Pyeongchang Olympics Are Here! Brace For the Letdown!

The Pyeongchang Olympics are here! Some of my friends are really excited about this, so of course I take it as my Roboseyoly duty to throw some cold water on the proceedings. We have a lot of cold water around the house right now, because our laundry room's pipes have been frozen for literally three weeks! Before running out to the coin laundry to ensure I have underpants for the next week (rueing that cancelled trip to Hawaii more and more), I'd like to say a few things about the Pyeongchang Olympics.

Part One: Tempering Expectations

I had intended to write this about two or three years ago, but never really got around to it, which means I am now Johnny-come-lately instead of being stylishly ahead of the curve, but I've been telling whichever friends would listen that the Pyeongchang Olympics are going to be a letdown pretty much since they were awarded.

Whoa now, spoilsport!

I'm evil. I know. 
Source: https://giphy.com/gifs/2pjspMQCi70k

The Pyeongchang Olympics Coverage Bingo Card!

The Pyeongchang Olympics are coming!

I am in the process of writing my longer, less fun take on why the Pyeongchang Olympics will be a letdown, but one thing I'm looking forward to is... the foreign media frenzy!

Yes, foreign media will be helicoptering into South Korea in droves to cover the Pyeongchang games, and we get the pleasure of scads and scads of people writing about Korea who don't actually know much about Korea!

The esteemed Matt from Popular Gusts wrote this interesting piece for The Korea Times about some of the takes foreign journalists had of South Korea during the '88 Olympics, when NBC's coverage of a few incidents led to a full-blown backlash among Koreans, severe enough that NBC reporters were advised to hide the NBC logo on their cameras!

Well, in anticipation of hot takes that break all five of my "signs the author of the article you're reading about Korea doesn't actually know much about Korea," and running with this tweet from @thewaegukin...

I will give a prize to whoever finds the worst Korea hot take written during the Olympics by a foreign journalist unfamiliar with Korea.

— waegukin (@thewaegukin) February 5, 2018

There is simply nothing for it but to put together the "Pyeongchang Olympics Coverage Bingo Card!"

Buy your own bingo cards if you want! (Source)

Here is a list of items for you to fill in on your own card.

The Sexism in Sports Journalism Bingo Card!

Share it wherever you want... it sure is relevant right now.

-Rob

Source: Roboseyo!

(UPDATED) Sexism Covering Female Athletes: Help Me Make the Bingo Card!

Edit (August 9) well... here is some nice vindication. As well as some leads for my bingo card! Ironic that it's published by The Korea Times (see below).



Literally one after the other on my Facebook feed this morning, were these two articles:


1. Government Website Under Fire For Sexist Content

Screenshot taken August 8

Yes. Those clueless, ignorant, sexist, bad government website people sure don't know what sexism is! The article describes an internet backlash against a page on a government health portal, about "healthy breasts" which includes a detailed description of the shape and proportions perfect breasts should have. With helpful drawings! (Of COURSE KT included the drawings.)

And then... just to make sure we know The Korea Times doesn't actually understand what the problem was... this article published by them came right after:

"Boyfriend a tall order for 192cm South Korean volleyball star"

The write-up includes digging all the way back to 2010 to find a comment from the player about the height of men she'd consider dating. A comment I'm 100% sure she made in response to a sexist question from a journalist who cared more about her relationship status than her volleyball game or ambitions.

screenshots taken August 8

The Olympics^TM are on. The quadrennial orgy of nationalism, people pretending to care about sports they don't care about for the sake of cheering for their country, increasing corporatization and censorious brand-protection. For once, female athletes (whose medals add to countries' medal counts just as much as men's! Score!) will be given as much attention as men's sports... leading to people who have no idea how to write about women asking dumb, sexist questions and making dumb, sexist comments and focus on their bodies, family situations and relationship statuses instead of the fact they're badass athletes who made it to the f***ing Olympics^TM.

Imagine if men got asked these same patronizing, brain-fart questions: (explanation)



So... tell us how Kim Yeon-koung trained. Tell us what she brings to the team. Tell us how she inspires little girls to excel in sports. Tell us the strategic benefits having a very tall player gives the women's volleyball team. At least friggin mention that she's an otherworldly talent who won the MVP of the 2012 London Women's Volleyball tournament. But this shit, which was the closing line of the article: "The average height of South Korean men is 174.9 centimeters. Regrettably, it would be better for her to look for a boyfriend somewhere outside the country." Just fuck on off out of here with that.

Keep trying, Korea Times.


Readers!

You know the idea of the bingo card: here's the "Men's Rights Bingo Card" -- see if you can fill it out while discussing gender on the internet! Or, for a challenge, see if you can fill it out in less than an hour while discussing gender on the internet.

Image warning: Misogyny ahead.

Let's fill out the "Covering Female Sports Bingo Card" which I managed not to find online after a few google searches... so hey. Let's make one! Suggestions in the comments: we've got 5x5 to fill out.


UPDATE: Final Draft

Korea Herald... and Roboseyo... on Dog Meat

Korea Herald ran an article about eating Dog Meat in Korea -- a topic that received a lot of world attention in 1988 around the Olympics, at which time Seoul carefully squirreled away dog restaurants, in 2002 around the World Cup, at which time the response was more along the lines of "Respect our culture." It will happen again in 2018, when the Winter Games comes to Pyeongchang, and what the response is, is anybody's guess.

The Korean, of Ask A Korean! wrote in support of dog meat, and has brought the ire of every PETA person who finds his blog down upon his head. 197 comments in response, as of this writing.

I read up a little on dog meat while preparing for my essays about the Olympics, because the issue came up as one of the arenas where Korea wanted to put a positive image of itself onto the world stage. Not exhaustively, but a little.

"Animal Rights vs. Cultural Rights: Exploring the Dog Meat Debate in South Korea from a World Polity Perspective" (Minjoo Oh & Jeffrey Jackson, Journal of Intercultural Studies Vol. 32.1 Feb. 2011) gave an interesting history of dog meat controversies in Korea, and explores the tensions that occur when groups proclaiming universal values (and possibly wearing their colonial arrogance on their chests) come across local groups with other ideas. If you'd like to read it, contact me, and I'll get your hands on a copy.

