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seoulmon
Joined: 13 Nov 2003
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2006 6:39 am Post subject: Headline: Hwang Woo-suk caught with FAKE DEGREE |
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Taken from today's Korean Herlad:
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Hwang Woo-suk caught with fake degree
Updated: 9:40 p.m. ET Jan. 11, 2006
SEOUL, South Korea - In yet another scandal for embattled Hwang Woo-suk it was discovered that his degree was from an internet company based out of Thailand that offered degrees for $50 based on "life experience."
"Oh my GOD! I never SUSPECTED" said an KimChon-gu, an ex-hogwon owner who employed Hwang as an English teacher for 3 years. "He had this piece of paper that said BA on it so I just assumed it was valid."
It is not clear when Hwang made the switch from English teaching to medical science but in a matter of months he rose to prominence in the cloning world. For 6 years Hwang headed Korea's most prestigious University Seoul National. His salary during that time has not been made public but the University has said they may have suffered a loss of up to $400,000.
"We take Fake Degrees very seriously" said Um-kwui-yuk President Provost of Seoul University. Each potential candidate from janitor on up to vice-President undergoes a rigorous background check.
Hwang whose degree from WONDERLAND UNIVERSITY was determined to be a fake after investigators did a search in Google using the key words "Wonderland" and "University."
Hwang, who could not be reached for comment was defended by members of Dave's ESL, a community of English teachers who have no girlfriends and who meeting regularly to bitch about Korean. "I don't know what the problem is dude" wrote one poster named Kim-chi Kong. "If he can get away with it, good for him"
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More here. |
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Bulsajo
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 11:30 am Post subject: |
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A shirt that I call my Gatsby shirt
A few nights ago I went to my usual pub for a drink to wind down the evening. I decided to wear a shirt that I call my Gatsby shirt, so named for the resemblance I think it bears to something the title character of "The Great Gatsby" might wear. I thought it a nice touch to my otherwise funereal wardrobe.
In any event, I arrived there at about 9:00, only to catch the eye of a pretty girl with a man who I guessed to be her boyfriend across the bar. I paid only brief attention to her, because another girl I had a crush on was sitting at a table with her friends, not paying attention to me. I didn't feel too bad, that sort of behavior made me feel right at home.
I ordered a Chinese beer and the pretty girl sitting across the bar raised her glass in a toast to me. Finding the gesture charming, I did the same back to her. After a while and a little more of this, the guy she was with invited me to join them, and over there I went, being hard up to meet people here in Seoul.
We exchanged all the usual pleasantries which that situation demands, what I was doing in Seoul, where I was living, how old I was, etcetera. After a few minutes, the girl excused herself.
"So uh, is she your girlfriend?" I asked slowly.
"Wife," he said shortly. Damn, I thought. Married. And I can forget about her, I thought further. Engaging in more strained conversation with the man, I found out his name was Taeho and her name was Jung. He was a bartender and she went to school sometimes. Jung returned from the restroom awhile later, but not before Taeho called her on his phone to check up on her. Weird, I thought.
Jung came back to her barstool and declared that it was very, very good to meet me. She'd been drinking some and I could tell because of the amount of times she raised her glass to me. In Korea, people toast more than anyplace else on the planet I think, and the amount of times they do this is in direct proportion to the amount of alcohol they've consumed.
As the night wore on, Jung seemed surprisingly interested in me, despite the fact that her husband was seated right next to her. So she invited me to join them for another drink at a different place.
We went to Itaewon, a place known for a lot of expatriates, mostly U.S. Army. Itaewon is like a latter day "Casablanca" with people from every corner of the globe scattered about the streets on a Saturday night. We passed by a convenience store and Jung started getting sick. We left Taeho, who didn't seem to give much of a damn about his wife's health in front of the convenience store to talk to a few expatriates out front while Jung and I looked for a bathroom.
After finding one, I rejoined Taeho and the expatriates at the plastic table in front of the 7-Eleven. The expatriates were obviously interested in Jung.
"So uh, who's the girl?" asked a British guy who'd been coming in and out of the 7-Eleven all night.
"She's my sister," he said.
"Sister?" I asked incredulously. "I thought you said she was your
wife."
"No," he said with characteristic shortness. I was beginning to wonder why he'd invited me over for a drink in the first place. He didn't seem like such a friendly guy after all. The whole experience was getting really bizarre with his saying that they were married being the pinnacle of the evening's weirdness.
Jung came back not long after and seemed obviously interested in me. We exchanged phone numbers and agreed to meet the following day. At this point, we were getting close. I found her to be warm and caring, not at all like her brother. I wondered how two clearly different people could live in such close quarters and go out for drinks like they did.
Next to us, her brother seethed. He'd seen enough of our little show and dragged her away from me, screaming at her in Korean. She ran back to me, about ready to cry and took me by the arm, leaving him in front of the 7-Eleven. Half a block down the road, though, Taeho had different designs. He'd started following us, breaking into a full on gait not long after. He ran up to her, pulled her off of me, grabbed me by the neck, and ground my face into the hood of a nearby car. Now, I wasn't about to fight back and subject myself to the potential whims of the Korean legal system. I'd heard horror stories of how foreigners get screwed by Korean police and Korean laws and I didn't have any desire to get deported so I told him just to calm down and that we were all friends, using all the affability that my elitist self could muster.
"Hey, don't worry about it, I'll just get in a cab and we'll forget
everything," I said.
He said no. He was fuming and raving at me in Korean, not a word of which I could understand. Pulling his fist back sharply, I could only assume he was warning me to stay away from his sister for whatever reason. She got in front of him, started to plead with him to let me go.
That was when he hit her. Right across the face. Hard, it felt like.
"All right pal, that's it, you crossed the line," I said, moving to restrain him. And that's when he socked me right across the face.
Now I must say, that having never been hit in the face before, it doesn't hurt as much as one might think. But it still ain't pretty. He hit me a few more times, frankly, he beat the hell out of me. Eventually, the expatriates pulled him off of me, and I escaped with Jung. We went to a club where we she took care of my bleeding face and apologized profusely.
It had been a nice night, though I paid a sizeable price for it. Last I saw of Taeho, he was fighting with a police officer, and I assume they took him to the local drunk tank to cool off. I took Jung back to her apartment sometime before dawn. She was shaken up, crying. I told her that if I were their father, I would have throttled Taeho for hitting her and she only muttered something about that not being possible. I walked her to her door and she agreed to call me the next day so we could meet.
At my English lesson the following afternoon, I asked my student what he thought of the whole story. He apologized profusely and said that Koreans in general don't do that. As far as I could tell, he was right. I had not once been attacked here in Seoul up until that point.
As my student walked me to the hospital to get my nose x-rayed, he informed me that in Korean culture, when a man introduces a girl as his sister, it most often means lover. I cursed the obscureness of Korean culture as I laid face down on the cold x-ray table.
Diagosis: Fractured nasal bone. Jung never called me, though I suspected that was for the best.
And the worst part of it was, the Gatsby shirt was ruined. |
Send your comments, bouquets and shirts to: Tony Lizza c/o The Editor at [email protected] |
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Ryst Helmut
Joined: 26 Apr 2003
Location: In search of the elusive signature...
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| Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2006 5:59 pm Post subject: |
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New final line:
I got Derricked.
Any others?
!shoosh
Ryst |
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