Life imitates Internet as artist goes offline

The Internet has become so much a part of our daily lives that the fine line between cyberspace and real space is increasingly a squiggle.
Internet addiction has become an almost comically serious phenomenon. You know you’re certainly at a dangerous level when your real-life dialogue starts resembling a chat room.
Now that the number of these “addicts” has risen to a startling level ― forming almost a majority among the younger generation ― perhaps the term “addiction” needs to be reexamined. At least in Korea, confusing and fusing one’s online and offline identities is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s seen instead as a synthesis of imagery.
That’s exactly the goal of a young man who refers to himself as “Kimchisalad.” Kimchisalad’s offline art has stirred up several online issues in the past few years, which then led on to offline recognition in the form of the mainstream media. Some of his projects include creating a life-size mannequin by molding bloated bags of green tea, etching out “emoticons” in white balls made of laundry detergent soap, and sculpting a man’s face out of pink crab meat.
Kimchisalad’s most recent project took place earlier this month. He has been staging a series of offline performances in which he dresses up entirely in a white bodysuit, completely covering his body (even his head), and wearing a mask over his face that has holes poked out for his eyes, nose and mouth. He then poses in places around Seoul with his knees on the ground, and his two hands planted on the ground, in an “OTL position.”
Accompanied by two friends who took pictures of him in front of Namdaemun, the National Assembly Building, Myeong-dong and other well-known parts of Seoul, Kimchisalad did his “OTL,” which comes from an Internet term meaning “defeat.” What’s the OTL position? It requires the person to put his or her knees on the ground and stare down in defeat. Kimchisalad says OTL is a “very global term,” and that these first “performances” were of “OTLman in Seoul.”
“I wanted to express loneliness in a crowd and the feeling of helplessness that an individual feels,” Kimchisalad wrote on his blog, Kimchisalad.net. “But while I was in that position, my ears were covered and I couldn’t hear the surrounding sounds very well, and I thought instead of trying to battle defeat, perhaps we should welcome it. In an ‘OTL situation’ you should think about what your problem is and learn that the only way to overcome it is to love yourself.”by Wohn Dong-hee

Online jumps into the real world of hype

Companies doing online business seem to be realizing that the Internet isn’t all about living online ― if you want to engage the interest of warm-blooded customers, it helps to incorporate offline elements. While many advertisements for online games feature characters from the program, the models for Nexon’s role-playing online adventure game “Maple Story” are far more real. The company selected five young stars for its new series of television advertisements and dubbed them the Maple Girls; their ages range from 14 to 22. Since the game uses two-dimensional cutesy cartoon-style characters, the casting crew was looking for two key elements in its girls: cute and sweet. The eldest, Kang Hyeon-jeong, was a Miss Korea candidate from Gangwon province in 2004. Jeong Da-hye, 20, is a rising online star, and Seo Ji-seung, 19, is the younger sister of Seo Ji-soo, a professional player of the game StarCraft. Rounding out the team is the youngest member, Oh Ga-eun. The homepage provider Cyworld has also added an offline touch to its services ― on Friday, it held an event to hand out its “Digital Music Awards,” given on the basis of how many songs an artist sells over the portal. The winner this time was the pop act Jo PD and Brown Eyed Girls; the award for was sales in the month of July. The group’s song “Hold the Line” was sold 170,000 times; tunes sold over the portal can be used as background music on personal homepages. The group of female singers was given a trophy worth 2 million won (about $2,000) made of pure gold and crystal, but they joked that they would have preferred being awarded dotori, “acorns,” to buy more music for their own Cyworld sites. Dotori is a unit of e-money Cyworld customers spend to improve their homepages. Brown Eyed Girls were the first Korean singers to win the Digital Music Award. In May, the American pop singer Sweetbox was the first popular musician to receive the award. Last year, Sweetbox sold a total of 1.5 million copies of her songs over Cyworld. “The digital music market is growing, and these Digital Music Awards reflect consumer choices because they are based on actual sales,” said Jang Jun-young, director of Cyworld’s music business group. by Wohn Dong-hee for JoongAng Daily

Mobile services sizzle in the summer months

Mobile phone service providers are seeing a jump in business thanks to the summer season.
During summertime, people have been using more global roaming service, as well as more data services to look up weather or travel information.
KTF, Korea’s second-largest mobile phone service company, said its mobile telephone search service “**114” has been extremely popular in the past few weeks. The average number of users per day in June was 22,000, but in July and August, these figures rose by about 90 percent to 42,000. When this service was first launched earlier this year, fewer than 10,000 people used the service a day, the company said.
KTF also said that hot weather was increasing people’s use of food home delivery services. The most frequently searched keywords in mobile Internet services in July were for food that could be ordered from home, such as pizza, jjajangmyeon (Chinese black noodles) and fried chicken.
Users for SK Telecom’s wireless Internet reservation service and travel information service NOL shot up from 100 people a day in the off-season to about 1,000 people this month. In the first week of August, as soon as the monsoon rains were over, users of the reservation service for water theme parks jumped to 2,000 people a day.
SK Telecom also saw an increase in users for its global roaming service. June users totaled 36,000, and grew to 41,000 in July and 50,000 as of Aug. 4. The company also said that subscribers were using two to three times more of its Nate mobile Internet service in August compared to the previous month. Nate provides information on mobile and Web platforms, including traffic, restaurants and lodging.
Companies also noted that users, perhaps on vacation, downloaded more mobile games. KTF said that in the past two months, game downloads tripled compared to previous months.

by Wohn Dong-hee

Flower bush shrunk by scientists

Korean scientists have used radiation to shrink the size of mugunghwa bushes in half.
The Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute said yesterday it developed a new species of mugunghwa, the national flower of Korea, using gamma radioactive waves to alter the genes in the species “Hongdansim No. 2.” After three years of cultivation tests, the new species was recently registered by the National Seed Management Office.
Named “kkoma,” meaning “little kid,” the 5-year-old mutated mugunghwa bush can grow to 50 cm (19.6 inches) in height, making it easier to tend indoors than the full-sized bush. The flowers and leaves are also half the size of regular mugunghwa.
The institute manages some 200 genetic sources of Korean and foreign mugunghwa to develop new species. Before “kkoma,” however, changes were mostly in the color or size of the flower.
“We will use the radiation to develop new species of Korean plants for floricultural and landscaping purposes,” said Kang Si-yong, a researcher on the radiation project.
Mugunghwa is known in the West as the Rose of Sharon. The flowers, which grow on a bush, can be found nationwide.

by Wohn Dong-hee