Dear Ahn Cheol Su 안철수: Please Do Not Run for President

So this was in the news. From here.
Ahn Cheol su has been running the biggest political tease I've seen in a while. Here's what I think:


Dear Ahn Cheol Su: Please Do Not Run for President

Mr. Ahn, you are very famous, and very accomplished. These days, it seems like everybody loves you: simply indicating you are interested in politics vaulted you ahead of Park Geun-Hye in speculative polls, and your support carried Park Won-soon into the position of Seoul Mayor. The idea that you might consider running for president, makes a lot of people shake with excitement.

But please don't.

Let's look at this logically:

We've seen the outsider before:

Why are people are so excited you might go into politics? Because they are tired, and cynical, about the current system, and current politicians. Yes, you have your own impressive qualities, intelligence and talent, but part of the reason for your popularity is not really about you: it is an expression of people's discontent with the other options, and with the general climate of politics in Korea: nothing intrinsic to you at all. People have been betrayed too often by the politicians running the country, who abandon their principles when white envelopes change hands under the table.

I am sure you remember the sad story of Roh Moo-hyun: he was a political outsider (like you) and he said all the right things (like you). People voted for him because he seemed to promise a fresh start and a change from the ugly way politics were done until then (like you). Roh really meant something to a lot of people - I still have students and friends who speak passionately, with eyes shining, about the promises he made.

Then what? Once he entered office, all those high principles were hidden from view, blocked by political squabbling inside and outside his party, as he was attacked by everybody who felt threatened by his promise of a new way to do politics. His presidency started with a bloody fight that nearly led to his impeachment, and ended in allegations of corruption and disappointment... even though those pointing fingers at him were at least as corrupt as he was.

Is it possible you could become Korea's president, and start a new era in Korean politics? Perhaps. But I think it is more likely that the Korean politicians who have gotten fat abusing their power, and benefiting from their corruption and connections, will (for once) come together in their mission to either remove you, destroy you, or worse: to drag you down into their mud pit, and make you just as dirty as they are. This would leave Korean voters once again heartbroken and disappointed, and even more cynical than before. Like ex-president Roh, I fear that your ideals will disappear under the pile of garbage other politicians will throw at you, to protect their privileged way of life, and distract people from their own corruption.

The important question:

The important question is not "Could I be elected as president if I ran?" The question is, "If elected, could I fill the promise that makes people vote for me?" And I don't think you can. I don't think anyone can. The system has been in place too long, it is too savage and ugly, and there are too many people in powerful positions with reasons of self-interest to keep it in place. The political process is too slow, and too easily derailed in Korea by childish gestures from politicians, like tear gas bombs and secret sessions, for one person to actually change it, during one five-year presidential term (five years is really short for such a huge change!), while all the seasoned politicians work (in self-preservation) to undo him and his efforts.

But if Korea's people truly are sick of Korea's corrupt, unchanging system, one where corrupt officials favor the moneyed rather than the common citizen, there is something you can do instead, with your fame and influence: something that keeps your reputation for integrity pure, and something that will, over a long time, even create a better political atmosphere in Korean politics.

A different idea:

Rather than running for political office yourself, I ask you to use your influence to become a name all politicians, from either side, fear and respect: a name that causes them to reconsider accepting a bribe or using their influence to benefit their friends and connections.

How?

The prizes named after Alfred Nobel and Joseph Pulitzer have lived on long after the men who founded them, and the ideals their awards honor and promote are a legacy that has become greater than any of their lifetime accomplishments. The achievements of other humans aiming to win the prizes named after Pulitzer and Nobel, have led to countless other achievements in many different fields, that have benefited all mankind.

If you really want to change politics in Korea, let me suggest the Ahn Chul-soo Integrity Award. Use some of your money (you've got plenty!) to establish a foundation to provide award money, and every year, with your bipartisan or non-affiliated selection committee, give out two Ahn Chul-soo Integrity Awards: one to the politician who has behaved in a way that brings the most honor to Korean politics, through honesty, transparency, and dignity, and one to the journalist, blogger, citizen-reporter, or whistle-blower who uncovers the act of corruption, cronyism, or dishonesty among politicians and business leaders, that is most damaging to the reputation of Korean politics, and Korean democracy. Establish a committee with representatives from different age groups and political beliefs, with a transparent procedure (for accountability), who choose among nominees. Publicize the nominees, both for good, to praise those who fight corruption, and for bad, to shame those who are corrupt. Every ambitious young journalist in Korea will focus their attention on exposing corruption, in hopes of winning your award, and every politician will fear to engage in dirty dealings, knowing that Korea's most ambitious reporters are searching for ways to expose them.

Rather than join the mud fight of South Korean politics, and run the danger of beginning to look like just another pig twisting in the mud, I encourage you to use your influence and popularity to shine the brightest spotlight possible on Korea's politicians, so that if the private shame of dishonesty and indignity is not enough to dissuade Korea's politicians from acting corrupt in secret, and childishly in the National Assembly, perhaps the fear of discovery and public embarrassment will motivate them to change their behavior.

I firmly believe that this is the best way you could use your fame and influence to truly improve the political atmosphere in Korea, and give Korean citizens and voters the fresh start they long for.

Please consider my suggestion.

Sincerely:

Rob Ouwehand


(if you like my idea: tweet it, post it, share it... translate it)

Royal Asiatic Society Event, Canadian Embassy Event

Tomorrow night, the Royal Asiatic Society of Koreais hosting a "Badaksori" performance.

This is Pansori.


Badaksori a group of artists who are producing Changjak Pansori. Pansori is the traditional Korean singing/speaking storytelling performance art; Changjak Pansori are new compositions of Pansori (the Pansori version of modern classical music) - since Pansori became a Korean cultural property in the '60s, it got sort of standardized, with a recognized canon of Pansori songs.  But that's not how Pansori originally worked: it used to be a free-flowing storytelling form that the singer could adapt to the audience's responses.

Badaksori are trying to present THAT version of pansori: the one that still has life and spontaneity. They make social commentary and such, and compose pansori about modern events that are still happening in Korea; songs are also a lot shorter than the old, classical ones, which have been called "Korean Opera"... in part because they're really, really long, and maybe also because they're primarily enjoyed by old people.

Anyway, if you want to attend this performance, it's in the Resident's lounge, on the second floor of the Somerset Palace hotel, near the north end of Insadong, at 7:30pm on Tuesday Feb. 8th.

More info at the Royal Asiatic Society website (www.raskb.com/)

If you're a long-termer in Korea, and if you have a long-standing interest in the culture, etc., the Royal Asiatic Society is a good group to get connected with. Some of Korea's longest-term scholars, residents, embassy workers, and business owners are frequent attendees, and after each event, there's a little beer time when people sit, chat, and network. They have regular lectures, as well as tours around the country, some of which are family friendly.

For most lectures, admission is 5000 won for non-members, and free if you sign up and pay the annual membership fee. Tours are also cheaper if you pay the membership fee.


Second... and I figure into this one...

Members of the English teaching community are invited to an event on Sunday, February 20th.  There will be two sessions, one about Education in Canada, to help arm you with answers to your students' parents' questions about sending their kids to study in Canada, and the second one, to discuss issues affecting foreign English teachers in Korea.

Matt, from Popular Gusts, Mike Hurt, from Metropolitician, Ben Wagner, who's working on the HIV testing challenge in Korea's courts, and I, will be speaking about media scapegoating, foreign crime, and building the English teaching community, and you're invited to come.

The full text of the invitation poster (and the image above) are at Popular Gusts.

Weddings, K-Pop, Korean Food & Purity: Who Owns a Culture? Part 3

Janelle Monae, an African-American, stole this song from the white, British composer Charlie Chaplin, and white, british lyricists John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, who originally had their song stolen from white brits by Nat King Cole.

