Official: Turning Off Lights Easier Than Social Programs That Actually Support Families

A Ministry of Health official explained the recent decision to turn off the lights in government buildings, sending workers home to make babies and increase Korea's abysmally low birthrate. "We think that turning off the lights will let people know it's time to go home and fuck. In fact, we were originally going to make that the slogan for what we're calling "Lights Off Wednesday" - originally, it was going to be called "Go Home and Fuck Day." We also considered "Paper Bag Wednesday" for all the people who no longer find their spouses sexually attractive.

The point of the day is to turn off lights in the offices, so that nobody can work late, and will go home. We are confident that our employees, Korea's best people, lack the creativity to think of anything else to do, other than go home and fuck."

Coming up with the idea of turning off the lights at 7pm on one Wednesday a month was a long, difficult process. The same ministry of Health official describes the intense brainstorming session that led to this latest brainwave.

"We were spitballing ideas that would make families have more children, and all kinds of stuff came up:

public awareness campaigns removing the stigma against out-of-wedlock births,

government support for single parents,

social programs providing free or drastically reduced daycare for working families,

government assistance to defray the costs of education,

improved education to remove the need to put kids through the prohibitively expensive hogwan system,

legal support for maternity leave, with guaranteed returns to work for mothers,

changes in the business culture so that working parents can leave work on time instead of feeling obligated to stay until the boss leaves, or go to office dinners every night

campaigns aimed at raising the status of labor jobs and skilled trades - so that parents no longer feel that they MUST force all their kids to compete to get into SNU,

offering balanced lifestyle and family budgeting counselling to help would-be parents plan for more than one child

university scholarships or tuition waiver programs for children from large families,

better legal protection for women who are railroaded into quitting their jobs after marrying or having a child,

bringing all the abandoned babies Korean men left behind in the Philippines to Korea

tax breaks or refunds for multi-child families,

introducing more lines of designer clothes for babies (for the Kangnam crowd)

encouraging in-country, and not just overseas adoption,

and pretty much every idea on this list, too.

"but when we looked at the possible costs of all these kinds of programs, we eliminated most of them, just because we're too cheap to ACTUALLY do anything...

"but fortunately for us, Jung Han-su, an entry-level civil servant, who didn't seem to be taking the brainstorming process very seriously, was calling out all kinds of ideas that were... a little unique... and after awhile, we realized that some of them, like government sponsored orgies and adding aphrodesiacs to the water supply, or adding fertility drugs to the recipe for kimchi, or showing more two-year-olds doing sexy dances on TV, so that viewers think it's cute and want to have babies so they can teach them sexy-dances, were obviously in jest, but other of his ideas were actually feasible. Laughing all the while, he offered up a few more suggestions to the room-full of exhausted ministry officials, and we finally boiled everything down to two really feasible, and not too expensive options:

1. turn off lights in office buildings at 7pm

2. manufacture and distribute faulty condoms around Korea

Now, given that foreigners are the only ones dirty and immoral enough to use condoms in Korea (only ones that need them, you know?), and distributing faulty ones would just increase the number of faulty, half-breed babies who have no Jung, we realized that turning off building lights was pure genius: rather than inflicting a heavy burden on taxpayers, the way most of those "social programs" would, "Lights Off Wednesday" the reduced electrical bills would actually SAVE taxpayer dollars! We made Jung Han-su supervisor of the new program: he's going to be throwing the circuit breaker in our ministry building himself every "Lights Out Wednesday" and he's happy about his promotion, though he won't stop smirking."

Government officials are hoping the "Lights Out Wednesdays" will have their intended effect of raising the birthrate: if it does not, the government might have to actually do something.

Meanwhile, three months before the "Lights Out Wednesdays" program was introduced, brothels near Seoul's business areas unveiled a "Purple Light Wednesday" discount, given that Wednesdays are traditionally slow days in Korea's brothels; the "Purple Light Wednesdays" coincidentally fall on the same days as "Lights Out Wednesdays," but government officials swear there is no connection between the two events.