Some of the things it's got me thinking about:
1. Rhetoric from leaders has little meaning when it is not internalized by the locals. (See also: multiculturalism, globalization).

2. Rhetoric from international bodies and discussion of global norms has little effect if it does not resonate with something in the locals.

3. Formally adopting a policy is not the same as actually having it done in practice. (See also: maternity leave in Korea)

4. Don't underestimate nationalism and cultural exceptionalism.

5. Trying to take something away sometimes makes people hold onto it tighter.

6. As nations enter global community, there needs to remain space for local particularities, and dialogues about where those lines are drawn never end.

7. Sometimes, the way to clear space for local particularities is to announce global norms as window dressing... and then not enforce/implement it.

8. Shame tactics can provoke a backlash. Especially in the context of discussions about modernism, and in discussions between more and less developed countries, or more and less recently developed countries.

According to some of my reading, interestingly, partly because it's faced international opposition, eating dog has become seen (by some Koreans) as one way to celebrate their Koreanness -- because some furriners want to take it away, it suddenly gets chunked into the same category as pansoori, Arirang, and Other Heritages In Danger Of Vanishing. The article I mentioned above states that after the '88 Olympics, more Koreans had neutral or positive feelings toward eating dog, and more ate dog, than they did before some furriners tried to make them stop doing it.

Once again:
Eating dog is more popular now than it was before facing opposition from NGOs and such in 1988.

The Korea Herald piece presents two sides: pro and con. Stephen "Why Aren't You Respect The Korea Culture?" Bant argues against eating dogs, and Ann "I Used The Family Photographer Who Hasnt Bought New Equipment Or Backgrounds Since 1978" Yong-geun argues for it.

On the "Dogs are friends, not food" side, Bant comes across, frankly, as a little high-handed: a selection of words from his piece that demonstrate his attitude: "evolved" "uncivilized" "ignorant peasants." His posture comes across, in spots, as being one of the enlightened, bringing truth to the savages. Where his tone comes across that way, it rubs me the wrong way.

Then, in his last few paragraphs, he goes so far as to question the manhood of those who eat dogs. Directly after suggesting that those who don't eat dog meat don't need stamina supplements, he says,

"But dog eaters suffer other inadequacies. They say that in summer they cannot do without dog meat for energy. Well, perhaps if they exercised a litle, it would boost that flaccid physical condition of theirs." [emphasis added]

And that, sirs and madams, is called a cheap shot.

Bant also mentions that dogs are companions. And implies that using dogs as companions is a sign that a society is developed. I didn't realize that was the measure. I thought there was something about industrialization and access to education and medical technology and growth of civil society in there, too, but I've been wrong before. Using dogs as pets strikes me as a very culturally specific measure to choose as the barometer of a developed society -- I might as soon (and as arbitrarily) choose really good maple syrup as the measure of an advanced society... but I'd be showing my bias-cards then, wouldn't I? Do Indians look at Americans with envy, because Americans have pet dogs, and all they ever managed was big, unwieldy cows? Or do they see Westerners as savages, for coddling dogs, when they've discovered a far more bovine animal to revere?

In the bio, it explains that the writer is a vegan. And that matters.

On the pro-dog meat side, Ann Yong-geun plays the cultural relativity card, suggests that not all dogs are friends, and asks that people not force their opinions on others. Some of his points - like the one that Koreans only eat dogs that are specially bred for eating, are patently wrong or contradicted in his article -- almost every student over 40 with whom I've had this conversation, had a pet dog, or knows of a family who had a pet dog, that was stolen and eaten by a neighbor. This was also answered by Stephen in his article. Ann also points out that animal shelters in the West euthanize dogs regularly, and points out that if animal shelters destroy dogs anyway, why not make some use of the carcass, and eat a dog that's already dead, maybe even turn a profit from cooking it after it's been destroyed, rather than having to also pay for disposing of it the body. A fair point... but didn't he just say only specially raised breeds of dogs were supposed to be eaten?

Most interesting, he suggests that housing a dog in a human's home is an unnatural state for a dog, and they should be left to live wild; that keeping dogs as pets is just as unnatural and cruel as confining it to eat it.

Then he veers of into fishy territory, suggesting that Westerners don't eat dogs because it's in the bible. I got nothing to say about that, except that I suppose it's fair that both articles unravel toward the end, one with cheap shots, and the other with tangential borderline-nonsense.

Anyway, interesting pair of articles.


My own thoughts:

1. Korea is trapped in a bind. The dog meat industry here is terribly unregulated [update: it's fairer to say underregulated], which means that there's little to no control over the conditions in which dogs are raised and slaughtered, which in turn means that for all we know, many dogs continue to be raised and slaughtered in really viciously disgusting conditions (according to legend, slaughtering a dog by beating it to death produces the most delicious meat). The problem is, when the government tries to regulate dog meat, which would put them in a position to remove cruelty from the farming and serving of dog, animal rights people and humane society people, start raising a stink about banning it entirely. This meets resistance from people who believe them furriners (or them arrogant youngsters who need to get off my lawn, or just some ignorant people who have never tried it and should keep their nose out of it,) are trying to take away an important Korean traditional thing. That debate attracts negative international attention (which Korean leaders and image-sculptors hate). Better not to talk about it than to risk having all that dirty laundry run up a flagpole for everyone to see.  (see also: prostitution, suicide, abortion)

2. Stephen Bant is a vegan, so he's allowed to tell us that we shouldn't eat dog. He would probably argue just as passionately why we shouldn't eat chicken, pork, beef, ostrich, giraffe, or gorilla. His position is consistent.

But if you eat pig, you can't say it's wrong to eat dog. Pigs are remarkably smart: the intelligence argument doesn't fly. Some keep pigs as pets, too. If you eat any living thing (with the possible exception of wild game), you don't have a leg to stand on, saying that it's wrong to eat dog, but OK to eat chicken, ostrich, pig, cow, kangaroo, alligator, shrimp, oysters, turducken, or any other critter. Choosing which animals are wrong to kill and/or eat on the basis of cuteness is inconsistent and hypocritical: don't tell me it's wrong to cull cute baby seals because it's cruel, but it's OK to exterminate scabby rats on Manhattan Island.

