I took these cute pictures of a couple kissing on one of the Cheonggyecheon bridges, while I was out with my buddy taking video of the Christmas lights last week. It took some color altering to actually see the couple, but I still think they're nice photos.
The Sunday before Christmas, Wifeoseyo and I went down to the Express Bus Terminal Station, where lines 3, 7, and 9 meet.
Most of the year, in this underground area, there are tons and tons of live plants you can buy, which is great. However, during Christmas, the underground shopping center that's below the street at the south end of Gosok (Express Bus Terminal) station, near the entrance to Shinsegye Department Store.
Wifeoseyo and I went down there, and we found everything from lovely to tacky (mostly the latter) and a huge variety of things. We found scented candles that smelled like pine and apple/cinammon. We found a christmas tree and strings of lights and wreaths and garlands. We got some christmas tree ornaments and pipe cleaner snowflakes to hang on the walls. In general, what you find at the bus terminal shopping center is a little less... um... K-mart... than what you find in Namdaemun.
And readers, it wasn't a whole heck of a lot, but it made the house look a little like Christmas. And that was important to us this year. And the scented candles even made it smell like Christmas this year, and that was nice, too.
And for your benefit, here are the two places I've found Christmas Decorations in Seoul. If you know of another one, let me know, and send me a location on google maps, and I'll totally add it.
"I'll be seeing my dad,
my brother and sisters, my gran and my mum
they'll be drinking white wine in the sun" full (lovely) lyrics: well-written and full of humor, assonance, internal rhyme, and poetry. Critical of organized religion... but gets right to the heart of why you don't have to be religious to love Christmas.
White Wine in the Sun, by Tim Minchin
And I'll say, writing songs that pretty is the only way I can forgive his teased, mad-scientist/electroshock mullet.I think this song is an eloquent defense of an atheist's Christmas: not everybody subscribes to the various religions that have their eight crazy nights, etc., at the time of the Midwinter Festival (worst name I've heard so far), but this song is a lovely affirmation of the one thing shared by almost all the different holiday season celebrations: getting together with the family.
Now, coming from a religious family, the sacred part of Christmas is important to me: while I think "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" bumper stickers are tacky, and A Charlie Brown Christmas is preachy, it was still important for me to catch the Christmas Mass at Myeongdong Cathedral with Wifeoseyo, to hear their choir sing a bit of Handel's Messiah, and to stand outside, and check out the nativity scene in the bitter cold. No pictures, because it was literally too cold for my camera to work, but the Nativity outside Myeongdong Cathedral doesn't put the baby Jesus in the manger until Christmas morning.
Folks, Korea's my home... but the time it feels least like home is during Christmas, when I'm far away from my family, and when Christmas is celebrated very differently.
Now, I recognize, as Bobster stated in the comments last time I bellyached about this, that I don't really have much right to complain, when I'm choosing to be here, and I don't really have a say in how Korea does Christmas... I've written before about the fact nobody owns a culture, and will expand on that soon, in response to a few comments I've had recently: Koreans are in the wrong to complain about Japanese Kimuchi or a Turkish family owning a Korean restaurant in Edmonton that makes more money than the Korean-owned one, but when the shoe's on the other foot, and Korean Christmas is about couples and ice cream cake instead of families and turkey, we are also wrong to get in a snit.
That's because there's the emotional issue of not feeling at home in this kind of christmas, and the logical issue of recognizing that it's not really my place to tell Korea how to celebrate Christmas. But as homesickness goes, it's OK when the emotional issue doesn't jibe with the logical conclusion, because this is my Christmas, darnit! So yeah, that's how I feel... and I'm glad people close to me understand and care how I feel, but I wouldn't write a letter to City Hall or the Chosun Ilbo telling all of Korea "You're doin' it wrong!" and if I did, I'd ripely deserve the middle finger and the "Yankee go home" I'd get in reply.
I raised this point because: for Christmas to feel like Christmas to me, I have to be more intentional than I had to back in Canada, because the elements that make me feel Christmassy are not the same elements that are emphasized in Korea's Christmas celebration. In Canada, people get eggnog foisted upon them so often we're happy it'll be a year before we have to smell it again... but here in Korea, you have to head down to Itaewon to that place selling illegal goods smuggled off the army base just to taste it. Same for turkey stuffing. Meanwhile, silly hats and ice cream cakes and "Last Christmas" by Wham! and all its remakes are practically clogging the air and making it hard to walk in a straight line.