See how ridiculous it starts to get when we talk about people stealing cultures?  It's just a great song, isn't it?

So the final point on the topic is the question, what happens here in Korea, when expats living here see something that vaguely resembles their culture back home, but it's been changed in unexpected ways.  It's analogous to the question of what Koreans do, or ought to do, when they see artifacts from their culture being co-opted by other cultures - Hollywood remakes (my sassy girl), Japanese repackagings (kimuchi) and even Korean-engineered revisions aimed at a new audience (Wondergirls).  I step into a Korean wedding hall, and I see an aisle, candles, a white gown, I hear Mendelssohn's march, and a bouquet being tossed... yet it's all two steps sideways from the weddings I saw back home.

This can be quite off-putting, even to me, and I've been here relatively forever.

The topic is interesting because familiar touchstones take on different meanings, or are used differently, in different cultures.  Not all of these differences are obvious, or jarring - more people here use Starbucks’ for studying than back home, and it’s firmly entrenched in youth culture (the older folks just can’t stomach six bucks for a coffee: it’s 100 won at the gogijip!)  The absence of middle-aged Starbucks-goers, particularly older males, and especially groups of them, barely hints at the way Starbucks occupies a different place in culture here than back home, and I didn’t notice that until five old men parked at a table near me in a starbucks once, and started the usual “loud ajosshi table” routine that one usually finds in a BBQ meat house, and I realized it was the first time I’d ever seen a group of older men in a Starbucks.  Back in Canada, that's a lot more common.

A few more: library means "place to study" here, where back home, it was "place to get books and then leave"; non-Korean restaurants serve a dish of sweet pickles with the meal, almost down to the last one (a friend of girlfriendoseyo once went to a little restaurant in Tuscany, and asked where the pickles were).  Other differences affect our lives more - any foreigner can point out to you the bars in their neighborhood which DON'T require you to buy side dishes with your drink (more and more these days).  Korean girls can have skirts right up to their uteruses (uteri?) and it's OK, but cleavage brands them “that kind of girl”; in America, it's vice versa.

(illustration from ROKetship: you should check out this comic!)
(click for full post)

Who Owns A Culture: What do you Mean When you Say Korean Culture is Under Attack?

(all images from the first page of google image results for "Korean culture")
image

Now, the last time I talked about Korean culture, I crossed swords comments with a commenter...

On "Lee Hyori Gets It" we argued a bit about the one blood thing, and I'd like to address a few points raised there.

First, I've figured out why one of my commenters and I have been disagreeing so strongly, and it's a simple reason: our definitions of culture are different.  One of my favorite topics to bring into my old conversation classes was this handout of four opinions, each suggesting a different view on the cultural changes that have come through Korea lately.

For this series, and in general, as I stated in part two: I'm talking about popular culture: culture as a living, organic thing, Korean culture as a description of what and how Koreans produce and consume, not as a set of rules for what and how Koreans SHOULD produce or consume, in order to be "authentic" -- the definition of culture that defines Korea's culture only, or primarily by looking at the past?  That's for archivists and historians.  I'm not talking about Goguryeo, Lee Sunshin, or what kind of kimchi they ate in Gwangju in 2000 BC.  I'm talking about what Korean young people have on their mp3 players, and where they choose to meet their friends.

If the opinion you agree with the most on this handout is #1, we probably aren't going to agree on most points... because our definitions of "culture" are fundamentally different.
How Korean is Korea is Korea Losing Its Culture

Personally, I hold with #3 mostly: culture is a way of describing what people actually do, not outlining what they must do to be "real" Koreans.  Young ladies dying their hair pink is Korean culture, because young Korean ladies are doing it.  Yeah, I cast a wide net... but the net must be cast wide to catch the really interesting and powerful stuff, which always starts on the fringes before it goes mainstream.

Second:  To those who would suggest that Korean culture is under attack, and that this is cause for alarm... basically, chill out.

Is Korean culture under attack?  Here are the instances where it seems that idea comes up (let me know if I'm missing something):
(Korean culture club)

1. Items, artifacts, or pieces of Korean heritage have been plundered or claimed by others.  China claims Goguryeo; France took a bunch of historical Korean documents; Dokdo is OURS, dammit!

2. Foreign elements are invading Korean culture and making Korean culture some weird mix of foreign cultures that is no longer really Korean.  Young ladies are dying their hair pink, Korean singers are imitating American hip-hop, and everybody's wearing blue jeans and mini-skirts and FUBU.

3. People are criticizing or saying bad things about Korea, or Korean cultural items, artifacts, or producers.  Stephen Colbert is making fun of Rain, movie critics are crapping on "The Last Godfather."

4. Korean cultural things are being taken into other countries and changed, so that they are no longer authentically Korean.


Briefly, then:

1. Honestly, historical periods and historical artifacts aren't really my area of specialty, or knowledge.  I don't know the details of Goguryeo, or how China is allegedly "stealing" Goguryeo, or trying to erase it from the history books.  Honestly, I'm not a historian, and I'm not very interested in it, either, because history is dead, unless it's affecting the present.  History is relevant to historians, but other than when historians and demagogues get together to have some textbook protests outside the Japanese or Chinese embassy, it doesn't have much influence on culture the way I defined it above: nobody rearranges the playlist on their ipods, or changes their TV viewing or internet surfing habits, because of it.  If they did, I'd be interested in it again.  I hope France and Japan return those books and documents, but if they don't, the Hallyu doesn't magically vanish: culture doesn't begin and end in a bunch of historical documents, and in my opinion, the greatest relevance that old history has is in explaining phenomena that still happens now. Korea's heritage is not the sum total of Korea's culture, as defined above.  Korea's heritage may well be under attack... a lot of people say it is... but Korea's culture is in no danger at all.  In fact, Korea is now exporting its culture all across Asia, in Hallyu films, dramas, and more recently, music. For the rest, heritage is outside the scope of this series, and outside the scope of my interest, frankly.

(image)

2. Foreign elements are invading Korea. I addressed this at more length in another post, and I'd like to refer you to that.  Basically: complaints about cultural change are usually either coming out of historians who have a backward-looking (past-focused) view of what culture should be, or it's generational, coming from older people who remember how things used to be.  This often boils down to the fact as people age, they miss being the ones who set the culture's agenda, the way they did when they were younger (and their parents complained about them not respecting 'the old way' in the same way they now complain about their kids).  The problem with this one is simply: when do you draw the line of "this is authentic Korea, and this isn't" -- spicy peppers are from the New World, so if we really go back and get historical, spicy food CAN'T be part of Korean culture, because it hasn't been - CAN'T have been part of Korean culture for the entire (5000 year) history of Korea.  Defining "authentic Korea" is just as slippery and problematic as defining Korean culture in all its iterations right now, and "authentic" Korea from the past is either an idealized version of the past (go watch "Welcome to Dongmakgeol), or an idealized version of what one's grandparents remember, even though at that time, culture was changing, fluid, unstable, and affected by other countries' influence too.  All cultures are always changing, just because grandpa doesn't remember it that way doesn't mean it wasn't true back then, too.

3. Critics are saying bad things about Korea.  I discuss this one more in my post "In Which Roboseyo Exhorts Seoul City Not to Get in a Snit About Lonely Planet"  Basically... haters gotta hate, and playas gotta play, and haters gonna hate playas, and when haters hate the playas, that doesn't make the playa stop being a playa: it's actually a validation that the playa's a true playa.  Celebrities know that ANY buzz is good buzz, ANY publicity is good publicity, and Seoul getting named in a list of "Five worst cities" is better than Seoul being ignored.  The biggest players are targets most often, and criticism is actually validation.  If Roger Ebert rips a movie to shreds, it means he at least admired it enough to consider it deserving of an 800 word evisceration: he could have just ignored it, and that would be a real problem, because it would mean the movie wasn't bad, but irrelevant.  Stephen Colbert made fun of Rain... and Rain became more famous.  Wanting Korea to be more famous, but wanting to control HOW people talk about Korea, is wanting to have one's cake and eat it too, and it smacks of inferiority crisis, and the people who crashed Stephen Colbert's website miss the point.

