Things I've Learned about Korea by doing the Radio Show

Soundtrack: Press play and start reading.

Haven't done a bliss-out in a while, and you don't know this one is going to be one, until the last minute of the song, when it keeps celebrating, and then ends with about fifteen seconds on an entirely different plane... but like other good bliss-outs, you have to listen to the whole song, or those last fifteen seconds don't have the support to actually launch you into that other place.

I've always liked Stevie Wonder, but those ten seconds at the end of this song made me love him.

So yeah, I've been doing a section of The Evening Show for TBS eFM: the show's hosted by a fella named Mike, whom you can find here @MikeOnTBS.  You can also keep up with what The Evening Show's doing at @TheEveningShow.  Or follow me on twitter @Roboseyo (didn't see that coming, did you?) or friend me on facebook (facebook.com/roboseyo).  I'm a facebook friend whore: I'll totally accept.

The show's been hella fun so far, mostly due to the awesome callers we've had call into the show.  (and you can be one of those callers, readers!)

Anyway, before I turn into a pure pimp, one of the fun things about the show, to me, is this:

Every day I get a new Korea-related topic, and I have to become a fifteen-minute expert in it.  Fifteen-minute expert means not that I spend fifteen minutes researching, and bluff, but that I have to learn enough about a topic to talk about it in an informed way for fifteen minutes.  Every day the topic's different, which means I've learned about all sorts of things since I started the show three weeks ago.

So, here are ten things I've learned about Korea by doing The Evening Show's call-in segment:

1. Korea's actually doing quite well in trying to improve its environmental standing.

Given that Korea has very few energy resources of its own, it's important for Korea to use the oil it imports, or the nuclear energy it generates, as efficiently as possible; Korea's currently the world's fifth largest oil importer.  That's bad news.  The good news: Korea's actually put a LOT of energy and money into environmental initiatives.  Natural gas buses, public transit, bus lanes, Samsung's lithium batteries, smart, efficient buildings (which, I learned, burn more fuel than cars): Korea's working hard.

Now if only the country also took care of its wetlands...

The four rivers' project has become too politically embroiled to get a straight story about it from either side.

2. Korea's traditions of gift-giving for marriage are really interesting... and the richer you were back in the day, the more ridiculously extravagant the gift-giving became.

Chests full of silk, carried by the bride's family, bribed into the groom's house, watches, clothes, three keys (car, office and house) and more: the gift-giving expectations for Korean weddings are mad lengthy, and the higher your position you'd attained, the more your family demanded from your spouse-to-be's family.

3. In recent years, the largest demographic decline in Korea's smoking rate was in middle-aged men.  Young men (20s and 30s) has remained about the same.  Meanwhile, the smoking rate for women is probably waaay under-reported.

4. The secretary general of the Korea smokers' association doesn't like people using the term "smokers" - he prefers "cigarette consumers" because it's less stigmatized.

5. The experts we spoke to think the black market (where food is traded and distributed in North Korea, when the centralized food-distribution system falls short) is good for North Korea, for two different reasons: one because that's where North Koreans learn about how life is in the South - that's where Korean wave illegal DVDs are bought and traded - and the other because a mini-free enterprise system will help North Koreans adjust to living in a free market system, in the event of reunification.

6. North Korea has its own international economic zone, called Rajin-Sonbong.  So far, the main investor there is China.

7. There's a movie called Bangga Bangga about a Korean who pretends to be from Bhutan in order to get a job in a factory.  Sounds super-interesting: I heard about it from Paul Ajosshi, and I hope he has a chance to write about it sometime on his blog.  On that same topic, another reader commented that a farmer he knows started hiring migrant workers not because they were cheaper, but because the Koreans she employed kept stealing from her.

8. I already kind of knew this, but covering it from different angles really brought it home: long working hours, women's workplace rights, the low birthrate, lack of government support for parents, the aging population and the approaching welfare crisis, and the need to give migrant workers a more recognized place in Korean society, all connect to each other in a big, ugly bundle.

9. Pay day loan companies in Korea are very, badly under-regulated, and though it's illegal, some of them charge interest as high as 3000% per annum on their loans.  Yep.  All those zeros are supposed to be there.  The payday loan companies are supposed to be regulated by their gu office, but those offices are too under-staffed to be properly vigilant.

10. Standard versions of language are a kind of expression of cultural hegemony, and the degree of connection between language, culture, identity, and power, are quite inextricable.

More later, readers.

And all the best...

Roboseyo

Winter 2011 so far, in two-second bursts...

I think two seconds is a perfect amount of time to make an impression, and then move on.  You get to know what's happening (unlike with those MTV videos), but even if it's boring, it's only two seconds.

Here are some of the clips I couldn't fit into full videos, but wanted to share.

Memo to The Korea Times

I'm willing to let the alien graveyards slide for a little while...

Just make these maddening little text-obscuring popup ads go away...

and once you've done that, we'll talk about putting ads on the side of your paper that include spankable anime ass, or gross dental clinic ads featuring pictures of the insides of mouths, as well as what it says about your newspaper site, that the hotlinks for the "First in the Nation" English newspaper are in Korean.

first things first, though.