So here are the things that make ME feel like Christmas:
1. The sacred Christmas carols (The First Noel, Silent Night, Hark The Herald, O Come Immanuel, Joy to the World, for starters)
2. Handel's Messiah
3. Something religious - church, a carol sing, something.
4. Turkey Dinner. With STUFFING.
5. (new addition:) Spiced Wine
6. Being around my favorite people, preferably in groups.
7. Phoning the family that's not immediately nearby
8. A Christmas Tree
9. Flashing Christmas lights
10. Presents
11. It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, How The Grinch Stole Christmas (cartoon)
12. Candles
And I've been working hard to try and check as many of those boxes as I could during this holiday seasons. I'm happy to say I did. No, I didn't have a huge Christmas dinner party like I did last year with my nemesis Dan Gray, but Wifeoseyo was wonderfully supportive this year in seeing to it that we touched on as many of those elements as we could, which was nice, seeing as we have to forge out a Christmas tradition of our own, now that we're married. It was a fine first Christmas together.
I'll write a few posts this week about the varying degrees of success I had tracking down each of these things.
3. If you really want to make Christmas mean something for somebody, you need to learn about Kiva.org... maybe you've heard about microfinance before -- mini-loans for people who need just a little kick to get themselves going. Kiva is a place where you can choose who you sponsor, you can loan small increments toward the goals people need, and you can take the money that gets paid back once the loans are paid back, and put it back into the microfinance system, and sponsor someone else.
I went to Gwanghwamun, City Hall, Lotte Department Store, and Shinsegye Department Store, and took some film of the Christmas lights on display there.
Unfortunately, the new video camera stores photos in a format that is incompatible with iPhoto. Yep. That's what I said. Good ol' Mr. Steve Jobs has created some of the best video and photo editing, organizing and storing programs out there, that are easy to use and all... and then picked a few arbitrary video and photo formats that won't work with them.
Yeah, I can buy the decoder program... but I'm pretty choked that I have to, especially when it's a flippin' CANON video camera - we're not talking about some obscure company from Whoknowswherezystan. Get with the stinking program, Mr. Jobs.
Anyway, without photos, but WITH video (already bought THAT converter)...I give you Christmas lights, 2010.
Last Christmas, Wifeoseyo and I stopped at a rest stop on our way to Jeollanamdo, and spotted a pair of fellas who Wifeoseyo identified as 1980s popstars, singing in front of a donation bucket, raising money for goodwill.
Yesterday, while walking by the Chunggyecheon in Downtown Seoul, I wandered around and heard somebody playing a Sarah Brightman CD... and then turned around, and saw that it was a lady singing it, right there in front of me.
So I don't know if this lady's one of Korea's professional popera singers or not, but her voice is lovely, and she sings this song effortlessly, and buddy, after stomping around downtown for hours yesterday to take video about the light shows in downtown Seoul... it was a welcome reprieve from the clanging bells.
Listen. Enjoy. It was way better live, as it always is. And if you recognize the voice, or the be-shadowed face, let me know who it is in the comments.
I was also with my buddy in almost the same place (you can hear my voice at the end of the clip) to spot a traditional Korean marching band playing "jingle bells". A.We.Some.
say what you want about the song from... the boat movie... Celine Dion got her christmas music right.
Christmas is the time when homesickness cuts deepest, not just for me, but for a lot of expats -- the only way to get across how big a deal Christmas is to North Americans (can't speak for the rest) is to ask your Korean friends to imagine Seollal, Chuseok, and Childrens' Day, all on one day.
Christmas in Korea is different - way different - than back home. I talk about that here (from last year, responding to Brian in JND's response to Korea's "Christmas of Dumb Hats")
Most of my opinions haven't changed much since last year...
