Why Do Expats Hate Korea Complain So Much?

It’s an exciting day here at Roboseyo: I have an interesting topic I’d like to discuss, about the relationship between expats and Koreans, and in order to address the topic properly, I contacted a Korean blogger, named, um, The Korean, who runs the excellent site, “Ask A Korean!” We’ve agreed to do a joint post about this topic, in order to get a variety of voices out there. I’m interested in this topic, and I sincerely hope it starts an interesting discussion on the K-blogosphere: if this topic interests you, consider yourself tagged: let me know what YOU think, too. The Korean and I will each write two articles, so you can have an expat’s view, and a Korean’s view on these two questions:

This week, we'll discuss the question, "Why do expats complain about Korea so much?"
Next week, we'll roll out the question, "Why do many Koreans take criticism of Korea so poorly?"

For links to other bloggers' reactions to this topic, go here.

Here is my contribution on question one; the next post will be the Korean’s view on Question number one.
Then, after a "talk amongst yourselves" break, I will post my thoughts on Question two, followed by the Korean’s view on it.


Without further Ado:

Soundtrack time: "A With Living" by Do, Make, Say, Think

Hit play and start reading.

There's an elephant in the room. Three, in fact. On the (English language) K-blogosphere in its entirety. Nobody wants to mention it, because everybody knows what happens once we toss rocks at the hornet's nest. The situation is similar in real life; those elephants sure get around.

The three elephants are the following, and all three are on a hair-trigger:

1. the kimcheerleaders, out to promote Korea's virtues, sometimes well into the realm of fiction, given the opportunity.

2. the expat complainers, quick to whine and gripe about Korea

3. those same kimcheerleaders, now with hurt pride, getting prickly, surly, and sometimes even mean, because of the expat negativity.

From there, it's a back-and-forth, ad hominem grudge match between the kimcheerleaders and the bashers; sometimes the bashers are Korean, sometimes they're expat; ditto for the kimcheerleaders (though the expat kimcheerleader is the rarest of the lot: the AB- blood-type of commenters, if you will), and when the dust settles, nobody’s happy except the trolls who write poisonous things to get attention by upsetting people. They're kissing mirrors to make lipstick prints and congratulating themselves in the third person. And the K-blogosphere is poisoned by negativity. Again.

You better believe those three elephants are reading over my shoulder every post I write, crossing out lines, rephrasing things, smoothing my cynicism into sarcasm, and my sarcasm into gentle irony.

Now, I've already talked at length about the Kimcheerleaders; they're mostly harmless, and a source of a fair bit of comedy, as well as the target of a little satire and sarcasm. They're also easy to appease, if I praise Korea from time to time: toss them a bone, and they'll leave me alone.

The expat complainers are a bit more of a puzzle. Like Bruce Banner flipping the rage switch, and morphing into the Illegible Incredible Hulk, a criticism too harsh will turn certain Kimcheerleaders into big, green, angry K-defenders. Their hurt, defensive, even visceral response to the critics creates an interesting dynamic. It's human nature to complain, but this whining expat/K-defender grudge match is puzzling. I can't say whether this dynamic develops between griping expats and nationals anywhere else, but I digress.

I'm writing this post to look at some of the reasons Expats in Korea seem to complain so much: Metropolitician has had a lot of experience with defensive kimcheerleaders, and recently blog-buddy Brian has also come under fire, getting linked by a Korean netizen who basically wanted a cyber-terror attack on his site, and even went after his job, trying to publish his employer's phone number, so people could phone his boss and try to get him fired. The comments he wrote on why Brian should be cyber-terrorized are dripping with condescension and hate, basically saying, "Let's CORRECT this ignorant foreigner's behaviour" as if they were training a dog not to piss on the carpet. This kind of bullying of people with whom one disagrees reminds me of a certain other group of nationalist boosters who have a very effective way of shutting up those who disagree with them.

So let's look a bit closer at expat complainers, but before I say anything else, I'd like to mention three things:

1. Complaining is human nature. People everywhere complain, about pretty much everything. Let's be honest about that, and recognize that until Laura The Expat Who's Lived Everywhere weighs in with, "Yeah. I've lived in sixteen different expat communities over the last thirty years, and things are way worse here than anywhere else," there's no reason to think things are worse on the K-blogosphere than elsewhere. The reason it's a topic at all is because of the dynamic that develops between gripers and defenders, and because of the perception that things are especially bad, and because people are acting on those perceptions with things like cyber-attacks on bloggers, however, it has not been demonstrated that expats in Korea complain more or less than expats anywhere else.

2. It's the internet, folks. Everybody complains on the internet. Why would you expect the K-blogosphere to be any different than any other corner of the world wide whine? Plus: as usual, in places where people write, instead of talking face to face, things seem worse on the net, and in print, than they are in the face to face conversations I've had: on the whole, the interactions I have with the people around me are overwhelmingly positive; with the online stuff, less so. If most of what you know about Korea comes from comment boards and rant-blogs, I pity you for the dim and distorted picture you must have of both Korea and expats. Get out of the house and visit some heritage sites with some friends, or go to the Korean restaurant in your town.

Weird netizens are everywhere. Not just here.

3. Some people actually do have a bad time in Korea, whether because of disappointed expectations or crooked Hogwan directors or whatever. The question here is not "how is it possible to have a bad time in Korea" but "why do some spread that negativity so far and wide, so aggressively?" let's give people the grace to allow for a reasonable amount of complaining, because we're expats, not saints, and these are blogs and comments and conversations with friends, not press releases or travel advisory warnings from international organizations.

Now that that's out of the way:

I like to divide complainers into the cathartic complainers and the social critics. Let's make that distinction, and then immediately muddy it up by saying sometimes they bleed into one another (for example, when the Metropolitician goes on a rant).

I'm going to try to list these reasons in ascending order, starting with the basest complaints, that deserve the least attention, and moving on up to the critics and criticisms that deserve careful attention and sober reflection:

Class 1: Cathartic Complainers (because you need to get it off your chest sometimes)

Bottom Rung: The Snark Olympians:
(Harsher! Meaner! Ruder!)
For a certain stripe of expat in Korea, it's practically a sport, almost like a secret handshake, to moan about Korea: you can prove the validity of your experience and time spent in Korea by the depth and clarity of your complaint. After two months, Johnny Firstyear moans, "Korean moms are too intense! My boss is totally unprofessional! They put CORN on PIZZA! Cheese is so expensive!" but Annie Expat can prove her cred by going deeper. She drops a few phrases like "Neo-Confucianism" and "credential society," blames Korea's social ills on Park Chung-hee or Japanese colonialism, maybe drops the names Michael Breen and Bruce Cumings. ("I won't even listen to your opinion if you haven't read 'The Aquariums of Pyongyang'") The expat who's been here longer, or knows more, usually holds the floor in these cases; between expats with approximately equal experience in Korea, it becomes a race to say the meanest thing about the country, and I've heard some doozies.

But keep this in mind about the Snark Olympians: they usually don’t stay for long, and moreover, this kind of complaining has very little to do with Korea really, and everything to do with the complainers, and the fact complaining is fun. I've said a few awful things about Korea too, in my day, to get a laugh, or because it was well-phrased, and not really because I meant it. Uproot Joe Firstyear and Annie Expat, and put them in New York City, and they'd be doing the same, but crapping on the New York Knicks, A-Rod, or Mayor Bloomberg instead. Heck, given the chance, some of this group of whining expats would probably complain about Shangri-la, if that's where they found themselves. "Love-slaves 24, 46 and 71 out of 72 are kind of chubby, and love-slave 32 sweats a lot. . . what kind of sham paradise-on-earth is this?"

