You probably got here by googling "Robosayo"

But my name's "Roboseyo"

Regardless, enjoy the website.

:)

The final say on How To Order Takeout In Korea

So Tuesday's Borrower and her fiancee sent me a video breaking down the "ordering takeout" conversation that is very informative, and funny, and I edited it to be a bit less chatty, and added a bit of roboseyo spice, because DB don't do that video editing stuff too good. (She's a very good writer, though).
Watch it. It's cute.


then they did a final run-through of the conversation, so you can hear what to expect.


These are a nice companion to the stuff I posted earlier, found by Otto, and done by Mr. Ed.

FIle under WTF: Toys in Dongdaemun Market, Bum Jokes in Korea

Bum and poop jokes are a refined art here in Korea:

see Zenkimchi and Brian for more.  (Especially this one.)

Knowing this makes it no less surprising to come across something like this.

Found in Dongdaemun Market.

Uhh... yeah.

And that's all for today, folks.

Stay warm.

-Rob

Uhh...that's weird.

Blogger analytics tells me that two people found my page by googling "Roboseyo nude" today...

uhh...weird.

Now Brian has a feature on his page where he checks the google search keywords that brought people to his page, and sometimes writes about the things people typed in to learn about, and found their way to his site instead -- to fill in the information gaps, if you will.

I thought I'd be similarly obliging, for my (creepy) fans.

Here you go.  A Roboseyo nude, for whoever that was that wanted it.

Have a good day, weirdo.

*special note: no, just because I obliged this one time, I still will not post photos, no matter how often you google "Roboseyo bestiality gay foot fetish tentacle porn"  Sorry, Evil Jennifer.

-Rob

Dec 2: Update: Somebody googled "Roboseyo Bestiality" three times yesterday. Not gonna do it. Nope.

Making Your Way in Korea: Ordering Food: "Tell Me That's Not Awesome!"

Under the "Awesome Things about Living in Korea" file, Otto Silver, at "I, Foreigner" has a helpful, informative video about ordering food to your home in Korea.  Takeout Delivery is a wonderfully cheap, and convenient part of living in Korea, and it's not hard.

**Update/correction: I am told, by the Otto himself, that it is not him in the video, but simply a video he found online.  My bad.**

Here is Otto's Video [correction: the video otto found], which goes step by step through the process of ordering food, and even tells you what to do with the dishes afterward.

Here's all you need to know:

1.  Enough Korean to read the restaurant menus they stick on your door or hang on your apartment door handle.  (And you have ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for not learning this much Korean, when the Korean lettering system is so easy to learn.  Go here.  Or go here to do it by video.  It's a bit "Golly gee, this is SOOOO simple!" but it's well laid out.  It doesn't take very long, especially compared to how long it took you to read English: King Sejong, the guy who helped design them, said, "These twenty-eight letters are so simple and precise that the wise can master them in one morning and even the fool can learn them in ten days."  So quit your whining, quit procrastinating, and learn them, before we have to get Mr. T to pity you.)

2. The address of your apartment, in Korean.  Get your Korean coworker or your boss to help you with this if you're not sure.

3. The numbers, so you can tell how many of each thing you want.

4. The Korean names of a few foods you like.

Here's all you need to have:

1. A phone.

2. A flyer from a restaurant.

3. A little cash.

4. An appetite.

Otto uses the phrase "Hangug-eo chogum arayo"  "한국어 조금 알아요" which means "I speak a little Korean."  To Otto's very helpful video, I want to add two phrases that would also be useful in this situation (and many others):

"Hangug-eo chal moatt-hae-yo" "한국어 잘 못 해요"= literally, "Korean well can't speak" -- I don't speak Korean well.

and 

"Cheon-cheon-hee mal-hae-juseyo"  "천천히 말해 주세요"= literally, "Slowly speech-make-please" (juseyo actually is the polite form of "give," so it literally means "give me slow speech please" or paraphrased, "please speak slowly"... I'm not sure if that's grammatically perfect...but when you're telling someone you can't speak a language well, bad grammar might help you get the point across more emphatically, anyway.