[Some say] we have to respect the ways other cultures observe holidays, and if Korea wants to create a commercial monstrosity with stupid hats, that's their prerogative, and the other side [says], "it's all well and good to be a cultural relativist, but it's still jarring and maybe sad to see Christmas observed in a way that is so distant from the warm family holiday we remember from our childhood" (or even from the Christmas we see in movies like A Christmas Story, It's A Wonderful Life, and Love Actually... which is huge in Korea, maybe partly because it reinforces that Christmas is a couple holiday to Koreans.
What I'll say is this: I was never a big fan of commercial Christmas anywhere...but the fact that Christmas is not only mostly divorced from the old religious roots (didn't see a single nativity scene in two nights of walking around, haven't heard more than a few sacred carols on the Christmas music playlists in Korean shops), but ALSO divorced from the Christmas we remember from back home -- as far and away the number one family holiday of the year -- is jarring, and it sharpens the twinge of homesickness, or the sting of culture shock, for most of the month of December, for many of us. I always miss my family more at Christmas, and my students and Korean friends don't get that unless I ask how they'd feel spending Chuseok away from home, in a place where nobody knows what shikke or songpyun is..."
Now, given that the entire Christmas symbology is here, but it's used differently, maybe it's not accurate to ask my Korean friends to imagine Chuseok alone in a place where nobody knows what shikke or songpyun are... maybe a more accurage analogy is to imaging having Chuseok alone in a place where shikke is used exclusively as a mixer for rum drinks, and songpyeon is made of popcorn balls, which people throw at the boy or girl they like, in a holiday courtship ritual.
In previous Christmases, I've come across really cynical or dismissive of Christmas in Korea... but the fact is, every year I try hard to have some kind of Christmassy experience. I seek out friends, and festivals, and do sappy things, and hunt after the foods I eat for Christmas in Canada. This year, it's been particularly poignant, because 1. Wifeoseyo only gets the weekend off - nothing extra - and 2. it's my first Christmas with wifeoseyo, so I DO have family in Korea... (but Christmas will still always be an afterthought to most of them).
but on Saturday we went down to Goseok Terminal (subway lines 3, 6 and 9, if I remember correctly), where there are scads of Christmas decoration shops, and bought some candles, and shiny things, and hanging things, and a cute little tree. So the house looks like Christmas now. At least a little.
And we also got some ingredients, and I made my first Gluhwein today, as I experiment with it this week, to try and offer up something good for some friends this weekend.
Initial result: I'm gonna score it a 5/10. Hopefully I can get this going before friends come over.
I'll post more of the results from my gluhwein experiments over the course of the week.
So I just read about the Band Aid recording of "Do They Know it's Christmas" and watched the video..
it was all recorded in one night, and you're free to your opinion on the song (I'm not wild about it) but...
1. so much feathered hair
2. so many famous singers without stage makeup, in a badly lit studio
3. a fun game of spot the '80s star (looking awful)
4. a fun game of "do you remember who that is?" - exacerbated by the fact many of these singers aren't there intheir usual band costumes, or with their bandmates.
so...
Do They Know it's Christmas?
more of my rantings on Christmas music, with links to the rest of my christmas rantings, here.
and if there were a new "Band Aid" recording, organized by Oprah Winfrey (who else would have the pull to get ANY band involved), who would be in YOUR starting lineup?
Or in the words of the young lady I stood next to at the bus stop, "It's cold. It's cold. It's cold. Oh! It's cold. It's cold. It's cold. It's cold. It's cold."
Cold is funny in Roboseyoland, though, for a few reasons. First of all, communication with Wifeoseyo about cold is very entertaining.
An analogy: my grandmother will notice if you drop a single jalapeno into a six person meal's worth of spaghetti sauce. And imagine her eating something, and saying, "Say, this is really, really spicy! It's way too spicy for me."
Then, imagine my (imaginary) friend Vijay, who grew up in the spiciest province of India, raised on Mama "Five Days of Afterburn" Sen's five alarm curry. He takes a spoonful of something, and says, "Yeah, this is a bit hot, I guess."
Well, my grandmother going, "This is way, way, way too hot for me," is a about like Wifeoseyo saying, "Roboseyo," (she actually calls me that), "Dress up really warm! It's going to be really really cold today! You better be ready!"
