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.

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.

So why has posting been so sparse, Roboseyo? A SURVEY!

Hi, readers.

This is the first of a handful of surveys I’ll be running for research papers this semester.


If you’ve been wondering why my blog has been light on posting lately, this is part of it.

We’re studying Korean identity and multiculturalism, and looking for responses from people who have Korean ethnic background (a little or a lot), who have lived overseas, who were born overseas, who were adopted overseas… and who then had the experience of returning to Korea.

If that includes you, please do the survey! If it doesn’t, share it, and hang on: there’ll be more coming.

Koreans USE Arirang... but OWN it?: Part Four: China... and UNESCO Looks like Tools Right Now

This is a several-part response to The Korean's post about Korea's ownership of Arirang. The Korean's post was a response to my post in June, stating provocatively that Nobody Owns Arirang.

Part one of this series.

Part two of this series.

Part three of this series.

Some food for thought:
Becoming a Canadian.


Waking up Canadian. It's that easy to become a Canadian. That's what happens when nationality is civic instead of ethnic. Nationality isn't the same as ethnicity OR identity. Nationality's a piece of paper. Identity's a lot more.


These beer commercials are like putting video clips of the 2002 World Cup crowd scenes in a Korean commercial:


But you best not be crossing us canucks:


And, to illustrate the confusion that occurs when one word (Korean) can represent a political body, a culture, or a language, here's some of the confusion that occurs when Jew, the religion, and Jew, the ethnic group, get muddled: Jerry Seinfeld's friend converts to Judaism... and starts telling Jewish jokes, and referring to Jewry as "we."


Sidenote: Questions about China

Before we can be sure China is only trying to co-opt Arirang for the sake of taking over North Korea, Baekdusan, and so forth, here are the questions we need answered:

1. what other cultural heritages of China's many other minority groups has China been registering? Has it been at a similar rate to China's registering of cultural heritages belonging to the Korean Chinese in the Northeast? Faster? Slower?
2. are there landclaim disputes or potential landclaim disputes in any of those other places?
3. are there cultural practices being registered in those other places that belong to people who don't exclusively live in China? (for example, the Hmong in South China and Southeast Asia) and has this action been seen by any of these other groups as attempts to co-opt their culture? Has it been seen by the nations that host populations of any of these other groups as intended toward making claims on their territory?
4. Is China only registering heritage in places where it has, or is suspected of having territorial intentions?

The answers to these questions would take research... and perspective; neither were provided in the least by the coverage of the Arirang registration from Korean news sources, but without answers to these questions, we have no idea what to make of China registering a few local varieties of the Arirang.

If China's not bothering with ethnic groups' heritages in non-contested territories (for example, if they're registering a ton of Tibetan, Uighur and Taiwanese heritage, but no Manchu or Yi at all), then we have reason to get jacked up about the Northeast Project. But if China's registering the heritages of other groups at a proportionally higher rate than the Korean-Chinese, there's a possibility China has dragged its feet on Korean-Chinese heritage out of respect for the unique heritages of North and South Korea, and their kinship with the Yanbian Chinese.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

An answer to the I Am Canadian commercials above: Korean advertisers use lots of banal nationalism too... World Cup references always get the hearts stirring.
I'm not sure how I feel about bringing North Korea's most famous dancer into south Korea... to shill phones.


Finally: UNESCO Kinda Looks Like Tools Right Now


After all that, we're finally at the heart of the matter: why the hell are national governments, with their angles and agendas and political ends, involved in preservation of cultural heritage?

And I'd lay this problem at the foot of UNESCO:

Now I have a friend who used to work for UNESCO Korea, who explained to me that governments  have the power to petition UNESCO to register something as a cultural heritage, but UNESCO has to make a decision for or against inclusion on the Big Unesco Lists.

This benefits UNESCO because it only deals with UN recognized bodies, who are familiar with the protocols of dealing with international organizations, simplifying things. Also, because national governments have interests in promoting some kinds of heritages, I'm not sure, but UNESCO might well be benefiting...richly... from hearing the petitions of different nations requesting registration of different cultural heritages. Especially... energetic petitions as they might receive from Korea and China on this Arirang thing, and other such disputed cultural artifacts.

