Having a new baby will do that. Other than seeing a kid dressed up as a cow, and, during a trip around town, seeing about 4000 young people dressed as K-pop stars (though that might have just been their ordinary daily dress), I celebrated Halloween at home with my family.
Babyseyo and I dressed up as each other.
My babyseyo mask didn't fit all that well, and babyseyo had trouble drinking from a bottle through the Roboseyo mask, so he didn't wear it for very long. But still...
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.
I took these cute pictures of a couple kissing on one of the Cheonggyecheon bridges, while I was out with my buddy taking video of the Christmas lights last week. It took some color altering to actually see the couple, but I still think they're nice photos.
The Sunday before Christmas, Wifeoseyo and I went down to the Express Bus Terminal Station, where lines 3, 7, and 9 meet.
Most of the year, in this underground area, there are tons and tons of live plants you can buy, which is great. However, during Christmas, the underground shopping center that's below the street at the south end of Gosok (Express Bus Terminal) station, near the entrance to Shinsegye Department Store.
Wifeoseyo and I went down there, and we found everything from lovely to tacky (mostly the latter) and a huge variety of things. We found scented candles that smelled like pine and apple/cinammon. We found a christmas tree and strings of lights and wreaths and garlands. We got some christmas tree ornaments and pipe cleaner snowflakes to hang on the walls. In general, what you find at the bus terminal shopping center is a little less... um... K-mart... than what you find in Namdaemun.
And readers, it wasn't a whole heck of a lot, but it made the house look a little like Christmas. And that was important to us this year. And the scented candles even made it smell like Christmas this year, and that was nice, too.
And for your benefit, here are the two places I've found Christmas Decorations in Seoul. If you know of another one, let me know, and send me a location on google maps, and I'll totally add it.
"I'll be seeing my dad,
my brother and sisters, my gran and my mum
they'll be drinking white wine in the sun" full (lovely) lyrics: well-written and full of humor, assonance, internal rhyme, and poetry. Critical of organized religion... but gets right to the heart of why you don't have to be religious to love Christmas.
White Wine in the Sun, by Tim Minchin
And I'll say, writing songs that pretty is the only way I can forgive his teased, mad-scientist/electroshock mullet.I think this song is an eloquent defense of an atheist's Christmas: not everybody subscribes to the various religions that have their eight crazy nights, etc., at the time of the Midwinter Festival (worst name I've heard so far), but this song is a lovely affirmation of the one thing shared by almost all the different holiday season celebrations: getting together with the family.
Now, coming from a religious family, the sacred part of Christmas is important to me: while I think "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" bumper stickers are tacky, and A Charlie Brown Christmas is preachy, it was still important for me to catch the Christmas Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral with Wifeoseyo, to hear their choir sing a bit of Handel's Messiah, and to stand outside, and check out the nativity scene in the bitter cold. No pictures, because it was literally too cold for my camera to work, but the Nativity outside Myeongdong Cathedral doesn't put the baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas morning.
Folks, Korea's my home... but the time it feels least like home is during Christmas, when I'm far away from my family, and when Christmas is celebrated very differently.
Now, I recognize, as Bobster stated in the comments last time I bellyached about this, that I don't really have much right to complain, when I'm choosing to be here, and I don't really have a say in how Korea does Christmas... I've written before about the fact nobody owns a culture, and will expand on that soon, in response to a few comments I've had recently: Koreans are in the wrong to complain about Japanese Kimuchi or a Turkish family owning a Korean restaurant in Edmonton that makes more money than the Korean-owned one, but when the shoe's on the other foot, and Korean Christmas is about couples and ice cream cake instead of families and turkey, we are also wrong to get in a snit.
That's because there's the emotional issue of not feeling at home in this kind of christmas, and the logical issue of recognizing that it's not really my place to tell Korea how to celebrate Christmas. But as homesickness goes, it's OK when the emotional issue doesn't jibe with the logical conclusion, because this is my Christmas, darnit! So yeah, that's how I feel... and I'm glad people close to me understand and care how I feel, but I wouldn't write a letter to City Hall or the Chosun Ilbo telling all of Korea "You're doin' it wrong!" and if I did, I'd ripely deserve the middle finger and the "Yankee go home" I'd get in reply.
I raised this point because: for Christmas to feel like Christmas to me, I have to be more intentional than I had to back in Canada, because the elements that make me feel Christmassy are not the same elements that are emphasized in Korea's Christmas celebration. In Canada, people get eggnog foisted upon them so often we're happy it'll be a year before we have to smell it again... but here in Korea, you have to head down to Itaewon to that place selling illegal goods smuggled off the army base just to taste it. Same for turkey stuffing. Meanwhile, silly hats and ice cream cakes and "Last Christmas" by Wham! and all its remakes are practically clogging the air and making it hard to walk in a straight line.
