The Grand Narrative

( “Gravity” by nickwheeleroz)

Korea and the World

At the end of Part One, I mentioned that the Korean education system is routinely held up as a model for the West by foreign observers, and gave an example from The Economist magazine here. Here is a more recent example from The New York Times too. 

Now before I came to Korea, I had a great deal of respect for both news sources, but the longer I’m here and the more articles about Korea I read in them, I realise that I can’t trust the accuracy of either.  Anyone with just a few months of teaching experience in either a Korean university, public-school, or after-school institute knows that the system as a whole possesses numerous and systematic flaws, and that Korean parents themselves are simply desperate to have their children taught overseas. So what gives? Why do reporters that supposedly “read between the lines,” always “question everything,” and are paid to do the research that I do for free routinely produce such complete crap about Korea? If I lived in, say, Syria, would I find the same of English-language articles produced about that country? Or is this something…surely not unique, but more pronounced in Korea than elsewhere?

Scott Burgeson, introduced in Part 1, makes a convincing case for the latter. To finish my discussion of his thoughts on the decline of Korean Studies programs overseas:

…the fact of the matter is that it is almost impossible for a non-Korean critic to make a decent living writing about Korean culture for English-speaking readers. Thus, the lack of public or private grant assistance for Western critics covering Korean culture means that it is difficult to find commenters on Korean culture in the popular English-language press who actually know what they’re talking about (or who are not simply hacks).

I remember when I interviewed the Japanese director Suzuki Seijun in Tokyo nearly ten years ago, the staff at the Japan Foundation were extremely happy to hear about my work and went out of their way to provide stills from his films to print in my magazine at no cost to myself. They did not care whether I had a degree behind my name or not, but were simply pleased that I was helping to promote Japanese culture to an English-speaking readership — and I might note that an extremely transgressive director Suzuki is hardly a “respectable” standard-bearer of Japanese culture. My interactions with the Korea Foundation have been, well, in the interests of being diplomatic, quite the opposite. Perhaps I am burning bridges by posting this kind of message to the List, but since I gave up applying for grants here many years ago, I know that it will not affect me one way or the other so I really don’t care anymore.

There are many reasons why Korean culture is and shall continue to remain relatively obscure on the world stage, and my experiences as an independent critic here are just one more example of why this is so.

As explained in Part One, much of the problem is most Koreans thinking that only those affiliated to a university are “qualified” to write about Korea. Sure, there would be no direct link between that and those reporters mentioned above, but it reduces the already limited pool of people “engaged” with Korea, and like I explain here, their connections with Korea and Koreans have an impact far greater than they may at first appear. Hence, for one, the ultimately unsustainable nature of the Korean Wave compared to its Japanese counterpart, which I’ve discussed in many posts here.

(Image by gyoul)

This reminds me of what GordSellar has described as:

…the standard, near-universal conviction among Koreans that a positive image of Korea must be presented to the world. It goes without saying that, in this sense, the image can only really be positive if it’s presented in terms that will appear positive on the world’s terms, rather than on Korea’s terms.

And the fact that, in Korea:

…on some level, for many Koreans, a discussion is also a promo-op, a chance to represent the nation in a positive light, to make people think well of their nation; or, if it is not that, it devolves into a more basic “defense” of the nation, which is hardly any more useful for finding out people’s real opinions.

Previously I’d thought that the monstrosities in the English-language media presenting news of the “success” of the Korean Wave overseas were as bad as they were because they primarily for a domestic audience; over 95% of the readers of the English-language Korea Herald, for instance, are Koreans. And for sure, that still plays a large role, as too does the fact that most Korean authors on the Korean Wave are well aware that they’re writing propaganda rather than actual news. But seeing as how most Koreans think that Korea must always be presented positively to non-Koreans, but positive in their terms rather than Koreans’, then I’m increasingly convinced many of those authors are genuinely convinced that what they’re writing is what non-Koreans want and will respond positively to. That the results are usually anything but is, I think, a reflection of the self-imposed relative isolation of Korea that I’ve described in these two posts.

