SNL Korea Video Mock Overseas Adoptees Searching For their Parents. Uncool.

Some might say, after the third case of blackface, we should stop getting overly worked up when SNL Korea does something bone-headed and offensive.

Well, others might say, after the third case, we should get even more worked up than the first time, because somebody's not pulling their heads out of their arses. Because SNL Korea just keeps throwing down stupid, insulting skits.

This video floated into my radar on Facebook.



It's a four minute clip of an overseas adoptee meeting his birth mother at the airport.

Here is an explanation of the video from AdoptionJustice.com, which has written a "Dear SNL Korea" letter you really must read:

The title is taken from a former TV show that showed adoptee reunions. The adopted character’s name is Jason Doo-yeong Anderson.

Announcer: Now I am going to meet you. Jason Doo-yeong Anderson.

Jason (in a stupid fake accent and very polite Korean): It’s nice to meet you, mom. I am Jason Doo-yeong Anderson.

(still in a stupid fake accent but now very rude Korean, making fun of the fact that is hard for English speakers to remember all the different levels of politeness built into the Korean language): Why did you abandon me? Were you extremely poor at that time? You will be punished because you abandoned your baby. OK OK, but I but I ….

(now speaking medium-polite Korean):  But I am OK. Because I am meeting mom now. OK OK listen.

(now speaking informal Korean, rude to his mom): I heard this from my American mom. I drink a lot because I take after my Korean mom. Like my mom. OK.

When Korean people drink alcohol, they sing and dance… So, you like some?

[Dances and sings]: Look at my shoulders [etc.]

You know this song?

(in rude Korean): You know this song? Oojima, omma. (Sounds like “don’t cry” or “don’t laugh.” He pronounces it weird so we don’t really know what he’s saying.)

Be sure to have one drink with me.

If I become an alcohol drinking dog, call daeri…. Call daeri, OK? OK, listen. [This is in reference to a service in Korea that you can call if you're drunk. Someone will come and drive you home in your own car.]

When I meet Mom, there is one thing I really want to show her. Taekwondo. Taekwondo, OK. Look at this. I practiced a lot.

Mom, let’s not be separated.

OK. I'm not an adoptee, but I care that adoptees, and others who have complicated relationships with mainstream Korean society and mainstream Korean identities, find a place of belonging, and a place of dignity here. So this article is my small contribution, in solidarity with my adoptee friends. Because it sucks when some asshat writers at some TV show make a whole group feel like they don't belong, or that they deserve to be mocked.

Gleaned from blog posts like this from PeaceShannon, a few facebook conversations, and my own read of the video, here are some of the things wrong with this:

1. Mocking the attempts by foreigners to learn Korean (I'm not an adoptee, but I can relate to this at least... FU SNL Korea!), without mentioning the fact the reason some adoptees can't speak Korean is because they were sent away from their birth country and alienated from their birth culture. (Way to lighten that load of alienation, chums!)
2. The mother never speaks or shows her face -- though in the frame for almost the whole skit, she's somehow forced out of the scene, dehumanising her, or minimising her relevance. As with actual birth mothers in many adoption discourses.
3. Referencing that he takes after his mom because he drinks a lot - which is not a reach to connect to stereotypes regarding the loose morals of unwed mothers.
4. Belittling the attempts overseas adoptees make to connect with their birth culture -- the awful taekwondo demonstration.
5. Having an adult adoptee simper like a child, when media and government discourses are kind of known for patronizing adoptees as if even the adults were still children (a government minister declaring "I love you" to a conference of adoptees? Really? Note also the emotive language in the linked article.)

A lot of adoptees have tried and tried, unable to find their birth parents. I can't imagine how it would feel to see a sometimes painful and often difficult journey - one they may have dreamed of for their whole life, only to find that shoddy or falsified paperwork has made it so that only 2.7% of adoptees actually find their parents - trivialized this way. That's right. 2.7% (source) So for the 97.3% of adoptees who try to find their parents but can't, this is a mockery multiplied upon mockery. And really, really gross.