The same way a parent shouldn't take it to heart when his angry kid shouts, "I hate you!" snark-fests should be taken for what they are, and tolerated, but ultimately ignored: why waste your time reading it, and even more, why waste energy getting your hackles up? You won't convince them to stop. Complainers like these are the reason a lot of expat lifers don't spend too much time around first year English teachers: the complaining is a drag, and it's kind of boring when you've heard it all before, read James Turnbull's five part essay and Mike Hurt's rant, and written an op-ed piece to Korea Herald's Expat Living about it.

Next Group: The Misdirected Culture-Shockers and Disappointed Orientalists

Next rung up on the ladder are the expats who complain not so much for the sport, but because they don't know any other way to articulate the culture-shock they're experiencing.

This category also goes for people who expected their (often first ever) time overseas to be very different than it is. "What? Bosses here overwork their employees, too? People don't wear hanbok every day? People live in apartment buildings instead of hanok houses? People drink Starbucks instead of Sanghwacha when they meet? Not every girl wears a short-skirted school uniform? This is TOTALLY different than I thought Asia would be after reading Manga, watching 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,' 'Memoirs of a Geisha,' 'The Last Samurai,' and 'M*A*S*H*!'"

Got this:
Instead of this?

Harsh.



Got this:


and this:


and this:


Instead of this:


And this?

I hear ya. Reality's rough.

This is a little closer to honest criticism, but while Snark-Olympians are at least having fun, these two groups might be the bitterest and meanest of the lot: a former coworker poisoned the entire atmosphere in the staff room, as she took her failure to adjust to a different culture out on everyone around her. Eventually, she went home early, but not early enough. Again, a grain of salt should be taken with complaints of this kind: when certain people are thrown into a new situation (especially ones having their first overseas experience), it takes them a little while to figure out that "this is interesting" or "I can learn about this" are better default reactions than "this is bad," when they encounter something unfamiliar, or that new situations are best approached with open minds, rather than preconceptions. It ain't pretty, but hopefully we can cut them a little slack (though, again, it would be better for them if they vented their frustration in appropriate directions, saving it for people who knew them well enough to take their ranting in stride, and let's also ask, if it's online, who is choosing to read their complaints?).

The next level goes especially for people who complain online, or expats who always run Korea down when they're around other expats: The Off-Duty Diplomats

See, most expats realize that we are guests in Korea; because we (other than some Asian-hypenated expats) look different than the rest of the people around, we know we're being watched, in curiousity, or in judgement. In our own neighbourhoods, and around our Korean friends, most of us feel the burden of representing our home countries: we're diplomats, saying the "right" things about how Korean women are beautiful, and Jeju Island gyuul are great, and those mean Japanese textbook writers ought to get their facts straight! Is it any surprise that after a long day of diplomacy, we come home, hop online, or huddle away with other foreigners, and criticize, in the same way most table-waiters come home from a long day of fake-smiling for tips, and act rude and surly to their housemates?



Ranting Englishman makes no bones that his blog is saving his and his wife’s sanity. Sorry you had to be privy to that, but can you really hold it against him? My Mom once told me, when Peter talks about Paul, we learn more about Peter than we do about Paul, and while it's not pleasant to watch or read or hear, remember here that you're reading the literary equivalent of a hotel receptionist spending her day off wearing sweatpants, a baseball cap, and no makeup. For many of us, this is when we aren’t putting our best foot forward. Putting the negativity online, or keeping it between friends in a club somewhere, is better than spewing it at work, where careless words have more consequences.

(Another thing about these first three types of complainers: telling them to stop actually makes them complain MORE, in the same way that telling kids not to do something immediately makes it fun.)


This level and those above are often mixed with this: Alternate View Pointer-Outers

Now, due to various reasons (homogeneous society, intense and intentional cultural programming [especially during the '60s and '70s], a culture of suspicion of those who hold unconventional ideas [leftover from the anti-communist red-scare days], an atmosphere of conformity strong enough that old ladies have been known to correct how I eat my soup) which are mostly beyond the scope of this post, and would require masters' theses to do them each justice, many westerners are surprised at how little diversity of ideas there are in public forums here in Korea; meanwhile, when a group DOES get loud about something, the rest of Korea usually shuts up and lets them rave, rather than shouting alternative viewpoints just as loudly. (If you disagree with this, kindly explain why the pro-FTA, pro-America, pro-LMB conservatives were so quiet during the first month of beef protests). This means some expats take it upon themselves to argue a different point of view, for the sheer sake of having a different point of view.

For example: every time I talk about education in Korea, I run into the EXACT same arguments, as if they were memorized in high school, along with the phrase, "Fine, thank you, and you?"

everybody say it along with me:

1. Korea has few natural resources
2. Korea has many people; people are Korea's best resource.
3. Korea has so much competition, because of overpopulation.
4. Education is the only way to gain a competitive advantage.
5. If you go to SKY* universities, you're set for life
6. Therefore, even though it's stupid and counterproductive and hurting Korea, and hurting students, and everybody knows it, I still must push my middle-school-aged son to study until 1am every day from now until the end of high school, to do well on the test and get into an SKY university.

(*SKY Universities are Korea's top three: Seoul National, Korea, and Yonsei Universities. It's generally accepted that if you graduate from a SKY School, you're pretty much set for life.)


Good god! Somebody needs to toss a monkey-wrench into that tired cycle of thought, and suggest that there must be another way to raise kids into successful adults -- some noisy expats (maybe self-importantly) offer up other options, and are sometimes resented for it, and when we get the rote response, some of us feel like we're butting our heads against a wall, and depending on the expat, that prompts some of us to give up, and some of us to butt harder. Hard butts can rub some people the wrong way.

Next level: Closely related to the off-duty diplomats are The Kimcheerleading Counterbalances

I've blogged before (in my kimcheerleaders post) about the way an unfortunately large number of Koreans seem to approach every conversation with a non-Korean as a promo-op, a chance to promote Korea, rather than as a meeting of minds between two human beings. (remember that I'm speaking in broad generalizations here) -- some of us may feel overwhelmed by the Kimcheerleading.

Imagine Chul-soo. He's proud of his country. When he chats with a foreigner (which happens two or three times a week), he takes two minutes to explain that Kimchi is the world's healthiest food. It's only two minutes in his day, and he loves Korea -- good for him, I say!

But that foreigner might have similar conversations with many Koreans who also take just a few minutes to explain how garlic is healthy and Koreans use every part of the animal. Those few minutes' add up, when a dozen people a week spare a moment to promote Korean culture. It's even worse in the Korean English Language print media, where that dull, downer story about a double-murder-suicide, or a rapist on the loose in Daejeon, often get cut, but articles like this one ALWAYS make it in (HT to Brian in Jeollanam-do), the sports page is covered with a full, half-page "Park Chan-Ho pitches four innings, gets No Decision vs. Padres", ("Tiger Woods Wins Fifteenth Major in a Thrilling Come-From-Behind Finish" goes on the bottom half of the page) and "What's So Great about Korea, Maarten" still grins at us from the English section of every bookstore.

