Six "It's the __ of Korea" that drive me crazy.

This is the essence of a list I presented on TBS Main Street, on TBS English Radio, where I do a weekly countdown at 10:30 every Thursday morning. It's fun, and this is a topic I love to rant about.

You’ve probably heard, at some point, the phrase “Korea’s Something” or “The Something of Korea” —for example calling Apgujeong “Korea’s Beverly Hills," which basically fits. Rich people. Italian cars. Plastic surgery. OK. There are definitely some apt comparisons out there. But there are also some that don't fit, or that seem to force the puzzle piece.

Hey, did you hear Quentin Tarantino compared Bong Joon-ho to Steven Spielberg? Well now we have to call him the Korean Spielberg. And I sigh inside with a deep sad sigh. Hyorin does a cover of "Halo" so now she has to be Korea's Beyonce. You know, until Ailee throws her hat in the ring. And then you get places specifically named after more famous places in other parts of the world.

And it starts feeling like the "globally hip" version of this guy.

Trying.

Too.
Hard.

I was once told this mostly happens when Koreans are trying to describe korean stuff to foreigners who might not know about them, by someone who got defensive as I complained too much about this tendency. As I do. But for whatever it's worth, here are the "Korea's X" that have caused the biggest head-shakes, facepalms and jaw-drops for me.


1. Korea’s Madonna.

MTV Awards, Like A Virgin - 1984.


This one goes all the way back to 1987, when Kim Wan Sun pretty clearly referenced Madonna's performance for this performance, also at an awards show.


Um Jung-hwa has also been called Korea's Madonna. Her dancing and outfits raised eyebrows the way Madonna played her sex appeal in the 80s and 90s, and she also went from singing to acting, and managed her public image very skilfully.


Lee Hyori and S.E.S.'s Bada have also been called Korea's Madonna, and Ask A Korean! makes a plausible case for JYP being Korea's Madonna in terms of his impact on pop music.


But here's what you have to do to earn a comparison with Madonna:

1. Have Jo Yong-pil or Kim Geon-mo level popularity and success.
2. Be a fashion icon.
3. Be sexy as hell, and push boundaries for what a woman is allowed to do on stage, in terms of using her sex appeal, and push them again and again and again, without ever going too far.
4. Keep doing that for 15 years.
5. Have half a dozen completely unforgettable moments and/or performances, even after your relevance as a popstar is mostly faded.
6. Age into a mentor for younger performers.

Has there been a Korean artist who pushed the line on sex appeal, who was a fashion leader, who managed her image with superhuman savvy, and became a mentor for younger artists, while also being one of the most popular artists of her time for an entire generation? Lee Hyori wasn't controversial enough. Uhm Jung hwa wasn't controversial for long enough, and too much of her legacy is in her acting, which really isn't Madonna. Kim Wan sun didn't have the staying power. How much of Bada's cultural impact came from her solo career, and was she ever controversial?

Ladies and gentlemen there is no Korean Madonna, and it does the aforementioned artists a disservice to compare them to Madonna. There is also no Korean Beyonce. Just simmer down now.

Korea's Rain is Korea's Rain. He's not Korea's Michael Jackson. He can just be Korea's Rain. Hyorin is Korea's Hyorin. Lee Hyori is Korea's Lee Hyori. SuperJunior is Korea's SuperJunior, and that's enough!



2. Korea’s Opera: Pansori

Just listen to this.


Now listen to this.


Pansori was called Korean opera during a campaign to establish that Korean culture was just as refined and awesome as the best "high culture" of the west (Opera). There’s a certain type of person who believes that because Western countries were powerful at a certain time, the way to establish non-European cultures as worthwhile or world-class is by comparing them to Western culture. These people like using the word “advanced” and they don’t realise that by insisting on comparing Korean arts and sciences to western standards, they’re automatically putting the West in the superior position.

This means at a certain time in Korea’s nation building project, people were spending a lot of energy showing that before being colonized, Korea was on its way to developing a European style market economy, emphasizing that Koreans invented the movable type printing press, and so forth, and these people shoved Pansori forward as Korea’s opera. I guess because both include performances that can be long, both sometimes retell old folk tales, both require vocal training, and kids these days don't listen to much of either.

But, seriously, go listen to those clips again. The comparison makes no sense to anyone with ears. I’m in total awe of the way Pansori singers can do anything they want with their voices. But Opera it ain’t. That doesn’t diminish Korea’s cultural heritage in any way.

Korean opera exists. It does. But it's being performed by Jo Sumi, not by Ahn Suk Seon.


3. Korea’s Olivia Hussey

Olivia Hussey is an Argentenian actress who was a real beauty in the 60s and 70s. She is best known for starring as Juliet in Franco Zefirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet,” a film made in 1968.

She was 100% flawless in her day.

Here in Korea, beauty Han Ga-in, the actor/model (or model/actor), had a breakout role in the film "Once Upon A Time in High School" (말죽거리 잔혹사)-- a 2004 film set in 1978 (back when Olivia Hussey was a big deal). A character compliments Han Ga-in's character by telling her she resembles Olivia Hussey. Fair enough. It fit the time period.

Resemblance? I'll let the reader decide.

source

But it fails as a comparison. Because almost nobody knows who Olivia Hussey is anymore. (This sounds unkind... let's say instead that Olivia Hussey isn't a relevant enough celebrity anymore for that to be a useful comparison today.) The first time I'd ever heard her name was when I asked some students which Korean actors I should know about, and one identified Han Ga-in as Korea's Olivia Hussey, and I looked Olivia Hussey up. If a comparison involves looking something up, it's failed as a comparison.

So... if you told me that Taylor Swift is America's Lee Nan-young, it wouldn't mean anything to me until I looked up Lee Nan-young, or you explained it to me. And any comparison that obscures rather than enlightening has missed its point, in conversations like this.

(Lee Nan-young was a big deal in her day as well)




4. Korea’s Manhattan

Now, to call something Korea’s manhattan, here’s what I want: I want it to be the beating heart of the city. I want it to be the place where most of a city’s culture, art, commerce, and tourism happen. I want it to be the place where you can find the must-see places, attend the events, and also where all the really meaningful history happened. If an island met all those conditions, I’d think about calling it Mexico’s Manhattan, or Greece’s Manhattan, or Japan’s Manhattan.

Korea’s manhattan, of course, is Yeouido. While it does hold Korea’s national assembly, one of the city’s most famous buildings (the 63 Building), and a few TV stations, I have a big problem with calling it Korea’s Manhattan. Because here is what it looked like as recently as 1952: (source -courtesy of Popular Gusts)

Here is Manhattan Island in 1952: (source)

Yeouido didn't have a bridge to it until 1970. Manhattan Island had bridges to it before the Revolutionary War. If you can't be bothered to even build a bridge to it until 1970, Yeouido is clearly not the beating heart of Seoul. In fact, according to wikipedia, the name Yeouido means “Useless” and it was used as nothing but a pasture for sheep and goats until an airport was built on it in 1924.

I like Yeouido well enough. The IFC mall is a good place to go see a movie, and the park is nice when it’s not crowded to the gills. But if there’s an area that’s the beating heart of Seoul, it’s Jongno/Myeongdong/Gwanghwamun/City Hall — THAT’s where the culture, the history, the commerce and the political power all converge, if anywhere. Yeouido is sometimes called Korea’s Wall Street, which might be closer to the mark, but Korea’s Manhattan, it just really ain’t. So stop pissing on my leg and telling me it's raining.

