How to Tweet Your Way into South Korean Prison

Hey remember when I was writing about that Korean law professor who was put in jail for blogging…and how South Korea has some issues with freedom of speech?

Last month a South Korean guy named Park Jeong-geun landed in jail for violating South Korea’s notorious National Security Law.

His crime: tweeting about Kim Jong Il.

A Portrait of America

There are so very many reasons I feel proud to be an American. Wonder bread. Cheese whiz. Jersey Shore. Our professional athletes. And of course, the many brilliant things that our national political pundits say.

And there is another reason I feel so proud of my country. Our media. Which is renowned the world over for being informed, unbiased, and trustworthy. One network in particular stands out.

I often feel the need to kneel and give thanks for the bevy of informed news that this network provides to the world. I am talking, of course, dear readers, about Fox News.

And my personal favorite news network has now given me another incredible gift:

A great portrait of our country. Behold America, in all its majesty.  

Random Photo of the Day: Strawberries

Race, Skin Color, and Korean Plastic Surgery

Here's a reply to a comment on my old post White Men and Korean Women: a Complicated and Troubled Relationship. 


An anonymous reader replied "...you have little to no, real understanding of the korean culture....just because some [Korean women] may get plastic surgery to ENHANCE themselves - it does not mean they want to look more white..." 

Really? I beg to differ. And so would most socially conscious Westerners that have lived in South Korea. Or many other parts of Asia. This CNNgo article about Thailand reveals many of the same issues being pretty glaring there. 

Why does surgically “improving” one’s appearance in Korea almost always involve surgery that is designed to create white features? Why are advertisements and beauty images in Korea filled with white models? Even when the ads are made by Korean companies, for Korean markets, and never used abroad?

Random Photo of the Day: Unenthusiastic Bouquet Man

Rotten Mangos, Crummy Supermarkets, and the Free Trade Agreement.

 

This Thursday the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement finally went into effect. The Wall Street Journal reports that thousands of tons of American goods are now flooding into the country. In many cases they are things that Korean shoppers have not had much chance to buy in the past. I think the selection of products in Korean shops could be about to undergo a massive sea change. Although it may not happen right away.

It took about 5 years for the controversial US-Korea FTA to be negotiated and enacted. George W. Bush started the ball rolling, and conservative Korean leaders fought hard to get it on the books. 


And of course not everyone in Korea is happy about the deal. Like all these people, for instance. 

Coming Soon to a South Korea Near You: Woolly Mammoths!

Russian scientists from the North-Eastern Federal University of the Sakha Republic and Hwang Woo-Suk of South Korea's Sooam Biotech Research Foundation just signed a deal to work together to clone mammoths.

Seoul's Mountain Hiking...and Shopping

Al Jazeera's newest story on South Korea is about Koreans' love of their mountains.



Seoul is unusual among huge world cities in that it is built around mountains. Mountains in Korea aren't that huge, but the county has a lot of rugged terrain.

Random Photo of the Day: Street Art

Random Photo of the Day: War

So…the Korean War never really ended. In case all those shops in Seoul selling pink bunny ear smartphone cases had distracted you. 

This is from the KBS website.

The caption reads:

“Children humorously watch a soldier taking part in a joint civilian, government and military defense drill held at Omok Park in Mokdong…”

Yep, that looks pretty damn humorous to me. Who says the Korean media doesn’t just rewrite government press releases? 

Street Portrait of the Day

I think this old Korean lady is adorable. She also seems to have something of a knowing twinkle in her eye.

Trying to Save the Markets and Shopkeepers

Some Koreans in Seoul are dismayed about the decline of the traditional markets, and the many districts of small neighborhood mom-and-pop shops. Some have been centers of community and commerce for literally centuries.

Linkdrop: Thailand, Racism, and the Mass Interweb Freakout about Joseph Kony

Lots of people on the interweb, the twittersphere, and other social media have been flipping out about Joseph Kony, the long-time leader of the Lord's Resistance Army - the super-evil militia gang in Central Africa that does its recruiting by abducting African children and then forcing them to murder their parents. They have caused some serious shit in that part of the world, and this has been going on for a long time.


