Six "It's the __ of Korea" that drive me crazy.

This is the essence of a list I presented on TBS Main Street, on TBS English Radio, where I do a weekly countdown at 10:30 every Thursday morning. It's fun, and this is a topic I love to rant about.

You’ve probably heard, at some point, the phrase “Korea’s Something” or “The Something of Korea” —for example calling Apgujeong “Korea’s Beverly Hills," which basically fits. Rich people. Italian cars. Plastic surgery. OK. There are definitely some apt comparisons out there. But there are also some that don't fit, or that seem to force the puzzle piece.

Hey, did you hear Quentin Tarantino compared Bong Joon-ho to Steven Spielberg? Well now we have to call him the Korean Spielberg. And I sigh inside with a deep sad sigh. Hyorin does a cover of "Halo" so now she has to be Korea's Beyonce. You know, until Ailee throws her hat in the ring. And then you get places specifically named after more famous places in other parts of the world.

And it starts feeling like the "globally hip" version of this guy.

Trying.

Too.
Hard.

I was once told this mostly happens when Koreans are trying to describe korean stuff to foreigners who might not know about them, by someone who got defensive as I complained too much about this tendency. As I do. But for whatever it's worth, here are the "Korea's X" that have caused the biggest head-shakes, facepalms and jaw-drops for me.


1. Korea’s Madonna.

MTV Awards, Like A Virgin - 1984.


This one goes all the way back to 1987, when Kim Wan Sun pretty clearly referenced Madonna's performance for this performance, also at an awards show.


Um Jung-hwa has also been called Korea's Madonna. Her dancing and outfits raised eyebrows the way Madonna played her sex appeal in the 80s and 90s, and she also went from singing to acting, and managed her public image very skilfully.


Lee Hyori and S.E.S.'s Bada have also been called Korea's Madonna, and Ask A Korean! makes a plausible case for JYP being Korea's Madonna in terms of his impact on pop music.


But here's what you have to do to earn a comparison with Madonna:

1. Have Jo Yong-pil or Kim Geon-mo level popularity and success.
2. Be a fashion icon.
3. Be sexy as hell, and push boundaries for what a woman is allowed to do on stage, in terms of using her sex appeal, and push them again and again and again, without ever going too far.
4. Keep doing that for 15 years.
5. Have half a dozen completely unforgettable moments and/or performances, even after your relevance as a popstar is mostly faded.
6. Age into a mentor for younger performers.

Has there been a Korean artist who pushed the line on sex appeal, who was a fashion leader, who managed her image with superhuman savvy, and became a mentor for younger artists, while also being one of the most popular artists of her time for an entire generation? Lee Hyori wasn't controversial enough. Uhm Jung hwa wasn't controversial for long enough, and too much of her legacy is in her acting, which really isn't Madonna. Kim Wan sun didn't have the staying power. How much of Bada's cultural impact came from her solo career, and was she ever controversial?

Ladies and gentlemen there is no Korean Madonna, and it does the aforementioned artists a disservice to compare them to Madonna. There is also no Korean Beyonce. Just simmer down now.

Korea's Rain is Korea's Rain. He's not Korea's Michael Jackson. He can just be Korea's Rain. Hyorin is Korea's Hyorin. Lee Hyori is Korea's Lee Hyori. SuperJunior is Korea's SuperJunior, and that's enough!



2. Korea’s Opera: Pansori

Just listen to this.


Now listen to this.


Pansori was called Korean opera during a campaign to establish that Korean culture was just as refined and awesome as the best "high culture" of the west (Opera). There’s a certain type of person who believes that because Western countries were powerful at a certain time, the way to establish non-European cultures as worthwhile or world-class is by comparing them to Western culture. These people like using the word “advanced” and they don’t realise that by insisting on comparing Korean arts and sciences to western standards, they’re automatically putting the West in the superior position.

This means at a certain time in Korea’s nation building project, people were spending a lot of energy showing that before being colonized, Korea was on its way to developing a European style market economy, emphasizing that Koreans invented the movable type printing press, and so forth, and these people shoved Pansori forward as Korea’s opera. I guess because both include performances that can be long, both sometimes retell old folk tales, both require vocal training, and kids these days don't listen to much of either.

But, seriously, go listen to those clips again. The comparison makes no sense to anyone with ears. I’m in total awe of the way Pansori singers can do anything they want with their voices. But Opera it ain’t. That doesn’t diminish Korea’s cultural heritage in any way.

Korean opera exists. It does. But it's being performed by Jo Sumi, not by Ahn Suk Seon.


3. Korea’s Olivia Hussey

Olivia Hussey is an Argentenian actress who was a real beauty in the 60s and 70s. She is best known for starring as Juliet in Franco Zefirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” a film made in 1968.

She was 100% flawless in her day.

Here in Korea, beauty Han Ga-in, the actor/model (or model/actor), had a breakout role in the film "Once Upon A Time in High School" (말죽거리 잔혹사)-- a 2004 film set in 1978 (back when Olivia Hussey was a big deal). A character compliments Han Ga-in's character by telling her she resembles Olivia Hussey. Fair enough. It fit the time period.

Resemblance? I'll let the reader decide.

source

But it fails as a comparison. Because almost nobody knows who Olivia Hussey is anymore. (This sounds unkind... let's say instead that Olivia Hussey isn't a relevant enough celebrity anymore for that to be a useful comparison today.) The first time I'd ever heard her name was when I asked some students which Korean actors I should know about, and one identified Han Ga-in as Korea's Olivia Hussey, and I looked Olivia Hussey up. If a comparison involves looking something up, it's failed as a comparison.

So... if you told me that Taylor Swift is America's Lee Nan-young, it wouldn't mean anything to me until I looked up Lee Nan-young, or you explained it to me. And any comparison that obscures rather than enlightening has missed its point, in conversations like this.

(Lee Nan-young was a big deal in her day as well)




4. Korea’s Manhattan

Now, to call something Korea’s manhattan, here’s what I want: I want it to be the beating heart of the city. I want it to be the place where most of a city’s culture, art, commerce, and tourism happen. I want it to be the place where you can find the must-see places, attend the events, and also where all the really meaningful history happened. If an island met all those conditions, I’d think about calling it Mexico’s Manhattan, or Greece’s Manhattan, or Japan’s Manhattan.

Korea’s manhattan, of course, is Yeouido. While it does hold Korea’s national assembly, one of the city’s most famous buildings (the 63 Building), and a few TV stations, I have a big problem with calling it Korea’s Manhattan. Because here is what it looked like as recently as 1952: (source -courtesy of Popular Gusts)

Here is Manhattan Island in 1952: (source)

Yeouido didn't have a bridge to it until 1970. Manhattan Island had bridges to it before the Revolutionary War. If you can't be bothered to even build a bridge to it until 1970, Yeouido is clearly not the beating heart of Seoul. In fact, according to wikipedia, the name Yeouido means “Useless” and it was used as nothing but a pasture for sheep and goats until an airport was built on it in 1924.

I like Yeouido well enough. The IFC mall is a good place to go see a movie, and the park is nice when it’s not crowded to the gills. But if there’s an area that’s the beating heart of Seoul, it’s Jongno/Myeongdong/Gwanghwamun/City Hall — THAT’s where the culture, the history, the commerce and the political power all converge, if anywhere. Yeouido is sometimes called Korea’s Wall Street, which might be closer to the mark, but Korea’s Manhattan, it just really ain’t. So stop pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining.

