ZenKimchi

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

The comment boards of popular sites such as Dave’s ESL Cafe, The Marmot’s Hole, Scribblings of the Metropolitican and Brian in Jeollanam-do look totally different now.  A concerted effort by the regular nasty commenters, known conventionally as “trolls,” resulted in a mass movement of self reflection.

“I didn’t realize before just how socially retarded I was,” admitted wut, a great example of humanity at Metropolitician.

“Actually writing something positive makes me feel much better.  Before, I thought that tearing down people who stuck their necks out legitimized my self worth.  In the end, I realized that I was just jealous of people who worked harder and gave more to the community than I did.  Having them rise above me reminded me of how much of a loser I was, so I took any opportunity I could to find trivial flaws and tear people down,” sighed Samuel, a regular commenter on Brian in Jeollanam-do.

“Before I thought it was my duty to ridicule anyone who did not fit my perception of perfection.  I loved calling people idiots, and it gave me a sense of superiority to talk down to people trying to help others or asking for help themselves,” said Dave’s poster Straphanger, “But really, I only did it because I’m miserably passive-aggressive and am too chickenshit to actually say the same stuff in person.  I’m such a sniveling coward.  I mean, other than Dave and the Marmot, these bloggers and podcasters don’t make much money, if anything, from doing this work.  I still don’t get why they do it.  As for me, I just spend my time at the local Wa Bar.”

When asked to comment on the change in tone to his message board, Robert Koehler was still in shock.  “It’s actually worth it to pay for the bandwidth now.”

As an unintended result, traffic at Dave’s ESL Cafe has dropped seventy percent in the last couple of weeks.

After the latest brawl at the Korean Assembly, Korean citizens have decided to put all the politicians in time out.  Some of the more egregious offenders had to stand with their backs to the wall with their hands raised.

More egregious offenders, like Kang Ki-gap, were made to hold heavy objects for twenty minutes.  But all hell broke loose again when Kang Ki-gap was told he couldn’t have ice cream, so he threw a temper tantrum.

Now all assembly members are angry at Kang because they were really looking forward to the ice cream.

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling has recently grown tired of writing intellectual thought-out posts about Korean history and urban development.

“Really, I just want to post pictures of boobies.”

Fellow blogeratus James Turnbull of the The Grand Narrative has felt the same way.

“Actually, I’ve already started it.  All that feminism-in-advertising bullshit was an excuse for me to post pics of hot kimchi mamas.  I mean look how easy it is.”

“See?”

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

After a long, long time, Dave Sperling, creator of Dave’s ESL Cafe, has upgraded the forums to AOL 2.0.

Enjoy.

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

The SeoulPodcast, which recently turned a year old, has started to respond to fans and critics and has cut its show down to only five hours per show.  The hosts will still continue to get drunk and talk about themselves.

Well, you can’t have everything…

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

Park Jin-young, also known as “the dancing gorilla” or “JYP,” who was the force behind pop sensations Rain and the Wondergirls, has gotten rid of all his progenies.  After an epiphany during a recent trip to L.A., JYP had an epiphany.

“I saw a person playing a guitar and singing.  I wondered, ‘Is that possible?’ How could someone sing and not do robotic choreographed dances?”

JYP inquired further into these types of people and learned that they are special type of entertainers called “musicians.”

“This is amazing!  These are people who learn how to play these things called ‘musical instruments.’ And they’re able to be music stars.  How can you be a star without plastic surgery?  They didn’t even go to pop star hagwon!  This stuff actually requires years of practice, dedication and skill–more skill than is required to copy the latest Britney Spears moves and buying music from Swedish music scribes.”

JYP is on the hunt right now for these “musicians” and hopes that they exist in Korea.  His hope is that one day K-Pop will be full of people who actually play instruments and write their own songs.

IN OTHER NEWS… the heads of the writers for POPSEOUL and seoulbeats exploded.

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

Michael Hurt (Scribblings of the Metropolitician) and Scott Burgeson (Korea Bug) have found success coming out of their fake feud in 2008.  They’re going to star in a KBS drama about two buddies on a road trip through Korea.

Kim So-long is slated to play the love interest.  She wasn’t available for an interview, as her publicist said she was out on a “golf trip.”

Korean pop sensations the Wondergirls have been slated to sing two songs for the drama, which will be the entire soundtrack for the show–one song for happy and one song for sad.

“Mike and Scott’s Happy Time” (???? ??? ?? ??) will premiere in May 2009.

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

The Korean and Fatman are the most recent members inducted into the Bob Dole Society for Third Person People.

“The Korean is honored by this,” said The Korean in an email interview.

“Fatman loves–oh, is that a fermented skate over there?”

“The Korean and Fatman feel that talking in the third person makes us sound more important.”

The rest of the interview will come later, as ZenKimchi figures out who was talking when.

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

One walk around Seoul, and you will see a lot of construction fences.  Yet these construction fences have style.

“We’ve decided to use it in our latest tourism campaign,” said Maureen O’Crowley, Senior Marketing Director of the Seoul Tourism Organization.

“Why come to Seoul to look at ancient sites when we have the best construction fences in the world? We have turned construction fences into an art form.  It’s just dynamic all the construction we have going on.  Whatever drunken old men haven’t destroyed, the Seoul government is taking care of itself.”

O’Crowley is referring to the destruction of half of City Hall to make way for a tsunami shaped monstrosity that will symbolize the “Korean Wave of justice.”

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.

On the heels of changing the name for the Korean snack deokbokki into the Japanese sounding topoki, the head of the Ministry of Agriculture, Chang Tae-pyong, has more announcements.

“People often ask me why ‘hansik,’ or Korean food, is so important.  I reply, ‘Because it’s the face of our country.’”

“The word hansik, like deokbokki, may be too hard for foreigners to pronounce with their strange tongues.  So we have instituted research by asking the guy down the hall who spent a month in L.A. about how to make hansik easier for foreigners.

“We have decided to change its name to ‘Hand Sick.’ In order to promote hand sick, we are opening the Hand Sick Research Institute with a staff of eight experts on hand sick and a budget of 30 billion won (approx. $45 USD).

“We plan to blaze forth and conquer the world with this new Korean Wave of Korean food,” proclaims Chang.

When questioned if this conquest rhetoric was ironic for a country who has made its colonial past a point of shame and anger, Chang did not see the irony.

“Please explain this irony you speak of.  It’s a fascinating concept.  We have already tried to colon–buy land in Madagascar for the purpose of spreading the superior culture of hand sick.  The natives obviously did not appreciate our efforts to civilize–I mean–to help their economy.  We shall try again much more hardly.  Eat hand sick!”

As part of the Ministry of Agriculture’s plan to standardize Korean food for the international masses, they will require only pre-packaged Ottogi brand products be used when making traditional Korean food.

This was an April Fool’s joke from 2009.  Please don’t sue me.