The Grand Narrative

(Photo by annick777)

Introduction

At least by the editors of women’s magazines anyway (with apologies to the S&M crowd). Sure, your first impression may well be that in that sense then almost all women like “being told what to do,” but then the consensus of those that have actually studied the damn things (magazines I mean) is that in this part of the world they’re unique in the prescriptive tone of language that they use, much more akin to that of teachers in schools and after-school institutes than anything else. And when I say “unique”, I mean that very few other kinds of written media are so patronizing towards readers, even in a region where a constant acknowledgement of someone’s higher rank and status is fundamental to the languages.

I’ve already discussed possible reasons for this in these posts; today’s is just a quick a presentation of evidence for and confirmation of those from Keiko Tanaka’s chapter entitled ”Japanese Women’s Magazines: the language of aspiration” in the book The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, edited by D.P. Martinez (1998). The book itself has been sitting unopened in my bookcase for years, bought back when I was doing my MA and could convince my wife that I was required to buy up to a dozen books for it every few months (occupational hazard of being married to a geek), and there it would have remained had my research for a Korea Studies conference not forced me into a desperate search for any sources on East Asian popular culture that I could find.

(Source)

Readers may be surprised that I took so long to read it, especially as Japanese popular culture is usually the first thing that East Asia geeks like myself begin studying in any real depth. For those few of you that aren’t yet East Asia geeks yourself, the reason for that is because of being corrupted by Japanese history lecturers, who have a strange tendency in otherwise normal lectures to suddenly whip out, say, The Dream of the Fisherman’s Wife onto the overhead projector and then proceed to talk at great length and detail about tentacle sex manga, all the while in the same nonchalant manner and style of voice that he or she was talking about Edo Period economic policy five minutes earlier. Once one’s interest is aroused, as tends to happen after going through that surreal experience, then there’s more than enough interesting books on oddities like it to keep one occupied for a lifetime…and I don’t have the money.

Having said that, there’s a lot of crap out there too, and much of it, like tentacle sex manga, up there with ASEAN and postmodernism in being created for the sole purpose of providing jobs and publishing opportunities for academics. Oh yes, and for shocking students with too. Although saying things like “period pain” to mixed groups of 19 year-olds is about as risqué as I could get at my last job myself, I have to say that watching pompous freshmen squirm in embarrassment at it has been one of the highlights of my ESL career.  

(Source)

No tentacle sex in this otherwise excellent book though, maybe because most of it was researched before the internet really took off. And while the usual caveats about extending Tanaka’s conclusions apply, I’d be very surprised if they weren’t just as relevant today as in 1998, or to women’s magazines of most other East Asian countries too. Of Korean women’s magazines in particular, while I don’t go so far as to religiously read them myself (no, really), I do have sufficient Korean ability and experience with different media here to bet money on them applying to those for instance.

The Prescriptive Character of Contemporary Women’s Magazines

(Photo by Wallami)

I’ll let Tanaka herself do most of the talking from now on. Starting off after her short potted history of the industry then:

The prescriptiveness of the language employed in women’s magazines is a striking characteristic. The tone of the many of the features is blunt and hectoring, a curious point, given the alleged Japanese concern with politeness and the avoidance of confrontation. Even when not directly ordering readers about, the magazines draw lessons for young women from a surprising variety of events.

By arguing that there is a characteristic common to [these] magazines, I do not intend to suggest homogeneity amongst [them] or their readership….I hope that by examining a feature shared by these magazines, some general strategies in production of this particular form of popular culture will emerge.

The core of my argument is that these magazines not only provide detail, but also tell their readers what to do and what not to do. The manner in which this is done could be seen as almost patronizing and condescending. Compared to Japanese features, English equivalents may be similarly detailed but do not have the same prescriptive tone. (p. 117)

And with that she provides the first of ultimately over 100 examples from magazines, which to be polite, are a bit of a drag typing out here. I will do some, which I’ve underlined to make easier to pick out, but I think I can be forgiven for only providing the bare minimum to make my point, and especially for dispensing with mention of the sources and a romanization of the original Japanese!

( “Her Bikini’s Still Ugly” by 27)

The examples she starts with are used to contrast the overall prescriptive tone of Japanese women’s magazines with the overall more suggestive tone of English ones, but then she demonstrates with more that prescription is hardly unique to the former, which also sometimes use suggestions too. But:

This said, audiences are more often told what to look out for:

Céline motifs…it is effective to show them off by using a number of them concentrated around the region of your hands.

The loafers which have been popular all this time cannot be overlooked either.” (p. 118-119)

Japanese magazines know what is right for their audiences and tell them so in no uncertain terms:

This is about the best length for the jacket.

It is desireable to have all four basic items.

These magazines even make up their readers’ minds for them:

You no longer want anything less than “cheap and good” clothes.

We have decided to have your hair done in a bob next time. (p. 119)

And then she says that while statements of this type translate rather well into English, in Japanese they may well be regarded as patronizing, something which I’ve found can just as readily be lost in the translation of Korean to English too. But the success of these magazines suggests that readers do not mind the language, and in fact her informants have told her:

…that the tone has never caused them any annoyance or irritation. They all mention as a reason for buying the magazines that they can expect practical and detailed information on fashion and other related matters.

This raises the question as to where such language might come from, and my suggestion, from the resonance of the language, is that it comes from the authoritarian tone used by Japanese teachers in school.

(Photo by alexanderbot)

She then gives examples of expressions used which rely on familiar phrases from the classroom, then those that demonstrate how:

The magazines are keen on grading and they sometimes flatter their audience for following what they say with a kind of ranking:

Please enjoy this fashion, which is superior by one rank.

Those who in the senior grade should give it a finishing touch with a purple scarf. (p. 120)

In some magazines, expressions “reminiscent of school tests are rife:

You get a circle [for a correct answer] for wearing a long-knitted jacket or a waistcoat on top.

This suit is only just a borderline pass mark.

The last two expressions were from magazines that cater for young twenty-somethings and even high-school students, and so that language would obviously be more familiar and acceptable to them than older women. As a whole, the language of those magazines specifically targeted at that age group:

…tends to be fairly colloquial, closer to spoken language than is usually the case in a written textbook, but similar to the language of cram school textbooks, which are meant to reproduce live lectures; many of these prescriptive expressions…are strikingly similar to those used in [cram school] textbooks….and a high proportion of the readership of the magazines would have attended such institutions. (p. 121, emphasis mine)

( Photo by superlocal)

Sound like somewhere you know?

On the surface it may not seem all that surprising or profound to hear that these magazines for 18-25 year-old Japanese women talk to them like schoolchildren, and that most of the readers don’t mind…hell, some of them are schoolchildren. But think about it: what Western 18 year-old doesn’t think that he or she is more knowledgeable than the adults and authority figures that previously had to be deferred to, and revelling in new-found freedoms and independence? A magazine that treated them as the language used here seems to, as “pupils who aspire to achieve standards defined by the editors” (p.127), would go under before the ink on the pages was dry.