But many liberal Westerners are just now hearing about it. From this video, which went extremely viral in the past week or two:

A Manifesto about My Beef With Korean Nationalism, and some replies to an older post

This is a response to a post I wrote earlier about why I think the Sea of Japan is not called, and does not need to be called, the East Sea. This is a very controversial stance to take in Korea, and I got 30 replies within just a few days. I set out to write a reply on the original post, but then it grew so huge I thought I should start a new one.

Read the old post, Why the Sea of Japan is NOT the East Sea...and other things that really piss off Koreans, if you want more context. Some of the points I make here are direct replies to points that were made in the comments on that post, and the following post.

I am happy to get corrections about things I write that are not factual. I do, however, stand by the bulk of the things I said.

Visit Korea...where people will run from your face

Koreans are among the most homogenous of peoples. Traditionally they believed that Koreans all shared the same pure bloodline, emanating from a single mythic national founder. Mixed-race kids were shunned and killed. There is a lot of xenophobia in Korea, and there has been for hundreds and hundreds of years.

South Korea is being dragged into the global world, but on the ground it is often an uphill battle. Most Korean people have no experience at all of interacting with anyone who is not Korean. Many Korean people are quite terrified when they have to do so, especially if speaking English is involved. Since Koreans have to take years and years of English, but most people can barely speak the language. An incredible level of anxiety and awkwardness is the usual result.

As a recent commenter on one of my posts pointed out, many developed nations now try not to use the world "foreigner" in public discourse. It has a negative connotation. But in Korea, anyone who does not look Korean is always a foreigner. Always and forever. Even if that person speaks fluent Korean and marries into the culture. (And being a foreigner is never really a good thing in the culture.) It's not about knowing the language or the culture or whatever. It's about bloodlines and appearances.

My Korean government ID is not a foreign resident card. It's an Alien Registration Card. That's what it says, right at the top. I'm not a legal resident, I'm a registered alien. My Korean American roommate, who speaks even less Korean than I do, is here on a different class of visa, which is much less restrictive regarding employment opportunities. Because she looks Korean and has "Korean blood." That is a debatably racist policy. But I digress...

This video was made for Korean tv to show people how they look to foreign visitors - or people from other cultures who live here - when they shit their pants in fear when we try to talk to them.

Newsdump: STRIKE!

Can you imagine the core of America’s top broadcast journalists going on strike? That’s what’s happening right now in South Korea. The reporters at the nation's two biggest networks are out on strike.

Try to picture Anderson Cooper picketing outside the white house.




Even The Economist, which is pretty crusty and British and conservative generally - it is called The Economist after all - notes that some shit is wrong here. Freedom House, an NGO human rights think thank in the US, just downgraded South Korea's media from "free" to "partly free." This is no longer a free press.

They See Me Rollin’…

Samsung and Steve Jobs

I see Steve Jobs’s face every time I need to use the john at work. Along with an inspiring quote. Here in the Land Formerly Known as the Land of Morning Calm, Steve Jobs is with me while I poop.

From what I can tell, lots of people in Korea seem fairly obsessed with Steve Jobs. Including the CEO of the company I work for. Who wears a black t-shirt under his Korean-brand suit coat, adopted veganism to try to be just like the late Apple CEO, and who gives long speeches to the company about Jobs’s brilliance. Dude is infatuated.

When Steve Jobs died, I saw memorials for him on the streets of Seoul. Stores that sell computers and smartphones put up his picture, with sad messages. It was all over the news. People seemed genuinely upset. 


This image was everywhere.

Defending American Culture…Sort of….Okay, not that much

I am a deeply ambivalent American, and I have kind of a love-hate relationship with the land of my birth. Which is why I live in South Korea. 


I needed to get out for a while, and the journey has been a very interesting one...

Why the Sea of Japan is NOT the East Sea…And Other Things that Really Piss Off Koreans

I used to work at a summer camp alongside young Israelis that had just finished their mandatory two-year stretch in the military. And they were some… interesting people. (Note that Israel is one of the most nationalist, paranoid, and over-armed nations on earth. Sure, they are surrounded by countries that hate them, but...) The Israelis I met were often militantly committed to defending Israel, a few told racist jokes about Arabs, and many of them had an abrasiveness that was famous among the staff. 

