The Grand Narrative

Sorry about all the constant changes to the look of the blog: once I’d finally settled on the right WordPress theme, then I was changing the header photo every 5 mins. I can be forgiven for this I think: after all, at only 4 months old I’m maybe a toddler by blogging standards, literally still finding his feet, so some experimenting and finding out about the big scary blogging world is good and healthy for me, yes? But I like the present, grittier(?) look to it and think I’ll keep for quite a while.

After spending so much time on it, I’m very very tempted to explain all the deep and profound reasons for the choice of header photo, involving references to a good deal of cyberpunk literature, recent works of the Spanish sociologist Manual Castells, and what actually a “grand narrative” is and why I came up with that blog title, and of course all of these were much more important than the trifling fact that I couldn’t find anything else suitable on my C-drive, but I think it’d be wise if I saved that navel-gazing for some pages at a later date (not posts: a page is like the permanent “About” link above). In the meantime, if interesting stuff isn’t on the blog then people won’t read it no matter how deep and profound it looks, so I’ll get right back to business. Unfortunately, in hindsight today’s translated article only very barely qualifies…so first, I’ll go off on a bizarre, sleep-deprived tangent instead.

(Update November: All that was about the old look, not the present one with the headless gunman, but I didn’t have the heart to delete most of the post)

I have a good excuse for choosing the article. Because of all the Korean study I should have been doing for my test recently, I’ve been in a real dilemma choosing what reading material to bring on the subway everyday. I could bring my ipod nano of course, I have a huge backlog of podcasts to catch up on, but then I worry that I’ll miss the chance to surprise someone commentating on my shaved head or foreigners in general, thinking I don’t understand. After all, it’s what I live in Korea for. Also, if I listen to them (the podcasts, not the occasional rude Korean), or if I bring something in English to read, I feel hypocritical about complaining about how my job prevents me from immersing myself into Korean, but then not using the opportunities presented to me. On top of that…jeez, it’s such a dilemma being a long-timer learning Korean in Korea…if I do read English stuff, then I feel like I’m just fulfilling Korean commuters’ stereotypes of bloody foreigners who can’t speak a word of Korean and can’t be bothered learning…seriously, I so much as glance at a student’s English notes next to me, then I suddenly feel like I’m 40kg heavier and already ordering a Big Mac and fries.

On the other hand, I often don’t manage to study enough Korean in the mornings, especially as my daughter gets older, so I frequently think about studying it on the subway to make up for it. But it’s really quite difficult, for if I want to do more than reread an article I’ve already studied, or go over a riveting list of vocab I have to memorise, then it can be very impractical fiddling around with my pencils, erasers, highlighters, noticeboard, and electronic dictionary that I need to genuinely study. Korean podcasts are also out, for two reasons: first, not unlike Korean study materials in general, a search of itunes shows that there’s absolutely nothing available for levels between numerous bubblegum beginner stuff on the one hand and Korean language Radio Free Asia podcasts on the other; and secondly, studying Korean is a lot more fun if you can fantasise that the cute University student sitting next to you will not only notice that you are, but also that your abilities are clearly way better than 99% of all the other foreigners out there, and so would just love the opportunity to chat in Korean with a foreigner and get to know you much better.  Seriously, these fantasies are important, as in reality it’s not like people are dying to chat with me in Korean once they realise that I’m able to: in 4 years on the Busan subway, I’ve only ever met a whole 2 people who have, both 20 years older than me and the wrong gender. But after complaining about being hassled for so long by friendly well-wishers and/or people wanting free English practice whenever I went out in public, then I shouldn’t now complain about finally getting the relative anonymity that I craved.

So, I usually end up bringing nothing and just sitting there staring into space, thinking of what to say in Korean if someone hassles me for being an underqualified pedophilic alcoholic teacher, or discussing my oh-so-interesting shaved head in front of me. Unfortunately however, 99% of Koreans are perfectly normal, polite, reasonable people, and so no-one has ever ever done the former to me. Damn. As for the latter, I discovered that 100% of Koreans have a secret telepathic ability called Kordar™, which allows them to subconciously notice any foreigner with even limited Korean ability in their vicinity. In other words, for my first 3 to 4 years here, upon seeing me many people would blatantly start talking about me and/or foreigners and start laughing, even though by mere body language alone my 15 month-old daughter could figure out what they were doing, and get upset by it. But as soon as I finally knew enough Korean to not only clearly understand when this happens, but to retort wittily to it too…. everybody stopped doing it. Damn again.

Yes, I do know that I really really need my 4 week vacation in December! Let me enjoy myself for now, I’ve just about finished ranting anyway.

