansan.

꿈을키우는집 (Suwon) houses 98 children with limited access to native English teachers. 우리집 (Ansan) houses 10 children and sponsors 7 university students without access to English teachers and volunteers.

Representatives from both NPOs will attend the event.

ROK Concert-Fundraiser: Bands Battle with Molotov Vibrations

By Lee Scott

I love movies. I know a lot of people love movies, and I wouldn’t say that I’m any kind of special aficionado, but others might say that. I do tend to think about movies a lot, and I enjoy thinking about dialogue and recalling particularly favorite scenes. Sometimes, I have these little situations that remind me of situations that might happen in a movie, but I’m relatively boring, so those are few and far between. Here is a little anecdote, and you can tell me if you agree that it could have sprung from some “screw-ball” comedy—of errors? Possibly.

By Sue Rissberger

During the past few months as I’ve been delving into my own treasure chest of personal questions, I’ve asked myself, what if? What if I had the opportunity to meet my birth parents? I’m here, in Korea, there is no easier place in which to pursue a search and no better time. I’d recently been in contact at the beginning of the year with the agency in which my parents arranged my adoption to inquire about visa changes. They mentioned, “If you’d like to visit the foster home at some point, please let us know and we can look into whether it’s possible.” I cogitated on this for awhile. Months, in fact. While the opportunity seemed to present itself, I didn’t want to take it just for its availability.

By John Kay
Night on a hard wooden floor and mosquitoes on a mission. The nuns up and about the whole night reciting sutras and praying and burning incense. In the morning they shaved his head. In the small courtyard, the pudgy-faced young monk, now nun, who yesterday had a bucket, today held a razor. For a split second Oh panicked as he looked at the hand holding the razor, then reason took hold. Slowly with the razor she scraped clean every inch of his wizened scalp. Then he was given a set of clothes both grey and baggy.

By Iwazaru
Now that both Koreas have presented their cases to the United Nations Security Council regarding the sinking of the Cheonan, it is time to see if any kind of consensus and consequences will follow, though it already seems unlikely that it will matter.

North Korea, in typical form, threatened that its response to any punishment meted out by the UNSC “will be carried out by our military forces.” It continues to claim that it had nothing to do with the sinking and that the whole thing is “a complete fabrication from A to Z.”

Even the North’s ambassador to the United Nations, Sin Son-ho, oddly offered that he would lose his job if the UN weighs in favor of the South.

Actors Without Bard’ers Presents: Julius Caesar: Condensed. A selection of scenes from Julius Caesar, as well as a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets.

**FREE PERFORMANCE**  presented by AwoB at Sindorim’s open air amphitheater.
When: Sunday June 20 6:00pm–Where: Sindorim Station (line 1 or 2) exit 2.  After you exit, do a short U-turn to your right.  The amphitheater will be straight ahead.

By Sue Rissberger

After 30 years of being away from Korea, I returned last summer. A year and a half of planning, preparation and execution coalesced into my return to a culture I’d been born into but knew little beyond what news headlines and friends reported. A Wednesday evening mid-August marked this return; the arrivals hall at the airport swarmed with a mix of Koreans and foreigners. I blended in, but with who? Was I Korean? American? Korean-American?

By John Kay
Oh Young Taek; nut-brown, stooped with age yet with a full-head of black hair; Five feet 7 inches in his stockinged feet; a resident of Hannam-dong, Seoul. A connoisseur of cigars, tax dodges, room salons and screen golf. A self-made man with a trip to the Philippines in the pipeline but with something on his mind, journeys to Seoul station; the taxi driver impolite and disgruntled about something no one would ever fathom; with a big shiny pate and crooked spectacles dropped Oh off in front of the old station. That historical relic, that old girl; it looked as old and as rundown as Oh. Boarded up and no longer operational; now almost forgotten, like the derelicts and drunks, the broken, the browbeaten and the mad, camped in its shadows.

By Andrew Morris

Tensions on the Korean Peninsula have risen to their highest point in a generation. Reactions from all sides to the sinking of the Cheonan have ranged from the bellicose to the bizarre. While I believe that it was indeed a North Korean attack (for reasons I will explain later), other theories abound. A theory presented to me by my otherwise rational co-teacher is that the Cheonan was sunk as part of a false flag operation, designed to boost the popularity of Lee Myung-Bak’s famously hard-line stance against Pyongyang.