Here's Mr. Ed, to help you with those two phrases.  The pronunciation is Roboseyo-CanucKorean, rather than perfect Seoul Korean, but it'll get you through.

Have fun ordering your food!

Plus, Otto has a kind of funny address: there's a little squeaker noise in there.  I wonder what neighbourhood he's in: maybe this guy lives nearby.

(Embedding disabled: Hugh Laurie in "A Bit of Fry and Laurie" - a sketch called "Your Name, Sir?"  Watch it.  It's really funny.)

Want something to get mad about? How about this abortion of justice.

 Extended family members look after handicapped girl, repeatedly rape her, get suspended sentence in order to take care of her in lieu of parents.

HT. to Brian in Jeollanamdo, who continues climbing the "Must-read K-blog" charts.  Me, I got nothing.  If I say more then twenty words about this I'm going to lay down a rant so vitriolic that unicorns and elves will be killed by all the evil will and poisonous bile pouring out of me.

Saturday Night Fun-Times

So on Saturday night, The Hub Of Sparkle's first Sparkledown was held near Hansung University, and it was hella fun.  Cheesy McCheesington was there, and her happy, shiny review of the night is more joyful and excited than anything I could write, so I'm just gonna quote from it, as a pretty good reminder of why it's important to expand one's circle of friends and connections while living in Korea, and how much being connected and putting oneself out there (for more than just drinking binges in Hongdae, if possible) enhances one's experience here:

Last night was probably one of my best nights in Seoul. For the past nine months, I've been lugging this sense of isolation and loneliness and un-bliss around inside The Belly. And last night, I feel like the ol' uterus of my soul gave it up and I birthed friends. A community, really. A community of like-minded and beautiful people who drink good beer and have deep, authentic conversation and at the same time have ridiculous non-conversations and laugh really hard at each other because we are happy and not alone. Well, at least, I was happy and not alone.

You should read the rest, too.  In fact, the post before that, where DreamoMcDreamington decides to attend the Sparkledown in the first place, is quite the read as well (skip to the second half).  Wanderchomp Korea, another new K-blog, also attended, and has a similarly great time.  His post was titled, "A Night of Awesome" and it kind of goes from there.  Here's his closing:

Home isn't about a building or a location, it's about the people in your life. I've got my family, and now I have friends. I'd like to think that the Night of Awesome is the start of something special, perhaps a new home for all of us to build together. I hope so.

So, between Danielle's birthing uterus of joy, and Wanderchomp's sense of home and connection, I'd say the night was a success just on that alone.  FatManSeoul took pictures of the whole thing, and I'm looking forward to her finding some new wireless internet to steal in her building, so that she can upload the pics at the Hub Of Sparkle or something.  Until then, here are the pictures I took, which probably won't be as good as hers.  These are also available at the Hub of Sparkle's facebook page.  There were some good conversations, some great laughs, some tasty drinks and side dishes, and then some more great laughs, and some smart people really worth talking to and listening to.

[Update: Kimchi For Breakfast also attended, and finally blogged about it.  You can read here.]

Enough bloggers attended that there was occasional confusion about whether to introduce or address each other by our handles or our real names, exacerbated by the fact Roboseyo really IS my nickname.

So to everyone who came out, Thanks for coming out!  It was really nice to see/meet/hang out with/talk to you (again, where applicable); to everyone who didn't come: whatsamattayou?  Ya missed out, but we'll see you next time, when we choose a larger venue, right?

-rob

Update: FatManSeoul has photos and incriminating evidence up on Flickr and at the Hub of Sparkle.  The flickr album has a handful of good ones, so go see it, and visit FatManSeoul, Korea's best new food blog which updates regularly and actually talks about food.

Korea Goes Viral; Hub of Sparkle Get-Together

Anyway, this video of weirdly dressed dancers in pink spandex, doing their odd performance in various venues around Seoul, was up on Collegehumor.com today.

