Ex-Pres. Roh's Suicide: Wrong in So Many Ways

I'm still sad, bummed, disappointed, upset, angry, confused about this.

For the sake of Roh the man, I wanted to leave a few days to let this whole thing sink in, but dear readers, Roh Moo-hyun's suicide is bad for Korea in so, so, so many ways. It's not often you see a situation that just has no upside whatsoever, but this one really doesn't.

Here are all the ways Roh's suicide is bad, and for whom:

1. For Korea's political scene.

Korea's political scene has been plagued for SO long by a hyper-polarization of left and right. Various presidential candidates (including, I believe, Roh himself) got to the Blue House partly on merit of promising to end the regional antagonism, and the us-against-them bloodsport of partisanship in Korean politics.

The fact, at this point, that it appears (and reality matters very little to demagogues, as long as there is an appeareance) that Lee Myung-Bak's very zealous investigation into Roh's corruption pushed him to desperation will further deepen, and crystallize the polarization of Korea's political parties.

2. For Korea's image internationally.

Yeah. Ex-president committing suicide in the middle of a corruption investigation? Kind of the exact opposite of a PR coup.

3. For Korea's slow journey out of the old corrupt ways and toward transparency

See, it would have been embarrassing, yeah, for the man, and even for the country, if Roh Moo-hyun had spent some time in jail for corruption... then again, it would have sent a message to everyone in Korea, as Lee Geon-hee's resignation from the top spot in Samsung did in '08, that corruption is no longer acceptable in Korea, even from the rich and powerful. By calling off the investigation after Roh's suicide, he and his family get away with corruption. Sure, the investigators could hardly have done anything else, given the backlash they would have faced, but the fact is, Roh's suicide is a major setback for a country trying to climb the world transparency index.

4. For Korea's suicide epidemic

When Roh killed himself, he managed to buy his family the out they needed: the corruption investigation was called off. By calling off the investigation, the Korean government has validated suicide as a way to get yourself out of a jam.

(opinion article stating as much)

Repeat: Calling off the corruption investigation, though inevitable, has validated suicide as an effective option for getting yourself, or your family out of a jam.

And this is to say nothing of the way the high profile suicide trend continues, and, as newspapers print photos of suicide funerals where famous people cry and wear black, as newspapers publish photos of suicide sites, it makes suicide that much more prominent in the mind of a depressed kid, as an option for dealing with life's problems: "If Choi Jin-shil did it..."

5. For Korean prosecutors

It is a huge blow to the credibility of Korea prosecutors and justice department, that Roh's investigation both appeared to be politically motivated, and that it was called off upon his death. When it looks like they're serving as hand in glove for the ones in power, to crap on the ones not in power, rather than being focused on justice alone, and when public emotion rather than satisfaction of the law is the reason for calling off an investigation, the credibility of Korean law is damaged.

6. For President Lee Myung-bak

Yep. The death is going to be politicized by the president's opponents. Yep, just wait for the protests in the street to begin. Yep, they'll find other things to blame on him. It's gonna be a whole lot of ugly in downtown Seoul, again this summer. Just when you thought it was safe to have a Hi Seoul! Festival...

7. For the Roh family.

Of course. Let's not forget that a wife lost her husband, a son lost his father. While it's a shame that a man they're trying to grieve is going to be used as a symbol for so many other things in the coming months, in the end, after the politicians have squeezed every bit of leverage they can out of Roh the image, Roh the symbol, and Roh the martyr, a wife will still be mourning her husband, and a son will still be mourning his father.

8. For Roh's legacy.

I don't want to go too deeply into what his motivations might have been, but yeah, a suicide is a pretty explicit admission of guilt in the corruption case. Unfortunately, that case will now be the final word on the man's life, instead of possibly spending some time in jail, but then possibly doing some good work as a former head-of-state who'd been (hopefully) humbled, and a man who, at one time, stood for something a lot of Koreans, and particularly, a lot of young Koreans, believed in.

Ever wondered what it's like to be an American in quarantine for Swine Flu in Korea?

Well wonder no more: it's being blogged as we speak! Here's what it looks like.

Sweet! Here's another one. (Thanks, Okibum in the comments)

And another. Wow. Round up the bloggers. Or is it just that everyone really does have a blog now?

HT to Brian

Two nice things before the sad thing.

This guy made me smile on the subway. Note the footgear. (Look out, feetman seoul! I'm moving in on your turf!)
One nice thing about the older urban spaces in Seoul is the way every once in a while, roses start spilling all over everything.


And finally, something that you have to prepare for, and not be surprised at, if you come to Korea:

Yep. The cleaning lady in the men's room. Protocol is: let her do her job, and stand a little bit closer than usual.

Now the sad thing: R.I.P. Roh Moo-hyun. Suicide. This story is ghastly and horrible on so many levels. Heartbreaking, too.
And shame on people who are either using his death to say nasty things about him, or to gain political leverage. Shame.
I took some pictures and stuff of the vigil taking place by City Hall. Go look.

Micheal Breen Rules

His latest column at The Korea Times is a must-read.

Go read why using English well/properly/adequately for the situation is pucking dippicult for Koreans.