Faced with such a flood of positive Korean promotion, it's almost natural that we Westerners (who, at least among North Americans, have been programmed by movies and stories to go against the grain, and to prefer being right and alone over being wrong with the crowd), might start to push against the flood of Kimcheerleading with a bit of counter-balancing negativity, just so there’s a conversation, instead of just a room full of people nodding their heads in agreement.

Now, add to THIS the fact, because of our language limitations, a lot of us can't access the Korean language media in print or TV. This means that, while there might be a very lively discussion of Korea's social ills in Korean, because the English media editors and producers diligently excise almost all such topics from the pages of the English dailies, we have no idea whether social critics set the agenda in Korean public discourse, or whether Koreans just sit in circles repeating to each other the same things they say to us when they meet us!

If Arirang TV is anything to go on, Koreans spend all their time having conversations like this:

Chul-soo: "Yi Sunshin was probably the greatest naval commander in world history."
Hye-mi: "I've heard that's true. It might be because he grew up eating with chopsticks: studies have shown eating with chopsticks increase your IQ."
Chul-soo: "Ah. that might partially explain why Koreans scored higher than any other country on standardized IQ tests."
Hye-mi: "Indeed. Though I would credit that more to the fact Koreans are extremely diligent students."
Chul-soo: "It's because our young people are raised in such strong families: Confucianism values the family as the lynchpin of a healthy society"
Hye-mi: "That's why we have more jung."

It sounds ridiculous when I write it out like that, but The Korea Herald and Korea Times and Arirang TV (which no foreigner I've met watches) sometimes start to sound that way after a while, and for all we know, the local, Korean language papers might be the same way, from top to bottom! No wonder we feel like we need to balance out the kimcheerleading with a little negativity! (the simple solution here is that we ought to learn more Korean and see for ourselves what fills the pages of Korea's papers, but until then, that's where a lot of us are coming from.)

The Next Level: The (Maybe You Didn't Notice It Was) Affectionately Sarcastic

Some readers and listeners don't notice, can't notice, or intentionally ignore, the fact that some of us comment on this stuff because it amuses us, and we're not trying to be negative at all: some of the strongest reactions to posts of mine have been from readers who didn't quite notice the irony, sarcasm, or bemusement in my tone -- I wasn't trying to run anyone down, I wasn't trying to make anybody look stupid, or imply that the one dummy I met yesterday stands in for all Koreans everywhere -- I was just telling a story. However, a reader or acquaintance who doesn't have a lot of experience in spotting irony or verbal satire, who is looking for a reason to get upset and defensive, will probably find one. People who only read the critical rant, and skim the positive stuff, glancing at the photos, might miss the generally cheerful tone of my blog, and my usual affection for Korea. They might get more upset than they need to, about my mode of expression, in the same way the table-waiter's roommates think he's a rude jerk, because they don't see how well he treats his customers and his mother.

And, finally, the two highest levels:

The Social Critic:

These people HAVE paid their dues; they're not speaking in ignorance, or jumping to conclusions. They've done their due diligence, read up, qualified their statements, and started pointing out areas where Korea is not what it wishes to be. These people play an important role in a healthy society. It may seem they're negative, but as one of my favourite writers, Flannery O'Connor once said, when somebody accused her of only talking about the negative aspects of her society, and why couldn't she just write something nice once in a while, "If I write about a hill that is rotting, it is because I despise rot." (original quote by Wyndham Lewis)

Naming a problem is the first step to solving it, and maybe some of these critics are attempting to be legitimate part of that process -- that is, they're writing because they want to see Korea become a better place. . . in which case, Koreans who are upset about non-Koreans criticizing Korea need to stop and take a careful look at why that upsets them, because the problem does not lie in the complainers or their intentions.

To be fair, sometimes the social critics' intentions are good, but their methods are poor: the sometimes bitter and mean tone of certain critics can be hurtful, and as I've said to some of my friends who complain about Korea with a rude or condescending tone: "when you talk so harshly, even when you're right, you're wrong, and even if you win the argument, you still lose" -- but then,

1. polemical writing gets more blog hits than diplomatic writing
2. polemical writing sticks in peoples' heads for longer than diplomatic writing, which means it ultimately has a higher chance of changing a person's pattern of thinking!
3. polemical writing stirs up emotions, which means it will start more discussions, than diplomatic writing, which might not poke through someone's guard.

Bare fact: A scalpel is a better surgical tool than a pillow, and sometimes, a social problem must be sharply criticized to bring about change; gentle phrases just won't stir up a strong enough reaction.

Finally, at the top of the pile, the last group who complains about Korea: The Constructive Social Critic

The CSCs have also paid their dues. They know Korea, they've been here a long time, and maybe, their outsiders' views give them insight into topics that even Koreans miss. The only difference between them and the category above is that they are solution oriented, rather than problem oriented. Sure, they name the problem, and that's important, but for them, naming the problem is simply a step toward finding a solution, and their complaints end either with a suggestion of their own, or with a feeling of "now that we understand the problem very well, let's get working on a solution!"

Most of the critics I enjoy vacillate between these two categories, depending on their areas of expertise, and emotional state at the time of writing. CSCs write out of knowledge and love for Korea, out of a real desire to see Korea grow and improve, and mature into a world leader. Again, as with the social critic, if Koreans have a problem with a non-Korean producing THIS kind of writing about Korea, then it's really time to take a careful look at why it upsets them for someone with knowledge, insight, and compassion, to clearly articulate their wish for Korea to become a better place. My wish would be that more of the CSC's learn Korean well enough to get their ideas into the Korean media without risk of having a reader misunderstand it, or a translator twist it to their own ends (at the same time as we also need CSCs publishing about Korea in English, the international language).

So, there are a few reasons expats complain. I've probably missed some, and I'm not making excuses for rudeness (though I am suggesting it's best ignored), but that's at least where we're coming from, and as I said before: the stuff that goes online is harsher than what happens in face-to-face situations, so if the K-blogosphere is getting you down, don't use it to get in touch with Korea; get out of the house and climb a mountain, visit a temple, have lunch with a Korean friend, or (if you're outside Korea) go find a Korean restaurant nearby or watch a DVD of Welcome To Dongmakgol. Seriously.


***
"I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies."
Pietro Aretino, quoted in this article, from the BBC to angry Chinese defenders.


Here are a few typical responses that Koreans have to expats' complaints (some of these are borrowed from the Metroplitician's excellent, "Why Be Critical" post, one of the K-blogosphere's must-read posts, and an article without which this post would probably not exist at all. The comments on that post are also very interesting, for numerous reasons.)



1. Why are you airing out our dirty laundry? (One commenter on my blog once wrote about the critics, “It felt like my family’s dirty laundry was being aired to stranger and strangers were now telling me how to fix my family’s problems”) This one can also be phrased as "Why are you prying into Korea's internal issues?"

Answer: Well. . . if Korea is your house, then there are people living in your house that didn't live here before, and some of your family members have moved away and never looked back, and the windows are bigger than ever before, so a lot of people can see in now. South-Asian wives of Korean farmers and international investors and long-term teachers live under this roof now, and Korea's own people are more cosmopolitan and well-travelled than ever before, including many ethnic Koreans who haven't even been to Korea, transnational adoptees, Kyopos with various degrees of affinity for their parents' home -- it ain't Dongmakgeol any more, if it ever was, and the world is too interconnected to believe Korea can still exist in a bubble which doesn't affect other countries. A lot of us have invested a lot of time and energy into Korea; we have careers, families, kids, and connections here: this is our home, and we have a stake in Korea! Why shouldn’t we want our home to become better?

