When Worlds Collide

I love and miss you all. Have a weird news story involving a South Korean serviceman and a nearby high school. Apparently this went down while I was still in SK, but they didn't crack the case until now.

For reference, this (Hackettstown) is about 50 minutes away from my house. It's only 20 minutes away from one of my good college friends.
http://www.nj.com/warrenreporter/index.ssf/2013/07/man_who_called_from_south_kore.html

For the link phobic:

HACKETTSTOWN, NJ — Online chat rooms appear to be the link between a 19-year-old serving in the South Korean military and phone calls that led to the lockdown of four Hackettstown schools in 2012. 

Warren County Prosecutor Richard Burke and Hackettstown Police explained in a press conference today how Dae Woong Lee, a 19-year-old serving in the South Korean military, was charged in his country for a call threatening Hackettstown High School students that led to the lockdown on March, 26, 2012. 

Dae Woong Lee made two phone calls to the Warren County 911 Center, indicating he was in possession of an AK-47 in the woods behind Hackettstown High School, officials said. 

Lee spoke with the 911 dispatcher for an hour, threatening to kill students including one particular girl who Burke said Lee was previously communicating with in online chat rooms. 

The Procecutor's Office would not specify which website chat room was used to make contact. Burke indicated that it was not Facebook, but another form of social media.
Hackettstown High School, Hackettstown Middle School, Hatchery Hill School, Willow Grove School, St Mary’s school and Centenary College were placed on lockdown after Hackettstown Police responded, secured the area and contacted the Warren County Tactical Team. 

Law enforcement eventually determined there was no imminent threat to students, and the lockdown was lifted. 

"This is why we take these drills seriously," said Hackettstown High School Superintendent David Mango. "There is no incident that you can ever be fully prepared for." 

According to Principal Roy Huchel, the lockdown lasted for more than three hours and involved 955 students. He said that after the incident, the school's Child Study Team and guidance counselors were made available to students to discuss the emotional toll of the event. 

During the call to the 911 center, Lee identified himself as Kevin McGowan, 19, and spoke to the dispatcher about his girlfriend, his broken heart and rap songs he liked.
"We're not going to allow threats to our community and children to go unpunished," Burke said. "We could have walked away (from the investigation), but we're not going to do that; we're not going to tolerate this in Warren County," he said. 

Authorities were not immediately able to trace the call because it was made from a voice-over-IP address app that masks the phone number and makes it harder to trace, according to the Warren County 911 Center. 

This information was relayed to the Prosecutor's Office, which sought assistance from the N.J. State Police Electronic Surveillance Unit and the Attorney General's Office's Division of Criminal Justice and Electronic Surveillance Unit. 

Burke said that the 15-month "manpower intensive" investigation involved leads outside of New Jersey. 

"There were a lot of leads and one of them was in Wisconsin," Burke said. "There was a lot of investigation and a lot of man hours." 

They then acquired assistance from Middle Atlantic-Great Lakes Oraganized Crime Law Enforcement Network, the U.S. Marshall Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office. 

"It was determined that the target of the investigation was outside of the United States, and specifically located in South Korea," Burke said. "Without the coordination of all efforts this was not possible." 

Homeland Security continued the investigation along with the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, which was able to locate and interview Lee on Jan. 27. 

On Monday, June 3, Lee was charged with obstruction of business in Korea and faces up to five years in prison and a fine up to the equivalent of $15,000. 

Burke said Lee is currently not in jail, and will remain serving in the South Korean military until the matter is resolved. 

"We have no intention of extraditing," Burke said, adding that the punishment is equivalent in the United States and the costs to extradite would be large. He added that he believes "their process is quicker than ours." 

Warren County Freeholder Director Jason Sarnoski concluded the press conference by congratulating everyone involved for their hard work. 

"There is no such thing as a small county or a small town anymore. We live in a global society," he said, "and we can be affected by anyone. We need to be constantly alert." 

Michael McDonald, first assistant prosecutor for Warren County, hopes that resolving this will deter others from making threats in the future. 

"There is no way to know if a person is serious," McDonald said in an interview after the conference. "It scares you what's out there on the internet."

Gochujang: Some Uses

I haven't been posting as much as I would like. I do have a lot on my mind (my day trip to Dongducheon and the "Special Foreigner Tourism Zone" in Bosan; introversion and Korea; the chicken delivery shop down the street) but I don't have the mental wherewithal to focus and write those pieces.

