Who Owns A Culture: What do you Mean When you Say Korean Culture is Under Attack?

(all images from the first page of google image results for "Korean culture")
image

Now, the last time I talked about Korean culture, I crossed swords comments with a commenter...

On "Lee Hyori Gets It" we argued a bit about the one blood thing, and I'd like to address a few points raised there.

First, I've figured out why one of my commenters and I have been disagreeing so strongly, and it's a simple reason: our definitions of culture are different.  One of my favorite topics to bring into my old conversation classes was this handout of four opinions, each suggesting a different view on the cultural changes that have come through Korea lately.

For this series, and in general, as I stated in part two: I'm talking about popular culture: culture as a living, organic thing, Korean culture as a description of what and how Koreans produce and consume, not as a set of rules for what and how Koreans SHOULD produce or consume, in order to be "authentic" -- the definition of culture that defines Korea's culture only, or primarily by looking at the past?  That's for archivists and historians.  I'm not talking about Goguryeo, Lee Sunshin, or what kind of kimchi they ate in Gwangju in 2000 BC.  I'm talking about what Korean young people have on their mp3 players, and where they choose to meet their friends.

If the opinion you agree with the most on this handout is #1, we probably aren't going to agree on most points... because our definitions of "culture" are fundamentally different.
How Korean is Korea is Korea Losing Its Culture

Personally, I hold with #3 mostly: culture is a way of describing what people actually do, not outlining what they must do to be "real" Koreans.  Young ladies dying their hair pink is Korean culture, because young Korean ladies are doing it.  Yeah, I cast a wide net... but the net must be cast wide to catch the really interesting and powerful stuff, which always starts on the fringes before it goes mainstream.

Second:  To those who would suggest that Korean culture is under attack, and that this is cause for alarm... basically, chill out.

Is Korean culture under attack?  Here are the instances where it seems that idea comes up (let me know if I'm missing something):
(Korean culture club)

1. Items, artifacts, or pieces of Korean heritage have been plundered or claimed by others.  China claims Goguryeo; France took a bunch of historical Korean documents; Dokdo is OURS, dammit!

2. Foreign elements are invading Korean culture and making Korean culture some weird mix of foreign cultures that is no longer really Korean.  Young ladies are dying their hair pink, Korean singers are imitating American hip-hop, and everybody's wearing blue jeans and mini-skirts and FUBU.

3. People are criticizing or saying bad things about Korea, or Korean cultural items, artifacts, or producers.  Stephen Colbert is making fun of Rain, movie critics are crapping on "The Last Godfather."

4. Korean cultural things are being taken into other countries and changed, so that they are no longer authentically Korean.


Briefly, then:

1. Honestly, historical periods and historical artifacts aren't really my area of specialty, or knowledge.  I don't know the details of Goguryeo, or how China is allegedly "stealing" Goguryeo, or trying to erase it from the history books.  Honestly, I'm not a historian, and I'm not very interested in it, either, because history is dead, unless it's affecting the present.  History is relevant to historians, but other than when historians and demagogues get together to have some textbook protests outside the Japanese or Chinese embassy, it doesn't have much influence on culture the way I defined it above: nobody rearranges the playlist on their ipods, or changes their TV viewing or internet surfing habits, because of it.  If they did, I'd be interested in it again.  I hope France and Japan return those books and documents, but if they don't, the Hallyu doesn't magically vanish: culture doesn't begin and end in a bunch of historical documents, and in my opinion, the greatest relevance that old history has is in explaining phenomena that still happens now. Korea's heritage is not the sum total of Korea's culture, as defined above.  Korea's heritage may well be under attack... a lot of people say it is... but Korea's culture is in no danger at all.  In fact, Korea is now exporting its culture all across Asia, in Hallyu films, dramas, and more recently, music. For the rest, heritage is outside the scope of this series, and outside the scope of my interest, frankly.

(image)

2. Foreign elements are invading Korea. I addressed this at more length in another post, and I'd like to refer you to that.  Basically: complaints about cultural change are usually either coming out of historians who have a backward-looking (past-focused) view of what culture should be, or it's generational, coming from older people who remember how things used to be.  This often boils down to the fact as people age, they miss being the ones who set the culture's agenda, the way they did when they were younger (and their parents complained about them not respecting 'the old way' in the same way they now complain about their kids).  The problem with this one is simply: when do you draw the line of "this is authentic Korea, and this isn't" -- spicy peppers are from the New World, so if we really go back and get historical, spicy food CAN'T be part of Korean culture, because it hasn't been - CAN'T have been part of Korean culture for the entire (5000 year) history of Korea.  Defining "authentic Korea" is just as slippery and problematic as defining Korean culture in all its iterations right now, and "authentic" Korea from the past is either an idealized version of the past (go watch "Welcome to Dongmakgeol), or an idealized version of what one's grandparents remember, even though at that time, culture was changing, fluid, unstable, and affected by other countries' influence too.  All cultures are always changing, just because grandpa doesn't remember it that way doesn't mean it wasn't true back then, too.

