Cleaning out the photo folder: the Beautiful Ones

Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading.

Mr. Grieves - A Capella cover of the Pixies song, by TV On The Radio
or, for fun, you can watch this goofball dance. It's kind of fun.

See, it's spring over here, and April and October in Korea are the country at its absolute best. In fact, it's a travesty that I'm in my apartment writing this post instead of lolling about in a park somewhere. It just goes to show how much I love you, my dear readers.

I've been taking bajillions of pictures on my junky little cellphone camera, running up my phone-bill by sending them to my e-mail address, and even beginning to sigh in dismay at their poor quality -- it's reaching the point where the things I see make me happy enough that I wish I had a better instrument for catching their visual gunchiness.

So anyway, somewhere in the last couple of weeks, Spring came! My buddy Chris planned a wine and cheese party in Olympic Park (near my old house) so I headed over, because Olympic Park is a wonderful place.

Lots of people were out lounging around on the grassy fields.


This is one of my favourite trees in all of Korea.


And the one behind it is another. It's hard to see with my low resolution camera, but it's all twisty.

Tons of people came out: it might have been the first real, outdoor-friendly day this spring.

My bud Chris was there sipping wine and eating cheese. I joined him and we just shot the breeze for a couple of hours. It was great -- one of those "I love Korea" or maybe just "I love life" days that I need to remember to write about, to balance out high horses, grinding axes, critical analyses, and rants, from time to time.
Also in Olympic Park, there was a photo shoot (the magnolia trees were blossoming, see?), and it was kind of funny to notice this trumped up model looking away from the cameras with this disinterested look, meanwhile playing to them with her body language at the same time.

All around her, clustered, were mostly unattractive, mostly approaching or middle-aged men with big cameras, huddling around her and taking a picture a second.


Honestly, watching the men fawn over this made-up little symbol of the beauty ideal was more fun than checking out the model -- her hip, disinterested face kind of turned me off.

However, I did get a picture I liked of the way she's ogled and idealized by the photographers: it makes me think of a musical. Compare the above, with this:

Pictures from http://godusesbrokenvessels.blogspot.com/2007/05/bigfork-montana.html


And the most appropriate match:


Honestly, the guy below made me smile more than the model -- the photographers' fawning was more interesting to me than her posing, too -- I see people pose all the time (every time a camera comes out) but how often do you get to see some genuine fawning?

This guy, on the other hand, didn't CARE who was lookin'. He just parked himself on a bench overlooking a trail, and started singing to himself. He gave me a big old smile and a wave when he noticed me looking at him, and maybe if I'd known the song, I'd have sat next to him and sung along for a while. Got a kick out of him -- he was actually enjoying his time and showing it, instead of making a pouty face and pooching out his belly to emphasize his "S line" (S line is what Korean women call the idealized figure -- if you imagine a view of a woman from the side, the curves are supposed to form the shape of an "S")


So that was Saturday. Then on Monday, I met with Girlfriendoseyo, (who's way cooler than a model, because her heart, her intelligence, and her humour make me want to, you know, spend time with her, instead of just looking at her), in Samchungdong. Girlfriendoseyo's best friend Jueun joined us, too. I really like Jueun. She's funny, vivacious, smart, and just goofy enough. When I see her and Girlfriendoseyo together, I feel at peace, just by osmosis, because those two are so deeply happy to be around each other. Girlfriendoseyo has a special flavour of happiness and contentment that only comes out when Jueun is nearby, so I love seeing those two together. Fortunately, Jueun likes me, too. We ate some great lunch together:

And walked all over Samchungdong, Gyungbok Palace, and the street in front of Cheongwadae (the Blue House, where Korea's president lives).

The tree below is also twisty, and it has some magpie nests.
The Cherry blossoms were in full bloom in Gyungbok Palace, though the ones in front of Cheongwadae hadn't quite sprouted, yet.
There's Girlfriendoseyo averting her eyes. I still like her more than the Olympic Park model.
By some mysterious coincidence, every cherry and magnolia tree in downtown Seoul that I spotted had a pale background around it, so that there wasn't any contrast to highlight the colours of the flowers.

Really, to see some actually excellent cherry blossom pictures, go here -- the Marmot has a nice camera instead of a 400 pixel junker like mine.