(image - they sing in English. Are they Korean culture or American culture? What about Far East Movement?)

4. Korean things are being stolen and altered, so that they are no longer Korean.  I covered this at length in the last post (a long time ago) in this series, basically coming to the point that nobody owns a culture.  People can produce and consume artifacts in a culture, but nobody can own it.  Historians and archivists can lay a claim on a heritage, and maybe even define it, if they narrow their definition enough, but living culture - culture as it is, and is becoming, is far too slippery and unstable to define, much less to claim.  If Japan is exporting Kimuchi, that means that somebody likes Kimuchi, or it wouldn't be selling.  If Koreans don't like that Japan is exporting Kimuchi, complaining does nothing.  Writing hundreds of e-mails a day "correcting" people doesn't help much either.  What would help is exporting a kimchi that people want to buy more than kimuchi.  Buyers don't care who's right and who's wrong, or who originally invented.  They care about which one fits their personal taste better, or which is cheaper, or which is available at their local supermarket.  Koreans didn't invent cars, cellphones, or TVs, but make some of the world's best of each.  Is America bitching that Korea stole their inventions?  Nah.  (They're worried that foreign students and workforces are outperforming America in some arenas, but upset about stealing inventions? No.  Did India complain when Korea registered Seokguram Grotto as a Unesco World Heritage Site, because the Buddha is from India?  Not that I know of.  Nobody owns the Buddha, cars, cellphones, or rock music.)

As cultural claims go, cultural materials don't observe national borders.  Korea pissed off the Chinese and Taiwanese on a few internet comment boards by trying to register Dragon Boat Racing as a Korean traditional heritage.  [update: this assertion has been well-corrected by Gomushin Girl in the comments]  Korea has a enough of a reputation for claiming that not-Korean things are Korean, that they were even at the butt of a joke about it during the 2008 Olympics.

In the end, there are two sides: there's the emotional side, and the intellectual side, to the issue of cultural ownership and authenticity.  When I brought the article above into my discussion classes, I was startled at how visceral the resentment was, that Japan had tried to steal kimchi from Korea.  It's just a food, right?  Korea's stolen stuff from other cultures and made it their own (read the Metropolitician's take on "Black culture without black people")
(image from the post linked above)

but, again, as when people criticize stuff about Korea, I've got to say that in the big picture of Korea's ascent to becoming a cultural force, the fact people are stealing things from Korean culture (cf: south-asian imitation K-pop groups) doesn't mean Korea needs to get up in arms about copyright infringement (USA didn't get huffy about Korean hembeogeos, did they?  Why would they? The popularity of hembeogeos here is proof positive of USA's cultural reach.)  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: it means Korean culture is having the kind of influence all those promoters and boosters and kimcheerleaders dreamed it would have.

Awesome!  No, Kogi tacos aren't authentic Korean food: stuff always gets changed in translation... but then, given how slippery and changeable culture is, how could we expect anything else?

So, now that we're back up to speed, I'll be finishing off this series by talking about what should be done with the situation where expats living in Korea come across artifacts of their own home cultures, reinterpreted by Koreans, for Korea.

Who Owns a Culture: Summary before Finishing

OK. It was a long, long time ago that I started writing this series, and it's just embarrassing that I haven't finished it yet...

I have excuses, but you probably don't care to hear them anyway.  I got married, too.  However, I'd like to re-summarize what I've said in the previous articles, just to get everybody back to speed, before I go to my final point, which is of particular point during the holiday season.

However, in the comments to my "OK, Hyori Gets It," post, I'm getting comments from some of the same people who participated in that discussion back then, and who, in my opinion, are still off the mark in some respects.

So I'm finishing off this series, and while I do, I'll include another response to some of them.

The summary then:

Saying it's a Cultural Difference is the Beginning of the Conversation, not the End

I was just looking over the series I wrote this spring, about how to make friends across the foreign/Korean cultural divide, in which I highlight a few of the common pitfalls in developing friendships between Koreans and non-Koreans.  The series is extensive, good reading (I think), but while editing and cleaning up hanging links, I added this paragraph:

And remember: "It's a cultural difference" is NOT the end of a conversation.  It's the BEGINNING of a conversation.  After saying "It's a cultural difference," it's important to articulate that difference, and how my expectations are different than your expectations, so that we can be understanding and flexible towards each other in the future.

Using "cultural differences" can be a cop-out to avoid responsibility for unacceptable behavior which I, or someone else, is unwilling or unable to actually justify.  Any time somebody starts saying "cultural difference," watch carefully, to see if that same person is trying to get away with something, or to figure out what topic they're avoiding.


That is, if you want to have a genuine relationship with said person.  Otherwise, "it's a cultural difference" end of conversation, can be the sound of a door closing in someone's mind.


Anyway, to revisit a series I put a lot of work into this spring, go check it out.
Table of contents for the series 
Part one of "How to make friends with a foreigner"
Part one of "How to be friends with a Korean"

Most of the advice is basic, "Don't be an inconsiderate jerk" stuff... but sometimes naming specifics is helpful.

Question of the day: Multi Language Car Navigation

So Wifeoseyo and I got a car. It's pretty sweet, though commuting is... commuting.

Anyway, it's not a Korean-made car, so the next question is this: see, the navigation system that's built into the car... well... has a few shortcomings. We're looking at getting a Korean navigation system, but as a not-Korean native speaker, Korean-only navigation systems aren't helpful for me, because exactly at the times when I need to focus on the road and not have too much distracting me - off-ramps, left-turns, merging traffic - having the Navi speaking to me in Korean increases my stress instead of decreasing it, and divides my focus instead of helping. I can turn the thing off, but having notations and such is useful.

Now, I know that in America, you can get a navigation system that can switch voices - you can have Homer Simpson or Kyle from South Park tell you to turn left or right.  I haven't researched it, but I bet that means you can also switch your navigation to a different language...

At some point, maybe sooner than later, my Korean language will improve to the point it's not necessary, but until then...

So the question is, here in Korea, how does one get a navigation that can switch between English and Korean instructions without too much difficulty?  Which brand is best, or what does one have to do to their navigation system, so that it'll do it?

Answers in the comments, please.

been having an excellent taxi driver week

Sometimes it's the little things in life that keep you afloat... especially when one's glorious wedding/family visit/honeymoon to the maldives/summer vacation suddenly morphs into a "worst working schedule I've ever had and the staff room air conditioner stopped working" return to work.

but i'm happy to report that I've had a startlingly good run of taxi drivers lately.

And as tribute to Taxi Drivers, who can be the best, or the worst thing about life in Korea, depending on the one, and the day, and the weather, here's some taxi driver music, also known as "Trot" or 트로트.


Wifeoseyo and I were in a taxi heading to the Seoul Station Lotte Mart, and as we passed Seoul Station, Wifeoseyo twisted around and gasped, "We've gone past Seoul Station! What are you doing?" to the taxi driver. As we came a little farther around the corner, it was revealed that the Lotte Mart was around the side of the main station. Instead of the gruff, bulldog snarl that a lot of taxi-drivers would offer when their passenger said, in effect, "What the hell are you doing?" -- this taxi driver looked ahead, and sang cheerfully, "Lotte Marteu" exactly the way the radio jingle goes. It cracked us both up, and turned the situation from possible mean to brilliantly fun. Lovely.

then, yesterday, I got off work, and wanted to test out another route home before the car wifeoseyo and I ordered arrives, and I start seriously considering driving to work. So I caught a cab, and asked him to take me home by way of a certain road that's less travelled by than the usual thoroughfares taxi drivers head for, when one asks to go to my new neighborhood.