If they were really savvy, Seoul City would be silently encouraging these kinds of groups to make these kinds of goofy videos featuring Seoul, and sending them out viral-wise on the InterWebs, instead of taking the heavy-handed "Press Release Names Seoul New Hub Of Asian Tourism; Seoul Mayor Expects People to Flock Here on Sheer Power of his Declaration That it Will Be So; Releases Advertising Video that Resembles North Korean Propaganda With More Cellphones" tack.  (OK, it's not QUITE that bad...) Tourism Korea ad 1: come to korea, where everyone has a cellphone, and you can eat side-dishes; Ad 2: Come to the Computer Generated Land of Korea, where Hangeul Characters float around like clouds, and people play traditional instruments over disco basslines, and we're going to try and fit EVERY SINGLE THING we think is cool about Korea into one five-minute ad, while white people make faces of bliss, tasting Korean food; Ad 3 (after World Cup '02): Come to Korea, where Soccer Fans wear traditional masks; Ad 4: Let a star who's famous here, but you unknown to you, convince you to come to Korea.  Ad 5: We can't decide what's the best thing about Korea, so we're going to throw it all up against the wall, and hope something sticks.  (Which, according to Dale Carnegie, is bad sales.)  OK.  Sarcasm off.

An ACTUAL "Tour North Korea" ad, date unknown.

I know what you're thinking: How can I get these guys to pitch MY product?

(I don't know: maybe the Tour Israel people could think of a better way to sell Korea.  They sure know how to raise bloodline pride.)

Of course, everyone knows by now that this Canon Rock-playing baseball-cap-faced Youtube Legend is also a Korean...for a country that loves the internet so much, I wonder if Korea could savvy up to the fact the internet could be a really effective way to increase its visibility in the world through videos and content...and create an image a little more flexible and varied than what people get from official, imperious sounding press releases, newspaper ads, TV spots, and the world news (where Korea always seems to come off looking bad, between associations with North Korea and the economic troubles these days)  It would help if the entire Korean internet, and almost all content about Korea were not sequestered behind Naver and Daum's gilded cage bars (not showing up on google searches), so that my blog comes up higher on Google than most of the content created by citizens of the most wired country in the world. Anyway, ranting about the puzzling techno-ass-backward-ness of Korea (it's a really odd contradiction...) is more Chosun Bimbo's turf than mine, so go there if you want to read some really great vitriol about Korea's addiction to Windows and ActiveX programs.

Second thing:

The Hub Of Sparkle is down with server problems right now (we're working on it), which is a pain, because there's supposed to be a Hub of Sparkle Get-Together tonight, and people might be wanting to check for directions, so I hope they find this instead.

If you're looking for instructions to hang out with the Sparkly People, here's how: 1. you can check for detailed instructions on the Hub of Sparkle's Facebook Page. At six we'll meet at a great spit-roast-barbequed-stuffed-chicken place near Hansung University Station (Seoul Metro, Line 4, exit 6, walk five or seven minutes, look on your right), called Cham Namu Dalk Nara (Gingko Tree Chicken Country), that looks like this. We'll start there, and from there, at 8 (or whenever the crowd gets too big for the little restaurant,) go farther down the road in the same direction to Song's Kitchen (Fatmanseoul wrote about this, but Fatman is also down right now, so here are some pictures I took of it.) You have to go down some stairs into a little hanok gully beside the road, but once you get in there, it's pretty darn cool. This is what it looks like (though it looks much nicer when it's lit up at night, or photographed on a pretty day). Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3 It's a bit of a walk from the station: you have to follow the road around a corner, so don't be worried if you've gone a little ways. You'll know you're close when you pass a bank on your right, and then a spot where the road starts going up, but to the right, there are some Hanok (traditional Korean style) houses whose roofs are at or below the level of the street. (On the left there's a big church.)  If you have trouble finding either spots, there's emergency contact information at The Hub of Sparkle's Facebook page.

Hope to see you there!

-Rob

Ssomi & Hobo is a Very Unfunny Comic

I was on the SeoulPodcast again a little while ago, in a big ol' double-down party podcast loaded with a whack of cool K-bloggers and other assorted Korea personalities.  Go check it out.  It's shorter than the last one, and everybody's a bit giddy, because we recorded it the evening after Obama was elected, but I enjoyed listening to it, and maybe you will too.

