Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Cymro]

So much apparent interest in this post about brooms has completely surprised me. Is there nothing else to talk about?

Manlyboy, did you write that thoughtful piece of literature yourself?

To those who suggested that I get a vacuum, I would like to say I have one. By the time I get around to cleaning the apartment so much dust and half my girlfriend's hair has gathered that it's just easier to sweep up. The vacuum is used in phase two, fine particle removal, and three, edges and corners.

I'm aware that long-handled brooms are available, but nobody has yet told me why people risk putting their backs out to save the cost of a couple of feet more plastic.

I understand that many have small apartments and it's convenient to be able to stow away the broom under the kitchen sink. Maybe that's exactly it.

[TJ]

[Cymro]

I'm at a college, so I too am enjoying the end of semester.

[TJ]

xx

[ajuma]

Yep. Made the broom out of local materials, using a longer branch for the handle!

[JongnoGuru]

I read a piece long ago in some short-lived rag here entiled, "Open the Door, but Bar the Way!" It was back in the early years of Korea's import liberalisation, and there was a constant flood of shrill warnings in the media about the consequences if Koreans start liking and buying foreign-made products 'willy-nilly'.

So the idea was, okay, big mean old America and the EU may have succeeded in prying open the doors to our market, but we, the rascally Korean consumers, we'll show them! (Grrr!!) We shall unite and refuse to buy their products and services!! So there! Fighting!!

What was funny was that the author of this particular rant attempted, as many do, to employ some far-fetched Western example as a moral lesson for the Koreans. His example had to do with the Swiss who, the author claims, for centuries made their own type of bread: it was heavy, very hard, and wholly unappetising compared to bread made in countries surrounding poor defenceless Switzerland.

So when the valiant Swiss failed in their historic Anti-Imported Bread Struggle (what? you don't remember that well-publicised event?), the good people of Helvetica just went on eating their own nasty-ass bread out of sheer pique, and continue to do so to this day.

In his concluding line, the author exhorts all Koreans (in English ) to follow the lead of those righteous Swiss and 'eat our hard, tasteless bread!'!! (i.e., keep on buying only Korean cars, Korean chocolate, Korean cigarettes, Korean washing machines, Korean insurance, etc.)

What's this got to do with short-handled brooms? Isn't it obvious?

(Just you watch, Aled -- this will grow into the longest thread on Dave's.)

Long Live the Short-handled Broom Thread!

[coolsage]

Yes, yet another of those die-hard 'traditions' that date back to when Koreans were only four feet tall. In a similar vein, carrying a baby on one's back, facing forward, so that he/she never sees where he/she is going leads to the utter absence of vision, not just peripheral, in adults.

[hellofaniceguy]

[rok_the-boat]

I think they were designed for people with crippled backs, and then just caught on