I think these flowers are called Jindalae-ggott in Korean, or maybe those are only the darker purple ones, not the pink ones; I have no idea what they are in Canadese. (I really ought to learn tree and flower species names; it's embarrassing sometimes. I know almost as many different kinds of flower names in Korean as I do in English.)
This ain't a cherry blossom, but I don't know what it IS called. Go find out yourself. I'm not a journalist, I'm just a lazy-butt blogger. Leave a comment if you know, if you like.

There's girlfriendoseyo and bestfriend again. They were great together.

Tulips in Samchungdong. My friend Mel went to a tulip festival near her hometown in Canada and got some pretty good pics there.
Stolen from my bud Tom's facebook page: night, plus flash, equals the contrast I couldn't find all day Monday: These are from Yeouido, the island where Korea's national parliament buildings are found.


soundtrack part 2: hit play and keep reading.

"We Are Gonna Be Friends" by White Stripes

Once again, with the no-contrast-backgrounds for this nice Magnolia tree near Anguk station.
And this one near Namdaemun Market.


In Samchungdong, there's this awesome little coffee shop that has an awesome selection of herbal teas (it's where I discovered the joys of rosemary tea), and roasts its own beans (YEAH!), and plays cool jazz from its big vinyl records collection. I love it.

Well right next door to it, a new shop opened.
Yep. Coffee Bean, one of the biggest chains in Seoul, has decided to horn in right next door from the hip, cool little independent nonamer. This disappoints me, not because the franchise doesn't have the right to make money where money's to be made, but because I have a feeling a lot of people would choose the more familiar logo by default (in my experience, most humans are creatures of comfort, hardwired toward familiarity), and crowd out a really nifty little coffee shop.

Maybe I'm wrong, and if the little indie place pulls through, I'll be glad to admit I was, but I guess I don't have enough faith in human nature to go for the unique option instead of the familiar, safe one.

Again from my bud Tom's facebook page: Han River is gorgeous at night. Tom makes me want to buy a proper camera, too.
Cherry blossoms near girlfriendoseyo's house.A magnolia tree near girlfriendoseyo's house. The first one I saw this year. See what I mean about backgrounds with bad contrast?
For some other nice pictures of spring in Korea, check out this guy's post from last year, out in Bucheon (a suburb of Seoul).

April 9th was election day in Korea. I did a little coaching to make sure my students said "Election Day" instead of "Erection Day", but other than that, Girlfriendoseyo and I both had a day off, so we went to her old alma mater, Seoul National University, and she walked me around campus. Other than a break to buy an umbrella (and, you know, rain), it was a really nice walkabout.

Except, Seoul National was built during the Park Chung-hee days of Korea's history. President Park valued results over methods, economic growth over individual or press freedom, and function over beauty. To wit, SNU's Library building:
Is ugly.

Their administrative building:Is ugly, too.

There is a possibly apocryphal story that the Korean government hired a world-famous architect to design SNU's buildings, but he basically took the money, designed a single building, and split. In response, rather than spend the money to find another world-famous architect to do the other buildings, Korea just photocopied the blueprints and build the exact same building repeatedly, until they had enough classroom space to fit their needs.

Explains a bit, and also reveals a bit about that government's opinion toward aesthetics. You can see a legacy of that attitude that places function over form in any apartment block in Seoul.


Another way to get around the unattractive architecture: hide it behind pretty trees (a common practice in the above-type apartment blocks, too). Or build ponds. This one was by the humanities building.

This is the best cherry tree I found all week -- it was huge!
"I'm Roboseyo, and I endorse this tree."

From another angle, you can see how big it is -- that's all one tree. . . and finally, one with a dark-coloured building behind it, so you can see the pinky pink properly!More cherry blossom lanes.
The view from the terrace where we had lunch:
Some, uh, purple and, uh, yellow flowers. In bushes.
That tree again. (just humour me; I'm almost done)

Now I've said it before and I'll say it again. The two best times to come to Korea are April and October. Spring and fall are paradise in this country, and should be enjoyed. In fact, I'm mad at myself now for staying in to write this post, instead of going out to enjoy the jaw-dropping day outdoors.

I have some other news, but I'll save it for another post, when I haven't exhausted you all with so many pictures.

Take care, wonderful people! Stay tuned, because there's more where this came from!

Remember that big rant about China sending captured North Korean refugees back to North Korea?

Well grab onto your saddles, and get out your pens, and find out the addresses of your local representatives, because things just got even worse.