[Update]
Here are some responses from Reddit/r/Korea demonstrating the reason this skit is risible.

Mean was one of the words that came to my mind as well. Or perhaps cruel.

And that's the heart of it right there. My son is Korean and Canadian, and if I saw his efforts to make a connection with either of those cultures thrown back in his face like this skit does, I'd be fucking livid.

[Update over]

I now give the floor to adoptees - the actual people mocked in this skit, who are well capable of speaking for themselves.

Peace Shannon is a great blog to spend some time on, to get to understand why some adoptees are quite unhappy with how the Korean overseas adoption system runs. Some quotes:

lets mock the psychological and physical effort it took to reclaim some of it for themselves, like learning korean or taekwondo. this is particularly ridiculous that they’re mocking these efforts when they are expected of adoptees by koreans. you’re korean? why can’t you speak korean? and then one someone makes the effort, apparently that will be rewarded by laughing at your pronunciation.

Adoption Justice has a lovely response that you really really should read, 

Dear SNL Korea,   

I am so thankful that during my nine years living in Korea, I have met the most wonderful people...I am thankful to have met unwed mothers, overseas and domestic adoptees, people who grew up in orphanages, people with disabilities, GLBT people, mixed-race people, migrant workers, and people of all different classes and backgrounds in Korea. They have shown me what a diverse place Korea really is, and the great place that this could be if only the Korea public would become an open and welcoming society for all, free of prejudice and the perpetuation of negative stereotypes....

 [break... go read the whole thing]

SNL, your skit doesn’t make me think that all Koreans are ignorant bigots because luckily, I am already surrounded by amazing Koreans whom I know and love. However, I am not sure how this skit will be understood by the many overseas adoptees who have never been to Korea, may never get to Korea, and may never meet a Korean even once in their lives. 

And this chilling closing line:

"You may think that you are giving a funny representation of adoptees to Korea, but you have also have given us adoptees this representation of Korea and Koreans."

Mindle Mothers - partly a repost of Adoption Justice's post, with another letter (excerpt here):

Thanks for making fun me of and the rest of the overseas Korean adoptees. I am one of these adoptees you are mocking the most. I do not speak any Korean and I have been searching for my family for some years now. I am spending my vacations searching for my family and for the culture that was taken away from me. I have spent many million won on my trips back to Korea. I do not think that I ever will feel 100 % Korean because I did not grew up in Korea, my birth country. Maybe my mom was not a saint, but why do you have to mock me and her for that? 

If I have missed any posts that deserve a link here, please let me know.

[Update II] GOAL (Global Overseas Adoptees' Link) has written an excellent, and gracious, open letter, here.

I will assume that this skit was born from ignorance rather than malicious intent because I can work with ignorance by helping to educate the writers, actors and producer on where they went wrong and explaining why this skit was hurtful to the many, many adoptees, Koreans, and birth family members that saw this. 

It was uncomfortable because adoptees didn’t have a choice in the adoption. ... It was uncomfortable because the actor who was portraying the adoptee Jason Dooyoung Anderson visually reinforces the idea that adoptees are pitiable in their efforts to grasp Korean concepts ... 

It was uncomfortable because a reunion between an adoptee and his or her birth parents is for many adoptees, a very, very long awaited moment in their lives. The SNL Korea skit made a mockery of that sacred moment and that hurts.

and this is the part that destroyed me:

It was uncomfortable because adoptees who have little to no information about their birth families bravely go on shows like 사람을 찾습니다, 지금 만나러 갑니다 or others knowing that the show is deliberately dramatizing the experience and milking the emotional moments for every tear they can get, but they allow themselves to be put on display for the entire country in a manner that can be embarrassing and humiliating because they have run out of options and these shows actually facilitate reunions. SNL Korea’s skit just piles onto that feeling of humiliation because it is mocking a setting where we already feel extremely vulnerable and discourages adoptees from using the media to assist with their reunion efforts.