2. Why do you hate Korea?

Answer: I don't. If I did, I would have given up and left, as I am still free to do. The very fact I'm here is proof I like Korea enough to stay, and care about Korea enough to pay attention, and comment on it.

3. You should learn more about Korea.

Answer: This is a Korean's way of chunking me into category two of the expat complainer: "If I decide your complaints are borne of ignorance or culture shock, I can dismiss them." It falls apart if I can demonstrate knowledge of Korea (at which point this one often leads to number 4, revealing the true nature of the objection.)

Often, what this one REALLY means is, "I'm trying to find an excuse to ignore what you've said," or even, "It's easier for me to dismiss what you've said than to reexamine my idea of Korea." If I should learn more about Korea, then I'd love for you to explain it to me!

This one wears especially thin for those who HAVE been in Korea a long time, watching and listening carefully, but are still lumped in with Joe Firstyear, so be careful about using this one, because it often reveals more about the speaker's attitude than the complainer's knowledge.



4. You CAN'T understand Korea.

Answer: Translation: I refuse to listen to you. More at Metropolitician on this one. Sometimes this comes up when "You should learn more about Korea" is rebuffed by a demonstration of extensive Korea-knowledge, at which point, the K-defender is cornered, and starts saying stuff like this. Basically, this comment reveals more about the one who says it than the one who's complaining: what would it take to convince the person who says this that a non-Korean understands Korea? What kind of pedigree would it take, other than having Korean blood (and why does having Korean blood legitimize a complaint: who knows more about Korea? An expat who's lived here for ten years, or a Kyopo who can't speak the language, and has never visited, but has 100% Korean blood)? Where do pure-blood transnational adoptees fit on the spectrum of “allowed to criticize Korea”?

5. I don't like when a foreigner criticizes Korea

Answer: Why not? Again, this comment reflects more on the speaker than the complainer. What's so terrible about a foreigner complaining about Korea? The worst thing that can happen is that the foreigner's wrong, or the discussion gets emotional and unproductive; the best thing that can happen is that both sides might learn something.

7. You should be a more gracious guest while you visit Korea!

Answer: That might be so. . . but maybe I'm not a guest, and don’t want to be thought of as one; maybe I'm an active participant in Korean society, and wish to have my views respected as such. I've lived here for five years now, watching and asking questions: that's so long away from Canada that I no longer feel qualified to comment on situations back in Canada. If Korea isn't my home, nowhere is.

8. It's just as bad (or worse) in X country!

Yep. And when we're talking about that country, we'll address it. Right now, we're talking about Korea: there are very few things that are unique to only one culture -- but just because Japan, China, Iran, England, or America have the same problem, doesn't mean that Korea shouldn't be trying to fix it here, while those countries work on the problem there. If Joe's a jerk, and James is a jerk too, that doesn't mean Joe's free to remain a jerk; it just means that Joe and James both need to change their attitude.

9. If you don't like it, go home.

Fair enough. K-defenders are entitled to that opinion if they choose. However, I hope they’d think for a moment about how unhelpful that attitude is. If I don't like Korea, and I go home, whatever -- I'm just one guy, and I can put up with a lot, as long as Korea puts food on my table. But what about when an international investor doesn't like something? What if ten-thousand teachers, or ten-thousand migrant workers, or five-hundred loaded, foreign businesspeople looking to invest, don't like something? When does the onus fall on Korea to look inward, rather than on outsiders to get lost? Is telling that investor to take his billions and invest them in Hong Kong instead, going to help Korea become the global leader it wants to be?

And if a K-defender wants Korea to go back to its hermit kingdom days, and pickle in its own juices, he’s free to that view, but that "my way or the highway" has another name in North Korea: juche, and it didn't work out so well for the starving farmers over there. If Korea wants to become a globalized, cosmopolitan hub, and a destination for business leaders and investors, then, "If you don't like it, let's work something out" would be more productive.

10. Why don't you talk about positive things?

This is a fair critique, as is "why don't you say things more nicely/politely," and extremely valid, IF the complainer DOES only talk about negative stuff, and/or use rude, condescending tones. . . but don't use this one after reading a single post; save it until after you've read a bunch of posts, or had a number of conversations, so that you can back up your accusation. I get frustrated hearing this one, when I work damn hard to stay to stay positive and keep my criticisms edifying, and the commenter fires this off after reading a single one of my posts.

11. Go easy on us: we're just a developing nation!

Answer: Put very simply:
Still developing:



Finished developing:

Congratulations! You're part of the club! You're playing with the big kids now!

In terms of infrastructure and wealth, Korea is no longer a developing nation. Top fifteen economy in the world, people from South Asia coming HERE to work and send money home -- in the ways of the won, Korea's made it. It's a major player. Other countries look to Korea's development model to figure out how to raise their standard of living and set up infrastructure. One of the drags that comes with being one of the big boys is being a big target, and people pay more attention, and take more shots at big targets. Griping about facing criticism from the international community that Korea worked so hard to join, is like the little boy who wants to play soccer with his older brother's big friends, and then cries when they knock him down with a sliding tackle. More on that later.

12. You want Korea to become exactly like America.

Answer: If I want to live in a place that's exactly like America, I'll just move there. Given the history of the last 100 years, and the fact North and South Korea are as different as Summer and Winter now, when in 1935 their situation was exactly the same, Korea of all places should recognize that cultures are constantly changing and developing. The ones that don't end up artifacts and oddities, like the Amish, who are interesting, but basically irrelevant, and don't attract much foreign direct investment. Yeah, it takes some wisdom and discernment to figure out when you're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, or bringing in what The Joshing Gnome calls "cultural junk DNA", but if Korea can go through the upheavals of the last hundred years and still have a unique culture, isn't it time to lay the "our culture's going to disappear completely" objection to rest?


13. But you're telling this to the wrong crowd! You should learn Korean and say this to Koreans; telling it to other expats is preaching to the converted, and not very helpful. The people who really need to hear culture-changing ideas are the ones who can't read English, who are captive to the Korean language media.

Answer: You are absolutely right.


Two final thoughts on Expat complainers that didn't conveniently fit into the above categories:

1. (generalization ahead. . . ) One of my English Teacher friends has a lot of non-English teaching expat friends -- from other parts of the world than England, USA, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, with skin-colours other than white, and notes that loudest and bitterest complaints come from white males from English-speaking, first-world countries. She thinks it's because, for first-world WASP males, coming to Korea is the first time white male priveledge hasn't managed to open every door to them: only most doors.

2. A new way to look at complaining. . .

Reflect on the fact that complaining is an act of hope. Really. When there's no hope that a bad situation will improve, people stop complaining and learn to bear it, or (in the case of first-world expats in Korea) go home. The very act of complaining is an expression of hope, of the conviction that Korea DOES have the potential for change, and for growth.

Criticism is also a sign of respect, a recognition of Korea's climbing status in the world. It is much better to have people criticize Korea and hold it up to international standards (with the implicit affirmation that Korea is now a world leader), than to approach it as a place so backwards and stubborn that engaging with the culture would be useless for anyone but observers and documentarians. Such an attitude would cause less stress to the K-defenders, but do they really want Korea to be treated delicately, like a quaint oddity, rather than like an international heavyweight? (Case in point: look how much international criticism the world's MOST powerful country, the U.S.A., receives from other countries -- the fact that Korea now catches the attention of international critics just proves how much Korea's influence has grown. Would Korea rather be a criticized heavyweight like the USA, or a delicately approached cultural oddity, like Bedouin nomads? Which treatment is more respectful, really? An honest criticism, or a condescending, "Look at these interesting specimens!"

