Seoulscapade

PETA were in Seoul for a couple of campaigns at the end of March, and one of them was to take the I’d-rather-go-naked campaign to Seoul Fashion Week. I was there helping them on behalf of KARA and my wife assisted by handing out leaflets. Here’s part of PETA’s media release:

PETA wants fashion week attendees to know that animals trapped for their fur suffer excruciating pain—often for days—before their chests are stomped on or their necks are broken by trappers. Beavers caught in underwater traps struggle frantically before they drown. On fur farms, animals spend their entire lives confined to tiny, filthy cages, where they suffer physical and psychological distress before they are poisoned, gassed, or anally or genitally electrocuted or have their necks broken. In China, which is the world’s leading fur exporter, millions of dogs and cats are killed for their fur, and animals on Chinese fur farms are frequently skinned alive. Because cat and dog fur is often deliberately mislabeled as fur from other species, it can wind up in stores anywhere in the world.

The “naked” ladies didn’t go into the Seoul Trade Exhibition Center (SETEC) where Fashion Week was being held. The terrain was too tricky and staff might have ousted them. Instead, press were alerted to wait at the intersection of Nambusunhwan-ro and Yeongdongdae-ro, or exit 1 of Hangnyeoul Station (Line 3).

The phalanx of photographers, who were the main audience for the demonstration, were waiting in force as the girls arrived.

Here they come. Not many Fashion Week patrons would have seen it except the few exiting the SETEC. I joined the photographers but tried my best not to get in their way.

They were totally surrounded at one stage:

The girl on the left, Ashley Fruno, is from PETA Asia while the others are local girls. They all made some anti-fur announcements and proclamations. Here is the blurb from the media release:

“I’ll gladly bare my skin if it will help save animals’ skins,” says PETA’s Ashley Fruno. “In the 21st century, with so many stylish, comfortable alternatives to fur available, there’s no excuse for supporting one of the most hideous industries on the planet.”

The girls next heading down the sidewalk for the last part of the demonstration while press scrambled madly to stay in front.

The press guys all seemed choreographed, the way they knew the procedure and their part in it. The girls then stopped again outside a different entrance, as pictured in the shot at the very top.

After photo ops there, they walked further up the sidewalk. This was the last part of the demo, a photo op in which the press hung back as if by some prearranged agreement.

It was a good chance to capture the girls without people getting in the way.

The girls then made their exit in a taxi. I’d often wondered how activists get away from such demonstrations, while wrapped in a banner and still trying to maintain the illusion of nakedness. Well, they simply clambered into the taxi as a group with the banner on! Now you know.

Of course, they are not naked. Underneath they are wearing skin coloured shorts and and a strapless top. Anyone could see that, as the girls were not of the same height and the banner’s nipple to crotch dimensions had little play in it for error, so sometimes the shorter girl was showing pant. Even just a little bit really dispelled the illusion, and I found myself strangely distressed about that.

Here’s one of the reports on the campaign in the Korea Times.

-: PLEASE DON’T BUY PRODUCTS THAT USE ANIMAL FUR :-

A great deal was advertised on TV in Seoul recently where you could get a new LG Cyon mobile phone—the strangely named Viewty, model KH2100, for only 26,000 won. It included a charger in the deal and since we needed an extra one of those, we bought the phone.

It’s got all the stuff you’d expect of a latest hand phone, including a cool touch screen instead of any buttons (except for off and on). It came with a cable to hook the phone up to Cyon’s Mobile Sync software. Unfortunately, this software is all in Korean and some fonts just appear as questions marks on my English XP system. But after trial and error I could figure out how to import a CVS file of my numbers into the phone and sync pictures.

Separately from this software, it’s also possible to connect to the phone’s portable 450 MB disk to upload images, text files or music. Great, I thought, I’ll just copy over some MP3 files and away I go—wrong! Like many before me, I misread the signs. When it says MP3 in all advertising, on all of the phone’s music settings, and even on the name of the phone’s default music folder, it does not mean it plays MP3! How stupid of me to think so.

The Cyon can’t play MP3s. Instead, it plays KMPs, which I’ve never heard of. There’s not much info on the net, and I could only find a Mac program that would do conversions—don’t be fooled by something called a KMPlayer, it’s just like GOM Player and doesn’t do conversions—but then I stumbled onto a Korean blog with a small conversion program that thankfully works.

You can download it from here. You don’t need to install it, everything is ready to go in the folder.

Once again, like the Cyon software, this program is made for a Korean operating system so most fonts are question marks, as shown above. Through trial and error again, I figured out how to get it to work. Here are the steps following what I’ve illustrated in the image:

1. This is where you locate and load the MP3 file you want to convert.

2. Put your mobile number (or any number) in here. It won’t work without this.

3. Select the output directory.

4. Do the conversion, which takes about 2 seconds.

Just above the convert button is a button to clear the contents.

Lucky Jim (Penguin Classics)

Kingsley Amis

I’d heard this was a classic of “academic life” literature that had an influence on later writers of that genre. But there is quite a dated feel about this. Many passages, especially dialogue, play out like a 1950s movie, with snappy but unnatural conversations and retorts. The humor was not as evident to me as it might have been back in the day. It relied a lot on the antics of the main character, whom for me was just an immature prat.

Here is the vote taking place for the AMCO Constructions Company to take over the construction of the Sangdo Haemoro apartment complex from Hanjin and Daemyung. This is where our community got to tell those gangsters to go to hell.

Hanjin representatives had tried to call my wife several times during the week, no doubt to try and sway her away from a negative vote. They would have done the same to everyone else. My wife ignored their calls and perhaps others did, too. The vote against Hanjin was unanimous.

I’m pleased with the choice of AMCO, it’s brand name being AMCO Town. It is among the top 20 of construction companies in Korea and last year it won a kind of best apartment award. The company is up and coming and looking to make a mark. It was only established in 2002; however, it is part of Hyundai Motor Company. So that’s cool! It’s previous CEO is now the president of Korea, Lee Myung-bak. Hyundai built our car too, the KIA Carens, which we are very happy with.

For these reasons I’m glad they’re going to take over. My wife and I actually think now that things are going to turn out much better than they would have, even though we’ve been put through a long delay.

AMCO’s Vice Chairman and CEO was at the meeting, reassuring everyone and laying out the strategy for going forward. If all goes well, construction will start again in 2 months. We heard the talk and saw a promotion video, as shown below. Various people were introduced. All in all, I got the impression AMCO is really out to please. What a contrast to Hanjin, the smug bully.

AMCO will change the apartments around. A company rep explained that the materials Hanjin was intending to use were of poor quality and the design was inadequate–the kitchen, for example, was poorly placed as far as it was concerned. This means we might as well forget everything we saw in Hanjin’s model house!

Nonetheless, I was please to hear all of this. It also gave me the impression that AMCO are going to do things right. Sangdo AMCO Town, as it will be called, is possibly be their biggest housing construction project to date, not just in Seoul but in Korea. It could well be a showcase opportunity for them.

There is one major problem. At the moment, on the gates down at the construction site, Hanjin has posted notices saying if anything is touched, the issue will go to court. That’s the worry. Hanjin are legally still there, although everyone wants them out. What happens next will decide how much more of a delay we can expect.

Will Hanjin go quietly, or will it live up to the reputation it has impressed on me, as a gangster company? They could make things difficult pulling out, in which case, as we were told today, we may see a 6 month delay. I’m secretly hoping that since Korea’s President has ties with Hyundai as its former CEO, Hanjin may back off and just piss off.

So, things are on the up and up, and I left that meeting today feeling pretty confident and enthusiastic about AMCO.