All over the Korea Herald Today

Hello Readers.

I'm Roboseyo, or Rob Ouwehand. This is my personal blog. You may have found this blog because of the articles in today's Korea Herald, about ATEK's Legal Assurance Program, which is big news, and my new position as ATEK's National Communications Officer.

To find out more about me, go ahead and look around the blog; some of my best or most popular posts are on the right. However, I should be clear that these are all my own, personal opinions, and they don't represent ATEK.

To learn more about ATEK, visit ATEK's website. You can also check out ATEK's Twitter feed, to the right.

2S2 On Saturday: Gwangjang Market And All the Good Vittles

Remember: 2S2 Wonju is also a go.

So Amy and Chris, minor deities in their own rights, have offered to help me out by running the upcoming 2S2 by Tag-Team, so that I can go tuxedo shopping on Saturday with my fiance, and still get married in July. Thanks, you two.

The plan remains as stated: Meet at 2PM on the second floor of the Twosome Place coffee shop by Anguk Station (Anguk Station exit 1, turn right).

Look for either this handsome guy (stolen without permission from Chris's Blogger Profile), who answers to the name "Chris" or "Thou Austere Keeper of the Sword That Wails, And Curator of Awkward Silences"

Or this curly-haired young lady, who radiates "awesome" (picture stolen without permission from her facebook photo album... I didn't have time to check if the picture was a good one; it's late and I wrote this in a sleepy rush.  Sorry if it's not you at your best, Amy.)

She answers to the name Amy.  I think the picture might be old; she may have changed since it was taken.

Once the crew has gathered, there are two ways to get to Gwangjang Market. Either by following this path:

View 2S2 Saturday May 8 2010 in a larger map
(If the weather's awesome and everybody is healthy and mobile)

Or by subway, Anguk Station, transfer at Jongno 3-ga station, get off at Jongno 5-ga station, exit 8, and head for the center of the market, where all the best food awaits.

From there, on the other side of the market is the Chunggyecheon Stream, which is a nice walk, and if some of you want to go to the Seoul World DJ festival, you'll have to work that out. The facebook page is here. The google map is here.

If you really want to go to the DJ Festival (which is awesome, by the way, but'll cost ya), here's the map to catch the bus from World Cup Stadium Station;

View Seoul DJ Festival in a larger map

Wish I could be there, readers. I'll post pictures of me in my tuxedo when I can. Don't you know I look dazzling in a suit.

If I have the energy (clothing shopping tires me), and Girlfriendoseyo has the patience, and the store has one in stock, I'll be sure to get at least one picture of me in a ridiculous tuxedo for you. If all those things occur.  Have a good time eating food and walking around a market I wish I could join you for, readers.

-Rob

Great Jimjilbang... cleaning my desk

I've had the business cards of a great jimjilbang cluttering my desk for months now, so I'm just going to scan and post the info and let you know that this place is pretty sweet: the clay kilns out back are a wonder, and the coal roasters where you can buy rice cakes, potatoes, sweet potatoes and corn, and then roast them yourself, are AWESOME.

You should go there.

Here's the place.  hanbangland.co.kr.  No promises the website will be useful.

It's between the Shinchon/Hongdae area and the Jongno area, and the masseurs are hella strong.

Enjoy~

2S2 Saturday: Here's the Plan; Come Hungry; Here's what I Need

OK, readers...

Here's the problem.

I have a great idea for this Saturday's 2S2... except one thing.  I'm double-booked.

See, I'm getting married in July ... you might have heard about this ... and Fiancoseyo (no. That's not working) Girlfriendoseyo set the tuxedo shopping appointment for this Saturday, at 3pm.  Given that 2S2 meets at 2pm, it pretty much means that I could be there for about ten minutes before I had to split.

I love you all, my readers, and I care a lot that people get the connections they need... but I'm completely unavailable this Saturday.

So here's what I need: a friend who can fill in, and lead people around.  I'll even plan out the thing, as long as I have someone who can hold a map and keep a group together.

You can read about 2S2 Suwon here, or at the 2S2 blog, once it's posted there; I hope 2S2 Wonju will be putting something up soon, and 2S2 Yongin/Suji also has a facebook page.