If you think about it, criticism isn't a bad thing at all: it's an opportunity to learn something, to improve something. The person who ignores valid criticism does so at his own peril; I would argue that it's the same for countries (look at how bad USA's international reputation is these days, because of plowing ahead with its plans and ignoring the international community). So yeah, because it's all in English, a lot of the K-blog complaining doesn't read the audience that would benefit most from hearing it, but starting the discussion can only lead to deeper insight, right? So bring it on!

Readers: Korean expats and Koreans: Do YOU think expats complain about Korea too much? If so, why? Should they complain, and how? Why is the relationship between expats and Koreans online so adversarial? What's an appropriate mode and medium for complaint, if not online? What can we do to have constructive criticisms heard? Write about it, blog about it, weigh in; e-mail me your thoughts to roboseyo [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll post them here; tell me where to find them online and I'll link them. Weigh in on my comment board. Let's talk about this honestly and reasonably. It's about time.


(Flannery O'Connor Quote from "Flannery O'Connor's Religion of the Grotesque, by Marshall Bruce Gentry)

To tide over my rabid fans (snicker)

I've got something really cool coming soon, and until then. . .

one extremely, exTREMELY cool video of a floating lantern festival. . .

See more funny videos and funny pictures on CollegeHumor

and. . .

It's not my place to discuss whether Wonder Girls is a group of exploitatively sexualized underage girls or an adolescent feminine fantasy wish-fulfillment boy-free zone (or one of those. . . exploited for money). . . (these guys have done a great job of it here, here, here, here, and here.)


the basic gist of the lyrics is "I'm so hot, all the boys like me. It's so boring when all the boys like me."

but whatever they're actually selling, and despite her much lower production standards. . .

Can we agree that this lady (a "Fake Kindergarten Teacher") has the goods to sell it better?

On the other hand, they could go completely the other way. . . (skip to 1:20)


I see a team-up with this kid on the horizon -- they could rule the world by age 18.

Cutest moment at 3:30 -- they ask him how many beatles there are, and he says, "Five."
"Name them."
"Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and me, Hero!"

(Update: Spoke too soon.  Just kill me now.)

I just heard my first cicada of the year.

Hey does anybody know what THIS bug is? I found it in Samchung Park.




It's officially summer.

This is what they sound like in Chicago



This is what they sound like here:


That droning isn't the ONLY sound they can make:


Once I even heard one that sounded like he's studied free-jazz saxophone.

(hee hee hee)- a prague ragtime street-performing group

Two more youtube favourites:

this super bowl ad made me laugh out loud the first THREE times I watched it.


I'm not sure if this is a follow-up or a spoof:

What Swearing Can Teach Us

See, ever since I learned in French class that most of the worst swears in French involve curses on the church and holy things, I've sort of paid attention to the way you can learn something about a culture by what people talk about when they hit their thumbs with hammers. While France today is fiercely proud of being intentionally secular, the fact a lot of French curse words invoke God, hell, church-doors and such, gives an interesting clue to French heritage, and the development of the language.

Conversely, most of the English swears that are used most often, and considered most crass, involve body parts, and body functions. I'm not going to list them off here, but you know the ones. (Swears on the comment board for this page shall remain up only if they are discussed academically, rather than simply posted for the fun of writing potty mouth on the internet, thanks.) I think those very bawdy words provide an interesting clue to understanding the focus on things, and a tendency toward materialism evident in English speaking cultures.

I asked Girlfriendoseyo about this once -- Korean culture developed in a very different place and along very different lines than them western cultures, and asked her, not to rattle off all the Korean swear words she knew, and teach them to me, but to clue me into the general subject matter of Korean curses.

She said that most curses in Korean involve bringing someone down -- calling somebody a wiener-suckler (you know the word I mean) or an Oedipal-incest-practitioner (you know the word) is about as harsh as you can get in English, and crazy's pretty mild (maybe a 3 out of 10) but in Korean, the word crazy is an 8 out of 10 -- the simple word "crazy" in Korean is a bit English to calling somebody "totally batshit in-'f-word'ing-sane" in English. In Korean, Girlfriendoseyo told me that the most commonly used words bring a person's status low -- you're a dog, an idiot, you're a fool, you're dirty and low -- that's the general gist of most Korean curses.

(comic by xkcd.com)

"But Girlfriendoseyo," I interjected, "from what I know about Korea, and Korea's emphasis on filial piety and family obligation, wouldn't the worst swears in Korea involve insulting somebody's family? Wouldn't "your mother wears army boots" be more offensive to a Korean than "You sleep in a gutter"?

She flashed me a "oooh, careful, buddy!" face, and said, "Yeah. It would be. But if you insulted a Korean's family, it would be war between your families."

That's right. Family loyalty's so important here in Korea, that it's actually a taboo for swearing! I can't really think of ANY taboos in English swearing, though there are some topics, for example, cannibalism, that don't come up very often, simply because most cursers aren't creative enough -- but if a good creative curser tossed a reference in, nobody'd say "Whoa, man. That's too far." People would probably just shake their heads in wonder, impressed that Joe Crass managed to pull such a creative curse out of the air.

Swearing is a funny thing. Swear words are the most onomatopoeic words in almost every language -- that is, of all classes of language, they're the words whose sounds most perfectly match their meanings (other than real onomato- poeias, like "bang, crash, splat, boom"), and frankly, they're delightfully fun to say -- just forming the words with your mouth can be a good catharsis, because a good swear requires your whole face to say it. The Korean "worst word" (18 -- you know the one) requires your whole face to say it properly, as does the English "worst word" (the F-word) as well as the new "worst English word"s -- the ugliest racial slurs.

And you know, listening to a really good curser, is a kind of poetry of its own -- I'm told Trainspotting is a great movie to hear some good cursing, though I have to watch it again. My own two favourites are "South Park, Bigger, Longer, and Uncut" -- the movie that first gave me an appreciation for a good, colourful, blue streak -- and "Full Metal Jacket" -- the first half of which might never be topped, which goes so far over the top it's absolutely hilarious.

(uhh. . . swearing warning)


(Any others I'm missing?)

A telling contrast.

The main sports page from the International Herald Tribune:



The main Sports page from the Joongang Daily, a Korean local daily:

(p.s. in case you haven't heard of the two biggest stars in Major League Baseball, Baek and Park are Korean pitchers playing in the Major Leagues.)

Let's play a game of spot, and explain, the differences.

Talk amongst yourselves.

Apparently, he refuses to grab his ankles OR grovel like a dog, as if he didn't hold most of the cards. . . (headline)

From Reuters.


North Korea says can't negotiate with S.Korea's Lee

Mon Jul 7, 2008 3:31pm EDT
LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - North Korea renewed its criticism of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Monday, accusing him of "rude behaviour" and saying he could not be negotiated with.

The North's official KCNA news agency quoted a spokesman for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF) reacting to an interview Lee had given to Japan's Kyodo News.

The North appears to have interpreted comments made by Lee to mean that the issue of the North's nuclear disarmament ought to be discussed at North-South summit talks, despite this problem being at the centre of international six-party talks.

The nuclear issue is not thought to have been previously discussed at bilateral meetings between the two Koreas in June 2000 and October 2007.