You may recall that I’ve recently decided to save the world by looking at the free daily newspapers available in Korea online rather than physically carrying them around with me from now on. In hindsight though, they were the perfect solution to my sleep-deprived rant above. Without them then, realising last week that all this crap that I come up with everyday meant I had nothing to bloody do for 2 hours of commuting on the subway again, at the turnstiles I picked up a free copy of the Busan City Council’s weekly newspaper the 부산시보 to read. Normally I’d avoid it like the plague, for if you haven’t guessed from the cheesy music that’s started playing if you clicked on the link, it always looked like it just contained local government propaganda: everytime I saw it, I’d instantly be reminded of the Moscow newsroom scene from the movie Airplane!, where the announcer leads with the story “Fire today in downtown Moscow clears space for glorious new tractor factory,” which at least got me smiling. But if I really wanted that, I’d grab a bottle of Jim Beam and soon be laughing silly at the much sleeker version available on the god-awful ArirangTv instead thank you very much. But I was desperate, and while it was about as thrilling as I expected, I did find this article below:

(oops, actually it was Airplane2: The Sequel)

부산 인구유출 줄이기 - 출산장려 시민톤론회

12일 오후 2시 부산싱공회의소서

부산 인구유출 줄이기와 출산장려를 위한 시민톤론회가 12일 오후 2시 부산상공회의소 상의홀에서 열린다.

부산경제살리기시민연대 (상임 의장 박인호)와 부산은행(은행장 이장호)이 공동으로 시민토론회를 주최하고, 부산광역시, 부산상공회의소, 한국증권선물거래소, 부산인구출줄이기 - 출산장려서민연대가 후원하다.

이날 토론회는 박인호 상임의장의 사회로 특별강연과 발표, 토론 순으로 진행될 예정.

박영숙 (사)유엔미래포럼 출산장려운동본부장이 ‘미래가 보여주는 저출산 해법’ 이라는 특별강연을 하고, 이원섭 부산국토 연구원 연구위원이 ‘부산의 인구 감소 어떻게 대응할 것인가’를, 이이숙 주산장신대 교수가 ‘부산 저출산의 요인과 정책방안은 무엇인가’를 주제로 각각 발표한다.

이어 이영 부산산공회의소 상근부희장, 오흥석 부산시 기획관리설장, 이상진 부산시교육청 부교육감, 안승철 부산은행 부행장등이 토론자로 나서 열띤 토론을 벌일 예정이다.

이날 토론에 앞서 행사장에서는 고등학생과 대학생 부산 사랑 선서 및 서약, 다산가족행복이야기 발표 및 표창 행사도 열린다.

People leaving Busan - A public debate on how to increase the birth rate

2pm, Wednesday the 12th, Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry

A debate on how to deal with Busan’s population moving to other cities and how to increase the birth rate will be held at 2pm in the afternoon in the Sang-ui hall at the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The Citizen’s Group for the growth of the Busan economy (chairman: Park In-ho) and Busan Bank (chairman: Lee Jang-Ho) will be co-chairing this debate together with the suport of Busan Metropolitian City Council , the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Korea Stock Exchange (KRX), and the Citizen’s group for reducing the population movement from Busan and increasing the birth rate. On that day, Chairman Park In-Ho will lead by introducing a special lecture, to be followed by the debate.

Park Yeong-Su, chairperson of the “UN Future Forum,” a movement to encourage higher birthrates,  will deliver this special lecture entited “Methods of raising birthrates in the future.” Then Lee Won-Sop, a researcher at the Busan District Research Center, will deliver a speech on how to cope with Busan’s population decline, which will then be followed by a speech by Lee In-Suk, a professor at Busan Jang-Sin University, on Busan’s low birth-rate and what methods and policies should be adopted to cope with it.

Next, Lee Yeong, Vice-President of the Busan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Oh Hong-Sok, the Manager of the Busan City Council Admin and Management Department, Lee Sang-jin, Vice President of the Busan Education Department, An Sung-Cheol Vice-president of Busan Bank will have a passionate debate about the issues raised in the previous speeches.

On the day, immediately before the speeches, there will be a opening ceremony where high-school and university students will swear their love for Busan city, and some of them, with family members, will give short speeches and receive prizes for volunteer work they have done to support Busan citizens.

Sure, it was just a notice about a meeting, but you were warned in the title, so no complaints. Before I translated it properly with my wife, I thought it was about Busan’s population declining due to the low birth rate, but it turns out that this decline is more because people are moving out of Busan than declining birth rates per se (at the moment, Busan’s population is 3.65 million by the way). In hindsight I’m not surprised, for Korean friends told me the same as far back as when I came to Korea in 2000 . I think it’s still interesting and relevant to Korea’s impending population decline as a whole though, and I definitely would have attended this meeting had I not been working at the time. I also have a book about geographical issues in Korea, including population movements, that I’ll check out again to see what it says about Busan. In the meantime, I may as well start picking up that paper and scanning it for similar events: if I find out about something that I can go to I will, and report back on it here.

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