Next item: so, some people looked at some of the very unfunny comic strips out there, and decided they needed to be mercilessly mocked.

So Scott Meets Family Circus, and makes it funny again.
Garfield Without Garfield is an incredibly sad portrait of Jon's actual loserness...and it's funnier without its titular character than with.
And Marmaduke explained is awesome too. At least, it was a year ago, when I first came across it.

Well, Ssomi & Hobo is a comic that appears daily in the Korea Herald.  Now, whether it is actually funny in the Korean language in which it was obviously originally written, before it was translated into dull, lifeless, unfunny and just weird English, I don't know.  But in English, it is mostly proof that either some types of humor don't translate, or what Koreans think is funny is very different from what Koreans do.  The kindest thing I found said about it in English (on the only page of google hits) was from spunangel, who blogs, "It's a good cartoon to read when you're hungover and nothing makes sense."  The unkindest things were...less kind.  Dave's people didn't like it much.

Over at Zenkimchi, Joe has been posting SoSueMe & Hobo comics, parodies made by a guy named Karl.  I like them, but I wanted to take a crack at Ssomi & Hobo myself.  Here is a sample of the sheer unfunniness of Ssomi & Hobo, followed by two attempts by moi to improve them.  The text is small, so you might have to click on the picture to see a close-up.

Hope ya like it.

The original:
My first crack at improving Ssomi & Hobo:
And, in what might become a recurring send-up here at Roboseyo (if you like it), I thought I'd start a parody of my own, and try to make this thing funny for you, my dear readers.  Without further ado, I present: Ssomi and Roboseyo. 
Have a good one, all.

-Rob

Ji Man-Won... Korea's Ann Coulter? How To Shoot at Someone Who Outdrew Ya

Post subtitle explained at the end.

Soundtrack: "I'm An Asshole" by Dennis Leary (uhh... warning: some bad words in this song)

so then, to balance out that unrestrained joy-down from the previous post...

Conservative Critic Ji Man-Won, and a bunch of netizens, actually attacked Moon Geun-Young for anonymously donating to various charities.

Add another item to the list of things to call "Korea's X" -- things in Korea that are like more famous things elsewhere.  Korea's Ann Coulter. (picture stolen from The Korean's site, but altered here at Roboseyo)

This goes to prove that many pundits, and (not all, but certainly enough) netizens are dicks.  I've written before about how too many netizens are dicks, and bring the dialogue down to the level of the lowest common denominator, instead of trying to raise their own level.  Here in Korea, where netizens have to use their actual ID numbers, and so the things they say can be traced back to their real identities, even that isn't enough to dissuade them from being duh-icks (read it out loud) online, and pundits will always be jerks if it can make them more famous. (photo stolen from Brian's write-up on the topic, but altered here at Roboseyo.)

Matt from Popular Gusts has a really great write-up about Moon Geun-Young's grandfather (one of the reasons she's being attacked is because he was affiliated with the communist party), and Ji Man-Won, the obnoxious conservative pundit who led the attack on her.  He also directs our attention to Mike Hurt's article, "My Stomach Hurts" where the Metropolitician talks about how envy at others' success brings out the worst in Koreans.  

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Moon Geun-Young, like Tiger Woods before her, when somebody said something stupid and ignorant about him, has responded in the only appropriate way: by remaining silent about the whole fustercluck.  Now she has doubly impressed me as a class act, rising above a whole bunch of ugly with grace.  I might even start liking her TV spots, and forgive her voice for being so. darned. cute.. 

Post subtitle explained: this is a line from the lovely Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah, as sung by John Cale:

"Maybe there's a God above, all I ever learned from love

Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya"

Which is exactly what these petty parasites are doing, for fame, or for release of the frustration at their own unhappy lives, or for the sheer lulz of being a dick anonymously.  They're taking aim at someone who outdrew them, who accomplished more in life, lashing out in spite, rather than taking aim at the kinds of accomplishments that Ms. Moon has been achieving with her success.