I'm sympathetic to vegetarians for two moral reasons - I used to do summer work on farms, and it's really hard to raise meat in a way that's cost-effective and affordable, without being a little horrible. There's a reason many livestock farmers' kids grow up to be vegetarians. Particularly industrial chicken farming is so horrific, nobody should eat that shit. I'm sparing you links to photos and videos... but just google it. If the comment discussion gets interesting, I'm sure somebody will be considerate enough to include links in the comments to pages where you can see pictures and video from industrial farms. It's awful, and will make you sad for days.

I'm also sympathetic because in terms of efficiently using the world's resources to feed the world's humans, livestock a terrible choice. Growing beans and nuts to provide humans with protein, and making it into tofu and stuff, uses so much less of the world's resources, it's ridiculous. You know how many humans could be fed, on the grain it takes to raise a beef cow to slaughtering size? You know how much corn could be grown with the water it takes to raise a cow to adulthood?

3. Until it became a "thing NGO's and other furriners who don't understand our culture want to take away from us" because of these big public mega-events, eating dog meat was probably on its way to being a generational thing, like bbundaegi, which is slowly fading out of favor with the younguns - mostly old people, in mostly old neighborhoods, eat dog meat, particularly since it was pushed to the margins in '88 and (especially these days) young people mostly think of dogs only as pets. My wife is one of that generation: she, and people younger than her, are generally more interested to be seen in the newest belgian waffle, hand-drip coffee, gourmet hamburger, snazzy tapas place, than sitting on the floor in a dirty old neighborhood, in a shop in a back alley with fake wood floors and teal tables, surrounded by old men eating dog.

Even though dog consumption has increased since the '88 Olympics, I'd be interested to know how many of the people under 35 who eat dog, do it only with other people under age 35 -- I'd wager that the overwhelming majority of young people eating dog are doing it because they've been brought along by someone of that older generation.

4. Me, I'm torn, really torn, about dog meat. While I was traveling in China, I saw a dog market that made me sad enough that I won't eat more dog myself, and have eaten much less of other large animals, too. My wife wouldn't let me eat dog, anyway - not while she's around - because she's an avid dog-lover.

I'm mostly frustrated by that catch-22 I mentioned in "my own thoughts, part 1" -- the industry's sketchy because it's unregulated, and it's unregulated because trying to make it legal is politically risky, and any attempt to bring the industry above board and clean it up is going to result in loud movements to ban it entirely instead, attracting negative attention.

They're different in many ways, but the prostitution industry suffers the same dilemma - in both cases, leaders don't have either the will or the resources to eliminate the industry entirely, but neither do they have the courage to own up to its existence, and try to bring it above board, so it hangs around on the margins, where people who beat dogs to death can get away with it, and where gangsters who do all kinds of horrible human trafficky things to women, can get away with that.  

For the record, I think it's a much higher priority to clean up the prostitution industry than the dog meat industry, but until Korea's leadership is willing to either snuff the dog trade out, or legislate it appropriately, it will continue to exist in this shadowy area, until the generation that consumes most dog meat dies of old age, and it becomes impossible to find, not because international groups have foisted imperial values on innocent Koreans, but because those who prepare it, and those who eat it, have died of old age, and the young ones who would take it up, are interested rather in belgian waffles, hand drip coffees, and Indonesian, Thai, Swedish, Middle-Eastern, or whatever other kind of food has become the newest way to show off one's sophistication.

Pyongchang Olympics Predictions and Perspective in Question and Answer Format

Well, it's very convenient that Pyongchang was awarded the 2018 Olympics just now, as I just finished reading over 600 pages worth of books and articles on the Olympics and the FIFA World Cup, so I have lots to say...

In Question and Answer Format, then:

1. People in Korea are, like, REALLY excited about this. Why?

Almost every Korean you talk to wants Korea to be recognized as a world-class nation. Whatever that means*. Every Korean you ever meet wants foreigners to think well of Korea, and in order for MORE foreigners to think well of Korea, Korea needs to attract their attention. Big events like the Olympics are a great opportunity to do this. Koreans like to see Korean-related things high on lists comparing  countries, and get distressed when Korea's position on such comparative lists are low. Here's a list Korea now belongs to:

Countries that will (by 2018) have hosted a Summer Olympics, a Winter Olympics, and a FIFA World Cup:
France, Germany, Italy, USA, Russia, Japan... and South Korea. That's more exclusive than the G20!

Not only is Korea now on a very very exclusive list (absent: famously "highly advanced" nations like Sweden, Canada, Australia, Netherlands, and even the United friggin' Kingdom!), but Korea gets to show that anything Japan can do, they can do, too. Which is important to some people here.

*Usually, what "world-class nation" means is a nation that resembles nations universally recognized as "highly advanced" - usually in terms of technology, economic and military power, and cultural influence. These nations tend to be "Western" nations like the USA and European nations. And Japan.

2. That's a lot of talk about prestige and status, Roboseyo. But The Olympics are about peace and harmony through sport, aren't they?

Actually... whether the Olympics are successful at bringing peace and harmony and cultural understanding to the world is debatable -- during the 60s and 70s, the Olympics were extremely politicized, with major boycotts to the 1976, 1980 and 1984 games, a political hostage situation at the 1972 games (Munich), and a massacre of protestors just days before the opening of the 1968 games (Mexico City). There are also constant rumors of corruption in the International Olympic Committee, and the IOC is known for turning a blind eye on some horrific stuff: the Seoul Games were awarded to Korea only a year after the horrific Gwangju Massacres in 1980, and the IOC very nearly gave the 2000 Summer Games to Beijing, only four years after the Tiananmen Square massacre: a bid which China submitted after being actively encouraged to bid by IOC leaders.

Meanwhile, though Olympics bring lots of nations together, it's debatable whether one sees an increase in international understanding during the Olympics, or whether one simply sees nations gathering to root for their own tribe. Pride gets involved. Winning at all costs becomes more important than fair play and excellence.* The Olympics and similar events warm over old national rivalries, and when things don't go the way one or another nation wants, especially when one of those old rivalries is in play, it can lead to an international incident (see also: Ohno, Apolo).

