I hope you've been well, and happy, and all that great stuff.
It's been an action-packed little while for me (as always?) but there's been one change that I want to talk about.
Starting in Fall of 2019, I began hosting Weekly Review, the one-hour weekly program that TBS Efm, one of Korea's English radio stations, runs in order to fulfill some legal requirement about media outlet accountability.
All fair and fine. It was... a fantastic experience, frankly. I started just a few months before the pandemic hit, and it was a little thing that kept me having things to look forward to, people to meet, things to get excited about, during all the very worst days of the pandemic, when my default would probably have been to become a Howard Hughes-grade shut-in. Instead of letting the days blur together and turning into a toad... I made new friends, deepened old friendships, acquired a new skill, found a lot of joy in hosting a radio show and making the show a place where a big variety of people felt comfortable sharing their views, and did a bunch of other stuff that made me happy, along with scads of laughs and jokes and smiles.
Well, you may have heard about the politics around TBS's budget problems -- as an outlet funded in large part by the government, TBS got in hot water when one of their Korean DJs said a bunch of stuff that the mayor of Seoul and the new President of Korea disliked, and they used their political pull to withdraw TBS's funding. The review show -- required by regulation -- survived even when a lot of other shows were either wholly or partly cancelled, but in the end, they ran out of money to pay a host (me), and I had to say goodbye to a gig that helped me enjoy my life.
On air, for my final signoff, I asked the producer if I could say a few things about the value that an English language radio station like TBS Efm brings to the culture of a global city like Seoul, and they graciously said I could, so just below, is a capture of that farewell address, for posterity, and in the hope that maybe it'll reach some of the ears that need to be reminded what an independent, non-education, non-news radio station can contribute to a local culture, as well as global views of that culture.
I have more opinions about it than that, connected to the idea of reprisals for free speech, the importance of a free press, and where exactly media outlets can turn for funding in 2023, when everybody wants content, but nobody wants to pay (except advertisers, which introduces a whole other set of problems), but I might save those comments for a future post.
For now, I want to say again, to everyone who listened, who appeared on air with me as a panelist, or who was on the other side of the soundproof barrier, in production, engineering, or whatever they were doing... thanks to all of you, for an experience I've enjoyed immensely, and hope to do again.
You can hear my full comments here!
And here's the text of what I said, in case anyone wants to read along.
That is all for our reviews this week!
I’ve appreciated your insights I look forward to hearing more from you next time!
With that, we’ve reached the end of another episode of tbs eFM’s Weekly Review. Thanks to all of you for listening.
Listeners, we’d love to hear your feedback, too. Our email address is: weeklyreviewefm@gmail.com tell us your thoughts or say hello!
The team will be back again next week, Saturday, at 9am with more feedback and constructive criticism on all your favorite TBS Efm programs, but I have sad news for any of our listeners who have enjoyed my hosting during my time here.
Loyal listeners have surely noticed the way TBS budget cuts have squeezed out many of the programs listeners love, and that squeeze has reached Weekly Review at last. I’m sad to say that this is my last week as the host of Weekly Review.
For me personally, that's a loss, and for all the team members who've enjoyed working with me, and also for listeners who've enjoyed my hosting, hopefully, or my cheesy jokes by some strange bit of luck, but the greater loss is one that I’ve seen up close as a reviewer here at TBS Efm: strangling TBS Efm's funding has robbed Seoul, Korea, and people from every country who are streaming TBS Efm or listening online of an amazing resource.
As a reviewer, I’ve a huge variety of programs presented by TBS efm, and it's my job and here’s the bigger picture: TBS Efm delivered a huge variety of perspectives on Korean life and culture, to a global audience, in real time, for hours every day, in a global language.
A news or education or Korea promotion only station just can’t show the richness of Korean life the way TBS EFM could at its best. We had family stuff, comedy, chat, live music, deep analysis, conversation with listeners from across the globe, not to mention personal interviews with culture and thought leaders both big and small.
All together, tbs efm was much more than the sum of its parts. It was a window into all Korea is, could be, and might become.
So… I’m not here to talk about the politics connected to the TBS EFM budget.
I AM here to say Seoul, as a global city, is culturally poorer for cutting TBS Efm adrift.
So if you care that global audiences get to see Seoul and Korea as it really is, through the eyes of creative and interesting people who live here and love it… I encourage you to contact your local representatives, and let them know you’d like them to support TBS EFM.
It’s been an honor to work with the teams I’ve had here, and it’s been an honor to serve you, listeners, these three and a half years. THank you, all of you in the studio and everywhere.
And that’s it from me and from our team today. This has been Rob Ouwehand for Weekly Review. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, be safe, and support Korea’s culture by supporting TBS Efm.