And they're getting worse in North Korea, too.

I don't have the heart to hold forth on the topic again, but. . . wow.

My Favourite Class

I will write about my favourite class at my school.

I will use very simple English, so my students can read it.

After my father's wedding, and traveling around Canada in July, I came back to Korea. That August, I had all new classes. One was PreEfl: the lowest level.

Pre EFL classes can be fun, if the students are nice. If the students are shy, or something, it can be a really, really hard class.


This class had some older students. Before coming to this school, I taught small children. Most of my students are about age 40 or younger, or they speak English very very well, from living abroad. I thought, "maybe this class will be really hard."

Instead, I met two ladies.

Their names are Betty







And Veronica.






They don't really look like that.

Betty and Veronica are famous characters from a comic book called "Archie". They are best friends. Betty and Veronica are also two ladies in my English class. They have the same names as the girls in the comic, by coincidence.

"Archie" comic books are very popular in North America. Archie is a high school boy, and he likes two girls.


Veronica is beautiful, and her father is rich, but she is also a princess, and she always changes her mind. Some days she likes Archie, but other days, she likes a boy named Reggie, because Reggie has a nice car.




Betty is the sweet, kind girl next door. She is honest and simple, and she loves Archie. She never changes her mind, and Archie loves her, too, but when Veronica calls, Archie forgets about good and faithful Betty.

Archie is a flake. (flake means a person I can't trust)


In my class, Betty is a sweet, generous lady who studies really hard. I know she studies hard because often, when I teach her a phrase or a word, she uses that phrase or word in our class a few days later. That shows that she studies hard at home, after class, too.

She is very impressive.

Betty studies English because her grandchildren live in America, and she wants to talk to them on the phone, and visit them there. I think that is the best reason I ever heard for studying English. I think about Betty's grandchildren, and it is very touching to see her working so hard to improve her English.

Here is a picture of Betty, on the right. Her classmate Christine is on the left. Christine was new last month. She asks good questions.

Veronica is a very sweet, Catholic lady. Her friend Misuk also comes to class (but she was absent the day we took pictures). Veronica is studying English to help her husband with his business. Her husband wants to work with more international clients and partners. Often Veronica helps her husband at the office.

Veronica is very kind, and she always sees a person's good parts. She always has a big smile, and she really appreciates her classmates, her family, and good things in life. Veronica leads a bible study in her apartment block, and she loves talking about the things she likes doing. She has a sister living in Chilliwack, near my old hometown, and she traveled to New York in November, and then she brought her laptop to class, so she could show her pictures to us.

For Lunar New Year, Veronica gave me some delicious rice cakes that she made with her own hands; they were yakshi, my favourite kind.

Here is Veronica, on the left. On the right is Nahyeon.

Nahyeon is a businessman who has taken a break between jobs to study languages. He is studying both English AND Japanese right now, and he works very hard. He is really good at making sentences, once you encourage him to speak. He shares his opinions, and tries really really hard to put his ideas into words. I really respect his hard work.

He is also gracious. Every day, he thanks me for my teaching.

Sometimes, Betty brings me a cup of coffee in the morning, and occasionally, Nahyeon brings in donuts. Christine (sorry I didn't write about her more: I don't know her as well as the others) brought me a tea one day, Veronica brought some rice cakes, and suddenly we had a big snack party in our class: look at all the good things!
I really feel their appreciation for my teaching, and I have known this class for a long time. They are in Level 1 now, and every month I tell my boss, "Don't change this class. I really love this class." I think they say the same to him, because I have had this class for nine months now! They are my favourite class, and I really love them!

There are other students that are not in the pictures. I also really like John and Misuk (she was in the class from the beginning), Alice, and many other students have come and gone (Jamie, Sebastian, Esther, Rory, Laura) but this 9am class is one of my favourite, and I am sure glad I teach them!

We owe it to them. (yeah, i've been ranting a lot)

to watch what they risked their lives to procure.

Hat tip to OneFreeKorea, the blog where I found links to this documentary.

People have been sneaking video cameras into North Korea to record what actually happens there. If caught, the camerapersons would be tried for espionage, and almost certainly either executed, or punished by being sent, along with their parents, family, and children, to a work camp/death camp.

We owe it to them to see what happens there.

Parts 1 and 5 are especially shocking.

thanks, CNN [correction: thanks, BBC].