5. Korean Pizza

In what world is this:

source

and this:

source

in any way at all similar to this:

source

It isn't, that's what. A few shared ingredients (like flour) and a flat disc-shape is it for similarities. The recipe, the preparation method, the way of consuming it, the toppings and sides, are all utterly different. This stands beside "Korean Opera" as one of the biggest misnomers, and one of the worst bits of expectation management out there, for introducing Korean culture. If you have to compare it to a western food, my favorite description of Jeon is "a savory pancake" (with green onion and sometimes seafood in it) -- which sets a diner's expectations about where they should be. But calling it Korean pizza... it's just inaccurate and misleading. And dumb. So stop!

6. Korea’s Machu Piccu

Of all the Something’s of Korea on the list, Korea’s Machu Piccu has got to be the biggest reach of them all.

Taegukdo or Gamcheon-dong, in Busan, is a pretty hillside village of colorful houses. It was founded by a group of religious refugees during the Korean war. Since then, blank walls have been painted with murals, and empty houses have been converted to cafes and galleries. It has a nice view of Busan Harbor, according to the write-up. Here is a picture.

source'

Can you believe it's even prettier at night?

from flickr

It looks like a lovely place to wander around and get lost in winding back alleys, which is one of my favorite things to do, so I'd actually really like to go there!

But it’s been described as The Korean Machu Piccu on the official Korean tourism website. (They also describe it as Korea's Santorini, which is at least closer to the mark.) It's not just the official tourism website, either.

Now, here is Machu Piccu: (source)

The only. fucking. thing. the two have in common are walls, and slopes. That's bloody it. Whatever they were smoking when they came up with Gamcheon-dong as Korea's Machu Piccu, I would very much like to try some!

Machu Piccu is abandoned, it was built in the 1400s, and is 2400 meters above sea level (triple the height of Bukhansan's peak). Machu Piccu is a UNESCO world heritage site, a Wonder Of The World, and a relic of the very peak achievements of a lost civilization. Gamcheondong is a pretty hillside that had a good idea for how to stave off the redeveloper's bulldozer, but still probably doesn't even appear in most visitors' top five lists of "things to do while visiting Busan" (unless it was recently featured in one of those comedy shows where famous people tour local attractions.) I wish the citizens of Gamcheondong good luck, and I actually do hope to visit there some day, but I haven't come across a single "Korea's X" comparison more misleading than this one.


And that’s the problem with every one of these comparisons: by making a comparison, I immediately start thinking about ways that the Korean version isn’t as good, is smaller or less impressive, or just plain different, than the original, and that sets the Korean one up for failure. It’s the very worst kind of expectation management, because it makes me expect that the thing I’m going to see will be better than it actually is, and it’s an unfair burden to put on a charming place like Gamcheondong, a perfectly nice business district like Yeouido, or an artist like Uhm Junghwa, who’s perfectly respectable in her own right. We don't need to call Song Gang-ho Korea's Tom Hanks, or Baekdusan Korea's Everest, for them to be awesome. In fact, it makes them less awesome when we do!


For more on Korea's X, I always go back to this Dokdo Is Ours bit... and a thingy from Brian in Jeollanam-do that seems to have been removed from public access, unfortunately.

So, readers: in the comments, what are your favorite/least favorite "___ of Korea"?

Please share!

PS: from somebody's facebook comment:


Update 2: Commenters mentioned the most disappointing comparison of all: that Jeju Island is Korea's Hawaii. I like Jeju Island, don't get me wrong. And in that people go there on vacation, and it's an island, they have... two points of similarity. But... no. No no no no no. Every person who's mentioned going to Jeju Island after being told it's Korea's Hawaii has also reported it being a bitter disappointment.

Asian Food, Western Food

By random coincidence, these two videos just appeared right next to each other on my Facebook feed.



Actually enjoyable song, musically. And a pretty comprehensive tour of the Asian foods people call "weird."

And this one: "Korean girls eat American snacks"



My favorite part was when one started asking the person filming, "Did I do something wrong to you?"

Thoughts on "The Interview"

You've read, no doubt, about The Interview, and the Sony hack. The Sony hack that was blamed on North Korea, which people are now doubting was actually done by North Korea.

This piece talks about how uncritically people accepted the government line blaming North Korea.

The Economist goes into more detail about why people are now questioning North Korea's culpability.

VOA News talks about the interest (or lack thereof) South Koreans have in seeing the film.

This one by "The Daily Star" discusses North Korean defectors' response to the film, which is very interesting.

Another one I liked: "I Watched The Interview With a North Korean Defector."

Vice has an interview with a former member of the Kim family's inner circle, who defected, talking about the impact the film might have in North Korea.

Most interesting (to me) Babara Demick, author of "Nothing to Envy" (on my reading list), discusses the film in "A North Korea Watcher Watches 'The Interview'"

At Ask A Korean!, The Korean! suggests this piece from The Atlantic as the best thing to read about the fiasco: basically, if this tempest distracts from the human rights violations going on in North Korea right now, that's really bad, and benefits the North Korean regime. And also... some rich Canadians making fun of North Korea isn't brave, when people are having their entire families sent to prison camps in North Korea for doing the same.

Here is a panel Q&A including a Korean-American filmmaker, members of a few North Korea-focused groups, and a North Korean defector who now works for "Justice for North Korea"

I watched every minute of it. If the movie's interesting to you, or the idea of the movie, watch it.

I've watched the film now. In fact, it's playing right now, while I type this. This won't quite be a "live blog" of the film, because it's not actually much of a film, but as things come up, I'll type about them. Hopefully this will lend a sense of immediacy to the proceedings, but apologies if the post is scattered.

You know what? I'm not going to tag spoilers... it's a Seth Rogen comedy. You're not watching it for surprises, are you? Given that the media frenzy has been about the film's climactic moment, where Kim Jong-un's head is blown up, we already know how this thing ends, don't we?

If you really don't want to have plot points spoiled for you, well, you're watching Seth Rogen comedies for the wrong reason, for one thing, but if it's really important to you, watch the film before reading this, or skip to the next Kim Jong-Jackson, after which I will not have any more spoilers.

1. The people making this movie were definitely, clearly making the film specifically about North Korea, not pinning North Korea onto a basically undefined dictatorship. Somebody who knows a lot about North Korea has given the script a few passes. Details like the fake grocery store and the film opener, with the little girl's song about the death of America, while fictionalized, ring true to what we know about North Korea, and Barbara Demick notes several other spots where the filmmakers were at least factually correct or accurate to what's known about North Korea in her article linked above. You know, when they weren't making butthole jokes. The fake grocery store (as discussed in the panel above) is a fiction, but it puts the entire idea of much of Pyongyang being a giant potemkin village into one, quick and accessible video image.

2. Yes. They make fun of Asian accents. And despite the fact possibly the two smartest characters in the film are both female -- North Korea's propaganda head, and the CIA agent -- they are also the only two, and they are both treated as objects of desire first and foremost.

3. It's a bro comedy. Along with the "are they or aren't they" homoerotic undertones between James Franco and various cast members, (which are underlined by the Eminem interview at the beginning talking about "homosexual breadcrumbs"), there are numerous (yes, numerous) rectum jokes. Penis jokes, anal penetration jokes, and topless women. Part of the Kim family cult is even turned into a butt joke, as Seth Rogen and James Franco (the characters have names, but I don't care) are told that Kim Jong-eun has no butthole, because he works so hard for the country that he burns off the waste before he can excrete it.