5. Korean Pizza

In what world is this:

source

and this:

source

in any way at all similar to this:

source

It isn't, that's what. A few shared ingredients (like flour) and a flat disc-shape is it for similarities. The recipe, the preparation method, the way of consuming it, the toppings and sides, are all utterly different. This stands beside "Korean Opera" as one of the biggest misnomers, and one of the worst bits of expectation management out there, for introducing Korean culture. If you have to compare it to a western food, my favorite description of Jeon is "a savory pancake" (with green onion and sometimes seafood in it) -- which sets a diner's expectations about where they should be. But calling it Korean pizza... it's just inaccurate and misleading. And dumb. So stop!

6. Korea’s Machu Piccu

Of all the Something’s of Korea on the list, Korea’s Machu Piccu has got to be the biggest reach of them all.

Taegukdo or Gamcheon-dong, in Busan, is a pretty hillside village of colorful houses. It was founded by a group of religious refugees during the Korean war. Since then, blank walls have been painted with murals, and empty houses have been converted to cafes and galleries. It has a nice view of Busan Harbor, according to the write-up. Here is a picture.

source'

Can you believe it's even prettier at night?

from flickr

It looks like a lovely place to wander around and get lost in winding back alleys, which is one of my favorite things to do, so I'd actually really like to go there!

But it’s been described as The Korean Machu Piccu on the official Korean tourism website. (They also describe it as Korea's Santorini, which is at least closer to the mark.) It's not just the official tourism website, either.

Now, here is Machu Piccu: (source)

The only. fucking. thing. the two have in common are walls, and slopes. That's bloody it. Whatever they were smoking when they came up with Gamcheon-dong as Korea's Machu Piccu, I would very much like to try some!

Machu Piccu is abandoned, it was built in the 1400s, and is 2400 meters above sea level (triple the height of Bukhansan's peak). Machu Piccu is a UNESCO world heritage site, a Wonder Of The World, and a relic of the very peak achievements of a lost civilization. Gamcheondong is a pretty hillside that had a good idea for how to stave off the redeveloper's bulldozer, but still probably doesn't even appear in most visitors' top five lists of "things to do while visiting Busan" (unless it was recently featured in one of those comedy shows where famous people tour local attractions.) I wish the citizens of Gamcheondong good luck, and I actually do hope to visit there some day, but I haven't come across a single "Korea's X" comparison more misleading than this one.


And that’s the problem with every one of these comparisons: by making a comparison, I immediately start thinking about ways that the Korean version isn’t as good, is smaller or less impressive, or just plain different, than the original, and that sets the Korean one up for failure. It’s the very worst kind of expectation management, because it makes me expect that the thing I’m going to see will be better than it actually is, and it’s an unfair burden to put on a charming place like Gamcheondong, a perfectly nice business district like Yeouido, or an artist like Uhm Junghwa, who’s perfectly respectable in her own right. We don't need to call Song Gang-ho Korea's Tom Hanks, or Baekdusan Korea's Everest, for them to be awesome. In fact, it makes them less awesome when we do!


For more on Korea's X, I always go back to this Dokdo Is Ours bit... and a thingy from Brian in Jeollanam-do that seems to have been removed from public access, unfortunately.

So, readers: in the comments, what are your favorite/least favorite "___ of Korea"?

Please share!

PS: from somebody's facebook comment:


Update 2: Commenters mentioned the most disappointing comparison of all: that Jeju Island is Korea's Hawaii. I like Jeju Island, don't get me wrong. And in that people go there on vacation, and it's an island, they have... two points of similarity. But... no. No no no no no. Every person who's mentioned going to Jeju Island after being told it's Korea's Hawaii has also reported it being a bitter disappointment.

Culturalism - You Keep Using That Word 2: Some Q and A on Culturalism

I'm just going to assume that readers have all read part 1 of this series: What is Actual Culturalism? I'm tackling the idea of "culturalism" - which The Korean discussed, but has also been discussed by others in social sciences and policy discussions for a while. This comment points out that it isn't really taught as a method or framework in anthropology. Which is good to know. Thanks, commenter Nora!

So what are some other concepts related to culturalism?

Last post, we talked about Culturalism and Multiculturalism as it plays into policy discussions - particularly in Europe. Here in Kblogland, most people talking about culturalism are going on The Korean's definition, which mostly resembles the one used in Europe, but applying it to the area of cultural engagement rather than public policy. He defines it these two ways:

Culturalism is the unwarranted impulse to explain people's behavior with a "cultural difference", whether real or imagined. Because the culturalist impulse always attempts to explain more with culture than warranted, the "cultural difference" used in a cultural explanation is more often imagined than real. (source)

and as

...the impulse to explain minority people's behavior with a "cultural difference", real or imagined. (source)

Along those lines, here are some other rhetorical and philosophical concepts that The Korean and others might find useful in discussing "Culturalism". Rather than long descriptions here, I strongly encourage you to read the explanations I link. I also glossed over this in my previous post, "problems with citing culture"

• Fundamental Attribution Error - we tend to over-emphasize internal causes, and under-emphasize external (systemic or sometimes even random) causes of a phenomenon.
• Cultural Determinism - we tend to believe that culture determines our behavior...probably more than it actually does.
• Essentialism - we tend to think that there are certain traits that are fixed and unchangeable for certain groups - "Women are all like this" "Koreans are all this way" "White men all do this"
• Orientalism - a type of essentialism that focuses on other groups and cultures. When we look at certain cultures, we tend to make them out to be so different from us that we could never understand them (implied: so we may as well not try) - they will always be exotic, strange, and inscrutable to "us." Any time somebody uses the word "exotic," watch for this attitude.

Culturalism as The Korean defines it is bits of the four above in one, intellectually sloppy modge-podge, with a little ecological fallacy thrown in for flavor. And I say "intellectually sloppy" because people over-using culture to explain things are being sloppy, not because The Korean has been sloppy in describing it.

Meanwhile, commenter Dylan suggests we read more about Communitarianism -- which is another concept used by human rights scholars in discussing the ways people organize into communities.

So, is culturalism racism?

Not necessarily.

For one, racism has been discredited - the variety within members of each racial group is so great, that the variety from one racial group to another fades to insignificance. And we've all heard racism deniers tell us that "race is a social construct, therefore it doesn't exist"... As if social constructs don't exist. But society is also a social construct, so as people living in societies, we still have to talk about race sometimes.

Abstraction confuses me.

Culture has the benefit of being recognized by everyone as a social construct from the get-go, so at least we don't have deniers herp-derping that it does not exist because humans made it up (unlike all the other things humans made up, that DO exist, like the language they're using to make that argument). Anyone who's agreed to talk about culture has already agreed to talk about social constructs, so that's at least nice.

And race is hardware -- your pigment and bone structure are in your dna, and unchangeable, but culture is software - programmed patterns of behavior which can be changed. Culture is changing all the time. That's a crucial difference.

Strictly speaking then, culturalism isn't the same as racism.

Lemme tell you 'bout race, butthead...

However, if you take a person in the habit of lazy or sloppy thinking, and give them a phenomenon they don't understand, the same sloppiness that might have caused their 1955 self to explain it with race, might today cause them to explain it with culture.

It's all about culture, butthead!

Racism has been discredited, but while intellectual laziness is still in style, even most bigots generally realize you're not "supposed" to be openly racist anymore. So culturalism isn't the same as racism, but they are used in the same way by lazy thinkers and bigots. They are born of the same desire to generalize about those who are different, both are worsened by the same lack of curiosity and unwillingness to admit the variety and humanity of others, and both lead to the same kinds of sweeping and ignorant statements. And those are ample grounds for The Korean to call culturalism "racism of the 21st century"

So is culture off the table entirely?

No. Because it's human made, and learned, culture is changeable, and changing all the time. This means that, as long as we discuss it in terms that don't overestimate its usefulness as an analytical tool (which is easy to do), yeah, it's fair game for discussion, but even kept in perspective, it's still easy to get it wrong when talking about culture, because when talking about culture, you're also talking about the way a bunch of people live, and those people deserve to be approached with respect, and in a way that recognizes their humanity, intelligence, free will, and so forth. And there are lots of ways to talk about culture that does not do those things. Be respectful, and don't be a dick.