It’s a long shot, and for sure there is bad English all over the world, but nothing symbolizes this to me more than the signage at stadiums for the 2002 World Cup here. Billions spent on what in many cases have become little more than white elephants 6 years later, but the designers of things specifically designed for non-Koreans didn’t feel the need to consult even a dictionary, let alone the opinions of an actual non-Korean:

(Source)

(Update: There wasn’t really any appropriate place for it in this post, but I did want to mention this factoid often uncritically accepted overseas too. See this article on that too, and thanks to GordSellar for passing it on)

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(Update2: Those technical problems in turn mean that I can’t reply to a notorious troll over there, but fortunately his comments don’t really deserve a reply. Still, he’s no ordinary troll, and you have to admire his skill in trying to goad me into a response)

(Update: I’d like to thank bumfromkorea over at the Marmot’s Hole for telling me about Time and Cinderella, two movies that deal with the Korean plastic surgery industry. I would thank (probably) him there, but for some reason every time I write a comment on that post it just disappears)  

(“Liberty Leading the People“ by Eugène Delacroix)

Introduction

Today’s post is a bit of a light-hearted break from all the intense and/or very academic posts I’ve been writing recently, but I think that the points I’m making are still quite valid. Sure, if I’d wanted to convey that impression more effectively then probably I should have used a different title instead, but then I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t usually choose them with SEO in mind (Search Engine Optimization to non-bloggers). Sorry if that sounds a little cynical, but then consider this internet classic on the differences between what people say they read and what they actually do read on the internet. Meanwhile, if pictures of Lee Hyori are what you’re really after, then you’ll find plently to choose from here.

Korean Celebrity Culture 1: Different Standards

(Photo by lej pics. Yes, I know Lee Eun-ju/이은주 on the right committed suicide in 2005, but rather than making my choice of picture tasteless, actually I think that that illustrates my points all the more)

The original motivation for this post was my volunteering to translate this ”news” article about Lee Hyori’s recent chest X-rays for readers over at Dave’s ESL Cafe (I guess I’m a real glutton for punishment). I did last night, but PopSeoul! has already translated something very similar here, saving me the trouble of putting it up.

The article I translated is stupid, as is the endless speculation about whether or not Lee Hyori has received breast enlargement surgery: for one, you can see the before and after evidence for yourself here, and I discuss that in more detail here. Of course she has. Like I say there, I think she was very attractive without them, but they certainly didn’t harm her career, and while I may often sound critical of plastic surgery, I’m not against it per se. But why then, this endless, repetitive speculation? Because she refuses to admit it. Or rather, ironically, being a celebrity means that she’s not allowed to admit it, at least in Korea.

(Photo by mona)

I’ve already written a great deal about the differences between Western and Korean celebrity culture, so let me just give the briefest outlines of them here.

Discounting the big differences between Western countries, to a greater or lesser extent Westerners almost expect their celebrities to live hedonistic lives, and the public and the justice system as a whole gives them a great deal of leniency to do so that is not granted to ordinary mortals like ourselves. But Korea is the exact opposite, and female celebrities in particular are held to impossibly higher standards. Hence when it is revealed that they have taken drugs or had sex before marriage, for instance, then the public reaction is swift and severe, even if they didn’t actually do the heinous crimes of which they’re accused.

And so while Korea has one of the largest plastic surgery industries in the world, and a majority of women have had some form of operation or another, Koreans seem to want to keep this a secret from non-Koreans, and celebrities in particular definitely can’t admit to having received it themselves (with exceptions for aspiring stars).

I think that the movie 200 Pounds Beauty/미녀는 귀로워? is one of the rare popular Korean movies that draws attention to this (I discuss it here); if readers know of any others, please let me know. I also think that the dichotomy between the Korean public’s standards for themselves and for celebrities also partially plays a role in the their toleration of sexually-suggestive dancing and provocative clothes from the Wondergirls/원더걸스 too, because many parents, say, that regard both as innocent and cute would never tolerate the same from their own daughters. But after all the virtual ink I’ve already spilled on that, I’ll wisely stop there and let readers make their own judgements.

Korean Celebrity Culture 2: Promotion of the Mundane

(D-War/디워)

Amongst non-Koreans living in Korea at least, the both the Korean and especially English-language Korean media is notorious for portraying any cultural product destined for overseas consumption as world-class, on a par with Hollywood productions (if it is a film), and enthusiastically received by non-Korean audiences, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Gordsellar describes it as a “standard, near-universal conviction among Koreans that a positive image of Korea must be presented to the world”, and I myself (somewhere amongst these posts) have interpreted the effects of this on the Korean media to be its portrayal of the Korean Wave/한류 as Koreans would like it be received rather than it actually is, and even if this was the only problem the Korean media had, then it would be in a very sorry state indeed. Unfortunately, it’s not, as this and the following case reveals.

By this stage, you may well be asking how on Earth the Korean Wave is related to Lee Hyori’s breasts? Are they a cultural product? Well…yes. Consider this article about her trip to Hong Kong in 2003, but before you do, let me provide some background:

• Men like women’s breasts
• There are some men in Hong Kong
• Lee Hyori has breasts
• Lee Hyori went to Hong Kong

Therefore, even before the big event I would have bet money on some men in Hong Kong liking her breasts while she was there. An article about the test of that hypothesis is not news, and of course the fact that it was in a Korean tabloid also means that it wasn’t news too. But ironically, this celebration of Hong Kong men’s interest in Lee Hyori’s breasts is news precisely because it was in a Korean tabloid.