3. Critics are saying bad things about Korea.  I discuss this one more in my post "In Which Roboseyo Exhorts Seoul City Not to Get in a Snit About Lonely Planet"  Basically... haters gotta hate, and playas gotta play, and haters gonna hate playas, and when haters hate the playas, that doesn't make the playa stop being a playa: it's actually a validation that the playa's a true playa.  Celebrities know that ANY buzz is good buzz, ANY publicity is good publicity, and Seoul getting named in a list of "Five worst cities" is better than Seoul being ignored.  The biggest players are targets most often, and criticism is actually validation.  If Roger Ebert rips a movie to shreds, it means he at least admired it enough to consider it deserving of an 800 word evisceration: he could have just ignored it, and that would be a real problem, because it would mean the movie wasn't bad, but irrelevant.  Stephen Colbert made fun of Rain... and Rain became more famous.  Wanting Korea to be more famous, but wanting to control HOW people talk about Korea, is wanting to have one's cake and eat it too, and it smacks of inferiority crisis, and the people who crashed Stephen Colbert's website miss the point.

(image - they sing in English. Are they Korean culture or American culture? What about Far East Movement?)

4. Korean things are being stolen and altered, so that they are no longer Korean.  I covered this at length in the last post (a long time ago) in this series, basically coming to the point that nobody owns a culture.  People can produce and consume artifacts in a culture, but nobody can own it.  Historians and archivists can lay a claim on a heritage, and maybe even define it, if they narrow their definition enough, but living culture - culture as it is, and is becoming, is far too slippery and unstable to define, much less to claim.  If Japan is exporting Kimuchi, that means that somebody likes Kimuchi, or it wouldn't be selling.  If Koreans don't like that Japan is exporting Kimuchi, complaining does nothing.  Writing hundreds of e-mails a day "correcting" people doesn't help much either.  What would help is exporting a kimchi that people want to buy more than kimuchi.  Buyers don't care who's right and who's wrong, or who originally invented.  They care about which one fits their personal taste better, or which is cheaper, or which is available at their local supermarket.  Koreans didn't invent cars, cellphones, or TVs, but make some of the world's best of each.  Is America bitching that Korea stole their inventions?  Nah.  (They're worried that foreign students and workforces are outperforming America in some arenas, but upset about stealing inventions? No.  Did India complain when Korea registered Seokguram Grotto as a Unesco World Heritage Site, because the Buddha is from India?  Not that I know of.  Nobody owns the Buddha, cars, cellphones, or rock music.)

As cultural claims go, cultural materials don't observe national borders.  Korea pissed off the Chinese and Taiwanese on a few internet comment boards by trying to register Dragon Boat Racing as a Korean traditional heritage.  [update: this assertion has been well-corrected by Gomushin Girl in the comments]  Korea has a enough of a reputation for claiming that not-Korean things are Korean, that they were even at the butt of a joke about it during the 2008 Olympics.

In the end, there are two sides: there's the emotional side, and the intellectual side, to the issue of cultural ownership and authenticity.  When I brought the article above into my discussion classes, I was startled at how visceral the resentment was, that Japan had tried to steal kimchi from Korea.  It's just a food, right?  Korea's stolen stuff from other cultures and made it their own (read the Metropolitician's take on "Black culture without black people")
(image from the post linked above)

but, again, as when people criticize stuff about Korea, I've got to say that in the big picture of Korea's ascent to becoming a cultural force, the fact people are stealing things from Korean culture (cf: south-asian imitation K-pop groups) doesn't mean Korea needs to get up in arms about copyright infringement (USA didn't get huffy about Korean hembeogeos, did they?  Why would they? The popularity of hembeogeos here is proof positive of USA's cultural reach.)  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery: it means Korean culture is having the kind of influence all those promoters and boosters and kimcheerleaders dreamed it would have.

Awesome!  No, Kogi tacos aren't authentic Korean food: stuff always gets changed in translation... but then, given how slippery and changeable culture is, how could we expect anything else?

So, now that we're back up to speed, I'll be finishing off this series by talking about what should be done with the situation where expats living in Korea come across artifacts of their own home cultures, reinterpreted by Koreans, for Korea.

Vote for me at HiExpat!

Hi Expat, a relatively new Korea-site, which is well on its way to becoming more useful than Dave's for the info, the active job board, and especially the tone, is having a "Best K-Blog" vote.

And I was totally nominated.

So get on over there, readers, and vote for me!  (Only once, though.  Cheaters get disqualified.)

Go to this link.

Ten Things About The Last Godfather: An Expat in Korea's Movie Review

So, after ripping director Shim Hyung-rae's last major feature-film, D-Wars, or Dragon Wars, on my blog, and taking another shot this week, it's fair to give him a shot at redemption.

Disclosure: I didn't pay for these tickets: I got them through Cynthia, the head don of Nanoomi.net. She's awesome. She has a small face.

Now, Shim Hyung-rae cut his teeth in the comedy genre, which might partly explain why D-Wars was so bad. Maybe. Then again, if D-wars becomes a cult classic - a Plan 9 from Outer Space with high production values, maybe it deserves it, in the "so bad it's good" way. never been a fan of that myself.  Wait  minute... I like zombie movies.  Sure I am! - but usually not with comedies.

So Mr. Shim has made "The Last Godfather" - a gangster flick about Harvey Keitel doing an impression of Marlon Brando's Vito Corleone trying to hand his mob family over to a fat, Korean version of Lloyd Christmas.

(image source)

The character is named Yonggu, who was a popular comical character on Korean television back when people my age were kids.  That, of course, will be lost on non-Korean audiences -- think of him as Korea's Mr. Bean.  Broad, physical comedy, kind of dumb - the premise of this movie, to Koreans, would be about like a movie called "Mr. Bean Joins the Mafia" to Brits (but in a language other than English, because The Last Godfather isn't in the native language of most of Yonggu's fans).

Here's Yonggu in a TV commercial, from back when he was popular in Korea, I guess.

