Baek Ji-min counts herself as one of Na Ggom Su’s biggest fans. She said she’s addicted to the podcast and can’t wait for the next episode.

“While I am waiting for the new episodes I just repeat the old episodes. When I am bored I listen to the old episodes again and again,” Baek said.

Baek said she loves the show’s sarcasm, much of which is directed at Korea’s president, Lee Myung Bak. He’s is the “petty minded creep” of the show’s title, and the brunt of just about every joke.

The four podcast hosts include a former opposition lawmaker, an investigative journalist, a sound engineer and one of Korea’s first online satirists. All kidding aside, they’re very serious about their political message.

They say President Lee, who they call “his highness,” is only interested in increasing his personal wealth, and that he neglects Korea’s less privileged.

Chung Bong-ju, the host who’s the former opposition politician, said Na Ggom Su gives its fans news they can’t find anywhere else.

“In Korea, the government and big corporations have too much control over the media,” Chung said. “We believe people download our show because they want to hear the truth.”

Chung and the other hosts say Na Ggom Su recently blew the lid on a shady real estate deal involving the President, and it’s cited alleged examples of how Lee and his family are profiting from a new free trade deal with the U-S.

Na Ggom Su’s message of class resentment resonates with many young Koreans who don’t trust the conservatives in power, according to Kim Young-chul, a politics professor at Busan National University.

“Many people feel left out of the political process, and Na Ggom Su has cultivated an image of telling Koreans the truth about politics.”

But Kim said some podcast listeners might not be able to distinguish between the show’s version of truth-telling and rumor-mongering, for instance, when the hosts recently insinuated that President Lee fathered an illegitimate child.

Making accusations like that, even under the guise of satire, won’t protect you from Korea’s strict defamation laws, according to British journalist Mike Breen. Breen was sued for $1 million by Samsung after he made fun of the company in his column for the Korea Times. The charges were later dropped.

But the Na Ggom Su guys have a way of side-stepping responsibility, said Breen.

“They are deliberately throwing out conspiracy theories, but covering themselves by saying this might not be true, but I heard and I’m laughing about it.”

But that tactic isn’t completely fool proof. The four podcast hosts have been indicted on charges of defaming a conservative politician who ran for mayor of Seoul.

And Chung Bong-ju, who faces another defamation suit, had his passport application denied. That meant the hosts had to postpone a planned US tour.

But despite the legal problems, the Na Ggom Su hosts say the jabs at the President will continue, at least until February of 2013.

That’s when Lee Myung Bak’s term in office comes to an end.

Update: On December 22, one of the podcast hosts was sentenced to a year in prison for spreading false rumors. The host – who was once an opposition politician – is also barred from running for office for 10 years. Critics say the sentence is a blow against freedom of speech on the Internet.

We’ve got some inspirational tech stories this week on the podcast. First up, this is a Katherine Bomkamp, a student at West Virginia University. In interviews, Ms. Bomkamp says she likes the normal student activities: hanging out with friends, going to parties, etc. But, she’s also an entrepreneur with her own company. When she was 16, she was inspired to help veterans who suffer from phantom-limb pain. Now, four years later, she’s well on her way to developing a prosthetic device that she believes can help them. It’s called the Pain Free Socket, and you can hear Bomkamp talk about it in this week’s edition of the best kept secret in podcasting, the World’s Technology Podcast.

Also, we’ve got another great inspirational item on a project called Random Hacks of Kindness, and we’ll also have an in-depth look at the Satellite Sentinel Project.

For those who prefer a bit of fear to inspiration, we’ll also take a look at the raging debate over how the rules of war apply when the war moves online.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

(Photo: Greg Ellis for WVU)

This is the Kiira, an electric vehicle that has been built and successfully tested by professors and students at Makerere University in Uganda. They’ve been working on it since about 2009. Most of the parts were built in Uganda, and the car was assembled there. Some are hailing it as proof that African science and technology is pushing forward at a rapid rate. Others…are not so sure it was money well spent. Listen in to episode 346, and you can decide for yourself. You’ll hear from some of those involved in the project.