(For the record, FIFA has generally, but not always, been less political, but especially recently, even more corrupt and unaccountable.)

The one thing the Olympics are SURE to bring is not peace and harmony, but a jump in international visibility, which acts as a blank canvas on which the host (and anyone else with some media savvy) can paint their messages. Beijing 2008 used the Olympics to make some bold declarations about China's rise. The 1988 Seoul Games, the 1968 Mexico City games, and the 1964 Tokyo games did likewise. After World War II, the Olympics were held in a series of former Axis nations, to show their return to normalized relations with the world (Rome 1960, Tokyo 1964, Munich 1972). The Olympics are also a great opportunity to do a little national swaggering, as in the 1936 Berlin "Nazi" Olympics, the cold war Olympics (Moscow 1980 and LA 1984 - which featured Sam the Eagle, the most nationalist mascot ever), and some might argue, the 1948 "Who just won a world war?" London Olympics.

(Sam the eagle: 1984 LA's mascot. A bit flag-wavey, no?)

*Lest I be accused of finger pointing, Canada is also guilty of focusing on winning. Canada's "Own the podium" project missed the point of the Olympics, if it really IS about understanding, harmony, excellence and fair play.


3. But fair play and excellence comes into it, right?

Somewhere in there... but with few exceptions, the medal counts have become more a reflection of who puts money into their Olympic program than anything else. And why do governments and corporations think it's worth it to support Olympic programs? Swagger, not sport. Look at the change in China's medal counts that have happened since the 1980s, leading up to China's 2008 gold frenzy - directly connected to national "glory" and prestige. If medals weren't a way of building national prestige, why would countries strategically focus funding on less popular, high medal-count events (swimming, diving, rowing, and skating events) in order to pad their totals?

4. But the 1988 Olympics were really good for Seoul, and Korea in general. Why wouldn't these Olympics be equally good for Korea?

A few reasons.

First, in 1981, all anybody knew about Korea was the War, and MASH, and Western news coverage on Korea at that time focused on North Korea, civil unrest in South Korea, and visits to Korea by heads of state. That's about it. There was nowhere for Korea's national image to go but up, and by putting on a helluva good show, Korea's national image DID go up.

Were the Seoul Games the "foundation for an Advanced Nation" advertised in the 1988 Olympic Museum (Olympic Park)?



Hard to say. A lot of other things were going on at the time. The games were a convergence point for forces that had been gathering speed in Korea for a long time, towards democratization and internationalization and a new stage of economic development, but those forces existed before the Olympics, and would have had their effect on the national trajectory without them, though in different ways and with different timing. The Olympics definitely gave Koreans a better story to tell themselves about Korea's rise in status, acting as a tidy turning point in the national narrative being constructed.

The 2002 World Cup also provided a nice turning point in the narrative of Korea's recovery from the 1997 financial crisis... but that was a constructed narrative, too. Not necessarily an objective truth. Often, that's what big sports events are best for - national storytelling.


5. So why wouldn't the same happen to Korea this time?

Well...

Now, Korea already is a prominent nation. You don't see Mongolian TV dramas sweeping their time-slots in Taiwan, you don't see Laotian pop bands hitting top ten charts all across Asia, and you don't see Burkina-Faso's top popstars getting headlining roles in crappy Hollywood movies, do you? Park Jisung even has his own chant from Manchester United fans, which, while as crass as any other soccer chant, is at least aware enough of Korean culture to choose the correct ugly stereotype.



Korea has much less to gain this time, and much more to lose if the games go poorly, or if something embarrassing happens, like the 2008 Beijing Torch Relay fustercluck, or closer to home, the Byun Jong il boxing brouhaha, during which a Korean security guard hit a boxing official. (More on that) ... do you know how close they came to canceling the rest of the Olympic boxing tournament in 1988?


6. So what do you think is going to happen during the 2018 Pyeongchang games?

I think they will be a successful games, but not enough to be considered among the best ever.

Predictions will wildly overestimate the number of tourists and dollars the Olympics will attract. But that's true of literally EVERY Olympics.

I think Koreans have overestimated the Winter Olympics - they're nowhere near the importance, length or scale of the Summer Games. They have much fewer events, and they only appeal to nations with winter sports.

It will raise Korea's profile, but not as much as expected, and not only in the ways hoped for: that visibility gives EVERYBODY a platform, not just the official party line, and protesters and dissenting voices WILL be a part of these Olympics.

If this article is on base, the region has its work cut out for it, to develop a venue area that will impress people from winter sport regions, rather than just Koreans who can't afford to travel to Whistler.

I think there will be a lot of talk, but the Olympics will not help improve North/South Korea relations. Nobody will win the Nobel Peace Prize because of these games.

I think North Korea will do some big stunt a few months before the games, to get attention and try to piss on the Olympic party, but be relatively quiet during the games. I don't know whether they'll send a team (they didn't in '88)... too many variables in play, particularly in terms of succession.

I think negotiations to send a unified Korean team to the Olympics won't work out, and both sides will blame the other. As usual. This one might hinge on whether the president at the time is lefty or righty (politically).

I think the facilities will be completed ahead of time, but over budget. Either that, or early and under budget, with problems in workmanship cropping up close to the opening day. This would be very embarrassing to the nation, especially if it was discovered that construction funds were funneled elsewhere. However, due to TV revenues, etc.,  the games will pretty much break even.

Then, I think Pyeongchang will not know what to do with the extra facilities, and mad surplus of hotel accommodations no longer needed after the games, and maybe tear down things like the bobsled track, once all the Olympic jobs evaporate and public funds have to go into maintaining mostly unused facilities. Best case scenario? Pyeongchang becomes an Olympic training complex for future Olympians.  Pyeongchang's nearby ski resorts will become WAY overpriced and overcrowded.

I think it will be run better than that F1 Racing event (racing events remain a mess), because the President will see to it that extremely capable people will be involved in the olympic project.


7. What are some pitfalls that you think should get some media play during games preparations, so that Korea doesn't end up in a media standoff like they did with NBC during the 1988 Olympics?

Here's the thing:
I'm sure the planning and execution of the games will go well. And I'm sure the "official version" of Korean culture will be well represented during the opening ceremonies and such.

But...