As soon as I started talking in Korean, the Taxi driver started laughing with glee -- it took me a few seconds to suss out that he wasn't mocking me, but was simply impressed and tickled that I spoke Korean as well as I did (not THAT well... but I'll take it)

Then, he started telling stories in 85% Korean (but mostly simple enough I could catch the gist), about other non-Korean passengers he'd taken, which included a hilarious re-enactment of a conversation with some Arab passengers-

"You tomorrow airport come! Big cash!"
"No I taxi small! Five people my taxi small."
"Please you come tomorrow please cash money!"
"I sorry taxi small no five people sorry!"

he was laughing all through his own story, and the way he told it reminded me of the seven-year-old I used to teach who was so excited about his story that he stopped using words, and just acted the ends of his stories out with broad, comical charades, while his classmates looked on, bemused, with faces reading, "I have no idea what's going on, but it sure is entertaining!"

Then he went on to explain how Japanese passengers can't speak Korean OR English, and complained that English is hard. He took his little screen (which had been playing trot/techno, which he stopped at the beginning of the trip, and which I asked him to turn back on, because it was hella fun), and turned on an English tv drama, which we watched, all as he told me in asides, "I have no idea what they're saying," and then took a phrase from the show "How do you like that?" and repeated it as he heard it: "Hawyuulaee'det?" over and over, until it cracked me up again.

So yeah, sometimes things get busy, and air conditioners break down, and wallets get pick-pocketed... but there's always a funny taxi driver, a cute old lady, or a friendly stranger, to keep things from going too far down the dark road.

Paper Wedding Done

The good news is, if you wake up really early, you can get all the paper wedding work done in a morning.  Mrs. Roboseyo and I did exactly that yesterday.  The even better good news was that just in case there WERE lines, Jagiseyo (see what I'm doing here?) had cleared the entire day... and then we totally got the afternoon free.  So we went to Wood & Brick, a great bakery to visit in the evening, when their stocks are almost sold out, but an AMAAAZING bakery to visit in the morning, when the sourdough rye is still warm.  We loaded up on good breadstuffs, and had an easy afternoon that involved Seokchon Lake Park in Jamsil, the best Jajangmyeon I've had in my life, and a movie in Myeongdong.

And the paper wedding is done.  We're officially married, all three ways: in a church, in front of a crowd, and in the district office.

The only drawback was that the Korean district office needed a week to send the official certificate, which means that while I got 80% of the immigration work done to apply for my F-2 (marriage) visa, I'll have to go back there with that documents to get the final stamp on it.

Fortunately for Yobo-seyo, the immigration official was very understanding about her work schedule, and said that if I find her back when I return later, Wifeoseyo doesn't need to be there in person, so long as I have all the documents she needed.

Anyway, we saw "Salt" - the new Angelina Jolie movie, which has made me decide/realize two things.

1. Angelina Jolie is the most convincing female hollywood action hero since Sigourney Weaver in the Alien movies.  Who else is even in the running?  Mila Jovovich for Resident Evil, Uma Thurman for Kill Bill (but have you seen "My Super Ex-Girlfriend"? Just about cancels it all out.)  Michelle Rodruigez, but she's having trouble graduating from "Member of the rag-tag group who saves the day" to "Serious headliner"  Anybody I'm missing?  And don't you dare say the Charlie's Angels' ladies.  Michelle Yeoh kicks ALL their asses sideways till tuesday... that's why I said "Hollywood female action heroes"

2. If you're a major hollywood star, and you throw a bone to Korean audiences, they will reward you with SO much love, and probably an extra half-million ticket receipts.  Hugh Jackman, Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Cage: they visited Seoul, and said some nice things about the country and the food, and now Roboseyette absolutely adores them.  (conversely, if you are mean about Korea, you may face a backlash... sometimes with a long memory.  Oprah.)

Then, the big bummer of the day:

I've always said I love that Korea's a really honest country: I once left my shoulder-bag on the back of a chair in a PC room and the next morning it was still there, un-touched, and un-looted.  On the other hand, maybe the law of averages had to exert itself:

After having a really, really wonderful day, in the taxi on the way home, I realized that my wallet was missing.  And it was full of cash - full - after I'd changed almost a year's worth of coin-change into cash this week.  It might have fallen out of my pocket during the movie (which wasn't that impressive - Manchurian Candidate + more explosions, basically), but I'm pretty conscientious about that stuff; I think it might have been pick-pocketed.  Bummer.

Also gone: my Alien Registration Card, my Korean Driver's License, my Korean bank card, my Canadian bank card, and my Canadian credit card.  Some frequent user stamp cards from some coffee shops.  An old student ID card with a really funny picture which I'd kept in there to crack people up (totally irreplaceable).  My costco card. (NNNNOOOOOOOOO!)

NOT gone:
My birth certificate, which I fortuitously removed from the wallet this afternoon thinking, "It's best not to carry this around everywhere"
My passport
My Canadian driver's license
--which is to day, I didn't lose anything that's worse than inconvenient or annoying to replace, except that student card.  Made the phone calls, froze my credit cards - nobody'd tried to use them, anyway, and now I have to ask them to issue me a new Alien Card at Immigration, I guess.  Came out of it relatively unharmed... though a little humbled, a little more cautious, and large payer of the "stupid tax" this month.

So... here's the choice:

Wifeoseyo
Yobo-seyo
Mrs. Roboseyo
Roboseyette
Jagiseyo

and while The Mrs. has final veto, and I'm giving myself five votes, I'm making a poll: how do you think I should refer to the Mrs. on my blog, now that we're married?

The Wedding Hall Wedding...Why?

I'm actually torn here, because what I really want to do in response to Jason's post about wedding hall weddings is to sit somewhere with a beer in my hand, nod knowingly (and a bit defeatedly) and say "Yeah, man.  I hear ya."  On the emotional level, I'm sitting right there with Kimchi Icecream, feeling that weird taste in my mouth.  On another level, given that I'm about to marry a Korean, I've thought a lot about Korean weddings, and I do want to look a little at this wedding culture stuff.

So before I intellectualize the whole thing and give reasons and justifications, I just want to take a moment to recognize.  Yeah.  It's way different, and jarring, and often quite off-putting.  A spade's a spade, and a Korean wedding hall wedding looks weird to Western eyes.

Soundtrack: Marry Me, John, by St. Vincent


(Photos of one Korean wedding) (Another) (Another, from Busan Mike)
(let's not forget that other countries can go a bit overboard with weddings, too.)

Photo by these guys... who seem to do a good job, if you look at their samples.  Hope you don't mind my borrowing!

Ask The Expat also has something about weddings.

But in Korea's defense, here are some of the points that have come up in talking, a lot, about weddings.  Fact is, most Koreans I've spoken with agree with many of Jason's complaints about wedding halls, and I've spoken with quite a few, because I have an article about wedding culture I like bringing into class.
more

Weddings, K-Pop, Korean Food & Purity: Who Owns a Culture? Part 2

Korean Cultural Change Abroad

Soundtrack time:

Lemon Tree, by Fool's Garden, covered by Park Hye Gyeong.  Is it Korean culture (Korean remake/words) or German culture (Fool's Garden is a German band), or Irish/Dutch/Norwegian culture (three of the countries, along with Germany, where the song hit Number 1)?

I've decided to make part 2 of the series about Korean opinions on cultural change abroad, and then to talk about Western views on Korean handling of Western culture last, so that we shift from the Korean view to the Western view more smoothly, and to provide a context for the reactions westerners in Korea have to Korean adaptations to Western culture.  The similarities might be interesting.

