Miscegenation? Race-Traitory? Consensual Choice? White Male Korean Female Relationships Warmed Over Again

There's an amazing conversation going on, that's stretched across three blogs so far, about the archetypal, unbelievably fraught white male/Korean female relationship:

is it the ultimate realization of internalized colonialism, or is it simply a choice between two human beings?  This topic comes back again and again, probably with each new wave of people making these same choices, and it's classic troll-bait... so be aware I'll be monitoring the comments carefully on this one.

Anyway, go read James at The Grand Narrative, who, like me, is a white dude married to a Korean woman.  James wrote a post titled "Real and Presumed Causes of Racism Against Interracial Couples in Korea," that's highly worth reading in its entirety.  In it, James responds to a comment on "Noona's Blog" (Are Koreans a Homogenous People?) by a fella named Jake, from a website called "Asian Male Revolutions" which challenges the image of the asian male as it has been presented in the Western media (here's another article about that from "IamKoream," one of my favorite websites for and by Korean Americans).  You see, in response to Noona's question whether Koreans are homogenous, Jake suggests that (most? all?) white male-Korea/Asian female dating boils down to unconscious lapsing into colonial power dynamics.  James at The Grand Narrative has a message for Jake, from Mrs. Grand Narrative:

(in short: -image stolen from James' blog)

Then, I'm No Picasso, which is probably my favorite K-blog that I've found in the last year, weighs in with her own view on the thing, in a portrait of purest hypocrisy on the part of a certain fella she once talked with.  Her post is titled "Hello, I'm a Woman" and is also worth reading in its entirety.

James' blog continues to get more interesting and more relevant as he tackles topics like this.

Now, I'm no trained sociologist, but I find this discussion interesting, if only because I happen to have married a Korean woman myself.  And she's awesome.

I mostly side with James, that it's patronizing, sexist, and just insulting to imply that Korean women have no agency of their own in choosing whom they date and marry: Wifeoseyo didn't pick me because I looked like a superhero, and I didn't pick her because she lowered her eyelids and acted submissive.  In fact, the 'submissive' act is as much a turn-off for me as that aegyo crap, which some people like, but I don't. (The Joshing Gnome's highly worthwhile piece on Aegyo-part 1)


This funny YouTube video looks at the issue of Asian women and white guys, which is pretty good: the doofus who plays the white dude is a real doofus... but after reading I'm No Picasso's post, I can't help but notice the video's almost entirely male.


However, I'll give I'm No Picasso the final word, with this setup:

While I agree with nearly all of the points in theory that Jake has made, and I see where it all is coming from, the point is, categorizing people's relationships with other people based on race is not okay. It's not okay from one end, and it's not okay from the other. And I find it disturbing that it seems this "revolution" in the Asian male's image of himself has to come at the cost of feminsim, in his view.

and then this absolute coup de grace:

Welcome to our world, Jake. Thanks for being part of the problem. So long as you promote the idea that you have the right to categorize the choices that women make in regards to the race of the person they choose to love, and why they are making those choices, you will only be enforcing what it is you are supposedly taking a stand against. This is not a male issue -- you don't get to have all the control.

Det Dere Birthrate

Funny thing:

I keep reading and hearing these pontifications on why the birthrate is so low in Korea.

The funny thing is, I've never seen those pontifications by government ministers and policy makers (mostly male) alongside results of surveys actually ASKING women why they don't want to have kids, or asking them, "If this happened, would you think about having more babies?" (this being things like, government funded daycares, legally binding work end-times, legal maternity leaves protected with teeth, etc.)

And the question is, is the government really that clueless about women's issues, and why on earth aren't they asking the people actually affected by their policy decisions (women, newlyweds, young families).  Another case in point: this obscenely wrong-headed attempt to improve the birth-rate by cracking down on doctors who perform abortions (covered at length and with outrage by the Metropolitician, Korea, No Place for Young Women, but about Whom Policy Is Decided by Old Men)

Analogy:
Cracking down on abortion to solve the low birthrate problem is like raising the downtown speed limits to fix Kangnam's rush-hour traffic gridlock.

This article is the one that set me off.  That's about it for now.

Readers: correct me if I'm wrong.  Are there surveys of Korean women's views on childbirth that are simply being disregarded?  Where can I find and read them?  Links in the comments if you know of one.