There will be some bad calls during the games. Some of those bad calls will go against Korean athletes.

Some journalist will do a piece on the nearest dog meat market to Pyeongchang.

Another will report on the gender empowerment gap, and the prostitution industry here. And maybe even the intellectual crime (pirated DVDs and such) or the continuing corruption of the high-and-mighty elites. Or the mistreatment of migrant workers. If people try to suppress these stories, there will be instead a series of stories about how Korea is not ready to take criticism the way a truly developed nation should (as happened to China when they lashed out at BBC). Western media likes to position non-western nations as "Other" and somewhat "inferior."

People will talk about North Korea more than South Koreans would like.

A few Koreans will act like hypernationalist asses, and it will get a little play in the international news, like the "USA" chanters at the Atlanta summer games.

If North Korea sends a team, they'll send a squad of beautiful cheerleaders who attract a lot of media attention.

Some athletes or guests will act like asses, and get into some kind of scuffle with locals or local police.

Some protestors will jump in front of cameras and talk about the Korean issue of the day: the 2018 equivalent of the 4 rivers project, or the US Agent Orange dumping.

Some Koreans will dislike the style of foreign nations' reporting on Korea, and try to stir up a nationalist outrage like the one that led NBC to advise its reporters to hide the peacock logo during the 1988 games.

Somebody's going to write a cheeky article about Korean culture that seems mocking to a reader without enough English skill to pick out nuances of tone, or write some stuff that's overwhelmingly positive, but has a few critical lines in it. (see also: Hohleiter, Vera)

How the Korean internet, and media, respond to these things, will demonstrate Korea's true level of advancement as a nation either confident in its status as a major player, or still insecure about whether EVERY person likes EVERYTHING about Korea - an impossible goal for a high profile country. Will the media and public response be different than it was in 1988 (exactly 30 years earlier)? That'll be a test of whether Korea's truly comfortable in its own skin as a player on the world stage.


8. So how can Korea prepare for those kinds of unexpected things?


With a preemptive series of media discussions about why it's unsporting, and makes Korea look bad, to crash the websites of countries, athletes, or sport governing bodies, that are party to decisions that go against Korean athletes or say bad things about Korea, or to threaten the lives of, well, anyone, over something as inconsequential as sports, and a series of media discussions about the fact people coming to Korea will be behaving by different norms than Koreans behave, which doesn't mean they're bad, inferior, immoral, or trying to insult their hosts: it just means they're not from around here.


9. Do you think that'll happen?


I don't know. But it'd be refreshing if it did.  We saw during the 2008 Beijing Games, as well as the 1988 Seoul Games, that host nations do not have complete control over the messages conveyed about their countries during such global events. Responding by taking it on the chin, with a "Yeah, maybe that's true. Everybody hosting the Olympics this year raise your hands!" instead of with prickly defensiveness, would demonstrate a kind of confidence Korea hasn't always demnostrated, and didn't in 1988. The point of big event hosting is swagger... so swagger! Korea would do well to bear this in mind while preparing for the games, and to aim for a populace ready for this inevitability, come games time.

I have this running through my head. So you will, too.

I mean... if you press play.

The Olympics are fascinating
"Hand in Hand" - the Official Olympic Theme Song of the 1988 Games.



one of my dogs has an ear infection she keeps scratching. So we put her in one of those cone things that would totally get her teased by the other dogs at the playground. Poor thing.

Also funny:

after the Olympic video finished, this video ("Hand" was in the title) was queued up as next.

In Studying the '88 Olympics

a few things I've learned that might not make it into the papers, but were interesting to learn nonetheless.

from "The Games Within The Games" by Vincent J Ricquart (Hantong Books 1988)

1. The Olympic Museum in Jamsil is an awesome encapsulation of the Olympic narrative as told by the Korean government, and that narrative is followed by people who have talked with me about the Olympics with surprising consistency.

2. Before the '88 Olympics, South Korea didn't have diplomatic relations with many socialist countries.  After the Olympics many of those countries established diplomatic relations with Seoul.  That they committed to attending may or may not have been because Seoul was at least engaged in talks with Pyongyang about holding some events in the North, though that didn't pan out.

It didn't pan out because North Korea was being over-demanding, intransigent, and arrogant.  They wanted to host either the opening or closing ceremonies (pretty damn big deal) and started building a stadium before having confirmed shared hosting duties. NK also assumed the North Korean team soccer would be granted an automatic berth in the Olympic tournament, as a host country, so didn't even bother to send their team to a qualifying tournament in (I think it was) Malaysia. FIFA, miffed at the arrogance, disqualified them from the Olympics.

Ever since the humiliation of that disqualification, North Korea has been a humbled state, and has engaged in international discussions with much less pride, willing to be flexible, and compromise.  It's been impressive to see them back off from that off-putting, screeching brinksmanship they used to do.

(source)

(source)

3. My own thoughts, in regards to the "'88 Olympics made Seoul an advanced nation" meme:

IF we accept the eurocentric model of "development into an advanced nation" and the eurocentric definition of what an "advanced nation" is... (after all, the IOC and FIFA and the like are western institutions - it's no surprise they use Western criteria to determine which nations are "advanced" and award them hosting rights)

Landing an event like this DOES require a certain level of achievement/skill in two main areas: infrastructure development (to build facilities and handle logistics) and diplomacy (to 'sell' my country to the committees that choose the next host).  That's all that hosting rights proves for SURE about a country.

But my own analogy is this:

Hosting the olympics for a developing country is like an adolescent buying a car with his/her own money. It doesn't CAUSE them to become an adult, and it doesn't automatically make them an adult, nor is it a prerequisite: another kid who never buys their own car isn't thereby disqualified from becoming an adult...

The official Olympic poster: 

but it certainly can be a powerful sign of a kid's intentions to act, and probably also desire to be treated like an adult, and it makes a strong statement of that to everyone around.  Sure, uncle Vernon might grumble that little Annie's not mature enough to own a car, and there might be a family discussion about Annie's shortcomings along the way (just as people grumbled about Korea's dictatorial political culture, and street protests, and North Korea stuff, just like they grumbled about Tibet and political prisoners in 2008), and young Annie might wrap the thing around a telephone pole... but the way she pays for, maintains, and uses her car might also be a way for all the adults around her to note, and recognize, that she's an adult, and for some adults, and many of Annie's peers, and maybe for Annie herself, that'll be a sure sign she's crossed the threshhold.

