Computers are a huge part of today’s world, but let’s face it—too much time spent staring at a screen can turn your leisurely pursuits into a headache. To deal with this problem, a Japanese company is offering a product that should bring back the revitalizing inspiration your mind so desperately needs.

Introducing Thanko Rare Mono Shop’s USB Head Refresher:



At first glance, it might look like nothing more than a toy robot spider, but it actually has a very practical application. The odd gadget’s vibrating, adjustable legs are designed to be placed on your head, neck, or shoulders for a calming, refreshing massage.

Just plug the USB cable into your computer, flip the switch, and get ready to feel rejuvenated!



While the Head Refresher is specially designed to relieve the stress of operating a computer, you also have the option of popping in a couple double-A batteries and taking the spindly electronic masseuse anywhere you want—the gym, McDonald’s, the beach. You could even show it off the next time you go partying!

Well, at least that’s how Rare Mono Shop is pitching their device. The product description page quite confidently affirms the following: “There is no doubt that everybody will be interested in this little gadget. It will give your party a fun boost. You might become a center of the party.”



I’m sure partygoers would express interest in this product, but the claim for increased popularity is debatable. Let’s face it—would you wear this thing to a party? I didn’t think so.

The Head Refresher’s price tag might seem a little high, but if you’re willing to drop 32 bucks, all the relaxing sensations of an electronic massage will be yours, and if you hang with the right crowds you could also enjoy some social status. Who knows, this thing could even help soothe a hangover in the morning!

Some say the halls of Buddhist temples and museums across Japan are home to many unwanted guests; namely, monster mummies whose preserved remains defy explanation as they stand brazenly on display for all who dare to look.

These mummified demons include incredible monsters, mermaids and even human monks. Some are definitely bogus, but others may well keep you up at night. Take a look but…. don’t forget to check that moving dark spot over your shoulder.

In the Japanese city of Kanazawa in Ishikawa prefecture, the Zengy temple is home to the mummified head of a three-faced demon. As the legend goes, a resident priest discovered the mummy in a temple storage chamber in the early 18th century.

Nobody knows where the demon head came from or how or why it ended up there. The mummified head has two overlapping faces in front, with another one (resembling that of a kappa, which is a water spirit found in Japanese folklore) situated in back. The temple displays the head each year around the spring equinox.

In the town of Usa (Oita prefecture) another demon mummy is on display at the local temple. Once the treasured heirloom of a noble family, this mummy changed owners several times before ending up in the hands of a parishioner in 1925.

When he fell ill (the owner, not the mummy), a legend was born that the mummy was cursed, a belief that was reinforced by the fact that he quickly recovered from his illness after donating the mummy to the temple where it remains to this day on display as a sacred object.

During the 18th and 19th centuries known as the Edo period in Japan, mermaid mummies often appeared at misemono (side show carnivals). A bizarre art form, these mummies were created by fishermen who perfected techniques for stitching the heads and upper bodies of monkeys and other animals onto the bodies of fish.

The very disturbing mummy depicted below was found in a wooden box that contained passages from a Buddhist sutra written in Sanskrit.

Kappa mummies were also constructed by using odd animal parts ranging from monkeys and owls to stingrays. One notable kappa is located in the town of Imari (Saga prefecture) at the Matsuura sake brewery of all places.

As the story goes, the mummy depicted below was discovered hidden in a box by carpenters replacing the roof more than 50 years ago. The owners of the brewery built a small altar and enshrined it as a river god.

A supernatural sky creature known as a tengu is often depicted as part human and part bird. Japan’s ruling samurai families of the Shogunate period maintained collections of these weird mummies, and one is on display at the Hachinohe Museum (Aomori prefecture) in northern Japan.

Topping the list of mummies are the self-mummified monks of northern Japan who willingly tortured themselves in a three-step process to achieve heavenly nirvana. The Japanese government outlawed this practice in the late 19th century, but the image below tells its own horrible tale.

A view of these creatures raises more questions than answers, which always creates a tinge of discomfort.

Who’s to say what’s real and what isn’t?

Are such things truly in the eye of the beholder?

Meet Pan-kun, a very intelligent chimpanzee who lives in Japan and is known for his appearances on TV shows.

Pan-kun’s televised adventures typically involve learning how to imitate some sort of human activity. In the past, he’s approached such challenges as making noodles, operating a remote-controlled car, and even training with the fire department.