So here are the things that make ME feel like Christmas:
1. The sacred Christmas carols (The First Noel, Silent Night, Hark The Herald, O Come Immanuel, Joy to the World, for starters)
2. Handel's Messiah
3. Something religious - church, a carol sing, something.
4. Turkey Dinner. With STUFFING.
5. (new addition:) Spiced Wine
6. Being around my favorite people, preferably in groups.
7. Phoning the family that's not immediately nearby
8. A Christmas Tree
9. Flashing Christmas lights
10. Presents
11. It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (cartoon)
12. Candles
And I've been working hard to try and check as many of those boxes as I could during this holiday seasons. I'm happy to say I did. No, I didn't have a huge Christmas dinner party like I did last year with my nemesis Dan Gray, but Wifeoseyo was wonderfully supportive this year in seeing to it that we touched on as many of those elements as we could, which was nice, seeing as we have to forge out a Christmas tradition of our own, now that we're married. It was a fine first Christmas together.
I'll write a few posts this week about the varying degrees of success I had tracking down each of these things.
3. If you really want to make Christmas mean something for somebody, you need to learn about Kiva.org... maybe you've heard about microfinance before -- mini-loans for people who need just a little kick to get themselves going. Kiva is a place where you can choose who you sponsor, you can loan small increments toward the goals people need, and you can take the money that gets paid back once the loans are paid back, and put it back into the microfinance system, and sponsor someone else.
I went to Gwanghwamun, City Hall, Lotte Department Store, and Shinsegye Department Store, and took some film of the Christmas lights on display there.
Unfortunately, the new video camera stores photos in a format that is incompatible with iPhoto. Yep. That's what I said. Good ol' Mr. Steve Jobs has created some of the best video and photo editing, organizing and storing programs out there, that are easy to use and all... and then picked a few arbitrary video and photo formats that won't work with them.
Yeah, I can buy the decoder program... but I'm pretty choked that I have to, especially when it's a flippin' CANON video camera - we're not talking about some obscure company from Whoknowswherezystan. Get with the stinking program, Mr. Jobs.
Anyway, without photos, but WITH video (already bought THAT converter)...I give you Christmas lights, 2010.
Last Christmas, Wifeoseyo and I stopped at a rest stop on our way to Jeollanamdo, and spotted a pair of fellas who Wifeoseyo identified as 1980s popstars, singing in front of a donation bucket, raising money for goodwill.
Yesterday, while walking by the Chunggyecheon in Downtown Seoul, I wandered around and heard somebody playing a Sarah Brightman CD... and then turned around, and saw that it was a lady singing it, right there in front of me.
So I don't know if this lady's one of Korea's professional popera singers or not, but her voice is lovely, and she sings this song effortlessly, and buddy, after stomping around downtown for hours yesterday to take video about the light shows in downtown Seoul... it was a welcome reprieve from the clanging bells.
Listen. Enjoy. It was way better live, as it always is. And if you recognize the voice, or the be-shadowed face, let me know who it is in the comments.
I was also with my buddy in almost the same place (you can hear my voice at the end of the clip) to spot a traditional Korean marching band playing "jingle bells". A.We.Some.
say what you want about the song from... the boat movie... Celine Dion got her christmas music right.
Christmas is the time when homesickness cuts deepest, not just for me, but for a lot of expats -- the only way to get across how big a deal Christmas is to North Americans (can't speak for the rest) is to ask your Korean friends to imagine Seollal, Chuseok, and Childrens' Day, all on one day.
Christmas in Korea is different - way different - than back home. I talk about that here (from last year, responding to Brian in JND's response to Korea's "Christmas of Dumb Hats")
Most of my opinions haven't changed much since last year...
[Some say] we have to respect the ways other cultures observe holidays, and if Korea wants to create a commercial monstrosity with stupid hats, that's their prerogative, and the other side [says], "it's all well and good to be a cultural relativist, but it's still jarring and maybe sad to see Christmas observed in a way that is so distant from the warm family holiday we remember from our childhood" (or even from the Christmas we see in movies like A Christmas Story, It's A Wonderful Life, and Love Actually... which is huge in Korea, maybe partly because it reinforces that Christmas is a couple holiday to Koreans.