If you want to learn, literally EVERYTHING about the '88 games, you can go here, and download the two-volume, 1500+ page official report written by the Korean Olympic Organizing Committee, in .pdf form. Pictures in this post are screenshots taken from the .pdf.

I like these versions of "Hodori" the Seoul Olympic mascot.

Korea did an interesting job of presenting itself as a modern, developing, and also ancient culture, all at the same time, during the Olympics.


The Olympics have had a pretty troubled history of scandals, boycotts, tragedies, dumb moves, more scandals, and the like... but the fact that countries on both sides of the Cold War attended the Seoul Games (only Cuba, Ethiopia, and North Korea boycotted) might have been the beginning of the era we now experience, where Olympic attendance is pretty much taken as a given.

It used to be that who hosts the olympics was the stage for national rivalries (hence the cold war boycotts) but now, it seems that rather than hosting and boycotting the olympics, the main arena for international competition and bragging comes from who wins the most medals.  At least that's how it looks from here.

Enough with the Sports Victimhood Already

Had a conversation with Girlfriendoseyo about bad sportsmanship on the third last day of the Olympics: she mentioned how the Russian team officials were so disappointed at their poor showing these Olympics that team officials and government members left before the games were done, and even the president is calling for heads to roll. Figure saking silver medalist Evgeni Plushenko bitched about not winning gold rather than giving credit to Evan Lysacek. I came back with my memory of the 2002 winter games, when team Russia was so dissatisfied with their bronze medal finish in hockey that they didn't even show up for the medal ceremony. No class.

Then I mentioned the death threats against Jim Hewish, the referee who disqualified the Korean skater and gave Apolo Ohno the gold in 2002, and this year called back the Korean women's team speed skating gold medal for crowding a Chinese skater. (It's interesting that the hate this time is for the referee instead of for the Chinese skaters... but something I've noticed recently is that Korea will get all noisy and outraged in hate for America or Japan, but Korea doesn't mess with China. When the 2008 Olympic Torch Relay ended with the embarrassment of Seoul being unable to control the crowd of Chinese boosters, who violently quelled any protests around city hall, and darn near mauled a fella in the Soul Plaza Hotel lobby, the Chinese students arrested weren't even deported, and the whole thing disappeared from the media in two days, unlike the trumped up story against US Beef, which was a pure fiction, but sparked street protests for months, to say nothing of all of 2002 except the World Cup.)

So Jim Hewish had to be put under police protection in Vancouver. Brian cited a comment at Marmot, that these netizen outbursts can, and WILL undermine Korean attempts to host huge events like Olympics and World Cups - is the IOC really going to hold a Winter Games in a country where they might be unable to guarantee the safety of referees or players, if a call or a close game goes against Korea? Do they want to risk 200, or 1000 of THOSE kinds of people waiting outside the venue every time the hated ref of the day comes and goes?

In Korea's defense, Girlfriendoseyo said that she read that Jim Hewish had a history of other calls against Korea, and that he'd been suspended for two years for one such call (possibly the one in favor of Ohno?)... but I, with my extensive research skills (googling "Jim Hewish Suspended") haven't been able to find any confirmation of this from news sites. And yeah, the 3000 meter thing sucked. Sure.

But one commenter I read pointed out: Korea's own bad sportsmanship may well have caused Jim Hewish to make more calls against Korea. You see, Kushibo explains:

South Korea's hardcore netizenry may be entirely to blame for this one. The call was one that, according to the link The Marmot provided, could have gone either way, but the orgy of hate unleashed by the hardcore super comment tribe and their hacker buddies in 2002 forced his hand in Vancouver: Were Mr Hewish to have sided with the ROK team this time, he would have left himself open to accusations of caving in against his judgement.

The Joongang Daily has an editorial (HT Brian's twitter) about how bad calls are poor sportsmanship... which conveniently fails to mention that planting flags on pitching mounds and death threats are poor sportsmanship, too...
(source)

I don't really care to get into a back and forth about who's right and who's wrong, so all I want to say to Korean sports fans is this:

Folks, here's the thing. Sports Karma exists. The sporting gods, who determine who gets good luck and who gets bad luck, watch the behavior of athletes and fans, to decide who gets the lucky bounces, and who gets the bad calls.

Here's how sports Karma works - and I've seen this best by following Canadian hockey for quite a long time:

Basically: what goes around comes around. Send out bad sports Karma and it'll haunt you later. Send out good sports karma, and you'll benefit. Seriously.

Being a sore loser = bad sports karma - if you bitch and moan when bad things happen, more bad things will happen. Seriously. Russia's sore losership in the past is, in the Sports karma way of things, the direct cause of their poor showing in these Olympics.

Being an ungracious winner = bad sports karma - if players gloat when good things happen, bad things happen in the future. (cf: Flag planting, Korean audiences getting up and leaving after Kim Yuna skates instead of watching the whole show, gold medalists talking shit about runners-up)

And here's the big thing about sports Karma: if you remain competitive, keep trying, and respect the game and the other players, what goes around comes around. Seriously. In Canadian Hockey, a few bad referee calls have robbed Canada when they should have done better... but for every disallowed goal or bogus call that went against Canada, there's one that went our way, that benefited us, at some other time. If Canada lost this gold medal game because of a bad bounce, or an unlucky play, or a bit of bad refereeing at the wrong time, or if they just ran into a hot goalie, like they did in 2006, I'd be a bit upset, sure, but I'd also know that buddy, that doesn't change too much: Canada played hard, and next Olympics, they'd be in the mix again. Dear South Korean sports fans: it's the same for you! If you try your best, and lose with grace, that's good sports Karma, which improves your chances next time around. Losing a heartbreaker? That's good sports Karma, too, and it just makes it more satisfying when things finally DO go right (cf: 2004 Red Sox World Series). Getting the women's 3000 relay gold next Olympics will be way more satisfying if you win it back after being robbed this year, than it would have been if you'd just kept winning.