To celebrate his seventh birthday last October, Pan-kun was filmed for the show Shimura Zoo while he learned the basics of riding a Segway. Thankfully, no one was injured in the hilarious experiment, although the daring chimp did have to dive clear a couple times to ensure his own survival.

Right from the start, it’s obvious that Pan-kun has a natural talent for driving the personal transporter forward (at what appears to be full speed, of course), but his inability to stop at first leads him to a couple pretty rough finishes.

Now that, my friends, is what you call a talented monkey!

Japanese gangsters are facing an obstacle that can’t be beaten with a nunchaku – a pen and paper exam.

Spotted within the Yamaguchi-gumi syndicate, this Q&A session involved a 12 question paper that tested faction members’ knowledge of gangster lore.



One such question asked for a comprehensive list of taboo activities. The correct answer, as specified on the sample paper, included con jobs involving phones, stealing costly motor vehicles and disposal of industrial waste.

Furthermore, the paper stressed that all gang-related activities had to be approved by the big bosses.

This exam paraphernalia was uncovered by police when they were investigating a crime-related instance involving the Yamaguchi-gumi gang in Shiga Prefecture .

This particular group has a strong presence in Japan with its 40 000 members and thus, has adopted this unconventional method in order to save money. Recent changes to the anti-organized crime law ensured that crime bosses could be fined over the illegal actions of their respective minions.

Such minion actions could be anything from a shoot-out in a street to a bloody bar fight.

In addition to legal moves, civil action by concerned citizens against crime syndicates were becoming increasingly common and have might have contributed to the creation of this exam paper.

One such example was the efforts of Akasaka residents where they won a court appeal to exclude the Inagawa-kai gang from their neighborhood.

In a weird and very unusual twist of medical fate, Rashida Khatoon, a young girl from northeast India cries tears of blood instead of water.

She and her unusual medical condition have been transformed into a holy shrine where worshipers come to watch in awe as blood drips from her eyelids several times a day.



Doctors in the region of Patna, northeast India, have no medical explanation as to the cause of this most unusual anomaly, but local Hindu holy men have declared Rashida a miracle. Followers bow in deference as they stand before her, showering her family with holy offerings.

“I do not feel any pain when it happens, but it’s a shock to see blood instead of water,” said Rashida of her most unusual situation.

What could be the cause of this weird occurrence? Some have suggested a brain tumor or malfunctioning of tear ducts, but there is no medical evidence to support that. No one in authority in fact, seems to know or will even venture a guess, which is even more disconcerting than to watch the phenomenon, which occurs every few hours.

Could Rashida be suffering from a case of a rare phenomenon known as Haemolacria? Little is known about this medical condition other than the fact that it occurs when a person produces tears, which are partially composed of blood. This can manifest as anything from red-tinged tears to those, which appear to be entirely blood.

Bleeding from the eyes is most certainly weird and creepy. It may be the result of a very rare medical condition, but whatever it is, it is not likely to be a gift of any sort from the holier powers that be. If you think about it, how could bleeding from the eyes be a gift except from a very creepy donor?

Mr. Ripley, where are you when we need you anyway?

Last night in Hong Kong, the police received a disturbing call from a man in trouble.

Xing, a 41 year-old man, was calling from LanTian park in the middle of the night. The lonely and disturbed man had apparently thought it would be fun to have sex with one of the steel sit-up benches around the park.

The bench has numerous small holes in it, which Xing used to attempt to satisfy himself. However, once he became aroused he found that he was stuck and could not get his penis out of the small hole.

He panicked and called the police to help him.



When police arrive they found Xian stuck face down where he had been stuck for some time.

When doctors arrived on the scene they tried to release some of the pressure by removing some of his blood, but the penis was so swollen that they ended up having to cut the entire bench free and take it, with Xian attached, to the hospital.



4 painful hours later, Doctors finally separated Xian from his bench.

Doctors stated that if he had been stuck for even an hour longer, they would have had to remove his penis.



Lets just say this is probably one bad date that Xing will never forget.

Recently deceased Hong Kong tycoon Nina Wang, once the richest woman in Asia, gave hundreds of millions of dollars to her feng shui consultant in search of a longer life.

Even after her hopes were dashed, when she died at age 69 in 2007, she left billions more to the consultant – her alleged lover – in her will.



Tony Chan, a former bartender and master in the ancient Chinese art of channeling energy known as feng shui, received three gifts of $88 million dollars from the real estate billionaire after she was diagnosed with cancer in 2004. The gifts were bestowed in 2005 and 2006.



