WARNING: while this scene does concern iPod sales in Korea, it contains absolutely no humorously incomprehensible computer-generated English translations of Korean text. We know, it's tragic, but it happens. If you're only here for the goofy autotranslations, you may want to move on to avoid massive disappointment. You have been warned.

Okay, so now that that's out of the way, remember when we were shocked, appalled, and yes, even flabbergasted (and we all know how painful that can be) to learn that, despite leading the market globally, Apple's iPod had at most a 3 percent market share in that mysterious land known as Korea? Actually, some sources reported Apple's slice of the pie over there to be a wafer-thin "less than 1 percent," a fact so mind-blowing in its sheer incongruity that Apple Korea apparently got a little disoriented. So disoriented, in fact, that it did a most un-Apple-like thing: it launched a price war by slashing iPod prices to unseemly new lows. Sure, said war ended abruptly a few days later when the company came to its senses, but the fact that Apple got pulled into it at all speaks volumes about just how distressingly unpopular the iPod was with music-loving Koreans looking for a way to stuff a wad o' digital songs in their pockets.

Well, good news: faithful viewer Simone Manganelli tipped us off to an article in The Korea Herald (which is the country's "No. 1 English Newspaper," hence no incomprehensible Google autotranslation) which reports that the iPod family is finally catching on in Korea after all. According to sales data compiled by a single Korean online electronics reseller, in the first half of this month, iPods of various flavors comprised a whopping 7 percent of the market by revenue-- which the reseller estimates to be "well over 10 percent" in terms of unit sales (presumably since iPods are, on average, more expensive than other players). From less than 1 percent to over 10? Now that's a turnaround, baby.

You get three guesses as to what's responsible for pumping up iPod sales in Korea, and the first four don't count. Yes, folks, it's the iPod shuffle to the rescue; if reports were correct that Apple only released the shuffle to help spread the iPod brand through flash-happy Asia, evidently that strategy is already paying off big. Faithful viewer John Blackburne points out that, according to The Korea Times (in English once more; curses, foiled again!), Samsung aims to steal the MP3 player crown from Apple by 2007, but with Apple gaining ground in Samsung's home country, that might be a little tricky; after all, it takes a lot more than a blowhard CEO spouting tough talk to beat Apple. Just look at Singapore's Creative Technology; its Napoleonic CEO "declared war" on the iPod last November, but according to Bloomberg, its shares are now trading at their lowest levels in eight months. War is, as they say, H-E-double-hockey-sticks. Let's just leave it at that.

Okay, okay, you're right-- a scene about Korean iPod sales that doesn't feature a ludicrously poor autotranslation seems like a crime against all that's good and decent in this world. So just to keep the universe from collapsing in on itself, we've decided to translate a random sentence from the first article into Korean, and then back into English. Behold: "Apple Computer also recently released its first flash-memory-based MP3 player, the iPod Shuffle, which is sold for 125,400 won" becomes "The Apple the computer mixes up and the mp3 bow which recently puts it first flash flag hundred million foundation, for 125,400 where it wins sale toy the iPod to release, it put." Happy now?