Korea's last two Olympics were, as far as I can tell, its best showings ever... so enjoy that, and be happy about it, support your athletes, learn to enjoy the awesomeness that is sporting excellence, no matter who's playing and winning, and seriously, back off with the victim thing - two Korea stories were in the nominations for the most controversial moments of the Olympics, and that's bad Karma - and go enjoy another Kim Yuna replay. The bad sports fan thing is tired, and it's building up bad sports karma which will hurt your teams and players in the future.

Thank you for listen my essay.

Rob

For all your Olym-peccadilloes

You can't embed, but you can link:

http://www.youtube.com/beijing2008

As much as I stand by what I've said before about the Olympic organizers, the IOC, and the way China is using this olympics for their own nationalist propaganda. . . ya still gotta cheer for the athletes.

To know what TV is like in Korea right now, watch this clip. . . forty times in a row.

(P.S. Korea's going gold-medal bonkers right now. . . but it won't last, according to girlfriendoseyo, who tells me all Korea's strongest events are in the first few days of the Olympics -- Judo, archery, shooting)

Not that they really have a choice, but. . .

Pretty much everything I read about the IOC in the lead-up to these olympics has disappointed me.

Latest: freaking journalists won't have uncensored web access for these Olympics.

For the ladies: a blogoseyo first (and probably only)

I just moved into a new apartment, in order to start a new job at Privacy University, where I'll teach adults (as before) work harder, and have VACATION TIME!!!  I'm also next door to my best friend, so things aren't too shabby.  The new apartment is just about triple the size of my last place, but my stuff is still all over the place.  Anyway, I'm a happy dude.

Random thought of the day:

Now, swimming is one of the best things you can do for your health, so it follows that high-level swimming competitors are probably extremely healthy.

I'm not into guys or anything, (though the people who collected these photos seem to be). . . but Michael Phelps, even if you care nothing for swimming and sports, is an Impressive Human Being: he's a contender for eight (count'em, eight) gold medals at the Beijing Olympics (which I still don't support, but I'm not getting into that here). He won six in the Athens Olympics (and two bronze), and has set his sights on Mark Spitz's single-Olympics record of seven.

Meanwhile, the guy looks like God called up a swimming coach and asked for tips on creating the perfect swimmer. Look at those long gorilla arms and crazy huge hands for scooping through the water.   I mean, he also works hard and he's a hell of a competitor. . . but he sure got the physical tools to go with his mental makeup.

Here's the "for the ladies" part: a little beefcake to balance out all those bikini pics and TNA that I usually post here.



(turn on safesearch before you do a google images search for him, though -- there are certain demographics who, um, like insane sixpacks, and whose sites some of my PG-13 or Focus On The Family readers may not want to accidentally visit -- the things I put myself through for you, dear readers! The things I put myself through.)

However, if you like pictures like this (you're welcome, Melissa), give him a google.



Suddenly, MTV cares about swimming. Hope swimming inc. isn't disappointed when they lose interest after Sixpack, I mean Phelps, retires.


To be fair and balanced, female swimmers are also very very healthy: Amanda Beard, who spent a little while near the top of men's magazines' "Sexiest Female Athlete" lists, battling it out with Maria Sharapova and Anna Kournikova and a few other people without NIKE contracts, looks very healthy, too.  Amanda once posed for playboy, thus making it hard to find clean pics to post here - turn safesearch on before you do the image search for her,  if you're at work or something.  Luckily, I painstakingly combed through all those dirty pics to find a few excellent, clean pics to help you appraise the condition of her health.  The things I do for you, dear readers.  The things I do.  (More images of Amanda Beard here.)






all images from google images.



both swimmers are seen modelling the Speedo LAZR swimsuit, a ridiculous piece of technology that has grooves set into it that reduce drag, and have led to a whole mess of new world records.  The aluminum bat of swimming, if you will.

Olympic Torch Relay in Seoul, April 2008: The Olympic Spirit is Dead

Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons.
Take that.And that. (feeling a bit cowed yet?)
Well, their intimidation tactics worked. Here's my new official line:

Soundtrack courtesy of Monty Python. Don't want to piss anybody off, eh?

Saw history today right out in my face, waving flags, noisy feet forward. Sure, it wasn't Ground Zero, Archduke Ferdinand-level history -- I won't get a book deal just for surviving it, but dear readers, I saw history nonetheless.

It started innocently enough -- I went to a Seoul Writer's club meeting near City Hall. . . but on my way over there, I noticed what looked like a new trend in fashion accessories: red capes with yellow stars on them.


On second glance, I realized what they were: Chinese flags. The Olympic Torch came through downtown Seoul on Sunday afternoon, starting at Olympic Park (where I lived in 2003) and ending in Jongno, by City Hall (where I live now.) You may have heard some rumours about protestors hectoring the Chinese Olympic Torch Relay -- over in Paris and London they caused a fair bit of embarrassment, and San Francisco bent so far backwards to avoid turmoil and embarrassment (and a pissed off exporter of cheap plastic toys, clothing, and shoes), that it wasn't so much a relay as a game of hide-and-seek.

Starting a fifteen minute walk from City Hall, the boosters came out in Red.
And the riot police buses came out, too.
I don't know where they got so many, huuuuuge flags (I know I took my wall-sized flag out of the suitcase when my luggage was overweight at the airport), but they were literally everywhere.

Recently, Chinese news sources and netizens have responded to protests and criticism with hurt outrage: the Western Media wants to sabotage our party; like ants at our Olym-picnic, those biased Western journalists want to ruin our fun! And meanwhile, back home, the propaganderthals in charge of the media are playing up the us-vs.-them narrative to stoke nationalistic rage.

(One of my students saw this picture and said, "Are we in Korea?")
Meanwhile, anyone who suggests that this kind of hurt-pride defensiveness is less than the best possible way to respond to the attack, is thrown, nay, hurled up against the wall, gored on the spike of nationalistic pride, slaughtered as a scapegoat: a Chinese student at Duke University had her picture and her parents' address in China published on the internet (scroll down after the link to see a youtube clip, and read the poison on the Chinese comment board, too). She was attacked on the net (and her parents house was vandalized) for stepping between a group of Chinese boosters and Tibetan protesters having a holler at each other, and trying to suggest that, in the spirit of free speech, the Chinese boosters ought to stop shouting down their pro-Tibetters. (She should have sided unthinkingly with her fellow Chinese and found something heavy to use as a weapon -- anything short of that proves she hates China and might be a spy, it seems).