Ultimately, the language of Japanese magazines, which doesn’t translate well, is masking profound and deep differences between cultures. In particular, Tanaka writes of the particularly prescriptive 25 ans magazine:

…this tendency…may be related to its main objective, which is expressed as “For nurturing discerning eyes and individuality”. I have argued elsewhere that in Japan individuality (kosei) is more about being fashionable and sophisticated than about actually “doing one’s own thing”. (pp. 121-122, emphasis mine)

And there you have it: evidence from Japanese women’s magazines demonstrates that what Taeyeon Kim and Minjeong Kim and Shannon Lennon have said of the real meaning of “individuality” in Korea is completely paralleled in Japan. This is what one would expect if the former’s arguments about Neo-Confucian notions of women as “subjectless bodies” applied not just to Korea but all of East Asia, not coincidentally the gist of the abstract I’m writing. It’s also yet another case of some aspect of East Asian life that superficially appears identical to its Western counterparts, especially to outsiders and expats, but which in reality even the briefest of investigations proves to be quite different.

( “Seoul City Hall” by jstifani)

And that’s the point I wanted to make. There is a great deal more to Tanaka’s article, mostly her reaction to various counterarguments to the above, and especially to the charge that she is portraying young Japanese women as too passive, naive and unthinking, but for the sake of reader’s eyesight I think I should stop there! But the rest is just as interesting, and I’d be quite happy to devote a second post to it if any readers want.

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  (Photo by publish9)

Anti-Communist Fashion

Unlike Part 1 and Part 2, this won’t be a stand-alone post; in just a moment, I’ll jump straight into outlining and discussing the the second part of Taeyeon Kim’s 2003 journal article “Neo-Confucian Body Techniques: Women’s Bodies in Korea’s Consumer Society“ as promised.

But before I do, I should mention that since writing those, I’ve started reading SeungSook Moon’s book Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (2005) too, and it’s made me realise just how narrow a focus Kim’s article has. That’s not necessarily a criticism: in the 16 pages available to her, Kim does a good job of explaining how the 19th Century Joseon Dynasty’s Neo-Confucianist views of the female body were warped by, adapted to, and ultimately survived and prospered in the 20th Century. And that endurance does go a long way towards explaining the question I first posted in part one, namely why are Koreans so conformist in their fashion choices.

But what Moon’s book has made me also realise is that, however outlandish the connection sounds at first, today’s Korean fashion can’t be explained fully without mention of the postwar Korean state’s anti-communist ideology too. No, really.

(Photo by theturninggate)

Let me run with this for a moment. In a nutshell, Moon’s book showed this to me by giving me a more bottom-up perspective on life in postwar Korea than what I’m used to (decidedly top-down Troubled Tiger is one of my favorite books). The more I read about it, the more I learn just how pervasive that ideology was in people’s everyday lives, and how almost any form of legitimate dissent or creative difference was often regarded by the state as nothing short of “leftist” subversion. I could give you examples, like Korean men with long hair being publicly shaved in the 1970s, or the police checking that women’s skirts were long enough (an onerous job I’m sure, and strangely not as well-enforced as the former), but you get the drift. 

These attitudes didn’t suddenly dissappear upon democratization in 1987 either. In hindsight, it’s incredibly naive for me (or anyone else) to account for conformity in modern Korean life without reference to it. Even something as innocuous-sounding as fashion.

(Photo by superlocal)

(Update: I suddenly remembered this ad. But while it’s a good play on how the “rule” for miniskirts has completely reversed since the 1970s, the conformity remains the same. How else to explain wearing miniskirts in winter? An otherwise extremely wasteful use of the body’s resources to demonstre one’s physical prowess to mates, just like a peacock’s tail?)

But that will be the subject of later posts. First, let’s finish Kim’s article, sans political ideologies. After reading it, I recommend reading this recent post of the Metropolitician’s on Korean fashion too, as he discusses much the same things but from a different angle, and, lest you feel that I give too pessimistic and conformist an image of Koreans, he argues that Korean fashion and creativity have witnessed something of a watershed in recent years. Considering he photographs them 24/7, then he would know. My comment to that post is a pretty blatant plug for my blog for sure, but in my defence when I wrote it I was quite stoked to find that he was writing a similarly in-depth post about the same subject at the same time I was (the life of Korea-studies geek-blogger is a lonely one). Having said that, I don’t agree with everything he says, and I think I’ll devote a post to discussing what he wrote next week.

Honourable mention should be made of this post of Roboseyo’s post too, if you can get past the picture (it’s tough, I know).

The second part of Kim’s article starts by placing the endurance of Neo-Confucian images of women’s bodies in modern times in the context of the endurance of Neo-Confucianism in Korean society as a whole:

Confucian Fundamentalism and Korean Identity

(Photo by donut2d)

The first thing of note is that, despite how it may at first appear, the endurance of Neo-Confucianism in modern Korea is probably more because of Korea’s turbulent 20th Century rather than despite it, as fundamentalism of any stripe is usually a reaction against painful, forced transitions to modernity. As Kim says, in Korea’s particular case, Japanese colonisation and then civil war and division meant that its postwar search for national identity: 

…became essential to Korea’s postcolonial and post-war project for national reconstruction. Neo-Confucianism came to stand for essential ‘Koreanness’ and was quickly embraced as the authentic culture of Korea - so much so that challenges to Neo-Confucian principles were branded as threats to national integrity. Neo-Confucianism also maintained its gloss as part of the elite culture, and as more and more Koreans were becoming upwardly mobile, many strove to identify themselves with the former [elites], making what was originally an ideology and culture of the elite minority into the culture of all Koreans.” (pp.102-103).

Some other consequences of that quest for self-identity include Korea’s bloodline-based nationalism (although the origins of that were closer to 1900 than 1953), and military regimes deliberately nurturing the idea that Korea has suffered invasions more than most, both now counter-productive (to put it mildly). Ironically, for women it also ultimately meant a reaffirmation of the ideals of taegyo (태교), despite women’s entrance into the workforce for the first time and the nuclearization of the Korean family, for two reasons.

First, one, I think, increasingly under-appreciated aspect of postwar Korea ,was overcoming the psychological trauma of the physical dislocation and separation of Korean families due to the war, and until I started today’s post I didn’t realise that that could have affected Korean’s women’s postwar lives much more than men; remember that they weren’t really thought of as of as individuals in the Joseon Dynasty, and thus their families had been the primary source of their identity. But then, not only were they suddenly and violently brought out of the inner, private sanctum of those families and homes by the war, and then into the public sphere of schools and factories for the first time, those families also moved from the farm to the cities, and nuclearized in the process. Given those circumstances, it is natural to suppose that women might yearn for the good old days of certainty. 

(Photo by mookiechan) 

Second, while for a time women’s physical labour in factories came to be regarded (rhetorically at least) as just as important and useful as their traditional domestic work in the home (as was, I might also add, their equally “needed”, expanded roles as sex workers too; I’ll save that for a later post), ultimately:

with the advent of a post-industrial, consumer capitalist society in the 1980s, women became more important as consumers than as factory workers, shifting the utility of their bodies from national labour production to national consumption, becoming, in effect, what Byran S. Turner (1996) calls the capitalist body. (p. 102)

Korea, uniquely, is much less “post-industrial” then Kim thinks (see here), but that doesn’t detract from the basic point that women, once exhorted and educated to work in the factories, were once again extorted to stay at home upon marriage, and to then focus on producing and raising children. Seeing as a good third or so of the blog is about how the Korean economy and minimalist welfare system is predicated on that fact, then I don’t feel the need to elaborate on and justify that here. Instead, of note is how they are also urged to consume as housewives and mothers, both for the sake of national development, and for the sake of obtaining the items necessary to secure and advance their family’s social status, as explained in Part 2. Ergo, it’s taegyo all over again, although I’ll admit that it sounds neither particularly Korean or even Neo-Confucian at the moment.