How the Internet Gets Inside Your Head

Great article from the New Yorker about how the internet changes the way we think.

Go read it.  "How the Internet Gets Inside Your Head" by Adam Gopnik

Best line - from talking about anonymous commenting:

Thus the limitless malice of Internet commenting: it’s not newly unleashed anger but what we all think in the first order, and have always in the past socially restrained if only thanks to the look on the listener’s face—the monstrous music that runs through our minds is now played out loud.

Royal Asiatic Society Event, Canadian Embassy Event

Tomorrow night, the Royal Asiatic Society of Koreais hosting a "Badaksori" performance.

This is Pansori.


Badaksori a group of artists who are producing Changjak Pansori. Pansori is the traditional Korean singing/speaking storytelling performance art; Changjak Pansori are new compositions of Pansori (the Pansori version of modern classical music) - since Pansori became a Korean cultural property in the '60s, it got sort of standardized, with a recognized canon of Pansori songs.  But that's not how Pansori originally worked: it used to be a free-flowing storytelling form that the singer could adapt to the audience's responses.

Badaksori are trying to present THAT version of pansori: the one that still has life and spontaneity. They make social commentary and such, and compose pansori about modern events that are still happening in Korea; songs are also a lot shorter than the old, classical ones, which have been called "Korean Opera"... in part because they're really, really long, and maybe also because they're primarily enjoyed by old people.

Anyway, if you want to attend this performance, it's in the Resident's lounge, on the second floor of the Somerset Palace hotel, near the north end of Insadong, at 7:30pm on Tuesday Feb. 8th.

More info at the Royal Asiatic Society website (www.raskb.com/)

If you're a long-termer in Korea, and if you have a long-standing interest in the culture, etc., the Royal Asiatic Society is a good group to get connected with. Some of Korea's longest-term scholars, residents, embassy workers, and business owners are frequent attendees, and after each event, there's a little beer time when people sit, chat, and network. They have regular lectures, as well as tours around the country, some of which are family friendly.

For most lectures, admission is 5000 won for non-members, and free if you sign up and pay the annual membership fee. Tours are also cheaper if you pay the membership fee.


Second... and I figure into this one...

Members of the English teaching community are invited to an event on Sunday, February 20th.  There will be two sessions, one about Education in Canada, to help arm you with answers to your students' parents' questions about sending their kids to study in Canada, and the second one, to discuss issues affecting foreign English teachers in Korea.

Matt, from Popular Gusts, Mike Hurt, from Metropolitician, Ben Wagner, who's working on the HIV testing challenge in Korea's courts, and I, will be speaking about media scapegoating, foreign crime, and building the English teaching community, and you're invited to come.

The full text of the invitation poster (and the image above) are at Popular Gusts.

Ten Facts about Driving in Seoul

So a little while ago, Grrrl Traveler rented a car for a five hour road trip, and came back with these ten observations about driving in Korea.

The most relevant one:

You need either an international driver's license, or a Korean driver's license, to drive in Korea.

Fortunately, getting a Korean driver's license isn't too difficult, actually.  Simon and Martina from Eat Your Kimchi  (and aren't their early videos cute, compared to the polished stuff they make now) go through how to get one from a driver's examination center.  The Constant Crafter also describes that process.


Fortunately for you if you're Seoul based, the Seoul Global Center makes it even easier than it was before: the one in Itaewon, or the one by City Hall, will take you through it pretty easily.

You'll need a little cash, your alien registration card, your passport, a few passport size photos, and your driver's license from your home country.

The other thing Grrrl Traveler got right, is that GPS is hella useful here.  Seoul has TONS of roads.  Apparently you can pay a lot more for a GPS that speaks to you in English... but to save the dough, it just takes a while to get used to reading the GPS visually, and tuning out the Korean until your listening is good enough to make sense of it.

Well, readers, after getting married, Wifeoseyo and I got a car, and after getting it, I drove to work, about a thirty-five minute drive (if traffic is light), for ten weeks.  We've also driven out of town, to various places in the nearby provinces, and as far as Gyeongju, in the six months or so we've owned the car.

So here are my own observations about driving in Seoul:

1. Driving in cities is just batshit, period: if you lived in a small or medium-sized Canadian town, and moved to NYC or LA, you'd say "Americans can't drive" just as surely as you would say "Koreans can't drive" if you moved to Seoul instead.  If you move to Seoul from a small or medium sized town, never forget that some of the things that are culture-shocking you are not about Korean culture, but about urban culture.  City driving is nuts, compared to driving in the towns and countryside, and the number of cars you come across inevitably increases the chance you'll meet some dumbass drivers, or some jerk-ass drivers.  Don't go saying "Koreans can't drive" without figuring that in.