Beep boop beep boop! Why am I not surprised the politically correct police have shown up to stop me from expressing my free speech?

OK. I'm going to write a whole extra unplanned post in this series to talk about this, because the more I think about it, the weirder it is to me that somehow political correctness has been framed as a bad thing... so if you're champing at the bit to start arguing about that, kindly hold your horses and save it for the comments under a future post.

Coming up next at Roboseyo: some ways to talk about culture without coming across as a shit. Stay tuned!

Culturalism - You Keep Using That Word 1: What is Actual Culturalism?

Last summer, when The Korean from Ask a Korean! wrote his bit about Malcolm Gladwell, the Asiana crash, and culturalism -- a tour de force piece that managed to get Malcolm Gladwell himself over to The Korean's site to answer criticisms, one of my friends who's in Anthropology got very frustrated with the whole thing.

Because before The Korean started using the word "culturalism" with the meaning he gave it (in this post)... it was kind of already an actual thing.

It happens from time to time that academic terms get co-opted, or re-"coined" or re-conceptualized by someone who isn't part of the conversation where it first came up (for example, Soft Power has suffered a lot of meaning creep since being co-opted by China's "Peaceful Rise" narrative, and now it can mean anything from all non-military nation-to-nation bullying, to nation branding) or a word gets so much baggage piled onto it in the public imagination, that it's hard to use it academically anymore. (For an example, look at The Metropolitician's attempt to re-explain racism in such a way that it's possible to discuss it again without knee-jerk defensiveness.)

And here's a definition of culturalism, as per Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt, who are the two names that come up a lot when you search it on Google Scholar and stuff: 

Culturalism is the idea that individuals are determined by their culture, that these cultures form closed, organic wholes, and that the individual is unable to leave his or her own culture but rather can only realise him or herself within it. [One type of] Culturalism also maintains that cultures have a claim to special rights and protections – even if at the same time they violate individual rights.

Basically, to develop public policy, or understand social structures, as a bureaucrat or anthropologist might want to do, one must decide how to group together the subjects of your study, and class, income, age, region, education -- these can all be useful. But if you decide culture is more important than all these other groupings, that, in its broadest definition, is culturalism.

Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt back away from the definition above by separating culturalism into two kinds: hard and soft. (explanation in this summary)

Hard culturalism is the one above -- where culture is constructed as the be-all and end-all, and cultural lines are imagined to be rigid and impassable. I can't define myself outside of the culture I was raised in. Taken far enough, Hard Culturalism is the basis of arguments that cultural groups should be allowed to put their community's laws above the laws of the land they live in, or that anybody unwilling to assimilate into their host country should be sent "back where they came from." This is where Eriksen and Stjernfelt's critique lies. Hard culturalism becomes politicized, and they describe it in places as an ideology, arguing that individual and human rights should always come before cultural rights.

And where exactly to draw those lines between respecting a cultural or religious group, and ensuring the human rights of members of that group? Does a doctor violate one's religious rights by saying, "I respect your religion, but I'm still giving your child a blood transfusion!" What if it's not the child, but the parent?

Soft culturalism, according to Eriksen and Stjernfelt, aren't incompatible with a modern cosmopolitan society. In soft culturalism, we can find our identity or self-expression in a culture, but the standards and norms of a culture don't supersede the values of a modern secular society -- human rights, rule of law, etc..

To over-simplify, Eriksen and Stjernfelt would probably say that you should be allowed to wear a cross or a hijab in school as a symbol of your identity (soft culturalism), but would reject a domestic abuse defense that "where I'm from, it's normal for parents to hit their kids," and oppose Muslim communities in Europe following Sharia law.

If you take Eriksen and Stjernfelt's definition of culturalism above: "that individuals are determined by their culture, that they have no free will to influence the course of their lives," I don't think The Korean would take issue with it. The difference is how each applies it: E&S explain how putting people into overly rigid groups leads to problematic policies and "culture wars," and The Korean explains how that same conception of culture causes problems in cross-cultural personal experiences and judgments, where it results in "Racism of the 21st Century."

It's just too bad they're giving different meanings to the same word, as they discuss two different, but interesting and important ideas.

If you're interested in Eriksen and Stjernfelt's concept of culturalism, here's more reading material:
This excellent article by Milan Vukomanovic hits most of the important points.
This is another good summary be Eriksen and Stjernfelt themselves.
This article, and the six recorded interviews below it expand on the key issues.
This article about the Anders Breivik verdict (that Norwegian mass-murderer) also talks about the tension between culture and human rights.

And if anyone wants to send me a gift copy of Eriksen and Stjernfelt's book, "The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism" I'd be thrilled.

Culturalism's place in the history of ideas is kind of mixed: one of the earlier cases of culture being used as a level of analysis was among colonizing countries, which used academic rhetoric to justify colonizing civilizations they had deemed "primitive," in order to "civilize" them. (cf: The White Man's Burden). Culturalism is usually not used in quite such a patronizing way these days. Arguably.

Culturalism is also a required prerequisite to multiculturalism: you can't construct a policy of respecting cultural differences, if you don't first imagine that cultural groupings exist, and are important enough to warrant specific policies and programs.

So while I have to take issue with The Korean using the term "Culturalism" because that's already a thing, the thing that he wishes to describe with his term is something very much worthy of discussion, and I'll talk about that in an upcoming post.

Press Freedom: KBS Walkout and the Steady Decline of Press Freedom in Korea

So on Facebook tonight, from a handful of friends, the word was that KBS only aired 20 minutes of news during the 9pm broadcast, and then finished the hour off with marine wildlife.

Photo from a Facebook friend: turtles gettin' busy

The Korea Times reported that KBS reporters have walked off the job as a way of demanding the resignation of the CEO, who is accused of trying to influence programming to be more friendly to the president, and to appoint people friendly to the president to important positions in the organization. More here.

The Sewol Tragedy once again plays into this series of events: the public accounting for poor media coverage of the disaster and rescue started days ago, with apologies and self-reflection. One aspect of that has been, again, suppressing or massaging stories in order to make sure the President appears in a positive light.

Related, on May 1st, Reporters Without Borders released its 2014 World Press Freedom Index, which reports on the media environment of the previous year. Visit it here. Read The Press Freedom Index's methodology here. (PDF) South Korea ranked 57th in the world, seven places down from last year.

Korea's press freedom index rankings have been on a steady decline for a while. Here are the results since 2002: The first column is the year. The second column is South Korea's ranking in the world, and the third is Korea's score. A 0.00 score means a perfectly free press, and a 100 score means a total lack of press freedom. The scoring system was re-calibrated in 2013, when Reporters Without Borders started tracking incidents of censorship, and other countable items, themselves, instead of through the word of their contacts (hence the big jump from '12 to '13).

Year     Rank      Score
2002     39          10.50
2003     49          9.17
2004     48          11.13
2005     34          7.5
2006     31          7.75
2007     39          12.13
2008     47          9
2009     69          15.67 (low point due to the 2008 beef protests and government response)
2010     42          13.33
'11-12   44          12.67
2013     50          24.48
2014     57          25.66

The high point for Korea's press freedom was 2006, meaning that in 2005, South Korean media faced less censorship and manipulation than any other year. Since then, with a blip in 2010 (after a low point in 2009), the slide has been fairly steady, dropping between 2 and 8 places per year. These drops were not large enough in any one year to attract special mention in any of Reporters Without Borders' global summary reports, but dropping 26 places from 2006 to 2014... bothers me.