GOAL has also just released an international press release on the topic, asking for an on-air apology, and suggesting that they be approached beforehand if SNL Korea is considering airing more adoptee-related content.
[End update]

And please reach out to SNL Korea on their Facebook page or their Twitter account @tvN_snl, in whichever language you know ('cause the world is watching) but Korean if you can ('cause the staff there has demonstrated enough ignorance recently that there may be doubts they can read anything else)

[Update: Another letter]

Follow-up in the next post.

North Korean Women Today: Event on March 15th

During a class I took, we had a guest speaker, a member of a human rights NGO, talking about refugee human rights, trafficking and exploitation of the vulnerable, and she commented that of all the groups of disenfranchised people in the world, perhaps the most vulnerable she'd ever seen, the group forced through more horrible crap than any other, was North Korean female refugees. On the other hand, in North Korea, women are frequently becoming the household bread-winners, because they are less carefully scrutinized by the state than men, who are expected to work in industry or military roles. You can read an article Prof. Lankov wrote about North Korean women for the Korea Times here, where he writes that "North Korean grassroots capitalism has a female face".

On March 15th, an interesting event will take place near City Hall (see the press release for directions), featuring a lecture by my favorite North Korea commentator, Andrei Lankov, and presentations from three female North Korean refugees. It's titled "Don't Ask My Name" and it will discuss the roles women are playing in North Korea right now in North Korea.

The event's Facebook page is here.

Full disclosure: by telling you about this event on my blog... I get offered a free ticket. I'm not totally sure yet if I'll be able to attend, but if I do, you can tell me in person what a sellout I am!

I've written multiple times about North Korea (most recently two blog posts ago) and I'm happy to see discussions not just about Nuclear and Security issues, but also the stories and events of everyday North Korean life, which often suffers from a lack of attention.

So... come!

Bitter, Sweet Seoul: my Two Favourite Videos about Korea

When I saw this video, just made by some guy, it struck me as doing a better job, and making Korea seem more attractive, than almost every official tourism promotion I'd seen.

Other than a few seconds of footage taken in Japan, I think it's pretty much perfect. And wouldn't it be nice if some percentage of the Korea Promotion budget were simply set aside to find people who make beautiful videos like this, and to offer them free, all-expenses one or three-month trips to Korea, in order to make one really really great Youtube video. Or four.

What we have next, coming out just recently, is as good.

Famous filmmakers Park Chan-wook (Oldboy) and Park Chan-gyong, have done something lovely.

They took crowd-sourced footage -- anyone could submit -- and hammered together a one-hour (plus change) video that I actually recognize as the Seoul I live in: the ones that's beautiful and ugly and funny and wild and loaded, loaded, loaded with life.

It's probably too long to grab casual viewers, but for anybody who lives in Seoul, who loves Seoul, they will deeply appreciate this video, which ultimately amounts to a gentle, knowing love-letter to one of Asia's most interesting cities.

Garbage collectors, crosswalks, breakneck motorbike delivery boys, urban gardeners, and yogurt ladies in yellow, runaways and street food vendors, mountains and crowded streets. I love this video, because the decision-making mucky-mucks who come up with junk like this appear to have finally stepped aside and deferred to the ones who have, you know, actual artistic talent. Now, perhaps that's because the makers of this video are award-winners and such... but it's a start.

I wish the video the greatest of success.

Read more about it here. And at the Wall Street Journal's Korea blog, "Korea Realtime." And of course, watch it, silly!

Five Things About the UN Report on North Korea And Two About The Future

At long last, North Korea headlines contain neither the words "Nuclear" nor "Dennis Rodman.” The UN has released a report. Along with this video.


Powerful stuff.

You can read summaries of the UN’s new report… going so far as to compare North Korea to the Nazis. (Summary. Summary. Original source A call to action with no specifics [reminds me of the video below].) Some of the best-known talking heads haven’t weighed in yet -- please put links to them in the comments when they come out, because I'm very interested.

