Sorry, I was all about to write a little column of links and whatnot when real life suddenly raised its ugly head and kept me busy all day. But better late than never, so…

  • Great series in Hankyoreh about Korean companies’ troubling practices in Southeast Asia. (Hankyoreh)
  • Honoring the supporting actors who helped build Korea’s amazing blockbusters. (Chosun Ilbo)
  • Enjoy fighting with Japan over Dokdo? Get ready for a feud with China (or at least its fishermen) over Gyeongnyeolbiyeol, a couple of rocks 50km west of Taean in Jeolla Province. (JoongAng Daily)
  • Three-month suspensions for the credit card companies that leaked customer info. While I’m pleased to see the government cracking down on that sort of irresponsibility from Korea’s big banks, I am also worried that the move could end up hurting people who do business with those banks. (JoongAng Daily)
  • In a related thought, is it my imagination, or has there been nearly zero damage caused by those banking leaks? From what I’ve seen, nearly all the problems have come from people’s fears over their leaked data. I.e., criminals phishing and pulling other scams on people, telling them to send their personal info to protect themselves from the data leak.
  • While it is great that plagiarism being talked about in the Korean media, I wish this article had a better understanding of legality, ethics and the like. After all, plagiarism is a moral issue more than a legal one. And you cannot copyright an idea, just its execution. For example, compare Harry Potter to Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea saga, or Neil Gaiman’s Books of Magic. The writer really should have reached out and talked to copyright/plagiarism experts outside Korea. (JoongAng Daily)
  • Disney’s Frozen is still going strong. It topped 6 million admissions over weekend, zipping past Kung Fu Panda 2 to become the top animated movie ever in Korea. And in a sign of the wonderful tastes held by Korean audiences, the so-called “Korean” movie Nut Job (which really is not very Korean) did quite poorly — it opened in seventh on the weekend, earning about $2 million. (KOBIS)
  • Also worth noting, The Attorney added about 280,000 admissions over the weekend to top 11.1 million. It looks like it might sneak past Haeundae to become No 7 movie ever in Korea.