I don't know if UNESCO benefits the way FIFA's governing body um... benefits richly from hearing countries' world cup bids.... but if it does, that explains a lot.

The problem is by putting the power to register heritage in the hands of national governments, UNESCO has put itself in a position where it can become the tool of national governments wishing to promote certain kinds of national images (possibly at the expense of others) through what they choose to register, and what they choose not to register. This leaves the heritage registration process open to being compromised through all the usual agendas, angles and interests that taint every activity of national political parties.

And heritage is too precious and wonderful a thing to put it into the hands of politicians.

Somebody needs to pull UNESCO's leadership out of Paris, and their heads out of their asses, and bring them over to Asia, and show them how, in these parts, world heritage ownership becomes a battlefield for historical disputes, and the building of claims of ownership of regions, and the source of ridiculous pissing contests. In case they aren't aware of it.

More to the point: Why the hell are national governments involved in registering cultural heritages that predate them, and that transcend and predate more recently drawn borders between nations? That's fishy to me, and it undermines UNESCO's credibility when it allows itself to be the battlefield for another Korea/China cultural dispute.

I think it would be better if UNESCO were dealing directly with the people, the societies and groups and artisans who practice the arts being recorded as heritage. Why should China OR South Korea be involved with registering Arirang? Why isn't there an international body for the preservation of Arirang, one where Chinese-Korean, Japanese-Korean, North Korean, South Korean, and diaspora Korean Arirang singers, recorders, writers, and lovers, can get together, and get excited about Arirang? And why isn't that group, which (hopefully) doesn't give a damn about political nation-state ties, the one helping UNESCO get Arirang registered right as a national cultural heritage?

Cultures and Nation-States are not the same thing... but they are confused far too often. This muddy (and/or lazy) thinking is by absolutely no means limited to Koreans, either, so let's not hear any of that in the comments.

Yeah, nation-state governments have deep pockets. Way deeper than historical/cultural groups. But governments shouldn't be curating museums: they should be providing cultural funding without strings attached, so that museums can find excellent people who are better at curation than civil servants. And governments shouldn't have any part in registering cultural heritage with UNESCO, because it taints the entire process if they do. UNESCO should be collaborating with historians, artisans and preservation groups in their project of cultural preservation. 

The best governments can do with culture or heritage is use it for propaganda... and that's a sad use of a cultural heritage. Even sadder than having it co-opted by marketers**. So let's put curation of culture in the hands of those who identify with it, who love it, who would see their precious heritage stay above political posturing or financial interests, and who help it grow, instead of those who would claim to own it, in order to gain politically or financially from it.

**Yes I recognize the irony of saying that after using beer commercials to describe Canadian national identity. But even if Molson Canadian is free to advertise with Canadian images, they shouldn't be the ones contacting UNESCO about heritage registration.

Further reading:
Why Arirang isn't registered.
Why are you telling us Americans don't have a culture, the Korean?
My favorite comment on The Korean's post: Part one, Part two

(best line: Think, for a second, if the French were to claim the Statue of Liberty as a product of French culture - this move would be made even worse if France were rising in its status as a world power, was making similarly political moves around its region, and were a hundred times as big in land, power, and size, and were right next to America.)

UNESCO's website

Koreans USE Arirang... but OWN It?: Part Three: It's Not Just Genealogies, and What do you Mean by Korean?

This is a several-part response to The Korean's post about Korea's ownership of Arirang. The Korean's post was a response to my post in June, stating provocatively that Nobody Owns Arirang.
Part one of this series.
Part two of this series.


Who can Identify with Arirang... or any Part of Korean Culture?

The Korean started his post off with an impressive story about seeing his name in the volumes of his family history. That's cool. I had a student who told me how his father ran back into his family's burning house, as the North Korean soldiers approached, in order to rescue his family history.  That's impressive too. I had a nine year old kid tell me he was the 28th generation firstborn son in his family tree. Sweetness. But you know what? My grandfather came to Canada with almost nothing, after the Nazi war machine boot-fucked his country so badly that there was nothing for him there, and the Dutch government, unable to provide a job for him (a former civil servant) in the devastated country, sponsored his emigration. When he got to Canada, he found a community of other immigrants who welcomed him, and helped him set up and provide for his five kids, his kids got free public education, and every one of them made it through university, too, and my grandfather literally worked himself to death to get his family established in Canada. And that's impressive too, even if it doesn't take two shelves of old volumes to tell that story.