I'd like to thank The Marmot, and also The Big Hominid, for writing up my Five Tips post. I got a few defensive reactions to as well: some people seem to have been reading it as "Five Ways Roboseyo Thinks He's Smarter Than Other Bloggers, And You In Particular" or "Five Ways Lifers Are Looking Down Their Noses At Noobs" or "Five Hints To Shut Down Your Blog, Asshole" --As Marmot's Hole commenter Briere says, "But in my opinion what Rob has done is give a big 'shut it' to others who want to express an opinion. It is elitist to try keep others out of the conversation, and that is what a list like Rob's attempts to do." So a few sentences are in order.
First, I do think that the piece was written with the appropriate caveats and explanations that a careful, or even just moderately un-rushed reading would make my intentions clear... but in case anybody skimmed it and decided I was telling people, or them in particular to "Shut it," let's start with the point that every person has the right to write out their opinions and experiences of living in Korea, and anybody who tries to invalidate their experience should go piss up a rope.
But when people are taking their lived experience of Korea, and trying to go a bit deeper, to understand something within a larger context than their own daily lives, or when people are trying to write authoritatively about Korea - for example, foreign correspondents, or when locals read stuff that's written English, and get confused or upset that this is what "foreigners" seem to think about Korea... then I think these principles are useful for sifting through everybody who's positioning themselves as authorities or experts on Korea, to figure out who backs it up, and who, despite ponderous tones, is actually only speaking for themselves (not that there's anything wrong with that).
This is relevant because someone who doesn't know the terrain sometimes accidentally shows their ass, like the time The Diplomat used satire blog Dokdo Is Ours as a source for an article about Korea's information economy (on page 2), and a few guidelines would have helped them. Or when those defensive nationalist netizen brigades take a personal experience of Korea, and decide it makes a person deserving of an online campaign, or the exposure of their personal data, leading to physical threats against their person. Or simply when someone is looking for more knowledge about Korea, but go to the wrong source, and end up in a "blind leading the blind" bind, getting mired in the Dave's/Bitter Expat echo chamber. It's a shame when someone doesn't spot the phoneys, ends up getting misled, and has their learning process slowed by getting sidetracked on such rabbit trails.
I don't think anybody needs to stop writing, but I do think that it greatly increases the credibility of those posing as knowledgeable, when their writing demonstrates a clear understanding of the limits of their expertise. And the writing I respect the most chooses topics where the limitations of their own knowledge are not hindrances to the points they are trying to make or at least where they cop to the gaps, and leave those spots as questions and suggestions rather than definitive statements.
When I wrote this list, then, here were the people I was imagining would find it useful:
foreign correspondents still getting to know the area
Koreans or other "Korea defenders" thinking about starting a netizen backlash to "correct" someone's "wrong opinion"of Korea
people unsure where to turn to increase their knowledge about Korea
readers (usually Korean) upset that these are the opinions foreigners are forming about Korea
people wishing to avoid common pitfalls, while trying to start writing more seriously about Korea
Is there a place for people writing about Korea, who don't actually know a whole ton? Absolutely. I will defend their right to write as they please, and wish them luck: go back and read the first three years of my blog posting (they're all still up there, in cringe-inducing glory). It'd sure be hypocritical for me to say other writers don't have the right to throw themselves into the online discourse meat grinder if they wish to... and hopefully it'll inspire their curiosity, and they'll have some interesting, knowledgeable, and patient, so patient, commenters and correspondents to show up and point them toward more knowledge and better sources, the way I was lucky to have.
So... are the five tips hard and fast rules? Nope. And which of the five tips (or others one could add) are more or less relevant will change for different topics - language is more important in talking about local culture and trends than it is in talking about foreign policy or security, for example, and having Korean language ability, or Korean ethnicity, doesn't automatically make someone an expert any more than marrying a Korean or living here for a long time does, though each of those gives someone access to certain kinds of knowledge about Korea, that might be useful for writing about certain topics. At best, let's hope they're a reminder to think critically about whatever one reads, wherever one finds it, and think carefully about the source of an opinion or argument before deciding to let it rustle one's jimmies.
To hammer that home, I'll give The Big Hominid the final word: I think he read my article exactly as it was meant to be read, and the thoughtfulness of his response demonstrates that well, wrapping up with this:
Don't take Roboseyo's post too literally; instead, when you're reading something about Korea, adopt what we in religious studies call a hermeneutic of suspicion—what normal folks call taking that with a grain of salt. That hermeneutic of suspicion is, I think, what Rob is driving at.