I remember one young Israeli girl working herself up into a passionate frenzy, her eyes glazing over as she pounded her fist into her palm - while she vocally fantasized about how we were going to find and kill Osama bin Laden. And she was talking to eight-year-old American kids at the time. The children looked afraid. I was kinda scared of her myself.

Word of the Day

And a highly relevant word of the day  it is too:  

chauvinism:

1: excessive or blind patriotism — see jingoism 

2: undue partiality or prejudice towards a place or group of people to which one belongs or has belonged

3: an attitude of superiority toward members of the opposite sex; also : behavior that expresses such an attitude (male chauvinism)

Example sentence: It sounds very chauvinist when some Koreans joke about how they think all Westerners are morally degenerate. And stereotype us all as drug-snorting pregnant gay prostitutes. Because not coming from a repressive Confucian culture means you have no morals.

South Korea has waay more than its fair share of public drunkenness, sexual harassment, prostitution, adultery, sexual assault, unprotected premarital sex, and other shady shit.

Lots of Koreans pretty much do all the same things we do - they just never admit it. So [almost] everyone can go on pretending that none of those things ever happen in Korea.

Confucianism scores again!

And hey - check this out, Dokdo now hosts basketball tournaments! Some schoolkids were dragged out there to play a few games, as nationalist-minded leaders continue to try to think of new uses for barren rocks in the ocean. 

According to Pride of Korea – Dokdo the claim “Dokdo is our territory” was written on all the basketballs. President Lee rode out for the day, and was quoted as saying, "If these balls fall into the sea and reach Japan, then they will have something to think about." Lee threw some of the balls into the water later, to make his point. 

I am not even making this shit up. 

My New Favorite Blog!

Thanks to Roboseyo for the links on his All the Korea Blogs list, where I found a new gem. Roboseyo also has some great stuff right now about racism and blackface in the Korean media. See those posts here and here and here.

Thanks to his links I have been finding some really interesting stuff out there. I am happy to see other people taking an intelligent and honest stance about the many huge problems afoot here in the Land Formerly Known as the Land of Morning Calm.

I am now a big fan of Expat Hell, which I think does a great job exploring some of the glaring issues that thinking expats encounter after spending some real time in Korea. It's smart. It's funny. It's honest. They filet the bizarre mindlessness of Korean TV, the nauseating and ubiquitous plastic surgery industry, the strange and consistently terrible newspapers, the dishonest lip-service paying expats who try to score points with locals by appealing to the never-ending and blindsided nationalism, other commonly weird shit.

I also really like Expat Hell's analysis of the economic situation in South Korea, which has been traditionally based on rampant corruption, self-serving cronyism, xenophobia-swaddled protectionism, and domination by a handful of all-powerful corporate executives. They could talk more about the constant labor abuse that makes so many Koreans want to jump off buildings, but their analysis is more about crookedly distorted economics than blatant social problems.

*Addendum: The site is, however, unabashedly sexist. And fairly misogynist. Posts like this one, about making a porno in Japan, are probably not going to appeal to most women or liberal male thinkers. It's just creepy. 


Clearly the author enjoys being in East Asia because Western rules about gender equality and sexism are fundamentally nonexistent here. Oftentimes I wonder if that is not the main motivation to be here for most of the white guys in Korea. It's pretty sad. They make me embarrassed. 


Also, I know Asian American women that would be highly irritated by crap like this - because they are sick of creepy white guys seeing them as passive sex objects. In no small part because of the proliferation and popularity of porn featuring East Asian women. Lots of which is sold to emotionally stunted white men. 


The author - or another author on his blog - also writes about his failing marriage, and how unhappy he is in it. Gee, I wonder why? Wait - white guys that see Asian women as passive sex objects have emotionally unhealthy relationships? No way!!

And check out this blog! - called What Would Eve Do? This poor girl has a story that sounds all-too predictable. She resigned from her job teaching English at a girls' school after being ordered to work out at the schools gym and lose weight, and then being yelled at by a maniacal principal for several hours when she tried to resign. The girl may have been naive about some parts of Korean culture, but she makes some fair accusations. And the whole atmosphere around that crazy dictator of a principal underscores the serious problems that Westerners may encounter working a culture organized around hardcore authoritarian principles.

