Bizarro world nears election day

Just when I thought it could not get any crazier, there's going to be an election.
May 31st, election day. A day off school. A national holiday.
The news was heralded by flashy trucks that zoom around townand park at one main intersection after another. Their mission? To blast shitty Norae-bang (karaoke) music as loud as humanly possible. Not even live, 50% of the time, just a recording of some warblings over synthesizer bleeps and taffs. Why do they do this? TO WIN YOUR VOTE!

These trucks are accompanied by speeches delivered through the town's air raid public address system.

Hey you! You, listening to music! Prepare to be drowned out!

Seriously, I don't know how windows are not shattering closer to the speakers, because half the time the speeches drown out our television, and they appear to be about 500 m (at least) away. Now, I'm assuming that these speeches are election related. I have no evidence for that though other than the coincidental timing. If they aren't for the election, then it's just one more crazy thing.

Yesterday I went to Gwangju. There I saw even more election-related insanity.

First, in Naju, on the bus ride. Four women standing in the back of a truck. On the truck, two walls have been constructed to create a "corner of a room" effect. Both these walls have been decorated with a blown up face and ad slogan, just like a billboard. Next to the face is a huge number four. The woman are now dancing, holding out four fingers on each hand. They are thirty or forty, decked out in matching tracksuits (the same colour as the poster background) and ajuma visors (think Darth Vader meets welder meets accountant). Why the fours? As near as I can figure, the candidates each have numbers. So, vote number four!!!!!

Leaving Gwangju, more of the same. This time, a bank parking lot, and about thirty women. The candidate's number was not thirty, that I could tell. The truck was there, the posters, the crappy music. And the women were dancing what appeared to be the Macarena and taking up about half the parking spaces. What's even stranger is that there were just as many people standing there watching the show!

These scenes were scattered throughout the city. So many women in matching suits, dancing away to some of the worst music I had ever heard...

And the music. There's something about Koreans, it's hard for me to understand. They are all about volume when it comes to music, to the point of losing so much quality. They will blast something, for no reason. They will crank a very powerful stereo or PA system to max when half would do. if you ever come accross a concert or dance performance, you had best avoid walking anywhere in the cone of sound from any speaker, because it will physically hurt you. And the speakers are popping and hissing, and making that horrible crunching sounds everytime someone pronounces a "ch" sound, which they do a lot in Korean. It's horrible, it's unnecessary, and it hurts me.

And I've been to a few Big Sugar concerts, and I liked them. So you know they had to be really freaking loud.