Results tagged “southkorea”

Uh oh! Something is afoot - two navy patrol boats from our peninsula-ed friends to the East began shooting at each other near Daecheong-do, an island about 125 miles west of Seoul earlier today. According to South Korean news service Yonhap, fighting erupted when a DPRK navy boat crossed the Northern Limit Line. South Korea issued warning broadcasts, and then fired some warning shots when the broadcasts were ignored. “It was then that the North Korean patrol boat attacked our high-speed patrol boat... Our ship returned the fire," according to the military statement. We wonder what this will do for next weeks bilateral nuclear weapons talks, of which China has a great part.

Oh rich ladies - we love hearing about your problems! Xinhua reports that over 20 Jiangsu taitais were stopped at Hongqiao International Airport's customs a few days ago after arriving from South Korea. The reason: all of them had gone to the peninsula to get plastic surgery and had come back so unrecognizable that customs officers couldn't use their existing passport pictures to place them.

More and more international and Chinese brands are getting embroiled in the tainted milk scandal. Latest news from the Straits Times:

SOUTH Korea's food watchdog said on Tuesday that two more snacks imported from China were contaminated with the toxic chemical melamine, bringing the number of tainted brands discovered locally to six.

Continue reading "Ritz and Lipton also hit by the melamine crisis"

• The World Expo Tunnel, which stretches beneath the Huangpu River, connecting Pudong and Puxi reached its full length on August the 20th: it's 2.67 kilometers long, and located 1.117 kilometers below the river.
• The soccer World Cup qualifier match between North and South Korea has been moved from Pyongyang to Shanghai, because the North had refused to play the anthem or fly the flag of its opponent (technically the two Koreas are still at war). The match is scheduled for September 10, sounds like an interesting game, eh?
• Migrant workers in Shanghai will be able to claim unemployment benefits and have the right to get health benefits while they are employed. This was stated by the department of safety in labor this week. Welcome news for a group who are definitely in need of a few more rights.

It's the best that we have, though we have to admit this video doesn't do justice to the incredible spectacle that was made up of North and South Korean fan contingents at Hongkou Stadium for the two Koreas World Cup qualifier play-off on Wednesday. The action on the stands was just as, if not more, amazing to watch as the action on the field.

Ok, we know that China are taking on Australia in a crucial World Cup qualifier this afternoon at 2pm, but that's all the way down in Kunming and, frankly, we're not too optimistic about China's chances in this latest 'Group of Death' match. Therefore, match of the day has to be this evening's fixture at Hongkou Stadium where North Korea will take on South Korea (kick-off is 7pm).

Like all football connoisseurs, Shanghaiist loves nothing better than a good derby. Games like Feyenoord v Ajax where travelling supporters are banned. The sheer evil of Rangers v Celtic. The Latin heat of Real Madrid v Athletic Madrid. The Manchester United v Liverpool grudge match. The Superclásico of Boca Juniors v River Plate. And Shanghai Shenhua v Inter Shanghai lacked the history but not passion before one half upped sticks and moved to Xi'an.

People who made the news this week

Our second show for the day is the critically acclaimed documentary Seoul Train (featured on PBS) which offers a look at the estimated 250,000 North Korean refugees living underground in China today, who have braved untold dangers to escape a food and humanitarian crisis that has claimed the lives of 3 million back home. The camera follows several groups of North Korean refugees, some have chosen to forcibly make their way past the gates of the Japanese embassy in Beijing, others have chosen to attempt to send in a formal application to be recognised as refugees at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and yet others have chosen to make their way to Mongolia, in the hopes of eventually getting to South Korea, their promised land. If they are arrested, the Chinese government (which sees them as illegal economic migrants and not refugees) will certainly repatriate them to North Korea where they will face punishment and execution. It also offers a fascinating look at what's been called the Underground Railroad, a covert network of multinational cells of relief workers, activists and volunteers including a South Korean pastor, Chun Ki-won, who's been dubbed the Asian Schindler. This show is amazing in the way it acquaints the viewer with the complexity of the issue, taking into account a wide range of divergent views, and even taking on the UNHCR for its supposed compliance with the Chinese government. Till today, the UNHCR has not saved a single North Korean refugee.