To all such netizens, and the pundits who sic them on classy people trying to make their way as best they can:

Go fester.

Now here's something beautiful, to put you (and me) back in a good mood.

How to Love the Heck Out of Korea

(this is the expanded version first posted at Hub of Sparkle: including more pictures!)

[Update: blogger replaced all my pictures with ads, so I'm taking them out]

I know, I know, everybody's been wondering, "You seem like a cheery cat. So what makes a happy expat, Roboseyo?" well, fortunately, the guru is open for advice, with a bit of photo/video documentary evidence to back him up.

Fortunately for all concerned, it isn't too hard, if you take the initiative to actually follow the instructions given by your wise old guruseyo. Soon, you'll be as giddy as my former student, Jesse. (Balloons between your knees are optional.)

So, without further ado, but with one more picture, here goes:

How To Love the Heck out of Korea


1. get some friends (preferably evil ones) who will taunt you with K-pop music, and mock your suffering.

Hey Brian! Mwahaha!


2. Get out of the house as much as you can, so that you're around to notice stuff like this, instead of being at home browsing the web and missing all the awesome:



3. Get out of the city as often as you can, to enjoy the amazing landscapes, the small towns, sights, and people of the countryside.

Damyang, Andong

also: see the sights IN town, which are worthwhile, too - Seoul Forest

Last weekend, I went to Paju, and the Hyerin Art Village over there, with Girlfriendoseyo. It was really great.


Here was the coolest building in the whole art village: in the windows, they'd stacked slabs of glass that caught the sun in gorgeous ways. (Play this one: the music is one of my favourite compositions anywhere).





4. Enjoy the seasons. Yep. I said it.

See, we westerners often kind of derisively mock Koreans' trumpeting "Korea's Four, Distinct, Seasons" as if Korea had invented seasons or something. . . and I guess it's stylish to mock things, in some circles. . . except it makes me a surly old crank.

But seriously, the pictures I took of the Fall colours this year were so great (and the best ones got swallowed by my faulty memory card, so even what you're seeing on this slideshow are the weekends before and after the peak, not THE. PEAK. WEEKEND. which was ridiculous, and approaching obscenely beautiful), that I finally understood the enthusiasm. I wanted to grab tourists by the shoulders and shout in their faces, "HEY! Did you know Korea has four seasons?" too! -- I mean, why let a shell of cynicism put a too-cool-for-school dint on that kind of happiness? 

Korean autumn is effing beautiful, and there's no need to take anything away from that! So yeah, enjoy the seasons. Don't hate on the Koreans who love the seasons, too--they darn well oughta, living here. Yeah, other places ALSO have four distinct seasons, and yeah, Autumn in Southern Ontario, where I grew up, was pretty great too, but so what? Korea has a beautiful Autumn! Am I allowed to just be happy about that, and get my butt outside to enjoy it?

I think so.

5. Watch the people, and let the people-watching make you happy, because people are wonderful.

At the art village, these folks were taking pictures of their kid, and trying to make him/her smile; it was my favourite people-watching moment of the weekend.




6. Pay attention to ALL the details, and allow them to make you smile, not in a "Koreans are backwards, goofy people" way, but in a "Life is full of intriguing details" kind of way. Keep a journal where you write it down if you must, so that you remember the juicy bits, instead of noticing them, smiling for five seconds, and ten forgetting.

The a-little-TOO-excited bus announcer on the 273 makes me giggle every time I ride.


7. Eat good food.

8. Find something you like about the culture, and dig in.  One thing is enough, for starters.  Why watch Lee Hyori videos if she annoys you? There are a lot of aspects of Korean culture worth enjoying, from indie/underground music in the Hongdae area, to traditional performance arts, to the food culture, the '80s acoustic guitar stuff, the goofy fun of trot, not to mention the b-boy culture, the online gaming stuff, the wacky cool street fashion -- pretty much everyone I know who's been here a long time (as Gord Sellar pointed out, too) is involved in some meaningful interaction with some aspect of Korean culture. Don't pay attention to the annoying stuff: there's enough good stuff to never NEED to. Study the language, so you can meet a greater variety of Koreans, and have them like you for trying to learn the language. (Duh.)