(Photo by BoazImages)

The Ensuing Social Malaise 

But just like in Western countries after World War Two, you can’t expose most women to working life and equal education and then expect them to meekly return to the home once the economy and/or national emergency no longer requires their economic services; the contradiction leads to the appearance of various social malaises, such as the “housewives’ syndrome” that Betty Friedan so adroitly recognised in 1963. In Western countries, that recognition and the civil-rights movement led to Second-wave Feminism. But Korea has so far lacked the former, and is only just beginning to experience a form of latter, often more because of the signing and implementing of UN conventions on gender issues and so forth rather than domestic pressures. What unresolved social malaises then, have arisen in Korea?

(Photo by Lola Blue)

Kim argues that uprooted Korean women naturally found solace in new, postwar media images of women, and following the new rules of fashion was certainly easier and more personally satisfying to most women then embracing new, entirely alien concepts of liberalism, individualism and feminism to which Korea’s new relationship with America exposed them to. Hence:

The Neo-Confucian values of harmonizing as one, proper behaviour and self-cultivation, [re-emerged] in the guise of conformity, propriety and self-improvement. (p. 107)

But as we’ve seen, while self-improvement for men involved training of the mind, resulting in transcendence of the individual self, women were considered incapable of this. Hence women’s primary means of self-improvement came to center on the physical body instead, and this ultimately explains the why of today’s social malaises in Korea today, notably that:

• Many young Korean women feel compelled to wear mini-skirts in winter. Think with your head for a moment, and realise its not a good thing.
• Many Korean women have to wear make-up to work, upon fear of being fired.
• Korea has one of the biggest plastic-surgery industries in the world
• And in Korea, it is statistically more likely for a women to become a prostitute than a doctor, a lawyer, or even a schoolteacher. The prostitution industry here is that big.

Hence taegyo is Korean and/or Neo-Confucian, because while plenty, if not most, Western women consider getting plastic surgery for the sake of bettering their chances in job interviews and marriage prospects so forth, very few do explicitly for the sake of their father’s and or husband’s families.

Finally, now for the how.

Correcting the Flawed Eastern Female

(Photo by danostamper714)

I’ve already explained that Korean women tend to embrace conformity rather than individuality in their fashion choices, and articles about fashion in women’s magazines too are less “Western” than they may first appear. While opening paragraphs seem to promise articles “promoting liberation from the edicts of fashion, and self-expression over blind conformity,” for instance, what they actually do is set up strict guidelines for Korean women to follow, the authors often failing to recognise that their exhortations not to follow fashion magazines’ fashions, but their tastes and styles instead, actually amount to the same thing. Indeed:

What is right for [the authors] must be right for everyone else, for there is a blurry distinction between [the authors] and others, a legacy of the subjectlessness of the Korean woman. (p. 104, italics in original)

Sure, much the same can be said of Western women’s magazines, which Kim should have acknowledged. But remember the importance of the notion of “subjectless bodies” in Kim’s article (see Part 1), and that for Korean women the philosophical concept of the individual self, defined not by ki and the family but by the physical limitations of the corporeal body, is very new. Hence Korean authors and readers may not see the contradiction that their Western counterparts may. Moreover, articles often present:

what [they] consider to be particular features of the Korean women - short legs, big face, yellow skin - as problem features that can be corrected by certain types of clothing and colours….[they] imply that the imperfect Korean body is disordered but can be put back in order through the tricks of fashion. The body is something to be rearranged so its apparent flaws are concealed or eliminated. These flaws themselves stand out as imperfections because they are features unique to Koreans and absent in white models (p. 104, italics in original)

(Photo by Scoubi)

I could go on to discuss the details of huge plastic surgery industry in Korea, but it’s been done to death elsewhere, and I think the above photo and this article sum it up better than any virtual ink spilt on the subject. Having said that, numerous sources have claimed that Korean women’s desires to look Caucasian are the result of an inferiority complex towards and cultural colonization by the West, but I think that the impacts of these have been grossly exaggerated. Consider this:

All three elements, the Neo-Confucian woman’s subjectlessness, the perception of Korean bodies as imperfect, and fashion’s function to re-order the disordered Korean bodies, make Korean women’s bodies particularly prone to alterations, rearrangements and re-creations of the body. (p. 104)

The biggest thing I’ve gained from these writing this series of posts (and I just so happen to think that it’s quite an original point too), is that in that statement above you can replace “Korea” with China, Japan, and/or Taiwan, and that argument would still be just as valid. Arguing that their shared plastic surgery mania is because all four countries share a history of cultural colonization and have inferiority complexes towards the West is tenuous at best, and if even if true, surely it would mean that Korean men too, say, would aim to look more Western? But no, they don’t, and not even with the huge size of the Korean male beauty industry today. But all four countries do share a history of Neo-Confucianism. On that basis, is it too much of a jump to argue that the Neo-Confucianist combination above is precisely why plastic surgery is so popular amongst women in this part of the world?

(Photo by wongtai213)

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(Photo by Bad Comrade)

Sorry for the five days since my last post, a long time for me. First up, some quick admin:

• My job situation is a bit up in the air at the moment. Naturally I can’t say much more than that online, just that if all goes well I’ll be working at another branch of my present company come April, but unfortunately have a lot less freetime available for the blog. If so, that won’t be disastrous, but it will mean less frequent, but hopefully higher quality posts. I’ll keep you posted (no pun intended).
• They may not sound or look like much, but I’ve followed some blogging advice and decluttered and made many small changes to the blog, mostly to my sidebar. I won’t bore you with the tedious and very very time-consuming mechanics of them, which I’m still in the process of, but the biggest changes are that I’ve renamed and reduced the number of post categories to 20, and also have only assigned posts to categories if they directly discuss those subjects, rather than just being vaguely related like before. After all, some of my earlier posts weren’t that bad, and the world would be a better place if more people read them, but the previous alphabet soup of categories was making them difficult for even me to find them.

And now for the 4th and final part of this series, easily the shortest but ironically probably more popular than the other three combined!

To quickly recap: part one was first about some Japan-themed art I liked, the inspiration for the series, then discussions of cyperpunk and its relationship to how Westerners view Japan and Korea; part two was about trance music - with many free samples for you to listen to - and the thoughts and feelings it induced in me; and finally the first part of three was very academic, dealing with popular culture, McDonaldization, and the dance party industry, but then it turned highly personal, discussing the cynicism that came with realising how base, capitalist, and manipulative were those things, like the vibes at dance parties, that I’d previously held so dear. In hindsight, that was a very depressing and misleading note to end on, because the whole point of the series, after all, was to show how I plan to overcome that cynicism and rediscover some of my youthful passion for life, and for living in Korea. Better late than never.

