The Comfort Women Deal A Month Later: Nothing New, Still Gross

When news of the latest "Final deal" regarding the Comfort Women came out on December 28, I wasn't as excited as a few of my Facebook friends. Sadly, my initial "Wait and see" reservations proved correct as the story soured faster than milk and pickle juice.

This topic is overwhelming to write about, because writing about any one aspect causes every single other thing to rush out for inclusion as well. It's like drinking a cup of jello: poke. Nothing. Poke. Nothing. Bigger poke. Omygoodnesseverythingiscomingatoncewhatwasithinking? Plus, no matter how carefully I write this piece, everything I omitted for simplicity or brevity will get thrown in my face in the comments anyway. It's daunting, and I'm frustrated at yet another apology doomed to be rejected both by Korea's and Japan's publics, followed by further recriminations, deepening grievance and apology/insincerity fatigue that will make it harder for both sides to offer and accept the next (hopefully final) apology, when or if it ever comes.

Source

More after the break.

The Amazing George Takei in Seoul, and the Pride Parade Is a Go

[UPDATE]: You can now listen to Mr. Takei's interview on TBS Radio's program "Inside Out," here on their program podcast. Here is the link.

Here is the embed.

[End Update]

Last week Thursday, I was going into the TBS Radio studio for a weekly segment, and as I came out of the elevator, an entourage poured out of an adjoining recording studio. A somewhat older Asian man walked past me, and then I did a double take, and may have murmured "oh myyyy" under my breath.

I had just accidentally nearly bumped into the one and only George Takei, known for playing Sulu in the original Star Trek television series, and more recently for balancing humor with social consciousness better than anyone else on social media.

That's right. THIS guy.

You should follow him on Facebook. Even if you don't, you probably actually do without realizing it, because that hilarious image or video your friend put on their facebook wall has about a 20% chance of having been re-posted from his FB page.

Mr. Takei came to Seoul to promote the play "Allegiance" - a Broadway show about the Japanese Internment Camps that USA ran during World War II, and where Mr. Takei was imprisoned when he was young. He is also holding talks and meetings around Korea and Japan about LGTB issues, in a tour organized by the US State Department organized the tour. You can learn more at the Korea Times.

Walter Foreman had just finished interviewing him when I bumped into him, and was kind enough to introduce me to Mr. Takei and snap this picture.

Probably my favorite "Rob With A Celebrity" picture.

Our encounter was quite brief - he was on his way to the elevator, but he was very nice, and I almost didn't say anything dumb.

However, I am sorry to say that in the three days since both shaking Mr. Takei's hand and squeezing his shoulder, I have not developed any magic powers, my jokes are not intrinsically funnier, my phrases have not started turning more beautifully, and my voice has not deepened in the slightest. Maybe I should have done a selfie.

Whether coincidental or not, the timing of Mr. Takei visit is actually great, though perhaps coincidental, because the weekend of June 7th is the 15th annual Seoul Gay Pride Parade, and this year the question of whether the parade would actually happen has been a bit in the air: a lot of events and festivals have been cancelled since the Sewol Ferry Disaster in mid-April. The parade had been approved, but then approval was withdrawn "because of the ferry disaster" - but event organizers told Korea Realtime, the Wall Street Journal's Korea blog, that "that the authorities appear to have bowed to pressure from some Christian groups that oppose the event and giving civil rights for sexual minorities. The district-office spokesman denied the protests played a part in the cancelation." (see full write-up here)

The WSJ blog mentions Christian lobby groups who have a bit of history: Here is Human Rights Watch's write-up about the re-wording of the anti-discrimination bill, putting the finger squarely on Christian lobbyists. Christian lobbyists also got a 2012 Lady Gaga concert slapped with an 18+ age restriction (protesters in Indonesia got her concert there cancelled entirely).

Personally, I feel that every time Christians take the side that is against loving a group of people that's marginalized, they're missing the point of their faith, and showing an ignorance of how Christ actually lived his life. If you disagree with me that the main purpose of faith is about learning how to love people, and to improve ourselves and become more human through the love we practice, well we're probably not going to see eye to eye.

The state of Queer Korea is still very much a work in progress, unfortunately. Things have come a long way since the early 2000s, when even open-minded sophisticates would sometimes tell you there were no gays in Korea... but the disappointing 2007 anti-discrimination bill, and the fact it seems people can still get their ears bent by the anti-gay lobby, is disappointing. You can read more about changing public opinion on gays here, also at Korea Real Time. If Mr. Takei takes some time to talk about this, well, that'd be swell.

Perhaps even with a brilliant Youtube video like this:


I wrote about the "It Gets Better" project - a beautiful movement against anti-gay bullying - in 2010.

Queer Korea is slowly slowly getting more "out," and I certainly hope that society here in general, as is happening in other places (at dreadfully uneven speeds), eventually comes around to the position that people can love whomever they want, dress however they want, and perform whichever gender role they want, as proudly or discreetly as they choose, and those around them should pretty much mind their own damn business and respect their choices. We're not there yet, but we're slowly getting closer.

So head out to the pride parade on the 7th. Here's the info. Show support and solidarity, no matter which way you personally swing, dress, present, and so forth. 

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

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

Photo from a Facebook friend: turtles gettin' busy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And here's the link for this one.

And here it is on SoundCloud.


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

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

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

A Few More Links On Culture

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sewol Ferry and Problems with Citing Culture

In the last post (part 1 is here) I wrote a rundown of the (large large) number of articles that use the Sewol Ferry tragedy as a jumping-off point for discussions about Korean culture.

(A few newer articles I liked, and one overly masochistic one:
Jae-ha Kim's culture post
WSJ's Korea Real Time blog - Blame and Shame
A journalist, on the ethics of overcoverage and media treatment of the disaster. One of my favorite takes on the story so far.
Letter asking the president to step down goes viral.
A discussion of "parachute appointments" - where retired government ministry workers move into leadership positions in the private sector, such that personal relationships rather than institutions drive public/private relationships, and cronyism gets entrenched
When self-flagellation goes to far, you see this from the official government website.)