Must be Chuseok! Order your Spam Set.

this is from a twitter post posted by a facebook friend...

One of the charms of Korean holiday culture is the gift giving culture: for a while I thought it was dumb, or lame, or stupid, that Koreans give each other toothpaste, spam, and olive oil sets for chusok, but now I just think it's goofy and funny.

Now, the spam might well hearken back to Korea's post-war poverty, a time when the US Military saw to it there was lots of military issue spam in the country, but it was mostly a luxury item for impoverished Koreans.  Some foods, for example budaejigae, came out of that period, and are frankly, some of Korea's best down home lunches, regardless of whether Korean food promotion is proud or ashamed of that period of post-war poverty.  I'll take a good old homey budaejigae over a pretentious boutique cafe lunch any day.

One year, my boss gave every foreign staff member (and every foreign Korean staff member) huge boxes of spam.  None of us knew what to do with it: none of us used spam in our cooking, none of us particularly liked spam.  We had to sign our spam sets out with the front desk; some of us never claimed one, and a few of us left them in the staff room for months before getting rid of them.  We mostly re-gifted them, and we kept one around, to set it up beside our computer monitor, so that it blocked the glare on the computer monitor between 10 and 11 am, when the sun shone in the window.   Were we being passive-aggressive?  Perhaps... but for seollal, our bosses gave us bottles of wine instead, which we actually used.  Another boss gave cash.  That was the best, and if any of my readers are Koreans, thinking of gifts for your foreign friends, cash or gift certificates are probably the perfunctory gifts we'll appreciate most.

The interesting thing, to me, is how in my anecdotal experience, it's so totally acceptable to give out a basically thoughtless gift here.  I asked Wifeoseyo and she said the same: It's just the giving of the gift that matters.  Everybody knows it's perfunctory gift anyway, and there seems to be an unspoken agreement to just be OK with that.  When I give a gift to Wifeoseyo, I want to think about her style, her taste, what she needs, what she expects, and what will make her feel happy: I spend a lot of time thinking about possible gifts, and even writing down in my pocketbook ideas that would make her happy, come gift-giving time.  Making scrapbooks, remembering old conversations, stuff like that.

I talked to an older lady (and yeah, this is generational), and she said, point blank, that she'd rather her husband just gave her cash for her birthday, so she could get what she wanted.  Weddings are the same: people give envelopes of cash on wedding days, and used to give cash to teachers as well - the white envelope culture works here, and again, wedding couples generally just agree to be OK with the way wedding halls sometimes even have a cash machine in the lobby, so that you don't even have to plan at all - just show up at the wedding hall with a bank card.

Do people in North America give thoughtless, perfunctory gifts?  Sure.  Ever got a box of chocolates for valentines day?  My Dad is a pastor, and pastors get a lot of perfunctory boxes of chocolate and christmas cake and pastries, come Christmas.  Back home, people give thoughtless gifts too.  Here, it seems like people don't even try.

So... do the Koreans you know feel embarrassed at all about giving cash, or olive oil, or toothpaste, to even close relatives, or is everybody still openly OK with it (even if they quietly bring it home and go "what the HELL am I going to do with twelve kilograms of spam?")

And what have you observed the younger generation do on gift-obligatory times?  Are young people also scooping up boxes of spam?  Have the types of perfunctory gift changed, though the gifting culture hasn't, or are things totally different now?  Is re-gifting OK, so long as it's done discreetly, the way we replace the cards on Christmas cake and pass it along, back home?

Talk amongst yourselves.

2S2 Anguk: Get Your Coffee Snob On!

Hey there coffee lovers!  Hope you're well... you may have heard of this thing called 2S2 that I regularly plan -- it's a come-as-you-are expat-and-anyone-else get-together aimed at meeting and making connections.

Well, this week, I'd like to share something that's given me much joy lately: coffee!  See, lately, in the Gyeongbokgung Station area, I've been finding a whole slew of amazing coffee shops, and I'd like to share them with my readers and friends.