Click to read more.

Weddings, K-Pop, Korean Food & Purity: Who Owns a Culture? Part 1

Korean Cultural Change - to older Koreans

During a discussion class, an older fella who attended my class got onto his hobby horse. This isn't a rare occurence, but he was riding one of the tropes that just irks me: the classic line, "Korea is losing its culture because of America." Sigh.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this topic... I recommend reading The Joshing Gnome's description of"cultural junk dna" - bad/useless stuff spreads from one culture to another, swept along with the good stuff: "Korea got democracy and spam at the same time, after all."

Maybe (probably) i'm missing a lot of the nuances in the arguments these (usually) guys make, but regardless, there are a few things I'd like to ask/tell them.

1. I don't want to hear what you have to say about Korea losing its culture if you're not ready to discuss the contributions of rapid growth, industrialization, a shift in ideology (not just capitalism and free enterprise, but also race-based nationalism, which could only have been invented and propagated by Koreans, for Koreans), and mass-urbanization. It's intellectually lazy to pull the America card when Korean cultural change comes up, and think it covers everything.

2. All cultures are always changing.  If a culture stops changing, it's dead.  Absent interest in Shakespeare, Mozart, Hanbok, or Korean court cuisine, preservation attempts will fail: if nobody's picking up the mantle, it means the culture has found a new way of defining itself, not that the culture is losing itself.  A culture can't lose itself: how a group of people lives, and what they do, that's their culture.  It might not look the same as the way their grandparents lived and did things, but that's true everywhere in the world.

It might make my old ajosshi feel comfortable to believe that he has a handle on koreas true culture, while those young kids are losing it... but he's just wrong.  When his parents were his age, they felt the same way about him, and when he was 20, he liked stuff that was new and exciting, stuff that his parents didn't recognize as their own culture.  Twenty years later, those same artists are no longer the adventurers, but the fuddy-duddies.

The Beatles were new and exciting in 1962; hell, they were controversial! Now they're old hat.  Paul McCartney is a KNIGHT, for goodness' sake!  Mozart was also a rockstar in his day - he did the same thing with the piano - a relatively new instrument at the time - that George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Keith Richards did with the guitar.  Young people, who grow up and become the establishment, set the arc culture follows, and young people generally seek out stuff that's fun, exciting, and different than what came before.  Those kids' grandparents don't have to like it, but they don't really have much say.

So Captain Fogey complains, because the culture's moving in a direction he didn't set (the way it did when he was 20).  He can complain about it, but the stuff Korea's creative people are using, doing, creating and creating and creating, has more energy and power than the influence of those who only consume, and way more than those who only complain about what others create and consume.  Consumers can encourage some stuff above other, and they might cause some outdated stuff to fade into obscurity slower than others, by going to reunion concerts, but if they aren't going the way the wind is blowing, they'll end up irrelevant.  

To draw a parallel in my own culture, how about the song in the youtube clip below: maybe it's uncomfortable to some of us; my grandmother would call it outright blasphemy: the sample in the background of this song is "her" music...but now it's "their" music, and if grandma can either accept it, or go back to her archives, and recognize that's what she's doing.  If Busdriver is what it takes for kids to learn about Vivaldi, if Clockwork Orange gets somebody into Beethoven's 9th, if a White Stripes reference gets my kids interested in Citizen Kane... great!

...this too?  Sure!

(Not that I'm never a purist, though: this song offends me, because Pachelbel's Canon has a really special, important meaning in my family.  Someone else is free to like it, but it bugs me.)

3. The people of a culture NEED to accept something for it to be incorporated.  You can't foist parts of a culture onto another culture -- it has to resonate with the locals, or it won't stick.  Maybe McDonalds had a good marketing strategy, maybe it didn't, but McD's, Quiznos, Taco Bell, and Tim Horton's have to be accepted by the locals, to catch on.  Koreans WANTED McDonalds.  And some western products don't catch on here, too (or there'd be as many Subway Sandwich shops here as there are in the US; this proves that America CAN'T 'spoil' Korean culture without Koreans accepting the product that's been introduced.  Some cultural artifacts catch on better here than back home: Queen is way bigger here than back home; so is Abba, Mariah Carey, and "My Heart Will Go On."  Meanwhile, very few here know about Creed, Travis Tritt, or even U2.  Wilco? The Flaming Lips? Bwahaha.

It's asinine for my student to deny Koreans have their own agency (power to make their own choices) in the process of choosing which aspects of a culture catch on here.  Koreans like blockbuster movies, or they wouldn't go to them.  It's hypocritical, and just stupid, for Captain Fogey to blame America for the fact Korean young people WANT to drink Starbucks.

4. And finally, I wish I could just read minds to see what these guys' image of an ideal Korea is like. I always suspect it looks more like the idyllic and very fictional Dongmakgeol than any actual place. If they refuse to acknowledge that Choseon dynasty had its own problems corruptions and evils, or that Korea's modern culture has a lot of good going for it, then I'm debating nostalgia (read: wasting my breath). I wish people wouldn't bring intractable opinions to discussion class, because it's discussion class, not screed class.  Koreans have more wealth freedom and opportunity now than ever before, and I wish they'd admit that, not because I think western culture and prosperity/"advancement" are inextricable, but because they're being dishonest or lazy if they don't acknowledge the baby while they curse the bathwater.

So that's what I'd say to the guy in my class... if it were my policy to engage in these discussions.

That said, I'm being harsh on this guy: not to buy into the "he's had a hard life" claptrap, but Korea has changed so damn much, so insanely quickly, that emotionally, I can't blame Ajosshi covey for taking this purist attitude toward all these weird new changes that make his (former?) home into an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place, barely recognizable as home.

I wrote about this before, in my "On Ugly English Teachers" series, and sorry to quote myself, but here's here's why I feel like this generation deserves a little understanding:

[Instead of] a military aggressor/villain trying outright to outlaw the Korean Language ...there's this wacky Western Culture, and rather than hammering iron spikes in rocks...it's causing young people to tan, [etc.]... and it's seeded the whole country with...apartment blocks... brand-name shops, and people aren't learning to respect their elders like they used to, and... they're being forced to learn English ... on pain of stunted career opportunities, and finally one morning they wake up and don't recognize the country where they were born. Can you imagine anything lonelier than finding yourself a stranger in the only land you know, anything colder than being called anachronistic and outdated in the place you grew up, at an age when you'd expected to be growing old with honor and respect?

In the face of all the change that's happened in Korea, maybe we can forgive them for retreating into what's familiar.  Folks in our home countries do, too.  Hell, Rolling Stone's album reviewers still spot four free stars to any artist who they liked when they were 24, and James Taylor and Mick Jagger are still thanking them for giving them full-page reviews, three decades after either of them were relevant.

Here's part two of the series: When Cultures Move Abroad

Weddings, K-Pop, Korean Food & Purity: Who Owns a Culture? Introduction

Jason, over at Kimchi Ice Cream, has a really interesting post up that discusses Korean Wedding Hall culture, and the ways it resembles weddings back home, but that resemblance, in the end, only serves to bring the differences into even starker, more jarring contrast.

This reminds me of one of the most interesting insights Brian in JD had talking about Korean Christmas: Brian uses the "Uncanny Valley" idea to talk about Korean treatments of Western cultural practices, and I think it's apt.

The uncanny valley is a robotics term: experts found that as AI and robots behave more like humans, we respond to them more positively, but beyond a certain point, it creeps us out instead of making us like the robots, and we focus on the differences instead of the similarities: it's easier to sympathise with the cartoonish Mr. Incredible than with the nearly photorealistic characters in the Final Fantasy movie, and in NHL '94 it was SO COOL that you could make Wayne Gretzky's head bleed, but in NFL 2010 those touchdown dances seem a little too graceful for NFL players.