What I'll say is this: I was never a big fan of commercial Christmas anywhere...but the fact that Christmas is not only mostly divorced from the old religious roots (didn't see a single nativity scene in two nights of walking around, haven't heard more than a few sacred carols on the Christmas music playlists in Korean shops), but ALSO divorced from the Christmas we remember from back home -- as far and away the number one family holiday of the year -- is jarring, and it sharpens the twinge of homesickness, or the sting of culture shock, for most of the month of December, for many of us. I always miss my family more at Christmas, and my students and Korean friends don't get that unless I ask how they'd feel spending Chuseok away from home, in a place where nobody knows what shikke or songpyun is..."
Now, given that the entire Christmas symbology is here, but it's used differently, maybe it's not accurate to ask my Korean friends to imagine Chuseok alone in a place where nobody knows what shikke or songpyun are... maybe a more accurage analogy is to imaging having Chuseok alone in a place where shikke is used exclusively as a mixer for rum drinks, and songpyeon is made of popcorn balls, which people throw at the boy or girl they like, in a holiday courtship ritual.
In previous Christmases, I've come across really cynical or dismissive of Christmas in Korea... but the fact is, every year I try hard to have some kind of Christmassy experience. I seek out friends, and festivals, and do sappy things, and hunt after the foods I eat for Christmas in Canada. This year, it's been particularly poignant, because 1. Wifeoseyo only gets the weekend off - nothing extra - and 2. it's my first Christmas with wifeoseyo, so I DO have family in Korea... (but Christmas will still always be an afterthought to most of them).
but on Saturday we went down to Goseok Terminal (subway lines 3, 6 and 9, if I remember correctly), where there are scads of Christmas decoration shops, and bought some candles, and shiny things, and hanging things, and a cute little tree. So the house looks like Christmas now. At least a little.
And we also got some ingredients, and I made my first Gluhwein today, as I experiment with it this week, to try and offer up something good for some friends this weekend.
Initial result: I'm gonna score it a 5/10. Hopefully I can get this going before friends come over.
I'll post more of the results from my gluhwein experiments over the course of the week.
So I just read about the Band Aid recording of "Do They Know it's Christmas" and watched the video..
it was all recorded in one night, and you're free to your opinion on the song (I'm not wild about it) but...
1. so much feathered hair
2. so many famous singers without stage makeup, in a badly lit studio
3. a fun game of spot the '80s star (looking awful)
4. a fun game of "do you remember who that is?" - exacerbated by the fact many of these singers aren't there intheir usual band costumes, or with their bandmates.
so...
Do They Know it's Christmas?
more of my rantings on Christmas music, with links to the rest of my christmas rantings, here.
and if there were a new "Band Aid" recording, organized by Oprah Winfrey (who else would have the pull to get ANY band involved), who would be in YOUR starting lineup?
I've been getting tons of invitations to Halloween parties on facebook and by e-mail...
turns out having a widely read blog means people want me to pass on word about Halloween parties.
So if you're part of the 50% of my readers in Korea, or if you're one of the 50% of my readers outside Korea, but you're planning on visiting Korea next weekend, here's what I've got:
Wolfhound Pub in Itaewon promises to give me a free beer, and maybe even a beef and mushroom pie (my favorite) if I tell you about their Halloween party. It's a 10 000 won cover, and big prizes.
So, I'm sure it's going to the the best of all the parties. I'm sure of it. And you should totally go! Here's the party facebook page.
Hi Expat has a pretty good rundown of Halloween parties here, which you should look through. Dillinger's, Sky Bar Lounge, Stompers, and many more are featured on the list.
Freebird sent me an interesting sounding party invitation: they're going to set up a bunch of bands around the edge of the room, and then each band will take turns playing one song each, trading off songs, so that there's a constant flow of music, and the party space has no front row: you can just hang wherever you like. 15000 cover, and the facebook event (including some of the bands playing) are here.
Korea's new to the Halloween game, so it's still a little hard to find a good costume shop; however, so far I haven't been let down by Namdaemun market: go to Hoehyeon Station, and head down to the main stretch, and towards the west end of the market. See map.
Well, not really: there are tons of great things about Chuseok:
The mountain I'm going to climb later today, the food, the finally-cooling-down weather, the food, the good times (especially if you've been invited to a Korean family's chuseok gathering), and the food... but one little joy that I haven't mentioned yet is...
One of the charms of Korean holiday culture is the gift giving culture: for a while I thought it was dumb, or lame, or stupid, that Koreans give each other toothpaste, spam, and olive oil sets for chusok, but now I just think it's goofy and funny.
Now, the spam might well hearken back to Korea's post-war poverty, a time when the US Military saw to it there was lots of military issue spam in the country, but it was mostly a luxury item for impoverished Koreans. Some foods, for example budaejigae, came out of that period, and are frankly, some of Korea's best down home lunches, regardless of whether Korean food promotion is proud or ashamed of that period of post-war poverty. I'll take a good old homey budaejigae over a pretentious boutique cafe lunch any day.