4. The movie also actually approaches some important questions about the existence of the Kim dynasty and it's figurehead position in North Korea. Only barely -- when they're first asked to assassinate Kim Jong-un, Seth Rogen asks, "If we kill him, won't they just get another chubby dude with a weird hairdo to replace him?" The CIA plan of cutting off the head is supposed to empower a faction who wants change in North Korea, to take over.

5. They drop some facts about North Korea in -- money it spends on weapons vs. money given in aid, the number of people in political prison camps. I have no doubt they're accurate, and those lines are delivered during the crucial scene. It's hard to decide whether this is tone deaf because it does such a disservice to the real tragedy of what's happening in North Korea, or because such massive human tragedy is going to be cold water on frat boys' laughing high. I guess it depends on which you care about more: massive-scale human tragedy or a shart joke's ability to extract maximum chuckles from men in their 20s.

6. I am a few years past being the target demographic for this movie. But I could totally see my university-age self, who winced and chuckled through American Pie and There's Something About Mary snorting and chortling through this as well.

7. The film cuts to the quick on US foreign policy as well. "Kim must die. That's the American Way." "How many times can the US make the same mistake?" "As many times as it takes." "Killing Kim won't change anything. He will be replaced."

This conversation could be held regarding any number of regions where boogeyman dictators' removal royally failed to unfuck their regions, and it turned out more was needed than just removing the guy at the top.

That said, this exchange was probably also on point "People need to be shown that he is not a god, that he is a man. Then they will be ready for change," which is what Sook, one of the James Franco and Seth Rogens' handlers explains, in order to change their main strategy from straight up assassination, to, more or less, get Kim to cry on air, and people will know he's not a god. This is actually very interesting, and I'll get to it later.

8. The "Kim Jong-un is a fan of our show" inciting bit seems to echo Kim Jong-il's love for Western film and whiskey, while visiting and getting the "seven star treatment" seems to echo Dennis Rodman's visits.

9. I am much more interested in the idea of this film, than in the actual film itself. It is more or less what you expect from a movie starring Seth Rogen and James Franco, and if you're a fan of that, it delivers exactly what you expect, except this time the bad guy is a sitting world leader instead of a drug dealer or a dick boss or (were it the 80s) the preppy frat who wear argyle sweater vests. It's not much of a film, really, and if your daily dose of semen jokes is what you came for, "This Is The End" was a better film. But the fact this film was made, the reaction to it, the idea of delivering information about North Korea in this package, of all packages, is interesting to me. I am quite conflicted about it.

10. Yes, they make a dog eating joke.

11. Randall Park's Kim Jong-un is probably the best thing in this movie. He's likeable and convincing as a manipulator with daddy issues, going from star-struck to preening to a little frightening, he makes us believe the character is a mad dictator, but also that James Franco might hesitate to drop the hammer on him because he just likes him so much.

Spoiler warnings from here on.

The big stuff:

The thing that bothered me the most about the film is how little attention was paid to the really horrific things happening in North Korea. The more you read and learn about North Korea's concentration camps for political prisoners (which are in operation as we speak -- so much for "Never again"), or starvation or mass corruption in the provinces, the more this movie rings hollow -- as if it's a hollywood scenario instead of an actual place where actual people are actually dying right now. Of course, dick jokes fall flat in the face of this stuff.

It's a pun on the word rectum. You know, rectum... wrecked'em? Get it?
Oh never mind.
Photo source.

The bit with the grocery store was a simple and visual stand-in for that bit of storytelling, but it's interesting that an image is used instead of actual humans, that the film resolutely sets its gaze away from the human cost of the Kim dynasty.

They couldn't put that into a comedy. At least, not this comedy. But it still bothers me that they didn't, because I want to have it both ways I guess. It suggests to me that North Korea was still mostly just a backdrop for James Franco to do James Franco stuff, and Seth Rogen to do Seth Rogen stuff, rather than something either of them actually cared about. It would be annoying for Rogen and Franco to be going around playing "White Jesus" to North Korean concentration camp victims, but it's also disappointing that the closest they ever get to addressing what's actually going in in North Korea are a few statistics mentioned in passing in prep for the big interview and comments like these: (rolling stone) "Are we gonna just make movies about guys trying to get laid over and over again? Or, now that we have people's attention, maybe we can focus it on something slightly more relevant – while still doing shit we think is funny." I'd feel better if I at least heard that the filmmakers were supporting NGOs devoted to North Korea or something.

Two spots of self-reflexivity I noticed as well: in the same way a celebrity gossip journalist wants to be taken more seriously, and takes on an interview with Kim Jong-eun, this film can be read as a group of frat boy filmmakers who want to be taken more seriously, and take on a film about an interview with Kim Jong-eun.

Secondly, and this is the biggie: after meeting someone in North Korea who doesn't like Kim Jong-un, the boys change their goal from killing Kim (which would just lead to another figurehead being installed) to embarrassing him, humanizing him, and thus puncturing the personality cult that holds Kim up as a god. {SPOILER} they achieve this in the film by revealing that Kim Jong-un likes Katy Perry, has daddy issues, and then by making him cry and poop his pants on television while the entire world, including every North Korean, watches. This proves he does indeed have a butthole, like a normal human, and that he is subject to human emotions.

Funny thing... releasing the movie achieves almost the same thing, depending on who sees it. It reveals that Kim Jong-un is a joke to the world, rather than a dire threat the whole world fears, which is how he's been packaged in the domestic propaganda. And this is important, when it comes to North Korean people's consent to be governed.

In the long term, it is impossible to indefinitely govern a population who does not wish to be governed. Military or police oppression and surveillance are expensive, and build up a sense of grievance that eventually becomes explosive. Governments can also co-opt a segment of the population, and put them above others, so they have something to gain from keeping the status quo, and those at the bottom focus on class injustice instead of leadership (for example Colonial Japan and the "collaborators"). Promising economic benefits for cooperation with the regime (South Korea 1970s, China now) can work. So can setting up the leader as the best possible leader, perhaps ordained from heaven (this is why dictatorships often include personality cults), or developing fear of an external or internal threat to the people, or the values, or the culture, and fashioning the government as the best protectors from these real or imagined fears (Cold War rhetoric in South Korea today, the War on Terror). Promising enhanced national status vis a vis other countries is probably the one most often used in South Korea. Building up institutions and promoting "national" values and/or a sense of justice and rule of law, so that people believe the going system treats them more fairly than other systems would, and running elections which give leaders a nearly unassailable veneer of legitimacy, is the tack democracies use. These are all ways to convince populations to consent to being governed. 

If the government cannot deliver on the promises they make, their legitimacy is in danger, and when people reject their leader, revolutions happen. This is the corner Kim Jong-un is painted into. The only two institutions North Korea has really developed, now that socialism has collapsed, are the Kim Dynasty, and the military. Because they can't deliver their promise of economic prosperity, the Kim regime has been forced to position themselves as the best leaders to protect North Korean people from the dangers of a hostile world outside the borders. Launching missiles, militarizing the culture, and releasing bellicose rhetoric isn't really for the world audience, though the world media's kneejerk response helps their propagandists. Those actions are a performance for North Korea's people, demonstrating why and how Kim Jong-un is the best leader to protect North Korea from hostile threats. The idea that the world fears North Korea's nuclear weapons and leaders, is the key to Kim Jong-un's legitimacy. If it is revealed that Kim Jong-un is not in fact the source of terror for Western nations and the USA, but an object of ridicule, Kim Jong-un's last strong source of legitimacy is gone. That is why North Korea has responded so overwhelmingly in defense of Kim's dignity. Because his rep is all he's got left, except perhaps his birthright, which people might quickly forget if it looks like he doesn't measure up to his father and grandfather.