A Primer on Korean Democracy for Developing Nations

Korean scholar Youn Jung-suk, president of the Korean Legislative Studies Institute, suggests that Korean democracy is a good model for developing countries attempting to set a democracy of their own in place.

Here are some samples from the "How-To-Guide" he's sent to several Southeast Asian countries.

Taken from pages 212-215, the first pages of: Chapter Nine, "Now that Your Democracy Has been Established, and You No Longer Have To Massacre Your Citizens To Put Down Their Protests"

Materials needed:

Sledgehammers.

Outrageous costumes. (politicians who can fly optional)

Fire Extinguishers.

Cartoon Characters.

Candles.

Podiums that are defensible as fortress walls

Irony-free Josie and the Pussycats Remake Greenlighted. Working Title "K-Pop: The Movie"

Josie and the Pussycats, the satirical 2001 comic book adaptation, in which an innocent, unknown band becomes part of a media hype machine, only to discover their music is being exploited as a platform to subliminally sell styles and products, will be re-made in Korea. Except, without irony, and brazen advertisement, instead of just satirical or subliminal product endorsements.



Of course, this will not be a straight re-make: while in the original Josie and the Pussycats film, the band played their own instruments, and valued their music and friendship above fame or money, and they were unaware that subliminal messages were being planted in their music and videos. In the remake, however, the band will be assembled through auditions of ten-year-olds, with training sequences reminiscent of the brutal child training sequences of movies like 300 and Ninja Assassin. Then, instead of being best friends, the lead characters will be placed in a huge all-girl pop group characterized by rivalry and back-biting rather than friendship and support.

Also, the original film contained a company logo or brand-name mention in nearly every frame of the film: this was an ironic reference to the commercialization of music, and a satirical running joke throughout the movie. The remake, funded by SM Entertainment, managers of Girls' Generation, will be doing the same thing, "But we've decided not to make it a running joke, and just make it into naked advertising plugs," SM Entertainment's media manager said. In fact, the movie's plot will incorporate several of our sponsors as well: instead of the friendship conflict caused in the original movie by the record company trying to make Josie a star above the other Pussycats, the new plot will revolve around an article in the newspaper saying that one of the group members (no spoilers: we won't say which one) is prettier than the others, at which time several of the other girls ponder plastic surgery in a montage of advertisements for plastic surgery clinics; then another of the girls gets a nicer phone than the other 8, leading to a shopping montage of all the girls romping around electronics shops trying out phones, mp3 players, and other new-generation handheld electronics. No Sony products or I-phones, though.


As seen in the above video, which doubles as a phone ad and a trailer for the film, there will be frequent instances of shaking the video camera as a substitute for actual dance moves. The re-make will also involve more dance moves involving pointing fingers, and camera poses that involve touching one's face in different places, with different fingers.


While one industry insider who pre-viewed the script of what will probably be released as "Jessica and the Third Generation Phone by LG," and dismissed it as "A two hour product placement interrupted by songs that are extended commercials," SM Entertainment responded to the critique by saying, "So?" The SM representative then slipped while stepping off the press conference podium, revealing the platform to have been a huge pile of cash.

M-Net to Wheel Comatose Lee Hyori Onstage During Music Awards

(article and photo source)

While Lee Hyori has been getting sicker and sicker with exhaustion and malnutrition as she dieted and prepared for her solo concert, her promotion company, MNet Entertainment, has assured her loyal fans that they will indeed be seeing her during January.

"The doctors ordered ten days of complete bed-rest, but they never said we can't take the bed around and keep her usual schedule of fan appearances and performances. We've commissioned a special, 'sexy' hospital bed for her while she convalesces; it fits in the back of a tour van, and it kind of combines Segway technology with vital function monitors and a reclining "sexy" shaped mattress, with super-tight, sexy see-through blankets, so that Hyori can stay warm, while fans can still see the hot fashions she's rocking beneath her bedcovers while she recovers from pnuemonia. We've programmed her hospital bed to wheel through her dance routines, and choreographed some special hospital-themed dances so that fans will sympathize with her poor health. She's always lip-synched her songs, so she doesn't even need to wake up and sing for her performances, which we think is best for her health. Of course, we're very concerned about all the money we've invested in her. Fans will still be getting the pound of her flesh that they want. Acutally, not just a pound: she's lost seven kilograms since she got sick."

