Free Republic

A woke council boss has tried to oust her only Asian colleague for standing-up for a compulsory-nude, women-only spa that sought to ban trans men with penises. Janet Pope, of Lynwood Council in suburban Seattle, organized a vote of no confidence in Vivian Dong after Dong spoke out in support of the Olympus Spa then observed a protest at the facility on on June 17. The Korean spa - which caters to women only, and is compulsorily nude, hit the headlines after telling transgender activist that trans women with penises were unwelcome. A judge later ruled the facility had broken...

Ever since he was a child, Jonny Kim, a highly decorated Navy SEAL and a graduate of Harvard Medical School, said he had always wanted to go to the moon. Kim, 39, was among the 18 people NASA chose to take part in the training for its Artemis program, which has plans to put the first woman and possibly first person of color on the lunar surface in 2024. Kim, who served as a combat medic for the Navy SEAL, could become the first Korean American to land on the moon. “I wanted to go to space since I was...

Mark Keam, a long-serving Democratic member of the House of Delegates from northern Virginia, has resigned his seat, a move that will set up a special election to fill the vacancy in the blue-leaning district. An attorney who was first elected to his Fairfax County-based seat in 2009, Keam said in an interview Tuesday that he had stepped down to take a job in the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce. Keam said he will serve as a deputy assistant secretary running the National Travel and Tourism Office, which is focused on bringing foreign travelers to the...

A gunman remains on the loose after storming into a Dallas hair salon Wednesday afternoon and shooting three women, reports said. The shooting happened after 2 p.m. at Hair World Salon, a business located in a shopping center in a district full of Asian-owned businesses, according to WFAA-TV.

A University of Pennsylvania law student couldn't shake his paranoid suspicion that his two neighbors, Drexel University graduate students, were foreign spies sent to work on some sort of a terrorism plot, police said. His anger-laced curiosity grew after he approached the roommates, both Indian-born bio-engineering majors, during a seemingly friendly conversation yesterday morning as the three men left the apartment building at 43rd near Pine streets before class, said cops. At about 12:30 p.m, the 31-year-old Korean-American law student returned home, took out his legal Glock-9, and knocked on his neighbors' front door. The 22-year-old Drexel student, the only...

For Netflix, Squid Game, which cost just US$21.4 million (S$29 million) to produce, has given it a subscriber boom, pushed up its share price and is set to create an outsized windfall of almost US$900 million. Media watchers said the global hit marked the latest, if not the biggest pop culture export so far from South Korea, whose TV shows, films and pop music have been making waves beyond the country for at least two decades. Notable K-drama hits over the years include Winter Sonata in the early 2000s...Idol groups like Girls’ Generation began breaking out of Asia by the...

Could the holy grail of turning salt water to drinkable water finally be upon us? A new report from Interesting Engineering seems to suggest that could be the case – detailing a new nanofiber membrane, developed by Yunchul Woo and his team at the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology, that appears to be “stable in the long term” for desalinization. And it can be done “in minutes”, the report says. Membranes had been used in the past, but there is often a challenge in keeping them dry for long periods of time. When they become wet, their...

A British-born white influencer has had 18 plastic surgery procedures to look like a member of K-pop band BTS — and now “identifies as Korean.” Oli London — who uses they and them pronouns — on Monday shared a series of videos from a hospital bed to show off the latest round of work in their bid to look like Park Jimin. “Hey guys! I’m finally Korean. I’ve transitioned,” London said in one video, saying they were “transracial” and now “identify as Jimin.” “I’ve been trapped in the wrong body … But finally I’m Korean — I can be myself....

A retired research assistant professor at the University of Missouri-Columbia died of multiple stab wounds before firefighters found in his body in the trunk of a burning car Friday. Boone County Medical Examiner Valerie Rao said after an autopsy that Jeong H. Im, 72, of Columbia was stabbed several times, but she declined to elaborate. MU police yesterday named Im as the victim. His body was found in the trunk of his burning white, 1995 Honda inside the Maryland Avenue parking garage, MU police Capt. Brian Weimer said. The case was under investigation by the Mid-Missouri Major Case Squad. No...