The film is not a very good film. But if it manages to convince North Koreans that the world looks on North Korea and Kim Jong-un with pity and scorn, not fear and trembling, that is very very bad for North Korea's national stability, because it means the dictatorship has delivered on none of the promises they used to gain consent of the populace for their method of government. Without the Kim family as figurehead, the rest of the government is just a corrupt and oppressive kleptocracy that has failed to deliver either safety or prosperity to the people they serve, and people who feel their leaders have utterly failed to deliver any benefit for being governed, sometimes decide to dispense with those leaders. 

This movie punctures the personality cult of the Kim family, and that is why it is dangerous to North Korea, and why, in their eyes, their response to the film was justified.

Read similar thoughts in this article, "Why Kim Jong-un Can't Take A Joke"

Was it a good movie? Not really. The movie was much less interesting than the bare fact it got made, and provoked the response it did. The Interview has gotten way way more attention than it deserves as a film, and I dread to think which other shitty filmmakers are watching this and thinking "Look at all the free publicity that film got!" and what godawful films might come out of that. 

But if this film means people start talking about a 90 minute string of anus jokes instead of talking about the UN's Inquiry into the Human Rights situation in North Korea, that is a tragedy. If the film means people are eventually led into talking about that kind of stuff, where they otherwise wouldn't care at all, I suppose that's a net good, but the noise to signal ratio is pretty damn high, and a better filmmaker and writer wouldn't have needed to flinch from the most important thing about the North Korea situation: the real-life suffering of actual North Korean people.

2014 Recap... A Stinker

2014 is over. And good riddance. As the title indicates, this was a stinker of a year.

Both sides (me and wife) were touched with death this year: teachers and mentors, a special uncle, a well-known member or two of the Korea expat networks, and a beloved pet.

An airplane disappeared. Another was shot down. Another one disappeared just last week. Seriously, what the hell is happening? The Sewol ferry tragedy happened. The Anti-gay Sochi Olympics and Putin's yearlong nose-thumbing at "the West" reminded us what a morally bankrupt sham international sporting events are. As did FIFA's "Let's have a racism free World Cup because we can't have a corruption-free, human trafficking-free or child labor free World Cup," given the stuff happening in Qatar. Yuna Kim got silver, which would have been a low point in other years, but this year comes off trite and shallow next to all the other awfulness of 2014. As summer came up, Wifeoseyo, who normally loves spring, called this the worst spring ever.

South Korea's constitutional court dissolved a political party, and continues its free fall on international freedom of the press and free speech indexes. And that whole UPP thing mostly started because the government needed something to distract the public from the NCIS interfering in the 2012 election to begin with. I mean... what the hell! This is new democracy stuff, not generation-old democracy stuff. Seriously. Meanwhile, South Korea and the country that should be South Korea's best and strongest ally in the region (Japan) are both letting lowest common denominator populism drive their policies towards each other. ARGH!

My favorite bar in the neighborhood, and really, one of the few truly perfect pubs I've been to, closed its doors this spring. One of the coolest new coworkers at my new job I'll tell you about in a minute left after a single semester. My kindle broke, but my son's most annoying noisy toys never break. And I didn't accomplish nearly as much writing of any kind during my unemployed period as I'd have liked.

And I haven't even started into Ferguson, Hands Up, Don't Shoot, Igloo Australia, the NFL star felony of the week, the ruining-for-all-time of Bill Cosby, mainstay of my childhood, or any of the other things that have been flaming up weekly on Twitter and other SNS thanks to many of my facebook friends being Americans.  Sparking sometimes-acrimonious arguments between people I like on Facebook. Hollywood has been mostly shit this year. What a horrible underuse/misuse of the Dinobots!

2014 has been pretty awful. It's a shame my opinions about the events of the year have far outstripped my time or inclination to blog about them, because if I were still at my 2008 "20 blog posts in a month" mode, it'd have been a beast of a year, with rants, rage and fury all over the place.

So... 2014 has been a complete write-off, in a lot of ways. But I don't want to leave on that note, so here are a few of the high points:

1. In the last few months, something clicked in my son, and he's been singing and dancing way more than he did before. And revealing a pretty impressive ability to carry a tune for a three-year-old. He can also be genuinely funny when he wants to - his jokes are no longer all just imitations of funny things he's seen mommy or daddy or grandma do. It has been really fun to be part of him getting older, becoming a little smarter, a little more curious, a little more patient, a little better at asking questions that will get him the knowledge he wants... and doing this in both languages at the same time. He resembles me so much in some ways that mean I have more patience for him than anybody else, and I'm happy to be the one to wait while he lets his methodical side come out.

2. I haven't given it the full write-up yet, but after writing the "beautiful rivers and mountains" post earlier this year, I was invited to write for a TBS EFM (English) documentary about Shin Joong-hyun, Korea's legendary rocker. I'm putting it off in order to give the documenary, and the artist, the treatment they deserve, and this last week I compiled my "Shin Joong Hyun Playlist," which I'll also be sharing, and which I'm quite happy with. It was the kind of dream writing project where I got to find a topic I really liked, work with someone whose enthusiasm and ideas about direction generally matched mine, and get paid for it. So stay tuned for more on that.

3. My father and step-mother visited in October, and they are awesome, and we had an awesome awesome time. We took my first ever trip to Seokcho, watched people shoot fireworks on the beach, drove all over the place, including the closest Poposeyo has ever been to North Korea. We ate some incredible foods -- we went at the perfect season for steamed crab -- but just missed the fall colors, on the early side. My son got to put a face and some real memories to the photos of his Canadian grandparents, which has made the family in Canada that much more real to him.

4. My circle of friends is actually pretty small, and even some of the people I'd love to know better and hang out with more, just don't end up taking slots on my dance card, as it were, because there are so few. But the friends I do have... mean that much more to me because of it, and it's sure nice having the chance to dig in. In an anomaly for expat life, this is was of the years when only one of my cool friends repatriated, and I'm grateful for that. So thanks, Jennifer, Eugene, Danielle, Kenny, and a few others: even if I don't see you all that often, your support, or humor, or insights, or kid who loves to play with my kid, or impeccable taste, or all of the above, have become part of the texture of my life. And Jo... I will miss you dearly. So, thanks, guys. And to the other folks on my list... I hope to get to you this year!

5. I've really enjoyed working on The Cafe Seoul podcast, which I cannot currently link because we're kind of between hosts right now. The other people involved are good folk, and we just last month were awarded "best Podcast" at the K-blog awards. Which means that much more because it was mostly determined by fan voting. The best part of blog awards, however, is always the chance to learn about great new blogs you've been missing.

6. After graduating from my Master's program in February, in September I started a job in one of those University Jobs you always hear about, and it's been good. Now I'm looking down the barrel of an extended vacation, which looks nice too. Maybe I'll study Korean. Or blog more. Or exercise.