The mainstream Korean news media is amongst the most populist, unprofessional, racist and xenophobic in the world, and is more than happy to portray all non-Korean men as perverted, pedophilic sexual predators whenever it suits them, so you can imagine what the tabolid press is like. Not unsurprisingly, this means that many Korean men (but by no means all) are resentful of Korean women in relationships with non-Koreans. Hence KoreaBeat points out that it was simply bizarre that a Korean tabloid newspaper would revel in non-Korean men ogling one of “their” women, and I’m suprised that I didn’t notice the incongruity myself when I read it at the time.

Now, I’d be the last person to describe Lee Hyori’s breasts as mundane…but sorry, at the end of the day, they’re still just breasts. So considering all the above, is there any other explanation for the positive spin of the article other than the desire for self-promotion overriding the xenophobia, which, after all, is usually just a mere convenient device to use when Koreans want to deflect attention away from their own problems?

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(Bigger version available here) 

On the way home from my local university district last week, I noticed this Chamisul/참이슬 soju advertisement of Kim Ah-jung/김아중’s being put up outside all the bars and restaurants:

(Better versions of this and similar posters available here)

For those that don’t know, Kim Ah-jung is a front-line soldier in Korea’s ‘Soju Wars,’ and a few months ago I wrote a post about what soju advertisements largely featuring innocent, virginal looking women and those for beer featuring “manly” men say about drinking culture here, and especially societal notions of “appropriate” expressions of sexuality. Those earlier posts cover those issues in a lot of detail; today’s post is mainly just about some things I’ve noticed since.

First up, I agree, “innocent and virginal” wasn’t the first thing that came to mind when I saw that poster either. But that is precisely what makes this ad so interesting, as all of her previous ads in the series had been up until now - in a way, hers had been the last bastion of male-targeted ads that had presented women like that. New readers might justifiably argue that I’m reading too much into that one ad, but then compare these (mostly) older, more traditional ones still hanging up inside those bars as it was going up: 

True, not all of those are for beer or soju, and given that the decidedly non-virginal Lee Hyori/이효리 was in the third picture, working for a rival company, then the new emphasis on Kim Ah-jung’s “S-line” and the placement of her hand in response was pretty predictable.

In the meantime, the third picture from the bottom is for the medicinal wine Sansachun/산사춘, something also very much on my mind recently. Judging by past commercials, it appears to be primarily marketed towards women, but then I only started thinking about it in the first place because of this now ubiquitous poster with Jeong Ryeo-won/정려원 in it:  

The TV commercials are still definitely aimed towards women, but surely it’s not just me thinking that something’s amiss in that ad? A female friend thought nothing of it, but I still can’t help but think that that particular one would appeal more to men…it certainly works on me. Is the idea that men would like women who drink it? What do readers think?

I’m also tempted to talk about Bronwyn Mullen appearing in so many idiotic beer commercials recently too (example below), but I’ve only just started watching Global Talk Show/미녀들의 수다 to study Korean with, and besides which, Matt at Gusts of Popular Feeling is better qualified then I to write about the subject of non-Koreans on television (see here and here for why). I’ll concentrate on Jeong Ryeo-won instead then, and will find and translate some “news” articles about the new Sansachul ad campaign next week.

Finally, I’d like to refocus on Kim Ah-jung, because less than half an hour after I saw those soju posters of hers, I saw these pictures of her from her school days on the internet:

No, I’m not going to laugh at her for her decidedly unglamorous high-school looks (I can hardly talk), nor lambaste her for (clearly) having had a lot of plastic surgery, which is pretty routine for average Koreans, let alone celebrities. But having watched 200 Pounds Beauty/미녀는 괴로워, like most people enjoying it despite myself, “art imitating life” can’t help but spring to mind after seeing the pictures?

By coincidence, I recently read over at Dramabeans that she’s considering starring in a sequel, which revolves about her regaining the weight. But although the soju ads may arguably have been her most successful “project” since the original movie, I personally predict that a sequel would be a disaster. After all, fat jokes weren’t the reason why so many people liked the first one…but a sequel that probably concentrates on them? Sounds like it would be a Korean version of The Nutty Professor, and about as successful.

If you’re interested in images and the media treatment of women in Korea, and if you’re still reading this despite the unflattering pictures above then you probably still are, then I recommend that you also read Dramabean’s post about real life “200 pounds beauty” Kim Mi-Ryeo/김미려. Unfortunately, real life didn’t quite imitate art in her case.