I watched Dragon Wars, and as I said, it kinda sucked.  Frankly, it was a great method of expectation management: my expectations were about as low as they are when I head into a Nicolas Cage movie I've heard nothing about (funny video about that).

Rather than give you a full-on 4000 word prose-down, as I am wont to do, here are ten things about Shim Hyung-rae's The Last Godfather.  Spoilers ahead.

1. It's not a movie for people like me  I wasn't the movie's main audience.  If you're a fan of Gangster movies by way of Goodfellas, The Godfather, and Donnie Brasco, don't see this movie.  If you're a fan of screwball comedies, and like stuff like stinky feet jokes, some bits about baseball bats, and people doing funny walks; if you believe bird noises is a perfectly good sound effect for demonstrating just how hard somebody got hit on the head, you might like this movie. More on the movie's audience later.

2. It's not two hours of kimcheerleading  To the movie's, and Mr. Shim's credit, this movie didn't come across at all as another attempt to win the world over to Korean culture.  It wasn't draped in a Korean flag the way Dragon Wars was, Arirang didn't play at the end, nor did a paragraph about how great Mr. Shim is (as did at the end of D-wars, in Korea) and that's good: the naked ambition of D-Wars, given how bad as it was, raised it from simply a poor movie to a vainglorious farce.  Yeah, the Wonder Girls appear in one scene of this film, but the whole movie doesn't come across as a miscalculated attempt to win the world (and especially america) over to Korean culture.  They weren't sneaking Janggu's into scenes for the sake of promoting "Brand Korea:" Mr. Shim is just trying to make a movie; not to promote Korea to us under the guise of presenting us with a movie.

3. Good thing it isn't, because that would reflect poorly on Korea It's a good thing this movie wasn't another attempt to introduce Korea and Korean culture to the world, because the only Korean character in the movie was a buffoon of the highest order, and if he were presented as a representative of the culture, it would have been extremely insulting and trivializing to Korea; it would also have shattered the suspension of disbelief required to believe a guy could grow to the age of "Yonggu" and still be so dumb and unreflective.  It's good the movie didn't go there.

4. There're a lot of cliches, stereotypes and silliness to wade through The best way to enjoy this movie is by doing these two things:  1. count the cliches - particularly those common to gangster movies (fugeddaboutit; people carrying baguettes in paper grocery bags; tommy guns; pinstripe suits and wide-brimmed hats; very fat people with Italian accents; New York Italian stereotypes).  and slapstick comedy tropes  (things falling on people's heads, farts, round cartoon bombs with sparking fuses, people who get blown up appearing in the next scene with their clothes and faces blackened, but no injuries to their bodies, fat people using belly bumps during fights).  2.  Imagine it's animated by Warner Brothers (the people who did Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner, Daffy Duck et. al.) - the way the action is done and the gags are delivered is more reminiscent of these cartoons, or the old silent films, than the kind of comedy you see in movies today.  Or imagine it in black and white: during one of the closing scenes, Mr. Shim is seen wearing short pants and oversized shoes, carrying suitcases in a side-to-side walk that's reminiscent of the little tramp.  Taken as an homage to the little tramp and his kind, the movie makes a little more sense.
(source)

5. Spot the Expat Easter Eggs There are a few easter eggs (maybe not intentionally put in, but there nonetheless) that expats living in Korea would appreciate: 1. there's a ddongchim, which anyone who's taught kids in Korea (or reads my blog) will recognize. 2. The Wonder Girls show up, performing in a building that, from the outside, seems like it generally stages more, um, adult shows.  3. There's a cute segment that will bring a smile to the face of anyone who's had a conversation with one of their Kimcheerleading friends about how Koreans invented everything before anybody else (for examples of this phenomenon: sarcastic; in earnest, and another) -- "Yonggu" (Shim Hyung-rae's character) accidentally invents the beehive hairstyle, the miniskirt, and the Big Mac in a single afternoon.  Maybe he's Forrest Gump rather than Lloyd Christmas.  [Update: I forgot one: I smiled during the dinner scene, and thought of Mr. Pizza's mayonnaise, honey-mustard, sweet-potato, shrimp tempura and ketchup pizzas, when Yonggu ruined his pizza slice with about a pint of ketchup, to the disgust of the Italians at the table.]

6. This is a children's movie.  The take on gangsters is mostly innocent (when a bomb goes off, we see the characters standing next to it, in the next scene, with soot on their faces and their suits torn.  Nobody dies, except a few faceless wide-brim-hatted mobsters in shootouts, who might have just lost their balance and taken headers off fire-escapes, and in moments where a real gangster would probably end somebody, these gangsters flee the scene.  The type of comedy, the type of story, the way the characters are presented, show that this is a children's movie.  If it's marketed as anything else, it's not aware of what it is, and if it's pretending to be a comedy for adults, or a straight-up gangster movie, it's insulting its audience.

7. It's a kid's movie, but... But for a children's movie, there are some reasons I wouldn't want to bring my kid to it, or put it on the children's shelf at the rental store, beside Cars and Monsters Inc..  1. waaaay too much gunplay.  If the movie were about ten minutes shorter, and those ten minutes they took out were all the parts referring to deadly violence, death, assassination, and one patch with a joke about simulated sex that fits better in a movie like American Pie than this movie, as well as the climactic gunfight, it would be a much better fit for the audience that will enjoy it.  2. The jokes and storytelling are for kids, but the gangster talk would lead to my kids asking me some uncomfortable questions. I DON'T want to bring my kids to see a movie where a character tells the hero to whack someone... several people, and several times, or where I have to explain what extortion is, after my kids ask "Why were the people giving him money when he went to their store?"  If they'd made it two shades lighter again, than it already was, it would have been a fantastic kids' film, instead of a children's movie with a caveat.

