On time.com article is titled: 'Nobody Is Going to Stay and Work When It’s Like This’: South Koreans Reluctant to Return After Harrowing ICE Detention'
At least some of them were not on the correct visas, and it's possible some may have overstayed.
The most egregious violation was that they were using Korean contractors for construction and there is no visa for that.
Also if you are going on a business trip, your company organises your visa for you. You cant really refuse, it's part of your job. So I feel quite sorry for these workers becuase they've been caught in the crossfire.
I happen to know someone well who works for a Korean Conglomerate building industrial/car batteries in the US.
When you do construction work, or operate the production line it has to be done by American Labour.
The visas they have only cover setup, repair and education of the production line.
At that LG/Hyundai factory they were using Korean contractors for construction. So there was some breaking of the terms of the visa for at least some of the people.
However, ICE didn't need to arrest everyone. All they needed to do was send a warning. These companies don't want the trouble, they would comply.
Now you have many Koreans very upset. And people in my friends company are now scared to go to America even though they are management.
It's not good for anyone, it's just so short sighted!
It used to be a wink wink agreement between the US and Korea. Yes, Korean companies break rules, but a lot of it tends to be directly related to the terms put in by the government. There’s milestones and deadlines that need to be met to ensure money gets released. But we all know what happens to construction projects here. There were some people definitely working on wrong visas.
Anyone who has worked for a larger than mom and pop company outside the US, who has been sent to the US by their company for some reason knows that the legality of their presence and type of visa needed is top of mind. Triple so when the company is as large as Hyundai. For certain they retain a specialist US immigration law firm.
> I happen to know someone well who works for a Korean Conglomerate building industrial/car batteries in the US.
You could just say you know someone at LG ;)
> However, ICE didn't need to arrest everyone. All they needed to do was send a warning. These companies don't want the trouble, they would comply.
The point is to reach quotas. Warnings and voluntary exits don't help with those.
> Now you have many Koreans very upset.
FWIW, the reaction among Koreans (i.e. in korea), especially the younger generation, has been quite mixed. Among age 20-39, only a minority expressed being "disappointed with the US' excessive measures". Among the older groups, the majority did react negatively.
The most common reasons among those who did not express disappointment:
- They'd want the very same thing to happen if the roles were reversed: foreign companies in Korea bringing in hundreds of people on questionable visas
- The companies knew exactly what they were doing, that it was illegal and that they were at risk. This had been coming for some time. Cases had been starting to pop up of those trying to do multiple consecutive visa runs (blatant abuse, but often instructed by these same companies) being denied.
- The employees who get sent on these business trips are often privileged and rich, so some take pleasure in seeing them not get away with something for once.
- Korean young MAGAs who love the concept of deportation and the current US gov
Agreeing with other comments.
I wouldn't take this too seriously.
Judging by the Korean score.
Korea's English proficiency is nowhere near that high. Among university age reading and listening is good. But Koreans even when they 'know' English can't string a sentence together.
(Source: live here)
For some context, you can't live in South Korea and not use Kakao, even your grandma has it.
So the fact that they have so many holes in their security is a cause for concern.
You grandma isn't going to know a fishy link when she sees one, especially with this exploit where domain looks legitimate.
A contributing factor is the hierarchical work culture in Korea. You boss gives you a deadline for a feature which is treated an non-negotiable so you cut corners to get it out. Your boss can't 'see' security vulnerabilities, but can see a UI. So you get told "good job" and then get given the next unachievable deadline.
This all amounts to an app full of security holes, and until Kakao stock drops because of it, they're not going to address it.
I actually don't use Kakaotalk (or LINE or Facebook, to be comprehensive) even though I'm a Korean. That does make me some kind of weirdo, but many enough services have an SMS fallback so I can live without it.
On the security side though: I don't think it is a work culture at the play because major IT companies in South Korea---often referred as to the initialism 네카라쿠배, for Naver, Kakao, LINE, Coupang and Baemin operated by Woowa Bros---are known for much better work culture and higher compensation than the nation average [1]. It is probably more like that these apps are domestic and hadn't been scrutinized enough compared to globally popular apps.