One year, my boss gave every foreign staff member (and every foreign Korean staff member) huge boxes of spam. None of us knew what to do with it: none of us used spam in our cooking, none of us particularly liked spam. We had to sign our spam sets out with the front desk; some of us never claimed one, and a few of us left them in the staff room for months before getting rid of them. We mostly re-gifted them, and we kept one around, to set it up beside our computer monitor, so that it blocked the glare on the computer monitor between 10 and 11 am, when the sun shone in the window. Were we being passive-aggressive? Perhaps... but for seollal, our bosses gave us bottles of wine instead, which we actually used. Another boss gave cash. That was the best, and if any of my readers are Koreans, thinking of gifts for your foreign friends, cash or gift certificates are probably the perfunctory gifts we'll appreciate most.
The interesting thing, to me, is how in my anecdotal experience, it's so totally acceptable to give out a basically thoughtless gift here. I asked Wifeoseyo and she said the same: It's just the giving of the gift that matters. Everybody knows it's perfunctory gift anyway, and there seems to be an unspoken agreement to just be OK with that. When I give a gift to Wifeoseyo, I want to think about her style, her taste, what she needs, what she expects, and what will make her feel happy: I spend a lot of time thinking about possible gifts, and even writing down in my pocketbook ideas that would make her happy, come gift-giving time. Making scrapbooks, remembering old conversations, stuff like that.
I talked to an older lady (and yeah, this is generational), and she said, point blank, that she'd rather her husband just gave her cash for her birthday, so she could get what she wanted. Weddings are the same: people give envelopes of cash on wedding days, and used to give cash to teachers as well - the white envelope culture works here, and again, wedding couples generally just agree to be OK with the way wedding halls sometimes even have a cash machine in the lobby, so that you don't even have to plan at all - just show up at the wedding hall with a bank card.
Do people in North America give thoughtless, perfunctory gifts? Sure. Ever got a box of chocolates for valentines day? My Dad is a pastor, and pastors get a lot of perfunctory boxes of chocolate and christmas cake and pastries, come Christmas. Back home, people give thoughtless gifts too. Here, it seems like people don't even try.
So... do the Koreans you know feel embarrassed at all about giving cash, or olive oil, or toothpaste, to even close relatives, or is everybody still openly OK with it (even if they quietly bring it home and go "what the HELL am I going to do with twelve kilograms of spam?")
And what have you observed the younger generation do on gift-obligatory times? Are young people also scooping up boxes of spam? Have the types of perfunctory gift changed, though the gifting culture hasn't, or are things totally different now? Is re-gifting OK, so long as it's done discreetly, the way we replace the cards on Christmas cake and pass it along, back home?
Not a lot of people know a whole lot more about Ireland than U2, sheep, Guinness, and all the symbols and images associated with St. Patrick's day. That's not a whole lot, really... and if you trot out those stereotypes as all you know, you'll get the verbal smackdown from your Irish friend just as quickly as if you make another f*#&ing 51st State/Exchange Rate joke to a Canadian. So yeah, it's unacceptable to wallow in ignorance about this awesome country, and unique culture, but the fact remains: a lot of people don't know all that much about Ireland.
But then, let's look again:
Yeah, the world doesn't know that much about Ireland... but what they DO know about Ireland is pretty darn positive. Cute Leprechauns, Guinness beer, four-leaf clovers, and a holiday that, while not observed in Ireland itself, has been popularized expressly as an excuse to have another day of the year to get smashed. And as Halloween has demonstrated, any excuse to get drunk will do. Who doesn't smile when the person they just met tells them they're Irish? Nobody, that's who, because everybody's had a great time at a St. Pafter's day party sometime in their life. Unless you've got a rugby or a football (that's soccer) rivalry somewhere in the background, that's most of what a lot of people know about Ireland. Not a bad start, frankly. Even I find myself predisposed to liking the Irish I meet because of those associations.
Along with that, St. Patrick's day means that, to be honest, I know a swack more about Ireland than I know about the Czech Republic, because there's no day when everybody dresses in blue and yellow and drinks pilsners. There are a whole ton of countries about which I know less than I know about Ireland, thanks to that silly drunk holiday which isn't even observed as a party day in Ireland (it was the Irish-Americans/Americans who really picked up on St. Patrick's day and started getting smashed - [fact check update] in Ireland, St Patrick's day is a week long religious holiday, where getting smashed might be part of the festivities; that's different from in Canada, where it's just a one-night drink-off.)
And here's what Korea can learn from this: with all that stress and anxiety about becoming better known around the world, here's all they really have to do: get the millions of Koreans living overseas to ...