Giant flag. Big as my classroom. And blurry. Moving quickly as they shook it.
Things are ugly back in the mainland, too, and even paralympic athlete Jin Jing, who protected the torch from protesters in Paris and became a hero to the Chinese nationalists, couldn't talk them out of their "Boycott Carrefour" fervour -- instead, they turned on her, too. It must feel pretty lonely to be ostracized by a 1.3 billion strong nation -- the most I've ever been ostracized by is an elementary school class of twenty-six.

(metal detector to enter the main seating area)

There's a new strategy in play with this [debacle] torch relay: it started in Australia, and will rear its head, no doubt, through the rest of the torch relay.

On Sunday, 6000 mostly young Chinese, probably overseas exchange students, descended upon the torch trail in force, wielding huge flags (big enough indeed to block a Tibetan flag from view), waving them, and chanting pro-China, pro-Beijing Olympic slogans loudly (loud enough to drown out any protesters, in fact).
This kind of a preemptive napalm-strike strategy works, insofar as it drowns out any voice of dissent in an ocean of unison, marching in lockstep, chanting in time, and they might have needed it: South Korea has its own grudges with China, including a historical grudge about the kingdom of Goguryeo, and (the big one) the Chinese policy of sending captured North Korean refugees back to North Korea (to near-certain torture and incarceration in a death camp). In fact, a North Korean protestor tried to jump in front of the relay route and set himself on fire in protest.

Here are some pictures I took, making a strong case for my need for a better camera.
I wasn't getting closer to the scrum than that. Robert "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa I ain't.


What you can't see is the torch actually moving along the column of gray-shirted police officers.

More pictures better than mine are here. (like this one: highly recommended link)

So many flags.
As far as I could tell, the basic goal of the Red Army Escorts was to haul any protester to the ground as fast as possible, hopefully before any media outlets pointed their cameras.

This Tibet protester was beaten down in the lobby of four-star Seoul Plaza Hotel -- I'm told the crowd is chanting, among other things, "Apologize" and "beat him to death," as the police surround him.


Bullying and intimidation, friends. When you don't want to listen to criticism, making a fist and snarling "shut the hell up" will do. It was kind of disgusting.

The Olympic spirit is dead to me.

(begin sarcasm) But you don't have to believe my account: take it from the Chinese media! (end sarcasm)

I mean, with this extra Nazi-twist, the western media IS piling it on pretty thick, but you're not winning any sympathy from me when stuff like this happens:

More video. Watch them fast, before the Chinese government demands they be taken down, and the news agencies (naturally) comply.

More pictures, courtesy of Stafford, and Smokehard via the Marmot's hole -- the downtown area where I was. . . with a better camera than mine. From Stafford: the biggest Tibetan flag scrum I personally witnessed (video here) was about ten meters over from where this picture of loyalists was taken.
Also from Stafford:-- just repeat the party line, louder than the dissenters. Effective strategy for their purpose.

See what the Chinese media are saying. And a letter written by Chinese students from M.I.T. -- worth reading (summary: give us a break; we're still a developing country. If you're still developing, why are you hosting the Olympics? Why jump onstage if you don't know your lines yet?)

8000 Seoul police came out to keep order.
The lump of red in the middle of the picture are Chinese flags thrown up to mask a bunch of Tibetan flags that had just appeared. Before the police got there, all the Tibet protesters had been hauled to the ground, overwhelmed by rabid China-boosters.

Vehicle escorts: a big bus gives protesters another obstacle to get around, and increases the chance they'll be intercepted before they can reach the torch.Coke led the procession in a shiny float. Write a letter to Coke and tell them you won't buy more Coke products until they withdraw their sponsorship of the Olympics.
Ditto for Samsung.
In the hotel lobby again.
The ugly, disrespectful (to Korea, to Korea's police force, and to Korea's laws about freedom of expression), disruptive behaviour of China's own citizens in Seoul and other cities is more embarrassing to China than any protest could be.


Some of the facts in this video montage are off base -- it's not a policeman stabbed, but a journalist hit by a projectile in the picture of the guy in green bleeding from the head, and I can't vouch for the text that goes with the footage in the other countries. . . but just look at the footage!

The Propaganda Olympics will go on -- really, whether they go smoothly or tank doesn't even matter to China anymore. Either they go badly, and China can use the embarrassment to stoke the "West hates us" resentment for their propaganda purposes -- a powerful, angry country full of rabid nationalists is just perfect if China decides to go expansionist, or the Olympics go well, and China can use it to strut and preen, declaring they're "arrived" as a major world player, and fuel the nationalism that way.

Last word goes to this kid: a sign held by a college-age student with big old glasses, standing quietly (but confidently: he has 1.3 billion brothers and sisters standing behind him).
It reads: "Respect the Olympic Spirit,
All men -- are brothers!
Interfere with China's internal affairs,
Annihilate -- in the far distance."

Somehow the first and last two lines don't quite match, eh? And how does the threat of annihilation fit with the proclaimed wish for a peaceful torch relay? Dunno.

Not that I was going to ask him: don't care to be wrestled to the ground and sat upon by 6000 angry China-boosters. Yup. The intimidation worked.

Sweet! Where are the protestors?

Never one to harp on a topic (yeah, right). . .

here's an awesome online game where you can help the Olympic torch on its way through Hong Kong. I wish they had higher levels that included obstacles like protesters, paratroopers, changes of course and buckets of water -- level 2: San Francisco. Level 3: London. Level 4: Paris!

Does playing the game count as complicity? Or should you click on the link but not play the game, to cause maximum embarrassment, like Nobel Peace Laureate Wangari Maathai, or do something else embarrassing, like conceal a Tibetan flag in your sleeve, a la Majora Carter? I think they should have buttons you can push to do such things in this game. They should also have cheap plastic toys and cheaply made clothes you can collect as you run down the street, I suppose.

Anyway, here's your chance! Do with it what you like! Just be careful, because if you don't play nice, you might run into roadblocks next time you want to outsource labour over there.