(Photo by Full Frame Chris) 

To warm up, let me quote one of my favourite books, a short-story collection called Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of 20 Young Writers (1998). Sorry to keep referring to it, but then so few people have read all of the previous posts in the series that most people wouldn’t have noticed. I’m using the book again here because, without readers knowing what the writing of this series has meant to me personally, then the solution to my above “problem” might make less sense, and editor Thomas Beller puts it so much better than I could:

Some of these essays function as an elaborate mechanism by which the author removes, or at least scratches at, a particular thorn in his or her side. (p. ix)

With 12,000+ words already spent on the topic, I certainly do have something to get off my chest! He goes on:

Part of growing up, beyond finding your life’s career or the ideal relationship, is understanding that the forces that shape you and the forces that compel you are not always within your control. Sometimes you cling to control as tightly as possible, and sometimes you casually fling it away (p. xi)

Realising that is precisely what my whole epiphany described in part three was about. And although it meant a lot to me at the time, and still is, fortunately I’ve come to terms with the fact that on one level it was just a normal part of growing up like he says. Strictly speaking though, with that quote he’s introducing the stories in the collection about drug addiction, one of the authors of which:

…is particularly good at describing that uncomfortable moment when the complex, private, and at times contradictory truths of one’s own inner life smash up against forces that have no facility for ambiguity…(p. xi)

I’ll come back to that later. He concludes the whole introduction by saying:

Reading these essays, you will want to get to know their authors well, sometimes more than you might want. If in some cases you draw back, surprised by the odd turns someone’s life may have taken and the sense that they have made of it, so in others you might lean in closer, sensing a kinship with the conscious being unfurling on the page and wanting to know more. (p. xiii)

Okay…at least I wanted to know more. I am indeed surprised that at 32 (today!) I’ve ended up…ahem…a sad, cynical, miserable bastard, and find it difficult to get passionate and interested about things as much as I did in my early twenties. That’s not unusual for 30-somethings, but living in Korea has compounded things, as living as an expat for a long time in any country, particularly one in which you don’t speak the language, ultimately makes even the bubbliest and most vivacious of us prone to cynicism and negativity all by itself. By coincidence, to me my Korean ability epitomises all of that, as on the one hand I so desperately want to acheive fluency, but on the other find it so difficult to get motivated enough to put in the time required. How to change?

At this point, I invite readers to pause for a moment, and think: what would you do? Remember that I have a wife, child, and 8 week-old foetus to support - suddenly dropping everything and moving jobs and or cities is out of the question. Despite those constraints, I think anyone can relate to my solution, which hopefully makes this post more than being just about me.

A Manifesto for A Korean Fantastique

After that build-up, readers may justifiably expect something inspiring and revolutionary, but actually it’ll be quite the opposite. Which is kind of the whole point.

(Photo by Digitalnut)

Again letting more gifted writers do my speaking for me, two years ago, in my never-ending quest to get out of ESL, I bought my first-ever self-help book, the What Should I Do With My Life? The True Story of People Who Answered The Ultimate Question (2003), a US Bestseller by Po Bronson. As you’d expect, the 55 or so chapters in that book are each about people who’ve attempted to change their circumstances and surroundings, although not all how they intended and/or successfully. In the conclusion, Bronson acknowledges that the success stories paradoxically look both exceptional and easy in hindsight, and that ordinary people often feel that they don’t have enough money or time to do the same. To which he responds: 

Never enough time? On the contrary - the saving grace is time. The people in this book didn’t fix their situation overnight. For most, it took many attempts over many years. When I began my research, I thought this was a weakness in their stories; I wished they had exhibited more commanding control over their changes. Now, I admire their patience, and I find it more interesting that they’ve made their changes despite lacking control.

Now I wonder - why was it supposedly more admirable for someone to have made their change cleanly and overnight? Why did I ever want stores that weren’t clouded by luck, pain, and ghosts? Why was that the kind of story I thought I wanted to hear? Answer: Because that’s the story-telling convention. The Self-Made Person. We’ve been boxed in by that myth. We’ve edited our lives to sound more like that myth. We’ve judged ourselves negatively because we haven’t measured up to that myth. We’ve stopped trying because we know we don’t have mythic strength. (p. 390)

Reading that reminded me of myself nearly a decade ago, making excuses for a late paper to a demanding but inspirational lecturer, to which he responded along the lines of: ”The world is full of smart guys, but there are very few disciplined ones.” He was right, and I wish I’d realised that much closer to when he said that rather than years later, when I began to suffer the consequences of my (in)actions. That is another reason why I want to become fluent in Korean, because it is a symbol to me - unless I’m speaking it 24/7 then there’s no other way to achieve that other than by the hard slog and discipline of daily, often tedious study that he describes, and if I do, then I would seriously feel that there’s little else I couldn’t achieve.

(Photo by theturninggate)

Hence, although I woke up 32 today, and…ahem…cut out all the pages in my diary up to today (March birthdays are good for re-resolutions!), I’m not going to pretend for an instant that I’m not the same, cynical, jaded, lazy person that I was last night. And unless I nearly die in a car accident say, albeit entirely possible in Korea, then indeed my personality never will change so soon. Hmmm…no, it has changed quickly before, so to be more precise, I can’t force yourself to become a different person overnight, I can certainly do things to help, but like Po Bronson demonstrated, the change will still probably be a slow gradual process, and all I can do is begin it and stick to it. At least, I’ve already come to terms with this reality for getting out of the ESL industry, which is why I quoted Thomas Beller earlier, as my job pretensions certainly do ”smash up against forces that have no facility for ambiguity,” a more poetic way of describing the bizarre lack of demand here for BA graduates that can’t speak Korean. But as for my 30-something angst? Finishing this series of posts marks my beginning to seek out the interesting, inspirational, original, creative and wonderful in Korea, or at least trying to look at what was previously ordinary and mundane in a new light. If you didn’t “get” the photos in this post, that was their theme, and hence the title of this series.

(Photo by june1777)

And that’s that. Frustrating, anti-climatic…but a lot like real life? I did actually intend to finish on a more positive, active, carpe diem note through giving some examples, I have a good 20 to go through as I type this, but now I realise that those would fit ackwardly onto the end of this 1800 word post. Instead, I’ll do that in the next post, probably up on Sunday. Fortuitously, this new project of mine will mean a lot of very short posts drawing people’s attention to them - maybe only 200 words long, I kid you not - and these will hopefully be a nice balance to the rather academic subjects I’ll be covering soon.

On that note, off to VIPS now…no luxury spared for this blogger on his birthday!

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(Photo by Full_Frame_Chris)

Rasion d’être 

For those of you who’ve read parts one and two of this (to be) four part series, thanks, and sorry, because I didn’t plan to wait so long before taking it up again. But the break at least gave me time to think about what exactly the series was about, and my purpose in writing it. I don’t think I’ve been too clear about either so far (sorry), so for everyone’s sake I should clarify both before moving on. For new readers especially, I would have liked to have quickly summarized the contents of parts one and two here as well, but that proved impossible without copying and pasting large chunks of them. Despite their length, they’re actually pretty succinct and to the point already, at least compared to my normal posts.

Lets see…parts one and two lead up to an important epiphany I had a long time ago, which I will describe in this post. The epiphany itself is very much water under the bridge, and if I’d written about years ago, then the final result wouldn’t have been all that different to what you’ll read here today. And because I ultimately came to it by a very academic route, that is what the bulk of this post is about. But the reason I’m writing about it now is because for a long time I thought it was merely a sort of intellectual realisation - after all, all my others had been - but recently I’ve realised that it had a much greater emotional impact on me as well, and crucially, not in a good way. It slowly made me a more jaded and cynical person. And because I happened to become so while I was in Korea, then in hindsight I it meant transferred this negativity towards my views of Korea and Koreans, even though it had nothing to do with either really. That is not to say that most long-term expats in Korea don’t get equally cynical and jaded about both regardless, or that this whole series of posts is really about anything other than typical 30-something angst about lost youth and passion. Nevertheless, unique or not, I don’t like either, and because I’m in Korea then it’s in Korea that I must deal with and overcome both. How I plan on doing that is the subject of part four.