1. Pick a random Korean holiday. I recommend Hangeul Day... but call it Sejong Day because that's easier to pronounce.
2. Dress all in red.
3. Invite Non-Koreans to the party. As many as you can, and make them part of the fun.
4. Everybody get royally smashed.
I recommend making it a mixer drinking party, as a tribute to soju -- soju might be hard to get around the world, but there are lots of other alcohols that are as fun as soju to mix with other drinks -- everybody dresses in red (this gives the party a recognizable visual identity, just as the drink-mixing theme helps people remember what to do) and it's only natural for it to turn into a bar crawl, because Koreans always hit up two or three places on their epic drinking binges. If at all possible, the party should end at a karaoke bar of some kind, another nod to Korean drinking culture, but that's by no means necessary.
And seriously, if Koreans abroad invited all their non-Korean friends to the party, and acted un-clannish for one night, so that everybody could join the fun, how long would it take for this to catch on? Exactly as long as it took for American frat-boys to go "HEY! ANOTHER DRINKING HOLIDAY SWEET!" and that's it. And within fifteen or twenty years, every university in sight would be dressing up in red, oiling up the karaoke machines, hitting up the barbeque restaurants, and mixing juices and liquors with other things, until the cows came home. It would have none of the pretension of trying to get Hanshik institutes established all around the world (that's never going to work, anyway), it'd make learning about Korea fun, there WOULD be an origin story -- people could learn about Hangul and Sejong, which in my opinion is the highest achievement of Korean culture -- but that would by no means kill the joy-buzz of having another night of the year when everybody gets happily sloshed.
So all my Kyopo readers, and Korean friends abroad: this is all you have to do to make Korea more famous worldwide, to make people like Koreans abroad, to lash some positive associations onto the Korean diaspora. Start planning your parties on Sejong Day, bring along as many non-Koreans as you can, and wait for the magic to spread. And dress in red.
So... my nemesis Dan Gray of Seoul Eats and I got together and planned a nemesis-themed Christmas party. It was great.
We got turkey from the army base near Itaewon.
There was way too much food for the size of the group (as Christmas dinners should be), so I got to take home a pumpkin pie. The world is a wonderful, wonderful place.
Joy was there with a hat she got from one of those places (Baskin Robbins, Paris Baguette, and I forget which others) that always have a dumb awesome hat contest.
Chris in SK was there, with his hilarious girlfriend, as were a bunch of Dan Grey's friends from the Seoul Eats meetups, and Kelly NameChangedForPrivacy made an appearance as well, as did an old coworker whom it was great to see.
Then, Girlfriendoseyo and I hopped in a car and started driving: we were heading down to Boseong, for the Tea Fields there, where every Christmas they string the tree plants up and put on a light show. We drove all day, stopping for an early dinner in Jeonju, home of the world's best bibimbap, where they threw more food at us than we could comprehend, and had the best yukhoe (raw, minced beef - traditionally not a favorite of mine, but I'll make exceptions) I've eaten in a long, long time.
The lights were nice. Strangely, the closer we got to the lights, the nicer they looked, and the were definitely the prettiest when we were right out there, walking around in the middle of the field.
Thanks to a botched reservation, courtesy of Roboseyo the dumb, whose Korean (lack of) skill still leads to the occasional snafu, and sometimes makes him feel like a noob, we got stuck out in Boseong with, literally (she checked) not a single room for hire within a forty kilometer drive. We drove to Suncheon, where there was one hotel room open in the entire town, and that thanks only to a cancellation (this is what happens when you travel inside Korea on holidays... especially on years when all the red letter days fall on Saturdays and Sundays)
(Here's a video of the lovely lights of Boseong, and Suncheon bay. Keep reading for more on Suncheon.)
But we found a place to crash. And you know how food tastes way better when you're starving, and there's a chance you won't eat the next day? Well dear readers, when you're worried that you'll have to spend the night in a skeezy 24 hour jimjilbang near Suncheon Bus Terminal, or crammed into reclined bucket seats in the car, waking up once an hour to run the engine and warm up the car... then even a simple room in a business hotel seems like a luxury suite. Oh, yes it does. And yeah. The irony was not lost on me, that we were driving around Jeollanamdo, and there was no room at the inns, on CHRISTMAS night. I'm also sad to report that we didn't see any shepherds, and no angels appeared.
On Saturday morning (the 26th), we woke up early enough to check the weather reports: it called for snow on Sunday, so we decided to drive as far as we could on Saturday, rather than do the lion's share of the driving in bad weather. Thanks to some sweet sleuthing, some good luck, and another cancellation, Girlfriendoseyo once again found us a place, one town over from Boryeong, and this one was pretty sweet. It was a beach condo, and it was an amazing, gorgeous place to say... except that whole below freezing thing. (it was cold and windy. Pretty, but bad beach weather).