Them's the links for the day. Stay tuned for my next post about Korea's amazing bathrooms.

The State of Korean Bathrooms

Some of my friends used to live in China. Having spent a total of 4 hours of my life in China, I don’t know a lot about living there.

But from what I hear, Chinese bathrooms are legendarily horrible. Especially if you’re a girl and you need to sit down – or at least squat – to pee.

Because in China, public bathrooms often look like this:

"Do You Like Kimchi?"

Here is some brilliant satire, made by this guy. I have lived in korea for a few years, and yeah this is pretty much a stereotypical conversation.



Most the satire here turns on this parody of a typical American/Canadian English teacher in Korea, although there are a few jabs at some Korean stereotypes. (I really like "Korea has 4 seasons...Koreans are one race....our history is 5,000 years old." Koreans students repeat drivel like that ad nauseum.)

There are of course, real reasons why Korea has chosen to systematically hire guys like this fictional character to be its EFL teachers. I outlined my ideas about that in another post. 

Crazy Shit Koreans Say in Korea

Recently the Shit White Girls Say...to Black Girls video made a big splash on the interweb. I thought it was pretty smart and funny, and made some good points about how clueless and offhandedly offensive white people can be.



And I was also really impressed by this video – Shit Asian Girls Say. This video was made by an Asian American guy to satirize girls in his own community. Who are famous for being princesses, among other things.



And so here is my contribution, Crazy Shit Koreans Say in Korea. I would do it with a wig and a fake voice like the above two satirists, but I probably couldn’t get away with that. Since I’m a white dude and that would probably look really racist and stupid.

Why Korean Buddhism Is Not What Americans Think It Is

I had a beloved aunt who was a devout Buddhist. She was a cool lady, and she was really good to me. An aging hippie, she meditated daily. My first exposure to Buddhism was when she took me to see some visiting monks do a sand painting at a local park. I think I was about 17 at the time. I didn’t really understand what was going on, but I could tell that the Buddhist monks, their sand painting, and watching them perform this ritual were all really important to her.

For my aunt, Buddhism was a religion of spiritual self-discovery, inner peace, and open-mindedness. She was a lesbian, a  sometime vegetarian, an environmentalist; she donated to Amnesty International. And for her all these things were connected to her sense of personal spirituality. She saw Buddhism as a path to enlightenment - an enlightenment that embraced her very liberal values.

This is often how Americans see Buddhism. It’s a religion embraced by hippies, yoga students, peace activists, vegans, and people who are searching for mystical alternatives to Western religions and ideas. The last time I went to a Buddhist center in the US I met a young guy with dreadlocks who was talking about his plans to attend Burning Man - the famous neo-pagan art and alt culture festival in the Nevada desert.

And Blackface Is Still An Issue...

Thanks Eat Your Kimchi for the post about this, and thanks for the real talk: 

(I posted the screenshot of the website because that Youtube clip has been disabled, and this was the only image I could get. But nevertheless, this went out on national Korean tv.)


Eat Your Kimchi goes on to say, "Yes, this is an imitation of a Korean cartoon character, but that doesn’t make either this show or the cartoon okay.  That cartoon itself is unacceptable and full of stereotypes, and Korean media needs to understand that.

It’s moments like these that we’re reminded that Korea is still very much a monoculture that is only recently getting to know other cultures.  The Korean media still don’t fully grasp why something like this might be seen as hurtful to others and not funny..."

English Nicknames: a Bad Idea for Korean Students?

It was one of my first days in Korea. I was new to teaching, and was charged with leading adult EFL conversation courses. I didn’t know a lot about Korea, and I had never really taught in a classroom before. I began by asking all the students what their names were.  

“Licky” said the young man sitting by the door. “Please call me Licky.”

“Uhhhhh…do you mean...Ricky?” I asked, slightly embarrassed. I thought perhaps I had misheard him. Or that perhaps, like many East Asian people, he had trouble pronouncing the letter “R.”

“No” he asserted - in firm but halting English, “my… English nickname is Licky. L-I-C-K-Y.”

Wow, I thought. I tried not to look judgemental. Or confused. Or entertained.   

What about Class?