Other commenters have taken The Korean to task for what they see as him privileging his type of identification with his origins over the ways other countries/heritages/individuals identify with their origins. They are correct, and pooh-poohing my methods of connecting with my heritage and my community because they don't include 2000-year-old books is just as short-sighted as as pooh-poohing those who turn to genealogies for their sense of connection, because long lists of dead guys don't mean anything to anyone but others whose names are in that book. (see Yujin Is Huge for more on that)

Source

And who can say that the swell of pride some Americans feel when they gaze upon the image above, is stronger, or weaker, than the swell of pride The Korean feels to look upon a bookshelf and think "that's my genealogy"? How the hell do we measure that?

(from Astrid Walter's flickr photostream)

Rather, I'd say we're back in the realm of arbitrarily drawn lines: why should history and ancientness matter more than powerful symbols, homeland geography, or family tribulations? Of course somebody with an old history's going to say that matters the most. And people who mine their identity along another vein would say THAT measure is the most valid.  Duh. "This is who I am" is a handle most people grip tightly, once they find it. Some people grip funny things for their handle, but once they grip it, they hold on tight.

While the artifacts or stories that help us create are identities are not always as old as The Korean's, the connections they make and represent are no less meaningful to us. 

Also...

genealogies are no longer the only way to feel a connection with Korean culture and heritage. As Korean culture becomes popular outside Korea, and as more non-Koreans make their home in Korea, non-ethnic Koreans are identifying themselves with Korean culture, both at a deep level of engagement, and in far greater numbers than ever before. One of my friends is a blonde-haired blue-eyed young woman who spoke Korean before she even came here, and now works in a Korean company, and has reached near fluent proficiency. Another person I know doesn't look like a Korean at all, but he has fathered Korean citizens, and lived in Korea longer than many of my students have been alive. A blog connection of mine has never visited Korea, but has taught herself to speak Korean by watching Korean dramas. 

In another direction, Koreans are using more, and more diverse aspects of what can be found in Korea to identify their Koreanness than ever before. When women's issues are urgent and rape culture remains rife in Korea, who dares tell the women who organized SlutWalk Korea that it's not relevant to Korea, that their effort to find a voice is not appropriate for Korea (as a journalist implied by asking me if a Slutwalk is appropriate for Korea)? Look at how differently the Korean political Left and the Korean political Right define their nation (a controversy that spills over into history textbooks). There are people who celebrate their Koreanness at StarCraft tournaments as well as Pansori performances, some who do by thanking US soldiers for their predecessors serving in the Korean War, and others by chanting "Yankee Go Home" until they're hoarse. Some young people would say that eating brunch and buying brand-name accessories are the most Korean thing you could possibly do... and really, no doubt historians could find historical precedents for such trend-following and ostentation in old timey Yangbanland as well.

The Korean makes a good point though - one I really like - that while Koreans do use these things to aid their identification with Korea, connection between bits of culture are also accretive (they grow through gradual addition over time) -- that is, generations of Koreans, in significant numbers, over a very long time, choosing the same things as representative of Korean culture, give them a deeper, stronger link with Korean culture than other aspects that are newer, or chosen as identifying reference points for smaller numbers. If (as I said in the last post) culture is like an ecosystem, then these things would be like the groundwater level, the climate, the tree density, and the terrain of the ecosystem: not absolutely unchangable, but more fundamental, and harder to uproot or change, than less fundamental, fixed things, like "rabbit reproduction rate."

I won't argue that, except to add that even those things that have been chosen by many people, over numerous generations, can still undergo radical changes, in order to continue to suit the changing needs of new generations. Arirang has, at different times, according to my background reading (yep, I looked up some scholarship on the history of Arirang for this), included songs satirizing the corrupt Yangban, songs of resistance against invading and oppressive forces, as well as the ever-present "nostalgic love song" motif. Kimchi and a lot of other foods have gotten a lot spicier recently, and all those battered deep-fried Korean street-foods everybody loves, and identifies as Korean food, didn't come about until after the war, when UN Food Aid came in the form of flour, and Koreans didn't know what to do with flour, so they started battering and deep-frying local vegetables like sweet potatoes and peppers.