So if you're free this Saturday, at 2pm, I'll be on the second floor of Twosome Place, near exit 1 of Anguk station, and anybody who comes out to meet up, will be treated to a coffee shop crawl of the neighborhood west of Gyeongbok Palace.  There are a handful of places there selling a variety of great beans, and slow-drip coffee, siphon coffee, and other stuff; they are also selling top-quality beans, and if you're a Seoul-based lover of coffee, I'll level with you, and tell you that you really need to come out and find out about these places!

Show up at 2pm, and don't be late: we'll be leaving fairly promptly, because the coffee at twosome place doesn't stack up, compared to the awesome places we'll visit thereafter.

Stop having these kinds of coffee experiences: (discarded dishwater coffee handed out before a concert I attended once)

and start having experiences like this:

and this... if it were coffee, instead of ice rink:

and this... not that luwak's on the menu, but you might make the face I make when I smell, and then sip it...

2S2: An Idea

Hi there, readers.

Many of you know about 2S2, the social meetup plan I concocted late last year to help us folks living in Korea get connected with each other. Now, over the last few months, I've been busy as a fox in a henhouse, taking care of this and that, and as my friends will know, I haven't even had time to have a social life...

and 2S2 has fallen by the wayside.

Now, I know some people who are not happy about this, and some people who want to support 2S2 if it continues, and I'm trying to decide what to do about it. There are a few 2S2's in other areas - Yongin/Suji and Suwon continue to meet, and maybe other groups may yet join...

so I'm having a few ideas, and I'd like to hear some feedback, about what next step is the best for 2S2.

1. Pass 2S2 as is, over to ATEK's Social Officers
   -see, while I don't want ATEK to take over the Roboseyo blog, I DO think that as networking goes, ATEK is doing an amazing job of building a sustainable network, and because the organization is designed to perpetuate itself, it means that this meetup will continue, in different forms, all over Korea.  ATEK has a bunch of social officers in all sorts of areas of Korea, and if each of them can access the 2S2 Blog to put their social calendar postings there, then people who aren't on facebook can still access the social event listings.  The feed could be linked on ATEK's homepage, in the PMA pages, or on the main page.

2. Change the name from 2S2 to ATEK Social, and do the same as above.

3. Recruit someone who has more free time to take over 2S2 Anguk.  (any takers?)

4. Let it all go dormant until somebody comes along who wants to take things over.

5. Suck it up, cupcake, and get back to scheduling stuff.  The weather's about to get nicer, anyway.

What say ye, readers?  I DO think it would be a shame if #4 came to pass... so what say ye?

Rob

Random Notes: Multiculturalism in Korea, and Crowdsourced Translation

An interesting article about multiculturalism from one of the Underwoods - one of the foreign families with the longest histories in Korea.  Most interesting quotes: "Koreans are hospitable to guests to a fault"... but "If you stay too long, Koreans become uncomfortable with you" and "having one million temporary foreign residents does not make Korea a multicultural society"

"Homogeneity... is the cornerstone that has helped Korea survive adversity.  But there is a downside, too."  To find out what the downside is, read the article.

It reminded me of a very interesting: academic, but worth downloading the .PDF-article sent to me by Matt, from Popular Gusts, also about multiculturalism, and how Korea, while it has tolerated other cultures, has always done so on the assumption of Korean culture's superiority.   Is that real multiculturalism?  Who knows?  Is surrendering one's idea of cultural superiority a necessary or good thing?  I suppose it depends on which values a country as set as its priorities.  Discuss amongst yourselves.

Crowd-sourced translation is an awesome idea that I'd love to see take off: crowd-sourcing means throwing something out on the internet, and letting users do it, for example, the way Wikipedia was built. Here's an article about it, and here's a website that does it: Looah.  If you want to be a translator, and need practice, if you're bilingual, and think some English blog content should be in Korean, or some Korean online content should be in English, here's the place to submit, or translate.

I've been reading about rhetoric, logic, and the different kinds of appeals one makes during a debate.  This led me to a funny moment of brain-weird, where I was watching this video, and analysing these two kids' appeals to different kinds of authority, and attempts to establish superior ethos.

Happy Times...

I'm tired every day when I get home from work... but there's a lot of awesome in my life right now.

Here's a song to commemorate my happy.  "The Heart of Life (is good)" by John Mayer, whose soft rock belies a seriously skilled guitarist.



and here are a few pictures from my wedding and honeymoon:



My Step-Mom is a class act.  We got her some hanbok made, and she looked fantastic with Wifeoseyo's ma.