And Vijay going, "It's kinda spicy," is like me going, "Yeah, it's kinda cool today," when Wifeoseyo asks about the weather.
This leads to funny miscommunications, and the development of the 140/70 rule: When she says it's cold, she describes it as being 140% as cold as it actually is. When I say it's cold, she understands that I'm understating the weather at about 70%.
The funniest thing was this weekend, when the inlaws were in town, mom-in-law-oseyo told me it would be cold... and overrated the cold at exactly the same rate Wifeoseyo does.
And despite this, Wifeoseyo underdresses for the cold. But this is an opportunity in disguise for me:
Roboseyo's Favorite Thing About Korean Winter #1:
(This message is for the guys:) You see, gentlemen, if you're dating a Korean lady, you should know there's a Korean saying that a fashionable woman is cold in the winter... and this works to your advantage, because chivalry is not dead in Korea. Just keep an extra pair of gloves in your pockets all winter. And wear a scarf you don't actually need when you meet her, so that you can pull it off and give it to her.
Wifeoseyo eats it up every time. It's one of my best tricks. That and cooking breakfast.
Chivalry. Korea. Not dead. Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth I, and Hamlet Cigars. The stuff you find on Youtube with the right keywords.
But yeah. Chivalry is not dead here.
Roboseyo's Favorite Thing About Winter #2:
Ondol. Heated floors are glorious.
Roboseyo's Favorite Thing About Winter #3:
Balgan Naebok
(Rabbit Trail 1)
My brother lives in a place so cold that the Wal Mart parking lot has an electric outlet at every parking space so that you can plug in your car's block heater while you're shopping, and it's so cold there, that during the dead of winter, you need to.
But Canadians aren't actually tougher than others: we don't have special cold-repellent skin like polar bears or tauntauns (see below). We just know how to dress for the cold.
Some Koreans also dress for the cold: the long underwear section in Korea is awesome, because it's so egregiously unfashionable: it's called "bbalgan naebok" (빨간내복) or "red under clothes"
But good luck finding someone under 40 wearing it.
In Edmonton, they don't say "A fashionable lady is cold," just "It's freezing out dere, eh? Bundle up, dumbass." I grew up in Southern Ontario, with weather like Michigan, or Buffalo, for you United Stonians.
(image: a tauntaun. That'll cover my nerd quota for the week.)
(Rabbit Trail 2)
Since you asked, here are my three pieces of advice for managing the cold:
1. Head Feet Hands. If your head is warm, your feet are warm and dry, and your hands are warm, you'll be OK in the end. If your head is bare, your jacket can be warm enough to collect pit-stains, and you still won't feel warm. Meanwhile, cold feet = unhappy Roboseyo.
2. Layers. If you overdress, and sweat in your winter clothes, it's going to end badly. Layer, and use zippers, so you can tie things around your waist, unzip things, zip things up, and pile on and undo layers, so that you're never over-chilled, nor over-warm. Include at least one layer that is wind resistant. Wool is warm, but porous.
Roboseyo's Favorite Thing About Winter in Korea #3:
3. These things.
Neck buffs. See, sometimes I have to give my scarf to Wifeoseyo. I'm OK with that. Because neck buffs are so fantastically multipurpose, I can keep warm whatever part has been exposed.
Plus, they pack away tiny into your pocket, which is a total boon for a dude who likes giving his wife his winter gear. They're also machine washable, unlike gloves with that thinsulate crap in them. Layers are WAY better than extra insulation. And in the summer, they breathe enough to be decent sun protection, too.
Doubleplus, these buffs are the ultimate layering aid. On top of, or below the scarf, the hat, or whatever else you've got, they trap all kinds of heat, despite being small and thin. Pull them over your mouth or under your chin. I always have one or two of these things on me, and I swear by them.
You can find them at most hiking goods stores: I just got one in Namdaemun. If you look around carefully, you can find quality ones for 18000 to 25000 won, or you can get the cheapie ones for 5000 won, and the cheapos are just as good for layering. Another good place to find them is biking stores: moped and scooter bikers are exposed to the elements, and wear them. http://www.guideschoice.com/scripts/prodview.asp?idproduct=834
Roboseyo's Favorite Thing About Winter in Korea #4:
Ten Magazine is running a huge giveaway where readers can vote on who gets the prizes: 30 million won in publicity and prizes are up for grabs in the big contest, and readers can go here to vote on who they think is most worthy.