2. Like dating, driving follows different logic in different countries.  For people who always drove, or dated, in one driving/dating climate, the way it's done makes sense, for that context.  Take someone from one context and put them in another, and things get sketchy.  It's not that aegyo doesn't make sense in the context of Korean dating, but it doesn't make sense to this Canadian.  Same with driving: put a Korean who learned to drive in Korea on Vancouver's streets, and that stereotype that Asians can't drive makes sense, not because Asians can't drive, but because they're driving by a different set of rules.

I've spent a little time in other countries, and they follow different logics in different places, too: in Canada, honking the horn most often means "I really don't like what you did." (not for kinda: only for really) in the parts of China I visited, they usually meant, "I see you there, but I can't, or won't slow down for you."  In Vietnam the horn just meant, "Aay, buddy! I'm here."  In Korea, honking the horn means either "I don't like what you did" or "Move along, buddy: let's go."



So while I have almost ten years of driving experience in Canada, I had to learn how to drive in Korea.  If I drove the same way I did in Canada, I'd hesitate and shoulder-check myself right off the road.  Once again: it's easy to say "Koreans can't drive" it takes a bit more effort to figure out how Koreans do drive, and roll with it.  And you have to.  If you follow the rules from back home, YOU'LL be the one who's making the mistakes, because you don't fit in.

3. Lines on the road: One of the biggest difference between the way Korean drivers handle themselves on the road, and the way Canadians do, is how we abide by the lines painted on the road.  See, Canadians are sticklers for the road signs and the lines on the road much more than Korean drivers in the city, who straddle lanes more often.  On the other hand, Canadians expect all drivers to follow those painted lines and signs so carefully that they don't pay as much attention to what the other drivers on the road are doing.  People on Korean roads, for the most part, are much more aware of what the other cars on the road are doing, because one of them might weave into their lane at any time.  Anticipation here is much better.

Plus: Koreans know the dimensions of their cars way better, and can park their cars in mad tiny spaces.

4. Buses are scary: Not just because they're so darn big, but because they move in and out of lanes.  The right lane is always a wildcard, because there are taxis, scooters, and buses dodging in and out.  Pick the middle or left lane.

Anybody who's lived here for a while knows that bus drivers in Seoul (I can't speak for out of the city) are way better than they used to be, as are bus lanes.  It's much less often I have to do that bus-driver drunk-walk to the back of the bus, where it looks like I'm off my gourd because I'm compensating for so many changes in speed and direction from the bus driver.

However, when a bus wants into your lane, it's still scary.  Every time.

5. Bikers are even scarier:  See, the bus drivers?  They've been trained to drive their buses, and they drive all day, every day, and many of them have been bus drivers for years.  Bikers?  Many buy their bikes because that's all they can afford, often it's the first road vehicle they've ever owned.

So you get these bikes, which can weave in and out between cars, driven by drivers who aren't as experienced at reading the road and anticipating traffic.  When they're bobbing to the front of the line up at a red light, that's alright.  When they're on the sidewalk, that sucks for pedestrians, but in my car, it doesn't affect me.  But when we're all in motion, and they're still popping in and out of lanes, it's scary as hell, because they appear out of nowhere, and when it's car vs. bike, the biker loses, and I really don't want a careless biker plastering himself across MY hood.

6.  People in expensive cars with dark tinted windows are the biggest assholes:  Yep.  People in small cars are more likely to be driving the first vehicle they've owned, and thus less attentive/aware, because of that inexperience, so you've got to be careful around them, but people in expensive cars - the Ssangyong "I'm A Big Deal," the Daewoo "Freud," the Hyundai "Long Car Important Driver," and all the imports with dark tinted windows know that, because of the way car insurance works here, people REALLY don't want to have even a tiny finder-bender with a really expensive car.  A lot of owners of those cars drive with the sense of entitlement that comes of knowing other drivers don't want to touch them, because they'll get the short end of any kind of accident.  You are likely to get cut off, or have your lane invaded by an inattentive driver of a cheap car, but you're more likely to be intentionally, brazenly cut off or around, or  nearly hit by the yellow-light-running, impatient daring of an expensive car.


7.  There's really, really no need to drive a car into town.  None.  Parking, traffic, traffic, parking, parking, traffic, traffic, parking, parking, traffic, parking, and gas prices.  Only if you really need to.  Given that Seoul has one of the best subway and bus systems in the world, you almost never do.

8.  The farther you are from subway stations, the more fun, varied and interesting the city becomes.  But because driving in Seoul is such a pain, I recommend bicycles.  Folding bicycles fit nicely on subways, there are a few shops near Hongdae, and a few near Apgujeong, where you can get a folding bicycle for less than 500 000 won.  It's worth paying the extra for being able to carry it more easily on a bus or a subway.

9.  You've got to assert yourself... but take some time getting used to how that's done.  What do I mean? People don't give you space on the road: you have to take your space.  This is done by indicating with your car - nosing in, or drifting partway into the lane - so that people know where you're going to go, before moving all the way into your space.  It's similar to how you can help people not bump into you when you're walking in a crowd, by setting your shoulders in the direction you're walking.  The turn signal helps, but you've got to take your space, and indicate that you want it.  Nobody gives it to you.  Spend some time driving more cautiously on the roads, to see how other drivers do this, before getting too assertive.

