Jesa Pizza

You should all go read Ms. Lee To Be's thoughtful blog post about tradition, in light of the picture of a pizza on a jesa table, that made the rounds on Korea's internet recently:

the main gist: we preserve dead things. To make preservation (rather than practice) a goal is also, in part, to surrender the belief that tradition remains relevant to our lives.

The Korean from Ask a Korean! wrote about how to do a Jesa a while ago, and has a (short) response to the pizza jesa here.

I wrote about Jesa once, a long time ago, too, upon reflecting on my mother's death of cancer.

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

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

Part one of this series.

Part two of this series.

Part three of this series.

Some food for thought:
Becoming a Canadian.


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


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


But you best not be crossing us canucks:


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


Sidenote: Questions about China

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

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

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

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

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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


Finally: UNESCO Kinda Looks Like Tools Right Now


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UNESCO's website

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

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


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

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

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

Source

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

(from Astrid Walter's flickr photostream)

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

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

Also...

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

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

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

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

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

What do you mean by "Korea" anyway?

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

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

Because:

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

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

Which meaning of Korean do you mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Background: 

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

Here's part one: the Identity Card.

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

Second Point: How does One Own a Culture?

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

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

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

So what is a culture? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Koreans invented Arirang.

2. Koreans use Arirang.

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

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

5. Arirang is associated with Koreans and Korean culture.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*UPDATE

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

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

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

And nor should they.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(source)

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

But let's be clearer.

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

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

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

* Sidenote on that:

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

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

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

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

First point: Vested Interests

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

(Tim Hortons donut shop - image source)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quotable passage ahead:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Briefly, then:

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

(image)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who Owns a Culture: Summary before Finishing

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

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

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

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

The summary then:

The Wedding Hall Wedding...Why?

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

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

Soundtrack: Marry Me, John, by St. Vincent


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

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

Ask The Expat also has something about weddings.

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

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

Korean Cultural Change Abroad

Soundtrack time:

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

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

Click to read more.

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

Korean Cultural Change - to older Koreans

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...this too?  Sure!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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