Cyrus Farivar

Aaron‘s wife, Soo Jin, first showed me this commercial in Busan last weekend. IHT, February 9 2006: SAN FRANCISCO – The Bush administration is drawing up plans to further tighten the noose around North Korea by barring financial firms investing in Pyongyang from conducting business in the United States. Washington is moving fast to capitalize on Pyongyang’s alleged counterfeit dealings, but so fast that it is omitting a major factor: Korea is reunifying. At Incheon International Airport in South Korea,…

After having visited the DMZ, I’ve been reading up on some of the weirder aspects and effects of a divided Korea. Here’s one (Korean-speaking) American’s account of visiting North Korea as a tourist in 2002. Here’s his writings on visiting the same spot on the DMZ that I visited, only from the northern side. Also these are a few films about North Korea, all of which have now been added to my Netflix queue. Joint Security Area (2000, South Korea):…

I’m not really sure what to make of my trip to the Korean DMZ (De-militarized Zone), and actually standing a few feet inside of North Korea for a few minutes. The best analogy that I can come up with is being taken to a zoo, and watching the lion cage. You’re impressed at seeing these hulking fierce beasts that you’re led to believe are vicious killers who will stop at nothing to tear you limb from limb. They feed you…

Remember those octopus tentacles I mentioned earlier? I wasn’t kidding.

Ira Glass, November 5th, 2003: For me, pushing myself is way more about “It’s hard to make something that’s interesting.” It’s really, really hard, and I’m sure we don’t succeed with every story on every show. Basically, anything that anyone makes… It’s like a law of nature, a law of aerodynamics, that anything that’s written or anything that’s created wants to be mediocre. The natural state of all writing is mediocrity. It’s all tending toward mediocrity in the same way…

The Grey Lady has just published a piece, in the Fashion section no less, about how (shocker!) people in hipster Brooklyn drink Fair Trade (omg!) coffee! No freakin’ way! Seriously guys, was it that much of a slow news day? Amid the wine bars and boutiques that line Fifth Avenue in Park Slope, Jonathan Coulton, 36, a musician wearing black rectangular glasses, was hunched over a laptop at Gorilla Coffee, where a blackboard proclaims all its coffees are fair trade.…

Well, it’s after midnight here in Daejeon (Slogan: It’s Daejeon) and I’m about to begin my final week here in Korea. I’m back in Daejeon for the third time in as many weeks to interview for at least a third (if not fourth) time, Kilnam Chon, the father of the Internet in Korea. I don’t have the energy right now to write a whole narrative, so I’ll just give you some snippets of things that I’ve done in the last…

AP: NEW YORK (AP) — It was an ordeal that lasted 19 hours. In that span, a man bound a Columbia University graduate student in her apartment, raped her, doused her with hot water and bleach, slit her eyelids and finally set a fire before fleeing, police said. Police pressed a manhunt for the assailant in the April 13 attack, with investigators hoping any surviving DNA and a $12,000 reward for information leading to an arrest would produce fresh leads.…