10. I think I know why the Car on Pedestrian Death Rate is so High - There are countries that have more traffic accidents per 100 cars or 1000 drivers than Korea, but Korea's usually first or second in car-pedestrian fatalities.  And it's because people tackle side-roads and lanes near apartment blocks and pedestrian areas, where kids play, with the same "Look at my big car" entitlement, aggressiveness, and impatience, as they tackle big thoroughfares where nary a pedestrian steps.

So that's what I have to say after half a year of driving in Seoul.  It's been fun so far, it can be stressful, but for the most part, Seoul's infrastructure is pretty good.  Driving here will improve your awareness and anticipation, by necessity, because anything can happen, and will.  And sometimes, you just have a "stupid driver day" when every dumb driver on the road seems to come across your path.  Whee!

I Lost My Talk: Poem

After that post last week about Jeju Island's dialect disappearing, here's a lovely, touching poem that my sister sent to me, about Canadian first nations groups losing their languages.

I think the writer is correct that power is inextricably linked to language: the language I choose to speak with you sets the terms for our interaction, especially when one of us speaks the language better than the other.

Put simply: If I argue with my wife in Korean, she wins.

Writ large: the language people speak, or study in school is one of the clearest expressions of which group in a mixed society/world holds (or is believed to hold) the keys to opportunity.

Lost My Talk by Rita Joe

I lost my talk
The talk you took away.
When I was a little girl
At Shubenacadie school.

You snatched it away:
I speak like you
I think like you
I create like you
The scrambled ballad, about my world.

Two ways I talk
Both ways I say,
Your way is more powerful.

So gently I offer my hand and ask,
Let me find my talk
So I can teach you about me.

Canadian Museum of Civilization

First Peoples of Canada Online Exhibit

http://www.civilization.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/fp/fpz4c03e.shtml

Happy New Year! Is Korean Seollal Changing?

Happy new year, readers.

It's a good day, the weather's finally not so bone-chilling, and the wife is away on vacation.

Not that I'm up to any mischief... I wouldn't be here blogging if I were, now, would I?

Since I've come to Korea, one of the things I've noticed is a big change in how the Korean traditional holidays (that is, Seollal/Lunar New Year) and Chuseok (Harvest festival) are practiced.

The typical/normative Korean Traditional Holiday^(tm) experience remains that of going to the grandparents' house, having a ritual for the ancestors that involves big tables full of traditional foods that take a long time to prepare and clean up, the women spending hours in the kitchen, the men playing cards or games in the other room, and the consuming of chapchae, ddeokkuk (new year) and songpyeon (chuseok).  Grandparents give money to the children, and the children bow to the living ancestors (parents, uncles, especially grandparents) and some or all of the family goes up the mountain to trim the grass and perform maintenance on the family gravesite.  And the children wear really cute Hanbok.

Frankly, I'm not the guy to describe all those ceremonies.  The Korean does an admirable job of it.

I'm interested in the way the holiday's changed: my first year in Korea, Seoul was a ghost town during the new year celebration.  The usual complaints were raised: traffic is a pain, it's impossible to get tickets,  the women do all the work, it's boring sitting around at your grandparents' house all day.

Meanwhile, this year Seoul's museums are staying open, and a lot of the palaces and plazas are featuring cultural events, displays and performances this Seollal.  People are traveling overseas instead of visiting the family.  Meanwhile, a recent survey reports that only one in five Koreans consider their grandparents part of their family.

Tonight's topic on TBS eFM is the ways we celebrate Seollal/Lunar New Year: what do you do, and is it different than it used to be?  It's a holiday, so we're picking a happy topic, and I'd love to hear from readers, how do YOU celebrate the new year?  Have travel concerns changed the way you celebrate? Have you spent holidays away from family? Why?  Have you ever attended the cultural events instead?Whether you're Korean or not, we'd love to hear what you get up to on Korea's traditional holidays.

The Evening Show Fun, plus: Korean Soccer

Yes, readers, I finished one week at The Evening Show.  Every night, I do a segment that's about 15 minutes long, and it's called "The Bigger Picture."

It's a call-in show where listeners call and share their opinions.  Last week went really well, but because it's a call-in show, the show's only as good as the callers.  So, readers, follow me on Twitter, and friend me on Facebook (yep, it's a verb now) and follow my tweets and status updates.

Question of the day today: how will Team Korea do now that Park Jisung has retired from international play?  He'll no longer be representing Korea in competitions like the Asia Cup, or World Cup qualifiers...

on the other hand, he's had a pretty good run, with he and Lee Young-pyo being the only remaining players who were part of the 2002 World Cup team that went to the semi-finals.

Are you a soccer fan?  Are you a Team Korea fan?  Who's going to take Park Jisung's place, are there young guns ready to fill his shoes?

Leave a comment, or shoot me an e-mail if you want to call into the show.

Greetings from... BE?

I got a message on Twitter saying "Greetings from BE" but I'm not entirely sure what BE stands for...

