Halfie Trots the Globe

Untitled

2010-07-09T04:33:00.000-07:00

무제

대구 근교 과수원
가늘고 아득한 가지

사과빛 어리는 햇살 속
아침을 흔들고

기차는 몸살인듯
시방 한창 열이 오른다.
애인이여
멀리 있는 애인이여

이럴 때는
허리에 감기는
비단도 아파라.

-박재삼 (1933-1997)

Untitled

In sunlight bathed in the glow of apples
On the slender, distant branches
Of the orchards outside Daegu,
Morning shakes

As a train, as though ill,
seems just now to have peaked in its fever.

My love,
My distant love,

At times like these,
Even the silk wrapped round my waist hurts.

-Pak Jaesam (1933-1997)

좋은 예감

2010-07-07T07:11:00.000-07:00

좋은 예감

물달개비
피는 동안
숨죽이는
새벽길

고요 밟는
어린 노을
바람마저
멈춰 서자

씨방에
가득 담긴 안부
터질 듯한
이 아침

(우은숙)This is a truly terrible translation and a good reminder that poetry is a sonofabitch to translate. I went the lazy route and stuck with a more literal and stanza-centered approach, so some coherency in the way of English got lost. Eh, hopefully it can at least help along any hangul beginners.

A good feeling

As the pickerel
blooms along
the hushed path out
at dawn

In the young red glow
that quietly follows
even the wind
is stilled

As though the womb
full of and immersing me in well-being
was about to burst open;
this morning.

(Wu Eunsuk)

*Funny note: I looked up 물달개비 and could only find the scientific name in English from naver...drumroll...the chortle inducing, Monochoria Vaginalis, a name that is made no less dignified by its "common" names: oval-leaf pondweed and heartleaf false pickerel weed. I went with the least ridiculous sounding one...despite a strong urge to make some link between "vaginalis weed" in the first verse and "womb" in the last (incidentally the word 씨방, that I chose to translate as 'womb', is actually more like uterus...actually literally translates to "seed room". Oh Korean, how I adore you).

Why didn't Korea get a wartime/post-war social contract?

2010-07-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

A little random but interesting. A Korean blog I follow, On the Picket Lines, posted this translation (I'm not sure if it's the author's own or from a professional translated edition distributed in Korea) of Stephen Holmes' "Lineages of the Rule of Law" (19-61, excerpt p. 32) in Democracy and the Rule of Law, edited by Jose Maria Maravall and Adam Przeworski, and included a nice little question about how such a sweeping generalization - clearly derived solely from Western examples - relates to modern Korean history. I was lucky enough to find the original text itself available for free on GoogleBooks - no mean feat given I was forced to pry "Przeworski" from the Hangul bastardization "쉐보르스키" - but still a good thing since it saves everyone from the game of telephone that would probably result from a re-translation of an already translated text.

The original is as follows:

A ruler who needs to raise a citizen army cannot keep his subjects apprehensive, disorganized, demoralized, mutually distrustful, passive, and incapable of collective resistance. So what is he to do? To secure the voluntary cooperation of ordinary citizens in war, according to Machiavelli, a shrewd ruler will provide the poor and the weak with fair legal procedures, democratic participation, and property rights. This is not utopian aspiration, but a historically observable pattern..."[I]n time of war the landholding class accepted a fairly steep tax on its property, even though it was the most influential political group in the country" (Strayer 1970: 108). That war between mass armies boosts the leverage of less affluent and less prestigious citizens is also suggested by the observation that, during World War II, and despite a ban on strikes, American unions organized and grew much faster than they had through plant sit-ins and mass picketing in the late 1930s. Finally, the central role of veterans benefits in the original emergence of both property rights and the welfare state suggests that transfer programs, too, are rooted in this ur-form of the social contract, namely, the exchange of combat service for legal protection and opportunities for "voice".

And below the Korean translation:

시민들로부터 군대를 모집할 필요가 있는 지배자는 시민들을 두려움과 무질서, 낮은 사기, 상호 불신, 수동성, 집단적 저항 불능 등의 상태에 발치할 수 없다. 그렇다면 지배자는 어떻게 해야 하는가? 마키아벨리에 따르면, 명민한 지베자라면 전쟁시 일반 시민의 자발적 협력을 미리 확보해두기 위해 빈자와 약자에게 공정한 법적 소송 절차와 문주적 참여 및 재산권을 제공할 것이다. 이는 공상적인 꿈이 아니라 역사에서 흔히 볼 수 있듣 현상이다. "전시에 지주계급은 그 나라에서 가장 영향력 있는 정치집단이면서도 자신들의 재산에 부과된 상당헤 높은 세금을 받아들였다." (Strayer 1970: 108) 제2차 세계대전 당시 미국에서는 파업 금지 조차가 내려졌음에도 노동조합들이 조직되어 1930년대 후반의 작업장 점거 시위나 집단 피켓 시위를 통해 노조가 성장했을 때보다 훨씬 빨리 성장했다는 사실 또한 대규모 군대 간의 전쟁이 덜 부유하고 덜 중요한 시민들의 영향력을 증가시킨다는 것을 시사해 준다. 끝으로, 재산권이라든가 복자극가가 처음 출현하는 데 퇴역 군인 집단이 중심적인 역할을 했다는 사실은 소득 이전 프로그램 역시 이와 같은 근원적 형태의 사회계약에, 즉 참잔을 법적 보호 및 "발언" 기회와 맞바꾸는 데 뿌리를 두고 있다는 것을 암시해준다.

Picketline continues with the question below, first in the original Korean, then in English:

영국에서도 2차 세계대전을 전후하여 노동계급의 성장이 있었다고 아는데, 이런 것이 일반적인 현상이라면 왜 한국에서는 그런 징조가 없었을까? 공산국가와의 전쟁이었기 때문일까? 한국민들만의 특수성이 있는 것인가? 몸 대주고 몫도 못챙긴 한국의 신민들. 우리의 아버지, 할아버지들이다.

"If, knowing that post-war Britain also experienced a expansion in its labor class, we posit that this is indeed a general pattern, why has there been no sign of such a development in Korea? Is it because the Korean War was with a communist nation? Is there some unique characteristic that belongs only to Korean people? Koreans who proffer their bodies and cannot protect the parts. Our fathers, our grandfathers."

Unfortunately, the comment list was fairly short and predictable, beginning with the standard, "Historical generalizations cannot be derived from Western models alone," to the "No such opportunities have thus far arisen in Korea," to one surprising but all too short remark that, "There is no labor class in Korea in the same sense that there have been in the examples noted in this entry". (Disclaimer, I'm paraphrasing the comments with a vengeance to cut down on space) I think the question is interesting, however, not only because it notes a problem with the original article's generalization, but because it points to a Korean identity issue that is no less charged today than it was during World War II - that is, what is Korea's place in the Western-Globalization model?

Leaving that question open, I'll end by citing the relevant sources to the excerpt below.

Holmes, Stephen. "Lineages of the Rule of Law." Democracy and the Rule of Law. Eds. Jose Maria Maravall and Adam Przeworski. Cambridge, UK; New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 19-61.

Machiavelli, Niccolo. Discourses on Livy. Trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Nathan Tarcov. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Strayer, Joseph R. and Dana C. Munro. Middle Ages, 395-1500. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1970.

[Translation] Modern Korean Buddhism 101: Historical Background

2010-07-03T02:28:00.000-07:00

1918 Declaration of Independence

Just the historical background section (no particularly Buddhist or Christian stuff) here, since it covers a lot of ground. The author takes a lot for granted in terms of knowing events and figures off the top of your head (he's writing to students who went through the Korean school system, after all), so I put in some relevant reading at the bottom for any hardy souls who feel inclined to brush up on their modern Korean history.

Period Background: Historical Setting, Imperial Japanese infiltration of Buddhism, and the influx and growth of Christianity

No Buddhist figure lives out their life in a vacuum. Rather, given their particular period and the circumstances they are faced with, such figures respond according to their own personalities. Let us attempt to examine the historical setting in which such modern Buddhist figures found themselves. An account of the past century of modern Korean Buddhism requires three general sorts of period background descriptions. First, the historical background of the past century of modernity. This background is usually composed of those events that are selected by historians from among the innumerable happenings experienced by Koreans for their deep-seated connections with the nation, the citizenry, or a considerable mass of people - events often recorded as political and international in character. The second background issue is the Joseon oppression of Buddhism, which resulted in the disseizin of Korean Buddhism by Japanese Buddhism, and the third is the introduction and expansion of Christianity.

Historical Setting: 19th century Korea had fallen prey to occidental imperialism. The Joseon kingdom, in the latter half of the 19th century, shed its commitments to sequestering the kingdom and broke off its policies of isolationism, emerging into and adjusting itself to global-historical trends instead. This 'coming-out', however, did not afford the opportunity for either the establishment of a modern democratic state or an industrial revolution, but ample opportunity for international subjugation of the government to foreign powers such that, rather than a standard modernization process Korea found itself upon the path to colonization. The political and physical weakness of the Joseon dynasty was such that between 1870 and 1900 any and all foreign powers with which Korea had relations treated the country as a pawn which they could move at will. The five-hundred year old Joseon kingdom was at the point of ruin, and likewise the structure of traditional society. Coerced by Japan, the Joseon government concluded the Ganghwa-do Treaty in 1876, and as Korean ports opened under the terms of the treaty the nation found itself thrown open completely before the Great Western Powers.

In 1894 and 1895 the actions of provincial leaders of the Donghak movement resulted in peasant uprisings. With the intention of aiding the Joseon government in it efforts to quell these revolts, China dispatched its own troops. Japan, determined not to miss this opportunity to remove the influence China wielded in Korea, mobilized its own forces and ordered the defeat of China (the Sino-Japanese War). Through its victory in the Sino-Japanese war, Japan reset the balance of foreign influences in Korea so that, relative to all other foreign powers, it held the predominant position. Japan, which was receiving economic aid from both England and the United States, next provoked and won the Russo-Japanese War (1904-5). After this Japan's invasion of the Korean empire went unhindered. November of 1905 saw the conclusion of the Eulsa Protection Treaty, a negotiations treaty between Korea and Japan, which deprived Korea of its diplomatic rights and put in place in Korea the Japanese Government-General, after which the Japan-Korea Annexation Treaty (July, 1907) compelled the abdication of Gojong and the succession og the sickly Sunjong. Finally, within the atmosphere of the Japanese army's strict occupation of Seoul, the Treaty Regulating the Annexation of Korea (August, 1910), which read, "All regulation and rule of the entirety of Korea is conceded completely and in perpetuity to the Emperor of Japan," was passed and Korea annexed to Japan.

Ito Hirobumi; An Junggeun

Once the nation had fallen into its new role as a colony of the Japanese empire, freedom fighters associated with numerous independence movements and patriotic nationals fought for the cause of freedom and emancipation. In 1909, An Junggeun, a lieutenant-general of the Korean resistance army, assassinated Ito Hirobumi ( ~1909) - the Japanese Resident-General of Korea implicated as the chief proponent of the invasion of Korea - at Harbin station in Manchuria. He was executed in March the following year. On March 1, 1919, the Buddhists Han Yongun and Baek Yongseong were among the thirty-three representative Korean nationals to sign and recite the Declaration of Independence, an event which also marked the birth of the Independence Movement. Although this movement failed to achieve a people's emancipation, it carried a number of historical significations for popular liberation that remained throughout the period of Imperial Japanese Colonization.

Between 1919 and 1945, Japanese colonial rule went through a number of stages. After the 1930s, in the wake of the commencement of an invasive war, Japan's colonial policy towards Korea grew even more restrictive. It compelled patriotic actions in the name of the Japanese government. Included among these were firstly compulsory worship at Shinto shrines and the exchange of Korean names for the use of Japanese names. Further, until the conclusion of the World War, Korea had been subject to 36 years of colonial restriction and exploitation. Joseon's economic resources has been exhaustively expropriated in the interests of the Japanese empire. The attitude adopted by the Japanese occupation was that evaluating the parties or persons who might spark emancipation was of the utmost importance.

The end of the World War and the accompanying emancipation from Japanese imperial rule saw Korea fall immediately from the period of colonization into that of division (north and south). Along with a number of internal factors, perhaps the most immediate was Japanese colonial rule and the division and occupation of the Korean peninsula between the American and Russian military forces. With the general election of 1948, South Korea established its own distinct Republic of Korea (ROK) government, and in the same year North Korea independently established itself as the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Division soon led to civil struggle in the outbreak of the 6.25 War (the Korean War, June 1950). The war grew into an international conflict which continued for over three years and drew to a close without any conclusive termination of hostilities, in the uneasy wake of which the structure of a divided Korean peninsula remained unchanged. In the 1950s following the conflict, the right-wing dictator Syngman Rhee (Yi Seungman, 1875-1965) established his own governmental system on the pretext of the division, a system that was both incompetent and corrupt. The system was demolished in the outbreak of the 4.19 student uprisings during the 1960s. Even in this upheaval, however, Pak Chonghee (Pak Jeonghee, 1917-79) established his own military regime, and as the military-dictatorship that preceded economic development continued, the structure of peninsular division was cemented in place. Finally, in 1972, the military-dictatorship was switched-over to the 'reform' system.

US news coverage of Gwangju Democratization Movement

On the one hand the democratic movement and the peaceful and solidarity-minded people's national unification movements of the 1960s continued unabated under the military-dictatorship - lending the motivational power that finally destroyed the Pak Jeonghee administration. And yet in the 1980s a new military authority crushed the Gwangju Democratization Movement (May, 1980) and until 1988 democracy was almost entirely unsupported as, under a new general, the system of military dictatorship continued. Following this, another succeeding general was designated president (Constitutional Measure; April 13, 1987). Almost immediately, in June of 1987, the cities of Korea broke out in mass gatherings in a show of popular force so immense that the government had no choice but to concede the direct election of the president to the people. Thus in 1992, after only 32 years, the Kim Youngsam (k: munmin-jeongbu) government was born. Political, economic, societal, educational, and many other sorts of reforms were advanced, while the system of peninsular division continued without change. Many Koreans foresee that in the 21st century the system of division, the most pressing concern of the Korean people, will be dealt with.

Recommended Reading:

Deuchler, Martina. Confucian Gentlemen and Barbarian Envoys: the Opening of Korea 1875-1885. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.

Chandra, Vipan. Imperialism, Resistance and Reform in Late Nineteenth-Century Korea: Enlightenment and the Independence Club. Berkeley: Center for Korean Studies, 1988.

Robinson, Michael Edson. Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, 1920-1925. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988.

Eckert, Carter J. Offspring of Empire: the Koch'ang Kims and the Colonial Origins of Korean Capitalism, 1876-1945. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1991.