So I'm a metal-mouth for a few months. Got my implements installed last month, and will have these for three or four months, depending on how long that stubborn left incisor takes to drop, and for that cranky bottom row to line up like soldiers. I had those invisible plasticky ones for a while, and they worked for the bigger stuff, but for the final detail work, I'm going to need wire braces for the last few months to get the details worked out.
As you can see, other than the, you know, wires, things are looking a lot more even than they used to be: Right Side:
Left Side:
I've made a lot of progress already...
On the other hand... eating with braces is a pain in the butt. I'm sure lots of my readers have experienced this for themselves, but I'm going through it now.
Foods that work with braces:
jajangmyeon
seolleongtang
muffins
kalguksu
dumplings
meat... in small bites
spinach
dubu (tofu)-based foods
eggs
kimbap (eaten slowly)
noodle dishes in general
shrimp
Edible, but needs cleaning afterwards:
anything with rice.
that is, most Korean food.
Foods that don't work with braces:
any ddeok and variations thereof
fish with bones
crunchy vegetable matter (kimchi, gakdukki)
nuts
artisan breads with tough crusts
fried stuff (especially deep-friend stuff)
On the bright side, I'm losing weight, because instead of eating until I'm full, I've been eating until I'm tired of trying to eat around my braces.
So that's what's up in Roboseyo-ville.
I've got some things I need to take care of, and I got a really kind e-mail from a loyal reader who's been concerned about the drop-off in posting lately (thanks! sincerely, thanks), and I promise, this is not the end of the Roboseyo we know, and once I've taken care of things, I'll be back in full swing.
But in the meantime... got in my application to the Korean Studies program I want to go to, and did a bunch of other stuff that'll come out once I start catching up on my back-blog.
See you again soon, Readers. Thanks for your loyalty.
December 4 is World AIDS Day. Starting at 9PM, in Hongdae, at Ting Tings, Club TA, Club FF and DGBD, you can attend parties at all four spots for a 15000 won cover. All the cover fees go to Hillcrest AIDS center in South Africa.
You can learn more at the Facebook event page linked above, or at the Rubber Soul Blog, here: http://rubbersoulevents.com.
So Captain Kimchi himself, my buddy Joe, had a baby... well, his wife had a baby, not long ago.
I wanted to send out a huge congratulations to him: I'm sure he's busy as all-get-out right now, but he's been posting pictures of the new baby girl, Ji-an, on Facebook and his website.
He also has an interesting post about Korean post-partum traditions: a pair of old coworkers of mine had a baby while in Korea, and they reported that the pregnancy and childbirth advice they got from their Korean friends was almost exactly the opposite of the advice they got from their phone calls back home. Their conclusion was that you should do whatever the heck your body tells you to do, as long as you frequently check in with a doctor you trust.
I can't say TOO much about it until the show airs... but a few mondays ago I stayed up really late, to film an episode of "SBS Running Man" run by Yoo Jae-seok, Korea's top TV show host.
So at 5:20 today, if you're in Korea, turn on the TV, and watch SBS's "Running man" to see what I'm on about.
I met Nikhun... nice, very very nice, very likeable guy. Even though the gesture he's making to the camera is the british equivalent to the middle finger, I'm sure it's unintentional...
Some of the other stars...
And the man himself, Korea's top TV host, Yu Jaeseok.
And also K-blog celebrities Simon and Martina. I kept photo-bombing them when they tried to take video. Can't wait to see the results.
See you (or at least you'll see me) at 5:20. Or thereabouts.
This is a little after the fact, but something had to be said.
Oh come on Hyori. I like Lee Hyori (이효리). What's not to like? She's cute, she's a super-de-duperstar in Korea, she's really fun in her TV appearances. She's great, right? Plus, my "fetish bingo" post about her is one of my most popular posts ever (and the one where I most often have to clean up trolls' comments)
She makes awesome videos and super-fun songs like U-Go-Girl, which is one of my favorite K-pop videos, mostly because Hyori actually seems like she's having fun when she dances, while a lot of the popstars out there seem like they're just playing a role, or going through the paces their trainers taught them (especially live: they're just not having fun. The farther down the alphabet scale (b-list stars, c-list stars) the worse it is).