Wang’s siblings are currently challenging Chan’s claim that he is the sole beneficiary of Wang’s will in court. Wang’s estate is reportedly worth thirteen billion dollars. When asked why Wang gave him the extravagant gifts, Chan said “It’s a gift to me. She addressed me as her hubby. She loved me. So it’s a gift.”

Lawrence Lok, the Wang’s family’s lawyer, claimed that the gifts were given when Chan had claimed he could prolong her life while Wang’s health was deteriorating. Earlier in the trial, a doctor claimed that a feng shui master told Wang he could improve her health by taking her hair and clothes to China. Chan denies this.

Wang’s family also claims that the will bestowing her fortune on Chan is a fake.

In a bizarre attempt to improve her relationship with her employer, an Indonesian maid has appeared in a Hong Kong court accused of adding menstrual blood to her employer’s food.

Things are not, however, as they seem for Indra Ningsih, aged 26.



Indra mixed menstrual blood into a pot of vegetables as a sort of guaranteed panacea for improving relations between herself and her employer.

It makes a little more sense if one considers that in some southeastern Asian cultures, menstrual blood is thought to have special powers.

Whether true or no, she has been charged with one count of “administering poison destructive or noxious substances with intent to injure” according to the media.

She has not yet entered a plea.

The noxious action was discovered completely by chance. Her female employer whose surname is Mok happened to enter the kitchen to her home and noticed the maid acting rather strangely. She caught her throwing something into the trash bin, which turned out to be a used sanitary napkin.

When she looked into the pot of vegetables, she noticed something “suspicious” floating around mixed with the vegetables and water.

Indra had no excuse except to say that things had been bad between her employer and herself, and she hoped to improve things.

Well, Indra, not likely.

Engrish is the often humorous grammatical translation failure between an Asian language, normally Japanese, and English.

You can find a little Engrish on almost anything that contains writing, like products, clothing, signs, advertisements, and just about anything else you can think of.

This section will focus on Engrish shirts, which can be the funniest Engrish moments, since we often associate what is translated on the shirt with the wearer.

Don’t forget to check out all the various galleries in the Weird Asia News Engrish Section.

The world’s one and only indoor beach can be found in Japan’s Ocean Dome about 1,200 miles south of Tokyo in Miyazaki, on Japan’s southernmost Kyushu Island.

Here, the water is always blue and salt-free, waves are perfectly timed, sharks are elsewhere, and its never too hot, or cold, to take a dip.



Japan’s Ocean Dome even has its own marble sand and a volcano that spits fake flames every hour, on the hour. Shores are sanitized; permitting surfers to drip-dry in the perfect climate, which never varies, day and night, every day of the year.

The Ocean Dome also boasts the world’s largest retractable roof.

The beach sits inside a vast dome that measures 300 x 100 meters (984 feet x 328 feet). The heated ocean sends 13,500 tons of salt-free water sweeping across 600 tons of polished marble chips that comprise a long shoreline.

The world’s largest artificial sea washes over the world’s biggest indoor beach, fringed with artificial fish and fauna.

Bogus parrots ruffle their feathers and squawk at tourists from the rainforest that has no rain.

There are no bugs here or sun burns either.



But like most things in life, entrance into this paradise costs. Visitors pay with payment tokens that are computer-coded plastic tags. Admission runs about US $50 for adults, with rides running $5-10 more. Add $10 more for two hours with a boogie board, or $5 for two hours of inner tube rental.

Visitors are offered many diversions in the form of shopping centers tennis courts and golf courses. On the other side of the beach is the plastic rainforest, where guests can travel among holographic sea pirates, demons and dinosaurs.

Who could ask for anything more?

In a bizarre turn of events straight out of Mr. Ripley’s personal files, comes this true story of a 92-year-old woman who delivered a child (albeit not a live baby) she had been carrying for over half a century! (Long pregnancies are one thing, but THAT is ridiculous!)



Huang Yijun, aged 92, is from southern China and she recently made news after delivering a baby known as a lithopedion, aka ‘Stone Baby’.



Huang Yijun told the press she didn’t have the money to have her fetus removed after doctors told her it had died inside her in 1948.

So she simply did nothing at all about it.

Lithopedion is a very rare medical phenomenon, which occurs when a pregnancy fails and the fetus actually calcifies while still in the mother’s body.