Cumings, Bruce. Origins of the Korean War (all volumes). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981-1990.

Lee Byeong-cheon. Developmental Dictatorship and the Park Chung-hee Era: the Shaping of Modernity in the Republic of Korea. Trans. Eungsoo Kim and Jaehyun cho. Paramus, NJ: Homa and Sekey Books, 2006.

Lee, Namhee. The Making of Minjung: Democracy and the Politics of Representation in South Korea. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007.

[Translation] Modern Korean Buddhism 101: Intro

2010-07-02T02:33:00.001-07:00

The Independence Celebration

If I have to suffer through the text book, so does everyone else. Or more to the point, if I'm going to be translating this in my head anyway I might as well write it down and post it online, contributing (hopefully) to the oh-so-inadequate English resources on Korean Buddhism. I'm not completely sure who wrote all this, but the book I'm working out of is an unpublished manuscript that was distributed in a history class I took at Seoul National University, so presumably it's correct and (more importantly) presumably the author will not find me and sue me for putting his shit up online...in another language...yeah...

Section 5: Modern Korean Buddhism, 100 years

0. Introduction and Period Setting

This section intends to present the fifty-year periods both preceding and following the 1945 emancipation of Korea, namely the diverse patterns that marked modern Korean Buddhism during those one-hundred years. As in any other era, this one saw the birth of a variety of forms of Buddhism. In addressing the hitherto inadequately examined form of Buddhism during the past century, the first and most difficult task is selecting which patterns/forms among the panoply of developments make the most appropriate subjects for discussion. While one pattern might seem to have great meaning in the present, as time flows by any import it had might not persist and the form itself fades into oblivion, and conversely that which seems insignificant now might, with the test of time, ultimately achieve such strength and influence that it will hold a solid significance in the account of Buddhist history. The preferred method in this work has been to select from among the countless developments of modern Korean Buddhism eight that seem to merit recording in Buddhism's ideological history and placing these developments within a single spectrum. These developments were at the heart of the ideology and practice of Buddhists of note, and so are presented as characteristic of the past century of modern Buddhism.

Taken during the March First Movement

Previous studies of the past century of Buddhist history have focused on the various forms that emerged during this period, but the methodology of such studies cannot help but to concern themselves primarily with the lives and ideologies of particular Buddhist practitioners. Here, however, aside from Buddhists of remarkable note, only those figures who leave an impression either because of their association with a particular movement or those who link a movement to its past or lead into its future manifestations are considered. As with these criteria for alluding to particular Buddhist figures, so too did we consider two particular points in regard to our selection of relevant modern forms of Buddhism. First, that the same or similar forms of Buddhism that were followed in the present, the past and the future were marked by different and notable practitioners, and also that the form presented both comparative distinction and consistency with prior and contemporary Buddhist movements.

This undertaking, while greater in scope than "A Study of Korean Buddhist Ideology," promises to hold a factor in common with that work - in order to minimize the degree of self-interest that would accompany his selection, the author describes primarily those subjects that have demonstrated a lasting significance within traditional Korean Buddhism. The relative merits between the religious disciplinary theories of meditation and study (the latter narrowly interpreted as silent scriptural study and more broadly as the general study of written texts); the conflict between the understanding of Buddhist tradition (the question of the driving spirit of Buddhism), enlightenment (existence), and ethical conduct on the one hand and an interest in history and politics on the other; the discrepancies between Buddhism's nationalistic character (the question of the attitudes held by Buddhist figures towards nation or politics), its shamanistic character, and its central faith (accomodation); as well as Buddhism's attitude towards other religions and the core trends of modernity (modern civilization and capitalism) are all points of interest. The undertaking also requires both determining what the awareness of Buddhists who lived through that period (as their present) was of the time, and what the meaning of their varying forms of period-consciousness was. The character of these peoples' era concerns not only their understanding of Buddhism or their intimate ties to the formation of its character, but is a key factor in the process of comparing and contrasting the various forms of Buddhism in which they participated. In comparing and contrasting one form (of Buddhism) with a different form, the differences between the two will naturally come to light and each will reveal its intrinsic critique of the other. Ultimately a single form, held against all other forms, will demonstrate its defects.Concerning the question of in which order to set upon our description, we will follow the sequence of which issues were considered most significant by these key Buddhist figures.

Random ajusshi snapped by LIFE back in the day

This composition is divided into two periods before and after the central event of emancipation. The figures that characterized the Buddhist forms of the former period are Song Kyeongheo (1849-1912), Baek Yongseong (1864-1940), Pak Hanyeong (1870-1948), Han Yongun (1879-1944), and the figures or parties that characterized the forms of the latter period are Yi Seongcheol (1912-1993), Kwon Beopseong (1914- ) and Yi Jikwang (1950- ), Pak Beopjeong (1935- ), and the Seon-u Doryang.

Coming up in the next textbook installment (yup, there's gonna be another. try to contain your excitement): Period Background - historical setting, imperial Japanese infiltration of Korean Buddhism, and the influx and expansion of Christianity in Korea

해에게선 깨진 종소리가 난다

2010-07-01T09:28:00.000-07:00

해에게선 깨진 종소리가 난다

해에게서는
언제부턴가 종소리가 난다.
은은히 울려 퍼지는 소리 앞에
무릎 끓고 한데 모으는 헌 손들
배고픈 영혼들을 위한 한끼의 양식이오니
고개 숙이고 낮은 데로 임하소서
하늘이 지상의 빈 터에다 간판을 내걸었다.
무료 급식소,
무성한 생명력의 소리 받아먹으려고
고적함을 견디며 서 있는 길고 긴 행렬
깃털처럼 야윈 몸들을 데리고
될 수 있는 한 웅크린다.
아무것도 움직여본 적 없고
스스로를 쳐 소리 낸 적 없는 몸짓이다.
바람이 조금만 불어도 파동치는
해에게서는
수세기의 깨진 종소리가 난다.

-노향림, 1942~

Ska-rean: (Translation) New music program, introducing Ska, Manyo, etc.

2010-05-11T03:46:00.000-07:00

I've heard enough complaints about the Korean music scene that this Hankyoreh article caught my eye. After all, how often do you see Ska in Korea? Personally, I dig Korean pop. Its unapologetically sales oriented and caters to the broadest common denominator with a willful disregard for individuated artistic or consumer tastes and combines appalling transgressions of Korea's traditional sexual conservatism with wide-eyed schoolgirl innocence that makes pedophiles the world over standup and say again: God Bless the Uniform! For these and so many other reasons I love it. Most other people though, not so much. They act like the mainstream monopoly of Korean music culture is a bad thing. I suppose this program described below might offer them some small comfort...comfort in the knowledge that television music programs exist to maintain artistic autonomy, rather than subvert it (in case anyone is missing the sarcasm, please turn to your copy of American idol for dummies).

At any rate, a marker at least on the Korean landscape of Indie music. It should be noted, though, for people who think the musical landscape here is all Boa and Bi that jazz clubs and latin clubs are the big sellers in Hongdae and other artsy districts. Whether or not that really counts as off the beaten path musically is up for debate.

Live Music Warehouse (KBS 2, 12:25am).

A new music program to go with the new spring television schedule. The show invites talented pop singers and Indie bands that are experimenting with uncommon genres such as Ska, Manyo [note: I have no idea what this really is, but a quick naver search suggested its a comic musical genre that, like trot, has connections with the period of Japanese occupation], and traditional music so as to introduce a variety of musical stylings.

Kingston Rudieska (different performance)

The first show presented Kingston Rudieska, a nine-member band that is bringing Ska to Korea. Ska originates in the transplanted African culture of Jamaica and is characterized by the strongly compelling repeated melodies that make you bob your shoulders. Singer/performer Pak Junyeon and his accompanying band melded the popular 1930s song "Shifting Saloon" (linked here is the only video I could find of this song) onto Manyo melodies.

Whool (different performance)

The six-member traditional music fusion band Whool also took the stage. In the fashion of the South African World Cup performance, the group intermingled traditional instruments such as the jangu (hourglass-shaped drum), ggweang'gwari (brass gong), buk (hand drum), etc. with digital instruments such as the hand sonic [no, I do not know wtf a 'hand sonic' is], experimenting with a uniquely Korean contemporary music.

"Half Korean is NOT Korean"

2010-04-02T03:28:00.000-07:00

Just North Koreans? I beg to differ.

Since I've been back in Korea I've noticed a pronounced increase in the vocal expression of racial concerns, very much tied up at least in its media expressions (news articles, broadcasts, etc.) with the exponential rise in the number of foreigners in Korea. I haven't wanted to spend a great deal of blog time on the subject because I'm personally not completely sure how I feel about it. On the one hand I can sympathize with the issue of an ethnic identity in perceived crisis - although frankly that sympathy stems from the fact that, having grown up in a country where Koreans are the minority I accord them the same minority crisis sympathy merited by instances of white-majority suppression of ethnic minorities, particularly in the United States. That is, I neglect to adjust to the fact that, within Korea, Koreans are the majority (although even there, arguable the ethnic threat perceived in Korea can be cast in global-historical terms in which the nation has been subject to the domination of foreign powers). On the other hand, it gets exhausting for me personally negotiating my daily life around the fears of Koreans.

Note: (a quick one necessary here) this post is totally and completely about the peculiar part-korean experience, those of us who are not just some potential foreign incursion but the actualization of that incursion. I personally separate this from harmless behaviors that the white people over here get so worked up about as "racist". For most white people here, Korea is the first place they've ever been the minority. Many do not respond with grace. A good overview on the phenomenon at expat jane's blog, Where the Hell am I?

While I'm not sensitive to the ubiquitous, "where are you from" or occasional staring, the one just a question that's more genuine curiosity than rudeness the other just par for the course, I dislike having to reroute my path home at certain times to avoid the ajusshis who are too fond of racial slurs, rude suggestions about my mother's occupation, or some truly inspired tongue-gymnastics in shows that are presumably meant to convey something sexual but inevitable tend more towards the 'self-dentistry' side of the spectrum. Likewise I noticed a while ago that I had adopted certain dress-habits and even physical behaviors to maximize my passing potential...but only in situations where I'm less likely to be harassed if I look Korean. Conversely if I'm somewhere like the subway I try to make my face fairly visible, since people who approach me from behind for directions assuming I'm Korean often get a nasty shock when I turn around and occasionally give me some looks or lip for being so sneakily un-Korean.

Anyway, I recently took a survey on half-Asians marketed in part through a facebook group I'm a part of, "1/2 Koreans Unite", so I scanned their discussions to see if anything interesting had come up. I thought this might offer a nice illustration of some of the attitudes that can make a country I'm pretty damn proud of such a bitch to try to live in sometimes.

"Dongsoo Go Half Korean is NOT Korean.
You guys are half-English, half German, half-white, half-black or whatever.
You guys are not Korean.
And Koreans in general dont like the term half-Korean.
Please get rid of Korean in your group name.
its just stupid just to talk with these people.
their parents left Korean and their offsprings try to stick to Korean.
aint this stupid?
...
I am bz fighting these honkeys, dongkeys, red neck, niggars, chinks, japs and whatever..etc etc...
my hands are full!
i will tell u guys Koreans u can stick to.
just stick to those small anti-North Korea folks in US.
then u guys might have chance to have a place to stick to.
just look for them. u might find a few ( or many especially in US)"

It's funny. I've spent most of my life talking about how ridiculous continued racism from certain white people in the US against Asians (and other minority demographics) is, only to explore the minority demographic and have it switched. Actually, along those lines, what struck me most vividly from the ensuing facebook discussion (the whole thread is linked Here) was how quickly it transformed itself into a question of US policies in Korea and where nationalist loyalties lie. That is, race itself - hypothetically the initial central issue - was rapidly politicized to the point that it was sublimated to political loyalties. Like most facebook discussions, which have a tendency to lose track of their direction, it was annoyingly difficult for me to follow.

On the other hand, I figure racists have more reason to be angry than the people they're angry about. We're here, whether or not they like it. There's not really anything they can do about it. We, on the other hand, have the law behind us whenever we want/need to stop harassment, so in effect we can get rid of them. So really, I suppose, instead of calling people like Dongsoo names, we should all spend more time sympathizing with the plight of the ever marginalized racists of the world.

Oh wait, check that. You know how everything you apply for in Korea asks for a picture? An online travel advisory clarifies the purpose of this practice: "Unfortunately, racial discrimination is still legal in Korea."

(Translation) Another Point Against Homogeneity: Excavating the historical relationship between India and Korea

2010-03-17T06:29:00.000-07:00

King Suro's Tomb

Quick Preface: If this translation seems confusing, it's probably because the translator is confused. The article (Indian Ayodhia's twin-fish motif as evidence of its marriage-based relationship with Gaya) is by Kim Byeongmo, a professor of Anthropology and Archaeology at Hanyang University, who published a book that compiles in greater detail his forty+ years of research into the subject addressed below (Kim Byeongmo's Archaeological Travels: Heo Hwangok's Route, from India to Gaya). I found translating his work trying enough that I didn't bother trying to clean it up much, thanks to both (a) my lack of familiarity with Korean names for long lost civilizations and their English equivalents, and (b) my shaky grasp on Korean history at the dawn of the A.D.'s, let alone the comparative goings on in India, China, and the greater south, near and east Asian regions. There is another, much more detailed, explanation of Professor Kim's book in Korean at the blog 꼬남이네, but be forewarned that it is lengthy, dealing separately with the traces of the mythical past left in genetic makeup, artwork, and adherence to particular family lines. In summary, sorry for the sucky translation. Since my own family is Gimhae I wanted to find a more scholarly perspective on the matter...and although this one left me a bit on the sidelines it is completely possible that the original argument is great and the flaws that come across are all errors of translation.

Indian Ayodhia's twin-fish motif as evidence of its marriage-based relationship with Gaya
Kim Byeongmo

48 A.D. 27th day of the 7th month (likely by the Lunar calendar). Today a party of red-sailed vessels arrived in Karak (Gaya) at the center of which is Gimhae. Everybody descended from the boats. From among these one woman presented herself before King Suro and introduced herself.
"I am the princess of Ayuta. My family name is Heo, my name is Hwangok, and I am sixteen years old."

The Kingdom of Ayuta: The kingdom of Ayuta recorded in the Kingdom of Karak section of the Samguk yusa refers to the Ayodhia on the banks of the Ganges. Ayodhia carries worldwide fame as the birthplace of the Hindu restorative progenitor Ram. It is also famous as the region where Sakyamuni entered the priesthood and began preaching, and bears further historical heft as the center of Kosala, the dominant state during India's warring states period.