Hong Kong Triad T-Shirt Gets Fashion Label in Hot Water [Asiaone.com] The arrest of 18 employees of a Hong Kong lifestyle and retail chain over a controversial new line of T-shirts '14K' bearing the name of a well-known triad gang spurred an apology from the store's founder.Pakistan - Besieged Musharraf plays for time [Asia Times] Having opened a can of worms by declaring a state of emergency, Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf is now in...

Locals cynically call him "papa," or praise him as their "king." Some expats, meanwhile, call him "big head." Whatever the moniker applied to him these days, Tajik President Imomali Rahmon is showing himself to be a man full of surprises.

Alibaba.com, China’s largest B2B commerce site is going public in Hong Kong in a few weeks. With the current frenzied market back drop, and Alibaba’s tremendous earning power (Goldman Sachs’ analyst pegs the site will earn a net profit of USD $83.8 million this year, up 186 percent from last year), the IPO will no doubt be a roaring success.

We just received news that North Korea has expressed its intention to attend the Shanghai World Expo in 2010. How exciting is that, people!

The Youtube video shown here produced by Chinese Malaysian student Wee Meng Chee, 24, triggered torrents of invective from Malays, and support from some Chinese in Malaysia.

Gold, silver, bronze? Nah. According to Bloomberg.com athletes the world over have smog on their minds when it comes to the quadrennial Olympics competition next year in Beijing. Gunn-Rita Dhale, Norway’s reigning world champion for women’s mountain biking had this to say about her future host city,

World Bank President Robert Zoellick on Monday praised Vietnam as a "tremendous success story" in fighting poverty but said institutional reforms were needed as it seeks middle-income country status.

Crossing the Line - a documentary by VeryMuchSo Productions with Koryo Tours

Pioniers, a minor league team in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In 2007, he was signed by the Beijing Tigers of the China Baseball League (more info here). The CBL season already over, Kim recently answered some of our questions via email.

Elsewhere - Indian-born billionaire Lakshmi Mittal - the fifth richest man in the world - has emerged as a contender to buy Birmingham, while Arsenal faces a takeover bid from an Arab tycoon Mohammed Al Hashimi who was a partner in a £450million bid to buy Liverpool. In the meanwhile, ousted billionaire Thai premier Thaksin Shinawatra, is reportedly poised to buy English football's Manchester City, although the Bank of Thailand said it has not received a money transfer request from Thaksin. Are Asians going to take over the English Premier League someday?

Kaesong, North Korea: The managers of this capitalist enclave in communist North Korea are appealing for the world's support, saying their experiment in free markets can pave the way for regional peace. Kaesong supporters are aiming for the city to emulate Shenzhen, the special economic zone bordering Hong Kong, which kick-started China's economic boom, and say this will narrow the huge economic gap between North and South Korea with the help of foreign support.

Despite chalking up their first point of their 2007 AFC Champions League campaign, Shanghai Shenhua are out of the competition after being held 0-0 by J-League champions Urawa Reds yesterday.

Shanghaiist loves lists. We've embraced the love of lists ever since we picked up Nick Hornby's novel High Fidelity. So when browsing the morning news yesterday, our honed powers of list detection and surveillance led us to discover that Shanghai has been included in yet another list. Not just any pokey little list might we add, but The Economist magazine's 2007 Worldwide Cost of Living Survey (WCOL) for expatriate workers.

Olympic Games.

China has moved a step closer to diversifying its US$1.07 trillion in foreign reserves, with the yet-unofficial appointment of two senior officials to head new vehicles that will seek to invest a portion of China's reserves, which are the largest in the world.

Yesterday MobileMonday had their third monthly gathering in Shanghai. This time the topic was Mobile TV, a very hot topic in China right now (trust us). Four different presentations introduced this topic to the audience: the encryption technology (Thierry A. Raymaekers, Irdeto), the content aggregation (Jan Henrik Pratje, 1MP), the technical aspects (Johann Le Roux, MIH Group), and the programming (Angela Chan, I-Vision). More details aboutteh presentershere. The main messages of all the speeches were that South Korea is an industry leader and China will push these systems due to the Beijing Olympics 2008.

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Everyone is reporting about North Korea's apparent "successful" test of a nuclear weapon, which happened last night.