And that's to say nothing of the moral confusion of yonggu's intentions during the movie: he wants to make his father proud, by becoming a coldhearted mobster.  He tries to impress his father by shaking down local shopkeepers, and by climbing a fire escape with a rifle to assassinate a rival mobster.  Throwing my kids into a world of such ambiguity is not my idea of a fun family afternoon.

8. Jay, from Jay and Silent Bob, (yep: this guy) plays one of the bad guys.  The fat mobster looks like a cartoon character... in fact, he reminds me of Big Boy (from Big Boy Burgers)

image

 and below, John Pinette (the actor) for your comparison (image source).

9. Harvey Keitel :(... dear Harvey... you are, far and away, the most watchable actor involved in this project.  But why are you involved in this project?  Why not any old extra from Sopranos who needs work?  Are you trying to get on this kind of list (seriously)?  Why not someone who's already kind of a self-parody, and a comedian anyway, like Danny Devito or somebody, anybody, that won't make me think "what a waste of talent"

I want to see you kick ass, Mr. Keitel.  I want to see Harvey Keitel the Wolf (see below).  I don't want to see you lying on your back and kicking your feet when you think your half-wit son, whom you've never met until two weeks ago, but have decided to make new don of your mafia family, is dead.  I really don't.

That's right.  Lying on his back.

Mr. Keitel, give me this:


Not this.


10. Shim Hyung-rae gets the girl? Really I suppose it's director's prerogative to do this, if he's starring in his own movie, but Shim Hyung-rae has reached an age where he should no longer be casting himself in roles where he gets the girl.  Much like Woody Allen in the 1990s, it strains credibility to think that the movie's token hottie would be hankering for some simpleton ajosshi.  Maybe he didn't trust any other actor to deliver the jokes he'd imagined, and yeah, he IS Yonggu, but still...

Anyway, the movie is what it is: not really a movie for my demographic, but a reasonably entertaining film for someone with kids about between age five and ten.  Unfortunately, the gangster content and gunplay makes it less family-friendly, but that's the only audience I think this movie will really resonate with.  The jokes are mostly a throwback to the silent era of slapstick, which is generally delivered well, and occasionally made me guffaw, but some of which I saw coming from a mile away.  Somebody go see it and count for me how many times somebody walks into a tree or a light pole.

It ends up neither here nor there... it's miles better than D-wars on almost every level, and it's been clipped of the kind of ego-tripping and flag-waving that made D-wars so ripe for ridicule; on the other hand, most of my readers probably won't jump out of their chairs to go see it, and it shoots itself in the foot (see what I did there?) as a kids' film.  As for Korean filmmakers bringing Korean film to the world?  Well, Shim Hyung-rae made an OK kids' film, but he shouldn't be the one carrying the flag of Korean cinema to the world. Let's see Park Chan-wook take a movie - the kind of movie David Fincher or Cronenberg, or Darren Aronofsky would make, and hit it out of the park with Hollywood backing.  Or Bong Joon-ho.  You know.  Somebody who deserves to be the poster-boy/girl.

I'm happy to hear, in the comments to my last post about Shim Hyung-rae, that other, (sorry to say, but...) more talented Korean directors (Park Chan-wook, Bong Joon-ho, and Kim Ji-woon were mentioned by commenters) are getting opportunities to helm western-made films now, too; I hope they deliver something really interesting to movie screens in the US, and I hope that they give American audiences a better inkling of just how excellent, varied, and original (a word that never crossed my mind during this film) Korean cinema really can be.

What have you been up to, Roboseyo? Wonju!

So blogging has been sparse, but it's good to fill y'all in on some of the stuff I've been doing.

Among other things...

I took a short trip out to Gangwon province with Chris in South Korea, who is a fine human being...

We went to Gossi Cave (you can read Chris's post about it here - my pictures didn't turn out as well, though I think I gave my helmet a few more nicks than him) and you can read more about the trip here.

We hit up Wonju Wife, one of my two favorite Danielles on the entire Korean peninsula (I heard there are some awesome ones in North Korea, but I bet none of them hold a candle to my two) and had some beers, and some amazing food with them in Wonju... Danielle is hella smart, and Danielle's husband Kenny is an absolute, stellar, class act of a human being too, and he's one of the sweetest husbands I've ever seen.

We also headed up to Chiak Mountain, and encountered this scene:


But we also saw this:

Chiak Mountain

Funny, obscene statues near Wonju Wife's favorite coffee shop.  No, that's not a flower vase he's holding.  It's a dick.

 And she's... yeah.

A roadside:

 At Jangneung, I took this striking of Chris Backe trying to blend into the surrounding fall colors.  He nearly matched the colors of the leaves with that shirt.

English Chosun Has Some Soft Kid Gloves.

So... Shim Hyung-rae directed another movie, called "The Last Godfather" with Harvey Keitel.  I'm thinking about seeing it just so I can give you the play-by-play.


looks like... quite a movie.  Mr. Shim seems to be pulling a Woody Allen, and starring in the film as well.

You might remember him from Dragon Wars, or D-Wars, a monstrousity of a movie that generated a lot of buzz in Korea because he wrapped it in the Korean flag and played "Arirang" at the end.