[1] But still lower than US or even some Korean startups in my experience.
it was the same in other places. it's only a matter of time.
south America and most of Africa was taken over by metabook whatsapp. you can't even schedule government appointments without one (which then require a mobile phone number, which then require all the data each govt require for a mobile phone sim purchase)
Europe requires sms plus a apple/google validated app and stock phone. you can't access most eu or eu commission or local gov services without it.
but it all started with "it's fine, i still have X fall back working". but we only cry about china dystopian techno state...
> Europe requires sms plus a apple/google validated app and stock phone.
Which European central government services require you to use an online service or app, with no voice, paper on in-person fallback. I can think of one in the UK - my council's resident's parking permit system
you have the option of two badly coded apps, which refuse to run on android without stock rom and google play services. it gatekeeps both internal services as well as access to public grant offers and financial help.
it used to accept sms, and it still show in some flows, but is forbidden on most common cases now.
The GP comment said "Europe" not the EU and the UK is in Europe so a valid counter example.
The main govt services I know of that require mobile apps are lcoal govt ones for parking. Everything else works in a web browser. As far as private sector services go I know of Virgin Money and supermarket loyalty cards.
Thank you, yes I was aware that the UK wasn't in the EU. Looking at that page, I can see that you are also apparently able to log in with EiD, Google or Facebook.
> Europe requires sms plus a apple/google validated app and stock phone. you can't access most eu or eu commission or local gov services without it.
I haven't interacted with the EU sites other than just looking up random things (so no login required).
But French government services (both national and local) work perfectly on my Firefox/Linux PC without any kind of interaction with my phone. I've never actually tried this, but I don't see why they wouldn't work on any phone browser, stock or otherwise.
I haven't tried them all, obviously, but I'm thinking vehicle registration, voter registration and tax service (both personal and corporate).
They have an SSO scheme, France Connect, which is used for multiple services, so I expect that if it worked for the ones I've used, it'll work for the others, too.
The private sector can be more of a clow show, though, especially some banks.
Didn't Japan just buy(back) line and pledge better operational security a while back? Samsung is famous for frequently reinventing things on their own and leaving it full of security holes as a result. Somehow it's just part of the culture.
You can find hierarchical work cultures with impossible deadlines all around the world, not just SK. The difference seems to be that the government sector and the chaebol take up such a huge share of the "IT" market in SK, that there really isn't much space left for startup culture to make a difference.
Kakao used to be a cool startup, but they've been trying hard to emulate the chaebol once they became successful.
> Startups are quite big in SK because the government gives them lots of funding.
Exactly. All that funding and the associated paperwork, not to mention the adverse incentives it brings to the table, help to turn the Korean startup ecosystem into yet another old-fashioned, government-controlled economic sector.
We all call each other the same honorifics, make our offices cute and comfy, and try not to have a visible hierarchy. But at the end of the day, it's the government that tells you which projects will be funded and when you should submit screenshots of the deliverables. Angels? Yeah, they exist, but where do you think half of their money comes from?
The government gives out a lot of grants to startups, but largely in the range of $10k-$100k USD. Beyond that, there aren't many angels, and VC is dominated by highly conservative corporates. It's an incredibly tough fundraising environment.
> Startups are quite big in SK because the government gives them lots of funding.
They need funding mainly because otherwise the govt sector and chaebol would outlive them. It greatly depends on the exact circumstances though. (Source: Had been in several startups with varying degrees of funding.)
> Fair warning to other foreigners, you will have to make _a lot_ of sacrifices.
Mainly because most if all people in Korean startups are necessarily Koreans. The same thing happens whenever many members share the same background, not just the nationality.
> Source: I worked at a South Korean startup. Fair warning to other foreigners, you will have to make _a lot_ of sacrifices.
As a foreigner living in Seoul, working for US startups, and eyeing creating a US-styled startup in Seoul in the future, what are the sacrifices you have in mind?