Part of that is because I've been stepping up my cooking game a notch. It's arguable whether or not that's a "poor skill" in Korea, where eating out is so cheap, but it's a useful skill and I like it. It also doesn't help that everyone in the world keeps posting delicious-looking recipes to Pinterest.

Of course, available ingredients in Korea are different than back home, so alterations must sometimes be made. You can experiment, too. My favorite thing to experiment with is the seminal Korean ingredient gochujang. Here are three non-Korean dishes that, I think, are vastly improved by red chili pepper paste.

1. Omelettes


Fry up your egg; before adding your stuffing, add some gochujang.

2. Shakshouksa

This was a Pinterest find: The Shiksa in the Kitchen's shakshuka recipe. As soon as I saw it, I knew I had to try it. Lacking tomato paste, I used gochujang instead. Mmm, flavorful. 

3. Quesadillas

Same principle as the omelette: before you load up your tortilla with ingredients (mine were peppers, onions, and cheese), spread a dollop of gochujang on it. 

4. Bonus, Non-Culinary Use

It makes great fake blood!

A Thousand Times Yes

Since I can't comment over at Scroozle's post on "Why Stay in Korea?", a quick hit and run post here:

This is one of the things my family in Canada doesn't often think about. Chumming around with an international crowd opens a whole new perspective on things. Attending events or meet-ups means getting together with a hodgepodge crowd of different nationalities. Being part of an expat community is something “regular” folks don’t take into consideration, and it’s empowering in a sense. Traveling back to one’s native land all of a sudden you encounter people who have never ventured outside the confines of their culture and have no interest in doing so. It’s a little dull once you’ve lived the other life.

I had this same reaction when I went back home after my first contract in Korea: the peer group I used to hang out with seemed different, somehow. Less glamorous, less exciting. That transformation was really bizarre, and it's one of the reasons I know that I can never permanently live in the States. It's not really fault of their own, and I still like my peer group back home in the Valley...I just know I could never permanently settle in that location or with that crowd. And I'm sure they were tired of my stories of: "One time in Korea..."

Does anyone else know/understand what Scroozle and I are talking about?

It Begins with C, Which Rhymes With T, Which Stands for TROUBLE!

Right here in River City Bethlehem!

Or not really. While I was away in Korea, the iconic Bethlehem Steel mill was converted to a casino.


Before


After

No greater indignity has ever been done to a building or a piece of machinery than that poor steel ore crane. I salute you, relic of an America gone by; reminder of what we used to be.

Anyway, there's been a whole lot of fussing with this project, including hiring feng shui experts to make casinos (like the Sands and others in Pennsylvania, such as Mount Airy Lodge) more attractive to Asians.

I'll reproduce the story here, in case the link ever expires.


Countdown to Table Games
Pennsylvania's cash-hungry casinos are redesigning their floors to encourage an Asian invasion

Matthew Assad

matthew.assad@mcall.com

If you visit one of Pennsylvania's new casino table games this summer, you're likely to see a lot of eights, the tables won't be close to the door, and it may appear that whoever designed the poker room has an odd fascination with dragons.

That's because casinos are preparing for what they hope will be an Asian invasion.

"Asians like table games," said George Toth, president of Mount Airy Casino Resort, one of several adding tables with Asian players in mind. "They are good clients, and we want them to feel comfortable here."

More importantly, they want them to feel comfortable betting thousands of dollars—sometimes in a single hand—at Pennsylvania's soon-to-open table games, such as blackjack, baccarat and craps.

Some experts estimate that 25 percent to 30 percent of new table game players in state casinos will be of Asian descent, particularly at easternmost casinos with close access to New York City, where more than 800,000 Asians live, and New Jersey, which has an Asian population of nearly 700,000, according to the most recent U.S. Census figures.

Consider that Macau, China—not Las Vegas—is now the gambling capital of the world. Unlike Pennsylvania, Macau casinos are dominated by tables, not slot machines, because that is what Asian players prefer.

And no casino operator wants the wrong gaming floor design to give cash-carrying players the impression there is no luck to be had there.

No one has more riding on attracting Asian gamblers than Toth and Mount Airy. The casino has been among the state's worst performers almost since it opened in 2007, but Toth believes tables give him an opportunity to turn things around.