Freedom House, which also reports on press freedom worldwide, downgraded South Korea's rating from "Free" to "Partly Free" in 2011, again due to government intervention in media coverage -- presidential appointments to important media outlet positions, again. (More on the 2014 report here) (Freedom House's 2013 report on South Korea here. Nice and concise.)

In 2011, Frank LaRue, special rapporteur to the UN, also reported on freedom of expression in South Korea. His final UN repot, however, mentions South Korea in specific only a handful of times: this Amnesty International report puts those points all in one place.

The National Security Act - read Amnesty International's report  -- was written in 1948, and has a kind of a cold war "Blank Check" feel to it, with some vague wording about "anti-state activity" that can cover just about anything, in case the KCIA ever needs to trump up some charges. Read up.

Now, I get it, that as recently as the 1980s, South Korea had extremely limited press freedom, and robust and vigorous institutions don't just install themselves overnight-especially institutions with as many moving parts as a free press, and especially installed right on top of a non-free, censored and manipulated press. And being really healthy for a while doesn't mean a long-free press can't suddenly take a nosedive (even the USA, our self-proclaimed model democracy, has had some embarrassing drops). On the other hand, the fact that South Korea's not only backsliding, but steadily backsliding over an extended period, bugs me a lot, and I find it cynical and spurious that the fangless North Korean threat is still being invoked in order to block that website, delete that tweet, and hound that reporter. The antidote for speech you don't like is more speech, not censorship, and a robust democracy is confident enough in itself that it can bear the existence of a fringe movement without flipping the f-stop out.

I and a few friends have been working on a podcast lately called the Cafe Seoul Podcast, and our latest episode was inspired by Korea's slide in press freedom rankings, but the KBS walkout seems like a good time to share it.

Here is the podcast episode. In it, I interview John Power, who has worked as a reporter for a few of Korea's English language outlets. In case you aren't interested in the other stuff (awesome as it is), the interview starts at 33:40.

The darn thing won't embed, so here's the link.

The interview was edited a bit for length, so here is the raw cut of the full interview... because especially when the topic is free speech, I feel like listeners deserve to hear all the questions and answers.

And here's the link for this one.

And here it is on SoundCloud.


And here are the questions I asked John Power, and the times you can skip to, to find them:
2:00 - "Tell us about yourself"
2:30 - "Why is press freedom vital for a healthy democracy?"
3:18 - "Freedom house reports press freedom worldwide is on the decline, and other countries in Asia are dropping or ranked lowly on press freedom indexes; what's going on, and do you think the conditions in other countries affect what happens in Korea?"
6:00 - "Who are some of the players that are affecting press freedom in Korea for the better or for the worse?"
9:20 - [Bearing in mind cases like Na Gom-su-da and the blogger Minerva cases] "Can you explain for our readers what a chilling effect?"
10:30 - "In your opinion, what are steps that cold be taken to get Korea climbing instead of dropping in these press freedom indexes?"
14:50 - "In response to what some see as the corporatization of Korean (and world) media, some have pointed to social media and citizen journalism as the antidote… what are your thoughts on this?
17:35 - "Who do you trust more to handle Korea’s media responsibly: the chaebol, the government, “citizen journalists” or who?"
18:45 - Other Cafe Seoul cast members join.
20:40 - The National Security Act is still invoked because "There are North Korean spies out there" - is that a big enough threat to be concerned about, and censor, media?

24:00 - Differences between the way Korea is reported on in English, and in Korean.

26:15 - Have you ever had a story you worked on censored? Have you ever self-censored?

A Few More Links On Culture

Here:
Read two examples of ways to talk about culture (in the broader sense)

From the New York Times - "The Case For Disobedience" which includes these lines, which I think are crucial to understanding the public response, and the most relevant cultural angle to the issue:

“The elder generation’s responsibility for the younger generation has always been a central Korean value,” Christopher Hill, a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul and the Dean of the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, told me. “It’s absolutely counter-cultural to have crew members not take responsibility, which explains the national revulsion.”

From Jason Lim, for The Korean Herald - "But Korean Culture Is To Blame" talks about the culture of unbridled capitalism and profit-seeking, the way too many Koreans, for too long, have been willing to sacrifice too many other concerns, for profit. If you stretch the meaning of culture one way -- to mean the behavior and values reflected in every day life, then it's a cultural argument. If you stretch culture the other way, to mean the framework of ideals reaching out of the past, you'd say "that's not culture: profit isn't a Confucian value!" Defining terms helps. The other most relevant way culture plays in:

But it’s not just the love of money. After all, who doesn’t like money? But it’s the almost Machiavellian pursuit of money, growth, and success that has reached its peculiar zenith in Korea and trampled any other considerations in its way, including safety. The Washington Post quotes Professor Lee Chang-won of Hansung University as he poses the question, “The thinking is, is it worth stalling progress to deal with these regulations if there’s only a 1-in-10 million chance of something going wrong?”

In my book, this is a legitimate cultural argument, because profit is one of the values and priorities by which Koreans make judgments and decisions for action. Held up to survey results like these - wherein 2010 a larger percentage of Koreans listed wealth as the most important determiner of success than any other country, and had a top 5 result in this one. Is that a slam dunk proof? No. But it's enough to warrant further investigation.

Sky Kauweola's Tumblr blog has a piece about Cultural Determinism and the "Fundamental Attribution Error" I name-checked but didn't really expand upon in my last post. I encourage you to read it.

That article also links to a discussion of the obedience issue, in the context of older studies on "destructive obedience" - obedience of authorities, even when it goes against one's better judgment: the famous Milgram experiments (where doctors told subjects to administer electric shocks to unseen victims, and the rate at which people delivered strong enough shocks to kill -- even while hearing screams of pain -- because the Doctor told them to, was shockingly high.

Bringing the Milgram experiments into the discussion of hierarchy and obedience to authority is an extremely useful addition to the conversation. Humans do seem wired to obey authorities and leaders, which is why (as protests online and offline gain steam) the point comes home, again and again how important it is for us to choose the right leaders.

How Park Geun-hye can Revitalize Korea's Politics

So Park Geun-hye, if the news tells it right, just won the Korean presidency, and we get five years of her in the iron throne.

I wrote earlier about my misgivings about her being held up as a female role-model actually being good for Korean women, because in her (an unmarried woman) the career/family dichotomy remains dichotomized, but now the I-Think-Women-Have-Come-Far-Enough-Thanks Koreans get to say "Look! We've got a female president! What more do you want?"

I also have misgivings about her being the daughter of a dictator... so I'm going to try to keep this short, but the context matters to the point I want to make in the title.

Her father was Park Chung-hee, perhaps the most polarizing personality in Korea. You've heard the story by now: he set the table for Korea's spectacular economic growth in the 80s and 90s by investing heavily in infrastructure and heavy industry in the 60s and 70s. While sure, he (like all the presidents in Korea so far) was corrupt... but unlike other presidents, he attached his favors to activities that fit with his long-term plans. He controlled the foreign aid money that came into Korea, by controlling the banks, meaning that he could give favorable terms to companies that cooperated with his master plan, when they applied for business loans.

Through this, the industries and business leaders Park hand-picked became mega-rich, but they also set up businesses and industries that helped Korea become wealthy.

To accomplish this, Park and his business leader buddies did a lot of union busting and suppression of workers' rights, in order to reap the benefits (nationally and personally) of a cheap labor force.

To make it easier to keep the little man as little as possible, Park is well known for using torture, kidnapping, and... let's call it... suspicious deaths of key people (a euphemism as sharp as calling sex slaves comfort women).

His legacy now is mixed: for those along the Seoul Busan Highway (where most of the industrialization took place) he's the genius whose long vision led to Korea's success today. For those whose parents and uncles and aunts were kidnapped from their homes and had their fingernails pulled out, he's kinda beastly.

and in a lot of ways, this election was, in part, a referendum on Park Chung-hee's legacy: if Ahn Cheol-su didn't do his tease act, it would have been the main narrative of the election... and perhaps the reason Ahn held on for so long was specifically so that the issues the Left wanted to bring to the table would get some play.

