Good Perspective on Blackout Korea

It's been a while since this was published or timely... but during my semester I kinda got busy.

anyway... here's an article written by Matt Lamers about the Blackout Korea kerfuffle. Go read.

Going through old Photos...

And finding gems like this.


and this


and this (spotted first by a buddy)


Gwangyang may have reached a threshold in buzzword density here.


I don't know how I feel about the new uses being given to the word "Virus" in Korea. Any word that's used in a Kpop song or TV show title (Beethoven Virus) is at risk of spinning off with a wild, new, farfetched meaning.





Ordinary poster... or is it?

Gaah! Look at her freaky photoshoppy wrist!



BWAHAHAHA BWAHAHAHA BWAHAHAHAHAHA!

Expat Hell and Blogs Bullied into Silence, discussed at Bobster's House

A writer whom I respect a lot, The Bobster, wrote a piece a little while ago called "The Curious Case of Jake, In Korea" (Part 1, and Part 2)

Jake shut down his former blog, "The Prestige," and at the time, I wrote a half-baked post about netizen bullies and defensive nationalists, making the unfounded assumption that it had been netizen bullies that shut him down. I later took that post down (something I almost never do). Because it was half-baked, and simply incorrect.

The Bobster interviewed Jake, and in part two, added some great thoughts about the myth of anonymity on the internet,  and the fact we own what we write on the internet, anonymously or otherwise. I'll be honest, and say that as a guy who writes under his real name, who has a family in Korea, sometimes I wonder how far I ought to venture into controversial territory... but then again, even if I don't aim for controversy, you never know when somebody will misunderstand a joke or an idiom, or just decide they don't like something about me. That's why, look around, and you'll notice I never put the name of my school or my current workplace on the blog, and have put a grand total of two or three pictures up where my wife's face can be discerned... because it would bother me a lot if my blog garnered any kind of unwanted attention for my wife.

You don't know this, but I did once have netizen who didn't like some comments I made on another page, publish the location and time where s/he or one of his/her friends had spotted me in public. They took it down a few hours later, before I could grab a screenshot, but yeah. That happened.

Anyway, my favorite line in Bobster's write-up:
"Steering clear of controversy because the topics don’t move you is different from avoiding them because we are afraid evil people will jump at us from the shadows. Most of the time there is nothing there in the dark, or what is there is, is very small and doesn’t want to do more than say boo."

I'm sad that so far, Bobster's two-part piece has garnered only one comment altogether, and I'd be really happy to see a lively discussion there. So, brace yourself, Bobster.

So go, read. Begin with part one. and then read part two.

Article on South Korea's problems Integrating Non-Them's

Faustino John Lim, whom I've worked with on the consultative committee I'm a part of at the Canadian Embassy, has published a very interesting article in The Diplomat's "New Leaders Forum" about South Korea's challenges integrating migrant workers, multicultural kids, and North Koreans, and warns of the formation of a racialized underclass.

"How successfully South Korea handles its marginalized populations will demonstrate not only its ability to achieve a multicultural society, but also a successful model of modernization."

later

"Long boastful of its nation's apparent ethnic homogeneity...the spectre of institutional racisim, excluding those not fully 'Korean' from equal opportunities for social and economic advancement, looms."

The article frames the issue well, though it's not quite long enough to propose many straight-up solutions.

But it's DEFINITELY worth a read.

So... Go read!

Koreans USE Arirang... but OWN it?: Part Four: China... and UNESCO Looks like Tools Right Now

This is a several-part response to The Korean's post about Korea's ownership of Arirang. The Korean's post was a response to my post in June, stating provocatively that Nobody Owns Arirang.

Part one of this series.

Part two of this series.

Part three of this series.

Some food for thought:
Becoming a Canadian.


Waking up Canadian. It's that easy to become a Canadian. That's what happens when nationality is civic instead of ethnic. Nationality isn't the same as ethnicity OR identity. Nationality's a piece of paper. Identity's a lot more.


These beer commercials are like putting video clips of the 2002 World Cup crowd scenes in a Korean commercial:


But you best not be crossing us canucks:


And, to illustrate the confusion that occurs when one word (Korean) can represent a political body, a culture, or a language, here's some of the confusion that occurs when Jew, the religion, and Jew, the ethnic group, get muddled: Jerry Seinfeld's friend converts to Judaism... and starts telling Jewish jokes, and referring to Jewry as "we."


Sidenote: Questions about China

Before we can be sure China is only trying to co-opt Arirang for the sake of taking over North Korea, Baekdusan, and so forth, here are the questions we need answered:

1. what other cultural heritages of China's many other minority groups has China been registering? Has it been at a similar rate to China's registering of cultural heritages belonging to the Korean Chinese in the Northeast? Faster? Slower?
2. are there landclaim disputes or potential landclaim disputes in any of those other places?
3. are there cultural practices being registered in those other places that belong to people who don't exclusively live in China? (for example, the Hmong in South China and Southeast Asia) and has this action been seen by any of these other groups as attempts to co-opt their culture? Has it been seen by the nations that host populations of any of these other groups as intended toward making claims on their territory?
4. Is China only registering heritage in places where it has, or is suspected of having territorial intentions?