Korean military drama (16 episodes) of the relationship and conflicts between a Special Forces Captain and a medical doctor. Patriotic and morally uplifting. The star, Song Joong Ki, had just finished his two years military service when he made this drama.

A Korean drama music video about the relationship between the leader of a group of boys, and an independent female who wins a scholarship to their elite school after stopping a student suicide. For a more romantic music video, there's also one from the Chinese drama, Love O2O. The red dress is their formal marriage attire. That video shows the parallel between their online gaming marriage and the real-life marriage they've waited two years for. Love O2O - Say It Once - Glass Pear These dramas have more of the 1950s American morals than anything else I've seen.

A music video for the rebel character of the Korean drama, Sungkyunkwan Scandal, Moon Jae Shi (aka Crazy Horse).

For many of the nearly 100 beauty supply stores in Philadelphia, it was another rough week. From Monday to Wednesday, thieves and vandals broke into at least 17 stores, making off with merchandise and even store fixtures. The losses were in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. ---SNIP--- Real estate agent Michael Choe, president of the Korean American Chamber of Commerce for Philadelphia, said some of his members were troubled when City Council adopted a bill this week that would forbid police from using tear gas and rubber bullets on demonstrators. He said these critics fear the law may lead...

SEOUL, South Korea -- North and South Korea on Thursday separately marked the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War with largely subdued commemorations amid the coronavirus pandemic, a day after the North abruptly halted a pressure campaign against the South. South Korea issued a joint statement with the United States, which fought alongside it during the 1950-53 war triggered by a surprise North Korean invasion. The U.S. still stations about 28,500 soldiers in South Korea in what North Korea views as a military threat. In the statement, South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and U.S. Defense Secretary...

My dilema: A good friend,brought up in Korea but who became a US citizen about 10 years ago,has what can be said to be,at best,a fair command of spoken English.He's very well educated (in Korea) and very intelligent.My question...does anyone have any experience,first or second hand,with an intelligent middle age person developing a good command of English? I've read that the human brain is wired to acquire language *when young* but that that ability fades as one gets older. I ask here because I know that Freepers are skilled and experienced in every imaginable human endeavor!

Someone sent this to me, knowing my history. I find it amusing. https://mobile.twitter.com/FrankHassleYT/status/1267156524453048320

Law: President Obama's nominee for State Department legal adviser could be a future Supreme Court pick. He believes U.S. law should be based on foreign precedent, and even Shariah law could find a home here.We have commented many times on the opinion of a number of U.S. Supreme Court justices that American jurists should include foreign law and precedent in their decisions. In several prominent cases, this has already happened. In a speech in South Africa, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the March 2005 Roper v. Simmons decision, in which a 5-4 majority ruled against executing murderers who were 17...

Parasite may be getting the awards-season love, but a vibrant new generation of filmmakers is ready to emerge from the shadow of established masters like Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook... The overdue official recognition from the West has been doubly meaningful--as 2019 also marks the 100-year anniversary of the country’s first feature film, Kim Do-san’s 1919 kino-drama, The Righteous Revenge. It’s likely that Parasite’s success — the film recently raced past the $100 million mark at the worldwide box office — will come to be viewed as the culmination of the "New Korean Cinema," the renaissance of the country’s...

The current theory on human migrations into Japan is that the original inhabitants, the Jomon people, were met about 2,500 years ago by a separate group coming mainly from the Korean Peninsula, the Yayoi people. Archaeologists have identified fewer Jomon sites from the Late Jomon Period, the era immediately before the Yayoi arrival. Global temperatures and sea levels dropped during that period, which could have made life more difficult for the hunter-gatherer Jomon people. When the Yayoi people arrived, they brought wet rice farming to Japan, which would have led to a more stable food supply for the remaining Jomon...

Hee-Young Lim, a Korean cellist, launched her first CD French Cello Concertos last November. Now she is tapping into the classical music world in China. "Playing the cello feels like meditation, it becomes sort of a mirror and helps you see within yourself. And since I have no siblings and used to spend a lot of time alone reading books, my parents felt this was all good because it was almost as though I had a constant companion in the cello!" Hee-Young Lim recalled the beginning of her musical journey. The Seoul-born musician entered the Korean National University at age...