So that's the background.

Now, two things you may not know:
1. Park Chunghee was not a beastly military goon for his entire presidency. He was at the beginning, after the takeover, when he kept the elected president in office for a while as a puppet until he resigned in frustration. (that'd be Yun Bo-seon). But then, in the 60s, he ran for president and managed to win three elections in order to stay in power. He won elections in 1963 (by a hair) and 1967 (by a lot)... and maybe those elections were rigged, but they weren't as rigged as Rhee Syngman's, whose opponents had a way of dying. (see here... one of his other opponents was later executed under Korea's national security law). Park had three elections where the other guy might have won, and the last one (1971, where he barely beat Kim Dae-jung) was what pushed him around the corner and led to the "Yushin" era, when he declared a national emergency, suspended the constitution and basically concentrated all power to himself, and his enemies and threats started mysteriously disappearing.

2. The economic growth that came through Park Chunghee's efforts nearly didn't happen. After securing foreign funds with the (very unpopular) normalization treaty with Japan (the 1965 one that Japan points to as absolving their responsibility for war crimes) and by sending troops to Vietnam (earning aid from the US), Park saw the US pull out of Vietnam completely... well, if US pulls out of Vietnam when it's no longer politically useful, what's to stop US from pulling out of Korea? The next step in that logic is, "Korea'd better have a self-sustaining industrial background and military before that" -- so he invested in six heavy industries: shipbuilding, industrial machinery, automotive, heavy chemicals (oil refineries etc.), electronics, and steel, (also known as the six most necessary ingredients for developing your own military). But after investing SO FRIGGIN' MUCH in these industries, the world economy slowed down in the late 70s, and suddenly heavy industry was a bad place to have sunk your nation's entire wealth! To stir up capital, Park sent construction crews abroad, to build things in the middle-east (those oil rich OPEC countries that were undermining the other industries he'd invested in), and this barely kept Korea afloat until the economic boom of the Reagan-era 80s, when that heavy industry infrastructure suddenly led to MASSIVE economic growth for Korea when Chun Doo Hwan presided over the payoff of Park's investment.

This is more my opinion than clear fact, but here's a third thing about Park Chung-hee's legacy: being assassinated and followed by Chun Doo-hwan did more good for his legacy than anyone can account for.

Huh?

Well... when you're assassinated, when you die mid-stride, your legacy gets a bump from what we might call "dead rockstar syndrome" -- if Axl Rose had died one week after releasing "Use Your Illusion I and II," we'd rank him with Kurt Cobain, instead of being sad about his "Fat Recluse" phase. Ditto if Michael Jackson had died in 1988. If Jimi Hendrix were still alive, the amazing things he did in 1968-70 would be diluted by those two albums in the 80s when he experimented with synthesizers, his religious phase in the early 90s, and his Grammy sweeping 2011 duet album with Taylor Swift. Park Chung-hee died... so he never had to spend time in jail, never saw the humiliation Korea's other ex-presidents suffered when later presidents jailed them to make themselves look cleaner, never had his corruption publicly revealed by whistleblowers or whatnot during a trial.

Second: the ugly parts of his dictatorship got smoothed over, because he was immediately followed by someone who was even worse. If M. Night Shyamalan had retired after The Happening, we'd all still be howling about what a bad movie it was. Instead, he went us one worse, and made The Last Airbender, and it was SO bad that all our The Happening jokes were no longer relevant. Chun Doo hwan managed the difficult accomplishment of making Park Chung-hee look like the GOOD strongman, which gave people the ability to gloss over that part of his legacy, and made it way easier to get nostalgic about him.

You don't see Chun Doo-hwan's kids in politics, do you?

So... all of that is in play, when you look at where Park Geun-hye came from.

Now, to wrap this up, I have one prediction, and one suggestion, which, as mentioned above, could revitalize Korea's politics...

The prediction is gross.
Opposition rhetoric during this presidency could be... has the potential to be... and therefore probably WILL be the shrillest, harshest, most polarizing, and most infantile, we've heard in Korean politics so far. Because every single time President Park introduces a policy the left doesn't like, they're going to play the dictator card, tell her how much she resembles her father... and that name calling will further polarize an already polarized political scene.

All the young people who were excited about Ahn Chul-soo's promise for a new kind of politics that doesn't involve brinksmanship and name-calling will get further jaded, and the broken system will get more broken. And even if you didn't like Park Chunghee... it'll be bloody annoying to hear the left jibjab about how the apple doesn't fall far from the tree... Park Geunhye at least should get a chance to show her own colors.


But here's the suggestion... Park Geun-hye could do something that would not only nip all those ad hominems in the bud, but completely change Korean civil society, meanwhile also showing that she is not simply riding her father's legacy, but that she'll be a new kind of leader appropriate for modern Korea. By doing two things:

1. Severing government ties to Korea's mass media. The fact that the government owns large stakes in most of Korea's major media entities is ridiculous... especially because the previous president actually had been interfering in the way government-owned media are run. Canada manages to keep the CBC run by government funds, without conflict of interest accusations coming out every month. BBC is generally seen as above reproach in that regard. These government run institutions are allowed to criticize their governments. And that's healthy.

2. And this is the biggie:
Striking the National Security Law from the books... or severely and specifically limiting it. The National Security Law has been the law that every president has used to stifle their critics or opponents. It's a vaguely worded catch-all law that allows a president to pretty much arrest or harass anyone who is doing something they don't like. It's been around since the cold war (1948)... when maybe vaguely worded catch-alls were needed, and "anti-state acts" could have meant a lot of things... but when retweeting a pro-north Korea tweet got somebody arrested? When an unemployed blogger gets called in by the national police? That's just ridiculous. Either a group of lawyers from both sides needs to get in there and add enough specific language that the National Security Law only catches North Korean spies... or it needs to be abolished entirely. Amnesty International and international human rights groups have been encouraging Korea to abolish the National Security Law for years, and the (mis)use of the National Security Law is one of the reasons that during Lee Myung-bak's presidency, South Korea went from "Free" to "Mostly free" on international press freedom indexes. (more at Amnesty International)

If Park Geun-hye does these two things, especially early in her presidency, she'll cut the umbilical cord, so to speak, from her father. She'll clearly distance herself from the kinds of behaviors that have plagued the Korean right for a long time, and open space for a healthier, less polarized civil society to develop more strongly in Korea. She'll also pull the rug from her opposition, so that the "dictator card" is unplayable, because she'll be able to toss back at them, "I abolished those laws, and removed the president's influence on the media. What are you talking about, I resemble my father? Take another look." She'd have the space to create her own legacy.

It'd be a genius move. Absolute genius.

Maybe the amount of name-calling in the national assembly would finally decrease... which might give more hope to those disenchanted voters who wanted Ahn Chul-soo to run for president. Maybe Korea's civil society would get a little less screechy, and we'd be able to have a conversation about issues without somebody calling someone else a dictator sympathiser or a communist. Maybe.

Too bad it won't happen.

Park Geun-hye: Female President, Patriarchal Society?

I had a short conversation today with someone who wanted to convince me to vote for Park Geun-hye

(If, that is, I had a vote.)

Now, I haven't studied too deeply into the politics and policies of the candidates for Korea's upcoming presidential election.  I expressed my skepticism about Ahn Cheol-su's candidacy a while back, and I usually list to the left politically, but I just have a few things to say about Park Geun-hye and her pop... because it's impossible to talk about Park Geun-hye without referencing her late father. And that works both for her (with one group of people) and also against her (with another group, at least a few of whom have to vote for her, unless Ahn Cheol-su continues splitting the vote on the left, gift-wrapping the presidency for her).