"It is absolutely intolerable to overturn the north-south declarations ... it is rude behaviour," KCNA quoted the unnamed CPRF spokesman.

"It is quite clear that it is impossible to sit at the negotiating table with such a man."
. . .
Writing by Matthew Jones)

© Thomson Reuters 2008

What a jerk! Forcing Kim Jong-il to face up to the realities of his situation, and the fact South Korea pretty much holds every card except the "I'm a crazy-ass motherf***er and you have NO idea what I might do next!" card.

Tragedy + Time = still tragedy. Korean War Prisoner Massacres finally coming to light

From the Chicago Tribune --

The truth about South Korean prisoner massacres during the Korean war is finally coming out.
(source: Mongdori newsfeed)

I feel sick.

Crappy Cameraphone's last day in the sun (and a game of spot the unintentional pun I discovered on proofreading, and decided to leave in)

Heck, let's make it into a contest.

If you can spot the unintentional pun and name it first in the comments, you get to choose the topic for my next post. I reserve the right to veto topic suggestions that are beyond reasonable boundaries of privacy, length, and good taste (this is a blog, not a game of truth or dare, you know), but if there's something you'd like to know about Roboseyo, or Roboseyo's Korea. . . get out your fine-tooth.

Inwang mountain: the last mountain I climbed before buying a real digital camera.

Inwang mountain is the mountain just to the west of the blue house (where Korea's president lives).  There's a neighbourhood between them, but it's a very nice mountain.

This guy enjoyed the peak a lot.


The mountain looks down on a really charming little village that, due to lack of access, has remained a little less gentrified, commercialized, and uglified than the apartment-block mausoleums in other areas of Seoul.  Would you believe that a twenty-minute walk from this view, in the opposite direction, is Seoul's finance district, City Hall, and the epicenter of every protest?


I wound around the side of the mountain, on the north side of the six hundred year old wall that the old kings built to protect the palaces from raiders and invaders.  I'd just head uphill, and wind around to the next side street when I hit a dead end, and I stumbled into this sleepy little huttish area that could have been untouched since 1930 (judging from the people I saw living there, with no new neighbours since then, either).  How these little bastions survive without either turning into tourist-trap self-recreations or getting bought out by developers, I'll never know. . . but I'm glad they don't.

I picked my way through their tiered gardens (another OOoooold Korea method), and came upon this trail, which led up to the defensive wall.  Again, just to re-state: this scene was a 40 minute walk from Jongno Tower.  (50 if you go slow)
More layered houses, winding up the mountainside:

a view from a lookout point on one of the side-streets a little closer to the town-ish area (where lookouts were obscured by vegetation) -- some nice, rich-looking, gated-garden type houses were there as a buffer between the city and the little grandmother villa I walked through.  The views there were nice.
Inwangsan was great.  Here's the defensive wall; on the other side of it are a bunch of military defensive structures, lookout towers and stuff, as well as signs, "don't you effing dare enter" warnings, and certain directions you ought not point your camera.  But it's also pretty darn beautiful up there.

As you can see, despite the sleepy villa on the approach, we're just THAT close to the big-ass city.  (The mountain you can see in the distance with the blurry, crappy cameraphone tower white smudge on it, is actually Namsan, with Seoul Tower.)


Went back to the same place again this weekend, and took more pictures: the 능소화 (Google Translate says they're "Neungsohwa" flowers) were out in full colour today; they're one of girlfriendoseyo's favourite flowers, so we had a real nice walkabout.

Girlfriendoseyo likes gardens.

A little too much.  (She pretended to climb the wall as a joke; that gave me a good laugh, so she posed like this. . . she's not ACTUALLY Girlfriendoseyo the B&E artist. . . as far as I know.)


The fallen petals are also fantastic.





Girlfriendoseyo says these flowers' name means, in the original Chinese, "the flower that mocks the sun" -- that is, the flower so beautiful, it even taunts the heavens.


Maybe somebody else tried to climb this wall too many times.  A lot of barking dogs on this lane, and the most unfriendly wall I've seen south of the Demilitarized Zone and outside of the military bases.

This seems like a perfectly lovely fusion restaurant. . . until you pronounce the name like a Korean would, switching the "R" out for an "L".



Finally, at the bottom of Inwang Mountain, in Puk'ak Dong, there's a heavenly coffee shop.


It actually felt like being back in the Pacific Northwest, between the look, the smell (beans roasted on site) and the atmosphere.  The specialty hand-drip coffees were obscenely tasty, for a very reasonable price.

The place had some reputation, too: we actually had to wait for a table!




Other pics: the receptionists at my workplace are hilarious and charming.  I took a picture of them together that didn't turn out well, so I said "Sorry.  Bad picture.  One more time." and they both did that, because of the "One More Time" song I wrote about before, but can't justify posting as a clip a second time.  This is called the "ET Dance."

Finally (and these, in case you haven't noticed, were taken with the new, good camera). . . a bit of goofy Korea:


>Are you sure we're in the MEN's shirts' section?  (why Korean men wear pink shirts)
(Hooray for Bean Pole)

The store and the brand's name is FUBU, standing for "For Us, By Us" (citation) -- it was a company started by African-American entrepreneurs when they noticed that most urban clothing marketed toward African-Americans was made by white-owned companies.  The company has since become very successful.  Now, I must defer to other bloggers and experts on the topic of black culture without black people (for example, Korean rappers flashing gang signs and talking in weird mixes of Konglish and Ebonics -- Kebonics? Ebonglish?), but I realized the name FUBU is a bit of a misnomer in COEX mall in Seoul, because there just aren't enough people of African descent who shop at COEX, to keep this store in the black.  I suggest a name change: FKBU -- For Koreans By Us.
Here's a video featuring a Korean hip-hop stars, Crown J, at the end.  Brian thinks he's a poser and a douche; agree or disagree?  Discuss amongst yourselves.   Decide for yourself also whether something like hip-hop culture is such a liquid concept that it can be separated completely from the culture that created it, and still keep some kind of legitimacy, or whether it's been totally co-opted and exploited. . . along the way, you can listen to an awful English rap in this one, count how many other reference to American culture are. . . um, raped, and pick out which singers use pitch-correction, before Crown J throws down his badass gang signs at the end.


You can listen to this other Crown J track, for more information, and decide what you think about him.  All I'm gonna say is, I don't watch Korean MTV.


Interesting as cultural artifacts and examples of fusion culture. . . but not quite enough to a spot next to the pink shirts on my page.

Dance the Candlegirl! (Anticlimax. . . or I left too early)

Well, I went, and there were lots of people, but nothing too out of sorts, compared to other days. The counter-protest fizzled (relatively speaking), however, I did spot a few dance troupes (or maybe the same one in two places) out starting what I think will explode into the next dance craze.

Ladies and gentlemen, after an intense editing session, I present to you:

The Candlegirl! Get busy learning those steps: it's gonna be tearing all the clubs in Hongdae a new one in no time!


(Update: For the sake of giving credit where it's due, Scott Burgeson, whom I met at the protest, was the one who had the conversations with the "V For Vendetta" masqueraders, and discovered that they didn't know the meaning of their symbolism.)


Update: ROKDrop (thanks for the link love) has more info about the creators of the candlegirl -- move over, JYP! The activists are breathing down your neck! GIKorea also reports that there were no clashes or violence last night, and a pretty unimpressive turnout, compared to June's protests, so I don't feel bad about leaving at about 12:00.