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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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(Update: For anyone further interested in Bae Doo-na after reading this, you can find out more about her here, and read a review of Take Care of my Cat here) 

I have a spare hour to study Korean, but am in a bit of a funk and having difficulty getting started. Translating the title to this photo is admittedly not much study-wise, but it’s certainly preferable to giving up and watching Starcraft on TV:

배두나 가슴만 살짝 가린 과감한 의상

Okay, “배두나” is obviously the lovely Bae Doo-na above, who not only starred in the critically acclaimed 2001 Movie 고양이를 부탁해/Take Care of my Cat, but who also is Exhibit A in the argument that small-breasted women don’t automatically need implants to be sexy, a quality which all too many Korean women don’t realise is about attitude more than anything else: if you still don’t believe me, then check out this pre-surgery picture of Lee Hyori too.

But…ahem…this post was about studying Korean:

• We all know that the following word “가슴” literally means “chest,” but it substitutes for “breasts” just like in English. You probably think you’re pretty smart (I did) if you know that “유방,” literally derived from the Chinese characters for “milk” and “room,” also means “breast”, but really that’s just a medical term, rarely used outside hospitals.
• Then, “만” means “only,” and “살짝”  could mean “secretly” or “stealthily,” but because of the context and the next word I think it’ll mean “skillfully, deftly” or “lightly, softly” instead.
• After that, “가린” is the relative pronoun of “가리다,” which has 3 meanings in my electronic dictionary but I’m pretty sure that the “hide, conceal, cover” one is correct.
• Next, “과감한” is the relative pronoun of “과감하다,” which can mean “resolute, determined,” or “bold, daring.”
• Finally, “의상” means “clothes” or “costume.”

Please forgive the pretty but irrelevant avatar, which I’ve inserted because of the formatting issues my WordPress theme is having again. In the meantime, there you have it: Bae Doo-na wears a bold costume that skillfully covers only her breasts.

Hardly Shakespearean prose for sure, but not only am I now officially out of my funk, but I’ve learned 3 new Korean words, relearned one, and have even been inspired to download buy a completely legal copy of the movie I mentioned. Not just for the sake of studying Korean: I’ve been meaning to watch it ever since…well, since I heard how good it was 7 years ago. All in all, not bad for 30 mins work, yes?

Meanwhile, if you feel that the first, resized photo lacks the artistic qualities of the original, then you can download it for yourself here, or alternatively 3 similar photos here. And finally, if you’ve been getting a little demotivated studying Korean yourself, then you can do worse than also checking out the (much more detailed) Parts 1, 2, and 3 of my official Studying Korean Vocab with Hot Korean Women™  series by clicking here, here, and here respectively. After all, there’s little point studying something if you don’t enjoy it.

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(Photo by JFA-japan)

In my post yesterday, I discussed some of the weird things you see on Japanese TV and in magazines, and defended (some of) them by quoting this passage from page 118 of this edition of the 1992 Michael Crichton novel Rising Sun:

“Remember, Japan has never accepted Freud or Christianity. They’ve never been guilty of embarrassed about sex. No problem with homosexuality, no problem with kinky sex. Just matter-of-fact. Some people like it a certain way, so some people do it that way, what the hell. The Japanese can’t understand why we get so worked up about a straight-forward bodily function. They think we’re a little screwed up on the subject of sex. And they have a point.”

I still agree with that…but then I’d completely forgotten Japanese game shows. As this post (edit: NSFW, sorry!) from the blog Sand & Cotton has just reminded me, freedom of expression is just fine and dandy, but surely it can’t be good for Japanese women to turn on the TV to games like Guess the Fake Orgasm, the Hot Tub Game, and Whose Boobies are the Bounciest?, the latter complete with attached stepcounters.

Now, I am against sexism in all its forms, but if it does have to have a form then I can think of much worse than women in bikinis making idiots of themselves on TV. Seriously though, I have been wondering for years about what things like that say about the relative positions of women in Japanese and Korean society, although really it’s a no-brainer: after all, Korean feminists can rightly complain about things like TvNgels, the unwritten rule that female comedians have to dress as schoolgirls, and movies like 200 Pounds Beauty/미녀는 괴로워  below teaching women that plastic surgery is the solution to all of their problems, but surely none of that compares to games like The Last to Orgasm is the Winner?

(Photo by hichetu)

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Apologies to all those of you who have read the original version of this post, but the sloppiness of the writing in it really bugged me, and it didn’t help that the second half was completely off-topic either. This version is much the same, but hopefully much easier to read, and I decided to move the second half to the (impending) next post.

