Note 7s at the local guns-and-ammo shop and hurling them at people and
cars like grenades on the streets of Los Santos, a fictional Southern
California city.
Samsung issued a copyright takedown notice to YouTube—even
though it did not own the copyright to the videos. The attempt at
censorship only backfired—more of these recordings proliferated.
“Samsung doesn’t want you to see video of this GTA V exploding
phone mod,” proclaimed Ars Technica, posting a video for all to see.
“It appears Samsung took the easy path to removing the content it did
not like by making a copyright claim where none existed,” wrote the
Electronic Frontier Foundation, the group that defends free speech on the
Internet, on October 26.
It was, in other words, one of the greatest brand disasters in recent
history: a recall, followed by the release of replacement products that were
equally dangerous, followed by increasingly confused and desperate
attempts to save face.
—
FOR ME, KOREA WAS a journey of discovery.
I first settled in the country in September 2009. I lived on and off in
South Korea until the fall of 2016, between reporting stints in Vietnam and
Cambodia.
I was immediately fascinated with my new, adopted home. It was a
nation divided between the authoritarian North and the democratic South,
polar opposites in terms of their societies, economies, and politics.
Yet they were essentially one nation and one people, divided by an
artificial border.
Thirty minutes north of my home in Seoul was the demilitarized zone,
one of the world’s most heavily mined borders, an area I would visit
dozens of times. Beyond that was North Korea, where Marshal Kim Jong
Il was threatening war against the United States and had set up a network
of brutal prison camps.
Yet my South Korean friends practically nodded off when I brought up
North Korea.
“We really don’t care about North Korea,” one friend said, repeating
what I had heard from so many others. “We’ve dealt with North Korea for