Here's something I like about Korea's culture: Jang Sa-ik. Stay tuned for a full write-up on him later.

This is his song Jillaegott -- which (according to the Apple Translator on my dashboard, means "It will steam, ley the flower" uh...yeah. Keep working on that). The youtube page said "Mountain Rose" which sounds nicer. Anyway, he's my new second favourite Korean singer. (After this guy.)

9. Share the good stuff with people, instead of only sharing the complaints when you're around your friends.

Up at the top of my page, I have this quote, from Rainer Maria Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet":

"If your everyday life seems poor, don't blame IT, blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place." -Rainer Maria Rilke

I'd say that doesn't just apply to poets, but to any human, anywhere, who feels that their everyday life seems barren and joyless. If I can get out of my own head enough to start noticing the country around me...well, I'm on my way to loving the heck out of anywhere, aren't I?
(P.S.: See you on Saturday)

Wanna Hang out with the Hub of Sparkle?

Find out more at the Hub of Sparkle Facebook page. (and join it, if you haven't already, silly!)

If you aren't on Facebook, but you still want to hang out with all the cool sparkly people, send me an e-mail at hubofsparkle[at]gmail[dot]com and I'll send you instructions.

It's on Saturday evening.

Random Linky Stuff

Welcome 2 Seoul has a good primer on Korean street food...except that Kimbap isn't like Korean sushi.  It's closer to Korean california roll, except kimbap came first, so really, California Roll is American style kimbap...but if we steal away Korea's right to name things that are uniquely Korean after more famous things that AREN'T Korean, (in order to convince people of their inferiority, rather than establish their uniqueness) Christmas will be cancelled.

(The twenty greatest "that guy" photo-ruiners ever...this rundown made me laugh out loud three times.)

In other being sarcastic about Korea news, who knew it was "World Unique Heritage of Irony Festival" in Suncheon, new hub of Korean irony, where Brian had his photo taken as a foreigner doing irony, while writing this hilarious post which you should read, even if you usually don't read Brian's blog.

I want you to look at this picture, from David Smeaton, who continues to put great photography up on his blog just about every day (as well as EPL Soccer scores...for all you EPL Soccer/Landscape Photography buffs out there, this is the blog for you.)

read the post for the explanation.

Makes you wonder when the shoe's gonna drop

on pirates being as stupidly brazen as this.

(Somali pirates capture Saudi oil tanker)

this seems like a really stupid thing to do, as they're basically inviting US stormtroopers to take care of this piracy problem once and for all.

sure kim jong il is not far from actually building a nuclear bomb, and he's dealing out counterfeit US money to beat the band, and trafficking drugs, and flouting every international agreement they've ever been a part of... but he doesn't mess around with oil, and whaddaya know: his ass is alive (probably)

as every person in the world learned when US invaded Iraq:

go ahead and be an @$$hole, but don't f__k around with oil.

To the Somali pirates: jeez, guys, think you might have bitten off more than you can chew this time.

I predict this overreach will be the beginning of the end of the Somali pirates' halycon days, as world governments decide to take them more seriously, and send in some serious countermeasures.

I could be wrong, though.

Belly Laugh for Sunday

They're available for YOUR bar-mitzvah... who could say no?
(posted on Facebook by Expat Jane)
and by the way: just so you know, they save the best clip for last in the video. Hang on...even skip ahead if you must.

Pure brilliance.

So Moon Geun-Young just went from Annoying as Hell to Over-Exposed, but Cool Nonetheless

So Moon Geun-Yeong, the Korean pop-star whom I have lampooned before (I even feel a bit bad about that now), just went from "really, really annoying" to "over-exposed, but kinda cool" when news came out that she was the donor sending large amounts of money to Community Chest Korea, a charitable organization. . . anonymously. Not with a shining light on her back saying, "Look! I'm a good person! Buy my merchandise! Pay no attention to the rumors that I throw furniture if restaurants don't serve me quickly enough!" A. No. Ny. Mous. Ly. God bless her bright, squirrelly eyes, even as they stare at me from the side of every fifth bus in Seoul.