However, before we headed out, we got a chance to meet up in Suncheon with Brian in Jeollanam-do, in Jeollanam-do. We had a nice hanjeongshik meal with Brian and his fiance, who's just wonderful, and I'm happy to report that Brian's a wonderful guy, and the in-Jeollanamdo's, as a couple, are adorable. Girlfriendoseyo liked them the first time she met them, last Christmas, and this year again, we had a grand old time. We'll look forward to the next opportunity to hang out with them.
After lunch, Girlfriendoseyo and I headed out to Suncheon Bay, which Girlfriendoseyo told me is spectacularly beautiful.
I concur.
It was crowded, crowded crowded (cf: famous places in Korea, Korean holidays)
And this poor girl was there. She'd dressed appropriately... give or take twenty degrees celsius.
I nearly froze my camera and my fingers taking pictures at first (it was beautiful bobbing in the breeze... but cold), and then, climbing the hill to the Suncheon Bay observatory, I was sweating in my winter gear....
but the photos were worth it. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, worth it.
2. On Ugly English Teachers and Racist Journalists Choi Hui-seon wrote her four part hit-piece on English teachers just as I was leaving for my summer vacation, so instead of reporting with the freshness, this five-part series tried to pull together a few themes going around on discussion boards, while taking a look at the Expat/English teacher community as it stands today, and the gap between what we expect and what we get from Korea, and the gap between what Korea expects and what it gets from us.
3. Tony Hellmann, ATEK forming, and The Wagner Report Blogging The Wagner Report was one of the most time-consuming single-posts of the year for me, but trying to shed some light on the content of Benjamin Wagner's complaint to the NHRCK, and trying to find a middle ground concerning the misunderstandings and bad blood stirred up between E and F series visas was hella stressful, but necessary. The formation of ATEK, and then AFEK, were both positive steps toward a more connected, and truly viable expat community in Korea. Unfortunately, Tony Hellmann - the subject of my first bold statement on the topic - found himself a target of some attacks, but hopefully everyone involved has learned a thing or two about what is and what isn't OK to do when you disagree with someone.
4. Travel Twofer: Morning Calm Garden and Kyoto My two favorite travel destinations this year were Morning Calm Garden and Kyoto... Morning Calm Garden because sweet mercy, that place is beautiful, and the photos practically took themselves, and Kyoto because, though I didn't announce it on blogoseyo, it's where I proposed to Girlfriendoseyo. Plus, she totally said yes! And later that night, we totally French-kissed, too. Sweet! Other trips this year included Andong, Hanoi, Gyeongju, Canada (more Canada) along with day trips to Paju, Yangpyeong, Jaraseom, Yongin,
6. Freedom of Speech and what NOT to Joke about in Korea I fired this post off after a really interesting discussion class. The way Korean freedom of speech laws work is way different than it is in North America. It demonstrates a very different view of public and private discourse: to oversimplify, let's say harmony ranks much higher on the cultural value list here than it does back in Canada, and possibly even higher than truth.
Radiohead: Four Minute Warning
7. Pro-Gamer's Tournament Almost a year after actually taking the photos, I finally ran this write-up about Korea's competitive computer gameing tournament: online gaming is a fascinating cutural phenomenon in Korea, and worth a closer look.