Medically speaking, what often happens is the implanted fetus gets to an advanced stage before it dies. Too large to be absorbed by the body, the remains of the child or its surrounding amniotic sac slowly calcify, turning to stone as a way to protect the woman’s body from infection from the decomposing tissue.

If no complications occur, believe it or not, the mother can basically just go on with her life.

According to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, only 290 cases of lithopedions have ever been documented by medical literature.

Fetus in Fetu (FIF) is a rare and very mysterious medical condition that is said to have occurred (or at least is recorded to have occurred) less than ninety times throughout medical history.

For the little boy born in Tianjin’s Children Hospital in China, the second penis in the middle of his tiny back is a medical first and even weirder than some other instances of this highly unusual phenomenon.



The baby presented no problems when it came into the world with the help of midwives on May 27, 2008, at the Hejian Maternity Center, which is part of Tianjin Children’s Hospital.

What seemed like a routine birth, however, soon turned into a story from Ripley’s Believe it or Not, as midwives and medical staff could not have been more surprised to see a little boy endowed with a second penis in the middle of his back.

Born to farmer dad, Li Jun, 30, and his wife, who live in Central China’s Henan Province, the extra penis was safely removed.

There are complicated theories about this condition that relate to the abnormal formation of twins in utero (parasitic twin theory), but this manifestation is just too weird for any of the medical books.

For now, doctors are content to say that after three hours of surgery, the extra penis is gone and the little boy is doing fine.

The daring vigilante act of a retired teacher captured the world’s imagination last month when he smashed the cars of traffic violators with a brick. The three hour spectacle took place in the city of Lanzhou and a total of fourteen cars suffered under the wrath of Yan Zhenping.

Reports claim that the seventy-four year old man armed himself with a brick one night and waited patiently by the pedestrian crossing.



Mummies known as ‘Cherchen Man and Family’ (three women and a baby) who were members of the ancient Caledonii tribe of central Scotland, have been unearthed in a burial site thousands of miles east of where the Celts established their biggest European settlements in France and the British Isles.

They were found in the Taklamakan desert in the western Chinese region of Xinjiang, in whose language the word “Taklamakan” means, “you go in and never come out.”

The mummies are currently housed in glass display cases in a new museum in the provincial capital of Urumqi.



The male mummy had hair of reddish brown, high cheekbones, a long nose, full lips and a ginger beard; hardly Oriental in any way. He stood six feet tall and was buried wearing a red twill tunic and tartan leggings. Even his DNA indicates that he was indeed Celtic in origin.



One of the women sharing his tomb has light brown hair, which appears to have been freshly brushed and braided. Her face is painted with curling designs, and her striking red burial gown is still lustrous even after three thousand years under the sand of the Northern Silk Road.

The bodies are far better preserved than Egyptian mummies. The baby was wrapped in a beautiful brown cloth tied with red and blue cord, and a blue stone was placed on each eye. Beside the child was a milk bottle made from a sheep’s udder.

The Cherchen appear to have been a peaceful folk, as there are few weapons among the mummies find and there is little evidence of a caste system.

How do you solve the problem of cell phone users who send sexually explicit text messages? Well, if you’re the Chinese government, you just monitor everyone’s text messages and throw the sleazy sexters in jail for awhile.



According to a recent report, people in the central Henan province who can’t control their erotic impulses and get caught may be fined or sent to jail for up to five days. And that’s for only one infraction—three or more messages could get you as many as 10 days in prison, plus the fine as well.

Additionally, the northeastern Liaoning province announced earlier in the year that inappropriate messages could be considered sexual harassment.

In other parts of China the solution wasn’t as simple as that. Apparently, party officials in Shenze county (in the Hebei province) sat down at 480 different meetings over a month’s time to discuss the pros and cons of sexting.

Yes, that’s 480 meetings! And they didn’t even specify what the basic punishment would be, although serious textual offenders will have the dubious honor of seeing their names flashed all over the media. Or, to put it bluntly—“Go ahead and sext, but we’re gonna shame you to death, you pervert.”

With over 600 million cell phone users in China, explicit text messages are becoming an increasing problem. It’s no fun to receive an obscene SMS, especially if you don’t know the person who sent it.

“It’s uncomfortable to get dirty text messages from male friends and even more gross when they are from strangers,” said Zhang Kai, 26, who thinks the new rules are a good idea.

Others, however, aren’t convinced.