Lately, every Thursday at 10:30am, on TBS radio, (101.3 in Seoul), I've been doing a list-based segment. I've had some fun, and done a variety of topics, and perhaps I'll post some of them on the blog... but today's got a really good response, and I've been asked to re-post it on my blog, for anyone who's having trouble accessing it from the TBS website, or prefers text.
The topic: 5 signs the Author of the Article You're Reading Doesn't Actually Know Much About Korea
You know how it is: whenever global or OECD rankings come out, whenever a Korean hits the global stage, whenever something's written about Korea in a prestigious magazine, or bidding opens for another major global event... it becomes clear that in general, Koreans in high places (and perhaps many ordinary folks as well) really really do care what non-Koreans think about Korea. I've written about this before... perhaps my most memorable (to me) being "In Which Roboseyo Exhorts Seoul City Not To Get In A Snit About Lonely Planet." One result of this abiding interest is the occasional case where some article, blog post, or other bit of writing gets far more attention than it deserves, through social media, netizen backlash, anxiety that someone Doesn't Like Korea, or whatnot. At times, people taking a blog more seriously than it deserves have waged online and even offline harassment campaigns, and shut down blogs and even chased people out of the country.
Caveat: I'm well aware that there are three fingers pointed back at me for a bunch of these. Watcha gonna do?
So, here are five times to take an English article about Korea with a grain of salt... or a progressively larger one. People trying to learn about Korea should think twice about using an article as a source, and people wanting to defend Korea should think maybe not worry so much about the writer's wrong opinion and respond with "who cares?" instead when...
1. Their main source of authority is marrying a Korean or teaching English in Korea for a while.
If the topic is "courtship in Korea" or "the hogwan where I work"... buckle in and enjoy a personal story that doesn't have any larger meaning. If the author is making sweeping generalizations, without providing evidence of being up to date and informed in the news, policies, and public discussions about the issue, other than in a really vague "I heard on Dave's that..." sort of way, well, maybe don't bother getting worked up about it, and click the "ignore" button in your head.
Teaching at a hogwan doesn’t make a person an expert in Korean educational policy, and it doesn’t mean they know a single thing about public education. And having beers with a public school teacher to trade stories is not necessarily enough to balance out that weak spot. Same for talking with one's spouse and their friends, unless one's spouse or some of their friends are informed and keep up to date on these issues, and makes statements about them starting with "Well here are the main stakeholders in the issue and what they want..." rather than "Koreans don't like this." When I asked my wife, "What do Koreans think about this?" back when I used to do such things, she used to answer "I don't know. Go find out." This is the best answer.
The caveat of course is that there are trained journalists and excellent researchers who just happen to be working as English teachers and/or married to Koreans... but they'll be pointing to their sources, not to their spouses.
2. All their quotes are from English teachers or bloggers.
In these first two, I am clearly throwing my own under the bus...
If a foreign correspondent or random writer doesn't know a lot about Korea, or lacks the tools to interview the Koreans knowledgable in an area, here's the first thing to do: a google, and a search of Facebook groups and pages. They'll come across some blogs, and a forum like Dave's ESL or Facebook's Every Expat In Korea, where all the bitter lifers and English teachers who haven't learned the better places to make connections go to vent and preach outdated Korea knowledge to newbies and invent new racist terms.
For someone who doesn’t know the terrain, it’s not always easy to separate people who REALLY know what’s going on, from people who are good at writing as if they know what is going on. And both bloggers and Facebook blowhards LOVE to act like they know more than they really do. I should know: I am both a blogger AND a Facebook blowhard. To choose to open a blog at all, you need to have a reasonably high opinion of your own views... or you wouldn't project them across the internet... and take someone with a reasonably high opinion of their own views, whose blog isn't getting as popular as quickly as they'd like, and send them an e-mail from the Washington Post... if they're anything like I was in my starting-out blog phase, they'll be so flattered at being asked for a quote, they'll provide one without ever thinking about whether they're actually qualified to do so. I used to. I am still a sucker for ego strokes, ear scratches, and shiny things. I am actually a cat.
A persistent reporter or writer will eventually track down the kinds of people — policy makers, researchers, or other experts or sources who have more reliable answers. And to be fair, some bloggers and English teachers are great researchers, and would give well-sourced replies. But someone only using sources like blogs, easy-to-find youtube channels, and English teachers… may just not have looked very hard, so factor that in when evaluating their writing.