8. The Korea Times Crashes and Burns, and other Media Hijinks (Yonhap, Kang Shin-who, Choi Yong-hee) While Brian in Jeollanamdo and Popular Gusts had the most extensive (PG) and timely (Brian) coverage, Seeing Kang Shin-who cover English teachers was like watching a car crash in slow motion, and watching him run the Korea Times' credibility into the ground as he went was sad for one of Koreas's few English reporting sources. At this point, between the continuous embarrassment of the comment boards, the increasing number of simply asinine articles, refusals to print corrections, retractions or apologies, and expressions of straight defiance and contempt for its critics, rather than an attempt in good faith to improve, has me in a position now where I have to encourage readers to read the Korea Herald instead: at least they're actually trying to give expats a voice, rather than treating us with contempt. If you're going to get a subscription, I highly recommend the IHT/Joongang mashup: International Herald-Tribune (of the New York Times) and the Joongang Daily. Oh, yeah: let's not forget the Alien Graveyard (good lord I wish I'd bought a paper copy of that issue). It's pretty sad when a paper goes from being linked regularly at The Marmot's Hole, to being linked regularly by Dokdo Is Ours and Koreangov, in the space of a single year. (Yonhap News and Chosun Ilbo were other subjects of roboseyo media criticism)
Here's a look back at the year of K-Blogging: (and of course, let's punctuate it with music that made me happy this year)
Band of Horses: The Funeral
Matt at The Korea Herald asked me to do a top ten expat stories of 2009, which you can read here. It got me thinking, first of all because lists are fun, and second of all, because I like to take a look back at things in December, so I'm going to give you 2009 in countdown form. I wrote a personal reflection list that you can read here... though I work hard on these personal reflection posts, they're usually the ones that get the fewest reads. Oh well. If the seven people I love the most are the only seven who read it, that's OK with me, really. All the rest is just icing:
The top ten K-Blog Stories of 2009 - the most significant, or talked-about topics on the 2009 K-blogosphere
1. The Korea Times - beginning with strife, and ending in a train-wreck. We should have seen it coming with Jon Huer's series of off-base, un-founded, or just generally ridiculous series of columns. Few commentators on Korea have stirred up so many forehead-smacks, or baffled, upset, or angry comment threads. Bloggers wondered why this guy, who seemed to be writing about an imaginary Korea, got a regular column, while their letters to the editor were going unprinted. In the late Summer, Huer called off his column series, apparently tired of all the negative feedback. Meanwhile, Kang Shin-who seemed to be trying to redefine journalism as a means to grind one's axes, and cause strive in the communities about which one wrote: his misquotes and distortions, which came so frequently, and reflected the same prejudices so uniformly as to make them seem intentional, rather than simply a case of carelessness, along with as his seeming hair-trigger readiness to give quotes to the webmaster of a hate-site - the Anti-English Spectrum - gave the impression that he had a hate-on for English teachers, and in response, it has become common knowledge among English teacher bloggers and NET blog-readers not to give interviews to a guy named Kang Shin-who, and generally to avoid the Korea Times altogether, as its reporting has mostly demonstrated contempt for the English teachers in its audience, and its only response to the criticism directed at it was not an apology, or a retraction: it has been a resounding, childish, "Are not, either!"
2. ATEK and AFEK For a few months this spring, discussion about ATEK heated up into a total free-for-all, with heated opinions on both sides. While the legitimacy of ATEK as an organization was much-discussed, the personal lives and characters of a few of the key players also got involved, in a way that moved off the comment boards and not only into real life, but into people's employment and legal situations. Update: AFEK, which started out as a snarky repudiation to ATEK, is developing into a community of F-series visa holders to be watched, and which could be capable of great things, and ATEK now has somewhere around one thousand members (as of January 2010.
3. Ben Wagner and Andrea Vandom Ben Wagner has never been a member of ATEK, though one of ATEK's first public moves was putting its support behind Ben Wagner's complaint to the National Human Rights Commission of Korea. Prof. Wagner's argument that in-country HIV tests violated English teachers' human rights, and actually worked against the proper protection of Korean children, led to Andrea Vandomrefusing to submit her health test results, and a constitutional challenge to the HIV test for English teachers. In June, Ban Ki-moon and other human rights heavyweights called Korea out for its stigma-inducing AIDS testing regulations, and on World Aids Day, 5 other migrant workers' groups also filed complaints to the NHRCK about HIV tests.
4. Benojit Hussain - general wisdom on the K-blogs was to walk away if somebody tried to get into it with you, but Bonojit bucked that advice, and went to the law, leading a Korean judge to award him Korea's first ever civil settlement for a racist attack -- something there isn't even a law for yet. It also caused Korea to take a look in the mirror, as regards racism here, and attracted international media attention, as well as prompting a big discussion on numerous blogs, and a wide variety of opinions on the topic.
6. Jon Huer - some were annoyed at his articles, some were annoyed that The Korea Times would print them, many simply didn't recognize the Korea he described in the regular column Jon Huer wrote for the first half of the year. For whatever reason, and though someone who knew him once assured me he comes across a lot better in person, Jon Huer's articles often just seemed like he was making Korea up as he went along, and rubbed a lot of expats here the wrong way, especially when Mr. Huer applied his "blanket statement" style to expats. His columns ranged from positively ingratiating to harshly critical, even condescending and orientalist, but the one thing most of them shared was a tendency to generalize wildly, often in ways that made his readers wonder what country he was describing, and why he thought it was Korea, and where he got his views, and how long it had been since he'd updated them. (English teachers with backpacks? Seriously? Happy new year: hope you have a good 1995, Mr. Huer.)