I wrote about that patriotism run amok - and how it nearly worked, at least on the homefront, where for a week or two, his movie was above critical reproach, before people finally nodded at each other and admitted, "yah, that actually was a bad movie" -- the same way Star Wars fans spent a short few days in "New Star Wars Movie!" bliss before collectively admitting that The Phantom Menace sucked, too.

(by the way: "Star Wars Episode 1.1 The Phantom Edit" Also known as the Corrector's Edition" - a fan re-editing of The Phantom Menace, is actually a much better movie.)

You can read that post here: "Irony and Uber-Nationalism" - it also features a youtube video at the beginning that was my first introduction to the singer Jang Sa-ik, now one of my favorite Korean artists.

Anyway, the Chosun English is covering Shim Hyung-Rae's latest foray into making movies, "The Last Godfather," and they dropped this doozy of a line, "Although "Dragons Wars" set a record for a Korean film of being released in 2,277 theaters in the U.S., rumor has it that it failed to make a profit."

Which, if you're keeping count, might be the most artful use of mitigating language I've ever encountered.  Mitigating language is, of course, the art of saying things more nicely: instead of "No." We say "Sorry, I can't." because it's nicer.  Instead of "Give!" we say "Sorry to bother; if you don't mind, could I just use that for a mo'?"

Well, I can't think of a nicer, gentler way to say "Ya tried hard, buddy, but it sucked, and it tanked." than "Although "Dragons Wars" set a record for a Korean film of being released in 2,277 theaters in the U.S., rumor has it that it failed to make a profit." (italics mine)

On the other hand, if somebody handed Shim Hyung-rae the keys to another film, after the monstrosity that was D-wars (and I saw it, in the theater no less: I paid my 8000 won, spent my two hours, so that I have earned the right to say it sucked the big one), at least M. Night Shyamalan can take heart, knowing that he'll probably find work again, too.

(the last airbender was a crime against art and storytelling: as a fan of the cartoon series, I might write about it sometime, but let's just say that "it was a letdown" is about tantamount to saying, "rumor has it that it failed to make a profit")

Oh by the way: happy new year!

Year-end retrospective in music... of sorts.

Here, for your enlightenment, are the 25 songs that have received the most play on itunes, on my desk computer.

to view the whole playlist instead of just starting to listen, go here.

I claim no responsibility for the imagery you might encounter on these videos - for example on the mash-up post, when the only video I could find that used the mash-up song I liked, included a lot of anime panty shots.  Minimize the window while it plays if you must... but the walkmen video's quite cool.



Feel free to judge the entirety of my character on whether you like or dislike one, several, or all of the artists or songs on this list.  I think it gives a pretty fair sample of the variety of music I listen to, though it doesn't include any of the classical I like.  The list biases towards the more mellow stuff that I like when I'm working (desk computer, you know?)  When I'm out and about on my mp3 player or in the car, the stuff I choose tends to be louder, and when I'm really focusing on my work, I tend to play classical music on the mp3 player with speakers instead of having it on my desktop iTunes, so that I can't distract myself by playing around with the music selections.  (White Stripes, and Sleigh Bells in particular this year, make me happy when I'm away from my desk.)




Songs (in order of listens)
Holy Holy Holy - Sufjan Stevens
4 Minute Warning - Radiohead
Lover's Day - TV on the Radio
Buriedfed - Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson
Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) - Arcade Fire
Keep Yourself Warm - Frightened Rabbit
Slow With Horns - Dan Deacon
Kids - MGMT
I Want to Live in a Wigwam - Cat Stevens
White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes
Tytto Tanssil - Paavoharju
Donde Esta la Playa - Walkmen
In the Flowers - Animal Collective
Portland, Oregon - Loretta Lynn and Jack White
Make Everyone Happy/Mechanical Birds - Modest Mouse
1901 - Phoenix
Convinced of the Hex - Flaming Lips
Festival - Sigur Ros
Dragon's Lair - Sunset Rubdown
Scythian Empire - Andrew Bird (played on the video I made for my wife on our wedding day)
A with Living - Do Make Say Think
Once Again - Girl Talk
On the Radio - Regina Spektor
Everything is Free Now - The Tiny
Rococo Zephyr - Bill Callahan
A Case of You - Joni Mitchell (I cheated and added a 26th, because either Joni or Stan Rogers NEEDED to be on the list)

Not available on youtube: Music in her eyes - by Stan Rogers, a Canadian singer-songwriter who would have been named with Gordon Lightfoot in the Canadian folk pantheon if he hadn't died early in a crash.

So, readers, what does my list say about me, other than that I'm not much into top 40, and that I'm friggin' awesome?

Roboseyo's Year-end Bests:

Here are some notable posts from 2010 at Roboseyo

Happy Roboseyo:

Cat Poo Coffee

Kim Yuna Kicks Ass

This Year's April Fools Prank

Travel to: Busan.  Inwang Mountain.

Superstar K

Useful Posts

Will I get bugged with my non-Korean significant other?

Marijuana = Bad in Korea. Deal with it.

Not all Foreigners are Violent, Drunken Asses

Smart Roboseyo

Isaac Durst, and the Cosbyfication of Foreigners in Korea's Media

Seoul: you really ARE a world-class city. Act it.

Friendships across Cultures

Bloggers getting Death Threats

What does a "Pure" culture Mean, and Who Owns a Culture?

Interracial Dating...