She's great, right? Absolutely... except...
she was on CNN.go on November 11.
and here's what she says, according to the subtitles, starting at: 0.25 or so.
Seoul is a city with a long history. There are two sides. Many traces of traditional things on one hand...but it is a well-planned city where you can also see many modern designs. Koreans are racially homogeneous. It's always been about one culture and one ethnicity. So we have a strong solidarity above anything else. And there is the emotional attachment that Koreans call "jeong" which relates to the brotherhood of the race. This "jeong" is what bonds us tightly and makes us think of one another as a single family.
So... she gets a chance to introduce Korea to the world.
And she chooses to introduce the one-blood myth as the thing that will make people decide Korea's awesome? I mean, really? "The best thing about us is that YOU can NEVER be a part of our club! It's nothing you did; you were just born wrong. Isn't that great! Come visit Korea tomorrow!"
As a non-ethnic Korean who plans to live the better part of my working life in Korea, I'm really annoyed by this one-blood stuff. Really annoyed. Because while there are many ways to define what Korean society is and isn't, it's one of the few that draws a circle in which I will always be an outsider, no matter how well I speak the language, no matter how dutifully I perform the jesa and the other rites, no matter how many little Koreans (correction: half-Koreans) I bring into the world. It was a useful myth to generate identity during the Japanese occupation, as well as to help Koreans sign onto Park Chung-hee's development plans... but now that non-Koreans living in Korea have topped the one million mark, and in light of the fact there's NO WAY Korea could have been invaded two thousand times (as it's told) without a little bit of invader DNA mixing into the pure Korean gene pool (p.s.: why is it called the "mongol spot" if Korean DNA is pure? Shouldn't it be called the Korean spot?)...can we please retire the one-blood myth?
"We have a strong solidarity above anything else" -- really? Because if the one blood thing is true, then North Korea's gotta be included in that solidarity, but most accounts of North Korean refugees don't seem to support that ideal solidarity. And ask ten South Koreans if they would wish for North and South Korea to be reunified tomorrow, and watch all the backpedaling and equivocations you start to hear. "It'll be expensive. It was really hard for Germany. I don't think our cultures are the same anymore. Maybe if other countries provided a LOT of aid... Well, on second thought let's not go to Camelot: it is a silly place."
I'm sorry, but I call bullshit on any one-blood solidarity talk as long as 400 000 South Koreans will come out for a U.S. Beef protest, without seeing at least double that coming out for every protest demanding accountability for North Korea, and the fact they are still operating concentration camps to suppress their own people...(or, in Hyori's one-blood view, "our brothers and sisters"). Didn't hear a lot of "let's reach out to our brothers and sisters" rhetoric anywhere after North Korea shelled that island last week. (More of my posts about North Korea)
And then, just in case we hadn't already gotten the message that Koreans are way more specialer than others, so we should visit Korea and hope to become cooler by association (but really, that won't work, because we have the wrong blood, so we can't be part of the club... but I guess we should still visit Korea to gaze longingly at the cool insiders)... she trots out jung.
Has she updated her views on Korea since 1983? And is this really what she thinks will win the esteem of CNN.GO viewers for Korea?
Now Jung is an interesting idea - my favorite piece on Jung is from The Joshing Gnome, who wrote "What is Jung and how can we kill it" (part 1part 2part 3part 4part 5) in 2008: one of my favorite pieces of K-blogging, and so good I hope he tells me before he ever takes his website offline, so I can copy his series and host it on my page, wherever that is.
Basically, Jung is a feeling of warmth, affection and intimacy between two people. It can come out of a lot of things -- it's been used as the reason split-up couples get back together (they're just used to being around each other), it can be used to describe the feeling of kinship that rivals eventually develop, and it can also be used to describe that feeling when you feel like you've been old friends with someone, even though you've only just met them, or the affection by which two old friends can pick up exactly where they left off, even though they haven't seen each other in twelve years. It's the applicable word for the way you can take one group of five people, put them in a room together for an hour, and they're still strangers, and you can take another group of five people, put them in the same room, under the same conditions, and they'll come out friends for life (cf: The Breakfast Club). Group B has jung. The Breakfast Club had jung (and not a Korean in the lot of them, was there?) Group A doesn't.