7. Great female singers. Back in 2003, other than a few jazz vocalists, almost all the music in my collection was by male singers. I didn't set out to have it that way, but it just kind of happened, without much conscious effort either way. Over the last four years, again without making conscious effort to seek out female artists, I've simply discovered that a huge proportion of the music I've really liked lately has featured female artists. Bat For Lashes, Janelle Monae, Cibo Matto, Sia, P!nk, Sleigh Bells, Azealia Banks, Nicki Minaj, The XX, Dengue Fever, Lee Sora, EMA, Icona Pop, Kim Jungmi, Neko Case, and others comprise well more than half of the newer music I've been excited about over the last few years.

8. Guardians of the Galaxy - the movie this year that made me smile the most, from beginning to end. Especially Groot.

9. Umm... we had a really long, really nice fall, and it didn't get really properly cold until quite late in the year, which was nice.

10. Can I really not even think of 10 things? Really? And I'm using number 9 to talk about the weather? This year was rough.

Um... there's a nice new bagel place in my neighborhood?

Happy new years, readers, and here's to hoping next year is miles better than this one. It's a low bar to clear, I know, but it's a start.

Kim Jong-ho: One Perfect Song

I don't know that much about Kim Jong-ho, but in the process of researching all that old Korean music for a shin joong-hyun documentary that I'll feature in an upcoming post... I just happened upon one of those songs that's simply perfect, where it all comes together:



The song is 보고싶은 마음 from the 1974 album 이름 모를 소녀, or "Nameless Girl."  I haven't been able to find an English translation of the lyrics, and have too much pride to put google translate crap on my blog, but not enough time to attempt a translation of my own, so... no lyrics. I know almost nothing about Kim Jong-ho, except that his album pops up on a collection I have, and manages to stay on the right side of all those balances Korean sentimental songs struggle to balance out, and this album has at least two really lovely songs on it. Listen to this perfect song. I hear a bit of downbeat Beck, a bit of Portishead, and other than that... just straight-up musical goodness. Just listen to the interplay between the violin and the bass. That is all.

Enjoy.

While We're on the Topic of Macademias... and Elites Being Jerks Bingo

While Macademia nuts are all the buzz right now in Korea, because of this story, I don't have all that much to add. You can read more at reuters. The New York Times, The Guardian, or almost anywhere.

My "privileged class/asshole behavior" bingo card is getting pretty full:
privileged class going berzerk? check
public overreaction driven by social media? check
big company doing damage control? check
internet shaming bad behavior by a woman?  check
walk of shame press conference? check
public resignation that is probably a sham until things blow over? check

the only two boxes that remain unchecked yet are these:
the hospital gown/wheelchair combo
netizens moaning that this will damage Korea's global image...


But then, I haven't been paying THAT much attention, so maybe I've missed it.

But while everyone is talking about macademia nuts...
here is my favorite use of the word, ever, and I feel like I just have to add this to the overall discourse.




And if you have any suggestions for more boxes to add to my "Korean elites being assholes bingo" card, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Some Old Korean Rock.

Yes, I have heard the complaint that some kinds of Korean music do nothing artistically -- they just take foreign music and put it in the mouth of somebody Korean.

I think the conversation is much more complex than that -- the act of mediation has a lot of different things in play -- why are they choosing this song or this style instead of another, and why does some stuff catch on, and other stuff not? I had a student tell me about her abiding love for U2, which surprised me, because U2 is almost never the foreign band mentioned when you ask your Korean friend who loves foreign music, to name a few bands they like. I've never heard a Korean pick a U2 song in a noraebang. Not to mention, you can just put on a record... so why do we want our singers to bang out live versions of songs, if accuracy is the issue? It's not. There's simply more going on. And even if imitation is the only thing that's going on, well so what? Anybody impressed with the cover is very likely to look up the original, and might even accidentally come across some great music, thanks to a shitty cover.

Those covers don't always work. Some covers do strike me as utterly unnecessary because they've done very little with the original except add a new color scheme, dance moves, or a different vocal style. But then, that doesn't only happen across cultures (original). And when it doesn't work, we can get rude and dismissive.

But then you come across Shin Joong-hyun's cover of In-a Gadda Da Vida (original by Iron Butterfly)... and I'm willing to forgive a lot of derivative works if every once in a while, something this magical comes across.

Play it through. Play it loud. Or don't bother. But... bother. It's worth it.


And ultimately... I have no problem with the idea of adapting things for a target audience. Why the heck wouldn't you? Italian food is so successful worldwide because pasta is easy, and sauces are infinitely flexible, and thus infinitely adaptable to available ingredients and local taste. And yes, there will be someone somewhere sniffing about authenticity, and they should just go to Naples. Ditto for music. You've got to use the available ingredients, and suit things to local taste. As long as royalties are being paid... all the power to ya!

The Pearl Sisters


Their live version of Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody To Love" made them famous.


Another thing I like about Korean music is the way certain songs keep coming up. There's kind of a repertory, and if you listen to enough music, you'll start recognizing them. Not all of them are even Korean songs anymore - somebody always wants to drop Nella Fantasia or "The Susan Boyle song" into the mix.

For example, any female who wants to show off her pipes chooses this one. (Kim Chuja is the original singer.)

It's an emotional rail spike, and it's effective as hell when a woman with a lower range pours her heart into it.

(If she wants to show off her pipes and her English, she picks Mariah Carey's Hero, or Let it Go.)

You can find dozens of versions of it, from darn near everyone. Here. Get started. It's viral video bait in Korea -- right up there with Nella Fantasia (aka Gabriel's Oboe)

I've been listening to more Shin Joong-hyun again lately, and I've heard him revisit songs with different artists and different arrangements a bunch of times, and I love how he brings out a different side each time. Numerous songs appear multiple times in his 8 disk anthology, which was generously shared with me by a reader. (Thanks, Adam.) It manages to highlight both his songwriting (to write a song that glows under so many different lights) and his musicianship (taking a song we know, and still surprising us).

He's done this song (떠나야 할 그사람 - The Man Who Must Leave) a bunch of different times, and each one is interesting. It started with the Pearl Sisters, one of his first proteges, and from there everybody did it, including Shin himself. My favorite might be this version by 김선 (listed as by Kim Chu-Ja by shazam, but that's a boy's voice). And more recently, In-Sooni took it in a totally different direction.



Another one is 봄비 or "Spring Rain" - which has been done by a swack of people, (Park In-Soo, Jang Sa-ik... but there's another song floating around with the same name, by the way) and has a very distinctive "na na" ending that you'll remember if you've heard it. This is another of those songs that makes everybody feel that happy kind of sad.

Shin's own version of this song is the saddest, in my opinion. As he got older, his voice just oozed some kind of disappointment. Fittingly.


Some people might argue that this kind of recurrence of songs is a minus in Korean music, but I have to disagree. First of all, the cult of the singer-songwriter is a culture and even a genre-specific phenomenon coming out of western (mostly white) rock and roll, where Rolling Stone writers got swept up in The Beatles, who made it a selling point on their artistic originality that they wrote their own songs. Now there's something really admirable about a great songwriter -- Tom Waits and Leonard Cohen are two of the artists that find their ways back on my playlist more than almost any other -- but it's also silly to take points away from someone just because the song's not an original. In jazz music, it's fine to sing the standards, and even preferred if the alternative would be a great singer or musician doing crappy songs, because they're limiting themselves to their own bad songwriting. In classical music, you're pretty much required to perform other people's compositions, and nobody rages on Glenn Gould for doing all those Bach cover albums.