3. They use Han, Jung, Confucianism, Nunchi, Chaemyon, and other “Magic words” to explain Korean culture
People talk about the theme of a story as if the theme were like the string that a sack of chicken feed is tied with. They think that if you can pick out the theme, the way you pick the right thread in the chicken-feed sack, you can rip the story open and feed the chickens. But this is not the way meaning works in fiction. (source)
That's a quote from Flannery O'Connor's book Mystery and Manners. She's an author I studied as an undergrad. I love the image of a string on a bag of chicken feed -- once you find the right string to pull, the whole bag comes open effortlessly. There are people who think that invoking "Confucianism" does the same thing: like a skeleton key, all Korea's secrets are magically laid out, just by saying (as pretentiously as possible) Confucianism!
One of my favorite sayings is "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” and this is where a lot of amateur analysts get stuck when they want to write about Korea, but they don’t ACTUALLY know a lot about Korea. Things like Confucianism, or Korea's rapid economic growth, or troubled democratization, or the colonial experience, or any word that a pretentious friend might be likely to intone in a low voice, "There is no translation for this word" runs the risk of being taken, and applied to way more situations than they're actually relevant, or given way more explanatory power (or mystery) than they deserve. Inside the expat echo chamber, and among "I must make sure my expat friends get a VERY specific image of Korea" Koreans, there is great danger of their over-and-mis-use.
South Korea is a society that works like other societies. It follows a logic that makes enough sense to enough of the people here that they can generally muddle through. Most phenomena have specific origins that are discoverable by any searcher willing to read books rather than blogs, and those "magic words" are often part of the background, but they're very rarely an adequate explanation on their own. The mistake people make is to put their finger on something like Confucianism and then stop looking. Confucianism is more often the sauce than the actual steak: often part of the mix, but not the meat.
The danger of "magic word" analysis is that it often comes out of orientalism, or leads to it, and thinking of Koreans as some "mysterious unknowable eastern people" is not conducive to careful critical thought, nor helpful in applying one's knowledge of the country to encounters with actual, living Koreans who don't fit the stereotypes.
Confucianism, and all those other "magic word" concepts, are not skeleton keys. They are single pieces of a puzzle, single threads in a web. Trust writers who are looking at the others as well.
4. They refer to Koreans as if all Koreans share the same opinion on issues, or talk about “Korea” as if it were a character in a drama.
"Korea wants..." "Korea always..." Who is this Korea you speak of? "Koreans are..." "Koreans all...""Koreans can't..." This is called "monolithic thinking" -- as if Korea were a monolith, an undifferentiated hive mind with no diversity of intention or opinion.
If Koreans all generally agreed on everything, a vigorous protest culture and a tradition of public dissent would be inconceivable.
Korea's a diverse, divided country. Left and Right, North and South, Southeast, Southwest and Seoul, Gangnam vs. populists, wealthy vs. the rest, Christian and Buddhist, Pro and Anti [you know which countries go here]. There are robust debates in Korean society on almost every topic, and even in areas where you get general consensus (it's very rare to find Koreans think Dokdo doesn't belong to Korea) you'll still find dissent in the details (but some think public demonstrations, boycotts or rude behavior toward Japanese tourists are the best strategy for laying that claim, while others would prefer it be dealt with at the government-to-government level). A lot of these disagreements spill over into street protests. That a writer hasn't located these debates, or can't access them because of language problems, doesn't mean they don't exist. Burndog regularly points out what you might call the "If I haven't seen it, it doesn't exist" error common on blogs and commentary about Korea.
Writers who say “Korea is” “Korea wants” or “Koreans all…” are usually guilty of lazy thinking: a more careful thinker will write about what specific groups are doing, or want, and how they're disagreeing with other groups, not what "Korea" wants.
5. (And this is the biggie) They don’t know any Korean.
Becoming an authority on Korea without speaking Korean is kind of like being a hearing impaired musician. Yes, Beethoven proved it’s possible… but it’s really really hard and really rare. It’s possible to write a very good piece about Korea, without speaking any Korean — I’ve read some — but it’s much MUCH easier if you CAN.
Signs that a writer doesn’t know Korean include romanization or name errors — it doesn’t take too long to learn the two main romanization systems, and once you’ve learned them, it’s easy to spot errors. If someone's putting Korean sounds into English letters all helter-skelter, they have seriously put their credibility into doubt — ANYBODY who’s studied Korean beyond taxi level has learned how to romanize correctly, and will. Anyone who uses the wrong part of a Korean person's name as their family name completely discredits themselves - if they call Kim Jong-un "Mr. Un" or "Mr. Jong-un," don't trust their understanding of Korea one whit, because it takes five seconds on Google to learn that Korea puts the family name first, and it should be "Mr. Kim," and they haven't even put in that tiny modicum of effort.