Cultures are much less fixed than we think they are, and this is one of the problematic things about nationalism: it tends to take relatively recent developments or definitions, and imagine them as having origins much more ancient than they really are. (one example of a recent idea projected backwards by its followers: Rapture theology) Nationalism also tries to tie cultural practices to national borders, when national borders, as they exist now, are extremely recent developments, and for most of the history of these very old things, they existed in regions, not countries, and spread around freely. It wasn't until the  1900s that humans had the technology or the desire to establish, and guard national borders the way they're guarded now, with stamps in passports and border guards and tariffs and records of what comes in and goes out.

What do you mean by "Korea" anyway?

This seems to be a very common problem in discussions about Korea and Korean culture: many, many who discuss Korean culture etc. fail to distinguish whether they are talking about Korea the political entity (The Republic of Korea) or Korea the culture, or Korea the ethnic group.

As this Youtube Video about the differences between Britain, The UK, The British Isles, The Commonwealth, and The Crown demonstrate, clarity on just what one means, is helpful.

Because:

I would absolutely agree that Arirang is connected inextricably with Korean culture. And through that, maybe also with the Korean ethnic group.

But to say Arirang belongs to Korea, we have to ask:

Which meaning of Korean do you mean?

And here 's the sticking point. When The Korean says "Arirang is Korean. Period," (At least in English... I haven't looked into how it shakes out in Korean) here are the people who stand up and shout "Hell, yes!" each with different understandings of what "Korean" means:

• A South Korean who sings Arirangs that are mostly sad love songs.
• A North Korean who knows a few versions of Arirang with "Down with USA" themes.
• A Chinese-Korean.
• A Japanese-Korean
• A Kyopo from a Koreatown somewhere in Europe or America (who sings a version that was translated into English, French, German, or Norwegian)
• A linguist who thinks the word "Korean" refers to the language.
• An anthropologist who thinks the word "Korean" means "somehow at least vaguely associated with the Korean ethnic group of Northeast China and the Korean Peninsula"
• A geologist who hasn't looked into it yet, and thinks Arirang is a kind of rock that can only be found on the Korean peninsula. Maybe that special lava rock from Jeju Island...

 And even though it seems pedantic, that's why scholars spend so much time arguing over how one defines words.

Let's go back to the scholar Benedict Anderson, "Imagined Communities" - one of the foundational studies in nationalism and national communities - who describes a nation as "an imagined political community [that is] imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign."

• A nation is imagined - it doesn't exist until a group of people agree that the things they have in common make them unique. Admit it: national borders are imaginary lines.
• A nation is a community - it requires a group of people who have come together, and who agree to conceive of themselves as a new unique thing. They imagine kinship with people they've never met, because they share a nation.
• A nation is inherently limited - every nation has rules for who IS, and who ISN'T a member, and how to become a member (if it's possible to). Yankee fans can't join Red Sox Nation, USA Nation requires paperwork, the Muslim Nation requires the Shahadah, and you can't be a member of Korean Nation unless you're born into it (for now). Though if you tell enough Koreans you like kimchi, you'll be dubbed a "blue eyed Korean"
• A nation is sovereign - it has its own rules and wants to be independent of other communities or nations. This is where Anderson's definition moves into politics.

Anderson is describing a political nation, but not all nations are sovereign political bodies. There are nations without their own state (like the Metis of Canada, the Kurds of Iraq, and North America's First Nations peoples) nations that never wanted or asked for sovereignty (Red Sox Nation of Major League Baseball, Justin Bieber's 10 million + twitter fans), political bodies that are home to multiple nations (for example, the politically fractured Belgium, which is unable to break a stalemate between its Dutch and French populations, and most of the countries that have had civil wars in the last generation), there are nations that find their home in more than one political nation-state (the Hmong in Southeast Asia, the Bedouin, and Koreans), and there are even other nations located in a few spots having "quarterback controversies" about which one represents the "real" nation - is Tibet's government in exile the real Tibetan government, or is the government that actually administrates Tibet's traditional land? The Wikipedia article says almost as many (2.5 mill) Jamaicans live abroad as live in Jamaica (2.8 mill).

