30 Stunningly Cool Facts About South Korea You Shouldn’t Miss

Employers in South Korea pay their workers a “kimchi bonus” in the fall so that they can buy all the ingredients to make their annual supply of kimchi.

In 1982, a South Korean man named Woo Bum-kon began a massive killing spree when his girlfriend woke him up trying to swat a fly on his chest. He was so enraged that he went on to murder 56 people and wounded 35 others.

In 2009, the city of Seoul painted 4,929 parking spaces pink so that women would not have to walk as far to their destination and to make the city more conducive to wearing high heels.

In South Korea, there is a sex theme park called Love Land. It features 140 sculptures representing humans in various sexual positions.

A South Korean man named Kim Ung-Yong was a guest student at a university at the age of 3, was invited by NASA to conduct research at the age of 8 and earned a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the age of 15. He also has the highest IQ ever recorded in history.

During the May 18 Democratic Uprising of 1980, hundreds of civilians and students in South Korea were killed by the dictatorship army.

The Frog Boys was a group of South Korean children who went missing while frog hunting in 1991. 11 years later their bodies were discovered and the police concluded that they died from hypothermia. However, a later autopsy revealed them to have been murdered, one with a shotgun blast to the head.

In South Korea, kimchi is so ubiquitous that many households have a special fridge just for storing it. According to a consumer survey, this "kimchi refrigerator" is the #1 most desired appliance in the country.

An elephant named Koshik in a South Korean zoo learned to imitate human speech by sticking its trunk in its mouth.

The Boryeong Mud Festival in South Korea is an annual event that attracts more than 2 million visitors. The mud is considered rich in minerals and is used to make cosmetics.