Now, because there isn't a word that carries exactly all those nuances in English (or in most languages,) I've been told by Koreans that jung is a uniquely Korean feeling.
I disagree: Jung is simply a uniquely Korean word... but here's another word that doesn't exist in English: "schadenfreude" (feeling happy when something bad happens to someone you hate - for example, the way I felt when I saw this video of Brett Favre)
Now, the fact schadenfreude is a German word doesn't mean that only Germans can feel schadenfreude. Germans aren't the only ones to go "Yeah! Brett Favre is really annoying! That clip was awesome! Maybe this time he'll stay retired!" In fact, when I first learned the word schadenfreude, the feeling I had wasn't one of confusion and lack of understanding; the feeling I had was recognition: "So there IS a word for that!"
And it was the same with "jeong" - I was glad to learn the word, because it's a great, useful word that describes an aspect of human interactions in a clean, simple way. It hits the nail on the head better than any English word I know.
I'm sorry, Hyori, but jeong doesn't relate to the brotherhood of the race, or you have to explain why most of my South Korean friends, as well as South Korean media, are trying to distance themselves from North Korea. It isn't race-based at all, and making it sound like it's tied to Korean blood is ignorant, and wrong. I KNOW jeong isn't race-based, because I've had classes of Korean students who just didn't get along, who filled hours of my life with awkward pauses and silences (and it wasn't because of their English ability: they were all intermediate) they just didn't have jeong. They didn't talk together in Korean either, the night we went out for some beers, in a desperate hope that maybe that would get them talking to each other. If jeong came from being Korean, they should have had it... but they didn't.
(And if Jeong comes from korean blood, will my kids have half-jeong? Does the country we live in while they grow up influence that? What about full-blood Korean international adoptees who can't speak Korean? What about ethnic Koreans in China? Do they have jeong? what about kyopos who can or can't speak the language? What about a missionary kid who grew up in a Korean school and speaks fluently, but has blue eyes? And when does jeong get passed from the (Korean) parents to the (Korean) kids, and can that only happen while physically in Korea, or while using the Korean language? Could a non-Korean kid raised in Korea in a Korean family have jeong?)
And this kind of a description of Korean culture -- laced with undertones of racism and exceptionalism -- is badly miscalculated, if this is how you think viewers of CNN.GO will be convinced to like and admire Korean culture.
I like you a lot, Hyori, but you stepped wrong this time. And I'm calling you out (fourteen days late). And maybe the Hyori fan club is going to fill my comment board up with hate... but I'll just have to deal with that, because Hyori's view of Korean culture is outdated, and just ignorant, and as one of the people who is marginalized by the myths promoted in it, I WILL stand up and object to it.
I like you a lot, Hyori, and any time you want a private English tutor, just call me: we're the same age, you know. But I hate what you said, and the way you think about Korean culture (if this is actually how YOU feel about Korean culture) because you're making me an outsider.
givemesomethingtoread.com (easy to remember), is a great little website: the text version of "TED Talks" - another website everyone who wants the Internet to actually make them smarter, should have on their feed, or as their default page. The topics are varied, chosen from reader submissions, some of the articles are longer - more than a blog post - remember back when we read magazines, and had attention spans? And it's always worth reading - either thought provoking, or compelling, or sometimes even just charming.
Anyway, they have a "Best of 2010" special up, and if you're looking for some great articles, give it a try.
I'm submitting applications to grad schools right now: I want to get into a Korean Studies graduate program, and some of the admissions people might be visiting this blog to see if the blog really is what I say it is...
So from time to time, you'll see this very post on the front page of this blog, in order that any inquisitive readers from the schools where I'm applying can look at some of my more analytical writings.
And if you want to leave a comment under this, and tell them how smrt smart I am, that would be nice, too.