“There are so many text messages going on now,” said Wang Xiaoyang, a lawyer from Zhenzhou. “How can they be checked one by one? It takes considerable personnel and resources from the public security system.”

Well, since China does monitor all internal communications, I’m sure the government will find a way to catch all the vulgar vagabonds. In the meantime, just play it smart if you’re in China—don’t send that sext message!

The Mountain of Flames in Turpan City, China, known for having the coolest name for a mountain in existence, has a new distinction to add to its credentials: home for the rare long-eared Jerboa.



The long-eared Jerboa (Euchoreutes naso) is a nocturnal rodent that is so unique, it has its own genus (Euchoreutes) and subfamily (Euchoreutinae). It possess disproportionately long legs to hop everywhere, making it resemble a bizarre hybrid of a kangaroo, mouse and rabbit.

Its distinguishing characteristic are its large ears, which are used to help avoid detection by predators such as the small owl.



The long-eared Jerboa lives in desert-like conditions in northwest China and southern Mongolia such as the Gobi Desert, spending the majority of the daylight hours in one of four types of self-constructed burrows and foraging for food at night.

Two temporary burrows are used for daylight and nighttime shelter, while two permanent burrows are used for raising young in the summer and hibernating in the winter.



While many Jerboa species subsist on a diet of nuts and seeds, the long-eared Jerboa is unique in that it is thought to have a diet that consists primarily of insects. Unfortunately, very little is known about the creature, and encroachment of their habitat by humans is threatening their existence.

They are currently on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and served as one of the top-ten 2007 focal points of EDGE: Evolutionary Distinct and Globally Endangered project.

Unable to deal with the endless nagging of his wife any longer, a Chinese man felt the raging waters of the Yangtze River were an adequate substitute.



Zhou, a truck driver, and his wife were on a ferry when the man ran out with his hands placed firmly over his ears, shouting, “I can’t take it anymore!” Crew members on the ship initially felt he had injured his ears, though his predicament became far more apparent when his wife ran up to him and continued nagging.

After being questioned by the crew and finally pushed to the boiling point of his nagging wife, the man placed his hands over his ears in a gesture of defiance, said “I need a break,” and jumped over the railing and into the river.

Lighting the water, they searched for sign of the man but to no avail. Presumed dead, he surfaced 2 kilometers on the other side of the river, safe and sound.

The man was quoted as saying to the police, “I felt I was dying, but even that’s better than my wife’s nagging.” Zhou’s wife met up with her husband at the local police station, promising him to end the nagging, or at least when they’re on a boat.

Lying about your age and beauty is par for the course when it comes to Internet dating. In China, such deceptions had deadly results for one lovesick teen who killed himself after a disappointing meeting with an Internet ‘hotty’ he had been chatting with.

The 17-year-old boy from the northeastern Heilongjiang province, whose name has not been released, chatted with what he thought was a 19-year-old girl for weeks on popular free Chinese instant messaging and chatroom service Tencent QQ.



The woman, who used the name Qunjiaofeiyang (meaning “Flying Skirt”) in chats with the boy, described herself as beautiful and the two had conversations online for weeks before deciding to meet in person. When they finally met in the nearby town of Mudanjiang, the woman turned out to be ten years the boy’s senior – and much less attractive than advertised.

Disappointed and depressed, the teen returned home immediately and discontinued eating and sleeping. He made the tragic choice to end his life through hanging himself four days later.

The teen is just one of many in China, which has one of the world’s highest suicide rates.

What’s green, juicy, and sweet, and improves your karma? You’ll never guess!

For centuries, statues of a sitting, big-bellied Buddha have illustrated what’s commonly called a “pear-shaped” physique. Now a Chinese farmer has turned the tables: Instead of a pear-shaped Buddha, he has given us a Buddha-shaped pear.



The technique, which took Gao Xianzhang six years to perfect, involves confining each piece of fruit in a plastic mold for a certain amount of time as it grows. There are no reports on the flavor just yet, but that’s presumably not much of a priority.

The response to the unusual fruit, at least in Gao’s Hebei province locale, suggests that he’s struck gold with his concept. Whether for superstitious reasons or just novelty value, people have been snatching up the pears, even at a price of about $10 apiece.

Now Gao hopes the rest of the world will catch on too. His next crop is expected to be some 10,000 pears, and he plans to start shipping them to Europe.