Hyori's loyal, sympathetic fans, left comments on her website.

"Hyori we love you. Please get better before Saturday's show. Do you know how much I paid for these tickets?"

"Hyori we hope your health will recover soon. We're rooting for you, so don't let your fans down, or you may as well kill yourself."

"Hyori: my fan club chapter is thrilled that you lost seven kilograms in one month: we're dying to know how WE can catch pnuemonia, too!"

"Get well soon, Lee Hyori, so you can return to your usual twenty-hour workdays of kowtowing to your fans' outrageous demands! You're the best! Just don't be sick for long: U-Ee's nipping at your heels, you know."

"It's good that you lost seven kilos. You were looking fat in your last few videos. Yeah, we noticed."

Here at Dokdo Is Ours, we also wish Hyori a quick recovery.

Hat Tip to The Korean

Go to Ask A Korean! and read The Korean's translated North Korean jokes.

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2010/01/ask-korean-news-north-korean-jokes.html

This Just In: Some Dumb People Think It's Cold

Korea Times Rule of Journalism #43:

If it's been happening for a week, it might continue forever.

Is Current Cold Winter Ushering In 'Mini-Ice Age'?

Kim Yu-na to Change Spelling of Name to Improve Her Skating Results

Kim Yu-na, the daughter of Jesus Christ, who is Korean, has been preparing for her shot at Olympic Gold in the 2010 Vancouver Games. Though too busy herself to grant an interview, Kim Yuna's mother spared some time to take some questions from Dokdo Is Ours. "Olympic Gold has always been a goal in the Kim house," Park Mee-hee explained. Just how true that was shocked this intrepid reporter.

"My husband and I only had sex during years when the child we had would have be at an age that gave her a chance at appearing in two Olympics - She'll be 20 for her first Olympics, but age 24 is not too old to contend and qualify in the 2014 games as well, in order to double her chance at winning gold. Though my husband didn't enjoy my refusal to have sex with him between the years 1987 and 1989, it was a sacrifice we both realized we had to make."

So before Queen Yuna was anything more than Queen Ovum, her mother's master plan had begun to unfold. "I used to press my ovaries up against the television when figure skating programs were on TV, before I conceived, and while I was pregnant with little Yu-na," Mrs. Park said. "Then, after going as far as we could in Korea, I looked overseas to find a foreign tutor for her. Though Canada had the world's best figure skating coaches, I'd heard stories online about Canadian teachers trying to have sex with their students, so I set out to find the gayest Canadian teacher I could, in order to make sure he would not try to have sex with my daughter."

Brian Orser was the Canadian they found, and after an awkward first conversation ("He was quite taken aback when I told him there were no gays in Korea," Mrs. Park explains) she convinced him to train her daughter, by setting up a tent outside his front door in Toronto, playing Pansori at high volume on a portable CD player, and refusing to leave for three months. "A mother has to do whatever she can for her daughter's education."

Brian Orser had nothing to say about the process of being recruited to train Yu-na, though he does acknowledge that Mrs. Park gave him a Korean nickname: "My name has so many R's, as you know, and R's are hard for many Koreans to pronounce, so she gave me a Korean name: 호모 - in English that's pronounced 'Ho-mo.' Sometimes she also just calls me 'the gay one.'"

Now, while following conventional training methods, like exercise, practice, mental focus exercises, not wasting her energy at less important tournaments like the Four Continents Championship, and not having sex with her Canadian teacher, Kim Yu-na also has another trick up her sleeve.


