Caption Contest: weirdest burger poster I've seen.

This poster is so many kinds of surreal I don't even know what to say about it... so I'll leave it to you, my readers.

CAPTION CONTEST!

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.
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Catching Up: Cheonan Memorial

A few weeks ago, on the weekend of the Cheonan boat tragedy funeral, I wandered around City Hall.  I took a nice picture of this couple:


and then I came across the Cheonan memorial by City Hall.

I haven't commented much on the Cheonan sinking here: I usually don't get THAT political at Roboseyo, but here are my basic thoughts:

1. I'm glad the South was so rigorous in investigating and proving it was a North Korean torpedo: without that rigor, we're in "emotional retaliation" territory instead of "strategic response" territory.

2. I wish China would just get on board... but given that half the North Korean refugees will be heading for the Chinese border if North Korea ever collapses, I can see why they're trying to maintain stasis.  China benefits from the existence of North Korea because it's a buffer between them and the US "proxy state" South Korea, and also because if international attention is on North Korea, it's less on China, and whatever they've got going on in the East-Asian theater.  As long as North Korean concentration camps are running, there's less outrage to go around for China organ harvesting political prisoners and stuff.

3. The best response South Korea can do is... explained better by blogs like One Free Korea or ROK Drop than me... but if South Korea gets back into the information war - dropping satellite cellphones, air-ballooning pamphlets and broadcasting radio signals, cellphone signals, and anything else they can into North Korea, to break the citizens' isolation from the truth, that'll hurt the North more than any military strike could; after the failed currency reform mess, the people are close to the limit, as far as I can tell from here, with the blogs and newspapers I read.  A military retaliation would galvanize the public against an outside enemy, and increase the military's influence, both bad things.  Leaving North Korea to fester, and leaving that bloody revolution to brew, looks weak, but it's the most strategic move if we ACTUALLY want change in the North.

4. Yeah.  Jon Stewart was out of line.

Anyway, I took some pictures of the Cheonan memorial by City Hall.  It was really sad: most of the soldiers who lost their lives were younger than 24



I can't remember what Canadian/Western public memorials are like (this memory of Princess Diana's memorial came to mind), but I think it's sweet and interesting that Korean memorials are covered in post-it notes that people write to the dead.




Photos of the excavation, the soldiers, and the President attending the memorial, as well as photos of US Military personnel helping Korean military folks with the excavation and investigation, were also on display.

Quick, quick, what's that song?

I'm exactly in the middle ground with K-pop, where I like it enough that there'll be about five songs a year I really, REALLY like, but not enough to read every K-pop blog, watch ALL the videos (still too much chaff, sorry), learn the names of ALL the Wonder Girls (one or two is plenty), and know all the latest hit songs.

But then something like this comes along, which I like, and I NEED to know who sings it.


So, the first reader to tell me the name of the singer, and the song, wins a toaster.

My favorite Korean music remains the '80s folk song stuff, and this: 그대 그리고 나 is my latest Noraebang show-stopper.  Lovely lovely song.



Matt Strum is the winner of the "name that song" contest, identifying the catchy song as "Lupin" by Kara.  Here's a picture of Lupin:

And here's the video.  The song's durn catchy, isn't it?

(shekshi denseu [섹시 댄스] warning)

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

Haebangchon Festival, Chicken Festival This Weekend

Three Wise Monkeys, a new Webzine that's worth reading, has the skinny on the HaeBangChon May Festival.  Check it out if you're in the neighborhood.

At COEX, There's also a Chicken Festival going on that sounds yummy.

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

Jason, over at Kimchi Ice Cream, has a really interesting post up that discusses Korean Wedding Hall culture, and the ways it resembles weddings back home, but that resemblance, in the end, only serves to bring the differences into even starker, more jarring contrast.

This reminds me of one of the most interesting insights Brian in JD had talking about Korean Christmas: Brian uses the "Uncanny Valley" idea to talk about Korean treatments of Western cultural practices, and I think it's apt.

The uncanny valley is a robotics term: experts found that as AI and robots behave more like humans, we respond to them more positively, but beyond a certain point, it creeps us out instead of making us like the robots, and we focus on the differences instead of the similarities: it's easier to sympathise with the cartoonish Mr. Incredible than with the nearly photorealistic characters in the Final Fantasy movie, and in NHL '94 it was SO COOL that you could make Wayne Gretzky's head bleed, but in NFL 2010 those touchdown dances seem a little too graceful for NFL players.

(from Swingers: warning: language)


Jason's description of Korean weddings, which is highly worth reading, seems to support this uncanny valley idea.  I think a wholly traditional Korean wedding, with Korean-only reference points, would be a nicer experience than the "Disneyland/Vegas" wedding Jason describes.  The wedding that seems to want to be taken on Western terms gets under our defenses... but then smacks us in the face even more sharply with its differences, because it seemed to hint that it would meet our expectations for weddings from back home.  It's the old bait-and-switch.