If you are an admissions official from a school where I'm applying, you may look at this "Best of Roboseyo" page to see some of my better, or more interesting posts. There are links to some of my favorite posts on the right sidebar.
Also, here are a few of the more extended pieces I've written. While the writing style is not academic, please consider the content.
Saw a top ten list of "the greatest antiheroes" while rabbit-trailing on the internet today. And I'll let you in on something:
I love anti-heroes. Love love love'em. As you know, an anti-hero is a person who does bad things, but for whatever reason, still has the reader/viewer's sympathy. Think of my current TV obssession: Dexter
(url: http://www.wallpaperez.net/wallpaper/movie/Dexter-Morgan-1574.jpg)
Yeah, he kills people, but he's such an interesting guy!
Now, these days, there are almost TOO many antiheroes - has Vin Diesel ever played anything but anti-heroes? However, I love a likeable bad guy in a film. They're just so interesting to watch. And way more fun than watching perfect, golden boys and girls marching through plots like little, maddening paragons.
Because they always have to make the right choice, they never make any interesting choices.
I don't know exactly where the idea of the Anti-Hero started-- was Odysseus an anti-hero? What about Titus Andronicus? MacBeth definitely was, and his wife even more so. Was it the devil in Paradise Lost? Lord Byron's Childe Harolde? Who knows.
Anyway, this top-ten list of "greatest anti-heroes" was fun to me... it includes Tyler Durden, Cool Hand Luke, Tony Soprano, Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds from "Firefly" and "The Dude" from The Big Lebowski, and a few from TV shows I never watched.
I'm not sure if Malcolm Reynolds is really an anti-hero, though: my favorite line from the whole Firefly series (yeah, I'm a nerd: but I only watched it once through, OK?) was when he said,
"You don't know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you'll be awake. You'll be facing me, and you'll be armed." I think that puts him on hero turf, not anti-hero. But that's just me.
I was a bit surprised at a few omissions on their list as well. Maybe comic book readers didn't catch wind of this list, because Wolverine was nowhere to be seen.
My own favorite anti-heroes? in no particular order:
Tyler Durden (fight club) Batman (Frank Miller/Dark Knight version, not 1960s version: re-watch that show. He's so durn preachy! Here's a website that's collected all the times Batman lectures Robin in the old TV series) Alex DeLarge (clockwork orange) - at the same time, one of the most evil, but also one of the most charming and attractive villans out there. That Kubrick makes us root for him is enough to establish him as one of the greatest film directors out there. That when Alex delivers the final line of the movie, we go "YES! Wait! NO! Wait... huh?" makes Alex a permanent top-fiver on my antihero list. I can't believe there are anti-hero lists that don't include him: my only explanation is that the person who wrote the list hasn't seen A Clockwork Orange. Dexter Morgan (the TV show Dexter. Season four is my favorite so far.)
Pick a Clint Eastwood Character - other than Million Dollar Baby and Bridges of Madison County, has Clint Eastwood played anything but antiheroes? My personal favorite Eastwood Anti-hero is Bill Munny, in Unforgiven. (his best line: see 2:00 of this clip)
Anyway, show me a great anti-hero, and I'll hear you out. Anti-heroes are great.
Tie it into Korea? How's this: One of Korea's best movies ever, Oldboy, features one of the greatest anti-heroes out there, along with a badass yogi, one of the most greek-tragedy-ish, devastating endings, and one of the most novel ideas for torture, I've ever seen.
Plus, the hallway fight scene, which regularly gets listed on "manliest fight scenes ever" and is sometimes the only non-hollywood, or non-English film on the list, because it's just so dang epic.
skip to about a minute into this clip: it's all done in one take, and in case you doubted that our man Oh Dae-su was the baddest of badasses, yes, he fights the second half of the henchmen with a knife sticking out of his back.
Other Korean movies with pretty sweet anti-heroes? Pretty much everything else by Park Chan-wook, along with Oldboy - "Sympathy for Lady Vengance" and "Thirst" come to mind. I'm pretty sure "The Good, The Bad and the Weird" has a good one. No doubt the "gangster" genre is full of them, but I don't know that genre of Korean film very well.
And in case you disagree with me that anti-heroes are more fun than heroes...