Still, a grave blogging faux pas for sure, but ulitimately I decided I’d rather not have something heading my blog that I was, frankly, quite embarassed to have written. From now on I’m definitely going to have to try and restrain myself from publishing as soon as I’ve finished typing the post up: after all, who cares if the original post gave the blog 636 “hits” yesterday, if 602 of them were for less than 5 seconds?

As a reward for those of you that do read the blog, be warned that the next couple of centimetres of the picture below, which marks the beginning of the original post, may be just ever so slightly NSFW. If you are at work, you might want to take care to scroll quickly past it.

(Photo(?) by naiyokaonkeitkokoraben)

To refresh people’s memories, I’ve already briefly discussed the historical background to this, and later I was happy to see fellow blogger Kevin take up some of my points and discuss them in more depth here. I’ve also mentioned the short-sighted and unsustainable way in which the Korean Wave was promoted (in contrast to its Japanese counterpart), and flooding the market with shoddily produced, repetitive Korean dramas may well have put East Asian audiences off them for the next decade. But then I saw the following post from the Korean Studies Discussion List, and it reminded me that there are still a myriad of small and subtle factors involved that never receive media attention, but the effects of which surely add up over time:

The 16th Cultural Program for Foreign Students and Scholars in Korean Studies

Nansook Jung yojh@aks.ac.kr wrote:

The Academy of Korean Studies is pleased to announce its 2008 Cultural Program for Foreigners. As an important part of the mission of AKS is to cultivate scholars and young leaders who can contribute to the development of Korean studies,…

Qualifications and Application Requirements: 1. Undergraduate students of second year or above and/or graduate students in Korean studies…

To which J. Scott Burgeson <jsburgeson@yahoo.com> replied:

One wonders if these kinds of programs would not be
more effective if  the limit to students and academics
were not opened up to include independent scholars,
critics, journalists, novelists and other writers
outside the academy but still professionally dedicated
to the field of Korean studies. Ditto for research and
language-study grants here, which are also almost
always strictly limited to academics.

Is it any wonder that number of books on Korea and
Korean culture aimed at a wider and more popular
audience in the West is so relatively impoverished, in
comparison to those produced about neighboring
countries like Japan and China, for instance?

Just my two cents, of course.

(Illustration by Aquarius-Campio)

Yes, I’d be very very surprised if that wasn’t the same J. Scott Burgeson who wrote the hilarious but informative Korea Bug, and I couldn’t agree more. It reminds me of strands of International Relations Theory I learned while I was doing my MA called Institutionalism and Constructivism, but strangely neither article in Wikipedia mentions what I was taught was the core component of the former especially, namely how the effects of state elites of various countries often going to the same overseas universities, learning the same things, making networks there and maintaining them throughout their careers and so forth, is to provide the shared ideas, contacts, and exchanges that are in practice the oil that greases international trade and diplomacy.

Sure, that is mere common-sense, and the thought of various lackeys in Trade Ministries going on a bender with their overseas counterparts every now and then may sound like a somewhat trivial aspect of international affairs, but then consider the effects of Korean economics students in the 1960s starting to go to American rather than Japanese universities: the tension between relatively neoliberal young Turks in upper levels of the state apparatus, and the dirigisme of older officials at lower levels, and of the Korean population as a whole, is crucial to understanding much of Korean politics today. One fact little known by many Koreans (understandably), is the extent to which many junior officials in the Kim Dae-Jung government welcomed and encouraged the liberalisation wrought by the IMF in 1998. Heresy for sure, but I can provide sources which demonstrate that they not only relished the opportunity previously denied them by their (now much-subdued) Japan-educated superiors, but even added to the IMF loan stipulations, feeling that they didn’t go far enough.

For a clearer, albeit non-Korean example, consider what the Economist says about the effects of shrinking UK-EU networks due to Britain’s Costly Disdain for the EU, which will surely have big impacts on relations in the coming decades as current old Europe-hands will lack suitably-qualified younger replacements.

(Illustration by Peter Schrank)

In short, ideas, exchanges and networks matter, and when I first read about the cultural program before I read Burgeson’s reply, I too was annoyed that I was technically excluded because I’d recently discontinued my MA: just in case you hadn’t noticed, I do still consider myself someone who “can contribute to the development of Korean studies,” and a good start would be reminding those few visitors still reading this post to sign up for the Korea Studies Discussion List that inspired it. Sure, much of it is announcements of public lectures in Tokyo or Washington that most readers wouldn’t be able to attend, but as you can see, events in Korea are mentioned time to time, and of course the discussions are still interesting. I’ll put it up in my blogroll as soon as I finish editing this post.