In this post, I'd like to talk specifically about why the culture angle is troublesome. A few things:

The Various Meanings Thing

It doesn't take much exploring to see that even when culture is under discussion, people have different ideas of what culture means, what aspect of a culture needs to change, and how to do that. This is the first problem with citing culture to explain phenomena: when somebody says "culture" it could mean any of the following:

1. Arts and media, overall
2. Arts and media of the elites. Or of the common folk, specifically.
3. Arts and media of the elites, or the common folk, in an arbitrarily chosen and usually idealized time in the past
4. Patterns of behavior in very specific contexts, among specific groups, sometimes even in specific locations (Korean test culture, gamer culture, rape culture, Portland hipster culture)
5. General, broad patterns of behavior, communication, and so forth, in a society
6. The framework of generally shared beliefs and values in a society, which contribute to the patterns of behavior in #5
7. Anything that happens that someone likes/dislikes, wants to preserve/change, or is similar to/different from how things happen where (or when) the observer is from
8. Anything someone who's "not from around here" notices more than once, the cause or purpose of which they can't easily ascertain 
9. A set of prescriptions (usually made by elites or fuddy-duddies) that young, or uneducated, or cosmopolitan, or provincial, or vulgar people should obey, and if they don't, they will be to blame when the country goes to hell in a hand-basket
10. All of the above in a big undifferentiated lump, often saddled with an explicit or implicit judgment

With so many meanings, conversation about culture would clearly work best if people paused to clarify what they mean by culture, and any participant considers that two people working on different definitions will talk past each other. All parties should also be alert to anyone who's moving the goalposts, accidentally or on purpose.

More to the point, if someone hasn't really thought about, or clarified what they mean when they say 'culture', it's much less likely that a line of thought starting on a muddy and ill-defined notion will end in a place that's clear and illuminating: Mythbusters literalism notwithstanding, you can't polish a turd.

TL/DR: The word culture can be used to refer to a lot of different things, so it's helpful to specify what you and others mean when you start tossing the word around

The Broad Brush vs. Getting Specific Thing 

Culture has a lot of definitions, but some of them can be quite all-encompassing. It's fun to paint with a broad brush, but glossing over details is risky: it's hard to know which details not to gloss. Culture is often part of an event, an issue, or the decisions people make, but it's most often several steps removed from the actual, immediate causes. It influences history more in a Rube Goldberg sort of way, than in a smoking gun sort of way.



The risk is that by focusing too much on culture, more immediate causes get ignored, which would be irresponsible.

And even when there is a pattern, there is a high burden of proof on anyone asserting that it is a cultural issue before anything else. You have to first identify, then show that all those other factors are less relevant than culture. Even if you can show that something happens only in Korea, or in a special way in Korea, you still have to demonstrate that it isn't any of the other features unique to the Korean situation, but culture. Unless you've defined culture so broadly that everything is culture, in which case the term is uselessly broad.

In the Sewol Ferry case, safety standard adherence (protocols, corner-cutting and greed) safety awareness (education, training of staff and officials), regulation (government institutions), implementation (transparency, corruption, rule of law), and enforcement (institutional efficiency, rule of law, cronyism, corruption) are all areas to look at before the nebulous "culture," and are all areas that every society struggles to deal with effectively and efficiently. Can culture be an exacerbating factor in any of these areas? Sure it can. But decisive? The burden of proof is on you to show how culture is the most important factor, in concrete and specific ways that are actionable through policies and interventions. If you can, you've accomplished something really useful.

TL/DR: Apply Occam's razor before positing culture as the decisive factor in something. Or add some qualifiers.

The Identity Thing

Because the word "culture" can mean all kinds of things, all the way up to "the entirety of how a society organizes perceives, represents and perpetuates itself," even somebody speaking an a narrower, limited sense of culture (for example, 'dating culture'), can be misunderstood to be speaking in the broadest sense possible, or making implicit judgments about the broad culture, by the way they talk about the specific one. This sometimes causes defensiveness, because people often take their culture as an important part of their identity. I have witnessed people defending things they admitted, upon cooling down, were mostly indefensible, simply because they felt that an outsider was attacking their culture in ignorance or spite.

Interestingly, people tend much less to get their backs up when one speaks more specifically. Talking about institutionalizing safety inspections or removing corruption from regulatory bodies provokes the rising of many fewer hackles than talking about a culture that does not value human life, to take the Sewol ferry case. If you cannot tell the difference between talking about a culture of corruption and talking about a corrupt culture, you will have a hard time avoiding defensive reactions.

TL/DR: People tend to associate their culture with their identity, so either get ready for defensiveness, or use more careful and specific language.


The Agency Thing, The Arrogance Thing, and The Monolith Thing

Spend a minute reading what fundamental attribution errors and ecological fallacies are.

Sometimes, inlaid in discussion of culture, is the idea that people have a hard time acting outside of their culture's patterns - that their culture defines the limits of their possible behavior. This is "cultural determinism." It often comes with the attitude that everybody within a culture shares some unchangeable fundamental traits (Essentialism). Or that "those people" are somehow fundamentally "different from us" (Orientalism). These attitudes frame a discussion as if cultures were more powerful than individuals' decision-making abilities -- that the kids on that ferry really WOULD obey the captain's orders even to the point of risking their own lives.

By skipping too quickly past other causes in which human choice is more prominent, or focusing too emphatically on culture, we're treating people as if they don't even control their own decisions, and letting some off the hook too easily. Can we offer all sound-minded human beings the dignity not to put culture above personal agency? (That's a rhetorical question. Yes we can. And we need to.) Culture doesn't take away our power to make decisions, nor our responsibility for them. Using culture to try and get a free pass, or let someone off the hook because they "couldn't help it" because of their culture is dehumanizing, and either condescending or disingenuous.

One more thing (slippery slope warning): elevating culture to the point that it completely, or significantly, determines a person and a society's entire range of possibilities and potentials echoes an ugly period in history. The attitude that some cultural features put a ceiling on a society's potential for attainment or development was used a long time ago to justify "advanced" countries colonizing "primitive" cultures. Including Korea. (cf: The White Man's Burden). Even today, the words "traditional" or "indigenous" are sometimes code words for "backwards" or "uncivilized." Watch for that.

Cultures are not undifferentiated monoliths and hive minds, nor are they fixed and unchanging, nor do they appear out of an ahistorical vaccuum, nor are they rigid determiners of their members' abilities choices or potentials. Cultures contain diverse elements, they change constantly, in response to specific events conditions and stimuli, and people constantly stretch the definition by not fitting the mold. Muddy, vague, context-removed generalizations about culture deny all of this.

TL/DR: Saying culture took away someone's ability to make a rational decision is degrading. Humans have brains, and make choices, and are accountable for them.