(from Swingers: warning: language)


Jason's description of Korean weddings, which is highly worth reading, seems to support this uncanny valley idea.  I think a wholly traditional Korean wedding, with Korean-only reference points, would be a nicer experience than the "Disneyland/Vegas" wedding Jason describes.  The wedding that seems to want to be taken on Western terms gets under our defenses... but then smacks us in the face even more sharply with its differences, because it seemed to hint that it would meet our expectations for weddings from back home.  It's the old bait-and-switch.

Korean Christmas is another good example of this.  The music is similar...ish; the decorations are similar...ish but it's a freaking couple holiday!!!

I'd like to look a little more at this funny spot where expectations and practices clash between cultures.  I began writing about it, and the post ballooned into what I'll break up into a series, for the sake of me, you, and time.  I'd been planning to write an article about the other side: observations about my Korean students' views of cultural change - for a while anyway, so now seems like a good time.

The three parts will be as follows: first a look Korean cultural change as viewed by Koreans, next, Korean cultural change (especially co-opting of foreign elements) as viewed by expats, and finally, Korean culture abroad: what will Koreans do if Korean culture really DOES become popular in the West, as everybody allegedly wants to happen?  I'll use a lot of my own observations, and stuff I've noticed during this semester's discussion classes, in the series.  Until the next post, you should go read Jason's article about Wedding Halls/Castles.

Jason takes a thoughtful, intelligent look at the way Koreans have taken Western weddings, isolated a few elements, exaggerated a few elements to cartoonish heights, and discarded the rest.  He mentions purity, which triggered some stuff for me, because I've been thinking about writing about this topic of what I call cultural cross-pollination, but from the exact opposite side.

http://kimchiicecream.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/korean-wedding-hallcastle-culture-jason-when-are-you-and-julianne-getting-married-you-should-get-married/

Here's part 1 of my series: Korean cultural change to older Koreans

Inwang Mountain and JjimDalk: Awesome Day

Given such fantastic weather, Girlfriendoseyo, Mom-in-law-oseyo, and I climbed Inwang-san, or Inwang Mountain, this Saturday.

The mountain was in fine form, with cherry blossoms and magnolias still in bloom.

The tree cover had pink peeking through.

The air was clear enough to see from Inwang Mountain, all the way to the 63 Building on Yeouido.

Girlfriendoseyo playing with her dog.  Cherry blossoms through the opening in the wood grove.

Mother-in-law-oseyo loves the mountain.

After a good climb on the mountain, we had a special treat in store: Andong JjimDalk.  Andong JjimDalk is so good, that it's just not worth eating it anywhere except in Andong... but Girlfriendoseyo heard that some of the JjimDalk restaurants in Andong will actually deliver their recipes to you in Seoul, if you order them a few days ahead of time.  Girlfriendoseyo did exactly that.  We'd been planning a jjimdalk party sometime, but before we ordered it to eat with a bunch of friends, we wanted to try it, and make sure it was the same stuff on deliveray, as it was in Andong.  After climbing the mountain, Mother-In-Law-oseyo warmed up the recipe that had been delivered, and readers... it was almost as good as making the trip to Andong.


A bit closer:

And this, readers, is a picture of a full, and happy Roboseyo.

Bravo my life!

And then, on the way home, I saw something amazing: on the subway, this old lady got on the subway, and fell into the most amazing kimchi squat I've ever seen. She curled into a tiny ball on her heels, fell just about asleep, and no matter which way the train pitched, rolled, accelerated, and decelerated, she stayed put. I've never seen a kimchi squat so stable. People were getting on and off near her, and bumping her, and she was unperturbed. Impressive.

ATEK Communications Officer, and no, ATEK will not be taking over Roboseyo

On Monday I sent out a press release, and posted on ATEK's website, that I've applied for, and been appointed, ATEK's National Communications Officer.  (link to press release).  This is an interesting opportunity for me, and I'm pretty excited about the possibilities right now.  Last time I wrote about ATEK, I wrote that

The area where Atek is failing so far is in communication, in my opinion. There isn't enough knowledge in the general population about what they're on about, about the kinds of connections that are being formed, and the reasons why things seem to be going slowly. Meeting notes ought to be published somewhere on their websites, and regular national council meetings should be announced, with their agenda and notes published, at least in some form that doesn't impinge on the privacy or trust of the people involved in certain ATEK actions.

I still think that.  From the conversations I've had (and I'm still learning the ropes right now: patience, please!) Atek has a lot of good people, and they're doing a lot of good things, and I'm looking forward to being a part of letting the world, or at least those who care, know what Atek's about, what they're doing, what they want to do, and how people can get involved.  Hopefully soon, people will no longer be able to say that ATEK's main failing is a failure to communicate... if I do my job well enough, people will know enough about ATEK that they'll be able to criticize finer points of its organization or bylaws or goals, and we'll be able to learn a lot from those public discussions, if they're productive.

So stay tuned: I'm getting my feet under me right now, but I've been sharing a lot of interesting ideas with a bunch of people (you can read some of them here, from Jason, who wrote a nice post about my appointment.)

But I'd like to be clear to my readers that I do not intend to use Roboseyo as ATEK's mouthpiece blog, nor any of the other blogs I'm involved with.  That would be unfair to my readers at Roboseyo, who come here for Roboseyo, not for ATEK, it would be unfair to other bloggers and news sources who write about ATEK, to be scooping them any time with inside information, and it would also be unfair to whoever comes after me as National Communications Officer, if I use the Roboseyo media empire (tee hee) for ATEK publicity, rather than trying to set up ATEK-specific communication mechanisms that are separate from Roboseyo, so that I can cleanly pass them on for the next person to use effectively, when my term expires (the bylaws give a maximum term).  Now, if I go to an ATEK event that rocks, I might post photos and talk about it, because that's something that happened in my life, and it rocked.  If ATEK is doing an event that I think is cool, you might hear about it at the 2S2 Blog or here, but I'll continue posting non-ATEK events that I like, and photos of non-ATEK stuff as well, so long as it's awesome (because that's the only real standard here at Roboseyo: awesomiousity).  This will be very remain my personal blog, with my personal opinions.  Because of my new official position, I'll actually be talking about ATEK less here (for example, in posts like this), because now that I'm in an official capacity, I should be writing about it along official channels.

So why, Roboseyo, are you taking on such a big task?  (and dear readers, it IS a big task... with a sharp learning curve.  I'd never written a press release before until Monday, and I made some mistakes that will be corrected in the next one.)  Well, here's why: I'm getting married, readers.  You know that.  To a wonderful Korean lady, no less, whose job prospects are mostly limited to Korea because of the kinds of re-training she'd have to undergo to do her job in other countries (she's pretty specialized).  I'm probably going to be living in Korea for most of my adult life, if things go the way they have been.  The wind blows, and the wheel turns, but for the foreseeable future, Korea's it.  For a lot of that future, I may well be involved in education, and if that's the case, then helping out an organization whose goal is to improve the lives of English teachers seems kind of logical.  At this point, I think ATEK is the organization I can get involved with, that has the best chance of affecting tangible improvements in the quality of life of English teachers in Korea.  I have a big stake in Korea, so I'm doing a favor for my future self, folks.  Also, when I have a bad Korea day (and everybody has them), thinking that I'm doing something meaningful with my free time makes me feel better about the prospect of living in Korea for a long long time.  It won't always be easy: the time management challenge alone will be a biggie, and I have a wedding coming up, but I think I can do a good job of it, and I'm excited to be part of an organization with a lot of cool people who are passionate about making life better for English teachers.  Plus, I get business cards!