Thanks also, Zenkimchi, and Seoul Eats for the link love.

Update: There's an interesting discussion going on between Gord Sellar and Scott Burgeson, the long-time expat with whom I walked around the protests, and who talked to the "V for Vendetta" protestors, over the actual and intended meaning of their symbolism, and whether we should give them a break for misunderstanding the real (anarchist) meaning of the "V for Vendetta" symbolism, or hold them to account for running so far with a ball like "V for Vendetta" when they didn't realize it was actually a pineapple. Scott suggests that this pulling of random issues and symbols into the fray, when they don't belong there, is crass and distasteful, while Gord (coming into his own in his new position as the K-Blogosphere's top protester apologist) defends their symbolism, saying that they're transmitting the symbols basically in the same context that they were received. See here and here and the comment board on this post for more.

If anything's gonna happen, it's gonna happen tonight.

And I'm bringing my camera.

The protests in Gwanghwamun are still (STILL!) running almost nightly, as the numbers dwindle, the extremists have gotten more violent in order to keep people's attention, newspaper buildings have been attacked, police buses have been destroyed, hundreds have been injured, and Korea has a whacked out protest culture (seriously, follow this link: it'll blow your mind), and while things have been less bat-shit insane this time than previously, if it's going to go overboard, tonight's the night it will.

There are counter-protests to go along with the protests, involving beef supporters, North Korea-supporters (as in, "People are dying, and you're mad about BEEF IMPORTS? Get a phunking GRIP!"), and the protest groups are hoping tonight will be another peak, for some reason or another (maybe because their support is flagging, and they're in the process of showing their colours as primadonnas and attention whores?)

Anyway, gonna be an interesting night, and I'm bringin' my camera!

Here's how I imagine the players (anti-protesters, pro-protesters, police, ring-leaders, etc..) are getting ready for the big throw-down:



Here are the very worth-reading thoughts of Scott Burgeson, or King Baeksu, a fellow who lives right next to the epicenter of the protests, and has attended almost every night.

Blogoseyo goes multimedia! (Food porn)

Short of figuring out a way for your computer to waft clouds of special Roboseyo fragrances (pavement after rain, acacia trees, car exhaust from downtown Seoul), this is about as multimedia as I can get:

I learned how to create videos on my new mac. Gee, this is fun.

In other news, I have a youtube video channel now, to go with my flickr account. All can be found under my usual moniker, Roboseyo.

Wheee!

This is a dish called Dalk Galbi.

The song is KC Accidental, by Broken Social Scene.

Gosh, I'm pleased with myself right now.
How do you like that, Zenkimchi?

For the Joshing Gnome

Joe, over at the Joshing Gnome, is writing a really interesting series of posts about the Korean idea of "jung" -- a mythical connection between humans that only Koreans share with each other.

Debunkadunk!

He brings together the ideas of Amoral Familism (explained in other places on his blog) with the Korean concept of Jung, in a really interesting way that you may or may not agree with. . . but it's sure thought-provoking.

And just to be a tease, (Bajung Gadung Dung), he's publishing it in parts, one day at a time, so that we have to wait in suspense for each new installment..

(Links as they become available)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five

This guy knows a lot about Korea, and has a very interesting take on the country. More about him later. . . for now, Joe, here's a video that perhaps illustrates a bit of what you're talking about.

I know this video's nothing new: it's made the round on the K-blogosphere before, but here you go.

Wait for it: forty-three seconds in, something happens that. . . well, I better not say too much.




while I'm posting way-after-the-point clips anyway, let's take a moment to kick it in Geumchon.





Have a good day.

the joys of kopseulmori (curly hair)

Happy Canada Day, all.

Before the rest: a lovely Konglish T-shirt.

I had a little fun with my naturally curly hair (YES, IT'S NATURAL, DAMMIT!) [sorry: twice a week an old lady asks me where I got my perm] today at work, stuffing pens in there.
The receptionists thought this was high comedy.
I had about ten stuffed up there, stuck between locks.  I'd almost forgotten my hair could do that.
Ten, however, was nowhere near my record: back in high school, when I let my hair grow out for about ten months (twelfth grade yearbook photo, minus personal info):

I once went into a Chemistry 11 final with an entire pencil case stuffed with pens and pencils.  All through the final, I surreptitiously slid pens and pencils into my natty mass of hair: it was long enough then, that they were completely hidden inside my mop.  Then, when I finished my final, I stood to hand in my exam, and when I handed it in, I held my head back, and then threw it forward in a (fake) sneeze.

About fifty pens and pencils flew all across the floor at the front of the classroom.  Got a decent laugh. . . though it isn't my ONLY final exam hijinx story by a longshot.  (If by a longshot you mean two.)

If you want to know the other two, you'll have to ask in the comments.

Until then:

a couple more pictures:

Didn't know pets were recyclable.

(eating dog joke goes here)

More from Jongho(from the previous post)'s ad agency:

Hey Jong-ho! I'm tired of thinking up funny and clever ads to sell phones.

"Here's what we can do, Chul-soo:"





"We can use sex to sell it!"

"Brilliant! That's why you're the idea guy, Jong-ho! Let's leave work early today."

next ad in the series:




Gallery Here (warning: Buuuuuh-keeee-neeeeez. That's bikinis. A lot. And Jessica Gomez. Yurp.) These posters are all over downtown Seoul, and every girlfriend in Jongno is getting madder and madder, and every boyfriend is on thinner and thinner ice, every time he walks by a phone shop with his lady.

Review of Crossing: The Desperation of the North, and the Hypocrisy of the South

Crossing is a movie about North Koreans fleeing to China in desperation. Once in China, North Koreans are in danger of being caught and repatriated to North Korea, where they will be sent to a work/death camp for their treachery against the great leader/god Kim Il-Sung (by the way, how are those Olympics going, Beijing?) They must either get into another country's embassy and claim refugee status, or travel secretly through China, and escape either to Mongolia or head south, and claim refugee status in a southeast Asian country -- Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, etc., and hope that Seoul will take them.

The preview


Here's a summary from Koreanmovie.com and a synopsis from the site:

In the film, Yong-su (played by Cha In-pyo), a North Korean living in a mining village in Hamgyeong Province, crosses the northern border with China to get food and medicine for his ailing wife, only to find himself on the run. His 11-year-old son (Shin Myeong-cheol) also risks his life to trace his father in China.

Now, Korea loves melodrama -- I'm not going to theorize on why, but let's just say this, is a TYPICAL, not an exceptional Music video:



Anyway, because of this propensity toward bombast, my expectations weren't TOO high, heading into Crossing, because I knew the topic ran risk of veering wildly into melodrama, but it managed to treat its subject with at least a modicum of grace. This was good. Even when we saw that Yong-su has a dog, and everybody who knows Korea thought, "Heh. This is Korea. . . I know what's gonna happen to that dog". . . they managed to treat Whitey's mysterious disappearance as a sad surrender to poverty, without overdoing it until it became a punchline.

As with most sad movies, the first thing they do is show you some people living a basically happy life, and you see enough of them to decide you like them, and want good things to happen to them, before bad things start happening to them (cf Dancer in the Dark). In reading up for this post, I learned here that the film was written after extensive interviews with North Korean defectors.