So, I apologise for the false advertising: this series is not about “Korean social issues.” That actually means that it should have the most universal appeal of anything I’ve written, but ironically, if parts one and two are anything to go by, hits-wise it will probably be one of my least popular posts. No matter. In writing it, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a favorite short-story collection called Personals: Dreams and Nightmares from the Lives of 20 Young Writers (1998), which I’d describe as stories ultimately giving advice about life from 30-somethings to 20-somethings, although I’m sure sure editor Thomas Beller would hate to have the book so crudely described. Although this series would have to changed a lot to make it into a (good) short story, I think it’s possible, and I will attempt it sometime this year.

Having unwisely raised everyone’s expectations then, on with the show!

Seeing the Forms

(Photo by dolloi)

Back in part two, I wrote that I liked trance music so much because, well, it put me into a trance. But not a drug-induced one, although my lack fo funds and spare time back in New Zealand were the only reasons I didn’t try that as well. The trance I meant was:

…difficult to describe, but if pressed I would have said that it was a palpable sense of being transported to another place, complete with futuristic electronics, exotic locations, bright clothing, a sense of empowerment and of being an adult, lots of attractive, sexually assertive girls in tight-fitting clothes (naturally), more money, more power, a lot of potential, and of living my dreams, whatever they may be.

Putting it into words now, what this thing was is banal and obvious. But I didn’t, and it wasn’t to me at the time, so I set about finding out what it was via a more introspective route. For a short while I thought that this thing was living in Korea, and certainly it seemed that way at first, especially having been a penniless students and then graduate before coming here, but then I realised that: 

…this place or thing wasn’t and could never have been Korea, because it was well before I arrived that I got into the habit of staying up late at night writing and drawing mindmaps about it, feeling that I had my finger on the zeitgeistof the millennium, that only I was so close, and that it just had to be gotten down on paper. Not succeeding, my mind eventually roamed beyond Trance music, if only for the fact that it’s difficult to sustain an interest in it when you can’t afford to go to dance parties, and ultimately came to rest in spending the odd hour or so sneakily photocopying entire books on popular culture in my newly “old” university library. Fortunately, it was at about that time that I got my golden ticket to Korea, and soon had the money to buy the books themselves.

And then I gave a list of all the books I bought, if not actually read, to try to figure things out. Again, go to the end of part two to see the list, but I’m actually only going to mention three here, although I’d be happy to chat about any of them with fellow geeks anytime.

• First, of all those books, easily the best and most straightforward amongst them is “An Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture“(1995) by Dominic Strinati. If that doesn’t pique your interest in popular culture just by itself, then nothing will.

• Next, the only book most readers will have heard of: George Ritzer’s “The McDonaldization of Society: An Investigation into the Character of Contemporary Social Life,” the first edition of which came out in 1993. I doubt it has the same resonance for undergrads today, but back when it came out it was like Mao’s Little Red Book was for my parents’ generation, proudly displayed in the bookcases of anyone who considered themselves at all left-wing. It’s a good book, and the world would be a better place if everyone read it, but it’s definitely sociology-lite. On top of that, I even grew to dislike it, because as I got more and more involved in environmentalist groups as a student, I came across more and more members of them who acted as if all they ever needed to know about history, politics and sociology was contained in that one book. I ultimately quit as president of the university group, partially because I was finally getting laid regularly, my main reason for joining, but primarily because I got so tired and frustrated with other members’ naivety and ignorance.

(Photo by studentoftheology)

• Finally, I mention that book to remind readers of the meaning of the phrase “McDonaldization,” which most probably haven’t heard of for nearly ten years, and to contrast it to McDonalidization Revisited: Critical Essays on Consumer Culture (1998), which is much more academic, and with a correspondingly much more limited audience. Almost all of the authors of the essays in it acknowledge their debt to Ritzer, as the book gave sociology departments the world over a boost in student numbers, much like the Matrix trilogy did for philosophy and CSI for forensic science later. They also acknowledge their complete jealousy at his success at creating “one of those strange and marvellous books that manages to be both academic and popular, but without doing particular violence to either genre of writing,” which, like Desmond Morris’s The Naked Ape (1967), and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch (1971) and a few others, “has sold more copies and been cited more often than most academics could dream of in a lifetime.” But jealousy aside, I think they’re all justified in ripping much of his central thesis to shreds, especially its elitism, pessimism, and reliance on the notion that consumers are  passive and ultimately constrained in their choices. I will focus on just one essay in the book here, entitled McDonaldization and the Global Sports Store: Constructing Consumer Meanings in a Rationalized Society, pp. 53-65, by Steven Miles.  

(Photo by johnny_kqc)

In a nutshell, Steven Miles argues that “that consumption has become so fundamental to the modern life experience that it must have some role to play in the construction of people’s identities,” and so a debate has emerged amongst sociologists over whether “consumption provides consumers with the feeling or illusion that they can escape from the drudgery of everyday life” or whether what it really does ”is ensure that consumers are locked within an “iron cage” of consumerism.” (pp. 53-54). He was particularly interested in the relationship between youth consumption and identity, and to learn more about the meanings with which young people endowed consumer goods, for 10 weeks he worked as a sales assistant at an anonymous multinational sports store, somewhere in the North of England. Like he said:

Given the apparent significance of brandnames among young people, and the close identification with the high-profile sports stars advertising such goods, the sports store seemed a likely context in which the meanings with which young people endowed consumer goods might proves accessible. (p.54)

Other staff were aware of his research role, but customers were not, who just thought he asked so many questions because he was an especially enthusiastic member of staff. The intent of the questions was:

…to address the significance of consumption in their lives, most particularly in relation to the training shoes they were considering purchasing. The meanings with which these shoes were endowed, the role that these meanings played in the construction of personal identities, and the cultural context in which such meanings operated, were the issues addressed…..The priority…was for the customer to discuss the role that training shoes/sneakers (and often, as the conversation developed, other types of consumer goods) had in their lives, and what factors they believed influenced that role. (pp. 54-55)

(Photo by rolon2000)

Sneakers may not seem like a sexy subject today, web 2.0 and all, but it’s easy to forget that they used to be so important to some young people that they would would mug and kill for them. This essay may also seem far removed from trance music and/or my “visions,” and for sure, it’s not about either at all. But with this next paragraph, about the uniformity of the sport stores’ designs and layout the world over, à la McDonalds and Starbucks, you should begin to see the links:

This notion of predictability is further emphasised when you consider the atmosphere that the management actively seeks to promote in its stores. All branches of the sports store concerned are dominated by a large TV monitor overlooking the shop floor. This acts as a magnet for passing customers. British branches of the store often broadcast MTV…as far as the Head Office is concerned, this helps to create a relatively straightforward means of perpetuating a superficial feeling, on the part of the customer, of personal familiarity with what it is to experience this particular store. It gives the individual a sense of personal knowledge about the store, whilst apparently simultaneously denying him or her of any sense of individual creativity in that selfsame context. The experience of shopping in this store is an a passive, as opposed to an active one.” (p, 56)

Moreover:

What is also of interest is that paradoxically, measures are taken by the company to actively disguise the impersonal nature of the experience of shopping [there]….Though on the one hand the company’s training literature is entirely open about the importance of giving the consumer a common experience on entering the store in whatever country, on the other, any hint that efforts are being made to control such an experience are hidden from the customer’s actual perception of the shopping environment.” (p.57, my italics).