Part 1


Part 2


Part 3: the sequence (near the beginning) showing about a dozen dead bodies lying out in the street is shocking and sad.

Rice sent as aid for citizens is being sold for profit, or channeled into the military.

Part 4
It's becoming impossible for Kim Jong-il to keep outside information out.


Part 5
The reporter hired someone to track down a person she met years before, a boy who used to sneak into China, beg, and bring the profits back to his family in North Korea. The tracker found him, and she chats briefly with him on the phone. Having that cellphone is dangerous in North Korea. At one point she asks, "Is there something you want to say to me, but are afraid to say over the phone?" "Yes."

For talking with her on the phone, he is arrested and questioned for three days.


When China finds North Korean refugees, it arrests them and sends them back to North Korea, to near certain death, or life imprisonment in a work camp, if they don't have the cash to bribe themselves out of their pickle.

This is where Canada will send its Olympic team: to a country that sends refugees back to this, and nobody says anything about it, because then China might block up the flow of cheap, outsourced merchandise into whatever country dares to defend the oppressed.

Rather than fixing the human rights situation, China has criticized news organizations for covering their repression of Tibetans in a bad light, leading the BBC to publish this, a letter that I admire, defending a free press.

I don't like this Olympics, and it's disingenuous for Hein Verbruggen and the other IOC folk to say the Olympics is a non-political event, when THEY chose this host city (after being given vague assurances from China that they'd do, y'know, something, about that human-rights-ish stuff), and when China has shown no wish to do anything of the sort, and has continued acting with impunity and without accountability. Mr. Verbruggen may even have traipsed into self-congratuation mode by saying, "Awarding the Olympic Games to China has elevated international dialogue on the situation in Tibet." (Yeah, because everybody's debating exactly how big of a hypocrite you and China's president Hu really are.)

Well, buddy, you're on the world stage now, and if you pass the buck, then who IS supposed to take a stance? Everybody's waiting for someone ELSE to say something, sort of like the awkward pause around the dinner table when somebody makes a racist joke, and I'm afraid nobody but bloggers are gonna feel any outrage about this.

Saying nothing is taken as tacit approval of things like organ harvesting on religious prisoners, that stuff about Tibet and Darfur. But keep your eye on the air quality, over in Beijing, boys! Don't want those athletes to get a scratchy throat! That would be terrible, and we'd have to reprimand Beijing. . . if we can get a hold of them while they're so busy organ-harvesting Falun Gong practitioners and coordinating "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" tours of Tibet for foreign journalists, and deporting North Korean refugees to life in a death camp and stuff.

I guess the Olympics are about sport and not politics, sure whatever . . . but if the IOC sticks to that stance, they're basically telling me that there are no ideals other than "Higher Faster Stronger," that they don't really care if the Olympics helps make the world a better place or not -- let's just watch some people throw some stuff really far, and jump over some other things really fast. I'm afraid I'll stop caring about something that started off seeming to me like a song for world peace, and has ended up ringing out as just another race for TV advertising revenues.

[Update: this morning, the president of the IOC spoke about Tibet. Read the article yourself to decide if you think he's sincere, or using doublespeak. I could use pull-quotes and make you think what I think, but you already know where I stand, so read it for yourself.]

[Update 2: Thanks to Jawick for the link.]

Holy cow it's a proper crime wave!

soundtrack: hit play and start reading.

Evig Pint- by The Kaizer Orchestra, a Norwegian band that might be described as "The Pogues meet Tom Waits while watching a rescue crew attend to a Norwegian carnival accident"

A little doom and gloom before the weekend. . .

This is pretty startling.

I've never heard so much (local) carnage in the newspapers as the last two months here in Seoul.

I started reading the newspapers daily last year when I started teaching adults, and friends, things are getting raw over here in Korea!

Some recent headlines (mostly from Koreabeat, a site dedicated to translating Korean news articles into English), and these are just the ones that turned up in a search: my students have told me about other, incidents bad enough to bum me out for an entire morning.

A burgler/rapist in Incheon (one of Seoul's satellite cities).

Popstar Lee Dong-gon's brother murdered in Australia:

A dirty old man attempted to kidnap and rape a little girl. The police responded as if it were just some drunken disturbance, and basically tried to bury the incident, even warning the child's mother not to go to the media. This guy's pretty mad about it, and even the President of Korea personally headed over to the police station to knock some heads together when the media started reporting the story and criticizing the lazy, half-hearted police work.