The West Sea

And yet a princess born into that central Indian city came to Korea to be married off. In such abundance as to defy accurate recording wedding gifts were presented and she married King Suro and became queen. From their relationship 10 royal princes and 2 princesses were born. Today those children are the ancestors of the Gimhae Kims and the Gimhae Heos. Their descendants believe firmly in that story and there is a strong tradition prohibiting marriage between the Gimhae Kims and the Gimhae Heos. It is a situation of significant anthropological interest.

Wondering how, in this historical period some two-thousand years ago, the long passage from India to Korea could have been made by traveling in boats, there are some who doubt the account set forth in the "Karak-gukki".

And yet between India and Korea, the kingdoms of Ayuta and Karak, there is a definite connection of a cultural sort. Certainly the Ssangeomun. The Ssangeomun refers to a design of two fish looking across at one another. The paintings of the pairs of fish drawn on the three gates standing before King Suro's tomb are such motifs. Not only at King Suro's tomb, but the motif also decorates Mt. Sineo's Eunha temple located in Gimhae city, the stone pagoda's of Hapcheon's Yeongam temple and remains in countless other ancient temples within the Karak kingdom's ancient territories.

A comparison between the Paired Fish Motif at King Suro's Tomb
and Indian Sun Motifs

On the other hand, in other regions of the Korean peninsula, namely those formerly occupied by Goguryeo, Baekje, or Silla, there have been almost no such discoveries. As such the author wonders if this paired fish motif might not have been a national emblem of the Kingdom of Karak.

The fact is the author is of the Gimhae Kim clan. In his youth because of his unusual black skin he had a complex. But when he learned in school about the story of Kim Suro's international marriage with an Indian woman his sufferings disappeared without a trace. Though his skin was black, he lived believing it was because of the many remaining descendants of the royal princes born of the Indian princess.

In 1975 the author met his lifelong benefactor, in a story named Lee Jonggi. That thing informed him that there were twin fish motifs like those at King Suro's tomb engraved likewise in countless numbers all over Ayodhia.

From the moment of the arrival from Ayodhia the country could be felt to be a country of those fish. Some hundreds were engraved on the gates of Hindu temples, the gates of academies, government offices, military ranks, law enforcement helmets, transportation registration centers and the like. At the heart of Ayodhia the paired fish motif was a defining symbol of the Uttar Pradesh region.

The Paired Fish Motif over the main gate of a
Hindu Temple in Ayodhia

Despite this I could not find anyone conducting research into the symbolic significance of the motif. It was clearly a symbol of great importance as it adorned clothes, buildings and carriages and yet there was no one who could clearly express to me the meaning it carried. Even the museum director could offer me no explanation. What strange business was this?

The author continued to explore the paired fish motif. The emblem could be seen at various locations in the broad expanse of land between India and Korea. Countless examples were discovered in Bangladesh's Dhaka, along the border between Myanamar and China, Yunnan's Kongmyeon, Sacheon's Anak, and along the Yantze river. They were the traces left of the people of the Ayuta kingdom's travels on foot. Further to the west it was confirmed in archaeological excavations of Scythian sites in Afghanistan, site in Iran from the time of the Persian Empire, in Turkey the ruins of the palaces of Pergamon from the time of the Babylonian Empire, and in folk-crafts that had been used in Syria and Tunisia. I marked these locations on a map and for some dozens of years explored the sites.

The conclusion I found was that the paired fish motif had its origins in the Persian myth of the Kara fish. The Kara was a fish that lived in the sea. It was the guardian spirit of a tree called the "Kokerena", whose roots settled in the sea and whose flower bloomed above. The essence of the Kokerena leaves was an elixir that could cure all the ills of mankind. This belief persisted throughout Babylonian times, and was recorded to the enslaved Jews in the Old Testament (the book of Nehemiah), and the story is also told of how Jesus multiplied two fish into far more to relieve the masses.

Domestically the paired fish have been passed down as the guardian spirits of King Kim Suro's tomb. As such, the thought that paired fish protect tombs, temples, houses and people was passed down from some Gaya person. Is this not something first spread by the princes Heo Hwangok, whose origins were in Ayuta?

Let us set out to discover more about the course of her travels. First she traveled along a path that connected China and India, a mountain pass that ran along the southern base of the Himalayas. Even further to the south they passed the Guryung mountain range into Myanamar. This was called the Ocheongno Mountain Pass. Though a narrow path a little over a meter in breadth, it could be traveled by loaded horses and donkeys. Merchants and the like carried fairly light articles of commerce such as wagons or silks via this pass.

In ancient times India, Myanamar, China, Sichuan and the Yantze river were all connected along this trade route. Along this route fragments of ancestral stones, particularly in engraved examples, of the paired fish motif remain.

The party of Indian's who had arrived in Sichuan settled in Boju for a short time. In a moment of generosity the people of Boju opened their gates to the Southern region. Up to that time the city had been a stronghold of the independent authority of minority peoples. The southern region was established as a subsidiary kingdom of Ayuta, resulting in a clash with China's Han Empire.

Two uprisings against Han authority developed in the Southern region. According to the "Record of the Latter Han", the aftermath of the first uprising of 47 A.D. saw some 7,000 minority people forced to leave Boju. And the next year, crossing the yellow sea, Heo Hwangok and her entourage arrived in Gimhae. On Heo Hwangok's tomb in Gimhae her name is clearly engraved as Boju-taehu (image below). There is reason to infer that the Queen's true resting place was in China's Boju.

At the end of the second uprising of 101 A.D. the leader of the revolution surrendered. His name was Heoseong. This is a record alluding to the great power commanded by the Heo family in the ancient Sichuan region. In truth, until that time the Sichuan and Unnam regions had been unable to match the power of the Luoyang based Han Empire.

In the author's exploration of Boju (presently Anak) I discovered 150,000 members of the Heo family living there. Those Heos attend upon the ancestral tablet of a man named Heo Changsu, revered as the father of the Chinese pursuit of education.

The path that runs from Heo Hwangok to that forefather passes through China and India and connects the Mediterranean Sea to the inland. Tea and salt, silks and riches, and even various crops passed frequently from east to west along this road. India and Korea are not such distant countries. They are countries long bound by commerce and intermarriage. And in this instance of marriage between the young royalty of India and Korea, Buddhism was formally introduced to Korea - certainly a matter demonstrating significant transference.

Among the marriage gifts Heo Hwangok brought with her were articles particularly representative of India and Myanamar: gyeong (a type of jade) and gu (a type of ruby). The people who rode in her boat with her were ultimately those that went back and forth along the land path between India and Korea. In this way their knowledge and experiences of the great area covered by Heo Hwangok's travels was conveyed to the Korean peninsula. Thus even before the year 2000 those who carried knowledge were already manufacturing a new history.

The Yellow Sea

Pansori: The Four Seasons

2010-03-06T07:01:00.001-08:00

Few examples of Pansori stylings. The song in all the videos is The Four Seasons, so hopefully watching them side by side offers a better sense of the song and the potential for individual variations in Pansori. Lyrics are below (although for anyone who can read along with the Hangul you'll note each singer branches off a bit on their own words or whole friggin tangents here or there).

서철가

이 산 저 산 꽃이 피니 분명코 봄이로구나.
봄은 찾어 왔건마는 세상사 쓸쓸 하드라. 나도 어제 청춘일러니 오늘 백발 한심허구나
내 청춘도 날 버리고 속절없이 가버렸으니 왔다 갈줄 아는 봄을 반겨 한들 쓸 데 있나.
봄아왔다가 가려거든 가거라. 니가 가도 여름이 되면 녹음방초 승화시라
옛부터 일러 있고, 여름이 가고 가을이 돌아오면 한로삭풍 요란해도
제 절개를 굽히지 않는 황국 단풍도 어떠헌고.
가을이 가고 겨울이 돌아오면 낙목한천 찬 바람에
백설만 펄펄 휘날리어 은세계가 되고 보면
월백설백천지백하니 모두가 백발의 벗이로구나.
무정세월은 덧없이 흘러가고 이내 청춘도 아차 한번 늙어 지면
다시 청춘은 어려워라 어화 세상 벗님네들 이 내 한 말 들어보소
인간이 모두가 백년을 산다고 해도 병든 날과 잠든 날 걱정근심 다 제하면
단 사십도 못 살 인생 아차 한번 죽어지면 북망산천의 흙이로구나
사후에 만반 진수는 불여 생전에 일배주만도 못하느니라
세월아 세월아 세월아 가지 말어라 아까운 청춘들이 다 늙어간다.
세월아 가지 마라 가는 세월 어쩔거나
늘어진 계수나무 끝 끝어리에다 대랑 매달아 놓고 국곡투식 허는 놈과
부모 불효 허는 놈과 형제화목 못 허는 놈 차례로 잡어다가
저 세상 먼저 보내 버리고 나머지 벗님네들 서로 모아 앉아서
한 잔 더 먹소 덜먹게 허면서 거드렁 거리고 놀아 보세.

The Four Seasons Song

On this mountain and that mountain flowers bloom - it is clearly spring.
Yet though spring is found the world is dreary. Yesterday I too was in my springtime, and today I am snowy-headed and wretched,
My spring discarded I left against my will, while spring knowing how to come and go has reason to be glad.
Spring once come plans to go, and so it will. And should it go and become summer the shade of the trees and soft flowers and grass are sublimated
From long ago this has been; if summer leaves and autumn returns and the cold dew season (Hallo) and the northern winds clamor
What will become of the petals of the unbending yellow chrysanthemum?
And if autumn leaves and winter returns, amid the brush, bleak weather and chill wind
Should you see only white snow streaming down in flakes to turn the world silver
Then 100 moons 100 suns and 100 earths are all a snowy-head's companions.
Cruel time flows by too quickly and if in youth too you were to grow old one damn time
You and the world's companions would hear me say 'Returning to springtime is hard'
Though people say they will live 100 years, if you exclude the fears of days of illness and days of death
You can't even life a life of 40 years and if you are only dying once then it is the clay of the Bukmang Mountain stream
Postmortem a host of spirits blow while pre-birth not even a glass of spirits can flow
As you said time, time, time shall not move on, your treasured springtime years have all grown old.
You said time shall not go - what of the time that went?
Hanging from the end of the sagging cinamon tree branches a man,
A man not devoted to his parents and a man not at peace with his siblings, each seize their turn
First letting go of that world while the remaining companions sit gathered with each other
And drinking one more glass see each other off in play.

사철가_지산 김형옥_차를 마시는 사람들 2010
from storycubic, 4 seasons sung by Kim HyeonOk, people drinking tea 2010

Just a random lady, I just dig how happy she looks and how she bosses everyone else into singing.

도경이와 할머니가 함께 부르는 사철가
DoKyeong and Grandmother sing Four Seasons together (for the cute race its pretty much a toss-up between this kid and cuddly Mr. Kim up there)

Seopyeonje: The Voice of Traditional Korea
Not the same song, but an amazing movie about Pansori. The whole thing is available in installments on Youtube here.

Everybody Poops

2010-03-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

A recently translated entry from the diary I'm working on. These are the sort of gems that make the whole project worthwhile. No archaic language, no references to arcane doctrine, no student-teacher question answer sessions culminating in a single inscrutable untranslatable character, no koans or hwadus involving gateless gates or one hand clapping...just pure unadulterated honest-to-goodness shit.

(Oh and bear with the sloppy translation, I still need to edit)

빙판에서 미끄러지다

어느 날 밤에 변소에 가다가 얼음에 미끄러져서 펄썩 주저앉았다. 발목이 금방 통통 붓고 꼼짝할 수가 없어서 업혀 들어가 요강에다 오줌을 누었다. 오줌은 요강으로 해결하더라도 방에서 뚱냄새를 피워가며 살 일은 아니다 싶어서 그날부터 멋는 일을 그만두었다. 한 일주간 지내기 지팡이를 들고 변소에 갈 만하기에 그때부터 다시 먹기 시작했다.

"Slipping on the icy path

One night I was going to the latrine when I slipped on the ice and collapsed with a heavy thud. My ankle immediately grew fat and swollen and unable to move I was borne piggy-back to the toilet where I urinated. Though the toilet solved my urination needs, the smell of feces filled the room, and so, deciding that that did not seem essential to life, from that day on I stopped eating. After one week had passed I could walk to the latrine with the aid of a cane, and from that time I began eating again."

Another point for indoor plumbing.

Family Ties

2010-02-26T05:58:00.000-08:00

Yup, that's Yuna

Moving away from the articles today, just because translating my own material all day doesn't leave me with much enthusiasm for translating anything else (plus the only news right now is Kim Yuna), I thought I'd just put out a few things that have been mulling around in my head lately. Actually, inspired in part by Kim Yuna's recent victories and the intense Korean pride she's sparked not only within Korea, but from what I gather via facebook status updates, an equal if not exceeding measure of pride in Koreans outside Korea as well. As some of these international enthusiasts were not overseas Koreans, nor expat Koreans but second and third generation Americans, it begged the question for me of what it means to be Korean.

My little sister was recently with me in Seoul and spent a great deal of time grappling with the question of identity - both thanks to her own college related research and her personal interest in the subject. Surprisingly, before she had come I hadn't really been spending a lot of thought on the matter and had been focusing instead on work that related to Korea as a self-sufficient entity and not a mutable component. Even more interesting for me was that when I brought Dion's observations and my own interest in the matter up to my mom, she immediately replied with the stock phrase that we were reading too much into things... looking for complications that aren't there.

So I guess the question today is, what does it mean to identify as Korean (or what the hell anything else, but I'm gonna go with this since it's what I have)? The way I see it, the basic options are racial, cultural and national. Racial is pretty self explanatory...assuming we avoid the inevitable 'race is a social construct' thing that I'm just too tired to get into. At the same time though, it kind of seems like the beast that makes the other two so much more complicated. I for example am racially 50% Korean, but for most Koreans that does not make me Korean, it makes me a curiosity (while on the flip side it makes me pretty damn ethnic to most white people and justifies the occasional appellation 'my Korean friend'). What about 100% racial Koreans who were shipped to overseas parents and were raised their entire lives separate from Korean culture...are they Korean or just of the Asian race and specifically from Korea?

Best of both worlds...Tony Karp's Kodachrome
of a 1965 "Mixed-blood Orphanage"

Korea remains the most popular country for overseas adoption...according to F. Pilotti's "Intercountry adoption: trends, issues and policy implications for the 1990s" (Childhood, 1993) the historical trend has been that as shifts in Korean government policy helped or hindered overseas adoption there would be a corresponding fall or rise in the output (not a great word, I know) of other countries - when the 'market' was flush with Korean babies, other countries were less popular and when the Korean stork express slowed other (often South American) countries picked up the slack. All this is a very cavalier way of saying that for better or worse there are A LOT of 'pure bred' Koreans out there with under a year of direct cultural experience with their country of origin...much to my mother's chagrin (not that mom has anything against adoptees, but she resents the continuing American perception of Korea as a land swarming with underfed hapless war orphans and the condescension implicit in amassing a brood of minority charity case infants...predictably Angelina Jolie is not tops on her list).

