Economic stuff:
- South Korea again finishes dead last in OECD ranking of foreign aid offered to poorer countries
- Chairman of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce says Seoul needs to focus more on foreign entrepreneurs in general and not just the large-scale investors, in particular to help expats make the jump to entrepreneur
- The government is trying to loosen restrictions on foreign investors building factories in non-industrial complex areas of the capital region
- Chinese shipbuilders overtake Korean shipbuilders
- US states eager to get into electric car battery business but GM's Volt may help South Korea's battery business
- More Canadian energy deals may follow South Korean acquisition of Harvest Energy Trust
- CNBC and SBS to launch 24-hour Korean business news channel
- Foreign pedophiles and convicted rapists to be permanently barred from re-entering Korea
- High-priced fake goods being sold at online shopping malls
- A Korea Times focus on the YMCA job fair aimed at helping immigrant wives get jobs
- Hilton Hotel is suing, one by one, all the motels in Korea that call themselves Hilton or 힐튼
- Eighteen-year-old Rayoung Kim of Fairfax, Virginia, may have been killed in traditional Korean shaman exorcism
- A Korea Times examination of so-called "English villages" and their struggle to stay afloat
- Foreign professors taking some of POSTECH's top jobs
- Newark Airport security guard and gun aficionado arrested for making threats against President Obama
- Hollywood moms before and after baby
- A Wall Street Journal article and slide show on ancestral Chinese homes
Thanks for passing along the Hilton story. I'm going to post it in a little bit.
ReplyDeleteWhere my HT???... :(:::
ReplyDeleteBrian, glad you could use it.
ReplyDeleteIt's good that Hilton is taking these folks on, but it's too bad they took so long to do it. Back when Korea was an economic backwater or even a rising star that hadn't yet gained notice of the big players, naming a small-time establishment after something big was commonplace and not seen as particularly harmful to the big name (Would someone really walk into a 힐튼모텔 and go, "Wait a minute! I thought this was the Hilton!")
But the owners of the big names didn't usually do much to defend their names, which reinforced both the practice and the sense that it was fair play (or, at least, wasn't unfair play).
Hence you have Starpreya Coffee, which came about long before there was Starbucks Coffee in Korea so those at Starpreya obviously paying homage to Starbucks couldn't possibly see their homage as harmful to a coffee house chain that didn't even exist in Korea.
And that's why you have (or used to have) store after store named 현대.
I think, too, there was a sense that naming something 힐튼 or 현대 (in Han•gŭl) was not harmful to Hilton or Hyundai (in English). Sort of an inside joke rather than wholesale trademark violation.
I'm just saying that the practice wasn't ever an evil one, and the people who did it might very well have done so playfully and out of respect (like Super-8 Motels' name following that of Motel 6), and, to some extent, it's at least a little bit of the fault of the big-name companies that control the trademark but for years and years and years do nothing to defend it (that, I believe, is related to a legal philosophy of trademarks and copyrights and it's why Fox, NBC, etc., go after those who post their stuff on YouTube or elsewhere with such diligence).
Edward, a HT for which one? I got every single thing for this set from my daily news troll earlier in the day, which is usually the case.
ReplyDeleteI do occasionally get one from the commentariat at The Marmot's Hole or some other K-blog, and I do try to give a HT in such cases, but I don't think that was the case with last night's. I'd be happy to offer a HT if I'm mistaken (and you provide a link).