Here's my idea: about a 20 minute walk from 2S2's Anguk Station meetup, there's a fantastic market called "Gwangjang Market" where you can get some of the best jeon (seafood pancake), bindaeddeok, kalguksu (Korean cut noodle soup), and a whole swack of other old-style Korean foods - the kind of stuff that reminds Koreans of their childhood, all served up in little food-stalls.  The prices are ridiculously low, the food's awesome soul-food - there's pig's feet, but there's also some awesome not-gross, cheap food like kimbap, chapchae, noodles, egg and fish-cakes -- all the best Korean cheap-foods you can think of.  And the market experience is as authentically "Korea" as you can get.  Read more here.

Here's Dan Gray, from Seoul Eats, my nemesis, describing some of the foods:


From there, right next to Kwangjang market is the Chunggyecheon stream, which is a nice stroll to work off all the food you ate, and if you're really ambitious, Kwangjang Market is not far from Jongno 3-ga station, where line 3 takes you to line 6, from which you can head down to the Seoul DJ Festival - I've gone before, and it was awesome.  (learn more here, or here, or here)

So... any takers?  Help a fella out!

Inwang Mountain and JjimDalk: Awesome Day

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

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

The tree cover had pink peeking through.

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

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

Mother-in-law-oseyo loves the mountain.

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


A bit closer:

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

Bravo my life!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great day, readers.

Roboseyo

Circus Acrobats...

I love Circus shows.  I love what humans have trained themselves to do.  The first live circus I saw that I can remember well (I think I went to a few when I was a kid, but didn't grasp at the time how friggin' hard it is, what they do,) was in North Korea, at the Geumgang Resort.  The stuff they could do was mind-blowing, and I felt like I was seven years old again... I'm still sad that I wasn't allowed to bring recording devices into the country, or buy a DVD.  Not that circuses EVER look good on DVD.

Saw this on Collegehumor, which usually does comedy, but every once in a wile puts some "wow" on their video feed, and it reminded my.

My favorite circus story was when I went to Beijing in December '08/ January '09 with my best friend and his wife; she speaks Chinese extremely well, so she did a lot of bargaining for us to get awesome prices and deals on a lot of stuff.  When she got on the phone with the circus people, to reserve tickets for the Beijing Circus, she tried to argue for a discount, and the phone operator just answered, "What they do is hard." and she had nothing to say.  Check it out.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

The circuses I've been to since then, starting with the most "wow":

1. Geumgang Mountain Tour, North Korea

2. Alegria, by Cirque du Soleil (wrote about it here and here - some of the video clips have been taken down; others are good)

3. Quidam, by Cirque du Soleil

4. Chinese Circus in Shanghai

5. Chinese Circus in Beijing (China takes so many Olympic medals in gymnastics, and supplies performers to every circus in the world, and it shows in their domestic circus shows.)

And being #5 on that list is no shame, buddy.  That's all for now.

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

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

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

Praise is Meaningless if Not Allowed To Criticize

This article was published in the Korea Herald, but the link is a bit glitchy, so I'm storing a copy here in case it disappears next time The Korea Herald updates its website.

It is further discussed in this blog post, "Death Threads, K-Bloggers, Lousy Korea"

This January, an English teacher in Korea had a conversation with a few other expats. All the complaining she heard made her decide to vent her negativity on a blog, so that she didn’t have to be negative around her friends.

Also a regular blog reader, she took the repeated and repetitive theme of complaining about Korea, and exaggerated it to ridiculous degrees, partly to vent, and partly in hopes that the exaggeration would prompt some of the whiners to shake their heads and say, “Wait a minute ... Korea’s not as bad as all that.” She named the blog Lousy Korea, and while she expected some defensiveness from people who missed her point, she did not expect what happened.

image from original Korea Herald online article (see link above)

The teacher, whom we’ll call L.K. to protect her privacy, last week took her blog down completely. Threats were being made not only to L.K., but to other bloggers who were linked on her blog, and even the families of those bloggers. Lousy Korea is not the only blog that has been targeted by death threats, nor the only expat: Korean Rum Diary is another blogger who received a death threat with detailed descriptions of how he would be murdered, and included his real name and address.