At first, I was a bit cynical, thinking things like, "I like this character too much. . . she's definitely going to die." But, when bad things start to happen, the filmmakers mostly told the story, and didn't spend TOO much time telling viewers how to feel. Mom coughs. Later, she passes out during the town meeting. Turns out she's pregnant and has tuberculosis from malnutrition. Medicine for pregnant women with TB is hard to come by in North Korea, but Yongsu, the father, has a friend who is a trader bribing his way back and forth to China, who is also surreptitiously handing out bibles. Then other bad stuff happens, and some more bad stuff, until Yong-su has to go into China himself to try and get medicine. . . and then he'll come right back! But then other stuff happens, so that he might not be able to come back, and his son has some bad stuff happen to him (no more spoilers today!) and needs to cross into China to try and find his father. My favourite character was Misun, the cute daughter of the bible-smuggling trader. We see her at the beginning, and then we meet her again later, and her character arc is one of the sadder ones (though nobody's going to quite out-tragedy Yong-su).

I won't say the film is completely without melodrama: I'm sure one entire round of auditions for the actor who plays Joon (the son) consisted of nothing more than, "OK. I'm gonna point a camera at you, and I want you to cry convincingly, and say these words while you're crying". . . but the use of slow-motion and echoing shouts of despair as the world falls silent didn't slide into overkill, nor did the silent montages of "remembering the happier times," and frankly, the movie was touching, and the ending was very appropriate. The acting, too, was well done, and the two children especially impressed me, given that making bad things happen to children in a movie is the fastest way to generate pathos, but also runs the greatest risk of slipping into bathos (mawkishness), but the kids never quite went too far, nor did the filmmakers.

There are a few sad conversations about heaven prompted by the missionary character and his daughter: "a place where I won't be hungry?" "I hope they have still rain there" and by the end of the movie, heaven's function is mostly just to be the place where certain characters can finally see. . . certain other characters. . . again, if ever. In fact, that seems to be what's playing behind the ending credits: all the characters in the movie are eating and playing by a riverside, including the ones who wouldn't be able to attend an earthly riverside picnic. There's also one angry speech asking, "Why does Jesus only help the South? Is God's help also only for the rich?" Those questions remained unanswered in the film, and yeah, the hope of heaven is mentioned, but in the face of thousands of starving people who need FOOD, too much talk of heaven would become problematic, and the filmmakers were wise not to dwell on it.

But this is the puzzling thing:

I'm going to talk about this movie in my classes next week, and see how the response is: so far, the times I've sent out feelers, most South Koreans seem not to really want to see this movie. Too much of a downer.

I'm of two minds here:

In one way, I think South Koreans kind of think of North Korea the way one might think of a deadbeet brother who, every time you send him a christmas card, writes back asking if he can borrow money, or insults your kids. Yeah, he's family, but it's too frustrating, costly, and draining to expend mental energy toward him. I've sensed this kind of dissociation toward the North, even just in the time since I've come here, people in the south feel more ambivalent, less connected, with the north. Less willing to help. And yeah, if your brother either insults you or ends up costing you money every time you see him, wouldn't YOU dissociate yourself, too?

on the other hand, I'm also outraged that Koreans can be so complacent about SUCH a desperate situation, so close, to people who are their great-uncles and second-cousins. It's only by a trick of geography that South Koreans were lucky enough to be here instead of there when the Military Demarcation Line was drawn. . . how can you write off your own kin? In my darker moments, I think that South Korea's apathetic attitude toward what's happening in the North (other than insofar as Kim Jong-il might have weapons that threaten the south) is the ultimate refutation of Koreans' claim to have that mystical "jung" -- some deep connection between humans that only Koreans could experience or understand. How could you claim "jung" -- some deep, humanizing connection between Koreans, when many of your own are starving to death and eating dirt just to remember the feeling of having something in their stomachs, and you won't even go to a damn movie about it (prefer watching schmaltzy music videos where the tragedy's fictional, I guess)? The filmmakers had a hell of a time even finding funding for their movie, because South Koreans keep NK at SUCH an arm's length. Investors didn't think the film would make any money. No jung, gentle readers. No urgency? No feeling of need to have this story told? No jung.


It's not often I feel it quite THAT strongly, but those are the two extremes.

But the fact is, every Korean I've mentioned this movie to so far has been somewhere from passively reluctant to actively resistant to seeing it, and Girlfriendoseyo also told me that most Koreans probably WON'T see it, because they don't like to think about North Korea (which, in my mind, is EXACTLY why every Korean SHOULD see this film.)


And that's the puzzle of North Korea.

(PS: articles from 2001 and 2003 on human flesh for sale in North Korea's black market.)




(all photos from google images)




(Update: thanks, Joshing Gnome, for the link and the kind write-up)
(Update 2: after bringing "Crossing" into my conversation classes this morning, it's been about a 50/50 split between students who want to see the movie and ones who won't. Had to mention it, for the sake of fairness and full disclosure.)

Some videos and no commentary whatsoever.

Freddie Mercury

Another One Bites the Dust

This completely unrelated Korean ad was on approximately every five seconds in 2006.
Every single student I had could sing the song.


(must. . . not. . . make. . . commentary)

Elton John

I'm Still Standing

Sunkist Lemonade: a Korean ad that really sticks in your head.



Liberace, baby! (sweet mercy I wanted to post this one, but embedding was disabled)


Barrel Polka

Finally, the topper: these are members of the big-time Korean pop-bands Super Junior and Girls' Generation.


finally, in another completely unrelated link, Korea Beat, debunking a widespread (though not as widespread as before) myth some foreigners are told about Korea.

How important is Education to Koreans, Roboseyo? (my emphasis added)

This important. From the front page of the International Herald Tribune.

An article about a Korean "Cram School" - a school entirely focused on preparing for the University Entrance Exams.

Here, the students are denied everyday teenage items in South Korea. No cellphones, no fashion magazines, no TV, no Internet, no game machines.

Dating, going to concerts, wearing earrings, getting manicures, or simply acting their age - all these are suspended because they are deemed distracting for an overriding goal. Instead, the students cram from 6:30 a.m. to past midnight, seven days a week, in a campus kilometers away from the nearest public transportation, to clear one hurdle that can determine their future - the national college entrance exam.

South Koreans compare their obsessive desire to get their children enrolled in top-notch universities to "a war."

...School background looms large in the life of a South Korean. What university people attend in their 20s can determine their position and salary in their 50s. Top-tier schools like Seoul National, Yonsei and Korea Universities hardly register in the global lists of top schools, but at home, their diplomas pass as a status symbol, a badge of pride both for the students and their parents. On exam day, mothers pray at churches or outside the exam halls.

The life of a South Korean student, from kindergarten to high school, is shaped largely by the quest of doing well in standardized examinations to enter a choice university. That system is often credited with fueling the nation's economic success but is also widely criticized.

When massive anti-government protests shook South Korea in recent weeks, first over President Lee Myung Bak's agreement to import U.S. beef and later over his other policies, many of the demonstrators were teenagers protesting the pressure-cooker conditions at school. Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents.

Lee's trouble started when people accused him of filling many top government posts with people who have ties with his alma mater, Korea University. Still, when he replaced his entire presidential staff this month, all but one of his 10 senior secretaries were graduates from the nation's three best-known universities. When the news media report government appointments, they always highlight the officials' school backgrounds.

It is no surprise that most students in this cram school say they enrolled voluntarily.

(my emphasis added)

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

Among students between 10 and 19, suicide is the second most common cause of death after traffic accidents

(my emphasis added)

sigh.