The Jolie-Pitt Brood

Moving on to culture, I guess the mashup of this and race is the head-spinner that hapas like my sister and myself as well as adoptees have in common. Culture is what half-Koreans have going for us. Unlike adoptees, we grew up in Korean households with Korean lullabies and Korean story books celebrating Korean holidays and wearing Korean clothes. In my own case Korean was my first language, Hangul was the first alphabet I learned, and my first experiences were a full-blown weekly Korean-fest at Korean community church my grandparents founded. All the same, as my sister pointed out from her own experience walking into her college's Korean Student Organization during her freshman year, when she walked in she garnered curious or hostile stares while her adopted friend who didn't speak a word of Korean was welcomed without question.

I think in many ways adoptees and hapas grapple with the same issues of justifying our race by acquiring culture, and its unfortunate that I've seen a degree of jealousy and antagonism run both ways. My college Korean language course had several adoptees who dropped without exception by second week out of the embarrassment of not being able to pronounce their 'native tongue'. One of those girls told me she wished for my easy pronunciation...a wish that might be broadened to cultural familiarity in general. If adoptees strive to acquire culture though, hapas can never acquire enough culture. For the multi-racial Korean you can claw and scrape your way up the ladder of "Korean-ness" - learn the history, read the news, sing the songs - but nothing you do will ever make you Korean. At best you'll be more of a curiosity then ever...someone who is only marginally Korean trying desperately to be something you are not. And I'm not trying to write a sob story here, it's just a fact that no matter how much I might 'know' about Korea, in the end I'm still going to raise eyebrows every time I have a conversation with a street vendor. Even among Korean-Americans, my sister and I don't constitute fellow Korean-Americans.

Which brings me to nationality. Earlier this year I was at a bar with a American friend and a Korean friend talking about Obama's nobel prize nomination. My Korean friend brought up Kim Daejung, the former Korean president who received the prize in 2000, only to be shot down be my admittedly asshole American friend. When I tried to defend Kim Daejung with her my Korean friend, without any intention of rudeness, patted me on the hand as told me kindly that "You just can't understand. You're not Korean."

Korean Pride
This photo headed Prof. Gi-wook Shin's
"Ethnic pride source of prejudice, discrimination"

In that context she was totally and completely right. Nationally I'm not Korean...I was not raised here, I have no vested interest in domestic policy and many of my values are characterized more by the uniquely Korean-American moral guidelines that strictly Korean ones. For many Korean-Americans, from what I've heard, this is the identity juggernaut for them. They've got the race, they've got the culture, but they're still not in the citizenship sense of the word "Korean". For many Koreans this is annoying as well. An older cousin of mine, while she was studying at Yonsei University, was upbraided on the subway by an old lady for speaking English with her likewise Korean-American friend. Though I hear of it less these days, there is definitely a shock and embarrassment factor for Korean nationals when it comes to people who "should" speak Korean but don't.

Not only that, but the sense of what it means to be Korean in the states and what it means in Korea grows more disparate with every generation. Even the first generation descendants of immigrants like myself and my sister have an understanding of Korea that is more closely in line with that of our parents generation than with Koreans of our own generation. While Koreans in Korea have been living recent history, Koreans in America have been handing down their history to their children...so that in many cases the atrocities committed during the Japanese occupation are felt with more keenness by Korean Americans who heard about it from their parents than the Korean Koreans who were caught up in the economic push forward.

The last question I guess than, goes back to my mom. Am I really reading too much into this? My grandmother once told my mother that what she wanted to do with her life was up to her, but when it came to children she should think about how dislocated they would be. Mom, for her part, is often very disappointed by how "sensitive" my sister and I are to issues of race - almost as if we should be more enlightened...because of who we are racially? But I can't help wondering what it would feel like to walk into a room of whatever (Koreans, Whites, etc.) and feel automatically entitled to belong...and at the same time if I felt that I wouldn't know who I was anymore. So maybe my mom has the right of it. Maybe the real point of identity is being you within your own history, with whatever weight you accord relatively to race, culture and/or nationality completely at your discretion. After all, if everything's a construct why not be the one doing the constructing?

Translation: 홍양호 "국군포로.납북자, 남북대화 최우선과제" (Hong YangHo: Military Prisoners and Abductees are the Foremost Issue in the North-South Dialogue)

2010-02-14T02:59:00.000-08:00

Only a quick note to top off Naver's political headliner of the day: given the ohsoquircky Korean disregard/dislike for those pesky little pronouns, I'm not really clear on whether the opinions Vice Minister Hong lays out in this article are meant to be his own or reflect broader government intentions and/or initiatives. Unfortunately my familiarity with the nuances of Korean government lingo end at "North-South" (much as my understanding of American politics remains color-bound at "Red-Blue" with an alarmingly shaky grasp on the ideological nuances of those colors and a pointless preoccupation with the absence of a White party in the Red-Blue party spectrum...), so I'm not clear whether an address like the one quoted below should be translated as a sort of 'royal we' situation or just a 'me' sorta thing. I went with the latter, just because I figure on the off-chance someone comes after me for slander or improper translation or whatnot I'd much rather deal with one angry Korean than one angry Korean government.

Hong YangHo: Military Prisoners and Abductees are the Foremost Issue in the North-South Dialogue

(Seoul, Yeonhap News) Reporter: No JaeHyeon On the fourteenth, ROK Ministry of Unification Vice Minister Hong YangHo stated, "This year, consideration of a basic solution to human rights issues, including the problem of North Korean military prisoners and those abducted to North Korea, will be the government's foremost concern in the North-South dialogue."

Ushering in today's New Year, Hong attended the 26th "Longing For Home" meeting of the Unification Advocacy Society - a gathering of displaced Koreans in Mangbae-dan, Gyeonggi-do - where he announced in stirring tones, "Through the current strategy of one-shot family reunification, given the list of those we meet in a year, there is no way that it will translate into a permanent solution."

In the same address, he said, "Should the North-South dialogue commence in earnest, this (human rights concerns) along with the North Korean nuclear issue, will be treated as the most important items on the agenda," and added, "I am committed to achieving epochal advances in regards to both these problems this year and am making broad preparations accordingly."

Vice Minister Hong particularly stressed that, "Above all else, I will ensure separated families comprehensive confirmation as to the conditions and fates of loved ones as well as secure the exchange of communications," adding, "For all of you who have waited ceaseless days and nights for decades knowing nothing of your families' fates, this gesture is the least that I can offer you."

Following this reference to, "The government's efforts towards the reunification of separated families," Hong continued, "Given the completion of our "Geumgang Mountain - Separated Families Meeting Point" project, if we can only secure the cooperation of North Korea the door to the reunification of broken families could open as soon as tomorrow."

Lastly, while saying, "The government is determined to prevail upon North Korea to allow elderly members of such families to visit their hometowns," Hong urged his listeners to, "Expect strong results from rapid daily reports of the dialogue with North Korea in regard to the solution to the human rights issue."

Translation: "너 잡종이지?" 혼혈의 슬픔을 아시나요?

2010-02-05T04:18:00.001-08:00

This article's about seven month's old but I thought it was interesting. It came up in the context of my Naver search for any Korean material on multi-racialism. A little context on Korean language materials on the concept of mixed-race: if you search "multiracial" on Wikipedia in English, you'll get a number of different pages covering not only that term, but every variation on it and the nuances of particular racial mixtures as well, from hapa to hafu to griqua. Try any of these pages in its Korean version and you're transferred to the brief, three sentence page on honhyŏl (혼혈), which basically says: This term refers to the generation born of the relationship between parents of different races or ethnicities, a generation called either mixed-blood or mixed-blood offspring. The expression is synonymous with twigi (튀기), a term for animal hybridization, but twigi can have a connotation of discrimination. Also, since the term honhyŏl can be considered racist, in modern Korea the refined term tamunhwa kajŏng 다문화 가정 is employed.

I think it's worth pointing out this dearth of terms for multi-racialism in Korean because, on a very basic level, it indicates the lack of interest and/or attention paid to the concept by Korean society generally, and furthermore the general acceptance of the common "honhyŏl", which literally translates as half-blood, contains in its very being an antiquated pure-blood mania that most of the post WWII world tries to distance itself from (although, to be fair, I have had it argued to me that the Chinese character for blood, or hyŏl, is more related to lineage than racial darwinism) . At any rate, here's the article...which is typically inconclusive but whatever.

Kim Unhui: Am I the only one who thinks she looks pretty damn Asian

compared the the rest of us "pure" halfies?

Choongang Daily Paper
2009/07/19

"Are You a Mongrel?" Understanding the Sadness of Mixed-Bloods

"Are you a mongrel?"

Discomfort. Fear. As Ms. Kim Unhui rode the subway home this question was hurled at her by a drunk passenger. According to the Justice Department the count of married immigrants (male and female) in Korea, compared to the figures drawn up only late last May, presently encompass 127 nations and amount to 172,353 persons. As the number of multicultural households increases, the apprehension regarding mixed-blood individuals only grows greater.

In Korea's conservative society those who are different find themselves faced with difficulties. "When I was younger I didn't have any friends. I dealt with wangtta (bullying)." Ms. Unhui's lingering childhood memories are those of pain. Why is it that someone with different features or skin color becomes the automatic object of ridicule? In Ms. Unhui's case, it was her grandfather, a Spanish-Englishman, who married her Korean grandmother.

"My grandfather loved Korea. That's why he married my grandmother." The Korea that her grandfather loved, however, has given his granddaughter only pain. This past 16th, the first night of the World Ms. University Pageant, Ms. Unhui announced her mixed-race identity openly during introductions. Furthermore she was the first to extend her hand to new and different friends. "I am truly optimistic, and so now I've forgotten my painful memories. At any time, change can happen like that."

"It's not plastic surgery, it's real!"

Though her racial identity is clearly stated in her small face and features, her Korean manner of speech is comfortably native. Ms. Unhui, who was sent from Daegu in her youth, speaks in the Gyeongsang dialect. The food she is most comfortable preparing is kimchi. When she sees the Taegukki (the Korean flag) her breast is choked with feeling and as a spectator at the Korea World Cup her throat nearly burst cheering for Korea.

"I can't eat really greasy food. Of course I like Korean food. I'm clearly Korean, so why should it be weird that I like Korean food?" "When I first came to College I didn't tell anyone that I was mixed. One night while I was sleeping in the dorms, the other kids decided to prod at my nose and double eyelid to check whether they were from plastic surgery or really real."

Ms. Unhui responds to my questions about this incident, sparked by her mixed background, with a light smile. "One of the good things about living with a group of people is that you get to have lots of friends. For me, I don't usually have friends. To live with so many people though, you all have to get in tune with each others' lifestyles. That's a good thing."

Ms. Unhui doesn't hide her mixed race identity any longer. Perhaps this reporter's question to her regarding that college episode was not well done. Perhaps I should have criticized Korean society's cold treatment of mixed-bloods and then asked her as someone who had actually experienced such treatment about the episode.

The news features more articles about multicultural families day by day and various planed programs are already in production. Nevertheless, multiracial families in Korea still face a great deal of difficulty. To the extent that these families love Korea, that their breasts swell with emotion at the Taegukki, can't Korean society attempt to give even a little of that love to these families as well?

Reporter: Kang Daeseok

Return to Seoul

2010-01-02T04:08:00.000-08:00

Happy 2010!

I celebrated by flying back to Seoul on a New Year's Eve flight from Beijing, where I was stranded for three days thanks to a delayed departure from Paris. On the upside, I got to spend a great five days with a friend in Paris and several of her friends who we met up with in Basel, Switzerland. On the whole though, it's nice to be back in Korea. Maybe it's the American in me, but I need a little neon above and urine below to make my cities feel real. And where the determined (though admittedly charming) quiescence of Europe falls short in that department, Seoul is more than happy to step in.

Further New Year's cheer will arrive in a few days when my little sister will be flying in to spend her winter break - the obscenely long month off enjoyed by Oberlin students - in my cozy one-room officetel with me. In preparation for this visit, I've been told to call (1) several members of our direct family, (2) several more outliers from the indirect family branches, (3) various friends of my mother's and friends of those friends, and most oddly (4) a traditional eastern medicine practitioner to perform acupuncture on my sis.

Sample email for contact type four (please keep in mind that, prior to receiving this email, I had not been clued in on any needle therapy plans in the making):

"Her name is X, Hyun-sook. Her phone numbers are:
XXX-7534 (O)
XXX-314-3097
The name of the clinic in Pongch'on-dong is XXXXdang.
I will tell her that Dion might call her in early-mid January."

At this point confused Inga contacts home suddenly under the impression that little sis's enthusiasm about visiting her in Seoul is actually a cover for obtaining some illicit Asian treatment for some mysterious untreatable disease. Calming home explanation is rendered cheerfully thus:

"Oh, yes. Your Auntie, you know, Auntie by marriage who actually you should get in touch with because she is worried you are being extorted - did I not tell you? yes, she says Korean professors will manipulate you for English - but Auntie by marriage has a sister living Bongcheondong, yes same Bongcheondong as you but a little further from Auntie by blood of mother's mother's sister's clinic and not government but still good, that that sister is famous Hanuisa, you know hwauisa, like a doctor but asian even though so many doctor's are asian but you know how this means, doctor not like third Auntie but like second Auntie's daughter who work's in salon not that she does doctor work in salon, yes Yujin-ah, but better than Yujin-ah, you know has column in newspaper and everything and actually did not train until very late because when she was young, you know she is older than mommy even though Auntie by marriage who is her younger sister is younger than mommy, but when she was young she protested a great deal so she was arrested and thrown in prison and tortured too much...toomuchtoomuchtoomuch...so when she come out prison her body is completely broken and her life is over but she go to college and study something not medicine but she is taking medicine and it helps so much after college she study to be hanuisa and now she is one of best hanuisa and she will help Dion with the...how you say...tmj? majah? tmj? yes that thing she can help well because she live great life, yes? hwah...what a great life..."

God I love Koreans. Go into painstaking, agonizing, completely unnecessary detail about familial relations and sweep right by that little bit about years of life-debilitating torture like other American parents would nonchalantly refer to the former 'rough patches' friends might have gone through, i.e. hitting the bong a bit too often on the way to adulthood.