7. Swine Flu, Kimchi, and Festival Cancellations - there was the quarantine, there were rumblings of painting swine flu as a foreigners' disease, there were a number of highly entertaining "in Quarantine" blogs, and then, suddenly, finally, there was soap in the dispensers, and people covered their mouths when they coughed and stayed home from work if they felt sick. Well, not that last part, but still: sanitation awareness hit an all-time high this year, and that without a single mention of hazardous materials, downer cows, or spinal fluid. American beef quietly found its way onto Korean market shelves
8. Korean Stars go Global - Boa, Jeon Jihyun, WonderGirls, Rain's abs, and Lee Byung-hyun all tried to make their marks in America, with varying degrees of success. The Wondergirls were the first Korean band to chart on the Billboard top 100, Ninja Assassin got critically panned, but that was because of the Wachowski Brothers' failure to consider story an important part of filmmaking, Blood: The Last Vampire vanished like a dirty secret, without even a courtesy nod from the Kimcheerleaders who rallied behind D-Wars, and not that it's really saying a lot, but Lee Byung Hyun was possibly the best part of the summer craptacle G.I. Joe.. This was fodder for the Kimcheerleaders, of course, and the "Do you know Chee Eye Cho?" questions came fast and furious, while expats weighed the relative merits of the new phase of the "Korean Wave".
9. Rise of the K-Comedy Blogs - This was Dokdo Is Ours' first full year of operation, after starting in the middle of last year, and while comedy blogs (especially ones that frequently update) are hit or miss, some of the high points were memorable. Later in the year, Koreangov hit Twitter in a big way, and finally opened a K-comedy blog of its own, while a few other K-comedy blogs had a few kicks at the can, and faded, and other bloggers managed to crack the K-comedy quicklist simply because the topics were so funny: it may well be that next December, we'll be looking back at 2010 as the year of the rise of the K-boy dating blogs, as a handful of hilarious blogs about hooking up with Korean boys suddenly burst onto the scene this fall. Read more about Korean comedy blogs here.
10. The Marmot Hole Comment Board Implosion - Dongchim once called The Marmot Hole "Dave's For Ajosshis" and as the year wore on, the comment threads there got to be more personal, and less informative. The back-and-forth came to a head in December, when Robert closed comments entirely for a while; we should have seen this coming, with commenters like King Baeksu and Linkd leaving, with the return of Pawikirogi, and, worst of all, with the fact, as the year went on, fewer and fewer fresh voices and new commenters bothered to read, or add, to the comment discussions at what was once far and away the most lively and interesting comment board in the K-blogosphere. Nobody's going to eclipse The Marmot Hole's popularity any time soon, though for relevance, Brian in Jeollanamdo got to most stories sooner than the Marmites did in 2009. Now that moderated commenting is back on at The Marmot's Hole, who knows what the new year holds, but the challenge of maintaining a lively comment forum that doesn't get bogged down in personal attacks or axe grinding remains an elusive happy medium in Kblogland.
Stay tuned for The Top Ten Blogoseyo Moments of 2009... coming soon.
and here's a song called "Dragon's Lair" by Sunset Rubdown, a band starring Spencer Krug, a favorite indie artist of mine, from their album "Dragonslayer" (get it?)
anyway, here's the song. It's long, but I love how it builds.
And I'm not putting this on its own post... but T-Ara did their pop song "Bo-Peep" with a Korean orchestra backing them up, moving awkwardly in an attempt at sexy hanbok, for their new year's day performance. I really don't know what to say.
This song is 2010's first number one song in Korea.
Christmas music... I ranted about it last year, so I don't have much more to add this year, but it's not Christmas to me until I've heard Handel's Messiah. The above is just a brilliant revisioning of the chorus.
And below: the great Christmas song I discovered this year. The Twelve Daze of Christmas, by Fay McKay: in my search for more Christmas music, this is seriously the only "novelty Christmas song" I liked. Sorry, Bob Rivers, but reading the tracklist of your songs pretty much lays out every joke you made on the album. (This is also the problem with The Onion: the articles are just excuses for their admittedly brilliant headlines)
(source)
2. ATEK and AFEK
(English teachers with backpacks? Seriously? Happy new year: hope you have a good 1995, Mr. Huer.)
9. Rise of the K-Comedy Blogs - This was Dokdo Is Ours' first full year of operation, after starting in the middle of last year, and while comedy blogs (especially ones that frequently update) are hit or miss, some of the high points were memorable. Later in the year, Koreangov hit Twitter in a big way, and finally opened a K-comedy blog of its own, while a few other K-comedy blogs had a few kicks at the can, and faded, and other bloggers managed to crack the K-comedy quicklist simply because the topics were so funny: it may well be that next December, we'll be looking back at 2010 as the year of the rise of the K-boy dating blogs, as a handful of hilarious blogs about hooking up with Korean boys suddenly burst onto the scene this fall. Read more about Korean comedy blogs here.
