crazy communist bears

for the past few weeks i've enjoyed the short bus ride to yeouido island's kbs campus. my producer and co-hosts are all nice ladies, and the job is easy. reading scripts written by highly proficient but non-native english speakers while trying to maintain a "conversational" tone sometimes causes flubs, which is one reason why the show ain't live.

another reason is that last week my co-host abby and i were discussing a story about manchurian bears that were transferred to south korea's mt. jiri from our communist brotherland up north. they're endangered here but there's enough to spare up there.

anyhow, our script went into considerable detail about the four-step acclimation process the bears underwent to prepare them for their new home. unfortunately, they are more interested in following hikers or molesting local farmer's honey operations than staying amongst themselves and procreating. their hijinx has already forced the government to dole out several hundreds of thousands of dollars to angry honey farmers.

the story went on to describe how the south korean government's wildlife officials recaptured the bears to impregnate them with GPS tracking chips and to conduct honey avoidance training exercises. during these sessions, when the bears touched honey they were electrocuted to discourage future mischief. at this point, my co-host, overcome with talk of resettlement, surveillance, embedded tracking devices and electrolysis, exclaimed, "my god, it's like they are from some crazy communist country!!" ... which, in fact, they are.