Anyway, before any more cheery anecdotes come to mind, happy 2010 all! Hit that shit running!

Evil in Korea

2009-11-26T07:49:00.000-08:00

Fu Manchu

Academic coincidences rock my socks. Actually, after a day of translating pretty much anything that isn't another dictionary dead end is a sock-rocker. Happiness relativity grader aside, however, I just started reading C. Fred Alford's "Think No Evil." (Link Here) Alford's basic premise is that just as the concepts that certain cultures have excessive vocabulary for say something about them - for example the many words for snow among Eskimos (Inuits?) or seaweed among the Japanese - the concepts that lack vocabulary are equally significant indicators of cultural constitution. Alford is motivated by Maurice Blanchot's admonition to "Keep watch over absent meaning" and composes his book on what he perceives as such an absence in the Korean vocabulary for evil. He acknowledges the word 악, of course, but argues that it corresponds less with the dualistic good-evil constructions of conventional Western theodicy and is more properly translated as something wrong or inappropriate. That is, he sees the closest word Korean has for evil as more descriptive of a transgression than an innately "other" entity on the level of evil. His study as he describes it is "Aimed at taking a reality that seemed fairly obvious, Koreans' widespread disbelief in evil, and making it complex...Absent words are not necessarily absent meaning...meaning can be conveyed by indirectness, by a series of words that encircle reality."

Although Alford references Korea's varied religious history, he spends most of his analytical energy on the Confucian system of relationships that tends to go hand-in-hand with any study of the Korean psyche. From this perspective he sees evil as untenable because such a dualist concept would exist outside the system. That is, within Confucianism the world is a ordered and singular construction whereas in Christian theodicy the world teeters between two concepts, good and evil. For Alford, evil cannot exist in Korea because dualism is moral anathema to Confucianism.

Asians might not know evil, but apparently that doesn't stop
heroes like Fu Manchu from being evil

It was interesting then to get another perspective in some of my other reading for this week. Cho Eunsu's article on Wonhyo's commentaries on "The Awakening of Faith", (조은수, "한없이 크고 넓은 마음과 깨달음의 세계: 원효(元曉)의 '대승기신론소 (大乘起信論疏)'와 '대승기신론별기 (大乘起信論別記)'") includes just one paragraph that, like Alford, compares Buddhist constructions of right and wrong with Western theology (although I suspect she is drawing more from Gregory's essay on the theodical points of the Sutra in Peter N. Gregory, "The Problem of Theodicy in the "Awakening of Faith", Religious Studies Vol. 22, No. 1 [March 1986: 63-78]).

It's not terribly relevant to the theme of this post, but the monk Wonhyo who is the subject of Cho's essay is a kickass monk from Koryo era Korea...by far one of my favorites. They call him the model for the mad monks that pop up every so often in Korean Buddhist history. While he was journeying in search of enlightenment he once passed a woman washing her menstrual rags. She scooped up the dirty water and offered it to him and he refused in disgust. The woman subsequently transformed into Kwanseum and disappeared, leaving Wonhyo with the realization that his mindset of pure and unpure was blocking the truth that everything is fundamentally the same. Later there was another incident involving a night in a cave and water drunk from a rotting skull with pretty much the same message. Later in life, Wonhyo got himself invited into a palace where he made sweet passionate and totally not celibate love to the princess, effectively knocking her the hell up (I imagine the accumulated love-juice he'd been stocking up on had been practicing during those celibate years so when the time came it just zeroed in on those eggs). Post-sexcapade, Wonhyo renounced his monkhood and wandered around as a lay practitioner, singing songs everywhere he went and converting people with more random escapades.

Wonhyo

Anyway, biographical interlude aside, back to the article. The excerpt and my admittedly amateur translation follow:

"인간의 근원적 무지라는 것은 중대한 철학적 함의를 가지는 것으로서 서양 신학의 중요한 테마인, 악의 존재에 대한 논의인 신정론과 비교해 볼 수 있다. 신정론은 "이 세상이 신에 의해 창조된 것이면 악은 왜 존재하는가?" 하는 물음에 대한 신학적, 철학적 논변들을 일컫는다. "대승기신론"의 입장은, 무명에 의해서 인간 존재는 불각의 상태 속에 있지만, 이러한 불각의 상태는 실체성을 가지는 것이 아니라고 한다. 불교에서는 악이라는 말을 쓰지 않고 주로 불선(不善)이라는 말로 표현한다. 하여간 세상의 여러 가지 부조리와 악은 각 개인들의 삶이 깨달음에서 이탈해 있는 불각의 상태에서 비록된 것으로 치환할 수 있으며, 궁극적으로 악의 실체성 내지 존재성 자체를 인정하지 않는 태도를 취한다고 할 수 있다.

A fundamental human uncertainty that carries enormous philosophical weight as a theme in Western theology is the discussion surrounding the existence of evil - enabling us to draw parallels with such theological discourse. The question "If this world is created in God's image, then why does evil exist?" is termed a theological, philosophical argument. The stance of "The Awakening of Faith" is that although due to ignorance humanity exists within an unawakened state, this unenlightened condition is not the actual character of existence. Rather than employ the word evil, Buddhism often represents the concept with the term unwholesome. Even so, the world holds every form of irrationality and evil - it is possible for an individual's life to separate from its fundamental enlightenment and commence instead from an unenlightened state, to ultimately adopt an attitude that does not naturally recognize the actual character of evil."

The term "unwholesome" which I have italicized in my translation is rendered 불선 in Hangul...it's one of the words that's clearly important in some way within the annoyingly specific and self-referential Korean Buddhist vocabulary because (a) it is written in the original article in Hanja, and (b) it is not in any of my regular dictionaries forcing me to DDB. The Digital Dictionary of Buddhism defines the basic meaning as "unwholesome", elaborating, "Wrong, harmful; morally negative; harmful to present and future life. In most cases, synonymous with 惡. (Skt. akuśala; Tib. mi dge ba; Pali akusala). In the Abhidharmakośa-bhāṣya it tends to often be associated with the production of desire. Refers especially to incorrect actions, which incur negative results — 惡業. Cf. 十惡, etc."

Interestingly, the character 惡 that is referenced as "in most cases, synonymous" with 불성, is simply the Chinese character for the Korean 악, or evil - the non-synonymous nature of which Professor Cho was just at pains to point out. The way I see it then, is while within a Confucian consciousness evil is untenable because it posits a separate system to the singular proper order, within Buddhism it is untenable because the idea of a system or systems, singular or dual, is a falsity. Evil cannot exist in Wonhyo's Buddhism for the same reason good cannot exist. Both are distinctions and distinctions are inherently false. I can see where this wouldn't really get Alford anywhere in his analysis of the Korean psyche...the average Korean is not a nirvana abiding enlightened being (common national self-perception to the contrary). Commenting on a some 'evil' in the world, most Koreans are likely to frame their response in Confucian terms rather than Buddhist (limiting our consideration to the two concepts above), simply because Confucian language is less convoluted and more applicable to everyday situations. I'm kind of interested in how far the Buddhist concept made it in Korean consciousness, however. No conclusions today, just something to think about.

Translation: 15년 복역 출소후 여아 성추행 40대 무기징역 (40-year-old commits sexual offence upon release from fifteen year imprisonment and receives life sentence)

2009-11-13T05:12:00.000-08:00

Way to go Korea. Actually passing a sentence that's kinda proportional to the crime.

In way of a little backstory bitching to intro this article, there are a few points that need to be made about Korean law and Korean society. To begin with, Korea is one of the safe countries. It prides itself on it, it advertises it - it considers it one of the perks of being a first world economic powerhouse instead of the war-torn crackbaby it was only half a century ago. The thing is, as we all know, image is everything. And the downside of this is that in order to perpetuate the myth of absolute and unconditional domestic well-being - whether in the hopes of self-fulfillment or the less noble don't ask don't tell (yes, I know that's gay) - crimes tend to go unreported and unprosecuted. Sex crimes especially.

In the past year, however, more and more have been cropping up in the news. The older generation will tell you its the younger generation: they're different, there's something wrong with them, etc. (Although ironically a lot of the offenders seem to be middle-aged Korean men, i.e. the infamous ajusshis). In my opinion, or maybe just my overly optimistic dream, however, the increased reporting indicates the increased potential for free voices and and recognition of the Korean reality with perhaps less fear of how Korea looks to the rest of the world...which is a necessary step if victims are to receive retribution.

The last points before the article are just a few legal tidbits for, ya know, fun. 1) Life sentences are almost unheard of in Korea. 15 is pretty much the longest it gets. Prior to this year, a sentence of 8-10 years for rape was considered extreme. 2) Alcohol is a viable defense for sexual offenders. If the assaulter is drunk, the argument goes, his judgment is impaired and he cannot be held accountable for his actions. Kinda like the insanity argument if everyone could go insane at will.

Now for the translation. I've also included links at the bottom to several other sexual assault cases that have come up recently along with brief descriptions of each.

Link to original Naver article here.

"(Seoul, Yonhap News) Kim HyonMi, chief justice of the Seoul Western District 11th Precinct, announced on the 11th that a Mr. Yun, aged 40, has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Yun, who was recently released from a fifteen year sentence, was charge with the suspected sexual assault of a 10-year-old girl - immediately after evading punishment for his previous sexual offences he again violated pertinent protective legislation.

The judge's decision states that, "Previously the defendant received a severe fifteen year sentence to remedy the attempted murder of a ten-year-old girl as well as the violent sexual assault and abuse of another woman. His rape of another girl after his release demonstrates the monstrosity of his crimes."

In explanation of the final assessment of the case, the statement declares, "In this case what is at stake is not only the issue of sexual assault. When the historical deprivation of, devaluation of, and violence against women is taken into consideration as well the unavoidable conclusion is that the permanent detention of this man is a necessary measure to safeguard the whole of society."

On August 11th, Yun took a friend of his niece who had come to his sister's house to play (A, age 10) to a park in Seoul's UnPyong district where he raped her. Earlier this year around the end of March he assaulted a female hiker in one of the UnPyong hills, slashing her throat with some weapon when she failed to heed his demands. It was on the suspicions raised by that almost fatal injury, which took a month to heal, that he was finally apprehended.

Yun was released from his fifteen-year sentence for attempted murder near the end of January. It took him only two months to commit another criminal act."

Other cases and links to relevant articles:

1) 여중생 집단성폭행 중학생 4명에 실형<의정부지법>(종합2보)
This is older, 2007. 4 middle school students were charged with the premeditated intoxication, rape, and abandonment on a field of a fourteen year old girl, all of which led to her death. The final sentences were 3 years for all with a minimum of one and a half years required. The judge explained that alcohol use and the extreme youth of the offenders were considered as mitigating factors.

2) 8세 여아 성폭행 50대 징역 12년 확정
This one is this year and an absolute travesty...to the extent it had mothers protesting in front of the Blue House. 8 year-old Lee Na-yeong was accosted by Jo Du-son (57) while walking to school and pulled into a church bathroom where he raped and nearly killed her by strangulation. Whats worse is the genital injuries she sustained, which necessitated an ileostomy...because her anus, colon and genitals were over 80% destroyed. Jo received a 12 year sentence. He is a repeat offender and alcohol figured in his testimony.

Mothers Protesting the Na-yeong Case

3) 서산서 초등학교 교사가 학생 성추행 구속
Also this year. A Sosan elementary school instructor charged with the molestation of two of his students.

4) [단독] "한국이 무서워요"…부끄러운 사건 처리
This one's just embarrassing...American English teacher assaulted at a shopping center by a 17-year-old Korean boy, who was caught and taken to the station where the police expected the two to sit together for the investigation. When the woman began crying she was informed by the police that they could really just release the kid since he was a minor. Oh official sensitivity.

5) 여제자 성폭행 만화가 구속<구리경찰>
This one's my favorite (...that sounds wrong). Manhwa instructor (Korean for Manga, i.e. Anime, i.e. you know this dude's already got some issues with (a) not having game, (b) not getting out and seeing sun or women, (c) nourishing himself on a steady flow of internet hentai) accused of sexually assaulting a student...but he has a defense! He admits he sexually molested her, but denies he sexually assaulted her. You're right dude. Lesser penalties and clearly completely justifiable.
...Douche.

Race in Early Korea: Archaeological Discoveries, Theories and a Load of Speculation

2009-11-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

Although the public discourse around Korea's transformation into a "multicultural society" today casts the potential for that change against a presumed history of ethnic homogeneity, scholarship in the past fifty years or so has increasingly found that assumption to be more of a modern construct than a historical reality. In particular the myth of ethnic oneness has been attributed to the emergence of the Korean nationalist movement - a movement that has a whole subset of its own problems and explanations. Although I won't get into the development of modern Korean nationalism in depth here, it is impossible to discuss almost any aspect of Korean studies academically without noting its influence at least in passing, since it has been the predominant force in Korean politics and academia since the entry of both into the "modern" (read Western) world - lately as a specter with which modern scholars struggle on a daily basis. A good explanation of the origins and transformation of the concept of Nationalism in Korea (that is, the modern variety promoted by Fichte and transmitted from Germany via Japan) is Shin Gi-wook's Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics and Legacy (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006) which can be read online through Google Books (i.e. the godsend that saves me library trips, library fines, and offers salvation from the ever present danger of a life spent crumbling into obscurity in some dusty stacks corner...thanks to Google Books I can now crumble into obscurity in the safety and comfort of my very own home.)
The point of that little detour into the twentieth century was that prior to the so-called "opening of Korea" at the end of the nineteenth century, it seems that the national sense of ethnic homogeneity was less pronounced - if it was present at all. That is not to say that pre-Western Korea lacked a sense of nationalism. Quite the contrary. If there's a common thread in Korean intellectual history, it's the ceaseless emphasis on superiority - the aspiration to it, the need for it, the compulsion to prove it, etc. Not to knock Korea because its got a long list of things to be proud of - get me into a conversation with my douchebag expat country men on any given weekend out and I am prone to enumerate those points of pride...belligerently (to be fair, I was actually informed by a inbred slob of a redneck last weekend that Korea has no historical importance of its own and is only significant as a piece of land for the U.S. and Russia to "play" on...commence belligerence). In the various historical records of East Asia, however, Korea has a somewhat embarrassing tendency to come off as the bratty younger sibling with the inferiority complex - always trying to prove it was just as good as big brother China.
That compulsion led to the fervent promotion of Dangun, the mythical founder of Korea. According to legend, Dangun founded Gochosŏn ("Ancient" Chosŏn, as distinct from the later Yi dynasty kingdom) in the same year as the Chinese King Yao, backing the assertion that Korean civilization had a historical claim as deeply embedded as that of China. Later Korean nationalists also promoted Koreans generally as "descendants of Dangun" - a people tied by a single (apparently prolific) progenitor. The biological import of the Dangun myth was first set forth in the Samhan Jeongtong Ron (Thesis on the legitimacy of the three Hans), proposed by Kwon Geun (1352-1409) who relied on the neoConfucian emphasis on blood ties and family background to draw further significance from the concept of ethnic oneness in order to discredit the secondary tale of Gija Chosŏn's foundation by the Chinese Shang sage Gija.