If you want to talk to me about personal or blog stuff, write me at the address on the right: roboseyo at gmail.  If you want to write me about ATEK stuff, I'm going to try to keep them separate, so please send it to media[@]atek[.]or[.]kr   If you have some advice, some suggestions, or if you want to help me out as a volunteer, because you like me so much, or just because you're awesome, some of the ideas I've been tossing around for improving communications will take some help, so drop me a line.

Have a great day, readers.

Roboseyo

Blood Connections, Group to Address Blood-Donation Issues, to Meet on Sunday

Blood Connections is a group conceived by some of the people who were working to collect blood for YooWoon, the 19-year-old boy who had a facebook page and a blood drive done in his name, but who passed away last week.

Some people, myself included, discovered that there are a number of issues making it harder for non-Korean speakers to give blood in Korea.  On Sunday, in Kangnam, a group of these people are meeting to start a group meant to address these issues, and make it easier for foreigners to give blood in Korea.  The facebook page is here, and it's a good cause that can mean life or death.

Wanna Chat with Foreign Beauties? How to Make Friends with a Foreigner Part 6

This post is part of a series providing tips for expats in Korea who are interested in becoming friends with Koreans, and tips for Koreans who are interested in becoming friends with Westerners. Read. Yes, I know these are sweeping generalizations. Deal with it.

The table of contents for the entire series is here.

Tip 15 Be calm: if you find yourself wanting to "correct" my opinion, or if you find yourself wanting to say something like "You should learn more about Korea before you criticize," it's time to do one of two things: 1. do a quick emotion-check - breathe deeply, count to ten, and continue as coolly and rationally as possible, with delicate, tactful language, in a calm voice, or 2. if you don't feel like doing that, or if you're afraid your emotions will make it hard to do that, just change the subject.

Honestly, this is a bad habit many foreigners have: it's natural to have complaints about life -- nobody's ever 100% happy -- but sometimes we choose the wrong time or place to say them, or we take our normal, natural complaints about life, and make them sound like we're complaining generally about Korea, not specifically about a situation. If it seems like the conversation is about to turn into a bunch of complaining, it might be time to change the subject.

If you don't want to have conversations like this, see also tip 11: don't ask questions that could be taken as an invitation to complain.

Tip 15.1 Please allow me to have bad days. Some days, my boss was a jerk, or the crowded subway was annoying, or some of my students' mothers complained about my teaching. If I complain about those things, please listen to me, and don't think that my complaining is a final judgement on your country, or your culture. I need friends to help me deal with my bad days, not Korea defenders to tell me I shouldn't feel that way!

Complaints are emotional, especially if I just had a bad day, and when I'm emotional, I don't always choose my words carefully. That's normal human behavior; please remember that before getting defensive.

Tip 16 Be ready for a different kind of friendship than you have with your Korean friends. I don't feel comfortable explaining in detail exactly how, because "foreigners" is a pretty diverse group, as are Koreans, and the specifics vary for every two different people... but the ways and reasons Koreans form and maintain friendships are sometimes different than the ways and reasons foreigners form and maintain friendships, so there will be times when things are different, strange, maybe even uncomfortable for both of us. In those cases, if you really want to have a good foreign friend, it'll be important for you to talk with me about what's happening, and how or why things are different than you'd each expect from your friends of the same culture. If you can both keep open minds and negotiate those challenges, then you'll be on the way to having a truly rewarding friendship. But especially if you haven't lived outside of Korea, and your friend hasn't spent time in other cultures growing up, both sides will need to work on being flexible. If we can both be flexible, it's totally worth it.

And remember: "It's a cultural difference" is NOT the end of a conversation.  It's the BEGINNING of a conversation.  After saying "It's a cultural difference," it's important to articulate that difference, and how my expectations are different than your expectations, so that we can be understanding and flexible towards each other in the future.

Now, following these tips won’t automatically guarantee that you’ll become great friends with every foreigner you meet: friendship depends on more than avoiding faux-pas - but by avoiding these turn-off behaviors, you’ll hopefully have the tools to make the kind of good impression that leads to good friendships. Have fun!

Back to the Table of Contents for the series.

I'm in the Canadian Embassy's April Newsletter!

The Canadian Embassy wrote a feature about me in their monthly newsletter.  :)

You can read it here.

You can go to this page, and in the top right corner there's a spot where you can subscribe to the newsletter.

Also, on the right side of this blog, under the "helpful sites worth checking out" category, you can find a link to the Embassy's page of information about coming to Korea to teach English.  It's a pretty good primer that touches on the most important points without getting over-long.

Wanna Chat with Korean Buddies? How not to make an Ass of Yourself: Part 4

This post is part of a series providing tips for expats in Korea who are interested in becoming friends with Koreans, and tips for Koreans who are interested in becoming friends with Westerners. Read. Yes, I know these are sweeping generalizations. Deal with it.

Here's the table of contents to the series.

On to the tips:

Learn as much as you can about Korean manners. Gord Sellar just wrote a great piece about what is called "Gaijin Smash" in Japan - where foreigners get away with stuff, or dodge the usual expectations or obligations by feigning ignorance of Japanese norms, or demanding special treatment. Don't over-play the foreigner card, and learn how we Koreans deal with conflict resoluation. Open confrontation often isn't the way it's done here; if you have an awkward situation, ask a Korean friend for advice rather than starting off with your battering ram impersonation. As a general rule, Koreans usually prefer back-channels and indirect methods of conflict resolution, rather than direct confrontation; we even have a word for it: 눈치, or nunchi, which might be defined as a cross between social awareness and tact on steroids. Learning a bit of how to comport yourself with nunchi will go a long way. Give a person a small gift and invite them to go drinking to work things out privately, instead of hauling off with a confrontation in front of colleagues, where I lose face, and you lose even MORE face, for making me lose face.

Don't ask how to get a Korean girl. What would you say if a Korean exchange student in your home country asked you the same question? Probably, "Every girl is different; I don't know what to tell you," right? Why would you think it's different here?

So here's Roboseyo's authoritative guide to meeting Korean girls: step one: Come to Korea. Step two: Approach a girl. Step three: Put your best foot forward, and hope she likes you. The Korean from Ask A Korean! wisely notes that "If there is only one thing to remember about Korean men, it’s this: they are men before they are Korean." Ditto for women: it's pretty universal that women want to be treated with respect and kindness. It's universal that there are some awesome women and some crazy psychos in every country. While variations in culture might lead to differences in how people express certain things, or how an an individual's awesomeness/psychoness manifents, those differences won't be that much more confusing than the usual variations between individuals, if you keep an open mind. One friend advises watching a few Korean dramas and romantic comedies to see what women expect from a suitor. From there, figure it out.

Earn your right to be opinionated. When giving opinions on Korea, acknowledge what you don't know. Even Roboseyo remembers having conversations with Koreans in his first year, telling them everything that was wrong with Korea, and exactly how it could be fixed. Coincidentally, the best way to fix things, most of the time, was to do them more the way they were done in Canada. Old Roboseyo was operating under the false assumption that Koreans don't already know what's broke in their system, and got caught up in the heady notion that he would be the visionary - that vaunted outside voice - who could break people's thinking out of the box of Neo-Confucianism (whatever that means) or hyper-competition, or whatever.

Problem is, the more Roboseyo learned about Korea, the more complex all those problems seemed. It's no surprise that a lot of us Koreans rankle when somebody acts as if they have it all figured out, three months into their Korea experience. During all those conversations on his high horse, Roboseyo didn't actually say anything his Korean friends hadn't heard before, and been said better, by a social critic, a commentator, or a thinker in Korea. Don't fall into the trap of thinking we will never have heard your "western perspective" before. Approach discussions of Korean issues with a level of humility appropriate to your level of knowledge about the country.  