Popular blogger Brian in Jeollanam-do was recently reported to immigration, most likely because of his critical opinions, and the president of the Association for Teachers of English in Korea also had his life threatened. Some of these people were attempting to discuss Korean social issues honestly. Others took negative approaches. However, it is shocking that there are people who believe that when somebody writes something they dislike, an appropriate response is to threaten that person’s job, life, friends or family.

So what’s with these negative blogs, anyway? They’re misunderstood: A lot of the people who complain online save all their negativity for the Internet, so that they can be pleasant and polite during the day to their friends and coworkers. These people are not publishing their articles in famous magazines or newspapers -- they often aren’t writing for an audience at all: They’re participating in a group therapy session, dealing with culture shock by talking to others who also feel culture shock. Posting their thoughts where anybody can find them might not be the wisest choice, but such people deserve pity more than hostility.

Meanwhile, in the same way that hyper-negative bloggers leave a bad impression of expats in Korea, the extreme reactions from netizens, who really believe they are protecting Korea with their hateful behavior, creates the impression that Korean society can’t stand criticism. This tiny, angry minority of hostile people can be very noisy, and they’ve chosen different targets at different times: ask Park Jae-beom, Vera Hohleiter (the “Loser” girl from Misuda), Dog Poop Girl or Jim Hewish. These people do not realize that rather than protect Korea’s reputation, their behavior actually damages it by creating a false image of a country full of thin-skinned, reactionary and hostile netizens.

During Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan’s dictatorships, people were afraid to say anything different, difficult, or provocative, because people were regularly jailed for criticizing the regime. Even today, the situation is similar in North Korea. It is really sad that a few angry and aggressive commenters can create a culture of fear online, so that, once again, people are afraid to express their opinions. It is shameful that even though many Koreans alive today can still remember those dictatorships, some people are celebrating Korea’s new democratic freedoms by using the same fear and intimidation tactics Korea’s old dictators did, to stifle opinions they dislike.

Free speech is the lifeblood of a truly free society, and while free speech does not mean speech without consequences, there are acceptable responses to speech, like written responses, angry comments, criticisms and negative feedback, and there are unacceptable responses, like threats to someone’s privacy, job, safety, friends or even family. It doesn’t matter if someone’s opinion or method of expression is unpopular or even offensive: If their free speech is not also protected, nobody is really free to express themselves.

These days, Korea seems to be especially concerned with how it is perceived by countries around the world. Branding is the buzzword in food, business and tourism promotion. Positive mentions of Korea are repeated, but criticisms are met with outcry.

On the blogs, it’s the same: Everybody congratulates the happy bloggers for truly understanding Korea; however, if bloggers do not feel free to say what they really think, if they are writing positive things because they fear violence when they criticize, then their positive comments are as empty as the songs of North Korean school children praising their leader, for fear of the prison camp.

To comment, e-mail [redacted]; Rob Ouwehand’s other writings can be found at the blog Roboseyo.blogspot.com; the opinions expressed here do not necessarily represent those of The Korea Herald – Ed.

By Rob Ouwehand

Death Threats, K-Bloggers, Lousy Korea

I wrote an article for The Korea Herald about the Lousy Korea incident, which you can also read about at I'm No Picasso here; the best commentary on the issue so far is coming from Korean Rum Diary, who's made some interesting and thoughtful posts on the topic.  His first discusses critics of negative blogs; his second is actually a long comment from the blogger Lousy Korea, and his third responds to the article I wrote today in the Korea Herald.  In the comments to the first of KRD's posts, The Korean leaves a response that's worth reading.

You can read my article in the Korea Herald here. Duplicate link here in case the first goes dead.

I'd written a big, really long post about this issue that I was going to run this week, but while writing the Herald article, I asked LK to contact me, and during that correspondence, she said that she doesn't wish this thing to be made too much more of a big deal, for the sake of some of the people whose lives have been threatened.

So I'm going to summarize my long post, instead of publishing the whole thing.  Interestingly, it referenced the same news story KRD mentioned: Muslims threatening South Park for their Muhammed portrayal.

Here's the bullet point version of the original post:

1. Yeah, Lousy Korea had a harsh tone that was quite provocative.
2. I'm No Picasso notes here that "hater K-bloggers" and "psycho nutizens" are both extreme fringes who do not represent their groups, but who sometimes makes their entire group look bad.
3. Yep, Korean Sentry can be hateful... but no worse than some of Dave's ESL's Hate Korea comment threads.
4. A lot of this stuff relates to my old "Why Do Expats Complain"/"Why Do Koreans Get So Defensive" teamup.

