Thoughts on North Korea and Google Translate

I was going to post on yodeling and perhaps the conundrum of farting with thin walls, but the North Koreans made my topic much more interesting. Let's talk about them. Hopefully, since this post is published so close to the last one, everyone will forget about the preceding post below. Especially since I just pointed it out.

Yesterday while I was at school, I received news that North Korea had attacked. My heart sunk immediately, until I read what really happened. South Korea was doing some routine military exercises (defense exercises at that). This involved shooting artillery rounds into the sea to the south and west, away from North Korea. North Korea fired 200 artillery rounds at the island, burning some stuff, killing two, and injuring a dozen more or so. The South reacted by shooting 80 rounds back and deploying fighter jets that make it look like the South flexed or something.

Normally, there are really imposing U.S. warships helping the South Koreans out while doing their military drills on this island. This time, they were missing, giving the North the chance to fire without much of a rebuttal. This comes at a time when North Korea is desperate. They are starving to death and they want attention.

In the wake of this, many non-Koreans are panicking. "OMG!WhatiftheNorthattacksandwe'reallstuckherewhatarewegonnadowhatarewegonnadowherestheliquorandtheguns?" To this I say, balogna. Baloney. Balonie. Baylognia. Just look at the locals. Are they freaking out? No. They've been part of this equation a lot longer than you have. To them I ask, "Is this serious?" They kind of chuckle and say, "This happen a bely opten. No wolly, no wolly." Indeed, in the Spring the North sank the Cheonan. Since I've been here there has been an instance of gunfire on the DMZ. This stuff happens. Indeed, maybe we all just pay attention to Korean news more on my behalf. It's probably akin to when you buy a new car and you suddenly see that everyone else bought your same car, too. Honestly, I'm not worried, therefore you shouldn't be either.

Since the news put North Korea in the forefront of our minds, a friend and I discussed the average cost of a meal in North Korea pretty ad nauseam. We did algebra that I hadn't done since my freshman year of college. That's how into it we were. We took the Big Mac Index in the U.S. ($3.57) over its average yearly salary ($46,381), equal to X over North Korea's average yearly salary ($1,244). Solve for X. According to this formula, the average meal in North Korea is a little over 10 cents. That's based on life in North Korea being as fair as it is in the U.S. (which still ain't that fair). Instead of a meal costing 15 North Korean Won as it would according to our formula, it ends up costing much more. Let's look at some data:

According to GoodFriends: North Korea Today, the price of 1 kg of rice, as of January 2010(which is long ago, but still after the currency went all googly eyed on them) was, on average, about 270 won. That's $1.89. Now, a 10 lb. bag of rice costs $18.99 according to Amazon.com. Let's do the math: 10 lbs is equal to ~4.5 kg. With that in mind, 1 kg of rice costs roughly $4.22 in the U.S. That's pretty close to the Big Mac Index. Let's convert how much 1 kg of rice really costs to the average North Korean into terms we Americans can understand. Using the same formula as above, that 10 lb. bag of rice would cost you $317.10 instead of $18.99. That's a pretty large jump in price, wouldn't you say? No wonder the North Koreans are starving to death.

I think I did more research for this blog post than any post before in the history of time. On a lighter note, remember that paragraph that I wrote in Korean last post that I was hoping you forgot about but definitely didn't now that I mentioned I wrote a paragraph in Korean? Well, to save you the trouble, I plugged that puppy into Google translate and here's what came up

"Today, I went to school. Student is an idiot. Now, I'm hungry too. I could eat breakfast. At lunch, terrified that I want to eat rib. Eojae 8:00 50 minutes, I saw the movie hyejinrang. 'Social network' I saw it. Okay."

It was close. I'll give it that. However, I can assure you what I really said was more grammatically correct and made more sense. Here's what I said: "Today, I went to school. The students are idiots. Now, I'm too hungry. I didn't eat breakfast. At lunch, I hope I eat a terrible rib soup (sarcasm). Yesterday at 8:50, I saw a movie with Haejin. We saw 'The Social Network.' It was good."

Here's a little insight into Korean (as if you care). Let's take a simple verb: 피곤하다 (pee-gon-ha-da). To be tired. Now, if I write it like this--피곤해 (pee-gon-hae)--it opens up a world of possible meanings. It could mean "I am tired," "you are tired," "he is tired," "she is tired," "are you tired?" "am I tired?" "who is tired?" etc. Technically, since there is no question mark the implication is that it's a statement, however, when spoken, you don't see a question mark come out of someone's mouth. It's more ambiguous that way. The interesting thing about Korean is that just a verb can act as an entire sentence, given the subject and/or the object is implied by both listener and speaker. In this way, Google translate is notoriously treacherous. We have made it a fun game to plug work emails into it to see what little gems come up. Entertainment, I tell ya. Entertainment.

Usually with single words it's fine though. Anyway, this post turned out to be real long. Good job reading all this, or at least skimming. I don't blame you. But it's all interesting to me.