Statue of Dangun at the base of Mount Taebaek

According to a compelling argument by Han Kyung-Koo ("The Archaeology of the Ethnically Homogeneous Nation-State and Multiculturalism in Korea," Korea Journal Vol. 47, No. 4 Winter 2007 here), however, Goryeo and Chosŏn era Koreans considered the Dangun myth to be more of a political origin story than the promotion of a common ancestor. He notes that in the earliest versions of the Dangun tale in the Samguk yusa (Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms) and the Jewang ungi (Songs of Emperors and Kings) it is clear that there were already people on the Korean peninsula. Hwanung, Dangun's father, looked down on the peninsula from heaven and decided it would be a good place to rule (there was some subsequent sordid dilly-dally with a she-tiger and a she-bear that we won't get into, but suffice it to say that Korean blood-purists should perhaps be more concerned with the hereditary consequences of bestiality than any potential racial blood pollution).
The point is, Koreans back in the day certainly considered themselves unified, but it was a cultural and political unification, rather than an ancestral oneness. Dangun's significance was akin to that of the American founding fathers - the progenitor of a system of governance that gave birth to a kingdom (although, unlike GWashington, he has the trump card of demigod-ship...now there's something that would have been helpful in going head-to-head with King George's ordained by God deal). And the fact is, archaeological evidence has increasingly revealed that Korea was not the hermit kingdom it was labeled during its later 'opening' but part of a broad cosmopolitan Eastern culture connected by trade routes that ran all the way from Rome to Japan (on the significance of Korea's participation in a East Asian cosmopolitan system for the development of Korean Buddhism and affiliated forms of government see Richard McBride, Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaom Synthesis in Silla Korea, University of Hawaii Press, 2007 here.

Clip from KDrama Queen Seon Deok featuring a trading post inn
at the Korea (Goguryeo)-China border during the Three Kingdoms Period

In terms of official trade relations, yes, Korea was politically limited to a tributary give and take with China that limited broader cultural excursions. As far as that goes, however, we're talking early. Like pre-Jesus early. By the end of the third century, however, unofficial trade routes had secured direct trade connections between Silla and Goguryeo via the northern-land route that extended through China and Near-East Asia to the Mediterranean and by the middle of the fourth century independent sea-routes linking the Baekche kingdom on Korea's west coast directly to China and India. For more detail see Yi Hyun-Hae "International Trade System in East Asia from the First to the Fourth Century" Korea Journal Vol. 41, No. 4 Winter 2001 here.

Kyŏngju Silla Tombs

Tomb excavations have produced Roman glassware and Serindian bead-work along with a host of other foreign items. Furthermore the records of cultural and intellectual influences occasionally mention foreign visitors and immigrants to Korea. The conventional rendering of Buddhism's introduction into Korea attributes Goguryeo's conversion to the Chinese monk Sundo, Baekche's to the Serindian Malananda, and Silla's to the mysterious immigrant Ado - presumably of near-Eastern origin since he is commonly referred to as the "black monk". Official records refer to Jurcheon immigrants from the north and Japanese immigrants, both of whom were generally welcomed and even legally privileged to tax and corvee exemptions up to four generations. According to Han, such warm immigration policies followed from neoConfucian principles. That is, the same Confucianism that emphasized familial relationships at every level of society (and by extension blood-ties) also placed a great deal of importance on self-cultivation...to such an extent that in its neoConfucian manifestation self-cultivation trumped blood ties (as an example Han notes the Chinese sage king Yao's decision to pass his throne on to a wise man, rather than his unworthy son). As such, immigrants to Korea were allowed to take the oh-so-important civil examination and to take public office if they passed.
This doesn't mean that immigration was an entirely peachy business - there was a definite cultural hierarchy that allowed Chinese immigrants preferential treatment (as the only civilization already on par with Korea) and immigrant groups were often split up and dispersed into rural areas to discourage the development of insular cultural enclaves. Assimilation was the goal and immigrants were judged not on their blood, but on their cultural and on their willingness and ability to assimilate into the Korean culture-sphere. That same assumption of cultural superiority, however, was what made Koreans so accepting of immigrants - in the neoConfucian world view immigration validated the presumed virtue of Korean rulers, or their identity as the ideal good ruler who inevitably attracts good citizens.
Actually, researching and writing this I was a little struck by the potential similarities to the American system - i.e. a nation defined by a common system of governance rather than a common people per se (although clearly there are some issues with that in both Korea and America). Now there's something to wrap my mind around next time I'm swamped by the subway rush of short black-haired Asians - they're all really pretty much American.
...or not.

Translation: 외국인 100만 시대의 과제 (The Era of One Million Foreigners)

2009-11-06T07:08:00.000-08:00

Link to the original Hanguk Ilbo article here.

It is the era of one million foreigners. If you ride the subway you are sure to meet a foreigner in any car. From only a little over 380,000 ten years ago, the number of foreigners has increased 2.5 fold and now accounts for 2% of the total national population. According to estimates by the Justice Department, in the not so distant 2020 that number will have surpassed 5%. It is said that we have already become a multicultural society.

2.5 times more than a decade ago, 2% of the total population

As we transition into a multicultural society, are we preparing some standards and limitations? Of the one million foreigners in Korea 725,000 are long-term alien residents. Out of those foreigners employed in industry 404,000 are laborers (56%), out of those learning Korean the number of foreign students has risen to 47,500 (7%), and as compared to the figure five years ago (35,000) the number of immigrant spouses has increased 3 fold, jumping sharply to 105,000 (14%). Those who are unregistered, so-called illegal residents, number a little less than 220,000.

In order to eliminate abuses of a system that employs industrial laborers as expedients to fill deficits in manpower, the system itself must be cleaned out and reinforced in regards to its employment policies. Accordingly foreign laborers, like domestic workers, have received a guarantee of three labor rights. Industry leaders, however, are restricting changes an in the reality of labor sites these rights are not guaranteed, resulting in many cases of human rights abuses.

In order to enter out country these new-hire immigrant laborers inquire at dealer offices and pay bribes in their native countries - unfortunate immigration circumstances that are not being eliminated. From the very beginning of the process foreign laborers who enter Korea in this way have no other choice - especially because it is impossible to pay off their extra-monetary debts within a short period.

The social issue of the rapidly multiplying number of international households and their integration into broader society is by no means simple either. According to a 2005 investigative survey by the Ministry of Health and Welfare 17.6% of the children of international couples experienced group exclusion in the form of wangtta (severe bullying). 85% of the children of international households are elementary school students. These grade schoolers have only begun to experience discrimination. Entering adolescence as middle and high school students often leads to psychological withering and a loss of confidence and cases of severe psychological distress can occur.

The guarantee of education for the children of illegal residents is also in a grave state. According to existing legislation, the children of illegal residents may attend elementary, middle and high school. The reality, however, is vastly different. A 2005 investigative survey found that out of 10,072 children (ages 7-18) of foreign residents more than 8,000 were faced with obstructions in regard to their education.

In April of 2006 a measure to "support the societal integration of families with immigrant wives" was drafted. However, the policy focused only on the negative experiences of wives and daughters-in-law and party leaders failed to propose any measures regarding possible accommodative measures. There is no consideration of issues facing immigrant brides such as employment and physical safety, as well as their general social wellbeing. As a consequence, in cases when these problems are not resolved within the family there is no other outlet available to immigrant spouses.

The government is proposing a number of policies in regard to the intergration and human rights of foreigners. Although the Department of Justice, Education, Labor, etc. are hoping to disseminated and enforce over ten policy proposals in regard to married couples, it seems impossible to demarcate clear legal boundaries. The reality is all these policies regarding foreigners have become, at the core, mere reform rhetoric with the empty slogan "social integration".

The need to match the policy focus on social integration

In the 2005 summary of the reshuffling of Germany's Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) by the Ministry of Domestic Affairs, Ministry of Economy and Labor, and Ministry of Foreign Affairs - following the enforced separation of 5 or 6 couples - the policies on foreigners have been made to accommodate the essential aim of social integration. Such policy shifts towards social integration are common to countries with a long history of immigration.

As this is clearly the era of one million foreigners, Korean nationals will have to change the way we think. The object of speculation in the administration of foreigners may not be what we want or expect. The two-fold goal of administrative policy is to expose its mechanisms and point out where it is inconsistent with the spirit of the times. It is not a time to speak of "the others in our society," but a time in our society when we must point out the issues and institute integrative policies so that our national character can progress a stage further.

Translation: 인종차별 공론화한 후세인 씨 (Mr. Hussain - transforming the public awareness of racial discrimination)

2009-11-05T05:17:00.000-08:00

Link to original Korean article in Chosun.com here.

"If racial bias is not remedied Korea will not have a future."

"Even as this trial draws to a close I intend to demonstrate that I am not foul (lit. smelly)."

On the evening of the 10th (July) in the neighborhood of Bucheon city hall, 28-year-old Indian Bonogit Hussain was riding a bus when he was insulted by a male Korean passenger, saying to Hussain, "You stink. You're filthy. Are you Arab, huh?" as well as adding to the female Korean colleague Hussain was traveling with, "Hey XX, I asked if you're Korean." When Hussain heard his colleague being insulted he could not be patient any longer and reported the matter to the police. This is the first time a foreigner faced with racial discrimination has reported it to authorities.

In 2007 Sunkinghoe (Episcopal) University conducted a study of the characteristics of international students on the theme of "Racial Discrimination and the Deterioration of Democratic Principles in Asia." This incident, which arises from people like the Korean man and Hussain's contempt for each other, will be transmitted from the Central Bucheon Police Station via branch offices on the 28th, and the investigation and prosecution will soon proceed. Both the National Committee for Civil Rights and the Citizen's Party have hopes for the investigation that will take place in the course of Hussain's petition. It is on this day that I meet Hussain on the Sungkunghoe University campus and at this time I ask how he feels about everything.

"Every time I have encountered this sort of thing in the past even though I began to get angry I controlled myself. However, that man's biased thoughts, "How can a Korean have a relationship with that kind of filthy bastard," were so crazy that it was impossible for me to remain restrained - above all because I had to protect that woman. It was sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, and so on from every angle."

In answer to why he couldn't let the matter drop as he would at any other time, Hussain said, "Because I want to inform Korean society that it needs to change its perceptions and attitudes through the opportunity this incident has provided," and, "It is about collaborating with the citizens' rights party and waiting on the final trial results."

One day, when Hussain had still not been in Korea long, he took a seat on the subway and immediately the man in the seat next to him stood and remained standing for over an hour. Because of the "shock" of this experience, Hussain says he has since carefully observed and considered racially discriminatory attitudes.

"I wondered if I was white if this kind of thing would have happened. When I asked Korean colleagues about it, they said, "That is only a small fraction of people." Somehow, however, I seemed to always meet that small fraction."

Hussain points out, "Although every society has a fraction made up of bad people, the scale of the Korean economy, its social processes and its cultural standard are well matched with this time of global transformation," and "While Samsung's semiconductors, Hyundae's cars, and Posco's steel are patching together the world, Korea's societal standard has achieved the highest point possible."

He especially notes, "Korea's labor force is rapidly aging and immigrant workers from South Asia are gradually increasing in number," and warns, "If people can't accept this reality and racist attitudes and biases continue, sometime soon there will be a race riot."

Further, he said, "If that man had attacked me in a back alley I could have retaliated in kind, but because of my strong desire to deliver a message to Korean society I went to the police," and stressed, "If the Korean people don't correct this bias that (South Asian people) are foul and filthy, Korea will not have a viable future."

In actuality, having gone out to meet him, I found that there was no strong odor. During our conversation there was a slight smell of soju though, which I pointed out. Hussain told me, "That is just the smell of biology," explaining, "Yesterday when my friends heard I was going to have an interview with a reporter we all got together for shots," with a smile. "Even though everybody smells like cheese or kimchi or garlic or whatever kind of food, the problem is the perception that only South Asians smell foul," he added for good measure.

Hussain, who has participated in a breadth of civic activities in India, criticizes, "The many migrant laborers here still cannot express properly the discrimination that they encounter, and when dealing with the police the dispute can only be recorded as an individual matter," and stresses, "We only want to be treated as human beings."

Korea and Race, pt. 1

2009-11-04T03:04:00.000-08:00

One of my friends who is also half-Asian pointed me towards this NYTimes article (South Koreans Struggle with Race) about race in South Korea today, adding as per our mutual personal interest, "what about hapas?" (Hapa is a term for half-Asians that, though it originated as a derogatory term in Hawaii, has been increasingly embraced by the broader American community of partial Asian heritage) Although the article gives a decent general overview on Korean race issues, I too noted the lack of attention to the multiracial question as well as the nuances of differing kinds of racism in Korea, both of which I would argue are key to understanding the broader issues of racism as an overarching problem in Korean society. So I'll try to address some of those within the context of a response to the article, but for anyone who is really interested in an compelling academic article (don't worry, it's actually interesting...and readable!) on race and multiracial identity in South Korea I'd highly suggest Mary Lee's "Mixed Race Peoples in the Korean National Imaginary and Family" (Korean Studies, Volume 32, 2008: 56-85, available at Project Muse).

Clip from Cho's Assassin addressing the American Asian side of
things that's not terribly relevant but is still near and dear.

Choe Sang-hun, the author of the NYTimes article, begins by describing the circumstances of the Bonogit Hussain (보노짓 후세인) case that made a splash this summer. The case is described in more detail at Chosun.com, and I'll see if I have time to get around to a translation later. The article is worthwhile if only because the greater detail it provides - such as the exact nature of the insults in question - offer greater insight into where the roots of Korean racism lie...also there's a picture of Mr. Hussain himself, instead of his traveling companion Ms. Hahm posed poetically by a window (really, NYT? to be fair though, Chosun.com doesn't even name her, referring to her as only Mr. Hussain's female colleague, but then that's Korea for you - a little racist, a little sexist, but so damn cute about it all). In case I don't get around to that translation, the actual offensive speech was: "냄새나. 더러워. 너 아랍인이지? (Smelly. Dirty. You're an Arab, huh?" to Mr. Hussain, and "조선X 맞느냐? (Hey, didn't I ask if you're a Korean?" to Ms. Hahm (unfortunately, a lot of just how rude all this is is lost in translation).