Here's a ridiculously disturbing video of the incident. It's pretty violent, so don't watch it if you don't have the stomach. Not like you see blood or anything, but it's shocking to see a grown man cutting loose on a little girl this way.

Right on an apartment building CCTV! Fortunately, he was caught. Unfortunately, he was a repeat-offending, convicted child-rapist out on parole, who'd slipped off the radar.

A former Korean pro baseball player commits a multiple murder/suicide.

A runaway kid.

An "educational civil servant" accused of rape is back on the job.

Scads of kids are going missing, too.

Parents are upset and worried to high heaven; the Joshing Gnome found this picture of mothers waiting by their children's Elementary School gates to meet their kids and bring them home safely. It's sad and touching and kind of cute and cause for concern, all at the same time.


After making excuses and prevarications, a dude confessed to killing two little girls in a province not far from Seoul. It was pretty grisly . . . I don't really want to talk about it much. In response, these folks are working to keep the streets safe by escorting elementary school kids home (that's touching and awesome. Yay grass roots!)

(these are the Tiger Grandpas, from Songpa, the area where I used to live, out to make sure the kids are all right.)

I teach adults, and dear readers, they're upset. They're calling for law and order and heads to roll, literally: I even read an op-ed piece in the paper calling for the death penalty for child killers.

Yes, indeed, things are getting rough and raggedy over here in Korea.

Now a couple months ago, when Seoul's Sungnyemun Gate burned down, this article in the Korea Times attracted a lot of scorn from a lot of people. Using the principles of "Oriental Topography" (basically really, really large-scale feng shui), it predicts that with the loss of Sungnyemun, known as the "fire gate" for blocking fire (hot-tempered) energy from entering the capital, crime in the city would rise.

Mysterious Energy Linked to Blaze

By Park Si-soo
Staff Reporter

Oriental topography experts said the fire at Seoul's 600-year-old structure may have something to do with the mysterious ``fire-torching'' energy from a mountain in southern Seoul.

. . . Jeon Hang-soo, head of Korea Oriental Topography Research Center[, says,] ``Basically, Seoul is more densely filled with the energy than any other cities due to the shape of mountaintops surrounding the city ― spiky and sharp. . . .'

In Oriental topography, spiky mountaintop stands for ``fire'' and ``hot temper.''

. . . Kang Whan-woong, 74, a professor at Sejong University in Seoul, said ``Namdaemun was constructed with the hope of blocking the `aggressive' and `fire-inviting' energies [from sharp-peaked mountains nearby] from sneaking into the palace.''

. . . If the gate had not existed, a blaze would have broke out at the palace and even the presidential office, Chung Wa Dae, the professor said.

. . . Some experts in Oriental topography said the number of crimes in the capital might increase in the aftermath of the gate's collapse.

``As Namdaemun, having served as a guardian restraining the `hot-temper' and `easy-fighting' energies from Mount Gwanak disappears, we will see the number of crimes in the capital escalating until its restoration,'' predicted head of the topography research center. ``The restoration of Cheonggye stream has largely contributed to mixing the hostile energy with peaceful one from the manmade waterway, resulting in weakening the violent energy.''

It seems that the crime increase is occurring all over the country, rather than just in the downtown: Sungnyemun must have been more important than we thought!

For poor old Park Si-soo and the geomancy experts, it must be nice to be vindicated, but I'm sure they'd rather have been wrong, and had a little more rule of law in the streets.

Scoff if you like. . . anybody have a better theory on why this is happening? It's a little disconcerting, and between this and North Korea puffing and strutting and saber-rattling again, my students are getting restless.

I'm beginning to see the light.

Soundtrack time: I'm Set Free, by the Velvet Underground.
Hit play and start reading.

Yeh.

It's been a difficult decision to write this post. . . I've thought and thought, and struggled with how I'm going to share this news with my family back home, and I'm still not quite satisfied with the idea of just blogging about it, but whenever I think of getting on the phone, my stomach starts shaking and I know I just can't do it.

If you follow my blog, you've read some of my thoughts lately on faith -- I know I've seemed pretty harsh on Christianity here, here, here, and here, and especially here.

If you read between the lines, you might notice a kind of relaxing of the rigid lines that used to define my faith. . .

you may have also noticed this. Well, I don't know how to say this, but here goes.