It all makes you wonder what fruit might look like once farmers across China begin to adopt Mr. Gao’s process. Will your average shopper come home someday with a bag full of BMW-shaped pears, or cheeseburger-shaped apples? Can the day of the Michael Jackson kumquat be far off?

Primates of the human variety like many different types of music – from classical to rap to country to rock- but monkeys are a little pickier. Researchers in Bejing have recently found that monkeys were calmed by heavy metal while ignoring other kinds of music.



Several different samples of music, including Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis and Bach, were played for a group of cotton-top tamarin monkeys, but the testees were disinterested in all of them.

However, when researchers put on Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”, the monkeys responded positively and placidly – unlike most parents of metalheads and counter to the hypothesis of the scientists, who anticipated that the heavy metal track would agitate the primates.



While the Tamarins enjoyed Metallica, they were far more interested in tunes composed specifically for them by cellist David Teie. They also displayed strong reactions to melodies composed of calls of monkeys; the sample group responded with increased anxiety levels to music composed of distressed Tamarin calls, and were calmed by the long calls that signify happiness in their species.

“Monkeys interpret rising and falling tones differently than humans. Oddly, their only response to several samples of human music was a calming response to the heavy-metal band Metallica,” said lead researcher Charles Snowdon. “If we understand how we can affect their emotional states through using musical tones and aspects of our speech, maybe those of us living with companion animals can have a better relationship with them, too.”

A two-headed cobra has been born in China. Such anomalies among snakes are rare but they do happen. As far as anyone knows, this is the first incidence of such an occurrence with a cobra.



The owner of the snake is one Mr. Liu, a railroad worker who breeds snakes as a hobby. He bought 10 snake eggs to hatch at his home in Jiangxi province in eastern China.

He got the surprise of his life when he first saw the reptile, which is able to eat out of both sides of its mouth simultaneously.

“When the cobras hatched out, one of them had two heads. The cobra is able to eat using both of its mouths…Its four eyes were cloudy at birth, but that will change when the snake sheds its skin for the first time,” said Liu.

Snakes born two heads have been known to live up to 20 years in captivity, and Thelma and Louise, a two-headed snake that lived at the San Diego Zoo in California, had 15 offspring during her lifetime. Still, these snakes have many difficulties, and two heads aren’t better than one in this instance.



The major problem with this anomaly is that both snake heads have to decide they are hungry at the same time, and then they have to agree to pursue the same prey. Then they might fight over which head gets to swallow the prey.

To make matters even more complicated, since snakes operate by smell, if one head catches the scent of prey on the other’s head, it may attack and try to swallow its second head!

Snakes with two heads occur in the same way Siamese twins are born to humans. A developing embryo starts out normally as it begins to split into identical twins, but then for some unknown reason that process is interrupted part way, leaving the twins joined. Variations occur at the point the embryo ceases to separate, and snakes, just like Siamese twins, can be joined at the breast, hip or head.





A spokesman for the local wild animal protection centre said the two-headed snake was most likely the result of genetic mutation.



Mother Nature is a trickster, no?

What do YOU think about this?

In an effort to develop treatments for human genetic diseases, South Korean scientists have manipulated the fluorescent protein gene in a cloning process that has left three cloned cats with a rather weird side effect: They Glow when exposed to ultraviolet beams.



“The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans,” the Ministry of Science and Technology said in a statement.

Cats have some 250 different genetic diseases that are similar to humans, so there is great potential in finding cures to various genetic problems.



This is a huge breakthrough for South Korea. They suffered some setbacks last year, after experiments the cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk conducted, turned out to be fake.

If you’ve liked watching Lt. Commander Data, the positronic-brained second officer, in the sci-fi series Star Trek, then you’d love to hear this.

The South Korean government plans to build two robot-themed parks close to Seoul, one in the bustling seaport of Incheon, and another in Masan by the year 2013.



The megaproject, the first of its kind on the planet, is estimated to cost a whopping $1.6 billion, and will feature an array of robotic marvels allowing visitors to interact with tomorrow’s machines.

According to reports published on the web site Korea.net, the two cities are being developed as futuristic hubs, poised to become the country’s Silicon Valley of robotics.

Robotics is considered to be one of South Korea’s booming industries and it has grown by leaps and bounds over the past five years, recording a 40 percent jump since the year 2003, the site reported.

To ensure that the robotics sector continues to see such growth rates, recently, the government drew up what is known as the Robot Ethics Code, a code of ethics that will prevent android abuse by humans as well as the other way round.