Other signs include using Korean words incorrectly or in the wrong context, or doing what I call “dictionary translations” - where the word they’ve translated IS what you find in the dictionary or google translate, but it’s being used in the wrong way or in the wrong context (usually as if it had exactly the same usage and meaning as it does in English -- the error students make coming the other way when they say 'I was scary when I watched 'The Ring''). These errors show that a writer not only doesn't know Korean, but hasn't even bothered to check that translation with a single Korean speaker. If they have been so lax on doing their due diligence, don't take their writing that seriously.
Another sign of this is ONLY using English language sources — nothing against the English language newspapers and websites, which are getting better every year, but using them means an author receives a filtered version of Korea, not the original they could access if they read Korean. Errors are just more possible if an author is experiencing Korea by proxy, through an extra layer of remove.
And something I've been noticing as I get deeper and deeper into my life in Korea: people who don't bother to work on the language seem to have a pretty hard ceiling on how well they can understand and engage with the country. Once they've bumped up against that ceiling, their investment in the country starts to suffer diminishing returns. I might write about that more in another piece, but for now:
Remember that no one of these signs, totally on its own, is definitive, and as with dear deaf Beethoven, even someone checking all five boxes might write something really good. But in general, checking two, three, four, or all five of these boxes is a pretty good sign that you shouldn't take an article very seriously, and perhaps the article can be taken as one person's view and then forgotten: no need to be forwarded, shared, spread, translated into Korean, or the subject of a netizen backlash. Writing like this speaks for itself, and what it's saying is "not worth your grief."
If you disagree, or love this post, or have some other points to add, feel free to drop a comment in the box below, and thanks for reading!
The Korean translates comments by Joo Seong-ha, a North Korean defector who's been deeply involved in recent efforts to stop the repatriation of North Korean defectors from China. He describes counting the cost of bringing the repatriation story into the news: due to the publicity, there'll be a crackdown in China, and tougher border control in North Korea... that’s a lot of potential human suffering to be caused by a media campaign... yet in Mr. Joo's calculus, border control has been so tight since the transfer of power to Kim Jong-eun anyway, and China's been so tough lately on North Korean defectors (refugees: let's call them what they are) that Mr. Joo figures things pretty much can’t get any worse... so it’s time to build international pressure.
Every time I see coverage on this protest, and government leaders adding their voices to the pressure on China, I'm glad.
After a lot of talk about the military base, Lost on Jeju is annoyed about some tourism developments around Jeju: apparently, they're developing Jeju’s coastline at Tapdong -- wrecking the natural coast and pouring concrete to build more tourist attractions...
Though at Iho Beach, development has led to lots of asphalt, but no influx of businesses, so that all you see is a wrecked beach, the redevelopment of Tapdong seems to be going ahead.
Basically... there's a delicate balance that must be reached between developing amenities for tourists, and retaining the charms that initially made a site attractive to tourists. My mind turns to Samcheongdong, which has lost all its original charms, as traditional restaurants and unique cafes have been replaced by waffle cafes, coffee shop chains and accessory shops.
When I saw a "Ripley's Believe it or Not!" museum under construction on Jeju, my heart sank. Importing the worst of tourist trap amenities from the world's other famous tourist traps, doesn't automatically make Jeju Island a world-class tourist destination, any more than getting arrested for tax evasion makes me as famous as Martha Stewart.
This is a risky topic because it’s easy to fall into stereotypes, but basically... there is a spectrum of how seriously people take their time in Korea as an opportunity to learn another culture -- ranging from "Let's drink budweiser and shit-talk Korea" to "Let's study Korean fan dancing together" -- and most expats fall somewhere in between that... but it's important to find people who are at about the same place on the spectrum as you are, so that the level of shit-talk, and the level of "trying to understand" stay at tolerable levels for all involved.
All that to say... don't give up, because those people are out there. INP suggests developing an online presence, whereby you can filter people before meeting them in person, to figure out who's likely to be the kind of person you want to hang with.
Hyori Pushes Back
Every person who's been body-snarked in Korea, or been told they're fat when their body is perfectly within healthy range, has to smile a little inside at Lee Hyori's response to netizens who criticized her no-longer-epically-taut abs.
When Lee Hyori struck back at netizens saying, basically, “well of course people lose a little tone as they get older” I felt a little hope in my heart that maybe fans will start offering their idols a little more leeway to be, um, healthy.
Full disclosure: I especially liked it, because I’m the same age as Hyori.
Ran out of time:
I didn't have time to talk about the awesome mixtape posted at "G'Old Korea Vinyl" -- which has songs ranging from the '80s to 1939, and is a great overview of old Korean music, in about 40 minutes. Go. Listen. Enjoy.
Do you know what your X-line, M-line, D-line, V-line (or second V-line) are?