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(Update: Now that I’ve read it, I won’t discuss Robert Koehler’s post here like I planned, because even without the 52 comments to it there isn’t too much I can add that Robert didn’t cover already. But thanks for the comment surin2sayan, and Korean horror movies have never really appealed to me either. But in the process of writing my latest post for ZR5, I did find two called Whispering Corridors (여고괴담) and Memento Mori (여고괴담 두번째 이야기) that sound very good, and which I’ll definitely watch when I get back from my vacation. If you’re interested, you can find more information about them here)

Great minds do indeed think alike!

I’ve been blogging on Korean women in bikinis issues for five months now, but I only mentioned the Korean Wave for the first time two weeks ago because a book on the Japanese Wave I bought rekindled an interest in it. But ever since, I’ve been simply deluged with references to it on the internet and newspaper articles such as this, and then even came across a podcast by the Korea Society that took a rare look at its impact in the US. But notably absent in my posts on it so far have been Korean perspectives, so I’m very happy to say that I’ve just found Robert Koehler’s translations of two articles from the Chosun Ilbo to compensate.

Unfortunately, I’m a bit swamped tonight, so I highly recommend you read the translations and Robert’s comments yourself for now, and I’ll give his post a proper look and discuss it tomorrow as soon as I can. But in the meantime, given the exaggeration and hype with which I mentioned that the Korea Wave has been reported on by the Korean media in the past, I’ve got to say it’s refreshing to see a Korean newspaper give what appears to be such a frank account of the reasons for why the Korean Wave was so short-lived, but that of evil Japan’s has been sustained, with none of the nationalistic BS that normally accompanies articles comparing Korea to Japan.

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I wish I had seen a sunset like this while I was in Seoul, but I did get to see one behind the 63 Building on the right while I was on a leisurely boat ride on the Han River on Sunday evening. And later I got to see the same view as the picture twice from the subway, on Line 1 heading over the river North towards Seoul Station. Millions of commuters see the same thing everyday, but for a country bumpkin living in a city of only(?) 3.5 million people, and who hadn’t been to Seoul in 2 years, I was suitably impressed.

For those of you that I met in Seoul, thanks again for the lunches, coffee and drinks, and it was great meeting you all, but after taking the subways all over Seoul most evenings while I was there I didn’t feel much like exploring the city the next day! But on Wednesday afternoon I braved the cold to buy some books, and first went to Whatthebook? in Itaewon, naively surprised while en route that even at 2pm in the middle of winter upon seeing me Juicy Girls would open their “bar” doors and encourage me to come inside…I guess I haven’t lost my touch. After beating them off with a stick, the store was easy enough to find a little further up the hill, but nothing like I’d imagined: I’d ordered online from them many times, but the physical store itself was mostly second-hand books. That’s not a bad thing at all, but already having too much stuff to carry back home to Busan meant I was planning to buy just a few, probably new books, not about the 30 or so second-hand ones I could easily have walked out of there with if I lived in Seoul. Here’s the 3 second-hand ones that I did buy from there in the end, in no particular order:

1. Agricultural Cooperatives in Korea (1998), by the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation.

Hey, I said I went to Seoul and just bought books, that should have told you how much of a geek I am. Seriously though, even I don’t consider it bedtime reading, but like I’ll talk more about in Part 3 (I’ll link to that once I write it), there are big gaps in English language sources on many aspects of Korean social sciences, and it’s good to have something to study the Korean agricultural economy with when I’ll need it. And considering how important it figures in Korea’s FTAs, that might be sooner than I think. Before this, all I had was Chapter 7 of Korea, the Land and People: The Organizing Committee of the 29th International Geographical Congress (2000), not enough for that topic but which is still a great (and the only) introduction to Korean Geography in English. To any scholars in the future who have found this post by googling the title of the book, which may well happen considering it’ll be the only relevant hit they’ll get once I post this(!), let me be even more helpful by pointing you in the direction of the pdf file Improving the Agricultural Finance System: The Changing Role of Agricultural Cooperatives in Korea (2004), which shouldn’t be too out of date yet.

2. Recentering Globalization: Popular culture and Japanese transnationalism (2002) by Koichi Iwabuchi

Given the Korean Wave only really got started after this book was published, then it too is maybe a little out of date. But actually I thought that that that was a blessing in disguise, because it looked like a pretty good introdution to the economics of the Japanese Wave, and I plan to read it and then see to what extent the same things it mentioned applied to the Korean Wave, the index showing that knowledge of the latter didn’t influence his (or her?) take on the former. Despite their complete absence in my blog so far, I’m actually very into the economics of Japanese popular culture (and Korean too, if there was anything on it), and have gone so far as to have on my bookshelves, in chronological order, Postmodernism and Japan (1989), edited by Masao Miyoshi and H.D. Harootunian, The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures (1998) edited by P. D. Martinez, and finally Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan (also 1998) edited by Stephen Vlastos. Sure, I may not have actually opened any of them until I just put them down next to my laptop as I type this, but I think I’ve got good excuses for the first one (despite the blog’s title, I hate postmodernism of any stripe, and agree wholeheartedly with Noam Chomsky’s take on it), and given how recently I blogged about invented traditions then Vlastos’s book may finally see the light of day relatively soon.