The answers to these questions would take research... and perspective; neither were provided in the least by the coverage of the Arirang registration from Korean news sources, but without answers to these questions, we have no idea what to make of China registering a few local varieties of the Arirang.

If China's not bothering with ethnic groups' heritages in non-contested territories (for example, if they're registering a ton of Tibetan, Uighur and Taiwanese heritage, but no Manchu or Yi at all), then we have reason to get jacked up about the Northeast Project. But if China's registering the heritages of other groups at a proportionally higher rate than the Korean-Chinese, there's a possibility China has dragged its feet on Korean-Chinese heritage out of respect for the unique heritages of North and South Korea, and their kinship with the Yanbian Chinese.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

An answer to the I Am Canadian commercials above: Korean advertisers use lots of banal nationalism too... World Cup references always get the hearts stirring.
I'm not sure how I feel about bringing North Korea's most famous dancer into south Korea... to shill phones.


Finally: UNESCO Kinda Looks Like Tools Right Now


After all that, we're finally at the heart of the matter: why the hell are national governments, with their angles and agendas and political ends, involved in preservation of cultural heritage?

And I'd lay this problem at the foot of UNESCO:

Now I have a friend who used to work for UNESCO Korea, who explained to me that governments  have the power to petition UNESCO to register something as a cultural heritage, but UNESCO has to make a decision for or against inclusion on the Big Unesco Lists.

This benefits UNESCO because it only deals with UN recognized bodies, who are familiar with the protocols of dealing with international organizations, simplifying things. Also, because national governments have interests in promoting some kinds of heritages, I'm not sure, but UNESCO might well be benefiting...richly... from hearing the petitions of different nations requesting registration of different cultural heritages. Especially... energetic petitions as they might receive from Korea and China on this Arirang thing, and other such disputed cultural artifacts.

I don't know if UNESCO benefits the way FIFA's governing body um... benefits richly from hearing countries' world cup bids.... but if it does, that explains a lot.

The problem is by putting the power to register heritage in the hands of national governments, UNESCO has put itself in a position where it can become the tool of national governments wishing to promote certain kinds of national images (possibly at the expense of others) through what they choose to register, and what they choose not to register. This leaves the heritage registration process open to being compromised through all the usual agendas, angles and interests that taint every activity of national political parties.

And heritage is too precious and wonderful a thing to put it into the hands of politicians.

Somebody needs to pull UNESCO's leadership out of Paris, and their heads out of their asses, and bring them over to Asia, and show them how, in these parts, world heritage ownership becomes a battlefield for historical disputes, and the building of claims of ownership of regions, and the source of ridiculous pissing contests. In case they aren't aware of it.

More to the point: Why the hell are national governments involved in registering cultural heritages that predate them, and that transcend and predate more recently drawn borders between nations? That's fishy to me, and it undermines UNESCO's credibility when it allows itself to be the battlefield for another Korea/China cultural dispute.

I think it would be better if UNESCO were dealing directly with the people, the societies and groups and artisans who practice the arts being recorded as heritage. Why should China OR South Korea be involved with registering Arirang? Why isn't there an international body for the preservation of Arirang, one where Chinese-Korean, Japanese-Korean, North Korean, South Korean, and diaspora Korean Arirang singers, recorders, writers, and lovers, can get together, and get excited about Arirang? And why isn't that group, which (hopefully) doesn't give a damn about political nation-state ties, the one helping UNESCO get Arirang registered right as a national cultural heritage?

Cultures and Nation-States are not the same thing... but they are confused far too often. This muddy (and/or lazy) thinking is by absolutely no means limited to Koreans, either, so let's not hear any of that in the comments.

Yeah, nation-state governments have deep pockets. Way deeper than historical/cultural groups. But governments shouldn't be curating museums: they should be providing cultural funding without strings attached, so that museums can find excellent people who are better at curation than civil servants. And governments shouldn't have any part in registering cultural heritage with UNESCO, because it taints the entire process if they do. UNESCO should be collaborating with historians, artisans and preservation groups in their project of cultural preservation. 

The best governments can do with culture or heritage is use it for propaganda... and that's a sad use of a cultural heritage. Even sadder than having it co-opted by marketers**. So let's put curation of culture in the hands of those who identify with it, who love it, who would see their precious heritage stay above political posturing or financial interests, and who help it grow, instead of those who would claim to own it, in order to gain politically or financially from it.

**Yes I recognize the irony of saying that after using beer commercials to describe Canadian national identity. But even if Molson Canadian is free to advertise with Canadian images, they shouldn't be the ones contacting UNESCO about heritage registration.

Further reading:
Why Arirang isn't registered.
Why are you telling us Americans don't have a culture, the Korean?
My favorite comment on The Korean's post: Part one, Part two

(best line: Think, for a second, if the French were to claim the Statue of Liberty as a product of French culture - this move would be made even worse if France were rising in its status as a world power, was making similarly political moves around its region, and were a hundred times as big in land, power, and size, and were right next to America.)

UNESCO's website