Pick Your Spots, Too. Make sure our friendship can bear the frequency and type of complaints, criticisms, and commentaries you make on Korea. It IS my country, after all, so I probably won't want to talk about social issues all the time, nor will I want to hear complaints and criticisms every time we talk.   Spend some time talking about travel, or food, or video games, so that it doesn't seem like the only thing we ever talk about is all the ways you'd change Korea, if you could.

Meanwhile, if you don't know me well enough to read when I'm starting to feel uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation, you shouldn't be getting overly critical to begin with, and if you do know me well enough to read my comfort level, be sure to do so during the discussion.  It's generally a good idea to save the "Korea bashing" theme for other expats, who understand the difference between the "group therapy" context and the "representations of Korean culture" context.

Finally: Don't talk about sex all the time.  Some of us don't mind that - some of us even hang out with non-Koreans so that we can speak a little more freely about topics that are taboo to most Koreans, but not all of us.  It's quite unusual, and often embarrassing to have a lot of really open conversations about sex, even if it's in English, because these days, a lot of people can understand English, and can follow every word you're saying if you talk about it in public.  Even if the other people in the coffee shop don't understand every English word, they'll still recognize words like "sex" and "fuck" - we all watch Hollywood movies.  Once again, pick your spots, and don't go into it unless you already have a pretty good read on a person's sensibilities and comfort zones.

Well, that's what I've got for now. If you can think of other things I've missed, let me know. I hope this series turns out useful for both sides.

And even though I've just spent a few thousand words dredging up stereotypes and awkward aspects of either side of the expat/Korean friendship, here's my bit:

Basically, if you boil down both lists, they sum up the same way: be considerate and respectful, and consider the person you're meeting as a complete human, and not just an example of their group. Really, that's all anyone wants, because, to modify The Korean's quote: "We're humans before we're Koreans, or Westerners."

I've grown uncomfortable with the casual tendency to say "I talked to a Korean nurse at the clinic" instead of saying "I talked to a nurse..." because often adding the "Korean" (or "foreign") label means lumping a whole bunch of baggage over top of the initial situation. "A Korean lady pushed me on the subway." No. "A rude lady pushed me on the subway." Using the word "Korean" there instead of the word "rude" seems to saddle the category of "Korean" with rudeness, and fails to acknowledge the diversity of Koreans, and that's unfair. On both sides, we need to be more careful about avoiding such casual categorizations.

One of my correspondents concurs:

Even though I said these things, this is the small part of my friends/foreigners aspects. Mostly, the foreigners I know are really nice but I sent this list because I had to think about what could be annoying for me.

and I'd say the same thing about the Koreans I know.

Hope you've enjoyed the read.

Back to the table of contents.

Don't Trust Your Boss? How's Peace of Mind for 20 a Month?

I got an e-mail from ATEK's President, Greg Dolezal. I'm a member of ATEK now, and am planning on becoming more involved. I'd rather not let that take over this blog entirely, but I would like to put some of my energy in that direction, and you'll hear about it here from time to time.

Meanwhile, there's an exciting program that I'd like to mention here: Kangnam Labor Law Firm, which has handled a large volume of labor cases by reference from ATEK, is testing a new program called "Legal Assurance" You can read about it, including the text of the ATEK member e-mail, at Chris in SK's blog, it's mentioned at Expacked, and explained further at Kangnam Labor Law Firm's own site.  After reading up, here's the breakdown, as I understand it.

Basically, it works like health insurance: instead of paying tens of thousands for a surgery when you get sick, you pay a little each month, which adds to the pool of insurance payees, and when something big comes along, they draw from that pool to help you out with your surgery.  In this case, 20 000 won a month pays into the monthly plan, which amounts to a retainer, and give you access to the law firm's services.

So why is this a good idea?  Dollars and cents, readers.

See, the standard labor lawyer's retainer fee at Kangnam Labor Law Firm -- the fee you pay them before they start looking into your case -- is 600 000 won, to recruit their services.  Then, if you win a settlement, the firm is also entitled to 30% of the entire settlement, on top of the retainer.

Doing the math on that, if your boss is trying to rip you off for 1 000 000 won, the retainer is 600 000, and then the firm gets 30% of the settlement on top of that.  This means out of your million, 600 000 goes into the retainer, and another 300 000 goes to the firm as a percentage of your settlement, leaving you with 100 000 won - not even worth the effort.  Basically, this means that for cases in which your boss is trying to stiff you for a smaller amount, it's just not worth going to a labor lawyer; your only choice is to cut your losses and look for a better job.

The next problem with doing things this way, is that lawyers don't get called into the case until the dispute has already "gone nuclear" as the law firm calls it -- not until things have gotten so bad between the teacher and the boss, that the teacher is actually willing to cough up 600 000 won - no small amount - to get it sorted.

The last problem with doing things this way is that a lot of English teachers in bad spots need a lawyer for the same reasons they can't afford a retainer: because they're not getting paid.  How is one expected to pony up 600 000 won, when the REASON one needs a lawyer is because one hasn't been paid in two months?

So how does 20 000 a month help?

First, it means that you can access a labor lawyer without dropping 600 000; this means that you can have Kangnam Labor Law Firm backing you up in issues over smaller amounts - that big retainer means  that until the amount in dispute is larger than 2 500 000 won, it's not really worth your while to call in a lawyer, but for 20 000 a month, you can have access to a law firm ready to mediate, negotiate, and support you in smaller matters as well.

Second, it means that rather than waiting until things have gotten really bad between an employer and an employee, you can bring a lawyer in sooner in the process, or get better advice sooner, and hopefully settle the matter before it has to go to court, which is better for everyone.  Mediation is way better than lawsuits, it's faster, and less antagonistic, and there's less chance of totally fire-bombing your working relationship forever (if that's important to you).  If there IS a problem that requires going to court, no further retainer is required, but the firm is there to advise you long before things get bad enough to consider going to court, and there to mediate issues rather than having to bring the hammer.

Third, it means that you can access the expert legal advice of a labor law firm whenever you need it, which could be worth a lot, not just in terms of a stronger negotiating position, but also in terms of peace of mind.

I'd say 20 000 a month is a small price for peace of mind.  So who should sign up for this?

Well, at this point, the Legal Assurance Program is a trial balloon: they're doing a small-scale release, a "soft opening" to see how it works out, and to see if the model is viable.  They might tinker with the model a bit before rolling it out on a larger scale. If it does work out well, I'd say anybody who doesn't trust their boss, anybody who's observed sketchy behavior from their employer, whose employer seems to be hiding something, who's had to fight for things they're entitled to, like health insurance, or who's been burned in the past, and doesn't want it to happen again, would be stupid not to sign up.  Like health insurance or life insurance, anybody who's not sure about the security of their position would have much less to worry about if they signed up, and 20 000 a month is nothing: that's six bowls of jajangmyeon in Seoul, or a meal and a pint at Wolfhound, or three Long Island Ice Teas.  I'm not sure exactly how limited this limited release is, or how many monthly retainers they're putting on the table at this point, but I hope they go to people that need them.

I predict that in the first group of people signing up, Kangnam Labor Law Firm will end up dealing with a lot of grievances, so that it won't pay for itself immediately; however, I think that once that initial burst settles down, it'll be well worth it for them, in revenues and in reputation among English teachers, and it'll be a huge boon for English teachers who aren't sure about the situation they're heading into.

I think it's awesome that Kangnam Labor Law Firm is trying out this system; I hope it works, and I hope we can see others like it.  For those who have been asking what ATEK's done for them, lately, I'd say this is a pretty strong indication that, while ATEK hasn't been loud (though some of its critics have), it has been getting stuff done.

Go to the website and read more about the plan, and you're also free to write them if you have a question at i.need.help@k-labor.com.

(by the way: I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not qualified to give legal advice.  Don't take this as such.  Instead, contact Kangnam Labor Law Firm where they actually know what they're talking about, rather than just reading stuff and putting it into pretty words.)