Back in 2006, I had a pretty rough year -- you've also read my writings about that. In this post, I finished off my discussion of my own search for meaning with these words:

Maybe admitting "I'm not out of the woods yet" authentically IS the best thing I can come away with, and maybe The Lesson I've Learned is that life doesn't fit in boxes, nor needs to: Things I've Figured Out quickly become Prejudices, if I decide I don't have to keep thinking about them. Maybe some honest stumbling about in the woods IS an act of worship, and by being OK with that, or even celebrating that, it might even become a celebration of the fact we need never cease our search for meaning, that every part of our life can continue being deepened and enriched, long after we stop feeling sad.

I think a few of you have kind of read between the lines and spotted some of what I'm going through; I've spent the last two years or so trying to work out a framework where the things I believe, my spiritual life and practice, begins to focus more on the process instead of the destination -- gently stepping away from a destination helps me focus on the joys of the process, helps me to commit to being the person I am, in the place I am, rather than yearning discontentedly for some future, some heaven, some illusory attainment.

In light of that, I've been reading the Dalai Lama a lot lately, and finding that it makes a lot of sense to me, and I love the way that in Buddhism, it's more a question of finding a harmonious way to live, than of having the "right" doctrine or belief.

So I've decided to become a practicing Buddhist. I want to renounce the trappings of desire -- all those things that make me feel like a hamster running on a wheel -- and clear my mind, so that I can finally walk in the world as it is, instead of always comparing it with the way I want it to be.

"Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away."
Aitken Roshi

The thing I like about Zen Buddhism is that it's not so much about setting a goal or an aim, but more about letting go-- being in that neutral, mindful place helps me to feel like it's really ME who is walking through this life.

Another thing I like is that Buddhism doesn't ask you to renounce any other belief, ritual or practice you have; it just supplies a kind of different framework for understanding why we do the things we do. This means I don't have to throw aside the Bible, the (wonderful, wonderful) teachings of Christ, or the morality I was raised with; it's more that I add this new thing to the other things I've already learned!

(title of this post from this song: "I'm beginning to see the light" by Velvet Underground


Here is a passage of the Dhammavadaka, edited a bit for length:

Remember always that you are just a visitor here, a traveler passing through. your stay is but short and the moment of your departure unknown.
...
Speak quietly and kindly and be not forward with either opinions or advice. If you talk much, this will make you deaf to what others say, and you should know that there are few so wise that they cannot learn from others.
...
Treasure silence when you find it, and while being mindful of your duties, set time aside, to be alone with yourself.
Cast off pretense and self-deception and see yourself as you really are.
Despite all appearances, no one is really evil. They are led astray by ignorance. If you ponder this truth always you will offer more light, rather then blame and condemnation.
You, no less than all beings have Buddha Nature within. Your essential Mind is pure. Therefore, when defilements cause you to stumble and fall, let not remose nor dark foreboding cast you down. Be of good cheer and with this understanding, summon strength and walk on.
--Dhammavadaka

To me, seeking the Buddha nature means becoming more alert and attuned to the people around me, and their needs. It means no longer clutching for the things other people tell me I want (money, status) or things that I can't see, and which can thus never satisfy my daily cravings and desires (heaven). By dropping this baggage, I can finally be free.

This is a kind of startling thing to finally announce! Sorry if it's a little shocking to some of you, but it's been really good for me. I've been writing more than ever before, and every bit of sunlight seems sacred now, every step I take seems like a celebration of life and creation!



In order to truly awaken myself to Buddha nature, and to finally die to the desires of the world, I have decided it is time to learn how to embrace silence. I'm taking a pledge of silence -- I'm going to stop all writing except the books and plays I'm working on. That means that you might want to read this post carefully, because it will be my last, until a year from today, when (hopefully) I've re-centered myself, and I break my vow of silence. Until then, I'll phone and be in touch with you that way, my loved ones! Thank you for enjoying my blog. I hope I'll see you again in a year.

(now, check the date of this post)

Why isn't THIS guy a star?

Just watch the drummer go. Just watch him.



(hat tip to the Marmot for telling me about this one.)
That's all.



Aw heck. With me, that's NEVER all.

More about what I discussed in the last post:

A little performance art from the metropolitician.
"Only in a society where plastic surgery, high heels, and makeup are OPTIONS, can they NOT be symbols of women's subjugation. Designer noses, stiletto heels, and prada bags can only be beautiful and fun when they are a choice, not a requirement for life." (this protest took place in Myongdong, the high fashion district in North-central Seoul).