The Silencing Thing


All those complex forces that influence cultural change? All those debates and discussion about identity, history, priority and future that, all together, comprise a society's conversation with itself about what kind of society it is? Those conversations are full of voices. Voices from people inside the culture. Who experience it first hand and know it intimately. Who are the very best source of knowledge and insight into the nature of a society, and whose conversations provide concrete examples of how cultural backgrounds manifest in actual social behavior. And whose assent is needed if anyone wants to create any kind of cultural change. And ignoring all that contestation, all those contradicting voices, all those ideas and values and conflicts, in order to fit some image, silences them.

There is no need to speak on behalf of the members of a society, as they have their own voices, and the best commenters start with references to those voices. Denying a society's members the chance to speak for themselves is another way of dehumanizing a group. And it's been done too often, to all kinds of groups, and every time it happens, we are poorer for the lost opportunity to learn something new. And this is what it looks like to people who actually know the conditions on the ground. Some of the cultural discussions regarding the Sewol disaster have reflected, and been reflected by sources written by Koreans, for Koreans. Others have not. Guess which ones I take more seriously.

A discussion of culture that is not in tune with what people in a culture are saying themselves, is woefully incomplete, and could never persuade them to affect cultural change anyway.

TL/DR: Societies are full of self-aware people who make good points about what their culture/society is, and what it needs, and they deserve your attention.

The Complex Text Thing

Because culture is such a big, messy, slippery, contradictory thing, it is possible to find confirmation of just about anything one wants to find. Wanna prove Koreans are backwards and provincial? Chat up some folks in the countryside or an old, low-income neighborhood. Wanna prove they're hip and cosmopolitan? Head to Garosugil.

You can conclude Koreans are incredibly polite or rude, loud or quiet, shy or ribald, moderate or intemperate, generous or ruthless, all depending where you fix your gaze, in the same way that the same bible was used to support the Civil Rights Movement and to justify slavery. Koreans slavishly obey authorities? That chapter in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers, the way public schools are generally run, something about North Korea's Cult of Kim, and this spurious "death by obedience" explanation support the narrative. Koreans mistrust authorities and have a cherished history of defiance? Donghak peasant revolt, March 1st Movement, 1961, 1980, 1987, and 2008 corroborate that.

Somehow everybody seems to find what they're looking for. (Source)

Yes, there are prevailing patterns, which can be identified. A culture is not a pure ink blot with no meaning or form at all, but the whole system is so complex, dynamic, and contradictory that anybody who wants to go there needs to step carefully and offer more than anecdotes.

TL/DR: Cultures and societies are so complex you can prove anything by focusing your gaze in the right place. It doesn't mean you've made a compelling case.


Conclusion: Enough Lecturing Already, Roboseyo!

So is culture off the table entirely? No. Of course not. But it should be clear by now that bringing culture into a discussion is a minefield: there are more ways of doing it wrong than doing it right, and it should be done with tact, rigor, or both. Both. Minefields are most safely navigated when you know where the mines are hidden, obviously.

It should also be clear that the person with the most credibility is the one who is in tune with the voices on the ground. Is a foreign correspondent the only one talking culture of obedience? Someone who doesn't even live here? Do your Korean friends shake their heads vigorously when you posit culture of obedience as a contributing factor, or do they nod sadly? Does the article you just read reflect the discussions actually happening AMONG THE PEOPLE CONCERNED?? Is their take gaining domestic traction, getting translated and forwarded among Koreans? Because the word coming through translation is talking about crony culture, of corruption and corner-cutting culture, not hierarchy and obedience.

Can we talk about safety regulation, implementation and enforcement in Korea without bringing culture into it? We sure can!

We could start with Heinrich's Law - Heinrich studied industrial safety in the early 1900s (in America, which also had to take some time to figure things out, and still regularly muffs it), and found that for every accident causing major injury or death, there were 29 similar accidents causing a minor injury, and 300 no-injury accidents -- close calls and such.

A quick google search reveals that Heinrich's law is still being debated and challenged today... but the big takeaway is this: accidents don't occur out of the blue. Before The Big One happens, there are warning signs - minor incidents - that attentive and proactive leaders/inspectors/regulators/staff members can identify. There are measures that can be taken so that the big one doesn't come to pass. Big accidents aren't one-offs, in most cases: they're convergences of lots of factors. Fatigue and bad visibility and a rushed itinerary and mechanical failure and late response and lack of training and failure to accurately assess the situation and a badly timed hangover, and and and. The Sewol disaster has been dissected at least enough by now that it's clear this is the case here as well.

These direct influences must be addressed effectively. No discussion of culture is needed. Now... why has corner-cutting been tolerated? Why is there so much cronyism between national associations and government ministries? Why have so many warnings gone ignored? We're getting meta now, which is fine after the most pressing issues have been addressed. And maybe maybe maybe culture plays into that, and let's have a conversation about it! I'm sure the locals have lots of good things to add, and are hoping their leaders will be decisive and clear-minded enough to create useful solutions, systems that are designed for early recognition of problems, that have regulatory teeth to punish corner-cutters, and not just stopgap and politically convenient band-aid solutions.

Wouldn't it be nice if all the public anger got channeled toward such solutions rather than cultural self-excoriations! Would that this new enthusiasm for due diligence and safety awareness got extended to all kinds of other sectors... I'm sure you can guess which. One of them involves better use of traffic cameras.

In Part 3, I'll talk about Culturalism, as per Ask A Korean, and Culturalism, as per what it actually is.

Sewol Ferry, Safety Awareness and Citing Culture: A Rundown

You have heard, no doubt, about the Korean Sewol Ferry disaster still in progress off Korea's southwest coast. The death toll keeps climbing, and the window for living survivors closed days ago. Part of the families', and public anger is due to the fact much of the pivotal first hours were wasted by slow or disorganized responses. The rescue and salvage reports are one heartbreak after another.

Prayers and heartfelt condolences to the families, and to everybody touched by loss in this tragedy.

Some links for reading:
This Chosun Ilbo article lists  the many things that went wrong.
And this Joongang editorial gives a pretty good glimpse of how emotionally distraught the public mood is, and how Koreans have been excoriating their own society because of this tragedy.
That the (normally tight-lipped) president herself has laid a judgment on the crew that bailed out too early, calling their desertion of duty "like an act of murder" (the Guardian didn't like that) gives you a sense of just how hot public emotion is running regarding this.
The tragedy has even impacted the Korean economy.
The official main cause of the capsize has now been announced.
Andrew Salmon's latest piece for Forbes, discussing first world hardware/infrastructure vs. not-yet-first-world software/norms and practices, and his first piece, about Korean leadership, has a great closing paragraph. His piece in South China Morning Post, where he was the first to mention a culture of obedience, not so much.