Korean Christmas is another good example of this.  The music is similar...ish; the decorations are similar...ish but it's a freaking couple holiday!!!

I'd like to look a little more at this funny spot where expectations and practices clash between cultures.  I began writing about it, and the post ballooned into what I'll break up into a series, for the sake of me, you, and time.  I'd been planning to write an article about the other side: observations about my Korean students' views of cultural change - for a while anyway, so now seems like a good time.

The three parts will be as follows: first a look Korean cultural change as viewed by Koreans, next, Korean cultural change (especially co-opting of foreign elements) as viewed by expats, and finally, Korean culture abroad: what will Koreans do if Korean culture really DOES become popular in the West, as everybody allegedly wants to happen?  I'll use a lot of my own observations, and stuff I've noticed during this semester's discussion classes, in the series.  Until the next post, you should go read Jason's article about Wedding Halls/Castles.

Jason takes a thoughtful, intelligent look at the way Koreans have taken Western weddings, isolated a few elements, exaggerated a few elements to cartoonish heights, and discarded the rest.  He mentions purity, which triggered some stuff for me, because I've been thinking about writing about this topic of what I call cultural cross-pollination, but from the exact opposite side.

http://kimchiicecream.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/korean-wedding-hallcastle-culture-jason-when-are-you-and-julianne-getting-married-you-should-get-married/

Here's part 1 of my series: Korean cultural change to older Koreans

Tom Waits Interview Text

Pitchfork: There is a rich and wonderful American history of tough, scrappy songwriters-- everyone from Ramblin’ Jack Elliott to Bob Dylan-- compulsively mythologizing themselves, inventing backstories, changing their names, developing personas to work alongside songs. Is there a Tom Waits mythology? Tom Waits: I’m sure there is. The fact is most of the things that people know about me are made up. My own life is backstage. So what you “know” about me is only what I allowed you to know about me. So it’s like a ventriloquist act. And it’s also a way of safely keeping your personal life out of your business. Which is healthy and essential. I’m not one of those people the tabloids chase around. You have to put off that smell-- it’s like blood in the water for a shark. And they know it, and they know that you’ve also agreed. And I’m not one of those. I make stuff up. There’s nothing that you can say that will mean the same thing once it’s been repeated. We’re all making leaner versions of stories. Before there was recording, everything was subject to the folk process. And we were all part of composing in the evolution and the migration of songs. We all reached out, and they all passed through our hands at some point. You dropped a verse or changed the gender or cleaned up a verse for your kids or added something more appropriate for your community. Anything that says “Traditional,” it’s “Hey, I wrote that, I’m part of that.” Just like when a joke reaches you-- how did it reach you? If you could go back and retrace it, that would be fascinating. Pitchfork: So the second you write something down, it’s fiction. Tom Waits: There is no such thing as nonfiction. There is no such thing as truth. People who really know what happened aren’t talking. And the people who don’t have a clue, you can’t shut them up. It’s the same with your own stories, the ones that circulate around with your family and your friends. We’re all part of the same hypocrisy. Pitchfork: Do you keep a notebook? Tom Waits: Oh yeah, everybody does! Life is too confusing. Monkey wrenches, pocket knives, dog food, instant coffee, lipstick. You gotta get it organized somehow. Pitchfork: Thanks so much for talking with me. Tom Waits: Oh! OK. Alright. I’ll leave you with a few little things out of my book here. In Los Angeles, it’s illegal for a man to beat his wife unless he’s on the courthouse steps. In Tulsa, it’s against the law to open a soda bottle without the supervision of a licensed engineer. In Texas, the Encyclopedia Britannica is banned because it contains the formula for making home brew. In Claradon, Texas, it’s illegal to dust any public building with a feather duster. In Washington, it’s illegal to paint polka dots on the American flag. There are only two things you can throw out the window of a moving car, legally. Do you know what they are? Pitchfork: Um… Tom Waits: Water. And feathers. Everything else you can get in trouble for. http://pitchfork.com/features/interviews/6492-tom-waits/ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/05/arts/music-a-poet-of-outcasts-who-s-come-inside.html?pagewanted=2

Who can say no to a Free Trip To JAPAN!

10 Magazine is having a video contest, and the top prize is a trip for two to Japan.

You should enter the contest.  Holy crap!  A trip to Japan is pretty sweet!  You'll also stay at the Tokyo Hilton, too.  There are other prizes to be won for the other top ten videos, including stays at sweet hotels in Seoul or Busan, and tickets to performances.

Your video will be shown on 10 Magazine's website, so this is a good way to pimp your site if you make videos.  Then, readers will vote on which video they like the most, and a panel of judges' decisions will be weighed along with voter totals, to determine the final winners.  Finally, there'll be an awards ceremony on June 12th.  

You can go here to learn about the contest, or to upload the video you made.

Enter!