2. After covering Girls' Generation's Letterman appearance last week, this week it was nice to assure readers/listeners that Kpop was not the only kind of Korean music getting blog coverage: The Atlantic and Wall Street Journal recently wrote about K-pop, but The Economist has a piece about a true Korean virtuoso (how's that, Mike Hurt?), writing about Korean guitar legend Shin Joong-hyun. Even better, the piece included a video clip of Shin playing "미인," his most famous song, from a 2006 concert, and even in 2006, well past his youth, the man absolutely rocks the hell out of the song.
The video's a bit out of sync, so scroll down, and just listen instead of letting it annoy you as you watch.
G'old Korea Vinyl is taking out of print Korean music from the 70s and 80s and putting it in Mp3 or Youtube video form so that the world outside of those few amazing vinyl classic Korean music bars, can still enjoy the old sounds that formed the foundation on which the K-pop altar (alter?) was built. I've added them to my sidebar and I love how every new post has something to listen to. Their latest is another Shin Joong hyun post, just by coincidence.
3. Ms. Lee To Be has a fantastic post that demonstrates why knowing the culture, and working within what you know of Korean culture, dramatically increases your chance of getting what you want, instead of just having a frustrating confrontations.
Mr. and Ms. Lee's baby dragon is in the hospital, and a hospital with an absolutely draconian policy for baby contact: you're allowed to look at your baby for 30 minutes a day. And that's it. No cuddling, no touching, until you check out.
When informed that modern medical pediatric science is generally concluding that skin contact, and touch, in really important for babies, and really good for their health, the doctor they spoke to threw up a storm wall that amounted to "nuh-uh, it isn't!"... as could be expected, given Korea's culture of saving face, and the fact they'd just told a doctor that her methodology was out to lunch.
But rather than trying to get through that wall by butting their heads harder, Mr. and Ms. Lee circumvented all that pain and uselessness by providing a side door that let the Doctor feel smart, and let them cuddle their baby, by appealing to the doctor's expertise and asking if someone at the hospital could help "teach" them about proper bottle feeding and nursing, during their baby visiting period.
Just like that, they went from butting heads, to getting a chance to cuddle their baby during visiting time, with a lot less conflict and frustration, than if they'd just tried again, louder, with their original tactic.
An impressive negotiation of "face" and hierarchy, and extremely well played, says I, and a lesson for us all, to try being a little more strategic instead of obnoxious, loud, or accusing, when trying to get what we want and need.
So remember, folks: if you're tempted to write a ten page letter to your boss about how wrong they are about everything... don't, unless your bags are already packed, and you already have your ticket home. And even then, don't, because you're going to make your school's work situation 40% harder for the next foreign worker they hire, who'll come into a situation where everyone they need to work with has a sour taste in their mouth about foreign workers. Even if you're really sure you're right about everything you say.
Every Thursday, at 8:30AM, I present a short piece called "Blog Buzz" on TBS English radio 101.3's morning show. In it, I discuss the stories that have been generating buzz, or just catching my interest as something unique, interesting, or worthwhile, on the Korea blogs, during the last (approximate) week.
Here are some of the things I shared this week:
My Two Favorite accounts of Seollal this year were Xweing, a Chinese Malaysian who lives in Busan, reflects on the differences between Lunar new year in Malaysia, and in Korea -- because I'm from a culture that doesn't celebrate Lunar New Year, Korean New Year is basically a family thing, where in Malaysia, there are street parties, decorations and fireworks -- it's a much more public event.
There's a wistfulness here, kind of like the writings Western expats have when they write about Korean Christmas, that you don't get from Western writers talking about Korean New Year, and it's very interesting. Western expats write about Korean Lunar New Year with more curiosity, because it's new to us, so Xweing's perspective is refreshing.
Ask A Korean continued his series on Suicide in Korea with part four: worth reading, and a reminder that saying "Korea has a suicide culture" and leaving it at that is an intellectually lazy cop-out: observing a cultural phenomenon insists we ask, "How did the culture get this way?" --there's still work to be done. Especially in Korea's case, where in the early '80s, Korea's suicide rate was one of the world's lowest. http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2012/01/suicide-in-korea-series-iv-how-suicide.html
What should you do this weekend?
If I had to choose only one thing Chris in South Korea has ever made, to be linked, spread, and shared, this would be it. The entertaining and helpful flowchart "What to do this weekend?" (a polished final version of one he made a little while ago) asks a bunch of simple questions that guide you towards a host of sights and activities to try or see all around Korea. Good weather? Bad weather? Flush with cash? Broke? Wanna live it up? Wanna take it easy? Tired of palaces and temples? There's something for you. It's Seoul-centric -- Going to Daegu or Busan are options on the "Get out of town" side, but it's interesting, and if you try to do every single activity on the list, you'll have a frantic year (or two) in Korea, but come away having had a pretty darn good experience of the country.