Bonogit Hussain

Choe goes on to set the context of ethnic homogeneity in Korea, citing the "pure blood politics" (which in my opinion is confused a little in her article. She brings it up in the context of ancient patriarchal practices, but it wasn't really enunciated as such until the Park presidency). Against that she sets globalizing trends, with one paragraph for the influx of South Asian blue-collar labor and another for the influx of foreigners generally - the latter trend is enunciated in more detail in this Hanguk Ilbo article (외국인 100만 시대의 과제 [The theme of the century is a million foreigners]), another I'll try to get around to translating. She also allots one line to the historical state of multiracial Koreans - although only in reference to the offspring of camp-women and GI's: "Their children were shunned as “twigi,” a term once reserved for animal hybrids..." This tendency to cast the entire spectrum of Korean race consciousness in terms of the Korean war is continued in the remainder of the article, which while it mentions other kinds of racism does not actually differentiate them.

My issues with the article right off the bat, then, is mostly in its lack of discrimination between the kinds of racism observable in Korea. Despite its traditional homogeneity, Korea has just as many flavors of racism as a multicultural bonanza like the US. For starters, there's the racism to do with an absolutist xenophobia - the good ol' clear-cut us vs. them. For those with a more discerning palette there's the shades of multicultural Korean identity - the us-and-them, if you will. Within both these distinctions there are a whole host more. Us vs. them changes depending on who the them is and the context within which the whole interaction is taking place. Us-and-them is likewise changeable in accordance with both parties, as indicated by the existence of several terms for half-Koreans that make very clear delineations in regard to the exact nature of your parentage - the distinct difference between Amerasians and Kosians, for example.

Positive along with the negative: MTU rally

Having just now realized how long this already is and how much more time and scribbling I would like to devote to both the question of Us vs. Them and Us-and-Them, I think it's best to separate out both issues into two separate posts that can really delve instead of fudging. If there's anything that I strongly agree with in Choe's article, it is that race is a more loaded issue in Korea today then it has ever been before, and that tensions are mounting by the day. This being the case, its worth taking a good long look at what is being said and separate out the hype from the sincere opinions...both of which are available in daunting supply on any Korean search engine. So, just to bullet point what I'd like to hit sometime soon:

Us vs. Them: Black, white and brown - race from the Three Kingdoms to Chosŏn, impact of the Korean war, and recent trends in labor and education related foreigner influxes
Us-and-Them: Shades of multiracial identity, the Hines Ward case, and legal reforms or lack thereof

H1N1 신종 인플루엔자

2009-10-31T05:58:00.000-07:00

My teachers wear face masks during class. It's like being instructed by ninjas.

The H1N1 thing is still going strong here. Last week SNU shut down all Thursday classes because of an influenza alert, and just a little before that the entire body of Malaysian students studying at the Language Education Institute dropped out for the remainder of this quarter so that they can hole up in their embassy in the hopes that by the time they emerge the pig death will have ended. There are hand sanitizers available at the entrance to every public building, kids with awesome tricked out face masks and posters everywhere - like the one below.

Most Western expats are taking it pretty lightly - regarding this scare pretty much the same as the infamous Korean fan death. As far as I'm concerned, there are two definitely serious points in this: (1) People are actually dying (just this week a 19-year-old student at Seoul National University); and (2) Because the introduction of the virus into Korea has been traced to/pinned on an Indian man, those ever present Korean issues with the darker races have been further exacerbated in an atmosphere of already heightened racial tension.)Although this ad runs with the official name Sinjong Influenza ('sinjong' is new species), the popular name here, as in the states, is Toeji Flu (swine/pig flu). The rest of the poster is pretty basic ('These are the proper prevention methods!'), but my favorite part is the little kids, and my persistently literal interpretation style that takes what this cute-ass boy is saying: "Yes! Please do this!" and turns it into the technically accurate but conversationally awkward: "Certainly! Do as real combat!"

내 (반)한국 사람 아니야? (I'm [half] Korean, aren't I?)

2009-10-24T01:17:00.000-07:00

Considering where to take this blog I've so far thrown out more options than come up with anything particularly appealing. Considering how frigging long I'm going to be here and how little of the conventional tourist stuff I do on a weekly basis, a conventional travelogue seems a little pointless. Meanwhile an overview of my Fulbright research, the reason I'm here, is likely to bore and confuse...hell it bores and confuses me on a daily basis. And since my research is focused on more old school philosophy than contemporary social theory, I am definitely not as qualified to hold forth on the very interesting race/gender/sexuality issues that anyone living in Korea comes up against on a daily basis as some other really interesting blogs out there. (In particular, see The Grand Narrative...really good stuff: http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com)

Seoul's South Gate (남대문) smack in the middle of a giant intersection.

Looking at the prominent blogs on Korean life out there, however (both English and Korean), I'm a little disturbed by this trend of cultural extremism - that is, the tendency to make unequivocal extremist statements both about one's own culture and the 'other'. Admittedly, Koreans have a looooooong history of doing this...after all, what homogeneous country doesn't? It surprises me, though, that so many foreigners in Korea respond to even the most inconsequential 'examples' of inherent Korean superiority with such vociferous outbursts...responses that usually run less on legitimate deconstructive counters than on holding up American culture as obviously superior. That is, instead of actually dealing with how to de/reconstruct residual 'hermit kingdom' attitudes, most foreigners actually use the same argumentative strategy themselves.

I'm trying to be balanced here. I know that as much as I might try to get in touch with Korean culture and understand 'my' heritage, when I am in Korea, I will always be half white. Just like when I am in the states, I will always be half Asian. And I'm not pointing this out in some sympathy bid, just that maybe as someone who has a conflicted relationship with both Korean and Western culture I also have a vested interest in the (de)merits of both sides.

That being the case, I'm going to try to address some of these arguments in the future. Because the simple truth of the matter is that even though Seoul and Korea are being rapidly and visibly 'globalized', attitudes on all sides of the international spectrum struggle to keep up with the physical change. Foreigners are a more conspicuous presence in Seoul than they were even two years ago (the last time I studied here...when I got excited if I saw a non-Korean once in a month). English is the most valuable commodity in the country, despite which the standard language educations system is chronically inept and the private institutions chronically corrupt.

Meanwhile, the new generation in Korea is, perhaps for the first time in this century, finding its feet as a generation of Koreans...that is, not defined by the legacy of colonialism and war that plagued our grandparents, nor by the sense of cultural inferiority and the manic authoritarian efficiency meant to counter that complex that defined our parents, but simply Korean. I'm not saying that this is all good either...many of the older generation are disturbed by a sense of baseless entitlement in the new generation's materialist and culturally elitist attitudes (an entitlement long enjoyed by Americans, it's worth pointing out). It is real, however, and good or bad it is the fact of contemporary society that has to be examined. Hell, it might explain a lot of the confrontation between East and West in Korea today: entitled Americans meet entitled Koreans. Culture wars commence.

Seems fitting given how proud Seoul is that it got KrispyKreme before Tokyo.

Basically then, my new mission for this baby of a blog is to try to sort through all the yelling out there and try to present as many of the opinions and the reasons for those opinions as possible. God knows, the metropolitician (http://metropolitician.blogs.com) continuing to blog and podcast like he's the chosen authority sent to correct Korea's self-delusions isn't going to help anything. (For those of you not familiar with the metropolicitican, it is a popular blog on Korea run by former Fulbrighter Michael Hurt. He clearly likes Korea since he's stuck around, but has a habit of letting loose with such gems as: "If I spent as much time trying to learn Korean as Koreans spend trying to learn English, my Korean would be awesome"...the obvious comeback: so why isn't your Korean flawless, was not asked. My opinion on this: be critical, yes. But be critical all-around.) And if I slip-up and occasionally let something from my research tangentially enter a post, please feel free to express your boredom freely.

cowardice

2009-10-22T08:11:00.000-07:00

justify it all you want.
rack up the awards,
find the funds,
fill the time w busy work,
earn the acclaim.

in the end its still just running away.

Signs of the times

2009-10-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

Stuck at home this weekend catching up one work...so of course I finally get around to posting again (rather than working on those pressing papers). And of course I really have nothing special to write about, since I'm afraid if I exert too much brain power here I'll have none left for my 'real work' (optimistically assuming I had some thoughts stored up for them to begin with).

So my neighborhood is not particularly quiet. I live in Boncheongdong (본청동), the neighborhood by the SNU Entrance subway station (서울대입구역) as well as one of the major - and therefore always congested - roads in Seoul. In addition to an enormous number of one-rooms and office-tels rented out by college students, Boncheongdong has an alarming number of motels...not nice motels. The seedy kind. They're called 'love motels' and cater to the kind of love that comes with neon lights, knee-high boots, and a handy fistfulls of loose bills. Add to that the perpetually drunk ajusshis without which no Korean city-scape is complete and you get a kinda human cat-yowl contest. The constant background of noise has actually gotten kinda comforting...the 2am sound of an ajusshi bitching out the store clerk for cutting him off is a reassuring sign that he's still alive at least.

Yesterday, however, I awoke to the 5am wail of some kinda siren and an ominous gravelly voice blasting out of street-speakers saying something that I was not quite conscious enough to take in. After a few minutes of this I finally realized they were running a test of some kind and relaxed...until it started up again fifteen minutes later and then fifteen minutes again after that.

It was only once I got to class that it was explained to me, very cheerfully, by a Singaporean classmate who's lived in the area for a while, that because Seoul is so close to the DMZ, they run occasional tests of the alarm system in case the city is attacked. When I asked what kind of attack, she casually listed off air raid, land invasion and nuclear missiles. Now, while I'm not of the opinion that any of these are likely to occur any time soon, or that I should be in a constant state of panic, I was taken aback at the reminder that Korea, for all glitz and glam, is still in a perpetual state of war. Pampered American that I am, the only 'tests' I'm accustomed to enduring are the 'emergency broadcasts' that only NPR seems to still care about.

To top it all off, the day ended with a pretty intense thunder storm. For the attack alarm test, not a peep out of this city (aside from me, I mean). Two thunderclaps later, I almost have a heart attack thanks to a pack of screaming Koreans (men and women) suddenly dashing through the street under my window. Clearly my panic priorities are a little out of whack with the rest of Korea. The rest of the month will be devoted to adjusting that. If you're around next time I hear thunder, cover your ears...

and thus she arrived...

2009-09-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to bother going through the details of my first three weeks here. Doing so would only make for a very long and very boring post. Instead I want to profile some women I was privileged to meet at a gathering a week or so ago...at the risk of breaking with the pseudo-comedic tradition of this blog. Earnest moment: their stories were kinda inspiring (yes, i'm subject to emotions. sue me.)

'Dear Girls' Party: A partial profile

The Dear Girls party is an annual fete held by KJ, one of Korea's few notable female power players, for a few other Korean women notable for their unprecedented success in the boy's club world of Korean business, politics, bureaucracy, etc. KJ herself is a successful entrepreneur and author. Perhaps not surprisingly, she's also a character...a loud, assertive, aggressively opinionated chain-smoker who doesn't hold with undue modesty. I think even some Americans might be taken aback by her unapologetic approach, but for a Korean woman - particularly of her generation - who she is and how she acts is almost unthinkable.

My mom and I were invited to the Dear Girls party because KJ and mom were classmates at Ewha Girls High School and both received their Bachelor degrees from Seoul National University (where, in the 70s, they were both the only women in their relative colleges). Bragging moment: KJ told me when I was still in elementary school that in her whole life my mother is the only person she remembers ever having been intimidated by...the short grade-curver who always sat at the front of the class and later walked around the SNU campus with a ramrod straight back 'like a boy'. I was also there to present my research proposal (a sing for your supper deal, if you will), and in return, the twenty or so assembled women were kind enough to introduce themselves as well. The following stories were told to a very un-decorous, un-Korean chorus of booze driven whoots and hollers...I've picked a few and didn't use their names or those of their institutional affiliations in the interests of privacy.

[Pic: KJ and Mom outside Sejong Culture Center]

The first interesting story was a bit of a shock. N is also a high school friend of my mothers, and we had been at her house (a traditional hanok near Insadong) a few days previously, where she also runs a gallery selling traditional Korean lacquer-ware and a teahouse. From my mom I had heard that N had been married, and very much in love with her husband, but that he had died a few years ago and that somehow in her utter devastation she had turned her grief to productivity - picking up the lacquering practice she had abandoned when she married with such determination that she is now one of the leading professors at a well-known college that specializes in the traditional arts. That story was inspiring enough, but at the Dear Girls dinner we learned that her husband had committed suicide...and that the depression that led him to it had also induced frequent and severe bouts of domestic abuse...which N interpreted as symptomatic of his deep love for here. I don't know whether this makes her subsequent accomplishments more or less impressive, but for me it added a sort of poignancy to her story...I suppose tragedy tends to do that.

On a less morose note there was H. In her late fifties now she was one of the most energetic ladies at the table, kinda bouncing around it rather than actually sitting at it. She had been raised as the heiress of a very wealthy family (one of Korea's three top chaebol's) and had leaned on that money and reputation heavily as a girl, cutting class to go bowling (apparently the mark of a delinquent teen back in the day). Somehow, she graduated from high school, and immediately married some dude...and a few months later decided he wasn't for her and left for the States...fully aware that she was also some months pregnant. And on top of that once in the states she decided she didn't want to live on her family's money and opened a coffee shop in Seattle. And now...she's a multi-millionare and the mother of a son with a ridiculously long name for a Korean (she factored in her family name, his father's, her mother's, his father's mother's and several weird generational necessities that went right over my head). How she made all that loot off a coffee shop I haven't the faintest idea...but as someone who just graduated with a useless major it's nice to hear that someone with NO major is rolling in it.

To end with a story that bridges the gap between emotional tearjerker and fiscal fairy-tale, K also married young. It was a love match, which, for Korean women of her generation, implies some fundamental incompatibility by conventional matchmaking standards. In her case there was a gap in family background and education - her husband was a medical doctor and she was the first college graduate in her family...and her mother-in-law was bitterly aware and bitterly opposed. Furthermore she and the good doctor had 'broken the speed limit' (Korean slang for premarital sex) and she'd gotten a ticket, so she entered his mother's house with the dual setbacks of her family background and the rapid approach of her new family. The conditions she lived under for the next twenty-some years were a domineering mother-in-law cliche nightmare. The old lady commanded all the income her son brought in and grudgingly handed it out to the 'children' as she felt necessary on a day to day basis. K made good even on that little amount, saving a little bit everyday so that she could invest in stocks (her forte) and gradually growing her money on the side. By the time the old lady finally died, she had enough to contribute generously to the cause of cultural education...which led bureaucracy officials to the realization that not only was she wealthy, but she was well informed and interested in the administration of such public institutions as museums and national treasures. She was soon appointed by the late former president Roh Moohyun (노 무현) to an administrative government position, and has managed to be one of the few officials that President Roh personally appointed to survive the recent purges enacted by President Lee. She is in her seventies.