For more of my own views, a podcast I'm involved in just covered the issue.

There were some heroes. But not enough.

Prayers and heartfelt condolences to the families, and to everybody touched by loss in this tragedy.

Unlike previous events like the Daegu subway fire or the Namdaemun Arson, this one doesn't begin with an unwell person planning an act of malice. This is the convergence of an aggregation of small human errors that, each one on its own, could have been untangled, but with an unhappy convergence, the knot just got too big. One too many corners cut. One too many excuses made, shortcuts taken, standards glossed over, regulations hand-waved, and suddenly we're expecting about 300 dead, many of them high school students. And the fact it was children on a class trip really brought it close to home, because every Korean adult went on class trips like this in school.

Koreans have been very hard on themselves as a country... so much so, that I'd suggest readers take any editorial they've read with a grain of salt, as many of them have put more weight on the emotive side than the analytical. I've heard from a few people the sentiment that "we've just been pretending to be an advanced nation all this time" -- somebody told me there's a Korean saying that a wooden water bucket is only as deep as the shortest piece of wood, equivalent to the English "a chain is only as strong as its weakest link" - meaning that shortcomings in some areas undermine all the advancement Korea has made in other areas. So do us all a favor, readers, and don't take lines like "We’re like Stone Age cavemen waving smartphones in the air. Look at us!" completely at face value, or pull them out next time you're trying to prove a point about Korea. These are emotionally charged times, and some people have right lost their perspective. That's allowed. No need to be a jerk about it.

Source

There's a lot of public anger for failures at every level -- from crew, to captain, to the company, to safety inspectors, to government emergency response protocols and organizations, and the media has made an even bigger mess of things, rushing a number of false stories to press, only to be embarrassed when those text messages, and that diver giving interviews, turned out to be fakes.

And the online commentary has run the full gamut, from sharp and pointed, to vague, mushy and half-baked. And, of course, somebody brought in the cultural explanation.

The Korea Times here mentions two outlets -- CNN and Time, that suggested Korea's Confucian heritage would make the students more likely to follow the orders to stay below deck until it was too late to save themselves. Financial Times also critiques the cultural argument.

In the remainder of this post, I'm going to run down some links where you can read up different views of different cultural arguments. In my next post, I'm going to get a bit more general, in discussing why the cultural argument has problems, what they are, and how to avoid them. Click on the links in this one to read various positions on something that's now being hotly discussed in various places.

Blogger Waegukin, who actually works with Korean high school students, does a handy dismantling of the idea Korean students would be obedient past the point of self-preservation, saying,

"We’ll never know exactly what happened to the students on the boat: what choices they made and what they tried to do. But one thing I am certain about: they died as thinking individuals, with individual dreams for the future, doing their best to survive and help their friends. To suggest otherwise is grotesque." 

Jakob Dorof, at Vice Magazine, of all places, launches another successful rebuttal... by actually knowing more about Confucianism than "uh... something about hierarchies." He gets a block quote, too (my emphasis in bold):

In truth, however, the catch-all of “South Korean culture,” or even neo-Confucian obedience in particular, fails to account for what happened on Wednesday. The problem with such arguments is their suggestion not only that the Sewol crew and harbor officials were blinded from moral responsibility by cultural programming, but also that the hundreds of students and others left on the ship were socially hardwired automatons who, though cognizant of their ability to escape, felt too inhibited by a respect for their elders to move. This is excessively reductive, for one, but falls apart altogether when you consider that many of the people who stayed onboard were in fact elders of the crew. Furthermore, if Confucian doctrine were the be-all and end-all under these circumstances, then what of li—a fundamental Confucian precept that encourages those beneath an authority to disregard orders if they seem irrational or unjust?

His article also goes into specific detail about what was happening when, with a timeline of events, and then he puts his finger on something much more plausible, and the one that's been much discussed in local media: "The real problem, at all levels, seems to be protocol—or rather, the absence of one." The Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Choe Sang-hun's piece in the New York Times all devote significant column space to the problem of poor awareness, training, and adherence to safety protocols in South Korea, as does the local paper of note, the Chosun Ilbo. I can't find back the article that mentions the fact that... in every other case except the one where the captain and crew panic and bail, the best way to survive an accident like this is to follow instructions from people are trained for dealing with them. The problem is that in this case, that trust was misplaced. The people who were supposed to be able to assess the situation accurately and choose the actions that minimize loss of life failed. And why they failed is the conversation that needs to happen. I would be horrified if the next time there's a ferry mishap in Korea, dozens of passengers panic and jump overboard in life jackets, or unnecessarily commandeer life boats because they don't trust the crew telling them that in most cases, staying on the boat is the safest thing to do.* (see update below) This Joongang article discusses the flipside of that "obey authority" canard: that seniors are supposed to take care of their juniors... a duty at which those responsible for the students - from the crew right up to the government - failed. This blog post agrees, asserting that more Confucianism, not less, would have helped the situation.

That's a bit of reading for you to try, if you want to have a handle on the "culture of obedience" thing.

The other place culture is being discussed, which I think is a bit more on point, is in the realm of adherence, awareness, and education about safety.

Strangely, some of the ones I think are on point make similar points to some of the ones I don't like... but the way they make them is different, and that matters. Burndog, on all those little rule-breakings that go on all the time: "there seem to be so many occasions here where people don’t give a fuck about laws or rules, and I think that that turning a blind eye, if it happens enough, can lead to the sort of tragedies that happen in Korea". Adeel on cultural reactions to national tragedies:

The explanatory power of culture is not as great as we think, and I'm not even discussing cultural differences that are really just myths or far reaches. Korean honorifics and hierarchy don't cause plane crashes. The Afghan tradition of hospitality doesn't explain why the Taliban protected Osama bin Laden. The Spanish fondness for siestas didn't cause last year's train crash that killed 79 people. Rugged American individualism doesn't explain the 2007 bridge collapse that killed 13 people.

This one's just a fragmented mess. What does China have to do with anything? Smudgem has some anecdotes about safety awareness and training. Which is (not really) culture. The Marmot and his commenters have contributed over 800 comments on Sewol blog posts on that site.

So... even in a case where Korean commentators and foreign ones alike have decided that culture is on the table for discussion, we've got a variety of views on what aspect of culture is relevant to the discussion here, and we've got people discussing it in anecdotes and uselessly broad strokes, as well as ones that draw clear and plausible lines from cultural contexts to observable phenomena.