The Acronym finder is helping me, but I'm still not sure:

My top prospects are...
British Empire
Belgium
Battlefield Earth
Barium Enema
Bern
Bachelor of Engineering
Blizzard Entertainment (makers of Warcraft and Starcraft... why not name your next game "Awesomecraft" or get meta, and make a videogame design simulator called "Craftcraft")
Breast Expansion
Bachelor of Education
British English
or
Back End

any other suggestions?

funniest one wins.

I'm sold! Boa's Dance Movie Will Have a Plot!

I liked this post from PopSeoul about Boa's upcoming dance movie.

The real kicker: according to reports, this movie will not only have dancing, but also a plot, which will differentiate it from all those other dance movies.

The film directed by “Step Up” Duane Adler hopes to spice up things up, compared to “other” dance moves by focusing on both plot and choreography, instead of a plot that doesn’t end working.

Fair enough...

a plot would also set it apart from other Korean filmmakers' and Korean stars' forays into Hollywood.

Eventually one of Korea's talented people will turn this trend around... there are tons of Koreans doing well in television (unfortunately, other than Kim Yunjin, I couldn't tell you who those are, because I don't watch much TV)...

Though I think it's awesome that one of the top Korean-American actors is John Cho, because the movie that made his name (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle) was all about weed, which means that, unlike most cases, where Koreans are happy to claim anyone with a tenuous connection to Korea as their own, there's very little talk of John Cho as one of Hollywood's top (Korean) stars, outside of KO-Am circles. I have never heard "Do you know John Cho?" as a conversation opener.

[and as a side note, I love that the one Nobel-Prize-Winning author who wrote about Korea, also has a name that's REALLY hard for Koreans to pronounce. "Teacher? Do you know Fall S. Fuck?" "Huh?" "The Good Earth." "Oh. Do you mean Pearl S. Buck?" "Yes. Fall S. Fuck." that actually happened.]

Also... it's a testament to just how bad a movie Blood: The Last Vampire was, that even in Korea, where some people will even defend The Last Godfather and D-Wars, Blood: The Last Vampire came and went without mention, and nobody will defend it, or talk about it at all.

(By the way: my favorite evisceration of The Last Godfather so far is this one, which, among other things, gives us a new one to add to Brian's list of "Korea's X" equivalents:

Shim Hyung-rae is Korea's Uwe Boll)

... and stop the presses: this old release, from back when The Last Godfather got the greenlight, says that originally, they were planning on digitally re-animating the late Marlon Brando's Don Corleone, to play the Godfather, before Harvey Keitel signed on.  I'm partly relieved they didn't do that... but then, what a lost opportunity to absolutely shatter the scale of unintentional comedy!  If they'd tried it, they might have even topped William Shatner's Rocketman on the "So bad it's awesome" scale.

Is Divorce in Korea finally Socially Acceptable?

Update:  The show went well... apologies to James from The Grand Narrative, who was supposed to be on the show, but who we missed because of a miscommunication.  Fortunately for you, readers, he's written some of what he would have said, over on his blog.  Awesome.  I hope I'll have a chance to invite you on the show later, James.

Also, thanks to Jennifer, facebook pals Hyunsoo, Sun Heo, and twitter pals @aaronnamba @Ben_Kwon and @TWolfejr, Wet Casements and 3Gyupsal, and everybody who listens, calls, or comments.

In my first year in Korea, I met a woman, the mother of one of my students, who lied to her family for two years, rather than admit that she had divorced her abusive husband.

Today, Yonhap News reports the launching of a magazine specifically targeted at divorcees.

So the question we're discussing tonight on "Argue with Roboseyo" or "The Bigger Picture" at TBS eFM radio is whether the launch of this magazine is an indication that divorce has finally become socially acceptable in Korea.

What do you think?  Write your thoughts in the comments, and I'll try to read them on air during the segment, from 7:40-7:55 tonight on 101.3 TBS eFM's evening show.  Or phone in at 02-778-1013.

Questions:

1. What are the gender issues and social issues at play?  In Choseon Korea, men could have concubines, and women had very few rights.  The danger of destitution and discrimination were the main disincentives for divorce in the past.  What about now?  Have women's rights improved enough that divorce no longer guarantees poverty?

2. Is it a sign of social progress, if women feel independent and liberated enough to get a divorce, rather than feeling trapped in a bad marriage?

3. Is this a sign that Korea's vaunted "family values" are disintegrating?  Maybe people just don't care as much as they used to about bringing shame on their family?

4. Other than family pressures, what were the obstacles to getting a divorce in the past?

Put your comments below, and if you have a strong opinion, or if you have experience with divorce in Korea, let drop me a line at roboseyo at gmail: the show's always looking for callers.

Argue with Roboseyo: Jeju Island's Dialect is in Danger... So What?

[Update/Recap:

It was a good show, with a bunch of callers, including a professor from Jeju University, who's studied the Jeju Dialect, and assures us it's a language of its own.