Hopefully, this kind of celebrity leadership leads to copycatting behaviour from Korea's youth, rather than some other recent celebrity trends.

A mini-retrospective on her cutest/most annoying TV spots:






selling pizza with crab on it...


my personal favorite...




And finally, encouraging soccer fans to move around a bit during the 2006 World Cup...



Respect, ms. Moon.

For now...

About to head off for the weekend and Do Fun Stuff.

If you think I'm super-cool, (or just think the kind of people I hang out with are cool, which they are) and want to hang out with me in Seoul, this is just my notice for you to set aside your November 22nd evening...more details to come.

Until then, for your entertainment and edification...
some links

1. putting stuff in a microwave


2. Wanna know what it's like to surf the internet in China? See what gets through The Great Firewall Of China.

3. A little high-brow humor from a Korean skit... for those who don't think Koreans have a sense of humor. (sigh: this advanced comedy technique of running a middling gag deep, deep into the ground, reminds me of the old days, watching Saturday Night Live)

The Peak of Suicide Season: A Prayer for Korean Students

Today is the day of the Korean College Entrance Exam.



Last night, I went downtown to see Girlfriendoseyo, and we had a very pleasant night. However, on the way through the winding alleys of Samchungong, we passed the entrance to a high school, and saw a cluster of underclasspersons sitting together, wrapped up in blankets.

You see, every year, High School Seniors take the High School Entrance exam, basically the most important test of their lives. Their score on this exam determines what University they can enter, and which university they attend, in this credential-obssessed society, basically determines your employability for life.

For example, despite all the efforts of the Education ministry to reduce the dominance of the three top universities in Korea (SKY: Seoul National, Korea, Yonsei Universities), 80% of the judges appointed between 2003 and 2008 were SKY graduates: a veritable stranglehold. You would find similar unbalances in most other sectors where power, money, and influence concentrate.

Because of the importance of the exam, students NOT in their senior year gather at the entrances of their high schools to cheer on their seniors, as they enter the school.

Today, roads will be blocked off to eliminate traffic noise around test sites. Airports will even re-arrange flight approach paths, so that airplanes' drone does not distract students in their seats, during the exam. Police wait by subway stations to speedily escort late students from the subway exit to their exam site, to help them arrive on time. High school seniors have been living on four hours of sleep a night for the months leading up to today; some parents even rent their kids a room in a goshiwon -- a cheap hotel -- so that they can study without distraction from their brothers and sisters, or from the TV or internet.

SeoulGlow made this video, interviewing students waiting outside a university's gates, a few years ago.


The dark side of the hope and expectations tied up in this one exam (and it's big: I've asked adults in their 30s, "What would you change about your past, if you had a magic wand?" and one of the most common answers was "I'd study harder in my last year of high school, to get into a better school: eighteen years later, people are STILL looking back at THIS test, as the turning point of their lives), is the depression and despair that comes with the fear of failure.

This article, "On a College Entrance Exam Deathwatch," suggests that probably 200 (mostly teen) suicides a year in Korea are directly connected with anxiety over this test. The stories the writer tells are sometimes shocking.

This is a story about students protesting the exam: they wore masks to hide their identities, because they were afraid they'd be put on some university admissions blacklist if their identities were known. They're just that afraid of not being able to get into a good school. A Korean Teachers' Union actually told their students to cheat as a way of protesting the exam. . . and were rightly called by Brian from Jeollanamdo for putting their students' careers on the line, rather than putting their OWN careers on the line, if they believed so strongly in their cause.