Mount Airy has brought in two designers whose sole job is to make sure the tables floor conforms to the theories of feng shui, the ancient Chinese belief that the proper design and placement of objects keeps the living and working environment in harmony with nature and the flow of energy.

When table games open in Pennsylvania this July or August, Mount Airy will have a special Asian room with 17 table games that include mini-baccarat, pai gow poker and pai gow tiles.

When players arrive they'll see a lot of 8s—a number feng shui followers believe portrays good fortune—and probably not many 4s, a number associated with death.

They'll see wall hangings and tapestries emblazoned with dragons and koi, and the decor will be draped in colors like red and gold, all emitters of good fortune.

The chandeliers will, of course, have eight hanging fringes, not four, and while the entrance to the room will be wide open, that opening will not continue unimpeded through the room. Screens or dividing walls will prevent the good energy entering the room from leaving too quickly.

"Feng shui followers truly believe in signs that represent good fortune and good luck," said Mount Airy interior designer Marcella Ravell, who has visited China and made two trips to Chinatown in New York to educate herself. "We intend to present a very lucky atmosphere."

But the effort doesn't stop with presenting an appearance of good fortune. Mount Airy will have eight daily buses into Chinatown, and its Asian room dealers will be fluent in Mandarin or Cantonese, said Edwin Chou, Mount Airy's director of Asian marketing.

That's right, Mount Airy has a special Asian marketing staff of people lured away from Atlantic City casinos.

And just as will be the case at Harrah's Chester Casino in Delaware County, Mount Airy will have a noodle bar buffet outside the Asian poker room. Willie Wong, Mount Airy's Asian player development director, noted the noodle bar has advantages well beyond the cultural benefits.

"It's a light meal, so they can eat in 20 minutes and get right back to the tables," Wong said, jokingly mimicking a motion of shoveling noodles into his mouth. "We want players at the tables having a good time."

Anyone who thinks casino operators like Toth are over-estimating what's at stake need only look back to the opening of the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in 1993.

At the casino entrance, people walked into the mouth of a mammoth lion built to resemble MGM's corporate symbol.

But soon, casino operators realized Asian gamblers were avoiding their casinos for others on the Las Vegas strip.

It turned out that some who held Asian beliefs considered walking into the mouth of the lion unlucky. MGM quickly spent millions to reconfigure the entrance.

Toth may be taking the most extreme measures to attract table games players, but he's certainly not alone. When Las Vegas Sands opened its Marina Bay Sands in Singapore last month, it proudly proclaimed the $5.5 billion casino project "feng shui-approved."

Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, Mount Airy's primary competition for the New York and New Jersey markets, also will have a feng shui-inspired Asian tables section and dealers who speak various dialects of Chinese. Officials there say they're upping the ethnic sensitivity ante.

"In addition to having no 13th floor in our hotel, there will also be no fourth floor," said Sands Bethlehem President Robert DeSalvio. "Four is not a good number in Asian culture."

It all may sound like a focus on culture and the mystique of feng shui, but at its heart, it's really all about dollars, millions of them.

Consider that Pennsylvania casino operators project tables games to boost casino revenues roughly 25 percent, and those in the eastern part of the state expect roughly 25 percent of their table players to be of Asian descent. For a casino such as Sands, that's an expected revenue boost from table games of more than $50 million year.

Carrying the formula through, that means Asian players alone could be responsible for leaving $12 million to $15 million a year on Sands' tables. And on top of that, Pennsylvania's table games tax, at 16 percent, is far less than the 55 percent tax on slot machine revenues, allowing the casino to keep a much bigger piece of the profits.

No casino wants to turn that money away because of a misplaced wall or the wrong color scheme.

"It's important that we show our friends in the Asian community the respect they deserve," DeSalvio said. "We want them to feel welcome."

Doing anything else would risk bringing bad luck to the bottom line.

I don't really know what to make of this article. Even if it is for cash, it's nice to businesses consider things outside the broader scope of their culture.