Do you know of anyone who has created a US style startup in Seoul? Only two people I can think of are Matthew Shampine and Jason Boutte. Jason Boutte is literally the only foreigner I know who pulled it off, I've lived in Seoul doing startup stuff for 5 years till recently.
> You boss gives you a deadline for a feature which is treated an non-negotiable so you cut corners to get it out. Your boss can't 'see' security vulnerabilities, but can see a UI. So you get told "good job" and then get given the next unachievable deadline.
If only that happened only in SK.
It definitely happens in the west too. Maybe its worse in SK because of the culture, but its definitely not unique. The problem of the boss or the customer seeing the UI but not security issues is universal.
"Hierarchical work culture" is like the go-to blanket excuse to explain anything in East Asia that Americans don't like or think is bad.
If you've ever spent a few years at any decent-sized white collar company in the US (tech, finance, consulting) you know it's the same in the west. Especially FAANGs. All these mid-level engineers are just yes-men trying to suck up to their VPs to get in the next promo cycle. The western companies just have better marketing about "flat hierarchies" but it's all PR talk and lip service. Some PM or SVP drops some mandate and no one ever has the balls to question it, they just grumble and do it.
The saddest part is that these tech bros actually believe the marketing they are fed about their company cultures, and it breeds this shallow superiority complex and so whenever something negative about Asian companies comes up, you get comments like this citing this 'go-to' rationale about hierarchy.
It's actually kind of sad these guys don't have the self-awareness to critically examine what they are told vs. what reality is.
I've spent many years at large companies including FAANGs. I've had no problems or issues pushing back on unreasonable deadlines or being the bearer of bad news about vulns, bugs, or systemic flaws. I've also seen plenty of engineers do the same.
Is there anybody here using this now? How does using the FSRS plugin on desktop effect the usage on mobile? I'm curious but don't want to mess up my anki setup.
This is a nice article. I've used Ecto embedded schemas and nimble options separately but never thought to use them together.
Faced with this kind of issue, I'd use Ash with the `Simple` data layer. You can get all the power of an embedded Ecto schema and nimble options together in a single dsl.
If you need to validate with arbitrary logic you can do that with a 'validation'
If you need to transform the input data before you return the struct you can do it in a change set.
Get Korean teacher irl or on italki. At least once or twice a week.Try to speak and listen to much Korean as you can.
Watch Korean kids tv shows on Netflix with Korean & english subtitles (I use language reactor chrome plug in)
Real life Korean conversations for beginners by Talk to me in Korean is good.
When you get to an intermediate level (TOPIK level 3ish) the iyagi podcast is GREAT.
Ive been going through the sejong institute practical Korean textbooks. You can get them for free online. They focus on understanding and expressing youself in spoken Korean. The audio examples emulate Korean speech much more than other Korean textbooks I've used.
The sejong institute also to free Korean online courses with weekly zoom lectures.
How to study Korean, sells anki flashcard decks with audio attached. The lessons are free. They're quite dense but are BRILLANT as a reference to grammar you have forgotten or want to know in more nuance.
Vocab-wise when you do flashcards have two for each direction KOR<->ENG. Learn the words for 3 days before putting them into an Anki deck (e.g. 30 words a day, but every day 10 words 'graduate' to the anki deck)
I find Anki good for keeping words memorised but not learning them. When you are looking at the korean word play the audio, it helps SO much!
Remember Korean is one of the hardest languages for a English native speaker to learn. There are times when you will feel you're making no progress. Then one day you will realise you actually understand what you MIL is saying. Have a sacred time every day where you do some Korean. Ideally at least an hour, anything less you will not improve quickly enough to re-motivate you, or thats at least how it was for me.
Maybe Korea also had blue traffic lights in the past. But they still call green traffic lights 'blue' even though all of them use a green coloured light.
I think the use of blue to mean both blue and green has also been present in Korea for a long time.
I wonder where it came from? In my limited experience if Korea and Japan share something culturally it often has its common derivation in Chineese tradition.