These are my scattershot thoughts -- I just don't have it in me these days to string together long and coherent arguments on teh blarg these days (hell, I can barely be arsed to write a post a month)... but here are a few things about Park Geun-hye's candidacy, and her pop's legacy.

1. Park Chung-hee's legacy will always be mixed. I visited his museum, not far from the World Cup Stadium, last spring, and it was pretty much a hagiography, glossing over things like his training and experience in the Japanese military, or the sketchier parts of his story. The emphasis was economy economy economy. What he set out to do? He did in spades, spectacularly... but at a hell of a cost.

2. What he did was really good for the time when he came along. A leader cast in his mold coming along now, when the world is a very, very different place, just doesn't fly. Remember LMB's grand canal plan? Korea doesn't need a grand canal anymore, because it ain't 1965 anymore. In the infrastructure area... we're good, thanks. Nor does Korea need another president who puts economic growth above everything --Korea's mostly in a good place right now, but some of the other components of democracy, like civil society and social welfare and equality, have a ways to go--, or plays nationalist cards in order to score points in favor of their economic projects, or who continues to stifle civil society and go on with the old tradition of appointing buddies in high government positions, or having two cabinet graft scandals per month, or hobbling civil society, free speech, and human rights organizations. International communication is too good, too instant, and too fast, to try and pull that kind of shit anymore.

3. I hate the way talking about Korea's history is so politicized -- that vast tracts of President PCH's story go ignored according to one's political stripe, and the same goes for many other characters events and entities in Korea's history. It's depressing, because it means people don't listen to each other. Then again, looking at the way different countries talk about the history of the region, it's no surprise there's such a sharp contrast between the stories domestically, along political lines as well.

4. The narrative my conversation partner gave me was this one: That Park Geun-hye didn't get married and start a family, because "Korea is her husband" or something like that. And with that kind of narrative, suddenly it becomes possible for an ultra-patriarchal country to have a female president, but still be ultra-patriarchal. Because clearly, the norm -- what a woman is SUPPOSED to do... is have a husband. To get married and make babies. As if the only way to be a successful female politician is to remove herself from the roles she's "supposed" to do... and just so, even as Korea moves toward possibly having its first female president, even the memes around that woman's becoming president, point a big finger back to the kitchen for women who don't want to become president-- women remain faced with the false choice of either starting a family or chasing success in some other (read: men's) realms.

Now I'm not saying every person in Korea's patriarchal or sexist, or that gender roles are as rigid as they used to be, or that no progress has been made...

but it makes me sad that the narratives surrounding the woman who might become Korea's first female president actually reinforce traditional gender norms, and that along with that, all the "well women in Korea have come far enough, thanks" (mostly) men will be able to pull out the Park Geun-hye trump card as "proof" that Korea is now an equal society, so we don't need to have wacky things like a whole government ministry just for women's equality anymore, and we clearly don't need to develop laws and social programs protecting working or unmarried or migrant mothers, because if we have a female president, clearly women have come far enough!

This might not be the case. This may not be how the narratives around PGH go. I'm almost 100% sure I'm missing something, because I've been busy, and my Korean ain't that hot. Probably, things will continue getting better, faster than the old men in power would like (out come the hospital gowns!) but slower than I'd like to see... but I just really really dislike the "Korea is my husband" meme, because of what follows from it. That is all.

North Korea. Lankov. Royal Asiatic Society. YouTube. Wow.

This is just one of the best ideas I've come across, and I have to share it.

The Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch is a group I like a lot, whose events I wish I could attend more often.

Andrei Lankov is one of the North Korea experts whose word I respect the most.

YouTube is a place where you can watch videos for free.

If you put them together, you get this:
A Youtube lecture of Andrei Lankov on the topic "What does China Want with North Korea and What Can be Done About It?" --this is a fantastic topic that's intrigued me for a while. The lecture's a bit over an hour, so square away some free time to watch it, if you're interested in this topic. If the Royal Asiatic Society is going to do this more often, they might want to look into finding ways to improve the sound quality of the speaker's voice - it sounds like they're using the camera microphone, so there's a bit of ambient noise and the speaker's voice doesn't come across beautifully. However... I DO think it's a GREAT idea for the Royal Asiatic Society to put their lectures - or at least a few of their lectures - online.

Anyway... watch it! And maybe join the Royal Asiatic Society.

A tad More on the MBC Video

I got linked in the Wall Street Journal's Korea blog, Korea Real Time. And at The Marmot's Hole. And Three Wise Monkeys (in a piece written by The Bobster, one of my favorite writers who contributes to that site). And Scroozle and Expat Abundance and a handful of others. So that's all cool. Thanks, all. Now that I'm famous and all, it's time for a change in style.

because that's how I heard teh famousz people dress. all of them. (source)

Seriously, though, if you're interested in a little heavier reading, here are two things you should read -- I've been researching multiculturalism and racist scapegoating for a few papers, and these two papers are very interesting, especially in light of the MBC video, and the xenophobia and sexism therein.

1. "The Political Economy Of Hatred" by Edward Glaeser (warning: links open to a .pdf download of the working paper) - Hate does not appear out of a vacuum. Hatred of a minority appears in a society when there are strategic incentives for political contenders to promote hate, and conditions which incentivize the population to accept messages of hate. Edward Glaeser breaks down the conditions that make it more or less likely that messages of hate will be generated, and accepted, by political players and populations. I'll be writing more about this one later, because I think it's important.

2. "Popularizing Purity" Full title "Popularizing Purity: Gender, Sexuality and Nationalism in HIV/AIDS Prevention for South Korean Youths" by Sealing Cheng (Asia Pacific Viewpoint, 46.1, April  2005, p 7-20) -- turns out, this conflation of HIV with teh furriners, has been connected with activating nationalist emotions about "purity" and "corrupting foreign  influences" at least since the 90s, and probably earlier. Did you know some Koreans wanted to test every visitor to the 1988 Seoul Olympics for HIV? Didn't happen, but some were pushing for it. The article also highlights how misogyny/sexism has been part of the "foreign corruption" "cultural purity" and "HIV threat" narratives in Korea pretty much since the beginning, as women shouldered most of the blame/responsibility to carry the flag of Korean cultural purity and moral virtue in the old "Purity" campaigns, just as women are blamed for being "open minded" (euphemism for other openings) to foreigners now.

Click. Read. 

Racist MBC Video: Some Perspective and Marching Orders

Scroozle has posted a subtitled (translated) version of a video made by MBC, one of Korea's major broadcasting corporations, about "The Shocking Reality About Relationships With Foreigners."

The video is exploding on Facebook, and I dare not open my twitter stream...

I have a few thoughts about this piece, and a few ideas about how to respond effectively. I'll try to be as brief as I can.

But first...

Meet Babyseyo. I don't want him to grow up in a country that tells him his mother was a victim of his father.

1. Things are getting better.

As upset as we all are, things are getting better here in Korea, when it comes to this kind of race-baiting.

In 2005, SBS ran an episode of a show based on a controversial post at a website called "English Spectrum" (that post) (that episode)

And this happened. (Chosun Ilbo)

Immediately after the broadcast, the bulletin board on the program's website was flooded with over 1,000 furious posts. "I was so infuriated after the broadcast that I couldn't sleep," one read. "I'm frightened to send my children to an English academy," read another. "Foreign language institutes must do some soul-searching," said a user giving their name as Han Seon-yeong. "We must quickly deport all those low-quality foreign English teachers who try to pick up girls near Hongik University or Apgujeong." 

The extreme nature of some of the attacks has led to concerns for the safety of foreign residents in Korea. "After watching the broadcast, I began to look differently at the native English speaker who teaches in the elementary school where I work and the Korean English teacher who works in the same classroom," a user giving her name as Yun Eun-hwa said.