But it also does the "Asian just means 'Chinese'" thing you see all the time. (To be fair, sometimes it's "Asian just means 'Japanese,'" as well.) Most of the superstitions carry over from China to Korea and Japan as well, it's the part where the supposedly Asian room will have Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking staff. No Japanese, no Korean. The clientèle they're hoping to attract is mostly Chinese (they run buses to and from Chinatown to the various casinos around here), so that makes sense. But then why call it Asian? Yeah, it's nitpickery, but Asia is really really big! Look at your RISK board, see why it's worth seven armies every turn? There's plenty of countries that aren't China. Aren't even close. If they're serving Chinese noodles and hiring Chinese-speaking staff to cater to a Chinese crowd, why not just call it the Chinese room? I'm reminded of back in the day when you used to be able major in "Oriental Studies." What? ("Asian Studies" isn't really any better, but at least in a lot of places now it's qualified as "East Asian Studies.")

I'm also not entirely sure that the article gives the right impression about East Asians and superstitions. ("Better watch out and make sure your casino's feng shui is right, or you'll scare away the ignorant Asians!") I mean yes, obviously it's a big enough concern that they're addressing it, but I think Koreans, at least, are in general about as superstitious as Americans are. Mina wouldn't write student names in red ink, but Kate would; I don't have a thing about the number 13 but I say "rabbit rabbit" at the beginning of every month for good luck. It's not like a compulsive "it makes or breaks my day" thing. It's a small, inconsequential decision I make. The same with an old Chinese guy spending his pension gambling: choosing one casino over another is a really small, inconsequential decision, and if you use non-rational means of making that decision, what does it matter? Of course, thousands of people making the same decision based on those same non-rational means will mean something for the bottom line of a casino. But it's not like all those old Chinese guys gambling away their pension are walking around with a ba gua, scoping out the best place to set up their new business or plant their vegetable garden, which is what the article seems to imply. But again: China and Korea are two different countries, so who knows!

The point that also bugs me is this statistic: "Some experts estimate that 25 percent to 30 percent of new table game players in state casinos will be of Asian descent..."

Yes, there's lots of Asians here on the East Coast, mostly clustered around New York City. But, and here's the big but, of Asian descent does not equal Asian. There's no shortage of second, third, etc generation Asian-Americans, not to mention the half- or quarter-Asians they may or may not be counting in this statistic. No mention, either, whether those numbers include East Asians who were adopted and raised by American families. The implication seems to be that the 800,000 "Asians" (whatever that really means to the people conducting these surveys) in New York City are all superstitious old fresh-off-the-boat ajossis and ajummas, and that being of Asian descent is equivalent to being terrified of the number 4 or playing blackjack in room with blue walls.

In any case, Asia-ing it up won't bring me to your casino, Sands. That's not a casino, that's a tasteless monstrosity.

First Post of 2010

Happy New Year!

I rang in the New Year quietly, on my own, with rice wine and The Big Lebowski. Supposedly there were shenanigans in Seoul, a sort of Times Square equivalent, but I had less than zero interest in that so I don't know much about it.

I went to see Sherlock Holmes on New Year's Day and just about fangirled out. I have a soft spot in my heart for whodunnits (as the rather sizable Agatha Christie collection I used to have can attest to) and Guy Ritchie and Robert Downey Jr, so all three of those things in one piece of media was absolutely brilliant.

Just today I, in a fit of "it's a New Year I should really do something about my health I guess," went to the jjimjilbang to avail myself of their small gym and their hot water (since my hot water has been flaking out lately, I haven't had a proper, proper shower since maybe a week ago). While I was cooling off in the 18*C tub, a Korean woman spotted my fat foreign ass from across the room and started speaking to me in surprisingly passable English. She told me she had been to California, and that she lived about ten minutes away (by car) from the jjimjilbang.

"I saw another foreign woman here, she said she didn't....accustomed?...to..." and then words failed her as she tried to communicate the whole idea of the jjimjilbang in English.

"Yes," I nodded, "it takes some time for foreigners. But then....ahhhhh." I spread my arms and smiled.

In America, I can't really imagine a scenario in which I would be casually conversing with a buck naked stranger, minus joining a nudist colony or the like. But she talked to me just as easily as though we had been waiting for the bus or in line at LotteMart.

Since my return is coming up quicker than I'd like, I've started nosing around to see what kind of Korean-y stuff is nearby at home. Mom already did me the favor of pointing me in the direction of Kim's Kitchen as far as food goes. Saunas are proving to be a bit trickier; so far all I've found is Chung Dam Spa & Fitness which will no doubt be much more than the 7-8 thousand won/visit places here, and just hella more awkward. The Internets/Mom tells me that all around Cheltenham is a small Koreatown, in case I get Koreasick. I wonder if they'll have Gim Bap Cheon Guk...