Other Memorable Tributes, Rants, Miscellany, and Must-Reads

Tribute to Brian in Jeollanamdo

Branding Korea

Must Read/Watch: The TED Talk that would Change Korea

Bad Service in Fancy Restaurants

People Go Home: Tribute to Friends Gone Home

And for fun, one of my two favorite music discoveries this year.  I'll probably write more about them later, but I totally have an artist-crush on Janelle Monae right now, and I am smitten as a kitten.

Here's the music; the video (which won't embed) is a another glorious thing entirely, and I highly recommend it.


Happy New Years, readers.

Year-end Parties and...Is K-pop the Greatest Genre for Mash-ups?

New Year's Eve parties: Ten Magazine continues its excellent work of scouting out and posting news of all the action going on in Korea.

Next: I love mashups.  They fit with the way I envision culture working these days, where everything is mixing together and touching each other in unexpected ways, thanks to our confusing, communication society.

Every year DJ Earworm makes a year-end mash-up of the top pop songs from the year.

My personal favorite is this one, built around the etherial hook from that one Coldplay song.  It just really, really works.  And it features a lot of Alicia Keys, and a lot of Pink, two of my favorite voices in current top-40 pop music.



This year, there's another one: it's alright - I prefer Alicia Keys featuring prominently over Katy Perry and Key$ha, though I do like (cheesy as it is) this song: "Just the Way You Are" by Bruno Mars.  I don't know if I'll join the Bruno Mars fan club and buy the t-shirt (I'd rather have this t-shirt), but this is an awesome song to have come on the radio while you're driving (which is how I first encountered it).

And, now that I've run it down a bit, here's the 2010 mash-up.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

But readers if you're only watching one mash-up on this post, watch this one.  This is the K-pop 2010 mashup, from mmixes' Youtube channel.


and here's the challenge:

I don't think anyone can find a genre of music that lends itself better to awesome mash-ups than K-pop. If you can think of one, with some example of mash-ups that are as awesome as this, let me know.

And here's why:

The fun of mash-ups is recognition.  See how many songs you recognize from this one track by Girl Talk.  Girl Talk is amazing.  I don't know if Girl Talk can play a single instrument, but he can throw lines and hooks from all kinds of songs together, so that five minutes of listening touches on a billion memories of drives, dances, parties, and awesome people who played you music, and the music also rocks: it fits together, it works, and it's a musical journey that's awesome and nostalgic.



Well, the fun thing in mash-ups is putting hooks together, so that people can recognize those familiar hooks.

K-pop is all. about. hooks.  Critics argue that's all it's about, and argue that if you will (some are), but when you're making a mash-up, that's beside the point, because the hooks alone matter.  So go watch that K-pop mash-up I posted above: it's like listening to the best parts of the entire year of k-pop, and not having to wait through weak verses, lines of songs where "the one who dances" has to sing to get equal stage time, unneeded dance interludes, unneeded "the music stops and we're going to act out a scene that somehow involves ambulance lights" breaks, or the other three minutes of a song that only has one good hook, or any of the other excesses or filler that puts people off K-pop, and enjoy it in its purest, most concentrated state.

Only the best hooks, only the famous dance moves, only the cutest close-ups, and then it's done.

Mash-ups, baby.  yeah!

What's your favorite mash-up?  Put the youtube link in the comments.

snow pictures from yesterday

It snowed yesterday, so I took these pictures.

It's actually harder taking good snow pictures than it seems, because all the white in the frame seems to wash out the three-dimensional feeling in a picture's composition, if it's not handled carefully.

Anyway, I headed out to Bu-am dong, near Sangmyung University, and took some pictures on the way up a couple of mountainsides, and through a couple of grotty old neighborhoods, the likes of which are slowly, sadly disappearing.

Anyway, I love fresh snow.







And snow on branches.








maybe my second favorite picture from the day... I was actually a little disappointed with the results of my photography, though the snowy trudge was sure fun.


There's a little temple up there.


during the spring, this was a rushing river.  Now kids were down there, having snowball fights in the riverbed.




This is a good example of why snow doesn't photograph well in daylight: the textures of the snow, and the branches on which it hung, got washed out by the diffuse daylight.  If the snow had been sitting on larger shapes, the picture would have some composition, and if it were a moving video camera, you could see the 3D movement of the things behind the branches, to get a sense of the depth.  As it is, there isn't much to see in this picture, though it looked super cool in person.


Maybe at night, if there were a single light source (say, an orange street light) it would have looked cooler.

Pine branches sagging under heavy snow.  Now we're talking!



My favorite picture on the day.  I'm pretty sure that's Bukhansan, though I might be wrong.


I also managed to get the pictures off the confounded wrong-file-formatted video camera and onto my computer, finally.



so those are my snow-tos.  (see what I did there?  I combined snow and photo, because they both have a long "o" sound!)

I also spotted this cool coffee shop name on the way up the hill to Sangmyung University:




The most puzzling thing I saw during my walkabout was definitely this nativity scene, out in front of a neighborhood church:

it's a run of the mill nativity scene, until you look at the proportional sizes of the figurines, and you wonder how a Mary that size had a baby Jesus that size... unless Jesus was capable of fish and loaves type miracles right from day one.


And, finally, because I have nowhere else to put them:

One of the little city beauty elements that one doesn't spot every day, but which I always love to see:

When the sun reaches a certain angle, it'll reflect off the side of one glass-windowed building, onto the side of another building, and cast all kinds of strangely shaped lights and shadow on it.


Stuff you don't see in the countryside, friends.

Who Owns a Culture: Summary before Finishing

OK. It was a long, long time ago that I started writing this series, and it's just embarrassing that I haven't finished it yet...