If you take points away from Aretha Franklin for not having written "Respect" (she didn't) or Jimi Hendrix for not writing "All Along The Watchtower," then in my opinion, you're kind of missing the point. Learning someone wrote their own songs is great while I'm scanning the bio, and I often do prefer the original version once I find it, but as soon as I press play, it's about the music, not the origin story. In his "50 Greatest K-pop artists" series (which you should be following, by the way), The Korean talks about the role Kim Kwang Seok played in helping to develop the repertory of Korean songs, and that's important work, developing a sense of heritage from which future artists can draw inspiration. While the originality of some artists is great and praiseworthy, it's not the be-all and end-all for a great musical experience, even if your songwriter was some Swedish ringer. Furthermore, sometimes a well-placed cover demonstrates a sense of history, a sense of heritage and respect for the pioneers, that deepens an artist's repertoire, even as it honors what came before.

So while I don't like every new cover of an old song, and while I in fact think that "Hallelujah" has been wrecked (but not irreparably) by too many crappy reality talent show audition covers, I think it's great when artists nod to their past, and bring us a new look at a song we already know.

News Rundown: Sewol Standoff, Dog Meat, That Pub, and Depression

A few news items have been blazing across my Facebook wall, and I'd like to weigh in briefly on a few of them. I'll be as concise as I can.

Sewol Ferry Law, Riot Police Overkill and Overreaching

The National assembly is deadlocked, as the ruling party and the opposition party cannot agree to the conditions for a special investigation into the Sewol Ferry disaster, and the opposition party are boycotting participation in any other parliamentary actions while waiting for the leading party to capitulate to their demands. Read up here. And here. And this one is my favorite. This longer piece at The Marmot's Hole looks into the motivations of the political players.

At the same time, the Gwanghwamun area, which I regularly travel through and around in my weekly schedule, is also deadlocked, with police buses and riot troops turning broad roadways into traffic bottlenecks. In my opinion, the number of police sent out there is overkill by a magnitude of order. There look to be 10 police for every one protestor I've seen. On the other hand... perhaps that mad overkill is what dissuades larger crowds from bothering to show up... and I can remember back to 2008 and 2009, when protesters would overrun police barriers and block traffic all weekend in Gwanghwamun, just because they could, misguidedly thinking that snarling the entire downtown would gain sympathy, rather than turning every driver against their cause... and well, at least the police keep one lane open.

I'm annoyed by both situations, because both dumb deadlocks are based on one side presuming that the other side will go nuclear - protestors getting violent and destroying police buses and attacking police, and politicians headhunting the president at every opportunity - given the tiniest shred of leeway. The problem, in both cases, is that in the past both protestors and opposition politicians have done exactly that, given any opportunity, so while I really hate all this recalcitrance and stubbornness, I see where it's coming from, and while I really hope the Sewol families get justice, and a full accounting for what went wrong, and they don't seem to be getting that from the ruling party, it's a shame they have to align with the political left, who come across (as usual) as if they're in it more for the damage they can inflict on the ruling party than out of any actual concern for the families devastated in this tragedy. I knew this Sewol thing would get politicised eventually, but I'm disgusted by how it's happened.

I keep going back and forth, like Louis CK.


On the one side... when a party acts as if it's hiding wrongdoing (perhaps simply out of habit), after a while people start guessing it's because there is some serious wrongdoing just waiting for the right rock to be overturned.

On the other side, it makes sense that they are acting defensively, trying to pre-emptively prevent the investigative committee from turning into a presidential head-hunting team, because the progressive party goes after the president whenever they can. Given their track record for overreaching, they've given the conservatives no reason to expect they won't do it again. Nor me.

Part of the story hinges on the formation, and composition, of a "fact finding committee" -- and the formation of special committees has always been fraught in South Korea, where everyone suspects everyone has an agenda, and/or has something to hide. The sordid track record of politicising Truth and Reconciliation Commissions is a good place to start for the way grievances never seem to get resolved in South Korea, especially when they involve powerful people.

It's a mess. It's a quagmire. It's the reason Korean people don't have faith in their government. It's the reason Korean people latch onto newcomers who promise to "change the way politics is done" -- as if it could be done, when every politician except that one person has something to lose in the case of actual change. Koreans seem to expect the worst of their politicians, yet Korean politicians have repeatedly lived down, and then sunk below that expectation.

Could the president have done something to make the Sewol tragedy unfold differently than it did? Probably, but not on the day it happened. There are heads that richly deserve to roll, and people who did get away with stuff. Who have covered up their shame more cleverly and subtly than the Sewol captain, and who'll probably get away with it. Shit is still happening that shows that actual concern for safety hasn't been impressed on the rank and file, those to whom we trust our safety (Saemangeum seawall workers were out having dinner instead of warning boats not to approach the seawall while the gate was open).

Dog meat: On the way out

I wrote about dog meat a few times before. Here. And here, with ruminations on the nature of online debate.

A recent article in Yahoo Finance, of all places, discusses the closing of a famous dog meat restaurant -- where presidents themselves ate -- and the slow decline of dog meat consumption, in the absence of young people eating it. The comment I put on my Facebook page was this:

Dog meat is a generational thing, and if foreign lobby groups had ignored it in 1988, causing certain people to cling to "our culture" mainly because "dem furriners" were telling them not to, and screw them! I believe dog meat would probably already be nearly extinct.  

Humanity and cruelty aside, it's economics that will do dog dishes in, and there just isn't a future in the market for it, when nearly every consumer is grey-haired. It'll go the way of bbundaegi (which is also slowly vanishing, with much less fanfare, because foreign lobby groups never convinced a group of Koreans it's part of "their" culture).

An academic paper I came across while researching the '88 olympics, discovered these outcomes from global pressure to ban dog meat in Korea during the buildup to the olympics:

The goal of this paper has been to assess the world polity perspective for one empirical case: the debate surrounding dog meat consumption in South Korea. In this case, global cultural scripts rejecting dog meat consumption did not translate directly or in a predictable fashion to conforming Korea’s practices into the world system. In this case, integration of world cultural norms has transformed existing cultural practices into something not quite resembling what came before (traditional dog meat eating practices) nor what the adherents of the world polity perspective might predict (the abolition of dog meat). Rather, dog meat eating practices have transformed into a more widespread cultural activity legitimised by greater protections against animal cruelty and greater awareness of the role of dog meat consumption within the discourse of South Korean national pride.

*Minjoo Oh & Jeffrey Jackson (2011) "Animal Rights vs. Cultural Rights: Exploring the Dog Meat Debate in South Korea from a World Polity Perspective." Journal of Intercultural Studies. 32.1, 31-56.

That is to say, by trying to ban dog meat, global animal rights groups created a backlash, causing a practice that had been dying out anyways on its own, to be practiced and cherished as a site for practicing and celebrating cultural identity. That cultural pride association had become strong enough by 2002 (World Cup) that anti-dog lobbyers were met with resistance that used the language of respect for cultural uniqueness. If international animal rights folks had said nothing in 1986-7, I think dog meat would probably have died away on its own before 2000, lacking any wind in its sagging sails.

I said in previous posts -- meat is meat, and I have trouble accepting arguments that it's OK to eat one critter, but not another, and I've always argued that Korean society will age out of dog meat in its own sweet time. Interesting to see I'm being proven right.