(Photo by fnktrm)

Finally, there is the whole process of how the consumer arrived at the store in the first place:

It is in the interest of [all] companies to channel consumers in certain directions in order to make the production process more straightforward and less costly. This, indeed, is the basic philosophy behind any mass production process which thereby ensures that the demand for a particular product is maintained at a particular level….This polarized process, whereby consumers feel as though they are free as they see fit and yet at the same time can only choose goods from a selection constructed for them by [advanced capitalist] forces beyond their personal control, lies at the centre of the consumer paradox which this essay attempts to explore. (p.58)

But not at the heart of this post! But I include all of the above partially because it is interesting it’s own right, and primarily to introduce the very real notion of atmospheres created for consumers, for want of a better term. After the above, Miles argues that the uncertainties of life for young people  - irregular jobs, the costs of education, the environment, shifting gender roles, and so on - mean that they positively embrace the predictable nature of consumption, because it gives them a much-needed sense of control and certainty in their lives. I agree with this in principle, but not to the degree he does, primarily because in 2008 uncertainty about the future is taking for granted, whereas when Miles was writing he was specifically responding to Ritzer, in his mid-fifties when he first wrote McDonaldization in 1993, who was clearly of a generation of academics that lamented the changes rather than realising that people could actively and positively respond to them. Regardless of what you think of all that, that argument is what led him to write this conclusion, which simply blew me away:

As far as young people are concerned then, the McDonaldization of the sports store, can, therefore, actually be perceived to be liberating. Upon entering the sports store the young people I observed were able to forget, indeed, escape from, their everyday concerns. They became immersed in another culture, a culture symbolised by the street life portrayed by MTV. In a world characterised by insecurity and uncertainty as to the future, as well as the present, young people can open this “window of stability” and enter a whole new world - a world in which, regardless of family background or work prospects, they can be treated as equals, in the sense that they have equal access, depending upon resources, to the cultural capital of consumption. (p.61)

And yes, just like that, finally, what has probably been obvious to you all along, I realised that my “visions” were nothing profound, nothing unique, but no more than mere fantasies.

A Manifesto for a Korean Fantastique

(Photo by justpedalhard)

What were the effects on me of finding out that something I’d thought so profound, and invested so much mental and emotional energy in, was a mere fantasy? Well for starters, I couldn’t go to dance parties anymore, and haven’t since 2003. Partially, this was because back in the early-2000s there wasn’t much of a dance party scene in Korea anyway (still isn’t as far as I know), and also partially because trance music isn’t popular at all in Korea anyway (unlike Japan, which I think is telling), but primarily because once I was there, I could no longer just switch off and go to that “place” anymore. Instead, all I could think about was the crappy lighting, the exorbitant cost of the drinks, the then 5.5 hour bus trip from Jinju to Seoul, the cost of the motel and ticket to the dance party…all for the sake of dancing by myself in dingy club in a city where I knew no-one (you don’t go to dance parties to meet people). And that was before I read an article entitled The night is still young: Tokyo’s club scene pulses with recession-beating energy in the May 2003 copy of Japan Inc. that I picked up on a trip to Tokyo a few months later, from which I learned that the dance club industry is just as capitalist and manipulative as that of sports stores described above. Maybe even more so. Take this for instance:

After running a monthly party at Twilo, Takahashi was approached by the management of Womb, which was struggling to find a visionary concept of its own. “They were attracting about 150 people a night at that point,” Takahashi recalls. “Now over 1,000 people are coming to the club on Fridays and Saturdays.” The reason for the shift, says co-producer Takeo Yatabe, is that “we made a culture out of the club scene.”

This culture embodies not only a night out dancing, but a complete urban lifestyle, including everything from what people drink, wear, listen to, think and shampoo their hair with in the morning. The concept was arguably first given life by the London club Ministry of Sound, which today refers to its club concept as a “dance brand.” Its interests range from nightclubs–including its recently opened venue in Bangkok–to record production, magazines and festivals. In 2001, 3i, Europe’s leading venture capitalist, invested 24 million pounds in this “dance brand.”

In Japan, Takahashi has been able to sell this brand concept to Calvin Klein, Nike, Sony, liquor and cigarette companies, and others. These interests form a conspicuous presence in the club scene by sponsoring special promotions, getting their logos on all club publicity, or providing exclusive brands of beer and vodka. As a result, Takahashi has been able to spend more money on big name DJs, better lighting, promotion, decor and so on. This has been important in ensuring that Japan’s fastidious, demanding and impatient youth generation are willing to buy into the culture and concepts.

…

Liquor and cigarette companies initially started to push their products to Japan’s club generation about give years ago, when new legislation banned them from advertising to people under 20. Since you have to be over 20 to legally enter a club in Japan, clubs become the perfect forum for legitimate advertising to young people. (Advertisers know, of course, that many people under 20 are habitual clubbers who can easily get into the venues). Ishihara calls it a “closed world,” a guaranteed market of self-selected consumers. Indeed, the rapid rise of tobacco sponsorship in clubs and bars since the 1990s globally has been well documented. Corporate sponsorship started conspicuously in Japan in 1996, notes Ishihara, when Grammy award-winning producer and DJ Little Louis Vega received an unprecedented [yen] 3 million from Gordon’s Gin to spin his magic in a Tokyo club.

I’d previously found dance parties so liberating. To me, they had been the equivalent of what John Pilger said the beach was like to Australians: a place where you left your class status, ideologies, cultural baggage behind in your parked car, as they were all meaningless when you were all standing around in your swimming costumes in the sand. But I should have already known better: years earlier, a friend of mine had dated a DJ and often sat alongside him while he was performing(?), and regardless of how much of a personal bubble the dancers felt themselves to be in, she said it was amazing watching her boyfriend manipulate them like puppets on a string by the choice and tempo of his songs. But that was benign. In contrast, a ”guaranteed market of self-selected consumers” for tobacco companies? No pun intended, but it left a very bitter taste in my mouth.

(Photo by ridestate)

With previous epiphanies too, I suddenly lost all interest in the subjects that they were about. But that was fine for the academic and completely abstruse subjects that they had been on. In contrast, this was the loss of something that had given me no less than a zest for life. Of course, since then my wife and then daughter and other things have helped to replace them, but I can’t pretend that I’m as passionate about things as I used to be, and not just because I’m older. It may also be partially to blame for my not being fluent in Korean after nearly 8 years here, despite my supposedly burning desire to learn. Hence my claim to be jaded and cynical ever since. But other than my Korean ability, perhaps, I can’t think of any specific instances where being so had impacted on my life in Korea and my view of Korea and Koreans. But surely it has somehow?

Although I lack specific examples, I think, in hindsight, that it meant I stereotyped and generalized Koreans a great deal. Sure, I may not have been doing that entirely because of my new-found cynicism, but it probably didn’t help. I first became aware of this in 2005 or 2006, when I heard a radio interview of someone from the Ministry of Health discussing the number of AIDS cases in Korea, and the ways in which they’d caught the disease. By the matter-of-fact way in which both her and the interviewer spoke about it, in the space of about 5 minutes I learned that despite what all English-language books on Korea said, Koreans no longer thought it was a “foreign” or “gay” disease. Put more simply, some Korean ability had shown me that Korea was a rather more complicated place than I’d previously thought, and I could no longer claim to be as much of an expert on Korea that I liked to think. This was confirmed to me a year later by an interview of Robert Koehler of the Marmot’s Hole, by Michael Hurt of Scribblings of the Metropolitician, probably the two most popular blogs in Korea, in which they both mention how Koreans debate and argue about issues just as much as any Westerner, but if you don’t speak Korean then you are largely unaware of it, and so are more likely to generalise Koreans as all thinking the same (it’s audio podcast #28 on the left sidebar of the Metropolitician’s site. You can download it directly from there…slowly…or from iTunes).