(retired from the quotes of the day sidebar:)
Write a wise saying and your name will live forever.
- Anonymous

English is hard, soju, and ranting about objectification of women, yet again.

Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading.

nina simone - sinnerman. Boy, this song is great. Let it build. Listen to the whole darn thing.

--

Here's an ad for soju, Korea's national cheap alcohol (think Russians and vodka). Originally, soju was brewed from rice, but during food shortages in the 1910s and 1960s, laws were passed that required rice to be used for eating instead of brewing. The soju recipe changed: instead of brewing something using a process even vaguely traditional, they just took pure alcohol and diluted it with water and chemical sweeteners. The result is something I avoid drinking at nearly all costs, whose taste I liken to a cross between Japanese sake, cheap vodka, cheap tequila, and ass. It's cheap as spit and tastes like butt: it's the very definition of an alcoholic's drink. In fact, in the '90s, some companies tried to bring back traditional soju, prepared according to the pre-Japanese colonization methods, but because it was nine dollars a bottle instead of a buck fifty (and because they were released on the market just before the Asian Economic Crisis, when nobody had any money to spend on pricey alcohols, but had lots of sorrows to drown, as cheaply as possible), Koreans spurned the traditional drink in favour of the cheap-ass alkie sauce.

My nickname for it is "tequila light" because it's a little weaker than tequila, but it acts the same way: a tendency towards an angry drunk, and when you get drunk on it, it kind of ambushes you: you're fine, you're fine, you're fine, then suddenly you're really trashed. Anyway, here's a poster for soju I saw recently.


In an attempt to turn a negative to a positive, chamiseul is actually trading on the face you make when you ingest something disgusting, telling buyers that if your drink forces you to make this face (see below), ladies will reward you with coy smiles (bottom right, above) and showing you their bare shoulders while making wanton come-hither looks (top left, above: you just know she's giving him the guns with her hands just outside the frame).



Usually soju is advertised with pictures of really really hot girls (see below, and here), but if they decide to switch to pictures of men crying. . . well, I won't stare at the posters as much, but I'll giggle more.



It's actually kind of funny that in the west, a female star knows she's "made it" when she gets a contract with Chanel No. 5 or Elizabeth Arden, while in Korea, a female star knows she's arrived if she's asked to pitch for cheap alcohol.

Strolling about the downtown:

There are a bunch of nightclubs in Jongno which hire people called bikkis to try and recruit cute girls (and guys who look like they have cash) to go to their club (as a draw for males). The cuter a girl is, the more insistent the bikkis will be, trying to get her into their club. I've heard the bikki's behaviour defended as being "flattering" to their targets, but to me it looks like bald-faced sexual harassment. Yes. He's grabbed her hand, and is trying to physically pull her into the club. This is a common occurrence. I can't believe they haven't had their asses sued to high heaven for this kind of behaviour, and I'm trying to imagine how many kneed groins and pepper-sprayed eyes those obnoxious bikkis would suffer if they tried to pull this kind of garbage in a city like New York. As you notice above, passersby don't even give this kind stuff a second glance, and sometimes I can take it in stride, but other times, it really rankles.

A minute later two of his friends were helping, and the guy in the white jacket didn't want me to take any more pictures.

And you know, that "many girls just feel flattered" thing is garbage. I don't buy it anymore. "I'm flattered when they slaver over me for my looks" basically means "I've internalized the male gaze and sexist lookism so deeply that it validates me as a human to be fawned over and even harassed for my looks" -- the same way a rich person can go ahead and feel good about himself because he's surrounded by sycophants and yes-men/women, but in reality the respect he receives is a sham, completely contingent on his deep pockets, and has no reflection on his integral quality as a human being whatsoever. "She should be flattered when they try to physically pull her into the club" follows the same logic as "Well if she didn't want to be raped, she shouldn't have dressed that way," but to a lesser degree, and applied in a slightly different direction.

Here in Korea, women spend SO FRIGGIN' MUCH TIME on their looks, they wear mini-skirts in the dead of winter and cake on makeup and consider it a requirement of life. One of my (older male) students told me point blank that he thinks women who don't wear makeup are lazy. Some of them do it because they need to appear professional for their job; fair enough. Male bankers also need to be well-groomed. Some of them do it and they're honest enough to admit that it's mostly because it improves their social or business prospects. Some even get plastic surgery for that reason. (Korea has one of the highest per-capita plastic surgery rates in the world. The double-eyelid surgery is a common high-school graduation gift for girls.)

