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On a day when Google launched Gmail Motion and LinkedIn was offering to connect users with “activist/chief fundraiser at Nottingham” Robin Hood, Korean websites were engaging in April Fools’ waggery of their own.

In a gag somewhat similar to LinkedIn’s, Cyworld users opened their accounts to discover friend invites from the likes of 2PM star Nichkhun and 아이유. Clicking on these “friends,” alas, led to nothing more exciting than an invitation to a Cyworld music festival. Cyworld also changed its name to 쵸재깅 (chojaeging) for the day, using the nickname that appears if you attempt to type “Cyworld” in English with the hangeul text left on.

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In a K-pop-heavy round-up of Korean tech/social media blogs:

• Bloter.net has an interview with Joyce Kim, who after a stellar academic career (Cornell, Harvard, law school) decided to ditch her job as a lawyer and start up Soompi.com, a site aimed at making Korean films, soap operas and pop music more accessible to English speakers. The article begins with some observations about how hard it is, language issues aside, for foreigners to access sites offering Korean dramas and K-pop music (Korea’s real-name registration system, Korean sites’ insistence on using Internet Explorer, and the dearth of English-language sites in the US).
  Kim says her site now gets more than 1.2 million hits a month (of whom only 10 percent are Korean) and that Korean pop culture has enormous potential among American youngsters, who Kim reckons view Hollywood as increasingly stale. About the difficulties facing start-ups in Korea, Kim has this to say:

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