It’s kind of ironic then, that I thought like that on Wednesday, only to read an article in the English Chosun Ilbo today about how the Korean Wave was just a flash in the pan, much of it copied from Japan (see the examples the article claims in the picture, which include 200 Pound Beauty) and why the Japanese Wave just keeps on coming. But neither is any great surprise, and was apparent to virtually everyone a few years ago except seemingly the entire Korean media, the government, and by extension all too many Koreans. Despite the Chosun Ilbo’s apparent about face, and the useful related links available if you click on the article, it too was guilty of grossly exaggerating the Korean Wave’s success as recently as September, which you can see for yourselves with titles like “Korean Computer Animators Rising to Challenge Hollywood” and “D-War Director Returns Home Triumphant.” The public clearly has yet to get the message too, considering netizen’s reactions to a televison debate about D-War and one of the few Koreans daring to criticise the monstrosity.

(Update: Just found this rather precient post of Michael Hurt’s entitled Why the Korean Wave Will Ebb, originally written in 2005. If you’re interested in the above, I recommend you check it out)

3. What’s So Good about Korea, Maarten? (2005) by Maarten Meijer

I usually avoid books like this like the plague, because after you’ve read one random expat’s book on Korea then you’ve read them all (although The Koreans (1999) by Michael Breen is pretty good), and Meijer seemed to have no qualifications to write the book other than having lived in Korea for 5 years and many other countries previously. Hell, he can’t even speak Korean…if he can make money writing a book about Korea, then I sure as hell should too. But then I’d been thinking a lot recently about something I read in Scott Burgeson’s hilarious Korea Bug (2005) a while back, when he interviewed Ken Kaliher, who’d lived here for 25 years…

…which compared to my meager 9 months at the time made me wonder if I had any business selling him literature that purported to “explain” various aspects of Korean culture. But he was very nice and didn’t cop an attitude at all, which he was certainly entitled to do. Actually, a lot of expats I’ve met in Korea and Japan who’ve reached that 4-5 year mark can be fairly standoffish towards relative newcomers, but I’ve found most “Old Hands” to be quite chilled out about such temporal jockeying and one-upmanship. After you’ve clocked in 15 or 20 years, you’ve pretty much seen it all and done it all. You ain’t got nothin’ left to prove. (p. 257)

I’d be one of those expats with an attitude, but I’ve been slowly admitting to myself that I don’t know everything about Korea, and I was recently very humbled by my score in my latest Korean/TOPIK test, which is why I’ve slowly started linking to and reading newbie blogs like Stranger in Suwon to get a much-needed fresh perspective on the place, although with that particular one I chose unwisely because she has just left Korea (and she never linked to me anyway, damnit so I’ve removed it from the blogroll). So I figured what the hell, it was only 6,000 won, usually 12,000 it said on the back cover (although I later found new ones, without pages falling out, for 9000 won at Kyobo) and I might learn something.

From the 72 pages I’ve read so far, I did indeed learn some titbits: pp.35-36, for instance, showed me that there are so many Kims, Lees and Parks in Korea because those were the names of some royal clans in the Silla period, and people wanted to disguise their occupational backgrounds by adopting those royal names. There are one or two others, but unfortunately I’m not sure that I can read anymore for, in short, this is the most sycophantic, outdated, incoherent crap I’ve ever read about Korea, and this is coming from a geek who has bought virtually every book he can find on Korea for the last 7 years.

The book started off well enough. I actually saw it’s Korean edition in bookstores two years ago well before I ever saw an English one, and when Meijer claims that he’ll be “painfully direct” and “straightforward,” and while “there will be no Korea bashing in this book” that this does not mean that the nation lacks problems or that it’s people have no flaws” (p. 12), you sense that he is directly talking to Korean readers. But I was already regretting the waste of money, the cost of a Black Russian, by the time I got to page 15, where he begins to aruge that criticisms of Korea are the result of a biased, ethnocentric world-view. After admitting that Scandinavian nations score “extremely high in empowerment of women,” for instance, he claims that “what exactly constitutes ‘female power’ is an issue of debate,” and defends Korean women’s extremely low empowerment by the fact that:

In many cases, the deck is firmly stacked against the inherent conservatism of Korean society and culture. Frequently, one can find western commentators complaining of the “authoritarian,” “hierarchical,” “unreasonable,” or “chauvinistic” character of the Korean male, for example. The underlying idea is that men nowadays should be democrats: egalitarian, rational gents who are in favor of absolute gender equality. Such assumptions, however, are popular notions of how society ought to be ordered based on a fundamentally wester worldview.