The contents of the report are grim. Even the summaries are, but if you follow North Korea sources like LINK, you knew about this. Three minutes of googling will do it. "Born and Raised in a North Korean Concentration Camp"


The following bullet points, then, are some things I’ve learned, or thought about, that seem relevant in light of the latest report. I may be wrong about any or all of them, because nobody knows dick-all about North Korea, compared to any other country in the world, but feel free to let me know how wrong I am in the comments!

1. The UN doesn't have the power, resources, or consensus to actually do something about these findings, and with Russia and China on the security council, won’t until North Korea openly attacks someone, or slips into actual chaos. An intervention would risk the UN having a failed state on its hands, and that’s messy. A failed state on someone else's hands? Messy… but buck-passing and finger-pointing are how politicians get their exercise. The “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine sounds nice, but it’s toothless right now.

2. Kim Jong-eun has seen that video of Saddam Hussein’s hanging. This report reminds him he probably faces a crimes against humanity charge if his country opens up to the international community. Big disincentive, that. With this, the chance he’ll do desperate things to hold power increases. Counterbalancing that… he’s also doubtless seen that video of Muammar Gadaffi being found by his angry former subjects, and not even surviving to face the ICJ. So...

Source.

3. Beyond that endgame, this will change nothing in North Korea. Pundits have been heralding the regime’s fall since Kim Il Sung presided, always incorrectly. Maybe the execution of Jang Song-taek really was the Kim regime's last card to play… but we’ve been guessing wrong about which card is the Kim dynasty’s last for a generation now. The analysts look like Mr. Bean in church.

4. Sunshine didn’t work. Sanctions don’t either. For everybody who thinks it’s time to finally get tough with North Korea… pull your heads out of your asses. To begin with, North Korea has alienated itself from the world so severely already that it now has nothing to lose from continuing with the histrionics. To boot, its leaders use the world’s hostility to ensure internal stability, and you know what? The “tough love” posture from abroad works great for consolidating domestic power. The Nork propaganda machine gets to keep proclaiming a state of perpetual existential threat, which continues to justify the military first policy and all manner of deprivations. To everyone arguing that unconditional aid propped up an evil regime: maybe. But there is more than one way to prop up an evil regime and unremitting hostility and alienation creates conditions which lend North Korea’s leadership more legitimacy and a stronger mandate than they would otherwise have in the eyes of its citizens. And revolution will begin and end with those citizens, and effective policy needs to be geared toward that fact, not towards the emotional satisfaction of getting payback for all those bad things they did.

5. Outside of North Korea, this report is a good thing, because of positioning: the UN won’t do anything directly, and not much will change in North Korea, but it will make it much much harder for those South Korean politicians who want to talk past North Korean human rights issues. It will put China further in the wrong when it supports North Korea rather than pushing for change there. This report tightens the screws on anybody who still wants to ignore or trivialise the human rights crisis going on, and shines a harsh spotlight back where the attention should be, even though Dennis Rodman and nuclear testing sell more papers.


What’s next?

I agree with analysts who hold that any fundamental change to the North Korean state must come from the North Korean people. Without them, it will have no legitimacy, and any intervention without the consent of the citizenry would be fought against with the intensity of three generations of Kim Il Sung-scented brainwashing. The question is not “What can the world do to help North Korea” but “How can the world empower North Koreans to demand a different kind of country for themselves.” Thinking of the issue in those terms creates a very different set of policy and aid priorities than reacting to the histrionics of the the Grand Mucky-muck On Top.


And a final thought: the one that haunts me.


I liked Paul Whitefield’s reflection (LA Times) on how hollow the words “Never again” - referencing the holocaust - ring now. With the Nazi concentration camps, almost nobody actually knew about them. Almost everybody could defend themselves with “We didn’t know.”

With North Korea, we knew. We knew and we knew, and we ignored it. And this is what haunts me about North Korea’s condition: that one day, the surviving North Koreans will confront the world, and ask, “Why didn’t you do anything?” The media used their country’s condition to sell newspapers and ad space, but ignored mass starvation and concentration camps. South Korean politicians cynically used North Koreans' lives as a political wedge issue. No apology will be enough. With Auschwitz not even gone from living memory, we have let this happen again, to our shame as a species.