The Pub Thing

The offensive sign in the pub, and the outraged response, has been beaten into the ground on Facebook, and was blogged about at Asia Pundits, Adam R Carr's blog (which tries to sniff through the (in?)sincerity of the proprietors' initial responses and denials), and Korea Observer, who attended the "apology" night, where the owner got too drunk to apologize (yikes!). A surprising number of people have come out on Facebook to defend or pooh-pooh outrage over an action that is indefensible in any way.

Mostly this summary was an excuse to share this
funny image from the Dokdo is Ours post.

For the record, the signs were only up at the location for about an hour, but the same article by Korea Observer that mentions that fact, seems also to give us a clue as to the real motivations for putting up the sign: a group of bar patrons from ... um... a country that would be excluded if all Africans were banned... who were bothering females in the club. Even Dokdo Is Ours (hey hey!) got in on the feeding frenzy, ending with a joke about the way so many people have trouble naming more than a handful of countries in Africa, and talking about Africa as if it were a single, undifferentiated country.

If I were the bar owner, I'd close down for a week and re-open under a new name. But honestly, given now many people attending bars in Itaewon either aren't tuned into expat facebook activism anyway, and how short expat memory is because of high turnover, not to mention how many people drinking in Itaewon aren't even foreigners anymore these days, I doubt a Facebook activist run boycott (if anybody bothered to organise one) would even have a serious effect. The location probably matters more than whether the proprietors are or aren't racist, but next time we suggest a sign saying "the management reserves the right to refuse service to any customer at any time" instead of "No Africans because... um... Ebola, I guess."

You can hear more of my thoughts on that issue at the Cafe Seoul Podcast -- some of my blogging energy has been going into the Cafe Seoul Podcast lately, and I am rather pleased with it. It's put together by my friend Eugene, and a couple of other pals, and our last few episodes have all made me happy. Maybe they will make you happy, too.

Here's the Ebola Pub episode. IBlug won't embed for some reason, so you'll just have to click on the link.

You can also search "Cafe Seoul Podcast" on iTunes, or click here.

Robin Williams and Depression

I, like everyone else of my generation, was staggered by the unexpected passing of Robin Williams: we were raised on his movies. There were conversations about which Robin Williams movies we loved (Hook, Aladdin, Good Will Hunting, The Fisher King, Dead Poets' Society, are my top five), the ones we not-quite-loved (Death To Smoochy, What Dreams May Come, and Jakob the Liar were two of the movies that taught me that even actors I like can make bad movies), and who can forget his appearance on Whose Line Is It Anyway, topped only by Richard Simmons' "Possibly The Best Five Minutes On The Internet", or his stand-up.

And the conversation veered into discussions of suicide. Cracked had the subtly titled "Why Funny People Kill Themselves", and my sister-in-law wrote this beautiful bit on her blog, which I'm copying but not linking, because I didn't ask permission, and if she wants my readers on her blog, she can put the link in the comments. Perhaps she doesn't.

Cancer, and diabetes, and kidney disease, and strokes, and fatal heart attacks, and Alzheimers are all horrible illnesses.  But you know what happens at the end of them?
The person dies OF the disease. 

We say, "Shirley died OF cancer,"  "James kidneys failed him," "Bonnie had a horrible stroke."  The disease killed them, got them, attacked them.  The disease was not associated at all with WHO they were, quite the opposite in fact, the disease got them.     

I don't know why it is that this isn't the case in with mental illness.  We likely won't speak of Robin Williams "dying of depression," or being the victim of "brain failure." Forever his death will be tainted with the tag "suicide," and in that, just so many complicated and avoided issues.  

...When people commit suicide, they are sick.  End of story.  They are sick like any dying person laying in a hospital bed, only they are likely getting far less comfort, love, and compassion in the hours leading to their passing. 

They die OF something.  They do not choose to die.  The disease has killed them, at least any shred left of who they once were. 

Similar sentiments here. Fact is, depression and mental illness still face a stigma other diseases don't. Nobody goes into the cancer ward saying "Why don't you just... not have cancer any more?" and if they did they've be acknowledged without debate as an ignorant asshole. But people do that for depression. "I'm getting tired of you and all this leukaemia shit. Snap out of it!" Said no-one, ever. "You know, maybe a little exercise is what you need for that liver failure." "Some volunteering might help put your muscular dystrophy in perspective." "I think you're just having tuberculosis for attention." So... it's terribly sad we've lost another hero of my childhood, particularly for his family and the people around him. Hopefully it will start more conversations about mental health, which will have positive outcomes in the end. But if that happens, to be clear, it doesn't mean it was worth it that even one more person, famous or not, lost the battle with depression. Every life lost is a deep tragedy.

Lest we miss an opportunity to share this information, you may have heard suicide is a pretty serious social problem in Korea. Here are some Korean suicide resources: http://www.counsel24.com/  http://www.suicide.org/hotlines/international/south-korea-suicide-hotlines.html and some other international suicide help lines. http://www.reddit.com/r/SWResources/comments/17gu7g/hotline_numbers/ Share others you know about in the comments.

Those are a few of the things floating across my brain-dar these days. Hope it was interesting for you to read, and that the thoughts are mostly well-formed, rather than half-baked.

That is all for now.

You'll Never Guess the Top Five Things That Happened After K-blogs Got Too Self-Referential

Ouroboros. Source

This might be the worst K-blog list infection since that CNNgo troll article prompted a spat of countdowns (links to others at beginning of post)

Lists are the thing again. And posts about bloggers who make lists. And lists about bloggers who make posts about bloggers who make lists. And this is a post about a list about a post about lists. If others write similar posts, we could make a list of posts about bloggers who write posts about bloggers who make lists. And then the K-blogosphere will crawl up its own butt, die of auto-rhetorical asphyxiation, and probably not be mourned.

Listception!

Image belongs to this guy. Buy one!

However, when even a scholar like Cedarbough, over at her blog Footnotes, has made a top 10 list of how to Korea correctly, I guess my memo must have just been lost in the mail. And so, in obligatory clickbait fashion, lest they take away my K-blogger card, here are the topics we've seen so far. In list form, of course.

1. Perhaps Paul Ajosshi got it started with his "6 Dangers That Await You at the Boryeong Mud Fest" - a cautionary listicle that totally neglects the looming threat of a zombie apocalypse. (By the way, don't you love the word listicle? It sounds just similar enough to the word "Testicle" that it not only conveys that something is an article that is a list, but makes people go "uh... kinda ew." As listicles do.

What I imagine when I hear the word "Listicle"

2. Following Paul, Charles Montgomery wrote "Top 10 Newbie Mistakes in Korea" the most useful of which is #2, that if you're an HBC expat hipster... you're not actually rebelling when you dress the way everybody else in HBC dresses, and hang out in the same dives. On the other hand... Charles is hardly breaking new ground in making fun of hipsters, which even Mike Myers did, way back when he was still really really funny.

(So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993): people have been making fun of hipsters since before the latest batch of hagwon teachers were born.)


I wish they would get off your lawn, too, Charles!


3. William George answered Charles with "Noobs, You're Doing Fine"

I don't think we'd realized listicular circlejerkititis was the thing infecting the K-blogs yet with Mr. George's "Don't listen to the grumpy guy" response. But then, the ball was just getting rolling.