Finally, we didn't have time to cover it on air, last week or this, but I'd like to send you to check out Charles Montgomery's great piece on the problems (he's had) with Korean self-study. It's an entertaining account of the circular "new book/tail off/forget what I've learned" cycle. The article ends with a good argument for getting into formal classes.
Interestingly, it's hosted as a guest post on the blog of Hanguk Drama, whose author is a self-taught Korean speaker, and has managed to find a method or motivation Mr. Monty didn't. Go read it here.
A couple more:
These weren't on the radio, of course, but Stephen Colbert's interview of "Where The Wild Things Are" author Maurice Sendak is laugh-out-loud hilarious. Part 1:
And... I've been on a Tom Waits kick lately. He's probably my favorite singer... and that's some rare air up there... and he's made about ten albums I'll listen to without even thinking about hitting the "Skip" button... and that's hard to do. Offhand, I can only think of two or three other artists who have made more than two albums during which I'd never hit "Skip"
Maybe some day I'll blog a list of albums I listen to without ever hitting "Skip," but not today.
Haven't done a bliss-out in a while, and you don't know this one is going to be one, until the last minute of the song, when it keeps celebrating, and then ends with about fifteen seconds on an entirely different plane... but like other good bliss-outs, you have to listen to the whole song, or those last fifteen seconds don't have the support to actually launch you into that other place.
I've always liked Stevie Wonder, but those ten seconds at the end of this song made me love him.
So yeah, I've been doing a section of The Evening Show for TBS eFM: the show's hosted by a fella named Mike, whom you can find here @MikeOnTBS. You can also keep up with what The Evening Show's doing at @TheEveningShow. Or follow me on twitter @Roboseyo (didn't see that coming, did you?) or friend me on facebook (facebook.com/roboseyo). I'm a facebook friend whore: I'll totally accept.
The show's been hella fun so far, mostly due to the awesome callers we've had call into the show. (and you can be one of those callers, readers!)
Anyway, before I turn into a pure pimp, one of the fun things about the show, to me, is this:
Every day I get a new Korea-related topic, and I have to become a fifteen-minute expert in it. Fifteen-minute expert means not that I spend fifteen minutes researching, and bluff, but that I have to learn enough about a topic to talk about it in an informed way for fifteen minutes. Every day the topic's different, which means I've learned about all sorts of things since I started the show three weeks ago.
So, here are ten things I've learned about Korea by doing The Evening Show's call-in segment:
1. Korea's actually doing quite well in trying to improve its environmental standing.
Given that Korea has very few energy resources of its own, it's important for Korea to use the oil it imports, or the nuclear energy it generates, as efficiently as possible; Korea's currently the world's fifth largest oil importer. That's bad news. The good news: Korea's actually put a LOT of energy and money into environmental initiatives. Natural gas buses, public transit, bus lanes, Samsung's lithium batteries, smart, efficient buildings (which, I learned, burn more fuel than cars): Korea's working hard.
Now if only the country also took care of its wetlands...
The four rivers' project has become too politically embroiled to get a straight story about it from either side.
2. Korea's traditions of gift-giving for marriage are really interesting... and the richer you were back in the day, the more ridiculously extravagant the gift-giving became.
Chests full of silk, carried by the bride's family, bribed into the groom's house, watches, clothes, three keys (car, office and house) and more: the gift-giving expectations for Korean weddings are mad lengthy, and the higher your position you'd attained, the more your family demanded from your spouse-to-be's family.
3. In recent years, the largest demographic decline in Korea's smoking rate was in middle-aged men. Young men (20s and 30s) has remained about the same. Meanwhile, the smoking rate for women is probably waaay under-reported.
4. The secretary general of the Korea smokers' association doesn't like people using the term "smokers" - he prefers "cigarette consumers" because it's less stigmatized.
5. The experts we spoke to think the black market (where food is traded and distributed in North Korea, when the centralized food-distribution system falls short) is good for North Korea, for two different reasons: one because that's where North Koreans learn about how life is in the South - that's where Korean wave illegal DVDs are bought and traded - and the other because a mini-free enterprise system will help North Koreans adjust to living in a free market system, in the event of reunification.
6. North Korea has its own international economic zone, called Rajin-Sonbong. So far, the main investor there is China.
7. There's a movie called Bangga Bangga about a Korean who pretends to be from Bhutan in order to get a job in a factory. Sounds super-interesting: I heard about it from Paul Ajosshi, and I hope he has a chance to write about it sometime on his blog. On that same topic, another reader commented that a farmer he knows started hiring migrant workers not because they were cheaper, but because the Koreans she employed kept stealing from her.