I wanna talk about Jenny Hyun again for a moment. In a previous post, I said that Jenny Hyun’s rant – whether she is schizophrenic or not – sounds a lot like the racism I hear all the time as part of the ambient background noise of living in Korea.

But not just racism – also extreme classism. I have never in my life met more people that see the homeless and the poor with so much outright disdain and loathing than I have in Seoul. Adults who came to my EFL conversation classes in Seoul pretty much openly hated the homeless. Those lazy dirty bums...

Jenny Hyun said she hates Black people for being disrespectful, violent, and POOR. Lots of people are condemning Hyun’s racism, but no one is talking about the classism.

What Type of Expat in Korea are You?

I recently took one of those "What type of hipster are you?" tests. It was moderately accurate, although some of the choices confused me. I don’t really keep up on Swedish retro new wave indie bands...

And so I realized that I could make a similar test for expats in Korea, who also tend to fall into some predictable groups. 

The Strange Disappearance of the Yongsan Garrison

Here’s a picture of central Seoul from Google Maps.

And here’s a picture of the same area from Daum, one of the most popular search engines in the Korean intranet. (Daum means "next" in Korean):

See anything missing in the second picture?

Yes, that’s right; the huge Yongsan military base has been totally hidden with cut-and-paste trees.  It has been purposely erased. That’s pretty weird.

But why?

Jenny Hyun's Racist Freakout

I just wrote a post about K-pop trying to make it big in America, going on Letterman. But – in case there was any danger to begin with – I am pretty sure they won’t be recruiting too many Black fans.

Because a chick that writes songs for Girls Generation just freaked out and tweeted a buncha crazyass shit about Black folk. As in calling Black people sub-human, calling for their eradication, and saying they should be worshipping Asian people. She issued a weak-ass quasi-apology, and now her website claims that she is “schizophrenic and has been battling a mental illness.” Jesus, I hope so.

K-pop Stars Dance Like the Muppets (if the muppets got plastic surgery and felt suicidal)

I know a lot more about cheesy Korean pop music than I ever wanted to. Because when you live in South Korea, it is everywhere. All the time. And generally at full volume. In a repetitive loop. You hear the same song-of-the-month over and over, everywhere you go. It gets into your brain and gets stuck in your head until you realize you know all the words. Even though the words generally make no sense.

The Korean Intranet, and Why It Exists

Hey Korean intranet – know what’s awesome? Websites with LOTS of flash animation. Like as much as possible. Sike! Just kidding, that was only cool in 1998….

Wait! What’s the Korean intranet? Don’t you mean “internet”?

No, no. That’ s not a typo.

I actually stole the term “intranet” from The Metropolitician. The “Korean intranet” is an apt way to describe the reality that the Korean internet does not really jive well with the rest of the internet. As in the internet the rest of the world uses.

It’s not an “inter- net,” meaning literally between - as in between various nations, as in the world wide web. It’s an “intra” net, meaning within - as in only within Korea.

A Huge Cloud of Shiny Whiteness: On Being White and Privileged in South Korea

Here’s a reply to Anonymous for my earlier post, Korean Women and Western/White Men: a Complicated and Troubled Relationship

Anonymous writes:

“Good post. I am in a similar situation to you in that I have a hard time finding male friends here and, being in a relationship with an American girl, am able to watch the white guy/Korean girl dating scene (and white guys here in general) with a grimace.
I would add one point though, and that's that as white guys NOT dating Korean girls it's easy for us to sit back and rather complacently congratulate ourselves on not misusing our white privilege. But in fact, in every other aspect of our lives, we walk around surrounded by a huge cloud of shiny whiteness. It's really quite hard for us to know the real extent of just how often we are treated more kindly, given more trust, more readily given the benefit of the doubt, etc. etc., because of our skin. The only thing we can do it just bear it in mind, and try not to let it go to our heads!”

Dear Anonymous,

You make an excellent point - and thank you for that. Also, I really like your phrase “a huge cloud of shiny whiteness.” In fact, I like it so much that I just stole it to use as a title for this post. Hope you don't mind.