4. Epidemic status was reached when Sweet Pickles and Corn published "10 Things In Korea that I'll Never Ever Do" including things like "I'll never go on a temple stay" (fair enough). Mostly, I think he must be doing well here, if the worst thing he can think of to do here is overpaying shitty foreign food (10th on the list). Somewhere out there, perhaps on one of those blogs that got cancelled, there's a person who could make a much more sordid list with a much better grasp of "How Expats Hit Bottom In Far-Off Lands".

5. Cedarbough weighed in with 10 things to do if you live in Korea -- one of the better lists I've read, and wish I'd written myself. I especially like 4, 5, and 6, and I can only hope she'll follow up #3 - "Read Real Books About Korea" with a second top ten (or 15, or 80) suggestions of places to start.

6. Burndog takes the piss out of everyone who writes a list, or grumbles about those writing lists, with "10 things I'll Never Write a List About in Korea Something Something Noob"

7. Finally, Dom and Hyo have, in cartoon form (squee) "9 Different Types of Expats You Will Come Across in Korea" -- a list I like, because it seems to be written neither to vent unhappy expat rage, nor to ingratiate themselves to an imagined Korean audience. However, they missed the "know-it-all" of whom I am one.

Now that I've done a list about lists, let's include it in a list of your favorite conglomerations of lists, like Cracked cannibalizing itself, until we have a list of the best lists about lists about collections of lists. And put each item of the list on a separate page, to squeeze out extra clicks. Ads in the sidebar, all hail google ads revenue!

Pertinent to all this listification is the fact that every week, I go on TBS radio and present a list myself, in a segment titled (by my predecessor in the spot) "The Lone Ranker" - I do little countdowns about whatever topic I like that week, ranging from heavy stuff like "6 ways Sports Mega Events Helped Create The World We Live In Today" to frippery such as "The Five Most Annoying Things About Spring" (both actual topics I've done). I may start turning more of my topics into posts for ze blog (especially given how sparse posting has been lately.

Stay cool my loyal readers.

And now, here is a video of Kim Jong-un dancing, that went viral in China.

Looking silly is the worst thing possible for North Korea (hence the report that a Seth Rogen movie will be considered an act of war) - no nation has ever screamed louder "Take me seriously" in all its policies and actions, than North Korea. I guess if you can't walk softly and carry a big stick, the next best thing is to wave your wet noodle as threateningly and loudly as you can in everyone's faces.


Put your list in the comments if I forgot yours!

Culturalism - You Keep Using That Word 2: Some Q and A on Culturalism

I'm just going to assume that readers have all read part 1 of this series: What is Actual Culturalism? I'm tackling the idea of "culturalism" - which The Korean discussed, but has also been discussed by others in social sciences and policy discussions for a while. This comment points out that it isn't really taught as a method or framework in anthropology. Which is good to know. Thanks, commenter Nora!

So what are some other concepts related to culturalism?

Last post, we talked about Culturalism and Multiculturalism as it plays into policy discussions - particularly in Europe. Here in Kblogland, most people talking about culturalism are going on The Korean's definition, which mostly resembles the one used in Europe, but applying it to the area of cultural engagement rather than public policy. He defines it these two ways:

Culturalism is the unwarranted impulse to explain people's behavior with a "cultural difference", whether real or imagined. Because the culturalist impulse always attempts to explain more with culture than warranted, the "cultural difference" used in a cultural explanation is more often imagined than real. (source)

and as

...the impulse to explain minority people's behavior with a "cultural difference", real or imagined. (source)

Along those lines, here are some other rhetorical and philosophical concepts that The Korean and others might find useful in discussing "Culturalism". Rather than long descriptions here, I strongly encourage you to read the explanations I link. I also glossed over this in my previous post, "problems with citing culture"

• Fundamental Attribution Error - we tend to over-emphasize internal causes, and under-emphasize external (systemic or sometimes even random) causes of a phenomenon.
• Cultural Determinism - we tend to believe that culture determines our behavior...probably more than it actually does.
• Essentialism - we tend to think that there are certain traits that are fixed and unchangeable for certain groups - "Women are all like this" "Koreans are all this way" "White men all do this"
• Orientalism - a type of essentialism that focuses on other groups and cultures. When we look at certain cultures, we tend to make them out to be so different from us that we could never understand them (implied: so we may as well not try) - they will always be exotic, strange, and inscrutable to "us." Any time somebody uses the word "exotic," watch for this attitude.

Culturalism as The Korean defines it is bits of the four above in one, intellectually sloppy modge-podge, with a little ecological fallacy thrown in for flavor. And I say "intellectually sloppy" because people over-using culture to explain things are being sloppy, not because The Korean has been sloppy in describing it.

Meanwhile, commenter Dylan suggests we read more about Communitarianism -- which is another concept used by human rights scholars in discussing the ways people organize into communities.

So, is culturalism racism?

Not necessarily.

For one, racism has been discredited - the variety within members of each racial group is so great, that the variety from one racial group to another fades to insignificance. And we've all heard racism deniers tell us that "race is a social construct, therefore it doesn't exist"... As if social constructs don't exist. But society is also a social construct, so as people living in societies, we still have to talk about race sometimes.

Abstraction confuses me.

Culture has the benefit of being recognized by everyone as a social construct from the get-go, so at least we don't have deniers herp-derping that it does not exist because humans made it up (unlike all the other things humans made up, that DO exist, like the language they're using to make that argument). Anyone who's agreed to talk about culture has already agreed to talk about social constructs, so that's at least nice.

And race is hardware -- your pigment and bone structure are in your dna, and unchangeable, but culture is software - programmed patterns of behavior which can be changed. Culture is changing all the time. That's a crucial difference.

Strictly speaking then, culturalism isn't the same as racism.

Lemme tell you 'bout race, butthead...

However, if you take a person in the habit of lazy or sloppy thinking, and give them a phenomenon they don't understand, the same sloppiness that might have caused their 1955 self to explain it with race, might today cause them to explain it with culture.

It's all about culture, butthead!

Racism has been discredited, but while intellectual laziness is still in style, even most bigots generally realize you're not "supposed" to be openly racist anymore. So culturalism isn't the same as racism, but they are used in the same way by lazy thinkers and bigots. They are born of the same desire to generalize about those who are different, both are worsened by the same lack of curiosity and unwillingness to admit the variety and humanity of others, and both lead to the same kinds of sweeping and ignorant statements. And those are ample grounds for The Korean to call culturalism "racism of the 21st century"

So is culture off the table entirely?

No. Because it's human made, and learned, culture is changeable, and changing all the time. This means that, as long as we discuss it in terms that don't overestimate its usefulness as an analytical tool (which is easy to do), yeah, it's fair game for discussion, but even kept in perspective, it's still easy to get it wrong when talking about culture, because when talking about culture, you're also talking about the way a bunch of people live, and those people deserve to be approached with respect, and in a way that recognizes their humanity, intelligence, free will, and so forth. And there are lots of ways to talk about culture that does not do those things. Be respectful, and don't be a dick.

Beep boop beep boop! Why am I not surprised the politically correct police have shown up to stop me from expressing my free speech?

OK. I'm going to write a whole extra unplanned post in this series to talk about this, because the more I think about it, the weirder it is to me that somehow political correctness has been framed as a bad thing... so if you're champing at the bit to start arguing about that, kindly hold your horses and save it for the comments under a future post.

Coming up next at Roboseyo: some ways to talk about culture without coming across as a shit. Stay tuned!