No, they’re not, and like I said in my introduction to this recent post, that “Asian Values” argument is at least a decade out of date. Later, on pages 33-35, Meijer again shows how out of touch he is by mentioning Koreans’ preference for sons leading to abortions of female fetuses and skewing the birth rate, but which I’ve demonstrated here is something that was indeed a big issue 10 years ago, but has since has been resolved and is not at all a concern to Koreans. Not surprisingly then, the English book hasn’t exactly gotten stellar reviews, and if you click here and then on “next message” you can read Scott Burgeson’s (the Korea Bug guy above) criticism of the factual errors in it and Meijer’s response. I’m also happy to say that, despite the somewhat biased Dutch Business Club Korea’s claims, given that “as far as [they] were told it is the first book about Korea by a Dutchman published locally,” Koreans don’t like it either!

(Update 2: I’ve just found a review of a new book called Korean Consumer Report by Scott Burgeson, which I remember also seeing the Korean version of in Korean bookstores this year, and which I fully expect in my sock this Christmas (you have been warned). The review briefly mentions Burgeson’s opinons of Meijer, and it sounds like he criticises him a great deal in that book too)

I’m not claiming at all that producing Korean versions of books automatically makes authors sycophantic, and Tariq Hussain’s Diamond Dilemma (2006), which I plan to finish and review after I get back from my vacation, seems to acheive a good balance. But it must surely be a temptation for the sake of sales, and although I can’t find the link for now sorry, in his blog Michael Hurt has mentioned how it is tedious and bizarre for non-natives but natural for Koreans to say “Our Country this,” “The Great Korean Republic” that, and “Our People,” whereas we’d just say “Korea” and “Koreans” in English, and this would surely have a subtle influence on English editions of what were originally Korean works too.

As for me, I think I’ll throw mine away to make sure it doesn’t get into an impressionable newbie’s hands! In the meantime, I did buy 3 more books that day which I intended to talk about in this post, but you’ll be happy to know that I’m going to try to stick to a limit of 1500 words per post from now on, and while this post’s 2000 words means that I’m not off to a good start, it’s much better than the 5248 one I did recently. I have some thrilling blog tidying-up to do as well, but I’ll still try to do Part 2 tomorrow, and it’ll probably be much shorter because all 3 books are very good and so I have less to rant about. After that I’ll try to do Parts 2 and 3 of Flatting, Premarital Sex and Cohabitation in Korea next week as promised, but I also have to write my next 6 posts for ZR5 Asian News before I go on vacation, so sorry, but that means that there won’t be time for many pictures of attractive Korean women for a while. If you can’t wait though, you could do much worse than checking out my second post there on Han Eun-jeong/한은정.

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(Update: I just came across this semi-related thread at daveseslcafe that discusses this Australia e-journal’s discussion of this social science journal article entitled “Porn Up, Rape Down” that claims that access to pornography in America has reduced sexual violence there. I’m not for a moment denying that many other factors would be involved, and correlation of two trends does not mean causation, but people interested in this post will probably find it interesting. Because of my online MA giving me access to Leeds University library I should be able to access the original journal article myself if it’s there, and if it is I’ll try to figure out WordPress’s hosting system and will put it up here for people to download.  But I have to go to work now sorry, so check back tonight)

(Update2: Well don’t I feel like an idiot. I was already in the Leeds University Library website trying to figure out the journal name to look for before I realised that a) ”Porn Up, Rape Down” is merely a research paper, and a whole 6 page(!) one at that, and b) that you can download it directly from the third link I gave you. Enjoy)

Quite a while ago I discussed censorship laws in Korea in Part 2 (and a little in Part 1), and concluded that their strictness, pervasiveness, and arbitrary application were signs that Korea still has some way to go before it completely democratizes.  But they are liberalizing, slowly, and I also mentioned that the whole issue reminded me of nudity in the media in post-Franco Spain, which I learnt at University that Spanish women consciously and deliberately flaunted, in an emblematic way I guess, to speed the whole democratization process along (see here for an intro).

I think it’s some time before major Korean newspapers and magazines flaunt nudity with the Spanish bravado that Martin Varsavsky in that link says is the case in Spain now, although the virtually nude women often found on page 3 of the free daily 7am are certainly a start (see the bottom of