People are going to talk about culture. And that's allowed. Let's talk for a bit about talking about culture. This post is getting long... so I'll do it in a follow-up post.

Prayers and heartfelt condolences to the families, and to everybody touched by loss in this tragedy.

*Update: It seems, with the collision between subway cars on May 2nd, exactly what I predicted here came to pass: told to wait in the subway cars for rescue, passengers instead forced the door open and made their way out. The sudden influx of upset civilians didn't exacerbate the situation in this case... but it could have.

Hollaback Korea: Taking a Stand Against Street Harassment

Street Harassment. From Lefty Cartoons.

Before reading further, we're just going to have to agree that street harassment -- catcalling and other such sexually (or racially, etc.) charged attention, toward strangers (or non-strangers, really) is wrong and inappropriate and ugly. If you can't agree with me about that, go find a corner of the internet more amenable to your views. The different types of sexual street harassment are points on the spectrum of sexual violence, just as racist street harassment is located on the spectrum of racial violence, and homophobic street harassment... you get the idea. Make no mistake about that.

Plus, it only takes about three seconds of walking in someone else's shoes to realise that bellowing come-ons, or pejoratives, to strangers in the street -- of any gender and orientation - is really rude and intrusive. Verbal and other harassment, and also brushing it off and treating it as if it's nothing, creates an atmosphere where targeted people can feel threatened and oppressed, nervous to do things that everybody should be free to do without fear. Stuff like walk down the street. Or wear something they like. Or be tall.

You may have heard of the "Hollaback" movement. Start with iHollaback.org, which was founded in 2005. Frustrated with the silence around street harassment in New York, the website allowed the victims of street harassment to upload photos of their harassers, or stories of their harassment, on the internet, to give victims of harassment a voice, and a means to fight back.

Awareness has grown since then, and Hollaback has now spread to 71 cities, 24 countries, and 14 languages.

Including... Hollaback Korea. The site is almost entirely bilingual, and it's quite easy to use. There is a map of Korea where you can drop a pink pin to locate your harassment incident, or a green pin to locate a harassment incident where you, or somebody else, stepped in to defuse or defend the victim. In my opinion, this is pretty damn cool. Posting is totally anonymous, so you don't have to expose yourself to tell the story that's been on your mind, or share the picture you took, or you can peruse other stories to remember that you're not alone. Any type of harassment, whether it's based on gender, sexual orientation, race, or anything else.

In December, I was contacted by the leaders of Hollaback Korea, who launched the Korea iteration of the Hollaback website on December 3rd. I've been in touch with Chelle B Mille, who's also a contributor to the Korean Gender Cafe, and suggested an e-mail interview, to suit our busy schedules.

Here is another Q and A here about Hollaback Korea that you might find interesting. This is the Hollaback Korea crew:

And here are the questions I sent, and the answers Chelle B Mille sent me,

Rob: 1. What inspired you, and the other contributors to this project, to create this page? Why now, and why Korea? 

Hollaback Korea: Our website and mobile app draw on great resources that Hollaback! chapters utilize in 24 countries worldwide. Several contributors to this project, such as Hany (돈두댓/Don’t Do That), Lisa (Stand Up to Sexism), and Maria (Jeolla Safety Alliance), had already been involved in or established their own Facebook or Twitter communities to address sexual violence or harassment in their regions. Hollaback! Korea is a way to connect us all to this national and international issue so that we can share stories and resources. The “why now” is really more of a personal journey, I had wanted to be involved in a project like this for a long time. I had participated in sexual harassment counseling training with Korea Women’s Hotline 한국여성의전화 (see what they do at http://www.hotline.or.kr) and helped 돈두댓 recruit participants for their Slutwalk event in Busan. After 8 years of study and life in Korea, I felt I had learned enough to start a venture like this and was connected to great people in citizen and expat communities that I could partner with.

2. Part of the goal of Hollaback is to create a safe space to talk about street harassment. Can you talk briefly about the existence, and condition, of safe spaces in Korea to discuss issues like sexual violence and harassment, both in English and in Korean? 

HK: There are some fantastic organizations, several that we refer to as resources on our website. There are not as many resources to talk about street harassment, compared to other forms of harassment or violence. We need to do more outreach to the folks who wouldn’t already be attending an event or already study street harassment, we need to bring the project TO them if they don’t come TO us. For example, outdoor events and sidewalk chalk events (see below) are something we’d like to do all over the country, so we’re looking for virtual volunteers all over the nation. 

3. I've noticed that the Hollaback Korea website makes as much content as possible available in both Korean and English. Can you talk about why you think that's important? 

HK: In my opinion, in general, spaces to talk about these issues tend to be spaces that feel “safe and comfortable” for either nationals or aliens, and we hope that our project and our efforts to provide bilingual content can build a bridge so that we can all communicate and learn from each other. Inclusivity and intersectionality are our core values. We have generally had excellent media coverage but unfortunately, once or twice a major news outlet has decided to tell a different story and to pretend that this is a “foreigner issue” or come up with made-up headlines like “Foreigners say Koreans harass too much” which couldn’t be further from our message. I think this is a strategy to diminish the project and the issue, and a way to silence people who could come forward. It’s easier for some people to avoid questioning their behavior and to squash a discussion if they tap into the idea that ‘outsiders’ are the only ones making noise. On our site and in our discussions we take great pains to emphasize that these are problems that are not unique to any particular nation, culture, etc. and to make it feel as inclusive as we can for all to participate. We are always seeking Korean and English language content contributors, contact us at korea@ihollaback.org for volunteer opportunities. 

4. When I [Rob] attended Slutwalk, a journalist asked me if having a Slutwalk was an appropriate way to deliver its message in the cultural context of South Korea. If somebody asked that same question about Hollaback, what would you say? 

HK: Hollaback! Korea really isn’t much different from what you already see happening on Twitter, Nate Pan, Cyworld, Facebook, etc. in online spaces that are run largely by and for Korean citizens, so I think our use of social media reflects a great adaptation of an international movement to a local context. I think the idea of sharing a story anonymously can provide a tool to those who might want support, but struggle to find it. 

5. Do you have any other causes or upcoming projects that you'd like to draw readers' attention to? Is there something “next” after Hollaback is established and running well? 

HK: Over the winter, we were focused on spreading the word and working with adults. After 6 successful events with adults, we feel we started a discussion and that Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/HollabackKorea) Twitter (https://twitter.com/HollabackKorea) and our website (http://korea.ihollaback.org/) are good spaces for adults to contribute. Now we are focusing our attention on youth programming. We have upcoming workshops for high school youths in Jeju and Gwangju. For adults, we will plan some future events but in the meantime we’d like our community members to participate in localized and even Korean-language white board campaign we’ve been running on Facebook. 