But this report is also an opportunity, because finally, though far too late, we are actually talking about it. Let’s hope something comes out of that. I’m not holding my breath.


Update: The Korean Foreigner has written a reply to parts of this article, titled "Moral Duty To Help North Koreans?" (his answer is none)

Clickbait, and self-othering

While you're waiting (with bated breath, I'm sure) for part 2 of "Why Japan Shouldn't Apologize To Korea (Right Now)," I'd like to pass on a few things I've enjoyed reading... in clickbait headline form, just because:

You wouldn't believe how many links in this roundup are exactly the ones I wanted to tell you about!

This blogger investigates a racially charged controversy over the name of a chicken dish, and does something nobody else even thought of doing!

This will be the best Groove Magazine article about Korean racism towards blacks you'll read all day!

Popular Gusts researched the history of blackface in Korea. What he found will blow your mind!

You won't believe what happens when "Drifting Sapphire" sends identical teaching resumes to recruiters with a black photo and a white photo! Go read how she designed the experiment.

And one bit of food for thought:

I followed the conversations at Ask A Korean! about what he calls "culturalism" with great interest, and will probably write about it at more length sometime in the future.

The Korean defines culturalism, in this 2007 blog post, as follows "the impulse to explain minority people's behavior with a "cultural difference," real or imagined" and fleshes it out in his post-Asiana Malcolm Gladwell post.

This tendency to focus on cultural differences is interesting to me, because of all the conversations I've had where someone will tell me what Japanese people are like, what Koreans are like, and what Canadians and Americans are like.

It's also especially interesting to me that people look at their own groups through that lens. Koreans will tell you what Koreans are like, and how Koreans think. Americans will tell you what Americans are like, and what they think. And not just to get away with stuff (playing the 'culture' card, though that happens). I've done it myself.

The Korea Herald recently published this example, by Kim Seong-kon, whom I've dressed down before. The title: "Is Korea a Strange, Enigmatic Country?"

The funny thing about this article is that, according to the Korean's definition of culturalism -- basically using culture as a magic handwave to escape having to look further into an issue -- this article is culturalism to the nth degree. Dr. Kim asks a bunch of questions about Koreans -- Why does this happen in Korea? And suggests that the answer is that Koreans are a strange, enigmatic people: if I did the same, I would clearly be accused of culturalism. "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, Koreans gotta give spam sets at thanksgiving" doesn't cut the mustard. But what about when a local does it? If he published this article in Korean, would he be scoffed at for his "how do magnets work?" credulity?

It's just a miracle, I guess. (warning: bad language)


Or would Koreans nod their heads knowingly and murmur "Yes. We are truly inscrutable to foreigners, perhaps even to ourselves." That he is writing in English suggests a foreign audience... does that change things, and make it more or less forgivable to do that same magic hand wave?

Acting as if Koreans (or Asians in general) are beyond comprehension to westerners (either because we're too advanced, or too unrefined - whatever) strikes me as a kind of performance: Koreans' lives make sense to them, more or less. No Korean waves their hand at their neighbor or relative's behavior and says "it's because they're Korean" unless there's a foreigner in the room. So why put on this pose of mysteriousness for the gaze of foreigners who are imagined to be judging Korea from afar? (Or am I making too much of the article being written in English when I suggest that?) What does it mean that the attitude encapsulated here seems to reflect the same attitude old orientalists had toward Asians? How strange that old white writers once wrote about Asians being inscrutable, and those same sentiments are now being echoed back out of the mouths of Asians themselves, for modern Western audiences!

To be fair, as time goes by, I hear less and less often that jung, or han, or "the Korean national character" cannot be understood by foreigners. But what would be the motivation, or origin, of this kind of self-othering, or self-essentializing? Is it a legacy of colonial mindsets? Is it self-flattery, pure and simple? Are they acting out an orientalist's fantasy to attract tourist dollars, or cultural capital? I have some thoughts, and a bit of a reading list to work through, but I'm interested in hearing what my readers think.

Comments are open. Be nice.