I have excuses, but you probably don't care to hear them anyway.  I got married, too.  However, I'd like to re-summarize what I've said in the previous articles, just to get everybody back to speed, before I go to my final point, which is of particular point during the holiday season.

However, in the comments to my "OK, Hyori Gets It," post, I'm getting comments from some of the same people who participated in that discussion back then, and who, in my opinion, are still off the mark in some respects.

So I'm finishing off this series, and while I do, I'll include another response to some of them.

The summary then:

Butterfinger Pancakes and Crappy Service in Restaurants Serving Western Food

In the comments of this post:

Let's go for a little name and shame.

Which restaurants have YOU been to, that should have known better (we're not talking "Halmoni Kimbap" here: we're talking about places that look, and charge, as if they ought to know their asses from a hole in the ground, in regards to service).  Let me know who the worst offenders are in the comments.


Fact: there are a bazillion restaurants in Seoul.  This means, I operate on a "one strike and you're out" policy.  If a restaurant can't impress me the first time, I won't waste my time going back to give them a second chance: other restaurants deserve a first chance more than that place deserves a second, after underwhelming me before.  The only time I bend on this is when it is enthusiastically advocated by someone whose food taste I trust (right now, that's a list of about four people, and I'm not telling you who they are... but two of them have names that start with J.)


So then...


A few months ago, in a fit of righteous outrage, I tore a strip through the horrible, horrible, insultingly neglectful service I encountered at Passion Five, one of those so-stylish-I-want-to-punch-myself-in-the-face restaurants near Hangangjin station.

Lesson learned: beautiful design is a yellow flag in Korean restaurants.  Of the ten worst service experiences I've had in Korean restaurants, about eight of them were in really nice-looking places.  Not ALL beautifully designed places are crap, but let's just say nice looks is NOT assurance of good food, or good service.

Three seasons later, if you google "passion five Korea" look what comes up: 

Passion Five, you've been google-bombed, and deservedly so!  I've made clear what I want in return for taking down the post (see the end of the post)

Until then, you frankly deserve to be slammed by google, for the atrocious, insulting service you gave me and my group.

And today, Butterfinger Pancakes gets theirs.

I'd heard a LOT about Butterfinger: how the food was just like home... but not crappy "just like home" (a la Denny's Korea) but GOOD "just like home" with waffles and pancakes worth the trip to Kangnam.

My friend Chris, who lives in South Korea, was having a birthday party for the lovely Lady in Red (who is an awesome human being, by the way).  He invited a crew over to Kangnam, and staked a place in line for a big group: about ten.  They said "Oh.  ten?  That'll be about an hour."

No sweat: we went to a Krispy Kreme to pass the time.

An hour later, we came back to Butterfinger.  "Oh. You guys again..." (inner monologue: we were hoping you'd get discouraged by the one hour wait and piss off) "we don't have a place to seat you.  Twenty more minutes."

Twenty minutes go by: now we're standing in the cold.  "Five more minutes.  And you have to sit at different tables." (no problem, guy. Can you just friggin' seat us now?)

Buddy goes upstairs to use bathroom: sees other groups getting seated before us, and no tables cleared for a group.  After an hour and a half.  Ten more minutes, several more inquiries (each time being told, "five more/ten more minutes"), still no movement (that's for those of us waiting for tables; I can't speak for the person who went to the bathroom).

Finally, we gave up and headed for a Burger King.  Wifeoseyo and I had a long to-do list that had included eating with the fine people at The Lady In Red's birthday party, but we couldn't because Butterfinger Kangnam couldn't get their poop in a scoop.

So, dear Butterfinger Pancakes Kangnam: 

Maybe your food is good.  I don't give a damn.  I'm avoiding you, and telling all my friends and readers to avoid you as well.  Hell, I can probably make better pancakes at home, anyway, and now that Costco exists, I no longer have to grovel to the shitty service gods to get my bacon fix.  We agreed to be seated at different tables, and we agreed to wait for an hour, and then waited in the cold for twenty minutes more, and twenty more: we were obliging as hell and got nothing except a chill, frustration, and a hunger headache from you.

There are easy ways to get around pissing off a widely read blogger or five (and a number of the people in that group were bloggers, and I hope every one of them tears Butterfinger a new asshole for treating our crew customers so badly).

1. Have a maximum group size policy for weekends.  Train your staff to be clear about it.

2. Have a maximum table size policy for weekends (ie: if your group's larger than six, we reserve the right to seat you at different tables)  Train your staff to be clear about it.

3. Train your door staff to seat people in the order they come in, and in how to set out tables for large groups.

4. Don't say "five minutes" when it's actually going to be twenty minutes.

There are probably other solutions, too.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time I've come across such crappy service in restaurants serving non-Korean food: the Passion Five incident has left such a bad impression that I've almost entirely avoided stylish looking places since then, as well as Fusion Food restaurants, and any place of which somebody tells me "they're famous these days".

Expat Jane's beef with slow, obnoxious service at Smokey's Saloon in Itaewon is well documented: it's surprising how many people I know have complained of the crap service there.

Personally, I had another atrocious experience at Jacoby's: 

Other bloggers have blissed fondly over the lovely burgers there, but my friend (another prominent food blogger), and I decided to finally try Jacoby's out one day.  We were told we'd have to wait an hour, so we gave them our phone number [they had our phone number] and instructions to call us when a table opened up.  We headed out and had a breadstick at a nearby bakery to tide us over.  An hour later, absent a call, we came back, expecting to be seated promptly.  People who had not been in line when we came, and people who had been behind us in line were already seated.  My friend asked where our table was, and they said, "Oh. You have to wait."  