6. Why street harassment? Do you see this as a first step toward other discussions, or as an end in itself, and what do you hope this website will accomplish? 

HK: There tends to be greater social awareness of and action around workplace and school harassment, but street harassment is an issue that requires more attention. Every time that a community member visits our website and reads a story, they can click “I’ve got your Back” and the author knows that even if no one on that street, subway car, in that store, etc. had their back, the reader online is empathetic. That is a first step toward people being more aware of the harms of street sexual, racial, homophobic and gendered harassment, and taking a stand in-person when they witness street harassment. On our map, pink dots reflect shared stories and the green dots highlight incidents in which a bystander intervened. I’d like to see more green dots. 

7. What advice do you have for someone who's been through an experience that's been humiliating or violating, and who doesn't know who to talk to -- or has been told to hide, ignore, or cover up their experience, by someone they trust? 

HK: Please share your story with us, we’ve got your back. Each person makes their own decision about how to respond and what actions to take after being harassed. I’m not here to tell anyone what to do or judge them for their decisions. We are here to show our support, and to educate the public about the seriousness of this issue, so we need people to come forward and share their stories. It’s a brave and difficult act, but in our community we have zero tolerance for anyone who would second-guess, judge, or criticize someone reporting their story. We want to hear from you and we want to support you. Together we can make sure that this issue gets the attention it warrants.  

8. What have been some of the obstacles in starting discussions about this topic here in Korea? How have you tried to deal with them? 

HK: There haven’t been many unique obstacles. Generally, any new project needs to get the word out. We all work hard to educate ourselves and our community about what it means to be inclusive and intersectional, so we are constantly unlearning some of the sexist, racist, homophobic and gendered ideas we may have been raised with, which is an ongoing learning process for all. I alluded to the attempts by a few to diminish the project by pretending that it is a ‘foreign’ issue, but I think there is generally great reception to the project and the people we meet are very open to sharing and learning with us. 

9. Can you compare the state of these sorts of discussions in Korea now, compared with, say, three or five years ago? Are you generally satisfied with the pace of change, or not? 

HK: I have lived in Korea since 2006 and I think social dialog around sexual harassment has increased quite a bit in that time. I’d like to see more discussion of homophobia and racism, but I think these are issues that are also getting more consideration compared to 8 years ago. It is hard to be ‘satisfied’ with the pace of change, though, when you read stories. It is hard and frustrating for our volunteers to hear about violence. We just have to keep working together to push these issues and to create opportunities for people to unlearn their prejudices. 

10. What are some ways men who support the Hollaback idea can help in real life, and online?

HK: We have had 5 men who volunteer with the project, so I’d welcome volunteer contributions to help us run events, spread the word, and to create opportunities to discuss these issues with friends, co-workers, and family. Visit our website and click “I’ve got your back” and read the section on our website about how to “Be a Badass Bystander - 우리가 도와줄게요".  Be more aware of and open to learning about the issue, don’t judge people or diminish their stories.

11. You just used the phrase "don't judge people or diminish their stories." Can you explain to my readers what it means to diminish somebody's story, and why it's a problem? Maybe this is asking a lot, but can you either guide my readers to a place where they can read examples of phrases or arguments that diminish someone's story, and learn why they do so, or give some examples and tell my readers why these examples diminish someone's story?

HK: Derailing is one common way that people might diminish stories, here are a few examples relevant to safe spaces like Hollaback! Korea where people share their experiences. If I were to typecast some common examples of derailing, I could start by pointing these out:

Contributor to the Problem #1: This contributor might intentionally use what they call 'humor' to bait people who are already suffering from offline harassment, or likes to be a "Devil's Advocate." A Badass Bystander would focus on calling out harassers instead. This link is a good one to read.

Contributor to the Problem #2: This contributor tries to tell someone that what they experienced was "not harassment" or that someone is being over-sensitive or not paying attention to what was intended as flirtation, etc. Harassment is defined by the person who experiences it; we don't care about the intentions of bullies. A Badass Bystander would listen and learn, maybe even pick up some tips on how to be a better human along the way. 

Contributor to the Problem #3: This contributor asserts that only XYZ person has "the right" to do something about street harassment, as if people who are targeted for abuse don't have the right to stand up for themselves. A Badass Bystander knows that everyone deserves to feel safe in public spaces. 

Contributor to the Problem #4: This contributor really wants to protect women, but doesn't really feel comfortable with women sticking up for themselves. Or they view themselves as really open-minded, until they hear that their joke about bisexuals is hurtful and are challenged to think about that. A Badass Bystander really cares about empowerment, intersectionality [Rob says: see note below] and is truly open to unlearning their own biases. 

We all have some things to unlearn, we have all said and done things we come to regret. When I think about the last few years of my life, it has been a great privilege to have had the opportunity to learn from a lot of people that I've come to love, and an even greater privilege to learn how to apologize to people that I have hurt.

That's the end of the interview. I'd like to thank the Hollaback Korea people again for the time and the interest in sharing. Personally, I'm quite an idealist, insofar as I really do believe that talking about social issues is the first step in improving things, and because of that, I salute the courage of people like those in the Hollaback movement, for starting conversations where there used to be nothing but shame and silence.

*Note from above: The word Intersectionality is used a few times in this interview. Intersectionality is the study of how different groups experience oppression, discrimination, etc., in different ways, due to the same structures of power and injustice. Race, gender and sexual orientation, for example, are important parts of someone's identity, but can't really be separated from each other in any individual's case, so it's hard to study them in isolation. The idea of intersectionality helps people try to look at justice issues in a more integrated way, by thinking about how these different aspects combine or interact. One of the main things  intersectionality has added to the conversation is the idea that all groups benefit when they support each other and try to understand each other, even if on the surface, they don't always seem to have much in common.

Whether or not you have experienced street harassment, or any of the other kinds of sexual violence out there, Hollaback Korea is a worthy effort to start conversations that can lead to change. And that's good, and you should support them.

That is all.

Here is the Hollaback Korea Facebook page.
Learn more about Street Harassment.
Learn about Rape Culture. Learn more about Rape Culture. And more. With examples. Seriously, it's worth it. Rape jokes are part of rape culture. Men, this is on you, too.