Thank you to Mike Hurt and Rachel for calling, and on Twitter, thanks to @Cocoinkorea, @rjmlee, @DGFEZ, @HJKomo @chrisinseoulsk, and @aaronnamba for their opinions on Twitter, Bora, Charles, Rachel, Danielle and Soyeon for their opinions on Facebook.]

For more information about endangered languages, check out this AMAZING TED Talk by Wade Davis:


And check out the UNESCO "Endangered Languages" map.

Last night, we talked on TBS eFM's evening show about Korea's "Mart Kids" - it was an awesome show, with tons of callers!  (Callers are fun.)

Tonight, we're discussing the Jeju Island Dialect: UNESCO has named the Jeju Island dialect (satturi) a critically endangered language.

If you're a linguist, a heritage lover, or if you have connections to Jeju Island (lived there, taught there, speak the dialect yourself), shoot me an e-mail, because we'd love to talk to you on the show!

These are the issues that come up:

1. When hanok buildings are being bulldozed, and archaeological sites are getting converted into apartment complexes, what's the big deal about a language?  Which aspects of a culture do you think need to be made a priority, in terms of preservation?

2. Why is this dialect disappearing?  

3. With English mania in Korea, should we be concerned that sometime in the future, the Korean language as a whole will be in danger, crowded out by English or some other "global language"? 

4. Is it the cost of progress to lose these kinds of local varieties?  Supermarket culture has led to the disappearance of regional breeds of tomatoes... but if the supermarket variety grows and ships and stores better, 

5. Is it possible to preserve a language?  Languages constantly change, adding new words, ceasing to use old ones -- if the language is falling out of use, that means it is no longer serving a purpose, so why preserve it?

6. Are Korea's other local dialects next?  Everybody's moving to Seoul and watching Seoul-made dramas and movies.  Will the Daegu, Busan or Gwangju dialects be next to go?

7. What steps should be made to preserve it, if it's worth preserving?

Did you learn your parents' mother tongue or not?  (I know I didn't); are regional accents where you're from disappearing?  Write in!

Thanks, Readers, and HiExpat.com: Third in Popular K-blog Poll

I got third place in the "Favorite K-blog" poll that HiExpat just ran, which means I'll be winning a big heaping plate of ribs from memphis bar.  Yaaay!

I'm a fan of Hi Expat: I think it's a really good site that's trying hard to become a more positive and useful place for expats to hang out.  The job board is surprisingly active.  I met Dan, one of the people running the site last year, when I won an iPod touch for a restaurant review contest they had... I'm still using it, more and more.

So Thanks guys.

And seriously, add HiExpat to your bookmarks.  They're pretty good people, trying to add something positive to the Korea internets.

Well done, folks!

Harry Potter 7: More Stupid Wizard Duels

OK.  So I saw the first part of Harry Potter 7 the other day.

Not sure what I think about the increasing trend of filming multiple film/sequels in one shoot... but I'll save that for another day.

I'm also glad this one wasn't in 3D.  I'm not impressed by 3D... but I'll save THAT for another day, too.

Actually, it was a pretty good movie, all told.  I've never believed novels translate well into movies, because there's just too much in a novel.  Short fiction? Yeah. Graphic novel? Heck yeah.  Novel?  It's hard.  And with Harry Potter, especially as the books got longer, it got harder and harder to fit all that junk into a movie, and some of the movies barely tried.  The best Harry Potter movie was the third one, before the books got bloated.  The worst one was movie 5, where they tried to fit almost 900 freaking pages into a two hour movie.  They'd have had to make a miniseries to do all the plot points justice.  Book five was a good read, in my opinion (despite it being the first step into Harry becoming a somewhat unlikeable protagonist: too sulky and Holden Caulfieldy for a fantasy book), but the movie was awful: it was like a rushed series of sketches meant to evoke the story, and had no room to fit in the little bits of color and fun that made the first three movies cool.  The minor characters are part of the charm with HP - people like Neville Longbottom - but with so much plot, him, and Moaning Myrtle, and even Hagrid got short shrift.

That is why I think it was not just a cash grab, but good for the storytelling, to split book 7 into two movies.  The story finally has time to breathe again... and while in the book, I thought it was poor storytelling the way the first two thirds of the book are a bunch of wandering in the woods and re-visiting all JK Rowlings' favorite characters and locations, the movie evokes the frustrated stagnation of that part of the book very well.

However, there's just one thing... and this is something that, the more I see it, the more I think is just a lame, lazy cliche: 

The superpower battle.  Let me explain. (with apologies to Alice and the Mental Poo blog, where I got the inspiration to use illustrations I drew myself.)

It seems that wizards like nothing more than to give their enemies magic high-fives.  Especially if their magics are different colors.  I think that if your magic is the same color as another wizard's, you have to be friends.

And if you're the opposite (fire and water, for example, or oranges and toothpaste)?  Enemies for sure!

(source)

Also, it's not only hands that can magic up a wizard fight:

It's seen most often in fantasy and science fiction.  Especially anime.  It happens so often I can't even begin to list them.  