It begins this way:

"If you are Korean and reading this newspaper, your English must be quite good, certainly gooder than most people.

But how about your spoken English? Is it also well good? Or are you hard when you speak English?" and gets better.

Go read it.

Also: some guy digitally combined over a dozen of the handsomest Korean stars and created this composite. What say you, readers? Is this the ideal Korean man?

ATEK Update

If you've been following the ATEK stuff here and at The Hub of Sparkle, you might be interested in "The Atek Panel" which just went up, in which three people submitted position essays explaining why they are for, undecided about, or against, the Associations for Teachers of English in Korea.

Hopefully this will gather the most salient points from each side into one place, so that people don't have to scan numerous comment threads at numerous websites to figure out which way is up.

Go read.

Coming of Age in Korea

I'd never heard about this until yesterday, when one of my 21-year-old students told me that the third Monday of May, for all the nation's 21-year-olds, is their formal "coming of age" day.

She said she was traditionally supposed to receive flowers, perfume, and a kiss on this day. Very interesting -- I didn't know anything about this.

Then today, at An Acorn in the Dog's Food, actually gives an explanation, with photos, of the ancient Korean coming-of-age ceremony, which involves hanbok, wine for men and tea for women. Thanks, buddy!

Photo Dump: Gyeongju Hi Seoul Festival, And More

On buddha's birthday I went to Gyeongju. It seems like a long time ago, because the ATEK stuff has pretty much hijacked all my free time, and might continue to, until I am satisfied that what's been needed to be said has been said, and them who needs to find out about it, can. I'm actually OK with that, because this is something that actually MATTERS to people: blogging is finally something more than me writing words and flattering myself that somebody might want to read them, and can actually be a way for people to connect, communicate, and try to understand each other...because that's what life is about, and that's what community is about, isn't it?

Anyway, I took a ton of pictures, but haven't put them up yet, as well as some video.

But first: 'Seyo's Bliss-out of the week, as soundtrack for the post.

Hit play and start reading...but here's the background. Dan Deacon is "freak electronic" artist. His music, rather than being "party music" like, say, The Chemical Brothers, which plays great AT a party, Dan Deacon's music sounds like he's taken a bunch of instruments and sounds, thrown them in a room together, and the INSTRUMENTS are having a party together. And you get to listen.

This song is long -- it's actually in two parts -- but it's also one of the giddiest songs I've heard, with the singalong chant at the beginning, and reprised at the end. He's apparently a wizard live, so I'm glad to have live video footage, and you can see and hear people dancing and singing along, and it's awesome. One of my new friends, Robyn from New York, just went to a Dan Deacon show that was webcast on NPR (recommended listen), and I'm seething with envy. Then again, I get to eat the world's most delicious Korean food every time I leave my house, and she's stuck with the crappy Korean food that you can dredge up in New York, so it evens out a bit. (I showed her around one Saturday, so she plugged my blog, too. But she called me strange. Next time she comes to Seoul, she's only getting SECOND TIER locations out of me. Take that, lady! Nah. I'm just kidding. I don't hold grudges. Or so she'll think right up until the other shoe drops.)

So The Hi Seoul Festival happened. These cool streamers were up in the night sky.Two white girls were dancing, and eight Korean guys were taking their pictures, and wishing they could join in, and occasionally doing so awkwardly for spurts of about eight second per.
The Korean bands No Brain and Cherry Filter, both awesome, were there. The show was set up with two stages, so people kept moving from one corner of City Hall Plaza to the other, which wasn't a bad way to do it. The mass migration was fun to watch.


I love all-ages shows. The three foreign girls dancing were funny, too.


Time to scandalize all my fellow k-bloggers (it was a big K-blog weekend last weekend. Don't know just why, but by some strange convergence, suddenly I managed to meet Seoul Eats, Kiss My Kimchi, Fatman Seoul, Zenkimchi, Kimchi Ice Cream, Expatriate Games, and Studio UR, not to mention some other, real human beings, all in the span of two days. And all that was along with flaking out and (I think) forgetting to follow up with Foreign/er Joy (sorry about that, Joy. Totally unintentional.)

I met Terry at a Buddhist Vegetarian restaurant. She was a pretty cool cat. But the real selling point in this picture is something all you ladies have been waiting for: look along the far right, and you get to see Dan Gray's crotch! (sweet! My blog is totally taking over the number one google hit rankings for searches with the keywords "Dan Gray's Buddhist crotch"! [warning: avoid the image search]) So, uh, just in case you'd been wondering.
There are other things I know about Dan Gray, after a night of drinking with him, which I WON'T share...but this picture was too much to resist. I actually like the guy. You should hang out with him sometime. I'll give you his private phone number if you send me a message. (again... just kidding, eh?)

Sorry buddy. You're allowed to publish any dumb photo you have of me, too.

In other embarrassing K-blog photos...Joe likes Mexican Beer.
(actually he was holding everyone's beer while they all took pictures of each other. What a nice guy. He's also free to publish any embarrassing picture he has of me...and I'm sure he has some. Of me making the Yanni face, or pretending to orgasm as I eat well-being pickled vegetables [stole that joke] or something.) Anyway, now that I've made enemies of two super-cool blog pals...