Oh yeah: have you seen this hidden camera? CNN Cairo dressed a man up as a woman to experience street harassment. Watch this. And 9000 other videos about Street Harassment on Youtube, from all over. It happens, and it matters.

SNL Korea: What the Hero Korean Adoptee Community Accomplished

In my last post, posted at 2am yesterday, I talked about an SNL Korea skit that mocked the airport adoptee reunion situation. What happened in the hours following was kind of amazing. For today, tomorrow, and maybe even most of next week, the authors of these two blogs, and the groups mobilized through the efforts of them and others, are kind of my heroes:

I'm connected with these two people on Facebook, but I'm only going to write about them using information available on their public blogs. Because internet.

"Tales of Wonderlost" - a tumblr blog by a Korean adoptee living in Korea.
"TRACK - Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea" - a website where contributor JJTrenka posted most of the articles related to the SNL video, and was very active on different Facebook groups.

Credit should also go to GOAL - Global Overseas Adoptees' Link, and a lot of others I'm sure I missed.


Word came to a couple of activist adoptee bloggers sometime yesterday about the SNL Korea skit. You can see it here, unless SNL Korea has pulled it. Which they might.

Here are the things these writers and their community accomplished:

• 1. Translated it, and numerous other pertinent releases and comments, from Korean to English or English to Korean, for dissemination.
• 2. Launched a twitter campaign by sharing SNL Korea's twitter address.
• 3. Mobilized adoptee communities on Facebook and other social media, and allies, to protest. Groups like Land of a Gazillion Adoptees and GOAL (Global Overseas Adoptee Link - who issued an open letter) and website I Am KoreaAm. Twitter also went kinda crazy - this single tweet got 246 retweets as of this writing, and the hashtag "#AdopteeDignity" became a focus point.
• 4. Prompted, either directly or because the backlash was big and noisy, numerous media articles in both English and Korean about the issue.
• 5. Earned, within a day, a full-on apology from SNL Korea. The apology. With English translation at the bottom of this article.

HOLY CRAP, EVERYBODY THAT WAS AMAZING!


We must celebrate in the way of the internet:
With gifs.

source

source

Yaaay!

You want to dance too. Admit it. Source

Bask. Bask in the joy of success.

Source

So, great job, everyone who contributed.

The reading I've done about overseas adoptees -- on blogs, academic publications, SNS and personal correspondence, has frequently come back to the point that adoptees and birth parents are too often discussed and talked about, but not nearly often enough consulted, or listened to. Which makes it all the more satisfying to see adoptees take control of their own narrative in this case, through good communication and activation of the human networks they've been developing on their own, use their voice, and get heard!

Awesome.

There were a few comments made on this blog and other places that I'd like to address or answer, before we go.


1. "Jeez you PC police are just a bunch of white knights going around looking for things to be offended by!"

Um... actually it was adoptees -- the group represented in the skit -- who were hurt most by this one. No need to manufacture outrage on somebody's behalf. Go read some of the responses linked above. If you're not an adoptee, you don't get to decide what does and doesn't offend adoptees. And even if you are an adoptee, you get to decide what offends you  as an adoptee, and not other, or all adoptees. And I checked the response among the adoptee communities and blogs I follow, before writing my piece in support. There wasn't a lively discussion about whether this was offensive or not. There was mostly outrage, disgust, and hurt.

But when, like, almost every single adoptee in your social circle, and almost every adoptee community Facebook page and website has a hurt or offended or angry response to it.... well why don't we listen to them, instead of undermining their right to take offense. Adoptees have been silenced and ignored often enough.


2. Lighten up!

If you told somebody to lighten up or get a sense of humour, you are gas-lighting. Gas lighting is a term popularized in feminist discussion groups, where people kept saying things like "You're getting all emotional" or "Get a sense of humour" to try and make the person doubt themselves - shifting the focus of the conversation from the issue to the person. Go educate yourself on it. Try here and here and here to start. Not all gas-lighting is on the level of domestic abuse (which is where the term originates) -- it's used much more loosely on the internet than in clinics, but the fact is, if you're focusing on someone's lack of a sense of humour: "It was funny to me," then you're side-stepping the actual issues in play here, and also dismissing someone's response, which is just as legitimate as yours in finding it funny.


3. But look: here's a video from America that makes fun of adoptees. Here's a video from America that makes fun of asians.

Umm... those videos aren't cool either. And their existence doesn't cancels out the fact this video is offensive too. Clearly, there are lots of issues to be worked out, in lots of places. And this is one of them. Classic tu quoque.


4. "So we're just going to have a committee to censor everything? You're spoiling the fun."

Ahh the C word.

First: if you are saying this, and you also answer "Of course, naturally!" or even just "yes" to a majority of the 26 statements in this article, it might be time for some soul searching, or some thought about the power of language and media to marginalize groups.

It's not censorship to ask for an apology. It's not censorship to say "this kind of a skit shouldn't have been made in this way."  It's censorship to demand SNL Korea be taken off the air. Which didn't happen.

Freedom of speech means that people have the freedom to say something that offends people. But the offended people who say "This offended me" and make a big stink are protected by that same freedom. Nobody should have the right to take freedom of speech away from EITHER of those groups. The word censorship is overused in discussions about what is and isn't in good taste. On the individual level, this isn't a conversation about free speech and censorship. It's a conversation about not being an asshole to people. And if, thanks to a conversation about what an asshole they're being, someone (or a media outlet) decides to change their behaviour, that's not censorship, either. It's just a decision based on new information someone didn't have before, or hadn't thought of, that they've calculated to be in their best interest. And good for them, being so open to new ideas!

That said... there's a difference between an individual saying some stupid offensive shit, and getting the response they deserve... and a major media outlet saying some stupid offensive shit. Because when a major media outlet makes light of the pain an adoptee feels, and there's no response, that normalizes the act of dismissing, marginalizing or putting down adoptees. Even if you're allowed to do something, it may still not be the right thing to do. A kid who saw adoptees get mocked and humiliated without consequences on TV will be more likely to bully my adopted kid (if I have one), and I'm not cool with that. So it's my right and prerogative and maybe my duty to make sure there are consequences if that goes on TV.

Censorship isn't necessarily the answer ... because every time adoptees appear in the media, we get to have a conversation about the issues involved, which helps everyone become better informed and more accepting: that's good! Censoring things prevents that opportunity for conversation. But a clip like this starts the conversation off on the wrong foot, so a backlash like this one is a grassroots way to steer the narrative back along more productive lines. This is a good, healthy process, and the recent incident is an example of redirecting the narrative gone right. Major media outlets do have a responsibility toward their audience, and especially the marginalized among their audience, in the things they publish, and reminding them of that is something that happens in a healthy civil society.