This time, when MBC does another hit piece, according to Busan Haps, "The video has spawned thousands of comments, overwhelmingly negative, against the broadcaster, with thousands of views and over 600 video shares in a matter of hours."

Comparing the release of photos from 2005's "Playboy Party," which inspired the Anti-English Spectrum, and for example, the appearance of the "See These Rocks" video, which got a week or so of coverage, maximum, and then kind of faded from memory as After School released a new video or something... things are getting a LOT better. Let's remember that, and be willing to mention that when we talk with people about this video.

When the awful awful Suwon rape/murder/dismemberment story was in the news, we got "Half of Foreigners Still Not Fingerprinted" (Chosun), but we also got "Don't Paint All Foreign Workers With Same Brush"

That said... a video like this is still bad, and wrong, and DOES merit a response, every time, until MBC and other outlets figure out that "Korea doesn't roll that way anymore."

Interestingly, a quick scan of headlines shows that the Chosun (the conservative paper) is more likely to  race-bait than the Hankyoreh, the most influential progressive paper.

Oh... and Scroozle mentions the 2018 Olympics, as in "Korea's on the global stage now... this kind of thing won't wash anymore" ... sorry to say it, but the 1988 Olympics were awarded to Seoul barely more than a year after Chun Doo-hwan had massacred hundreds and maybe thousands of democracy protesters in Gwangju, and a mere two years after Tiannanmen Square, the head of the IOC was encouraging China to put in a bid for the 2000 Olympic games that went to Sydney. As blind eyes go, the IOC clearly knows where their bread is buttered, and will cheerfully turn a blind eye to this, and secretly high-five each-other if this is the worst thing they have to ignore in the build-up to Pyeongchang 2018.

2. Let's not forget foreign men are not the only victim of this video...

Along with the old "Korea throwing Foreigners under the bus" thing, let's not forget, and let's be quite loud in voicing the other major problem with this video: the way it treats Korean women as if they are idiots with no self-agency, ripe and passive victims to the blue-eyed voodoo of white males. 

Because this video is just as much about women being easily duped and victimized, as it is about foreign men, and the idea that Korean women are helpless, faced with foreign men, is insulting to the intelligence and freedom of Korean women. It also has hints of possessiveness -- "they're OUR women..." which is also insulting and degrading to Korea's smart, dynamic, diverse, well-educated and self-determining females.

3. The ideal response (to this video)

There's a facebook group that appeared really suddenly, and has amassed over 4500 members as of this writing. They are talking about different ways foreigners could respond to this video. There aren't enough of us to make a boycott matter. E-visa holders run the risk of deportation if they protest something openly. Crashing MBC's website won't do much good in the long run.

So what IS needed?

Well, to begin with, it'd be awesome if there were a civic group in Korea, composed of expats and migrants, who basically acted as a watchdog for stuff like this. An anti-defamation league of language-savvy expats keeping an eye on media in general, publicizing cases, and making sure that racism in Korean media doesn't pass unchecked. But that doesn't exist yet.

I think the most powerful response to a video like this would be another video. A video that reminds MBC of the impact of spreading hateful messages. A video of long-term expats who speak Korean. Or who have families: multicultural families with kids who are Korean citizens, who attend Korean schools, who speak Korean, who have Korean grandmothers and grandfathers who adore them. Speaking to a MBC, and the rest, in Korean, saying, "Don't tell Koreans my father has HIV. Don't tell Koreans my mother is probably a criminal. Don't tell Koreans my wife is a victim. I CHOSE to marry my foreign wife. I CHOSE to marry my foreign husband, because we love each other. Pretending foreigners are all criminals hurts Korean families. It hurts your kid's teacher. It hurts the fathers and mothers of Korea's next generation. It teaches children to hate people, and hate hurts Korea."

Cue slideshow of cute biracial kids playing with their fathers, mothers, and grandparents.

It wouldn't take that much to put together such a video: the cooperation of a handful of multicultural families, a photo editor, a video editor, and someone who's bilingual and has a nice narrator's voice. That's it. If you're interested in being one of those people, e-mail me.

3.1 The ideal long-term response

The long-term response has to be two-pronged, because there are two main ways Koreans decide what they think about foreigners: the foreigners they hear about from politicians or TV shows (the macro level), and the foreigners they meet (the micro level).

I've written about expat marching orders before, btw.

3.1.1 At the macro-level (policy, laws, and media representations), here's what we need:

A. A group of expats, migrants and sympathetic Koreans who...

B. form an "anti-defamation league" or something like it, that... 

C. watches, and responds, to things like this. Every time. And... 

D. sends out press releases and communications in Korean,...

E. builds ongoing connections and relationships with the bureaucrats and politicians making policy choices about Korea's expat populations...

E. informs the expat community (in their languages) about what's going on, and...

F. perhaps also stages events or...

G. produces materials (classroom lessons, instructional videos, awareness PSAs) that...

H. raise awareness that expats in Korea have a voice, and are stakeholders in Korea, too.

It would be good if some members or allies of this group were long-term, well-connected expats. People who have published books about Korea, or who have sat across from government ministers or top policy makers to talk about these things.

If there were enough, nobody would have to carry the main part of the work load. And when the group is starting out, it wouldn't have to perform ALL those tasks: some would be for a future time when the group is better established. 

It would be good if this group were connected with the embassies of the various countries that send expats and migrants to Korea.

It is CRUCIAL that this group comprise members from EVERY country that sends a lot of expats to Korea. Canada, USA, UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand? Yeah sure. Also Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, China, Russia, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines. First world expats often forget our migrant/expat status makes gives us more in common with citizens of these other countries than we realize. Our voices are stronger if we're unified.

These kinds of organizations and movements will probably have to be organized and powered by long-term Korea residents: people with families here, for whom it's WORTH fighting the good fight. People with the language skill to complain in the language of the land, so it gets heard. Short-term residents will, I'm sure, be welcome to lend their energy to this kind of cause, but the stability needed to build the kinds of relationships that will lead to an expat anti-defamation league having a legitimate voice will be provided by long-termers.

3.1.2 At the micro level:

There have been other times I've written long lists of things that are good to do, or things that are bad to do, and ways to avoid alienating potential Korean friends (who are also potential allies). 

So have others. (best one by Paul Ajosshi: "Don't be a wanker")

Also: a quick reminder, especially for non-Asian males: NEVER talk about Korean women to a journalist. They won't necessarily identify themselves as a journalist, if crap as shady as this video gets made (it looks like they were holding the camera at their side, perhaps pretending it wasn't on, when interviewing a few of these people), so watch for hidden cameras and intrusive questions, and remember: in Korea, it's OK to do all kinds of fun stuff, as long as you don't talk about it.

So for now, I'll encourage you to check links, and just say again, that we're all ambassadors, wherever we go. For our home countries, and for the idea of multiculturalism and change in Korea in general. Just, kinda, remember that, maybe?

4. Who are our allies?

We have tons of potential allies, and the sooner we can get organized enough to start reaching out to these different groups, the better off it will be for us.

Among our potential allies:

Parents of english students.

Hogwan owners.

Members of the conservative party who are advocating for multiculturalism and globalization - multiculturalism policy is part of LMB's big plan for "Korea Branding."

Non-first-world expats and migrants living in Korea

The progressives who are arguing the social welfare and social support side of the multiculturalism issue, in terms of marriage migrants.

The ministry of gender equality and family (both on the scapegoating Korean women side, and the multicultural families side)

Chambers of Commerce from countries trying to run or establish foreign owned companies in Korea, or trying to employ foreign experts and professionals in Korea

The Canadian, American, South African, Australian, New Zealand, British, Irish, Indonesian, Philippine, Thai, Cambodian, Chinese, and Vietnamese embassies (all countries that send expats to Korea, and have to deal with expats who end up in bad situations because of racist acts or laws)

The National Human Rights Commission of Korea.