Longer points:

5. (똥)개 눈에는 똥만 보인다 - a Korean saying literally translated, according to Girlfriendoseyo, "The dog that eats shit, only looks for shit."  I think "The dog with shit in his eye sees only shit" is snappier, but basically, some kinds of writing reveal more about the writer than the subject.  Such extreme writing speaks for itself, and undermines itself with its vitriol; if somebody's having SUCH a bad time in Korea, they ought to be pitied, and then ignored.

6. Most of the "Hate Korea" blogs out there have fewer than 50 followers: they're not reaching a large audience, nor are they really trying to.  It's mostly a few buddies passing notes to each other in class.

(with apologies to Jason Ryan)
Q: If a tree shouts, "Korea sucks" in the forest, ten other trees shout, "Hear, hear!" and nobody else is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
A: Who cares?  I have more important things to worry about.

7.  "Hate Korea" blogs and the extreme reactions they engender lead to a perception that expats and Korean society are incompatible - in the same way that South Park's Mohammed jokes and militant groups' overreactions create the perception that Muslims will NEVER integrate into Western society.  Is the laugh that South Park got for taking cracks at Mohammed worth the mutual alienation that develops between Muslim and Western society?  I don't know.

8. While there are enough Koreans who can read English and access OUR complaining blogs, there are way too few expats who can read enough Korean to answer the K-defenders with "But a Korean blogger said the same thing yesterday!" and provide a link.  That's too bad.

9. Free speech doesn't mean Speech without consequences.  Free speech, even on the internet, has consequences, be that hundreds of commenters flaming me for saying "Wondergirls suck" or Birthers shrieking because I wrote in support of Obamacare, expressing yourself on the internet has consequences. The Marmot, Garry Bevers, Kushibo, and Brian in Jeollanam-do have all been personally attacked or threatened for their online actions.  You own everything you say on the internet, forever.  No, people shouldn't be allowed to publish my address and phone my employer: there are appropriate and inappropriate responses to free speech, but speech DOES have consequences.  Even anonymous speech can be traced by smart, persistent people, and a dedicated sleuth might expose even the thing you thought was completely anonymous!

10. The cycle of Misunderstanding: I really think there's a big misunderstanding leading to the negative cycle of Haters and K-defenders.  Here's how it works:

1. Expats vent online, kind of like a group therapy session (the internet's good for getting together group therapy and support communities)
2. K-defenders read the venting and miss the group-therapy context, and react.  Maybe they start out rationally (which would be fine if the point of the forum really were intellectual exchange, but it isn't: it's catharsis), maybe they don't start out rationally.  But they react.
3. Expats mistake the K-defender's defensiveness for either an invalidation of their right to free speech, or a denial of the realities they face every day.  Instead of explaining, "Kindly leave us to our group therapy," they double-down, and re-assert their right to free speech, usually by saying even nastier things about Korea.
4. Repeat steps 2-4 until everyone hates everyone.

11. You're not the first one to notice this blog is one-sided.  K-defenders forget that the other people who read the "Hate Korea" blogs have brains, probably don't believe everything they read on the internet, and most likely suspect any blog that is one-sided, either positive (suspected to be propaganda) or negative (suspected to be vendetta).  Readers will seek out other sources, if they care enough to get the full story. If readers are so disengaged and incurious they don't check their facts and read other sources, who cares what they think?

12. When people are putting stuff on the internet, I don't know if "You're not my intended audience" can/should be a "get out of jail free" card; regardless, if it's something easily misunderstood, it's the barest of prudence to put a disclaimer on the front page: something like "This blog is a satire;" or "this blog is just my own opinion;" or "I usually write when I'm feeling a lot of feelings, so the things you read here might not reflect how I feel 80-95% of the time;" or "These are jokes. Lighten up or move on."

13. In my own experience of K-defensiveness, I don't think it's as bad as it used to be, but I don't know if that's because there are more Koreans able to talk openly to foreigners about negative topics, because I'm getting better at presenting my thoughts tactfully, or because I'm getting better at spotting who is and who isn't up to those kinds of discussions, and I naturally avoid those who can't.

who knows.