4. So we're not allowed to joke about this topic? That's bullshit! Humour comes from pain! If you're not offending someone, it's probably not funny.

You are allowed to joke about any topic. But there are certain ways to joke about topics, that will cause you to be called and considered an asshole. And you will deserve to be called an asshole. That's not censorship. It's cause and effect. Don't be an asshole. Simple.

And there are ways of joking about any topic that is funny and not hurtful. Adoption included. Sure, humour comes from pain, but comedy is funny because it's audacious, because it's shocking, because it challenges norms and assumptions we take for granted. It's culturally important because it speaks truth to power, taking the bigwigs down a notch by hiding darts under a layer of humour. What's shocking or audacious about kicking someone who's already down? Where's the sport in shooting sitting ducks? That reinforces the norms and entrenches power imbalances, instead of challenging them.

[Trigger warning: the following paragraph briefly discusses rape jokes]

The idea that humour comes from pain was an important part of a recent conversation on a different topic: that of rape jokes. Rape is a different issue, and I have so much respect for survivors of all kinds of sexual assault, and for those fighting for justice in that area. I'm nervous about bringing such a big and important thing into a post on a different topic, because I would never want to give the impression that I'm demeaning, dismissing, or minimizing sexual violence. That said, some of the articles written during that discourse about rape jokes include useful principles for other jokes based on painful experiences as well. If you're interested, read this one. Read and watch 15 rape jokes that work without marginalizing women or rape victims. Read "Anatomy of a successful rape joke." "When Rape Jokes are Never Funny" Basically, the rape jokes that work, do because they attack the structures and people in power: rape culture, or the rapists, or those who bully victims into silence. They point out how hypocritical or vile they are, in such a way that they look ridiculous instead of frightening. This pushes against a norm of silencing or shaming rape victims, who really don't deserve to be kicked around more after what they've been through. A rape joke doesn't have to silence, shame, or blame victims. See the examples in the link above if you don't believe me.

The ones holding the power in international adoption are not the adoptees. The adoptees are the ones who get silenced, or lectured, or infantilized, or put on display. The birth parents get blamed and demonized and disparaged. Silencing, lecturing, infantilizing or putting adoptees on display isn't anything new, so it lacks the surprise that makes good comedy funny.  Make fun of the agencies that profit from separating kids from their parents, or the social, economic and cultural institutions that put women at such a disadvantage that they feel they can't support a child. Or the policy-makers who found it easier to smooth the road for adoption agencies than to develop functional social safety net for families in less-than-ideal situations. Mock the media which turns adoptees' search for their families into a tawdry, humiliating, televised spectacle. Or the associations that beatify adoptive parents while demonizing birth parents as unfit or immoral. They deserve all the mockery they get. But not the adoptees or the parents. They have few enough notches already, that it's mean-spirited to take them down another.

"If you're not offending somebody, you're probably not funny"

Horseshit.

Find me someone offended by this. It is perfectly possible to be funny without offending people, and being offensive does not automatically mean you are funny. You can make a comedy show about a vulnerable group, that is actually funny, while also respecting the group. South Park's episode about Tourette's Syndrome checks all those boxes, and was even recognized by the Tourette Syndrome Association: while it focused too much on swearing outbursts (a not-that-common version of Tourette's), they conceded the show was "surprisingly well-researched" with "a surprising amount of accurate information conveyed" and parts of its plot serving as "a clever device for providing ... facts [about Tourette's] to the public." It can be done... people who do it (Louis CK or Sarah Silverman for example) amaze me, because tackling a sensitive topic while being respectful and also funny is a praiseworthy display of virtuousity. Any clumsy jackass can go for the cheap shot. So let's just throw that offensive/funny canard out the window.


5. But this skit was trying to satirize Korean adoptee shows, which create situations like this reunion. And it's a step forward that a comedy show is talking about adoption, rather than continuing the conspiracy of ashamed silence.

This is based on a facebook comment by the Metropolitician, Michael Hurt, a long-time resident, with kickass knowledge of the culture and language. It was far and away the most thoughtful critique of the SNL backlash. He argues that this skit mocks other adoptee reunion shows -- even the name of the program at the beginning (here's the actual program of the same name) -- references them. He argues that this mockery of a reunion scene will make it harder for the actual TV shows that trade on adoptee reunions, to continue putting adoptees on display and making their most personal moments into a schmaltzy scene, kind of the way Austin Powers mocked the conventions of the James Bond franchise so accurately that the franchise had to completely reinvent itself with a reboot to avoid self-parody and irrelevance, I think.

He finishes his long facebook comment with this:

Food for thought -- I think that staging the skit as a replay of an actual television show first meeting, which they often were, would be a bit too direct for the defamation-suit-minded media outlets here, especially given the fact that the title of the skit references a show South Koreans all know, and that staging it as a true first meeting in the airport, without the cameras and onlookers allowed for a chance to let the audience "off the hook" dramatically, since the parody of the melodramatic meeting slips into actual melodrama at the end, where you can hear real "awws" and such from the stdio audience. Works well and is perfectly crafted to the Korean audience that is indeed sick of this beaten-to-death trope as well, but still would like the comedy to feel "kind" and not mean, as is the wont (and want) of Korean audiences, methinks.

Personally, I think if that was the purpose of the skit, it fails to deliver, but I respect the argument and the way it was made, and the knowledge of the context out of which it comes. I don't think it's clear enough to viewers that those programs, and not adoptees themselves, were the target of the laughter, especially Jason Anderson speaks Korean in such a way that it sure comes across as "lol badly spoken Korean is SO funny!" If that was their goal, they probably should have thought about how the skit would "read" to adoptees who weren't fluent in the cultural idioms they were referencing, or added enough clues for them to be in on the joke. It wouldn't be the first time comedy has failed to cross cultural lines... but it becomes more confusing and fraught because adoptees were part of Korea's culture and society... until they got sent overseas. Ultimately, though, I'm not convinced that the skit has done enough work to deflect the mockery away from Jason Dooyoung Anderson, and onto the proper targets. Which might be a question of taste... but I think if that was the intention of the skit, it was poorly executed. Which is better than being purely ignorant or spiteful, but still troublesome.

That's the end of the commentary I want to make, so with one more mention that... holy cow it's awesome that adoptees took control of their own narrative with this incident, and all credit and praise go to them! I'm wrapping up this post.

Have a great one, friends.