This bouquet was part of wifeoseyo's birthday celebration.  It isn't easy to get flowers in the maldives, but it was worth every penny, dear readers.  They were gorgeous, and perfect for the situation.


Here is a happy Seyo.


Wifeoseyo can make a coral blue sea and a champagne glass into a nifty photo.


She's also a hot silhouette.


We chose the right night to go on the sunset cruise: the other sunsets that week were mostly grey and disappointing, but we got gorgeous skies all the way from blue to gold to pink to purple to moonlight.


see?


Oh yeah.  Also my niece.


And my other niece.  This is one of the pictures I like most, of all the pictures I've taken.

B- Blood Needed in Gwangju

I've received a few messages:

at Cheonnam University Hospital in Gwangju, there's a longtime expat, and upstanding community member named Michael Simning who sick: the full diagnosis isn't out yet, but he needs blood.

All RH negative blood is rare in Korea: most Koreans have a positive RH, so there is often a demand, or shortage in negative blood types.

A few months ago, there was a call to give blood for a kid in Yonsei Severance Hospital, across facebook and other places.  I wrote about my experience trying to give blood here, and I wrote about what one must do to qualify to give blood here.  It will help if you bring a friend who speaks Korean: even in Seoul, the blood clinic folks barely spoke a stitch of English.

there's a facebook group called "Blood Connections" that shares information about blood donation in Kroea.  They're a good group to contact for more information about what you have to do, to donate blood in Korea: the language gap can be a problem. There's more here.

The donation eligibility form is the same at any red cross clinic worldwide:

Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.

Take a look at this document. Read it carefully.

These two documents'll help you determine your eligibility.

In this article, and this one, I was told you need to meet these requirements to donate blood in Korea: 

1. You need to have an Alien Registration Card. Bring it, and be ready to present it.
2. You need to have been in Korea for a year.
3. You need to be able to answer some questions about your medical history... mostly the ones inthose two documents above... the guy at the Seoul Global Center, when I called in April, was pretty sure that you need to speak enough Korean to answer the medical history questions yourself, but when I went in person, the nurse did allow me to answer the questions through an interpreter.  Some of the questions made my translator feel awkward -- "have you shared needles"? But if you can help save a guy's life, it's worth it, right?

I'm not sure who the best person to call for more information is, either at the hospital, or for gwangju-specific information - maybe a Gwangju-er could let us know in the comments?  But that's a start.

ht: Brian in JND, Twitter, and the two or three people who have messaged me on facebook or by e-mail.

more about my blood donation experience here.

North Korea on Collegehumor

Collegehumor put up this fictional "google map" of North Korea on their main page.

Here's a teaser/screenshot:

It was kind of funny - riffing on the propaganda thing.

It's not the first time North Korea's been mocked, and I'm sure it won't be the last.

I'm so Ronery (Team America, World Police)

the "Jackass does North Korea" thing was mildly funny... not funny enough for an embedded video...

but my personal favorite is this Chinese insurance commercial.

I like to imagine Kim Jong-Il seeing this stuff when he surfs the internet, and I wonder how he responds.

Question of the day: Multi Language Car Navigation

So Wifeoseyo and I got a car. It's pretty sweet, though commuting is... commuting.

Anyway, it's not a Korean-made car, so the next question is this: see, the navigation system that's built into the car... well... has a few shortcomings. We're looking at getting a Korean navigation system, but as a not-Korean native speaker, Korean-only navigation systems aren't helpful for me, because exactly at the times when I need to focus on the road and not have too much distracting me - off-ramps, left-turns, merging traffic - having the Navi speaking to me in Korean increases my stress instead of decreasing it, and divides my focus instead of helping. I can turn the thing off, but having notations and such is useful.

Now, I know that in America, you can get a navigation system that can switch voices - you can have Homer Simpson or Kyle from South Park tell you to turn left or right.  I haven't researched it, but I bet that means you can also switch your navigation to a different language...

At some point, maybe sooner than later, my Korean language will improve to the point it's not necessary, but until then...

So the question is, here in Korea, how does one get a navigation that can switch between English and Korean instructions without too much difficulty?  Which brand is best, or what does one have to do to their navigation system, so that it'll do it?

Answers in the comments, please.