Random [stolen] Photo of the Day: Mr. Matsubayashi's Bad Day

Mister Matsubayashi is having a really bad day. However, being Japanese, he appears to have no emotional reaction whatsoever to a series of terrible disasters. Everything in Mr. Matsubayashi’s life is suddenly going terribly wrong, but he meets every catastrophe with a stoic deadpan. 


And this is what some have termed the “Asian poker face.”

Random [stolen] Photo of the Day: Students in Korea Study All Day and Night

And here is another word about the Korean school system. When I taught English conversation to adults at one of Seoul's ubiquitous "institutes" (hagwons) I brought in an article about Amy Chua and the Tiger Mother controversy. We read through it, and all the Koreans in the room were confused by what the fuss was about. 

Amy Chua's relentless, domineering, borderline abusive parenting style was the norm to them. I had to explain that most American parents believed that kids deserve lots of free time in order to "play" and thereby to develop into healthy happy people. 

Jaws dropped. Kids? Free time? What?

Korean Women and Western/White Men: a Complicated and Troubled Relationship

       

This is a follow-up to my previous post about the heavily gendered imbalance of power within Korean society. Check that out for more of the backstory on the world that Korean women live in.

After a few months of living in Korea I realized that there was a stock set of questions that many people would ask me. Introductions usually involved questions about my nationality, hometown, marital status, age, religion, college major, etc. Other than the “Why aren’t you married yet?” questions, that all seemed like pretty much what I expected.

And sometimes people would also ask, with a sly grin, what I thought about Korean girls. 

Sexism and Patriarchy in Korea

Korean and American culture are extremely different – in many ways they are quite opposite. Americans believe in equality and a high-degree of personal freedom, and Koreans live in an ancient society governed by deeply conservative Confucian rules. One of the ways that Korean culture is really different is that it is very patriarchal. Not that sexism and patriarchy don't exist in the West; we have a long way to go. But shit is a lot more extreme here...

Random Photo of the Day: Confusing Graffiti

And a big prize goes to whoever can tell me what the hell this is about...

From Street Art

A Very Korean Christmas

Recently a Western friend of mine asked me, “What is Christmas like in Korea?” “Well” I said, “it’s kind of like what happens when you feed plastic army men to a pet duck.” Then I realized that explanation made absolutely no sense, so I wrote this blog post.

Kim Jong Il Croaked. So What Now?

News outlets around the world were all abuzz yesterday with the news that North Korea’s Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, had finally expired. 

Kim Jong Il’s Cinematic Opus! - Or, How Be an Evil Dictator and Make Monster Movies

Despite passionately hating America and Hollywood, Kim Jong Il was actually a big movie buff. Rumor has it that Kim Jong Il was also obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor and that he owned like 20,000 movies.

Not a lot of people know this, but – in addition to being one of the world’s most evil dictators - he actually wrote and directed his own films.

Random Konglish Photo of the Day

Who doesn't want some infection to go with their PC Bang? Boring people, that's what I say!

From Konglish

Random Photo of the Day

Nuns strolling past the Canadian Embassy, near Deoksugung

From Street Photography

Restaurant Pick: Cheap Eats: Noodle Box

Here's a good place in Hongdae for some cheap eats.

This place has great Southeast Asian food for a good price. It's called Noodle Box:

From Restaurants/Food Porn

Random Photo of the Day

a view over Seogyo-dong, near Hongdae

From Street Photography

Tear Gas in the National Assembly: A Quick Look at What’s Happening Now in Korean Politics

Several weeks ago I happened to be strolling around downtown, and noticed a political protest happening across the street from City Hall, in front of Deoksugung. It was a protest against a US-South Korea Free Trade Agreement that has been in the works for about 5 years.

I talked to one of the guys in this pictures, a middle-aged union activist. He told me the older lady on the left was on hungre strike, and had not eaten for a month. 

From Street Photography

Yay! Go watch Korean movies!

Nowadays, Korean movies are a big deal. They are gaining international fans left and right. But, chances are if you’re reading this you already know that. 


When I moved to South Korea in 2010, I really wanted to watch Korean movies, but I couldn’t speak Korean. Then I read a buncha articles in newspapers about how the government was getting big movie theater chains in Seoul to show Korean movies with English subtitles for foreigners. 

The English Language Further Explained (in cartoons)