And this is the biggest problem with all this discussion about Korean culture: South Korea is not the exclusive home of the Korean people. North Koreans have a right to Arirang, South Koreans do, and the Korean-Chinese in Yanbian have a right to it. And none of those groups has the right to say "our version of Koreanness is more valid than yours" any more than The Korean has the right to say his family story is more valid than mine, because mine doesn't have books with lists of names of dead people (it actually does), or mine more than his, because none of his ancestors participated in the Dutch resistance during the Nazi occupation.

Those Korean-Chinese in Yanbian even have a right to register their heritage with Unesco, or to ask China to do it for them. And they don't have to ask South Korea's cultural minister for permission first.

Bringing nation-states into a discussion of cultural ownership - particularly in a case like Korea, where Korean people are spread across a handful of states and regions, and others are spread all over the world - is extremely problematic.

The Republic of Korea officially became a sovereign state on August 15, 1948 (sez Wikipedia). It's only 63 years old, and Arirang is possibly thousands... the Republic of Korea has no right to assert ownership of something SO MUCH older than it.

The People's Republic of China was proclaimed on October 1 1949 (sez Wikipedia). It has no right to assert ownership of Arirang, either.

And now we're getting to the heart of the problem.

Koreans USE Arirang... but OWN It?: Part Two: Identify, Use... but Own?

Background: 

The Korean, of Ask A Korean! (with a festive exclamation mark) has responded to my post "Nobody Owns Arirang," with his own explanation of why Arirang belongs to Korea, period. This is my (several part) response.

Here's part one: the Identity Card.

Jang Sa-ik. He's not the most famous Arirang Singer (that's probably Kim Yeong-im), but his version of the classic (most popular version of) Arirang is my favorite.

Second Point: How does One Own a Culture?

While explaining his reasons for saying Korea owns Arirang, period, The Korean, who has clearly read Plato and his critics, has a little fun poking at my assertion that the idea of a culture is too slippery to wrap it in a box and own it. He takes the example of a door, which can be many shapes and vary on many details, but is still a door, and says a culture is unmistakable, particularly in view of how cultural practices are reinforced over time.

First, I'd suggest that discussing something as abstract as a culture as if it were analogous to something as concrete as a door is not very useful. Anybody can walk up to a door, and slap it with their hand, and agree, "This is a door between the hallway and the dining room." How do you slap a culture with your hand? You could slap a cultural icon with your hand, and yes, Simon Cowell's been asking for it, but you can't slap a culture. It's quite a rare door that I'd look at and call a door, while someone else would look at it, and say "I can't see how you think that's a door"... but exactly that happens with culture, when grandpa thinks K-pop isn't real Korean culture, but his granddaughter thinks it is.

See, a culture isn't so much like a door, or a cat (either it's a cat, or at least a type of cat, or it isn't).  A culture is more like an ecosystem: huge, complex, and made up of so many elements interacting with each other, and exhibiting different features in different spots, and, for the most part, fading gradually from one into the other, without sharp demarkations.

So what is a culture? 

A culture is a huge collection of texts (and we'll use texts in the anthropological sense, where a 'text' can be anything - any object, ritual, process, ceremony, method or behavior, that has/can have meaning for people), out of the entire set of which, each participant in the culture assigns differing levels of importance and value on different aspects, according to their life experiences, preferences, etc.. A culture is not genetic: it must be taught (or Kyopos and adoptees would be born able to speak Korean and cook dwenjang). One has to choose for oneself how deeply, and how exactly, one participates in, and identifies with a culture (not all Kyopos or adoptees or born-and-raised Koreans do), and the choices one makes might be controversial to others who identify with the same culture, because they've assigned meanings and levels of importance differently. A culture is also exclusive: it is defined at times by what it isn't, as well as by what it is. The "I Am Canadian" rant/beer commercial is a good example of defining a culture negatively, by outlining the ways Canada isn't like the USA.

