Concerned as he is with gender perception in Korea, and the mechanics of females in society and gender relationships, I wonder if James Turnbull would be interested in this article, service, or treatment of topic:
from the Korea Times:
Is 'Substitute Man' Modern White Knight?
it's an article about a quick service enterprise gaining momentum these days where, basically, (for example, in the case of a business called "Any Man," if a single woman has a "man" issue to deal with -- say, a bookshelf to move, a bug to kill, or, I suppose, a swoon to revive, she can thumb up the service on her speed-dial, and a "white knight" on a scooter will arrive at her house within ten minutes to put his thumb on the ribbon for the gift-wrapped present, properly operate the plumbing snake, or open that darn pickle-jar. It's written up as if it's exclusively women who use the service, and exclusively men who are employed as such.
In other news:
My friend's recent experience with a bank's slap-in-the-face credit card acquisition policy for foreigners seems to put the lie to this one, but the article says banks are looking at expat customers as their next big customer demographic: Banks See Expatriates as Gold Mine
one expat's life in Korea
4 comments:
Well, obviously I do read your blog(!), but emailing me about that sort of thing would be a more effective way of letting me know! But anyway, yes I was thinking of writing about it, primarily because I was already thinking about this post in the first link below about a New Orleans...er... wife-hiring service, and which in turn reminded me of the "Hire a Hubby" services which started in NZ when I still lived there, and which apparently still going strong judging by the second link.
http://contexts.org/socimages/2009/06/23/wouldnt-a-wife-be-great/
http://www.hireahubby.co.nz/
To place the Korean service into context, something that non-domesticated expats may not be aware of is that there may well already be dozens of people advertising similar services in your neighbourhood, although 9 times out of 10 picking up groceries or medicine is what people call them for. So, despite the KT thinking it's front-page news, these sort of things are hardly new or unique really.
Yes, I probably will copy and paste all that to my blog sometime soon...!
I wondered about the credit card thang too, and I was a bit sceptical since I find it hard to even get a *bank card* that I can use overseas. I don't use credit cards but when I read the article you're talking about I just assumed they meant other expats - and not foreign English teachers who make low wages and possibly carry diseases and so on ...
Credit cards are not an issue with me; I have four of them, and none of them required a security to obtain them.
The problem is the international ATM cards. I don't really care about debit cards, but I want access to my bank account when I'm overseas.
Four unsecured credit cards, which I CAN max out then skip town on, leaving Korea holding the bag on their own money... but not one int'l ATM card where I can spend MY OWN money.
With remittance limits now raised to $50,000 (from $10,000), I fail to see how refusing us cards is solving anything.
1900 words in the end...I hope that was enough!
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/2009/07/07/korean-deliverymen/
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