From Harry Potter alone (screenshots: these images don't belong to me, but to their respective copyright holders - JK Rowling and Warner Brothers film studio):

Movie 4: Goblet of Fire

Movie 7, part 1: Deathly Hallows

 Movie 5: Order of the Phoenix Harry's magic is the same color (red) as Dumbledore's.  That's why they're friends.  (for the record: AFTER the dumb wizard cliche fight, Dumbly and Moldy do some cool magic-ing.)

I wonder how many superpower/magic duels there will be in movie 7-1.

This is one area where George Lucas went really, really right: his Bright Side Jedi can't shoot magic hand beams, so even though the bad ones can, most Jedi battle is done with lightsaber duels -- the other absolute coolest feature of the Star Wars universe, because sword fighting is the awesomest kind of combat (with the possible exception of really good, Tony Jaa storming the castle/Bruce Lee vs. Chuck Norris level hand combat), and there are no hand-beam battles in the Star Wars movies.

This is as close as they get: (screenshot from a youtube version of the battle between Emporor Palpatine and Mace Windu.  Property of George Lucas: Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith)

Oh yeah.  Superhero and comic book stories also like having their cliche fights.

(X-Men 3: The Last Stand screenshot: property of Stan Lee, Marvel Comics and 20th century Fox.)

These silly cliche battles are everywhere.

So, readers, what's your favorite superpower/magic power-beam duel?  Let me know in the comments.

Also: what are some magic fights/superpower battles that have COOL effects, instead of just lame power-beam showdowns?  Tell me in the comments.

Argue with Roboseyo: Feral Kids/Latch-Key Kids

Update: the show went great!  We had more callers than we knew what to do with, and that's always the way to have the most fun on the radio.  Thanks to everybody who called.

Also, thanks for the awesome comments here; to get your comments read on air (we won't always have time to get to every one of them), following the patterns of Marc Hogi, and Dan, in the comments to this point, is great: concise, specific responses, with concrete experiences or points.  I especially like how Dan did one or two sentence point-by-point comments.  Thanks a lot.  Well done, readers!  See you tomorrow!

Well, folks, I'm hosting a part of The Evening Show on TBS E FM, one of Korea's English radio stations now.  It's a call-in show, where you can phone the station and voice your opinion about different topics, and the more callers we get, the more fun it is.  You'll see previews about the topics here, and any comment you leave here might get read on air, and if you really have something to say, drop your e-mail address in here and I'll write you about calling into the show: it's more fun with callers than with me reading comments on air.

The topic today is "Mart Kids" - this really sad article in the Korea Times looks at kids whose parents are working long hours, who aren't signed up for hagwons (the way most kids fill their hours until mom and dad get home), so they hang out in shopping malls killing time until the folks get home.

Questions that I'd love you to have an opinion about:

1. Is this any different from the latch-key kids of double-income families in North America?

2. Whose responsibility is it to make sure these kids have safe places to pass their time (the government? schools? charities? parents?)

3. What are their parents thinking?  Where's the disconnect, where these kids fall through the gaps?

4. The idea of free-range parenting: giving kids enough freedom to develop a sense of independence - is good, but it should be age-appropriate, right?  What age do you think is an OK age for a kid to hang out alone, or with two or three other classmates, at the mall all afternoon?

5. Is it so bad for kids to have minimal parental supervision?  When I was a kid, my brother biked all around the city, as long as he was home by dark.  Why are people so freaked out now by unsupervised kids?

6. After talking about "Tiger Moms" who fill their kids' entire days with study and lessons, and "Mart Kids" who don't have any structure at all, what do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of the two systems?

7. If you were a latch-key kid, or grew up without much supervision, and turned out really well, or had a rough time, share your experience.  If you knew a kid who grew up without much supervision, share what you saw with them.  If you're a parent, what's your policy, and why?

Write in, folks.  The show's at 7:30: the more opinions we have, the more fun it is!

What's the point of kimchi? What's the point of ignorance?

So I just caught wind, through Mike, from TBS radio's twitter account @mikeontbs, of an article in the Guardian by a lady named Rachel Cooke, titled "What's the point of Kimchi"

Go read it.

Now, I'm not a huge fan of the boosterism thing, and I don't necessarily think that kimchi should be the main focus of attempts to promote Korean food abroad, because it isn't the most accessible of Korean foods (bulgogi is, and bibimbap's up there, as is chapchae, and those awesome fish-bread things you can buy on the street in the winter).  I don't believe Kimchi cures cancer, H1N1, bird flu, prolongs erections,  makes children learn to read faster, heightens spatial reasoning, improves TOEIC scores, increases resistance to the HIV virus, or does any of the other things Tom Waits claims it does in Step Right Up.



On the other hand, I'd also prefer if people writing about Kimchi around the world at least knew a damn thing about it.  Rachel Cooke tried Korean food a few times, didn't like kimchi the first time she tried it, because it reminded her of foul sauerkraut she once had, visited the Kimchi Field Museum in COEX's website, and wrote her article.  (I've been to the museum itself: it's no great shakes, frankly, but at least I've actually been there, eaten a whack of varieties of kimchi, and know enough about Kimchi to know a good kimchi from a bad one, and I didn't just find the Kimchi Museum's website through its wikipedia page after googling "Kimchi Information" and looking all the way to the second result.)