There is another useful point to be drawn from The Korean's door thing: there's no way to answer the question "Is the most 'door' of doors - Plato's ideal door, red, white, or brown?" However, we will be closer to a useful definition of a door if we focus not on its exact dimensions, but on the purpose it serves: to keep some things in, and to keep some things out.

This is also true of defining a culture: defining a culture by identifying exactly the set of practices and rituals that unmistakably identify it heads straight into a whole bunch of grey areas where everybody will draw the lines in different places, and (as I said earlier) the surest indicator of what people consider authentic is more often based on what their parents/grandparents remember things being like (while their grandparents tut-tutted that the younguns were losing the old ways)* than the result of study and research. I think it is more useful to define Korean culture by the purpose it serves for those who identify themselves as Korean.

*That being said, The Korean is right that many Koreans choosing to use and identify with one part of culture, over a very long time, does make something more Korean than it would be with a very short history, or having been historically embraced only by a small fringe.

So what is the purpose of Korean (or any) culture?

To create a sense of identification, a sense of community, a sense of shared history and experience, with others who identify themselves as Korean (or any other culture). The idea (from Benedict Anderson) of 'imagined communities' is a useful starting point here, with a few adjustments because we're talking about a culture, not a political nation-state, but the ideas of imagined community, co-identification, and exclusion, are important aspects of defining a culture, as well as a nation, (which was Anderson's project).

So if we say that Koreans identify with Arirang, I would say absolutely. Here are a whole bunch of statements I wholeheartedly agree with:

1. Koreans invented Arirang.

2. Koreans use Arirang.

3. Arirang is overwhelmingly, almost to the point of exclusively, practiced by Koreans.

4. Koreans identify with Arirang as a piece of Korean culture.

5. Arirang is associated with Koreans and Korean culture.

6. Koreans use Arirang, and think of it, as a symbol of Korean culture.

7. Arirang is overwhelmingly, and probably exclusively, identified with Korean culture.

8. These statements are true now, and these statements have also been continuously true for probably the entire history of Arirang, or at least for the entire history of the concept of something called "Korean culture"

"use" "practice" and "identify with" and "associate with" are useful verbs/verb phrases to attach to "culture."

But owning something... and by owning something, I mean making a claim of exclusive use of something - having the right to send a cease and desist letter... I don't think owning is a verb that can be attached to the noun culture, any more than the owner of land on which a forest grows can say that he owns the ecosystem living in the forest - he can tell himself he does, but the bear doesn't hunt on his command, the tree doesn't grow, and the river doesn't flow, according to his wish. At best, he can interact with that ecosystem, at worst he can raze it, and while he might reserve the right to hunt the deer on his land, they don't obey his orders.

And an individual can own a song (that they wrote)... but an entire genre of folk-song? No.

Take "Waltzing Matilda," a folk song that, I'm told (please correct me if I'm wrong*), many Australians identify with at least as strongly as they identify with their national anthem, "Advance Australia Fair" - I'd say it probably holds a similar place in Australian culture as the most popular Arirang (listen to the clip at the top of the post) holds in Korean culture.

An Australian has the right to sing their own version of Waltzing Matilda, and say "this is one of my country's national songs" but an Australian doesn't have the right to tell the Pogues (who did a version) to stop singing Waltzing Matilda, and to me, when it comes to cultural products, that's what ownership means. Aussies are free to hate the Pogues' version, and scream as loudly as they want that they're doing it wrong, throw tomatoes during stage performances, or head to the studio and demonstrate how to do it right, or chant "Screw you guys" between verses whenever they hear the song on the radio... but they don't have the right to send a cease and desist letter.

*UPDATE

An email exchange with an Aussie leads me to add the qualifier that Waltzing Matilda probably isn't as deeply or intrinsically tied to Australian national/cultural identity as Arirang. The ties are probably not as strong, not as old, and not for as many people.