The Kiira is one of three stories from Africa on the podcast this week. We’ll also bring you a story about the arrival of a new fiber optic cable in Liberia, and what it might mean for Internet access, and the country’s economy. The third story is about a unique project for recycling plastic bottles in Nigeria. How so? Well…how about using them to build a house. Yep, a house.

We’ll also talk about how a US company’s products have been implicated in Syria’s net crackdown, and in Burma as well. And you’ll hear about Instant WILD, a phone and web app that allows you to help scientists discover new animal species.

A reminder that you can ignore us equally on Twitter, Facebook, and now Google +.

Another highlight from the podcast this week is a segment looking at North Korea’s attempts to use YouTube and Twitter to spread what it calls news, what the West calls propaganda, to the outside world. For a glimpse inside a world we rarely see, take a look at North Korea’s YouTube Channel. You can also follow North Korea on Twitter. To put all of this in perspective, we turn to Hazel Smith, a long-time North Korea researcher at Cranfield University in Britain. And here’s the radio piece I did for the Big Show (4 minutes or so). There’s already been an update to the story: South Korea has decided to block North Korea’s Twitter feed!

The flooding in Pakistan is dominating the news right now. Although it’s not strictly technology, we feature a piece that looks at how the Indus river has been managed (or mismanaged) and engineered over the years. The piece features Daanish Mustafa of King’s College in London. Mustafa’s got a whole set of interesting ideas that could be implemented to help ensure that flooding of this magnitude could at least be slightly mitigated. One idea that will be familiar to Tech Podcast listeners — an early warning system for flooding based on cell phones!

We’ll also head to Vietnam to hear about the government’s attempts to control what citizens can see and say online. For more, you can read a nice write-up on the current state of Internet filtering in Vietnam, courtesy of the Open Net Initiative up in Toronto.

And don’t forget to check out Rhitu Chatterjee’s Science Forum with the Einstein@Home guys — good stuff!

Remember, you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

(Photo: Choi Shine)

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• Bill Marx’s Arts Fuse blog

Sadly, sports fans, the Winter Olympics are over. No more skeleton, no more biatholon, and no more ice dancing. So, what does the globetrotting sports fanatic have to look forward to now? Well, as Lonely Planet’s Robert Reid points out in this episode of Talking Travel, there is the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo! Yee-haw! However, perhaps a bit further down on some people’s lists (not) is the 2010 Soccer World Cup in South Africa. Every four years, most of the globe grinds to a halt as 32 teams battle it out for soccer supremacy.  This year’s contest looks to be a good one, too, not in the least because it’s the first time the World Cup will take place in Africa. Here are some links to help you get your head around soccer mania, and what there is to see and do in South Africa.

• Lonely Planet: South Africa
• FIFA World Cup Official Site
• FIFA World Cup Official Site: Host Cities
• FIFA World Cup Official Site: Packages
• The Guardian: World Cup 2010 Travel Guide
• More on that 1950 World Cup group match between England and the United States

Remember, you can follow The World on Twitter and Facebook.

Likewise, Lonely Planet is on both Facebook and Twitter.

You can subscribe to the Talking Travel podcast via iTunes or RSS. Really, it’s worth it. And don’t just take our word for it.

Port-au-Prince, Haiti (Photo: ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images)

Given the scale of destruction left behind by the earthquake in Haiti, it might be hard to imagine a time when tourist travel to the Caribbean nation might be possible again. But in our Talking Travel podcast this week, Lonely Planet’s Paul Clammer and Robert Reid discuss how tourism might fit in to any future plan for Haiti’s recovery. Paul, who writes Lonely Planet’s Haiti guide, says the cruel irony is that, in many ways, Haiti was on the brink of becoming a truly up-and-coming tourist destination for tourists before the earthquake hit. He and Robert also assess Royal Caribbean’s decision to continue to dock their cruise ships in the northern Haitian port of Labadie in the aftermath of the disaster. They end with a look at the Haitian people and their resilience, and whether the earthquake has changed outside perceptions of Haitians and their nation.

