꽃미남 (kkot-minam) – 1 flower man
꽃미남들 (kkot-minam-deul) – plural, more than 1 flower man
‘Inappropriate clothing’ legislation passed in Korea and goes into effect in 2 weeks. A 50,000Won ($50USD) fine will be imposed on women who wear clothing that provokes others to feel ‘uncomfortable’. Full story.
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There were numerous stories this past week regarding North Korean threats to the US and South Korea after the UN Security Council voted in favor of sanctions. Story here.
See our previous posts on North Korea.
This weekend marked the beginning of Daylight Savings Time (DST) in the US and clocks were moved ahead one hour. We remember this by the phrase, “fall back spring ahead”. DST runs from March until November each year.
Large countries, like the US, may have as many as three time zones. China, on the other hand, uses a single time zone for their entire country (UTC+8). North and South Korea use a single time zone called Korea Standard Time (KST). Neither country utilizes Daylight Savings Time although South Korea had considered using it several years ago and eventually abandoned the idea. Korea is UTC + 9 hours.
Here are some interesting thoughts on why some people believe DST is useless.
Korea’s KakaoTalk is a free multi-platform instant messaging app with over 70 million users (mostly in Korea). It’s available for free on Apple iOS, Google Android, Windows Phone, and Blackberry phones. The app developers admitted to have been inspired by WhatsApp of the US but they’ve gone on to expand the design. It features a phone number based ID system where your contact list is automatically compared to existing Kakao users and matches are determined to be ‘friends’. KakaoTalk’s explosive growth and success derives from Korea’s quick adaptation to smartphones. Even the word ‘Kakao’ has become synonymous with chatting in Korean.
If you’re living in Korea or have Korean friends abroad, you’ll find KakaoTalk to be indispensable. While it doesn’t necessarily do anything better than other instant messaging apps, you’re guaranteed to find other Koreans using it. I frequently travel and communicate with international friends and KakaoTalk sadly has no use for me. Instead, I spend most of my time using Apple’s iMessage, FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, and Skype. KakaoTalk does support mVOIP for making calls to other Kakao users, but the quality is very poor (especially when calling internationally). I also dislike the app feature that automatically makes every contact a potential app ‘friend’.
KakaoTalk has been in the news recently for several privacy issues as they had stored personal messages on their servers for up to 10 days. Currently, messages are stored for 5-7 days and they’re looking to reduce this in the future. Full story here. On March 6, they posted a notice to the app that there were further security issues and the Emoticons, Themes, and Plus Friend features had to de-activated until users installed a new version of the app.
NHN’s Line is another popular Korean messaging app with over 100 million users globally.
KBS News reports that Psy will release a Gangnam Style remix album in collaboration with American musicians this coming Tuesday on iTunes.
Story here..