"We saw Topokki's new spelling set the world aflame with love for Korean food: we're really that the new spelling is what caused Korean food to become the seventh most popular world cuisine this year, according to a metric made up by Chang Tae-Pyeong; in order to tap that same kind of power for Yu-na's Olympic mission, the week before the Olympics' Opening Ceremony, we plan to change Kim Yu-na's name to Geem Yeon-ah. We're convinced this spelling will make her more familiar to the judges, and build her brand in their minds, which will give them a favorable disposition toward her during the competition."

While skating coach "The Gay One" is skeptical about whether the spelling change will increase his protege's chances of a gold medal, he is of the mind that Mrs. Park can do whatever she likes: "She will, anyway," as long as it doesn't take time away from Yu-na's training. "If the name-change were a ten-day ceremony during which she couldn't train, I'd be taking names and hunting heads, but as long as she's at the skating rink at 7 every morning, whatever keeps Mrs. Park running around town filling out name-change documents, instead of doing an impression of a bad hockey mom is fine with me. Who shouts 'Fight fight!' at figure skating practice anyway? Seriously!"

Korea Times School of Journalism: Rule 31

The Korea Times School of Journalism:

You are already familiar with some of our rules, for example, "In the absence of an interview, it's OK to make up a quote" and "If I heard one person say it, or something like it one time, I'm allowed to pretend it's popular sentiment" and "If at any time during the interview, my subject says 'I think that's true', I can put that quote after any sentence I write, to make it sound like that's what the person said in my interview" and "Leaders of hate groups are to be quoted at every opportunity"... here, is rule 31 in our rigorous code.


If we want it to be true, we're allowed to report it as if it has already happened. For demonstrations of this principle at work:

Example one:
Korean Food to the World!

Example two:
Next 60 Years

choice cuts:

It is a small surprise then that the democracy fighter-turned-President Kim Dae-jung honed his self-taught English using The Korea Times, setting an early ― and landmark ― example of the use of English Newspaper In Education, or ENIE.

And you can too! For a small monthly payment...

Uncompromising Journalism

The death of former Managing Editor Choi Byeong-woo while covering the Taiwan Strait crisis in the 1950s, and the torture of another ex-managing editor, Hong Soon-il, by the state spy agency in the early 1970s in relation to a foreigner's contribution are but a few cases that demonstrate this paper's uncompromising practice of what journalism should be.

And in sixty more years, we'll STILL be patting ourselves on the back about that, beside Bat-Boy's opinion column and results proving the alien skeletons were Korean. You may not realize that former Managing Editor Choi Byeong-woo also pioneered The Korea Times' special journalistic technique of publishing pictures of movie starlets who weren't wearing their bras, including these classics of Marilyn Monroe from 1952.

Today's world is hard to survive in for old industries, harder for old media outlets that are bearing the brunt of rapid technological and social changes, and hardest for newspapers trying to maintain both journalistic and financial integrity.

The Korea Times will spare no efforts for following that tortuous path through ceaseless self-transformation but with an unchanging sense of mission to serve the widest scope of citizens possible, with the confidence that our readers will recognize and support such a struggle, as they have done in the past.

In Oriental philosophy, the 60th birthday carries a peculiar significance of returning to the very year one was born after passing a full sexagenarian cycle. This means the time has come for this newspaper to be born again as a more mature, respected but modest guardian and watchman of this society.

If we want it to be true, we can report it as if it already happened.

Example three:
Korea to Witness Emergence of Global Newspaper

choice cuts:

National Assembly Speaker Kim Hyong-o has expressed his optimism that The Korea Times, which marks its 60th anniversary this year, is poised to become a global newspaper in line with growing worldwide demand for reliable, in-depth information about Korea.

(Play a game of spot the irony:)

The parliamentary leader noted that this demographic shift will bring profound changes to society, making the country enter a new era of multiculturalism.

``If Korea cannot resist the change, it should better adjust itself to cope with the evolving circumstances,'' Kim said, adding that The Korea Times should become the voice of migrants and minorities here.

If we want it to be true, we are allowed to report it as if it had already happened:

Example four:
Setting The Record Straight

I hope they understand my meaning when I say that The Korea Times is certainly the most incredible paper I've read in a long, long time!