Here are some helpful links from this episode:

• Lonely Planet: Haiti
• Paul Clammer’s Haiti update
• The Guardian newspaper: Cruise company boss says tourists helping Haiti quake relief effort
• CNN: Before quake, signs of hope for Haiti tourism
• New York Times: 2007 article on tourism in Haiti
• Helping in Haiti: Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree travel forum
• Citadelle Laferrière: World Heritage Site
• New Orleans: Habitat for Humanity

Remember, you can subscribe to the podcast via RSS and iTunes. You can find The World on Facebook here, and Lonely Planet’s Facebook page here.

We’re both on Twitter, too: @pritheworld, and @lonelyplanet.

To borrow a line from Bob Dylan: “The rules they are a changin’” when it comes to airport security. On Christmas Day, a 23-year-old Nigerian named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab allegedly tried to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit. Abdulmutallab supposedly had two different kinds of explosives hidden in his underwear, which he then tried to ignite not long before the plane was scheduled to land. You can read more about the initial incident here, and about the federal charges filed against Abdulmutallab here. In the wake of the attack, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration immediately imposed new travel rules for those flying into the United States. You can see the TSA’s guidance for travelers here. In Episode Four of Talking Travel, Robert Reid and Tom Hall of Lonely Planet try to make sense of the new rules, and about airline safety in general.  One measure that the Dutch are pushing for more wider adoption is the use of full body scanners (that’s a passenger at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in the photo) for passenger screening. Tom talks about a trip up to Manchester, England where the so-called “naked scan” technology is now in use. You can read about his experience, and see photos (if you follow the link, that’s NOT Tom in the middle picture…he wanted me to point that out).

Also in the podcast, you’ll hear from the BBC’s Colette Hume, who, on the day after Christmas, managed to inadvertently get an aerosol can of hairspray past two baggage checks at Sydney Airport on a flight to New York. Robert and Tom will talk about the “new normal” when it comes to feeling safe as an air traveler.

We also talk about Lonely Planet’s “World’s Worst Cities” feature. Poor Wolverhampton, England! You can see a defense of some of the cities mentioned in the list by going to Lonely Planet’s Facebook page.

Near the top of the podcast, Robert mentions his New Year’s Eve outing to celebrate the 100th birthday of the Manhattan Bridge in New York City. He mentioned a song and a video. Here are both:

This week on The World Science Podcast, host Rhitu Chatterjee brings you a whole range of interesting stories. First, the United Nations hosts an international climate summit. Meanwhile, the Indian government pledges to cap its carbon emissions, and a scientist says China should harvest its tremendous wind power potential. We remember a cave-dwelling Italian scientist. And there’s animal news, too: a new species of whale-eating worms, paralyzed rats that can walk, and a surprising finding about how monarch butterflies navigate.

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The U.N. General Assembly authorized a new U.N. agency for women last week. We’ll look at the years of advocacy that led to it. The World’s Jason Margolis helps answer a listener’s question about how this economic crisis compares to past ones, especially in terms of U.S. debt. And The World’s Alex Gallafent rereads Bertolt Brecht on the Crash of 1929.

Episode 20 of the podcast includes an interview with Prof. Sung-Yoon Lee about the apparent transition in leadership that’s going on in North Korea. He’s skeptical about many details in recent reports about Kim Jong-un. The bottom line, Lee says, is that North Korea’s economy may be a mess, the country may be the most isolated nation on earth, but its system of government is probably stable enough to make it through a post-Kim Jong-il transition intact.

The rest of the podcast focuses on the case of Laura Ling and Euna Lee. As I write this post, the two American women await trial in Pyongyang for entering North Korea illegally and with “hostile intent.” Here’s the latest from Reuters. I spoke with Chuck Downs of the Washington-based group, Human Rights in North Korea; former US ambassador to South Korea, Donald Gregg; and a former US Navy officer, Edward Murphy. In 1968, he was held – along with 81 of his fellow crewmembers on the USS Pueblo – in a North Korean prison for more than 11 months after their ship was captured by the DPRK.

Email me here: theworldpolitics@gmail.com