(Photo by ~Dezz~)

I’m still hardly a saint when it comes to stereotyping Koreans either - as my drinking buddies can attest to - but at least I’m aware of it now, and am making an effort to overcome my tendency to do so. Hence, a good number of my posts (as excitinghead) on Dave’s ESL Cafe, for instance, are pointing the above out to those who say that “All Koreans do X” or Y, or whatever. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an apologist for Korea by any means, and I really only ever write there to advertise the blog, but I do say what I genuinely think (see here for a more recent, more coherent, and all-together very formal-sounding of mine about that on the Marmot’s Hole). Not only that, writing things like that serves to remind myself of the diversity and, well, “sparkle” in Korean life that I’d previously missed. That was all well and good previously, but what writing this series of posts has taught me is that to regain a sense of passion and excitement about living here, and life in general, it’s high time to do more than just be aware of this diversity intellectually, and go out and find and experience that for myself. That is what part four will be about.

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 (photo by Brocco Lee)

When I innocently began writing this post about some of my favourite artists back on Monday, I never knew that it would develop and transform to the extent that it did, ultimately morphing into something quite unexpected. Revealing what that is now would spoil the ultimate message I think, but I can say that as a result of writing it, I now look at life in Korea in a new and much more enchanting light than I did five days ago, and hopefully some of that new-found sense of mystique (and also carpe diem) will rub off on you too.

Unfortunately, having come to some realizations and conclusions as a result of writing, rather than having them before the writing process started like normal, the result was…well, a grand narrative. Which is all well and good, but from a blogger’s perspective it’s a nightmare, for it means that the chronological order must be stuck to, every part is essential, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, and parts can not be readily broken down into separate posts that can be chopped and changed and rearranged. So while the original result was what I think is some of the best stuff I’ve written ever, albeit more for the ideas than for the eloquent prose, it ultimately came to about 5500 words, and the hour and half or so required to read it would have been just a bit too much to ask of readers. Hell, even I struggle to do the odd 3000 word post of mine in one sitting.

Despite appearances, I don’t think I could reduce the word count much more than I already have. And so, after about a day and a half of unsuccessfully grappling with this issue, I found myself relaxing by looking up rude words and sexual positions on Wikipedia instead. But then some chance link suddenly reminded me of a similar issue with easily the best fantasy book in the world: Imajica, by Clive Barker. Sold as a 825-page epic when I was given a copy in 1991, the publishers then decided that it was just too damn big, but Barker was adamant that there was nothing that could be cut. The compromise solution? He picked a random page something like 413 pages in, and henceforth it was sold in two volumes.

Following this example of the one of the greats, I too have accepted cruel reality, and, not counting this explanation, will present the original post in a series of three or four smaller ones of roughly 1500-1800 words each. That leaves me with posts that make no sense by themselves, and although this first one in particular is still interesting, I hope, it is (literally) far removed from the ultimate, majestic conclusion. But despite that, it does feel good to get things rolling again after five days, and sorry for the delay. 

Intro/Copyright Issues

Last week, I wrote in passing that finding the Tokyo “online design magazine” PingMag had rekindled a fledgling interest of mine in Japanese pop-art, and, suitably inspired, that I would be putting up a post about it soon. But in truth, it simply reminded me of the pictures by artists Francisco Perez (a.k.a. pacman23) and brothers Michael and Cyprian Chomicki of Studio Qube that I have sitting on my hard drive, and that what I really wanted was the opportunity to talk about them. And so I originally began this post thus:

Although none of them are based in Japan or are of Japanese descent, or in Perez’s case even seem to have work with Japanese subjects, to my untrained eye all of their artwork (galleries here, and here) simply screams “Japan,” as do their favorite works of other artists (see here and here). Here are some examples:

(”oO Vic Oo” by Francisco Perez)

(”oO 123 Oo” by Francisco Perez)

(”Fade to Red” by StudioQube)

So far, so good. But then I hit a brick wall, because the deviantART picture-hosting site where I found their pictures is very amibigous about copyright issues. The first and third pictures above have a “download” option with them, so indeed download I did, and the second has a big ugly watermark across it, so I have no qualms about putting that one up too, especially as I’ve just shelled out…ahem…US$41 to have an unadorned 61×90cm print of it shipped to me from America (thinking it was a photo, my wife was quite angry at my choice at first!). But as for all the other pictures I’ve saved…?

Personally I think it’s pointless to consider copyright issues on a site that allows a simple right-click and save of images, whereas Flickr, for one, has a number of options for users to determine what viewers can do with their images, and if users are so inclined (and all too many are), then there are various devices on there that prevent all but the most computer-savvy viewers from saving images that are intended to be for display only (just try right-clicking and saving this cool one of Hachiko Crossing in Shibuya for instance). Korean portal sites like Naver have been doing something similar in recent months too (see this one of Lee Hyori for example), not allowing an increasing number of images found from image searches to be saved. Most of these “protected” images are from Korean blogs that normally you would need a password to view, so I sort of understand the rationale from the bloggers’ perspective, but then I can’t see the point of an image search which doesn’t allow you to save the images you find: what, pray, am I supposed to do with them once I find them?

Yes, maybe I should have rephrased that. In the meantime, I decided that I have no moral qualms about copying a freely-available image and using it on a non-commercial blog, provided that it isn’t altered and that it is attributed (ie, as if it had the most common creative common licence), but after debating that with my sister, who has quite a network and her own (not half bad) photos on deviantART herself, then I’m (reluctantly) going to respect her wishes not use images from the site here, however amateur I think its approach to copyright is. Naturally, that makes writing a decent post about the artists near-impossible, so I had to give up on my original plan. But this proved quite serendipitous in the end, because it made me realise that, well…although I plan to rectify this, at the moment I know too little about Japanese pop-art to write about the pictures anyway, at least something meaningful. What I am qualified to write about though, are the feelings and realisations about life in Korea and East Asia that the pictures (re)evoked in me. Admittedly not a very high bar, but still, regardless of however pretentious and/or full of typical 30-something angst the following section will may be, readers should be used to that from me by now.

My Cyberpunk Baggage

(Photo by bhophoto)

(Photo by shymita)

Like most expats here, the reasons I came to Korea pretty much boil down to a combination of sex, money, youthful rebellion, sex, exotic locations, sex and sex. But despite my priorities back then, I’ll wisely avoid discussing the sex aspect for now, and focus on Korea as an exotic location instead. Yes, really, because even the most jaded and cynical readers amongst you would at least once have found Korea to be an exotic and amazing place. Of course, by definition it was to all of us before we came, but that disguises a lot of what can be very personal and unique baggage. In my case, although I was largely unaware of him back then, mine was a vision of Korea that echoed that which William Gibson had always had of Japan. 

He outlined that vision succinctly and very eloquently in a short article for Time magazine he wrote in 2001 entitled The Future Perfect: How did Japan become the favored default setting for so many cyberpunk writers?, and if you’re still reading this post by this stage, then I highly recommend taking a time out and spending the next 3 minutes reading it before you go. His historical argument is sweeping and generalistic, but basically true, and considering that most SF authors historical knowledge is a little lacking, gave me a new-found respect for his intelligence. I would quote it to save you the mouse click, but it reads awkwardly broken up, and is too long to quote in full. This alternate article from the 9 September, 2001 issue of Wired (interesting date) is also good though, and shorter and easier to work with:

Is Japan Still the Future?

