Blue House Zen Master, baseball celebration gone awry

By Kim Tong-hyung

Here’s your midweek update on stories in entertainment and media you might have missed while reading about cunning and corrupt chaebol bosses, the North Korean version of "Groundhog Day,’’ or because your life is probably a lot more fulfilling than ours.

Park tries to be philosophical

Three months into her presidency, Park Geun-hye has already had more than her fair share of drama. Her vice-justice minister was linked to a weekend Roman-style sex orgy organized by corrupt businessmen then her personal press secretary was accused of groping an American intern during her visit to Washington. These were two of many embarrassing stories that made headlines in recent months.

Perhaps, because of the weight of these experiences, Park has recently begun to speak like a Zen master. But her supposed attempts at mentoring and mind-gaming her men into behaving with decency and professionalism may not work out as prescribed if she keeps lapsing into tired cliches.

She could also try to be a little more thoughtful in her observations.

"There is an old saying that a hair’s breadth difference in thinking can make a difference of a thousand miles,’’ Park said during a meeting with senior presidential secretaries over social and economic policies.

Using a famous passage from the classic Chinese book of I Ching was an odd way to support an argument that employers should enjoy greater freedom to replace members of their workforce with temporary workers, despite social inequality becoming worse.

"For the country to create more jobs, part-time jobs are important ... we need to create an environment in which people exercise their abilities for four to five hours a day and do not feel discriminated against,’’ she thoughtfully mused.

"There seems to be a permanent stigma attached to the term `part-time job’ and I think it would be a good idea to decide a new name for such employment through a public contest.’’

Perhaps then, we can also replace the term household debt with household-potential-room-for-income-growth so that the country wouldn’t have such pressing economic problems.

This somehow morphed into the biggest social media story of the week. / Korea Times file

Pitcher bashed for splashing reporter

Social media will never cease providing a forum for meaningless opinions regarding meaningless subjects. The latest fuel to ignite gossip was when LG Twins’ pitcher Lim Chan-kyu, attempted to throw a bucket of water at a teammate during an interview to celebrate a win and hit KBS reporter Jeong In-yeong instead.

Kim Seong-tae, the producer of the KBS sports show, wasn’t pleased and tweeted that baseball players are in need of ``character education.’’ He also claimed that Lim put Jeong at risk of electric shock, although she was holding the same microphone used in weather reports.

Lim and the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) players’ committee issued apologies, but not before attacking Kim for what they perceived to be an insult to the intelligence of professional athletes. Online comment boards erupted.

A crazy exchange of jabs and jibes failed to address basic questions such as: why was Lim, who didn’t even play in the game, so pumped up in the first place?

Aren’t Gatorade showers for marking important victories, not for a random regular season win for an underachieving team that was seventh best in a nine-team league? And aren’t these usually done with Gatorade?

Overdoing his celebration was probably the only way Lim, a seldom-used option in LG’s bullpen, could attract public attention. At least his 13 walks in 24-plus innings shows he has slightly better command with the ball than with water buckets.

Anyway, it’s nice to know that KBS is concerned about the health of its female sports reporters. It didn’t always seem that way when the broadcaster kept sending them out in wind and rain while scantily-clad.

Only in Korea: suicide forecasts

A team of researchers led by Samsung Medical Center’s Kim Do-kwan announced the development of a suicide forecasting system, which they claim is a world first.

Using the information processing programs of computer technology company, Daum Soft, the forecasts are made by analyzing posts on social media services such as Facebook and Twitter and factoring in other variables, such as trends in inflation, stock prices, unemployment and public reaction toward celebrity suicides.

When retroactively applying the formula to the suicide statistics of 2010, the system achieved 79 percent accuracy in predicting when the number of suicides picked up, Kim said.

``Studying the data of 2008 and 2009, there were more comments on blogs and social media related to suicides, such as `it’s difficult to live’ or `I want to die,’ when the number of suicides were actually going up. Famous people such as entertainers or politicians killing themselves also have an impact,’’ said Kim, who believes his system will allow for more proactive action in preventing suicides.

Not that predicting suicides is a terribly difficult to do in Korea, where one person takes their life every 34 minutes. A toxic combination of household debt, shrinking incomes and unemployment have given Korea the highest suicide rate among OECD nations, adding weight to the arguments that the country needs targeted and credible strategies to slow the tragic tide of death.