Now, if somebody walked into a newsroom, and said "Hey!  We need an article on Italian food!" and I was a member of that newsroom, I'd say "Gee. I have allergies to cheese and cream, and the strongest memory I have of Italian food is the smell of the burnt spaghetti sauce that got left on the stove while we were calling the ambulance after my father had that heart attack.  Since then I've avoided Italian food, so I'm not the best guy to write about it.  Find someone who actually knows about Italian."

I wouldn't have said "Hey!  I'll use those six hundred words to shit on Italian food without really knowing anything about it, and make my ignorance and avoidance of it a point of pride!"

Which is pretty much what Ms. Cooke did here.

I don't think netizens should publish her address on the internet and encourage Korean-English citizens who live near her to leave flaming bags of poop on her doorstep, I don't think VANK should engineer a DDOS attack on The Guardian's website, and I have no idea if Ms. Cooke is normally a very fair, well-informed and even-handed writer in the rest of her articles... but she sure ain't in this one.  And if she can dismiss the entirety of kimchi because of her few experiences with it, maybe I'll turn that same ignorance on her, and dismiss her entirety upon a tiny, ill-informed slice of information, and encourage her to piss up a rope.

Ms. Cooke: if you don't know anything about something, rather than flaunting your ignorance of it, next time I recommend you pass on the opportunity to make yourself look like an ignoramus, and let somebody else do the piece on Kimchi.

If the article is a troll to prompt "outrage hits" for The Guardian's website, shame on you and your editor for being so trashy.  If it isn't, shame on you and your editor for not seeing a problem with being so willfully ignorant of a national cuisine's signature dish.

And to The Guardian: if you want an article about Kimchi, I'll write one for you, or I'll recommend some people to you who actually know about Kimchi, and have strong opinions on it that are born of knowledge and fondness for Korean cuisine, instead of ignorance.

(by the way: the Urban Dictionary page for Kimchi is pretty funny, just because it's so easy to pick out which definitions were submitted by expats, and which were submitted by Koreans.)

Rant over.

Talking with a foreigner...

This cute video is a pretty funny take on that "Oh crap... a foreigner.  What am I going to say..." thing.  I've always enjoyed the face people make when I walk into a shop and they assume I can't speak Korean, and will have to speak English to me.

Weddings, K-Pop, Korean Food & Purity: Who Owns a Culture? Part 3

Janelle Monae, an African-American, stole this song from the white, British composer Charlie Chaplin, and white, british lyricists John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, who originally had their song stolen from white brits by Nat King Cole.

See how ridiculous it starts to get when we talk about people stealing cultures?  It's just a great song, isn't it?

So the final point on the topic is the question, what happens here in Korea, when expats living here see something that vaguely resembles their culture back home, but it's been changed in unexpected ways.  It's analogous to the question of what Koreans do, or ought to do, when they see artifacts from their culture being co-opted by other cultures - Hollywood remakes (my sassy girl), Japanese repackagings (kimuchi) and even Korean-engineered revisions aimed at a new audience (Wondergirls).  I step into a Korean wedding hall, and I see an aisle, candles, a white gown, I hear Mendelssohn's march, and a bouquet being tossed... yet it's all two steps sideways from the weddings I saw back home.

This can be quite off-putting, even to me, and I've been here relatively forever.

The topic is interesting because familiar touchstones take on different meanings, or are used differently, in different cultures.  Not all of these differences are obvious, or jarring - more people here use Starbucks’ for studying than back home, and it’s firmly entrenched in youth culture (the older folks just can’t stomach six bucks for a coffee: it’s 100 won at the gogijip!)  The absence of middle-aged Starbucks-goers, particularly older males, and especially groups of them, barely hints at the way Starbucks occupies a different place in culture here than back home, and I didn’t notice that until five old men parked at a table near me in a starbucks once, and started the usual “loud ajosshi table” routine that one usually finds in a BBQ meat house, and I realized it was the first time I’d ever seen a group of older men in a Starbucks.  Back in Canada, that's a lot more common.

A few more: library means "place to study" here, where back home, it was "place to get books and then leave"; non-Korean restaurants serve a dish of sweet pickles with the meal, almost down to the last one (a friend of girlfriendoseyo once went to a little restaurant in Tuscany, and asked where the pickles were).  Other differences affect our lives more - any foreigner can point out to you the bars in their neighborhood which DON'T require you to buy side dishes with your drink (more and more these days).  Korean girls can have skirts right up to their uteruses (uteri?) and it's OK, but cleavage brands them “that kind of girl”; in America, it's vice versa.

(illustration from ROKetship: you should check out this comic!)
(click for full post)

Must have been really good Bibim Kalguksu!

Spotted this restaurant near Gyeongbokgung Station.


What does that say on the sign?

So... turns out Jesus likes Korean food, and this restaurant in particular.