That depends on which Japan you mean. Let us hope it’s not the prosaic one that lives in a decade’s grim headlines. Since the bust of the early 1990s, Japan’s financial levers have stopped working. Politicians have been rendered impotent by scandal and voter disillusionment, major banks humbled by the markets. Even in the splatter of America’s own burst bubble, Japan’s bottomless reservoir of bad news seems too dark a model for all but the most dyspeptic futurist.

But there is another Japan: Japan-as-metaphor. This is the Japan that represents hypermodernism in all its dimensions, from advanced technology to individual alienation to urbanization run amok. This stylized notion took root in the ’80s amid the country’s economic boom. It was a time when Japanese business models, money, and products seemed like irresistible forces. Neuromancer launched cyberpunk onto the streets of a future Japan “where you couldn’t see the lights of Tokyo for the glare of the television sky, not even the towering hologram logo of the Fuji Electric Company.” William Gibson’s imagined Japan was not the shiny future-perfect of yesterday’s world fairs, but instead a hard-edged tomorrow where giant conglomerates ruled and silico-, nano-, and bio- were the main denominations of value. Gibson’s message was that disruptive technology would bring with it disruptive social change. And it read like prophecy.

(Photo by bhophoto)

In hindsight, we know that although the cyberpunk vision anticipated many of the social pathologies that would emerge as Japan’s economy collapsed, it did not anticipate what has surfaced as a greater threat to Japan’s place in the future: irrelevance. The past 10 years have seen a depressing parade of disposable prime ministers, metastasizing concrete, and bankruptcy. And the last time we checked, there were no holograms over Tokyo. Yet it would be wrong to count Japan out just because the future is not what it used to be.

We persuaded William Gibson to go back to Tokyo to have another look. He found, to his own surprise, that his sense of Japan hurtling ever forward has subsided, only to be replaced with a new sense of permanent, yet well-tolerated, chaos. This, Gibson suggests, is the future for all of us. And furthermore, so what? Despite the fact that the country’s political and economic institutions lie in shambles, Japanese innovation and creativity continues unabated.

Two years ago, the notion that America’s future, then a glowing path of endless prosperity, had anything in common with Japan’s was risible. Today, post-Nasdaq, it is less so. Alan Greenspan is starting to feel the pain of his neutered Japanese counterparts. A controversial election cast a cloud over America’s political process, and an evaporating surplus is limiting government’s clout. Meanwhile, almost $5 trillion of national wealth simply disappeared. Our cyberpunk future has been put on an indefinite hold. But perhaps today’s Japan - the Japan beyond the dreary headlines - can reveal more about the shape of things to come than that shimmering vision ever did.

- by Chris Anderson

Admit it, remove the reference to Neuromancer, which every intelligent person knows was set in Japan, change the dates from early-1990s to 1997, switch the “Japan”s to ”Korea”s, and no-one would so much as raise an eyebrow if they read it in the Korea Herald tomorrow morning. Okay, the creativity may be a long shot, at least outside of the electronics industry, but the disruptive social change is spot on: it’s even more marked in Korea than Japan, and my interest in that social dynamism is, after all, what keeps this blog going. But actually this interest came well after I arrived, as did my reading and love of cyberpunk fiction and of the works of (to my mind) cyberpunk-influenced sociologists like Manuel Castells. Instead, what writing this post has made me realise is that the visions of Korea that I brought with me were largely derived from my love of, well, Trance music, or to be more precise the dance party scene and associated paraphernalia. I kid you not.

(Photo by Bjar9)

And on that note, I’ll jump straight into a discussion of Trance music tomorrow, which if you’ve read this far, I think you’ll still like and learn from even if you hate all forms of dance music (most of it is actually about popular culture). And for anyone still paying attention, I’m sorry that my plans for the blog in 2007 ultimately were delayed by about 6 weeks, but my series on developmental states will be coming after the big holiday from Feb 6-8. Not coincidentally, Manuel Castells mentioned above figures prominently in that.

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Over at Japundit, Peter Payne briefly discusses the phenomenon of kekkon taishoku in Japan, or leaving work to get married (I assume it’s exclusively used for women). My wife tells me there’s no equivalent exotic-sounding phrase in Korean (the real reason why Japanese culture is more popular than Korean) but the examples he gives of intelligent, sophisticated and (previously) career-orientated women quite happily…no, yearning to give it all up upon marriage will be familiar to anyone who’s taught Korean adults also. In my own experience, a good 10% or so of the women in their 30s that I’ve taught were already fluent, but happily confessed that they came to class more for social reasons and as a hobby than for learning English per se.

(Photo by comatosed)

Spending most of my undergraduate days either writing essays on the fallacy of the notion of “Asian Values,” or trying to pick up women at Amnesty International by joining their protests about them, then I completely disagree with Peter’s culturally-relativist sentiments that it’s inapproprite to judge this from his own US world-view. I do think that being a housewife is a waste of an intelligent woman’s abilities, particularly after 10+ years of career in a field that they enjoy, but notice that I didn’t say “raising children,” because yes, despite what I just said, my own wife is also a housewife and mother.

Why the contradiction? Well, we’ve decided that with the expense and widespread concerns over standards of childcare in Korea that this is best for our daughter (and our next child), but from what we’ve learned about childcare availability in Australia or New Zealand, then she would definitely work again if we lived there (which is…ahem…all I can really say about that online). Despite the boredom of being at home all day, she loves raising Alice of course (although it certainly helps that I’m doing much of it until I go to work at 1pm every day), and I’m reminded of a decade-old column I read in the New Zealand Herald about childless, soon-to-be (then) prime minister Helen Clark’s visions for childcare, which according to the columnist were based on an assumption that more women wanted to work but inadequate childcare facilities were the only reason preventing them from doing so, which the columnist, who was a mother, argued wasn’t quite the case. Somewhere in my possession I also have an Economist magazine article from 2000 or so that argued that the concept of going off to work and handing your children to complete strangers for the day was a recent anthropological oddity and hardly natural, and that thus, however cliched it sounds, “reconciling women’s roles as mothers and workers is one of the prime concerns of our age.”

I will try to find both articles if anyone wants to know more. In the meantime, I recommend you read this and then this article on the related subject of evolutionary psychology from Time magazine, both of which had a great influence on me at the time, and which briefly discuss the “naturalness” of modern-day childcare arrangements in passing (on pages 2 and 4 respectively). And if you haven’t seen it, then Mona Lisa Smile is a great movie dealing with all the themes above. It’s set in 1953, and if accurate, shows an environment clearly ripe for Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch in 1970. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard that it discusses “Housewives Syndrome,” a term used by family doctors in the 1950s and 1960s to describe the physchological and physiological problems many women were developing because all they were expected to do with their university educations was cook, look after children, and clean the house for the remainder of their lives.

But despite all that, regular readers will not be surprised to find that I still think that the expansion and increased availability of childcare is by no means the only, but still the best route for the advancement of women in Korean society at the moment. To take a leaf from the 18th Century “Mother of Feminism” Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women, where she counters arguments that women are inherently mentally inferior to men by pointing out that such comparisons couldn’t be made until women received the same education as men, I’ll accept that women instinctively want to stay home and only be mothers only once they have all options available to them. Until then, gynocentric feminists can just STFU.

But all this is not going to happen without the political will in Korea. So far