Fugitive Yoo may be armed
The Korea Times
Yoo Byung-eun, the owner of the sunken ferry Sewol currently on the run from authorities, may be armed with at least two handguns, according to a former aide.
The claim has prompted safety concerns for investigators trying to track him down because it is feared Yoo could resort to violence if confronted by them. Most police officers except for those on serious crime squads don’t carry firearms.
“I saw Yoo with two pistols when I worked for him,” Lee Cheong, Yoo’s former secretary, told a TV program.
Former Forever 21 Exec Launches Fast-Street-Fashion Brand for Guys
Digital Journal
“I’ve walked into many stores who target the teen and young adult market, and frankly I am often shocked by the price tag for many of the items. It’s not surprising to see a lot of them struggling to capture share,” said Founder and CEO, Eugene Kang, who formerly ran the ecommerce division at Forever 21. “We are offering a refreshing, wallet-friendly alternative to what’s out there that is more on the pulse of what is trending. I think we all want to look our best, but it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, especially for young people with limited budgets.”
Google Releases Employee Data, Illustrating Tech’s Diversity Challenge
The New York Times
Google on Wednesday released statistics on the makeup of its work force, providing numbers that offer a stark glance at how Silicon Valley remains a white man’s world.
Thirty percent of Google’s 46,170 employees worldwide are women, the company said, and 17 percent of its technical employees are women. Comparatively, 47 percent of the total work force in the United States is women and 20 percent of software developers are women, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Of its United States employees, 61 percent are white, 2 percent are black and 3 percent are Hispanic. About one-third are Asian — well above the national average — and 4 percent are of two or more races. Of Google’s technical staff, 60 percent are white, 1 percent are black, 2 percent are Hispanic, 34 percent are Asian and 3 percent are of two or more races.
What Maya Angelou wrote and said about race and politics
The Washington Post
Maya Angelou, who died Wednesday at age 86, first leapt into the political consciousness when she read a poem she wrote for President Bill Clinton’s inauguration titled, “On the Pulse of Morning.” A poet had not read at a presidential inauguration since 1961, when Robert Frost read “The Gift Outright” for President John F. Kennedy.
She told The Washington Post at the time: “It is fitting, at the risk of taking away from the fact that he really likes my poetry, it is fitting that he asks a woman and a black woman to write a poem about the tenor of the times. It might be symbolic that black women when looked at are on the bottom of the graph. It is probably fitting that a black woman try to speak to the alienation, the abandonment and to the hope of healing those inflictions which have befallen all Americans, that accounts for white Americans feeling so estranged. Somehow a black woman knows all about that.”
Democracy activist posthumously acquitted in retrial
GlobalPost
A prominent liberal politician was posthumously acquitted in a retrial 28 years after he was imprisoned for leading a democracy movement in the 1980s.
The Seoul High Court on Thursday found late Kim Geun-tae, a former three-term lawmaker and a liberal icon, not guilty of violating Seoul’s draconian anti-communist law, saying that he was convicted with false testimony and evidence obtained by torture and other illegal methods.
Starbucks Korea launches ordering app
The Korea Times
Every lunchtime, throngs of office workers flock to coffee shops in a sort of ritual.
During the peak time, from 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. , they have to wait several minutes to place their orders and then wait again to pick their orders. Some people sometimes break out of the queue grumbling to get back to work on time.
Starbucks Coffee Korea unveiled a high-tech “solution” Thursday that could shorten the long waiting time for orders.
It’s a smartphone app, called Siren Order. Siren Order is named after the likeness of the 16th century Norse woodcut of the twin-tailed mermaid in the company’s logo, according to a Starbucks official.
House from hit drama opens to the public
The Korea Herald
A set from “My Love from the Star,” the recently ended hit SBS drama, will be exhibited in Dongdaemun Design Plaza in Seoul.
The house, which appeared in the drama starring Jun Ji-hyun as Cheon Song-yi and Kim Soo-hyun as Do Min-joon, will be rebuilt as an exhibition allowing visitors to savor the drama again, the network said Thursday.
Sponsored by the Korea Tourism Organization, the display rooms will be entitled “Start,” “Fate,” “Shaking” and “Longing” in line with the plot of the drama.
Visitors will be able to enjoy the drama in 3-D and also learn about “time slice photography,” a technique for creating the illusion of time frozen in motion video. The special visual effects were used to produce scenes involving Do, who has the supernatural ability to teleport and freeze time.
The best books on North Korea
The Guardian
You can learn a lot about a country from literature and, when it comes to North Korea, the appetite for information is huge. From first hand accounts of prison camps survivors to defectors once part of the top echelons of government, here’s our pick of the best books to get you started.
1. Aquariums of Pyongyang: 10 years in the North Korean Gulag
The story of Kang Chol-hwan, a defector who spent 10 years in the notorious Yodok camp because his family was under suspicion for having lived in Japan. Billed as “part horror story, part historical document, part political tract”. Kang defected to South Korea a few years after his release, and went on to work as a journalist for Chosun Ilbo.