It’s basically a how-to manual for both robot-makers and robot-users that tells them how to relate to robots.



Given that the government aims to install a robot in every household by the year 2020, perhaps, that isn’ such a quixotic idea.

What’s more, in a recently-out book titled “Love and Sex with Robots“, a British Artificial Intelligence researcher David Levy, predicts that robots will advance to such phenomenal levels in the coming years that it’ll be possible for humans to even marry them by 2050.

Yoo Ye-eun, a 5 year-old South Korean girl is being talked about as though she might be the next Mozart.



Ye-eun was born without eyes and was abandoned by her parents.

She has never received formal piano lessons, yet even at the age of 3, she could play any song she heard after listening to it a single time.

The blind pianist received a large amount of recognition after a video of her performance received more than 27 million views on a popular Korean website called Pandora TV.

A similar clip on YouTube had received two million hits before it was removed.






‘She has perfect pitch even though she has never learnt to play. We never taught her,’ said Ye-eun’s adoptive mother, Park Jung Soon.

In May she performed a duet of ‘You Raise me Up’ with 7 year-old British singer Connie Talbot, who last year starred in reality show Britain’s Got Talent.

Hang Mioku, who had her first plastic surgery at the age of 28, is a cosmetic surgery addict who has let her obsession with surgeries ruin her life.



After her first plastic surgery, her addiction led her to Japan where she received additional operations on her face, which eventually became enlarged and deformed.

Eventually the surgeons she was visiting told her that they would no longer perform operations on her and suggested she seek help for her addiction.

Upon, returning home to Korea, Mioku was so deformed that her own family could no longer recognize her.



After searching for someone who would perform more surgeries on here, she found a local Korean doctor who provided her with silicone, which she would self inject into her face with a needle.

Mioku was so addicted to plastic surgery, she would even inject cooking oil into her face when the silicone supply ran out.

Recently, Mioku was featured on a Korean TV show for her addiction and deformities. Many viewers sent in money to help her get additional surgeries to help reduce the size of her face.



Having seen the error in her decisions, Mioku only wishes she could go back and have her original face back.

The hybrid descendants of a carp and a leather carp (tangerine fish) are the new sensation in the small South Korean town of Chongju because of their "humanoid" facial features.

The look suddenly appears after observing the front part of their heads for a moment or two. Two lines and two dots on their heads bear some resemblance to human eyes.



The local newspapers managed to snap some sensational pictures of the fish, which are about 80 centimeters long (more than three feet) and 50 centimeters (almost two feet) in circumference.

The fish live in a pond behind the home of a 64-year old South Korean man and have been there since 1986, although they have never attracted such public attention before.

“My fish have been getting more and more human for the past couple of years, said the owner of the unusual fish species.

The two fish are females so it will not be possible for them to breed others of their very odd ilk. They remain two very weird members of a very dynamic and eerie cosmos.

Have you ever heard of a glowing red dog? No, well, you may be the first on the block to get one if you live anywhere near Seoul, South Korea.

There, it seems, scientists purport to have genetically engineered four beagle pups that glow red. They boast that their cloning techniques might be able to develop cures for diseases that affect humans who don’t know how to bark.



Ruppy is the name given to the world’s first transgenic female beagle dog carrying fluorescent genes that make the canine glow red. Demonstrating a non-creative flow of energy, all four of these amazing puppies are named Ruppy, which is a combination of the words, ruby and puppy.

These dogs look like any other beagles you might come across by light of day. After the sun goes down, however, it is a different story.



These amazing puppies glow red under ultraviolet light and their nails and abdomens, which have thin skins, look red even to the naked eye. Why anyone would want a red dog is a question no one wants to address (or at least so it seems), but Seoul National University professor Lee Byeong-chun, head of the research team, called these dogs carrying fluorescent genes an achievement that goes beyond just the glowing novelty.

The team of scientists identified the dogs as clones of a cell donor through DNA tests and recorded their experiments on the website of the journal, Genesis. Fluorescent mice and pigs have been cloned before in Europe, Japan and the United States, but this marks the first time dogs with modified genes have been cloned successfully.

“What’s significant in this work are not the dogs expressing red colors but that we planted genes into them. The glowing dogs show it is possible to successfully insert genes with a specific trait, which could lead to implanting other, non-fluorescent genes that could help treat specific diseases, like Parkinson’s,” said Professor Lee.