And more, I'm sure.

In closing

My views on Korea's expat community have changed over the years. I'm not as optimistic as I was before I joined ATEK, and before ATEK crapped the bed. 

We're a fractious and diffuse community, in a lot of ways, and too many of us are transient. I've written about expat community here, and here: I stand by most of my points in these two community self-assessment-ish posts.  The first one.  The second one.

But it doesn't take THAT many people to form an anti-defamation league, if the right skills (language, writing) are present. And if such a group turned out to have the moral support of tens of thousands of first and second-world migrant workers... that'd be a pretty powerful thing. And a useful thing. And a thing Korea needs, if Korea is to continue down the same road towards being an increasingly diverse society.

Korea's New Adoption Law Is Horrible (one part of it, anyway)

[Update: I'm not adding too much more to this post, because somebody much more knowledgeable about Korea's overseas adoption situation than myself has agreed to write a guest-post with more information.]

Step one:
The Korean adoption issue is a tough one, that involves fundamental identity questions for a lot of people. There's a huge number of people who, before they were old enough to make decisions of their own (though some were old enough to remember Korea), were sent overseas to be raised by an adoptive family. Their experiences with their adoptive families vary greatly, their experiences trying to figure out their position in/among/regarding Korea vary greatly. The official Korean narrative of overseas adoption is one of guilt and shame: while he was president, Kim Dae-jung apologized to overseas adoptees in 1998. For various reasons, Korea continues to send kids overseas for adoption. This, obviously, causes a whole mix of feelings, especially for the adoptees whose experiences of adoption, or exploring the Korean part of their identity, has been one filled with hurt or confusion. I won't deny any of that, and I welcome comments and views from overseas adoptees who read this blog. I also invite links to the websites, articles, blogs, and communities where overseas adoptees find community and understanding.

Now that we're clear on that... Step 2: the post:

I'm disappointed to see South Korean policy makers taking the wrong cues from the USA, in terms of the way it treats women. The Korea Herald reports on a new adoption law that has stirred up some controversy. How do laws like these keep getting passed without public discussion beforehand? 


[Update:I am informed that this idea was developed by a coalition of unwed mothers and adoptee groups.]

Choi Young-hee (we’ve met her before on the k-blogs) has suggested that women who want to give their children up for adoption be forced to keep the baby for a week before giving them up, meanwhile undergoing mandatory counseling about childcare options within Korea, and the types of support available for parents in Korea. It also requires agencies to search for a domestic adoptive family before looking overseas, and requires more rigorous documentation and background checking before approving an adoption.

[Update, thanks to Shannon, a reader:] The thinking behind parts of the law -- in particular cleaning up the shady part of the adoption "industry," pleading for more support for unwed mothers in Korea, and requiring birth registrations so that legally shady adoptions (tantamount to baby-trafficking) stop, are well and good. I am vigorously opposed to the "seven days" part of the law, for a number of reasons.

Number one: Until I see scientific proof Korean women can reproduce asexually, I’m pretty sure it takes two people to make a baby. Not one. Let’s not be stupid... or sexist... which is what this law is, if only the mothers need to undergo counseling. Daddy’s just as responsible for that little bundle of “what’re we gonna do about this” as mommy, and it’s unfair to write laws that only hold mommy responsible, because she’s the one who carries it to term.

Number two: it assumes that the mother is the one choosing to give the baby up for adoption. We all know this is not always the case. The babydaddy, or either pair of grandparents-to-be might be the ones forcing the mother’s hand, even though she might well want to keep the baby. The article also mentions that the decision to adopt his usually been made before birth. Why compound the alone, isolated feeling some single mothers already have, by forcing them to spend a week with a baby they’ve already decided they can’t keep or raise? And if a single mom gets bullied or guilt-tripped into keeping a baby she’s unable to properly care for, and her family disowns her because of the imagined shame, or gets stuck in poverty because there's not enough social support for her to finish high school or college while providing for a baby... who’s to blame for that? Most of all, why not move the counseling to a time before the decision has already been made?

Number three: if part of the motivation for this is the old birthrate thing (to be fair, the article doesn’t explicitly say it is... but when discussing thousands of babies sent away from Korea, the low birthrate usually isn't far behind), then file this one away with cracking down on doctors who administer abortions, and turning off the lights in office buildings for “Go home and fuck day” as half-assed solutions that don’t address the actual problem in any way, in order to make it look like policy makers are trying to address the problem, without actually having to address the problem.

And here’s the problem: Korean parents are choosing not to have babies, or to give up the babies they have, because of the imagined cost of raising a child in a hypercompetitive country, and because of such a dearth of social support for parents, that mothers feel like they must choose between having a career and having a family. Abortion, adoption, late marriages, people opting not to marry, the "gold miss" phenomenon (as it pertains to gold misses not having babies): all these things are merely symptomatic of those two overarching problems.

Until these two problems are addressed, everything else is window dressing. Making it harder for women to get an abortion, or making it harder for a woman to give up a baby she’s financially, emotionally, or just all-around not able to raise, again, is like raising the legal speed limit on Tehran-ro and thinking that will fix the traffic gridlock at rush hour in Kangnam. There are solutions to the problem, but they are fundamental, infrastructural, society-wide, not cosmetic and ad-hoc.

Here are some suggestions that might ACTUALLY convince families to have more kids, and keep the kids they have:

•  enough social welfare support for kids in single parent OR two-parent families that people no longer cite cost as a reason for not having a kid. 
• enough open public discussions about single parenthood, and PSA campaigns and the like to encourage support for single parents, that families (not just moms, but the parents of pregnant women, and the next-door-neighbors and sewing-circle and church-group-partners of the moms of pregnant women) don’t see anything wrong with single parent families... or see them as opportunities to display human charity and generosity and community support, rather than ostracism. 
• mandatory subsidized childcare centers in office buildings large enough to host more than a set number of employees. 
• expansion of employment options using irregular and flexible hours that will be more amenable for people balancing work and family, but still well-paid enough to make raising a child economically feasible. 
• stronger laws, with better enforcement, ensuring maternity leave, a job to return to, and non-discriminatory hiring practices towards single parents  

Number four: take a woman who feels trapped by her situation and society, fill her up with the mad cocktail of hormones that childbirth releases, and trap her for a week with a baby she doesn’t want, and pressure her to keep it with mandatory counseling, and friends, we’re going to have some nightmare case where an unstable mom does something horrific either to herself, or heaven forbid, to her baby, in order to escape the situation that makes her feel trapped.

I mean, for goodness sake, is it that difficult to do this counseling BEFORE the baby's born - perhaps in the second trimester, when morning sickness has faded, and before the baby bump gets big enough to hinder mobility, so the mother-to-be can undergo the counseling without having to deal with the mindfuck cocktail of childbirth hormones? Can we also make it mandatory for both parents (if the pregnancy came from consensual sex) and all four grandparents (who will probably be involved in raising the kid)? I'd be a little more OK with that. In fact, I'd be VERY OK opt-in family counseling made available for ALL pregnant women.

But singling out a new mother for forced counseling? Forcing her to do this is inhumane, and a recipe for disaster. Singling women out for this possibly humiliating, distressing, seven-day treatment can be read as slut-shaming at a policy level, and it strikes me as needing to go back to the drawing board. Should we do something about overseas adoption being the go-to option for mothers with unwanted pregnancies, and qualms about abortion? Sure.

But I think we can come up with something better than this. Perhaps (and get ready for this... your mind is about to be blown...) we could ask women who abort, who adopt, and who delay marriage and pregnancy why they feel like they can't keep their babies, and then form policy in consultation with the lot of them?