I went to Gyeongju with Girlfriendoseyo. We rented bikes and found some really lovely trees and things.
Anapji pond was one of the prettier things I've ever seen in Korea.

All around Gyeongju are spots like this, where rocks are laid out in formation: remains of former temples, palaces, tombs or other such structures, weather-worn, often catalogued, but not yet restored. If you get up close, you can still see some really nice stonework on some of these, too. Must have made impressive palaces. Maybe later they'll get restored. Maybe.
One of the biggest ancient astronomy observatories in Asia.
More of the cool trees at the park behind the tombs.
The coolest old guy I've ever seen outside of the wacky wildness of Jongmyo park, standing around outside Dong Daegu Station, where we stopped on the way to Gyeongju.


A lake on the way in to Bulguksa Temple:


These clamps held up the strings of lamps:

Eaves at Bulguksa.
This was another view of Seokguram temple. The cave is up at the top of the hill.

Back from Gyeongju: there's a photo shop at the corner of Itaewon station that always had this picture of a baby boy with its little baby dong featured prominently, as was the tradition a generation ago, when having a son was very important, so photographers intentionally took baby pictures with the little man-child's equipment fully on display. Well, somebody finally convinced them that this would not attract all the foreigners who visit Itaewon into their shop, so they fixed the problem.

With a post-it note.Too funny.

Here's another one of my superduper cute former-student Cecilia.

And when I met Kimchi Ice Cream last weekend, we went to an incredible Japanese style ramen place. Ooch, I'm STILL thinking about it. (there's my buddy Evan's nice, pointy western nose. Evan's quality.)

Broth boiled so long it was milky and rich with flavour. Lovely. A thousand ways lovely.
Behind the Seoul Art Center in Gwanghwamun:

OK. Now here's the second half of the Dan Deacon song. It's good. Listen to it. The climax/final chorus is wild, even more so with the live crowd just giving it.

Did I mention? The song's name is "Wham City" from Dan Deacon's album, "Spiderman Of The Rings"

Teacher's Day Quandary

So... how should one feel when one receives a note on teacher's day that says:

Dear Roberte Teacher

Thank you the your Writing class. Without a your writing kind teaching I will having the terrible write, but now I'm gooder thanks to you.

Sincerrely
Sally

not that it happened to ME or anything, mind -- just asking.

Happy Chonji Day

I called it "Cheonji Day" instead of Teacher's Day because Teacher's Day is also known as one of the most common days for parents to give teachers cash gifts called "Cheonji" (촌지))... sometimes meant to be in exchange for "special" treatment of their kid (on the grade sheet) -- there have actually been laws passed putting a maximum on the amount of cash or value of gifts permitted to give teachers, because the old tradition of bribing the teacher had gotten so rampant. The practice continues today.

My favorite Teacher's Day moments in Korea came from my first year, when I taught grade school kids.

Being male, the usual cosmetics packages didn't suit, and there must have been a sock-selling truck somewhere on the bus route picking kids up to come, so over the course of the day, I received twelve pairs of the exact same socks. Totally interchangeable. I didn't buy socks once my first three years in Korea. Just when I was starting to run out and wear out, another teacher's day would come along. It was awesome.

My favorite teacher's day class was the class where one student gave me a bucket of rock candy, and another student gave me a bottle of Amway toothpaste. Perfect match.

My biggest teacher's day bung-up was the year I told the students that if they wanted to bring me Teacher's Day gifts, they could, but please remember that I'm allergic to milk, so chocolate presents make me sad, because I can't eat Korean chocolates (it's all super milky), and the mothers took my PSA to mean that I was expecting nice gifts from all of them, and complained about my overly expectant attitude. Since then, I've just taken the chocolates humbly, thanked people kindly, and passed the chocolates around to the other teachers in the staff room (who are all swimming in chocolate, too).

Thanks for the spelling correction, ROK Hound.

My Friend Cecilia

Last Saturday, I met Robyn, a food blogger from New York, and my ex-student/friend/Korean kid sister Cecilia. We had a great time trying some of the signature Korean foods around Insadong: one of my favorite moments was when Robyn went: "Wait a minute, holy crap... there's a takeout place across the street from my workplace in New York that serves dumpling-rice-cake soup" (ddeok mandukuk)... "but this stuff is so good I didn't realize until just now I'm actually eating the same dish!" So good she didn't even recognize it. Yeh. Roboseyo knows from food.

But also, my former student/friend/Korean kid sister Cecilia was there, and basically, she's liquified cute. Despite the language gap, her outgoing character and her charm made the day more fun. The amazing thing about this is, as cute as her pictures are in the video...she's always like that, and in the most amazing achievement ever in Korean cuteness...it's completely unaffected. There's never a hint that she's putting on an act, and I don't think she is: this is just how she actually is.

So much fun. Watch the video. You'll fall in love, but you can't keep her. She's taken.

My camera has a continuous function, so that it just keeps taking shots every half second until I release the button, so often I take five or six pictures of something and choose the best. This time, I just kept it down, because she and my friend Evan were having so much fun with the camera.