months into a deep cover assignment and only days away from breaking the story of 2007, seoulitary confinment's reporters have been outed!

posing as a tourist couple, one of our reporting teams was preparing an expose on the child labor practices of korean cultural event performance troupes. one particularly egregious violator was performing in seoul's city hall park - using the auspices of glorious korean tradition to exploit child labor. our crack team was busily snapping photos and mingling with some of the teen and pre-teen performers during a brief respite from the rigors of their abusive schedule. for example, the traditional korean mask pictured here is as grotesque as it is constricting. not only are these facades disturbingly ugly, but they also obstruct airflow.

these drums are piercingly loud. notice our reporter's cringe. with decibel levels like this, these poor children should all be wearing ear-plugs or some alternative form of cochlear protection.

having secured interviews and photographic evidence, the reporters were days away from taking the story to press, that is, until a competing news organization, the daily kimchi, ran photos of our reporters hard at work, exposing them and destroying the critically important guise of anonymity.

Seoul City Hall: Always Something To See

A group of people were doing some sort of cultural dance with costumes and the whole nine yards. After they finished, they left their equipment neatly laid out to take a break. Then, right after some people came by to take pictures—but they started putting on the masks! I don’t know if that was normal or not, but I should’ve joined in on the fun! Check out this couple:


I should've put this mask on

this is not seoulitary confinement's first encounter with the daily kimchi, but it is the most serendipitous. in an earlier confrontation, gdog at the daily responded to some unduly harsh criticism. read it here. and gdog's response.

by sheer numbers, the daily kimchi is (was?) one of seoul's most popular expatriate blogs, and merits high marks for its highly informative, exceptionally consistent posts and stellar photography. our reporters knew they were watching a master in the midst of his craft and sensing the propitious moment, snapped a picture. we should have said, "HOLLA." gdog and devante, your contributions will be missed. godspeed.