I'm still not sure what to think, though, of women who dress like a tart and then intone, "Oh, I don't even CARE if men stare at me. I just dress this way because it makes me feel sexy" (or even worse: "I dress this way because it makes me feel pretty. . . I hate that men ogle me just for expressing myself") -- is there a disconnect between self-perception and reality? Is that basically another way of saying, "I've internalized media beauty/femininity standards so deeply that I can't create an image of myself that I like without acting out the fantasy a sexist, objectifying media has foisted on me"? Or is it a little white lie because it'd sound cynical to admit "I put myself on display because I like the attention, or the benefits I receive from letting men stare at my legs"? What are the other options/rationalizations?

I mean, I'm a dude, so I don't really have the right to speak on anyone's behalf, and I ought to stick with asking questions instead of making statements about this business until I know more, but it upsets me sometimes to see women in Korea (and all around the world) tie so much of their self-image onto an impossible standard of beauty, and I don't know if saying, "I do it because I feel more confident" (that might be the number one excuse for women getting plastic surgery here) is a way of sidestepping the need to find a positive self-image based in one's character (because looks are easier, if you've got'em, and make a quicker first impression), or if it's basically an admission that they've internalized the image of beauty programmed into them by advertisers and beauty magazines. I'd prefer to listen before I speak on this topic, so to the women who read this: I'm very interested to hear what you think -- do you dress "sexy" or "pretty" according to some image or standard? Where does that standard come from, and why have you chosen to follow it? What do you think of the "It makes me feel confident/sexy" justification: does that hold water, and if not, where does it come from? Do you feel pressure to dress "prettier" or "sexier," and what do you do about that pressure? What are the other justifications people use for spending an hour in front of the mirror in the morning?

I mean heck, I get better responses from people when I dress nicely and take care of myself too, but I think of the outward appearance basically as something that can either help or hinder someone from getting to know, or wanting to get to know, the person I actually am, and I make sure that the reasons I love myself are not connected to things one would notice better when I'm wearing a bathing suit, or spot on first glance, and disappear when I get old, anyway.


speaking of sexism. . . so does that sign imply that being female is a disability, or am I just being obtuse now?



Some more Soju ads: I think they're selling sex here.


Look at the kittenish way the girl acts in this one -- the objectification of women in soju ads is really blatant, and often leans toward this type of childish persona.






This is Kim Ah-joong, one of Korea's hot young stars. Again, she really plays up the submissive role; this situation and her voice/body language makes me think of a hostess bar, where men pay women to pour drinks for them (and sometimes much, much more); the shaky camera work and the in-and-out of focus shooting makes it seem more like a first-person, slightly drunk point of view, and look at the way she makes eye contact with the camera, goes in for the "love shot" at the end, and calls the camera "oppa" which is the term for older brother common in hostess bars, because (again) it strikes a submissive and slightly childish pose.


Interestingly, that exact "love shot" was in the news recently here in Korea.

In other news. . .

Wires in the sky. Look at that tangle!

The Big Hominid (see my sidebar) "found the following at this nice blog: http://mississippitokorea.blogspot.com/"

22 Reasons Why English Is Hard


1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert..
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
22) He decided to comb the tomb to find the bomb.


Near my house: for the (dwindling number of) people who tell you there are no gays in Korea:
There on the door is the rainbow flag, the symbol for gay pride.
When my boss first walked me to my current apartment, he warned me and my coworker to avoid a certain street near our house, because homosexuals meet there. Neither of us quite knew how to respond to such a warning, so we made it into a running joke.

There was about a kilometer's worth of buses near chunggyechun stream on Friday: there are protests going on, and LMB (Lee Myungbak), Korea's new president, has promised to be tougher on protesters than the previous, socialist president.
Working as a riot control officer must be the most boring job in the world: "Hey. We want six hundred of you to sit in a bus for eight hours today and sweat in full riot gear, just in case something happens.

That's all for today. . . but any females still reading: I really AM interested to hear what you think about the questions I asked above.

(ps: thanks to James Turnbull from The Grand Narrative for the link and the kudos. I've been very interested to read your articles on sexism in Korea, and it's informed what I wrote here.)