nanoomi

Tom from Seen In  Jeonju has managed to get his hands on the very first editions of Korea’s first English newspaper, The Independent. Check back every week for a look back into late 19th century Korea and what life was like for both Koreans and ex-pats during this time. You can read more about The Independent here.

Saturday, April 18th, Vol. 1 No. 6
Local Items
For the last two years the pine forests on the hills of Seoul have been encroached upon by wood gathers and much timber has been cut without permission. If this continues the hills will eventually become denuded. The police department has just awakened to this fact and yesterday a policeman made an arrest of four culprits who were in the act of carrying away stolen timber from the hills of Yong San. Read the full story

The Korea Herald had a blurb on its front page that North Korea had opened a YouTube channel.  Now, this is very, very interesting news to me, because a North Korean propaganda channel on YouTube is/could be…

1. Unintentionally hilarious
2. Unintentionally frightening
3. A fascinating convergence of backward-looking thought with new media
4. In danger of being blocked by the Korean government
5. Loaded with hilariously bad English

Here we expat bloggers have been moaning that South Korean promotions people have been failing to reach their audience because they’ve been publishing/producing stuff THEY like instead of stuff that’ll actually reach their audience… How much do you want to bet a North Korean YouTube channel will raise that hilari-out-of-touchness to a degree we may never have seen before?

…If the intended audience of the YouTube channel is the international world, and not just South Korean sympathizers/potential sympathizers, that is.

Read the full story