If some people in China want to sing Arirang, South Korea's minister of Culture doesn't have the right to tell them to stop. Even if some people in China want to change the words and reinterpret Arirang with a Chinese angle, South Korea doesn't have the right to tell them to stop, and a better response than shouting "You can't sing OUR song!" is to support the Korean artists who are reinterpreting and developing Arirang as a cultural heritage that can still have relevance to Korea's Starcraft, Smartphone generation. 

I'd argue the same about Korean Kimchi and Japanese kimuchi. Would Koreans rather Korea's cultural products were being ignored and dismissed? Nope. Important cultures get their shit stolen... Is India telling Korea and Japan to cut it out with that imitation curry crap? Nope. Is China demanding royalty payments from Italian restaurants for using the noodles China invented? Nope. Is the US Foreign Minister trying to shut down Kraze Burger and Lotteria for getting hamburgers wrong? Nope. Are New Orleans musicians kicking over the music stands of non-Louisianan musicians who have tinges of dixieland in their music? Nope.

And nor should they.

Because people can identify with culture, they can interact with it, engage with it, adapt it, play with it, use it (for all kinds of purposes), teach it, build their identity around it, argue over what is authentic of it, interpret it, judge it, and even study, curate, and archive it. But they can't own it, if owning means having the right to tell others to stop doing any of those things with it. China can't, Korea can't, and I can't.

Koreans USE Arirang... but OWN It?: Part One: The Stakes

This article is heading into TL/DNR territory, so I'll break it into a few parts, and publish it over a few days. Here's part one.

A great old blog friend of mine, The Korean, of Ask A Korean! (with a festive exclamation mark) has responded to my post "Nobody Owns Arirang," with his own explanation of why Arirang belongs to Korea, period. He disagrees with me. However, I'm thrilled with how he disagrees with me: with a thoughtful, well-explained post laying out his view and responding to points I've made, not just in that post itself, but drawing context from other of my writings on the topic of cultural ownership. I'd like to respond in kind.

Kimchi Mamas has also weighed in with a very simple but well-stated post, the most important point being this: "In regard to whether or not Arirang is Korean, I don't even know why this is a question. It seems to be more about whether a national entity can claim to own a culture..." and at the same time, somebody commenting on my original post seems to want me to explain my meaning better, though she/he has done so in the language of internet window-lickers: personal insults. I don't mind people calling me ignorant, if they throw me a rope and fill me in on what I've missed. Absent that... I've been given nothing to convince me I'm not dealing with a troll, frankly. So rather than engage there, I'll add a little more here about what I meant.

First: let's not forget the title of the post was "Nobody owns Arirang" I'm not saying that Korea doesn't own Arirang or implying that if anybody had the right to claim it, it would be China, not Korea. 

(source)

Second, let's remember that a provocative blog post title generates interesting responses, as this has.

But let's be clearer.

The Korean and I agree that a big part of what's really going on here is connected to China's Northeast project: ongoing attempts to build a case for China's historical right to regions and peoples' in that area, with a somewhat predictable endgame... but this Korea Herald article detailing Korea's response to China's claim lays bare the real stakes: “The fact that ‘Arirang’ is sung by ethnic Koreans in Yanbian proves that region (of China) is a property of Korean culture.” (says Culture Minister Choung Byoung-gug).

So... we're back to 백두산은 우리땅!  (Baekdu Mountain is our [Korean] land), and we're back to calling a spade a spade, rather than having a landclaim dispute by proxy, with UNESCO playing the kid passing notes between the frenemies bickering in math class.

The upshot of this is might be South Korea's own Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, though late to the game, deciding to collect all the old forms of Arirang, and add them to UNESCO's world heritage list next year... it'd be good for Arirang for it to be recorded in some way.*

* Sidenote on that:

though I hope that it doesn't lead to a "canon" version of Arirang which then makes Arirang inflexible, and unchangeable according to the times and needs of Korean people, as it was for most of its history. Because fixing a piece of culture so that it can't change anymore is the first step on its path to becoming a dead artifact that is irrelevant to people's ordinary lives, rather than a living, changing tool for people to express or understand themselves.

It should also be made clear, before we go farther, that China designated a regional variation of Arirang (source) as a Chinese cultural heritage, not the entire body of Arirang.