The exam is mostly multiple choice...and soul-killing, and emblematic of a lot of the things I criticize about Korea's culture (I even wrote about it on my "Five Things I'd Change About Korea" post. . . )

So if you know any Korean kids writing the exam, say a prayer today (their moms have been praying eight hours a day for a month now; you can at least spare one or two), and hope that this year, more students choose to skip suicide, and instead do that other awful things underperforming students do, and put their entire life on hold in order to study for ANOTHER year after graduating high school, just to get a better score and get into a better school.

The public school teacher exam was on Sunday, too, so a lot of people's futures are hanging on the results of this week's tests.

(the number of years lost to studying by Koreans taking these once-a-year-exam, including the civil service exam, the bar exam, the public school-teacher exam, and the high school exam, and the number of person-years of lost productivity, as well as the drain on the finances of the parents of these study-monkeys, ought to be calculated, in order for their impact/drag on Korea's economy to be quantified...I'd bet the only thing holding Korea's economy back MORE than all these years of work lost, from some of Korea's brightest people, is the gender empowerment gap.)

A Lovely Eulogy

My wonderful friend back in Canada, Melissa, wrote a really lovely eulogy for an old woman who started out as a babysitter, and became a family member over time.

It is a beautiful tribute, and also a touching expression of the way family extends so far beyond the narrow bounds of blood relation, and love supercedes any other relation, or lack thereof, between humans.

Go read it, and extend a bit of support, if you wish, I suppose.

Sorry you have to miss your Grandma Kadie, Mel. Thanks for sharing her with us.

a nice thing about writing at the Hub of Sparkle is, when you're piping mad about something...

I can save my social commentary/moral outrage about Korea's social problems stuff for there, and keep Roboseyo a mostly happy place.

But I'm mad, readers.  Flaming mad.

Because the people who are supposed to be protecting kids: parents and teachers and stuff, are covering up acts of violence against minors.  Rather than raising a holy stink to high heaven, and throwing the perps up against a wall, with a good strong smackdown, to show everyone around that this is not acceptable behaviour, and will be punished by the law, a lot, and is also bad, parents and teachers at schools deny things and cover things up, in order not to lose face.

Losing face, dear readers.  

In other words: they are not doing their jobs properly, because they don't want it to look like they aren't doing their jobs properly.

Yeah.  When you word it that way, saving face is absolute bullshit.

Now, I know it only raises my blood pressure to get worked up about things too big for me to change personally... but this time, I'm at least pitching in, boys and girls.

See, the biggest problem with all this violence against kids being tolerated or ignored, is that people DON'T TALK ABOUT IT.  And I can talk about it.  And now that a few people read my blog, I can even get other people talking about it.

Because here in Korea, the only time shit actually seems to get done is when someone in power gets embarrassed for not having done his (yeah, it's usually a guy, this being Korea and all) job properly up until that point.  I could reference numerous incidences where as soon as something went public and embarrassed some people, decision-makers finally got around to doing something.

It is also well-known to anyone familiar with Korea, that Korea really hates being criticized in the International Media (even the Lonely Planet gets'em up in arms, and a Singaporean textbook...heaven help us all!).  If a major network picked up a story about Korea's apparent lack of care for all the corporal punishment and, even worse, the denials, cover-ups, and general flippance TOWARD these acts and much, much worse, maybe the right feathers would get ruffled, and things would start to change.

I've started a page over at Hub of Sparkle where I'm collecting all the ugly incidents of schoolteacher coverups, parents refusing to cooperate with police investigations on violence against kids, because it brings shame to the family, of police neglecting to properly investigate crimes against kids, because it sounds too much like work, so that if/when a journalist DOES decide to do that exposee, they'll have their job made easy, because the last round of stories, news links, and blog anecdotes (see the post after the link) has just been a bridge too far, and I want to do something about it.

So go check the link repository at Hub of Sparkle.  Send me links at hubofsparkle[at]gmail[dot]com if you have a story, or leave it in the comments.  I'm especially looking for stuff a journalist would be able to use, for example, news articles from creditable sources, or articles in translation with links to the original Korean articles.  Help me build up a stockpile of yuck, so that the right people can be embarrassed into actually making this country a better, safer place to be a kid.

Leave comments about the kids over there, not here.