"Why didn't you call us?  But those people got seated ahead of us; they weren't in line when we came by."

"Yes they were."

That's right.  Instead of trying to make peace with an unhappy customer who's hangry and annoyed, they lied to our faces.  We didn't drop the "You know we're famous bloggers" card, because it shouldn't have to come with that...

however, I've lost all interest in Jacoby's burgers.  If their wait staff is lying to customers' faces in order to save face, I'm not interested.  And every time a friend is looking for a burger, I qualify my mention of Jacoby's with "I got really shitty service there."

Maybe it's good I didn't go in and order at Butterfinger, and give them a chance to get my order wrong, because that would have led to a whole other outrage...

But to be fair, here's one good thing about Butterfinger Pancakes: 

It's near a building that looks cool.

But the larger question is,

why do all of these restaurants offer such horrible service to paying customers?

Zenkimchi Joe has a theory.  And a little more.

Fatman Seoul has two bits to add as well.

But what it boils down to is this:

If you're serving western food to western people or in the western style, at the usual prices for good western food here (and almost everybody in that Butterfingers' was western, or going there to fulfill their sex and the city brunchy handbag western fantasies, as were most of the Jacoby-ites). give a damn about western service, too!

If you're serving kalguksu at a hole in the wall, be as gruff as you want: I'm there to fill up, you know it, and I know it - I'm not an idiot, and I know different kinds of dining come with different kinds of service expectations... but if your place is high end, or reputed to be high-end (I'm looking at you, Outback), then I come in with some modest expectations about a modicum of decent service.  

If you're not going to train your wait staff to be attentive, put a bell on the damn table.  Maybe burger joints in Canada don't have table bells... but if it means I'll get extra ketchup without spending twenty minutes trying to ESP the waiter over to my table, I'll deal with it.

And if your place is designed real pretty, pay the wait staff an extra 500 or 1000 an hour to retain them longer, and make it worth it to train them in how to not piss off widely read bloggers, and general customers.  That shit doesn't matter to everyone, but it does matter.  Not all of us like shouting "YOGIYO" over the violin quartet playing in the corner.  You're charging 18000 won for a plate of spaghetti.  Don't tell me you can't put a little of that into competent wait staff.

If your place serves food that Westerners crave after eating jiggaes for a month out in the countryside, you know, maybe you've got all those folks over a barrel, and they'll take whatever long wait and crappy service you can pinch out, because they need their pancake-maple fix... but don't expect us to be happy about being treated like cattle, and don't expect to get through it without people who DO give a damn about service, and aren't just ravenous for "real" bacon getting pissed off to high heaven at your arrogance.

[update] I've been asked by a few people to put this list, which I posted in the comments, in the actual post, to increase the chance it'll be read: so here it is.  Here's what I expect when I'm paying more than 15000 won for an entree.  I don't think these are unreasonable, given that I probably also ordered a soup, or a salad, and some drinks.

water refills/another pitcher/whatever either without shouting at someone, or without waiting more than three minutes

knowledgeable about the menu, and/or willing to ask the chef (eg: about allergy-specific ingredients) rather than making something up (this goes back to knowledgeable about the menu)

able to relay special requests to the chef - salad dressing on the side? no problem

brings main dishes out all at the same time (if it's western food); brings out appetizers and soups in timely ways (if it's a course meal)

checks by from time to time to see if everything's ok

if refills are free, comes by to offer refills, or check for empty glasses - even once a meal will satisfy me on this count.

refills my glass with water when it's empty

gets the orders right, and writes things down if necessary

if something I ordered isn't available, they come out and tell me, instead of giving me something else and hoping I don't notice.

is nearby enough, and attentive enough, to spot, and come promptly, if they see someone trying to get their attention

and I know enough Korean that all these issues can be dealt with in Korean: I'm not even asking the wait staff to be conversant in English (that WOULD be arrogant of me) 

and, of course: my expectation of service like that depends also on the price scale of the place. 4500 for a heaping plate of bokkeumbap? I'll happily get my own water and kimchi for that.

12000 for a bibimbap? I'd like someone to come by and pour my water for me, thanks. If I wanted 3500 won bibimbap service, I'd have gone to a 3500 won bibimbap place.

Butterfinger, I offered an olive branch to Passion Five, on what they could do for me to take my rant offline.  I'm not offering that to you, because I didn't even see inside the door of your place, and I'm insulted by the lack of regard for the customers who had been waiting the longest to eat your food.

You'll never see me at your restaurant again.

Rant.

Over.

So where did YOU get crappy service at a restaurant?  Let me know in the comments.  Best story wins.

Couple in Cheonggyecheon

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.

Finding Christmas in Korea: Part 1: Lights and Candles

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.

(image)

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.

View Christmas Decorations in Seoul in a larger map

It's not Christmas Without...

Hope all y'all had an awesome Christmas weekend (without any extra days off)...

On Christmas Day, Paul Ajosshi posted this video of a lovely postmodern, post-religious Christmas song:

"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.

Rob

Merry Christmas

It's Christmas, so here's are three bits:

1. Durkee in Busan has a Youtube clip that amused me and my Korean teacher:

The Twelve Days of Christmas in Korea


2. ATEK got mentioned in Time Magazine, folks, in an article about HIV testing for E2 Teachers.

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.

Check it out.

Christmas Lights: Chunggyecheon, City Hall, Lotte and Shinsegye Dept Stores

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.