And a commenter on Asia's Finest discussion forum points out that China's motivations for this could just as well be to validate and acknowledge the distinct minority group composed of ethnic Koreans in Yanbian, lest they feel marginalized as China celebrates all its other ethnic minorities in state-sponsored propaganda. This is echoed in the Korea Times editorial circulated by Yonhap News. 

(Don't forget my usual position - Culture is what people actually do, not what people should do, or used to do. For stuff people used to do, the word "heritage" is more accurate. For further reading, check this out.)

First point: Vested Interests

As an ethnic Korean who makes his home away from Korea, discussing Korean culture with an ethnic notKorean making his home in Korea, when we enter discussions of Korean culture and cultural change, we have almost exactly opposite interests in the issue. I'm not comfortable speaking on The Korean's behalf (other than on April 1st), so I'll give my own example.

(Tim Hortons donut shop - image source)

Because I live away from Canada, and have formed much of my self-identity through my interactions with Korean culture, it becomes important to me to use certain aspects of my Canadian roots and upbringing like anchors to my "Canadian-ness." Some aspects include things I expect to see or do when I come back to Canada: I've drunk much better coffee in my life, but when I arrive in Canada, I make a beeline for the nearest Tim Hortons and order a fresh Tim Hortons coffee. Medium. Two sugar. Because that's what Canadians do: Canadians drink Tim Hortons coffee! And I'm Canadian! SEE? 

this guy is clearly more Canadian than I am. (source)

I'm fairly choosy about what I select to represent my "Canadianness," but once I pick a few things, I invest a lot in them, so if I came back to Canada one summer, and I discovered that Tims had replaced their special Tims coffee with a set of boutique beans, and I said "Medium, two sugar" and the drive-through person asked, "Will that be Ethiopia Sidamo, Mexico Coatepec, or Indonesia Sumatra?" part of what makes me feel Canadian would be gone (even if every other Canadian loved Tim Hortons' new improved coffee menu.) When Tim Hortons stopped carrying fancies a part of my childhood disappeared (I'm not the only one who misses those artificial oil-stuffed monstrosities, it seems): the "wedge" saw me through a very difficult summer once.

An ethnic Korean living in Canada, who felt a little marginalized that this presumably representative Canadian donut shop was so culturally specific, might be pleased to see samosas, burritos or kimbap rolls next to the timbits in a Tim Hortons. But that would hurt my soul, not because I have anything against kimbaps burritos, samosas or those who eat/identify with them, but because Tim Hortons isn't supposed to change from how it was when I was seven and I went there with my mom, dammit! Or another of the reference points for my diminishing "Canadian-ness" will be lost. 

Thinking about the way I feel about changes in the Tim Hortons, one of the Canadian things I chose to identify with to preserve my sense of Canadian-ness, gives me a good framework for guessing at why The Korean is irrationally purist about Korean food. Other factors probably play into The Korean's food purist streak, but the contrast stands:

The mirror image of my Tim Hortons prejudice, applied to Korea, aimed at deeper/more fundamental aspects, and the very heart of the matter:

Quotable passage ahead:

The more Korean society accepts new imaginings of what it means to be Korean, the better chance I, my wife, and our multiracial, multicultural (future) kid(s) have of carving out a meaningful niche in this society, while the more Korean society bends, flexes, and invents/accepts new definitions for itself, the less familiar it will seem to The Korean and other Korean diaspora each time he/they come back for a visit.

All that to say... of course I'm going to argue for cultural lines to be blurry, contingent, indistinct, and drawn in sand, because pushing that sand around is how I carve out a home here. And of course The Korean is going to argue for cultural lines to be stark, fixed, and timeless, so that he can rest assured that he can come home for a visit, and have it still feel like the home he remembers. And I'll focus on the aspects that are contingent and fuzzy (starcraft and Isaac Toast) while he focuses on the aspects that are more timeless (family records and Arirang).

So every time The Korean and I disagree about what Korean culture is and how it's defined, don't think this contrast is the only relevant point, because I don't like dismissing arguments by playing the identity card (as a WASP entering the field of Korean studies, The Identity Card will more often be played at my expense than to my benefit, once it's in play), but it's a bit of context worth considering.

So anyway, bear that in mind while contrasting our views.