During his riveting ’15-seconds’ online, he was considered a prophet who first saw the coming economic crisis and was among the first to criticize the Lee Myung Bak Administration’s weak economic policies. But shortly after the arrest of Park Dae Sung, 31, who used the online moniker Minerva, the public has become divided over his contribution to public discourse. (more…)

Looks like it could be one of those summers as North Korea ratchets up tensions in the area. Reuters reports today that the North has announced that two American journalists arrested under charges of illegal entry with “hostile intent” last March will be tried in a North Korean court on June 4. (background inside…)

American Daniel Libeskind, the master architect recognized for his selection as overseer for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center of lower Manhattan, has now been chosen to rebuild the Seoul Yongsan District after the U.S. Military base near there vacates sometime around 2012. (more…)

[AP / WSJ]

After defecting North Korea in 2002, Choi Young-hee has managed to find success as a professional matchmaker in the South. But instead of bringing together eligible men and women in the South, she has found a niche bringing together South Korean men with eligible Korean women from the North. 360 couples so far. So goes the saying that men from the South are charming and women from the North ‘ravishingly beautiful.’

[LA Times]

As the Korean government monitors the situation for 16 potential cases of swine flu, the World Health Organization (WHO) has raised their pandemic alert to five of six points. According to their web site primer on pandemics, the current phase: (read the rest…)

Rising from the ashes of the 2004 Hwang Woo Suk scandal that brought the world’s first successfully cloned dog, another Seoul National University professor, Lee Byeong-chun, and his research team have worked out a way to produce the world’s first transgenic dogs with the ability to fluoresce. Uh… they glow? Red? (Read the rest…)

But don’t look now, drag to Australia and they have several cases developing as reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). South Korea has already begun monitoring at airports. Google is capable of integrating both reporting (and search) data to track developing diseases (and/or pandemics) in real time. Kind of breathtaking, but only in small, short breaths so as not to induce panic or breathe someone else’s pig germs.

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

U.S. version at [Gizmodo]
[Google Maps]

Korea has the world’s largest number of TOEFL test-takers, and after billions spent on private education, the average ranking is near the bottom at 136th place out of 161 nations.

[Korea Times]

You may have started to notice it in subtle ways at restaurants and cafes, as the Seoul Metropolitan Government takes aggressive steps to curb second-hand smoke. Smoking bans now include public outdoor areas such as streets and plazas. While no fines or penalties are associated with these new rules, it looks as though the government aims to make it socially unacceptable to be a smoker in public. (more…)

Read the rest at the [Korea Times]