8. I already kind of knew this, but covering it from different angles really brought it home: long working hours, women's workplace rights, the low birthrate, lack of government support for parents, the aging population and the approaching welfare crisis, and the need to give migrant workers a more recognized place in Korean society, all connect to each other in a big, ugly bundle.
9. Pay day loan companies in Korea are very, badly under-regulated, and though it's illegal, some of them charge interest as high as 3000% per annum on their loans. Yep. All those zeros are supposed to be there. The payday loan companies are supposed to be regulated by their gu office, but those offices are too under-staffed to be properly vigilant.
10. Standard versions of language are a kind of expression of cultural hegemony, and the degree of connection between language, culture, identity, and power, are quite inextricable.
It's a good day, the weather's finally not so bone-chilling, and the wife is away on vacation.
Not that I'm up to any mischief... I wouldn't be here blogging if I were, now, would I?
Since I've come to Korea, one of the things I've noticed is a big change in how the Korean traditional holidays (that is, Seollal/Lunar New Year) and Chuseok (Harvest festival) are practiced.
The typical/normative Korean Traditional Holiday(tm) experience remains that of going to the grandparents' house, having a ritual for the ancestors that involves big tables full of traditional foods that take a long time to prepare and clean up, the women spending hours in the kitchen, the men playing cards or games in the other room, and the consuming of chapchae, ddeokkuk (new year) and songpyeon (chuseok). Grandparents give money to the children, and the children bow to the living ancestors (parents, uncles, especially grandparents) and some or all of the family goes up the mountain to trim the grass and perform maintenance on the family gravesite. And the children wear really cute Hanbok.
I'm interested in the way the holiday's changed: my first year in Korea, Seoul was a ghost town during the new year celebration. The usual complaints were raised: traffic is a pain, it's impossible to get tickets, the women do all the work, it's boring sitting around at your grandparents' house all day.
Meanwhile, this year Seoul's museums are staying open, and a lot of the palaces and plazas are featuring cultural events, displays and performances this Seollal. People are traveling overseas instead of visiting the family. Meanwhile, a recent survey reports that only one in five Koreans consider their grandparents part of their family.
Tonight's topic on TBS eFM is the ways we celebrate Seollal/Lunar New Year: what do you do, and is it different than it used to be? It's a holiday, so we're picking a happy topic, and I'd love to hear from readers, how do YOU celebrate the new year? Have travel concerns changed the way you celebrate? Have you spent holidays away from family? Why? Have you ever attended the cultural events instead?Whether you're Korean or not, we'd love to hear what you get up to on Korea's traditional holidays.
Update: the show went great! We had more callers than we knew what to do with, and that's always the way to have the most fun on the radio. Thanks to everybody who called.
Also, thanks for the awesome comments here; to get your comments read on air (we won't always have time to get to every one of them), following the patterns of Marc Hogi, and Dan, in the comments to this point, is great: concise, specific responses, with concrete experiences or points. I especially like how Dan did one or two sentence point-by-point comments. Thanks a lot. Well done, readers! See you tomorrow!
Well, folks, I'm hosting a part of The Evening Show on TBS E FM, one of Korea's English radio stations now. It's a call-in show, where you can phone the station and voice your opinion about different topics, and the more callers we get, the more fun it is. You'll see previews about the topics here, and any comment you leave here might get read on air, and if you really have something to say, drop your e-mail address in here and I'll write you about calling into the show: it's more fun with callers than with me reading comments on air.
Questions that I'd love you to have an opinion about:
1. Is this any different from the latch-key kids of double-income families in North America?
2. Whose responsibility is it to make sure these kids have safe places to pass their time (the government? schools? charities? parents?)
3. What are their parents thinking? Where's the disconnect, where these kids fall through the gaps?
4. The idea of free-range parenting: giving kids enough freedom to develop a sense of independence - is good, but it should be age-appropriate, right? What age do you think is an OK age for a kid to hang out alone, or with two or three other classmates, at the mall all afternoon?
5. Is it so bad for kids to have minimal parental supervision? When I was a kid, my brother biked all around the city, as long as he was home by dark. Why are people so freaked out now by unsupervised kids?
6. After talking about "Tiger Moms" who fill their kids' entire days with study and lessons, and "Mart Kids" who don't have any structure at all, what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems?
7. If you were a latch-key kid, or grew up without much supervision, and turned out really well, or had a rough time, share your experience. If you knew a kid who grew up without much supervision, share what you saw with them. If you're a parent, what's your policy, and why?
Write in, folks. The show's at 7:30: the more opinions we have, the more fun it is!