Not surprisingly my own presentation, after all these impressive and mold-breaking life stories, was comparatively lack-luster. And so I'm going to get back to the good ole books now after what has been a refreshing romp through the glory that is writing in English.

As it stands now

2009-04-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

So the last time I wrote in this thing was...whenever the last post was. A while ago, at any rate. Why pick it up again now? Several reasons. For one, its midterms here at UChicago, and as a post B.A. paper senior the only really appropriate way to deal with papers and exams is clearly procrastination. Also, sooner than it seems now, I'm Korea bound once again - this time thanks to the oh-so-generous Fulbright Grant which makes all things foreign and research-y possible (Shout out to my man, J. Williams Fulbright himself. Thanks a mil, J-Dub.) Aaaand, since as of this afternoon at 2pm my acceptance forms have been mailed, my medical sheet signed off on and sent off, and my request for Language Enhancement accepted, I figured I might as well tempt fate and put some life back into this baby of a blog.

I figure putting actual details of the project down would be too dangerous though. At best it would tempt fate. At worst it would bore fate so much she'd kill this thing now just to save herself the yawns. A schedule though...now that shows initiative and gets the ball rolling so that fate knows all she has to do is show up and i'll take care of the rest. So here we go. As it stands now (drumroll): my life from 2009-2011.

June - Graduation and wrapping up all things Chicago...or I suppose unwrapping since hypothetically it should actually be sunny by then.

August - Back to Korea. Back to Seoul. Back to SNU's Language Education Institute for six months of 'Critical Language Enhancement'.

February - Begin the official Fulbright Grant period and work that puppy 'til the end of December. Hell, if I really get cracking I might even make it home for Christmas, i.e. before 2011.

Random Encounters from Random Travels

2007-10-22T04:31:00.000-07:00

So having just returned from my fall break travels and being too tired and too lazy to chronicle them in detail (a chronicle I doubt my reading public would be interested in reading at any great length anyway) I have decided to itemize the high points of the trip according to random encounters. These should probably be contextualized in light of the fact that when not in Prague I slept (a) on trains, and (b) in train stations. Shady spots lead to shady encounters.

In Switzerland:

troubled sleeping woman on train. moans approximating intense orgasm or painful death. verdict is still out on whether subject of dreams was both or neither (or simultaneous...something to ponder further on)
homeless man in Interlaken train station. Nameless. introduced himself to me as my "swiss husband" and invited me to his, presumably roofless, abode

In Austria:

homeless lesbian couple in Innsbruck train station. encountered me washing my hair in the bathroom sink round about five in the morning. offered to trade smokes for some of my shampoo. pushed the deal through by grabbing my head and shoving it further into the sink in an effort to aid my futile efforts at cleanliness.
Innsbruck station security, who took me for third wheel to the homeless lesbian couple and evicted all three of us for the taller one's smoking in the bathroom.
distinguished gentleman who delivered the less than distinguished query, "For just quick fuck, how much?"
nice girl who bought me a coffee to compensate for her drunk brother's loud, drunk "ALLO!" two inches from my face at seven thirty in the fucking morning
owner of korean grocery store in Vienna station. nice chat in a language i actually get, plus free Yukejjang in the bargain.

In the Czech Republic:

Drunk trio of young men who joined me in my compartment for the rollicking ride to Prague. Wonderfully incoherent and, for the most part, unconscious, until the one passed out on my shoulder began to gag ominously.
Callie Peters...stoned and drunk at three-thirty at Praha Hln station. Crazy that girl. Just crazy.
Funny/sexy face

Life as a Cultural Curiosity, continued.

2007-10-05T00:31:00.000-07:00

The main difference between Italy and Korea (limiting my concerns, of course, to me...as opposed to trivialities like national cultures and histories and such) is that in Korea I felt like a cultural aberration, while here I just feel like a curiosity. Comments back East tended to run along the lines of "But why do you look like that?" or muttered speculations on my obviously polluted heritage. The shift in attitude here is, as always, best illustrated by quotes:

If you don't mind a somewhat personal question, may I ask where your ancestors are from? (one of my art profs. with a delightfully German accent)
I have a kind of pseudo-scientific curiosity question for you, since you and your sister are both mixed and its so interesting for DNA and those genetic, whaddya call them, alleles and stuff like that. (my host mother)
Dove sei? China? Japan?...No! Korea no! Koreans they are brutto! (random guys on a bridge)
Wait...you're Asian, right? Can you teach me how to fold an origami crane? (a classmate)

or, my personal favorite:

Cina! Cina! / Cinese! Cinese! (everyday on the friggin street)

Lessons gleaned from a night in San Gimigniano

2007-10-02T07:57:00.000-07:00

Medeival towers do not comfortable sleeping places make
No matter how warm it is during the day, the overnight outdoor adventure is guaranteed a teeth chattering good time
Guards do not patrol picturesque medeival fortresses at night. It is not that they think they are worthless. They just dont think anyone would be stupid enough to actually hang out there past ten.
Sleeping with your head on a spike is a BAD IDEA
sleeping on cold stone is a BAD IDEA
Sleeping senza blankets is a BAD IDEA
Substituting booze for blankets, despite popular appeal, is a BAD IDEA

moral of the story: a good time had by all

An Ode to Fabio

2007-09-20T02:24:00.000-07:00

(photo courtesy of Jackie)

Fabio is my host dad. When he was younger he had completely black hair...except for his beard, which was completely red. Now both his hair and his beard are dignified gray. And he looks like Sean Connery with an Italian accent.

Fabio has his blood type tattooed on his wrist. He did it himself when he was in the army.

Fabio has six wives. All he has to do is look at them and BAM! pregnant. We don't know how many children Fabio has.

One time Fabio met Chuck Norris on the street. Chuck Norris started crying and his tears would've cured cancer...but as soon as they saw Fabio they ran away.

My favorite Fabio-isms:

You must push! Push with the finger!
Mangia! Mangia! (Eat more!)
I don't like a read books. I like my life. Why I read books when I can live my life?
Cool-o? Cool-o is butt! Jackie, why you always thinking about the boys and their butts?

More to follow...

Switching Gears

2007-08-28T04:11:00.000-07:00

Got into Florence several days ago, and so far my deep and epic thoughts are

Florence is beautiful
The buildings are beautiful
The country is beautiful
The food is beautiful
The people are beautiful

...and it is all so friggin overwhelming that it is impossible to even be bitter.

Goodbye LEI

2007-08-08T20:31:00.000-07:00

Today was the last final at the language institute, which means I will probably never see (a) the school, (b) most of the motley assortment of students, or (c) a nasty cup of instant maxwell house coffee from the vending machine ever again. The tragedy is overwhelming. I offer here a sampling of my classmates' thoughts on the momentous occasion:

Jina: Wah! We must take many pictures! And say "Kimchi"! Then our beautiful teeth will shine like stars!!!

Monghu: Teacher, today...last day...we...i...never mind.

HongMi: Ya! Everybody let's meet for lunch tomorrow! I love everybody! And I love food! I want to love everybody and food at the same time!!!

Presca: Can they just give us the exam so we can get the fuck out of here?

I will be mourning in my own fashion, i.e. by touring korea with my family and trying to keep them from killing each other...with the possible exception of my dad. I might kill him myself. Just to keep him from loading any more of his photos on my already suffocated computer (current count of dad's photos: 257...including six perspectives of a single insect, thirty-two aerial views of the descent into seoul and countless creepy pictures of mom, dion and me from the back).

The Diederich Sisters Attempt Asian-ess...with limited success

2007-08-08T06:21:00.000-07:00

Primping

2007-08-04T21:36:00.000-07:00

If one more person (guy or girl) shoves me out of the way so they can fix their hair in the subway window there will be a problem.

(다시 한국 사람들이 모습 때문에 나에게 찌르면 곤란 해.)

seriously.

Living Old School and Loving It

2007-08-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

My desk prior to epic room cleaning
(the rest of the room looked pretty much the same)

The convergence of several past and imminent events this week have conspired to force me into a situation I rather dislike at home. As it happens, I rather dislike it in Seoul also, but I have to admit the foreign experience of said tasks has been...educational.

Said events are, in the following order:

Me reaching my tolerance breaking point in regard to the general smelliness of my clothing...that plus a classmate's observation that someone in the classroom "smells like they've been on a plane for the past ten hours"
My landlady

a. taking the liberty of unlocking my door and walking into my room the morning after club night (despite my resolute pretense that the knocks on my door were, in fact, merely the customary post-soju pounding in my head), appraising my messy room/sprawled form, and subsequently seeking me out that evening to scold me for the "ungmangin" state of things
b. asking when I will be moving out and forcibly eliciting a guarantee that the place will be spotless once I go (despite the fact that when I arrived it was coated in dust and the mattress sported a sketchy stain...)

My family's imminent arrival this Monday and my awareness that, once they arrive, my room must not only be orderly but must also not smell of:

cigarettes
beer
soju
sweat
anything remotely carbon-based

What all this adds up to, in all its anticlimactic glory, is my realization - 10 weeks into a hot, muggy Seoul summer - that I actually had to do my laundry. And not only that, but in the absence of washer and dryer, I had to do it by hand. For the amusement of those living in the 21st century, I took the liberty of chronicling the process with blurry cell phone pics:

1. Soaking: Pour cleaning fluid stuff into big bucket.
Add water. Add clothes. Let soak several hours.

2. Remove clothing items one by one from soak tub.
Transfer to scrub board. Scrub, rinse, wring, repeat.
If done properly knees, ankles and wrists should be swollen and immobile.

3. Transfer clothing items to drying rack.
Sit back and dream of Shoreland laundry room.

This long-winded exposition on the mundanest of subjects is dedicated to Callie Peters in the hopes that she will come to the realization that her life may not be so boring after all.

Resolution

2007-07-29T00:20:00.000-07:00

I must stop jumping the subway turnstiles. If I actually started paying for public transportation I might not have to spend my Sunday mornings running from subway security.

Hongdae Club Night

2007-07-28T05:26:00.000-07:00

The last Friday of every month is Club Night in Hongdae, a marvelous enterprise which offers party people the opportunity to pay 15,000 won for a stylish wrist band and subsequently get into all participating clubs for no extra fee all night. Killer good time. Here's a brief sampling of the lessons I took from last night's club-ish festivities:

Sharing a language is not necessarily a prerequisite for excellent conversation. I went out with a German, a Korean, a Belgian and a Frenchy. Despite everyone being multi-lingual there was no one language shared by all parties. Problem? Not at all. Sign language, shouting, and inebriation are highly underrated keys to international understanding and good will. I think I may notify the U.N.
"Alternative" as a club label in Korea is code for Ryan Cabrera and Jason Mraz
Mystikal's "Shake Your Ass" = two minute pause in dedicated ass-shaking whilst all the girls take the time to cover their mouths and giggle behind their hands
I rather enjoy bright flashing lights
I also rather enjoy deafening decibels
24 hour grills are a great way to pass the time while waiting for the subway to start running again

Some lessons gleaned from the aftermath of the festivities:

Passing out on the subway is a bad idea
Passing out on the bus is a bad idea
Passing out on the side of Family Mart is a bad idea
Passing out with a lit cigarette in your mouth is a very bad idea
Seven in the morning is possibly the worst time in the world to come home drunk. The only other people on the street are Ajumas and Ajushis (Aunties and Uncles), all more than happy to take a minute out of their morning routine to purse their lips at you stumbling your ass down the street.

On the Earning and Maintaining of Reputation

2007-07-25T00:32:00.000-07:00

Point 1: Koreans are, in general, inquisitive to the point of intrusiveness with little or no respect for personal boundaries (which is, of course, why I love them).

Point 2: Language class is, in general, an uncomfortably personal exercise in exchanging intimate details of your life with total strangers for the sake of a foreign tongue (which is, again, why I love it).

Combine the two points and you would assume the SNU LEI's students should know each other like the back of their own hands, moles and all. I am coming to the rude realization, however, that even with the panoply of intimate "conversation practice" topics the Level 3 라 Class has and will weather together we prefer to see each other in broad generalities than subtle details. It makes "conversation practice" easier.

Omale, for instance, is the class bad boy. He comes late, leaves early and tips his chair back during the short time he spends with us. The set of lines to be addressed to Omale range from the derogatory:

오매르가 진짜 바보예! (Omale, you're an idiot.)

to the coyly suggestive:

교실에 제일 잘 생긴 사람이 누구라고 생각 해요? 오매르요? (Who do you think is the hottest person in class? Omale?)

Noriko, on the other hand, is the timid but well-dressed girl (i.e., hot girl who knows her place) whose one distinctive trait is her seemingly uncontrollable tendency to fell asleep. Thus, when we talk about Noriko in class, the only permissible statements are those that reference this bit of endlessly amusing knowledge. For example:

오늘 너무 졸려요. 노리고 처럼... (Today I am very tired...like Noriko.)

I rather like this system of deflecting embarrassing moments with rote generalities. It means that when asked "what my heart's greatest joy lies in" I can employ a set response that is at once intimate in its exclusive sharing among classmates and perfunctory in its refusal to delve for an honest response. I think I might like to employ this technique in more aspects of my life:

What would you life for dinner?
-Oh...you know.

Where are you going?
-You know me.

and so on. With any luck I could render my life entirely impenetrable by relying on the assumptions of others. Awesome...

Another life lesson gleaned from Seoul National University.

Summer in Seoul, aka A California Christmas

2007-07-17T22:04:00.000-07:00

I've been feeling festive lately. Troubling symptoms like sweet cravings, a certain yearning after shiny gift wrap and the desire to "Ho" all lead to an inescapable conclusion: Summer in Seoul is, for all semblative intents and purposes, the partner of Christmastime in California.

What prompts such an appallingly unseasonal accusation? I return to my beloved bullet points to elaborate.

The weather: In summer God says to Korea, "You're a tiny little peninsula caught between two Asian superpowers. You've spent most of your history run over by one, or the other, or both. Oh, and you also went through a massive civil war, in the wake of which you've imbued your youth with an affinity for deep tragedy that manifests itself in melodrama, disease and death in your national media. You deserve to forget about all that, to which end I am going to spend the next three months dumping so much water on you that by the time fall rolls around you'll be so busy hiding under those garish ponchos sold on the subway that you won't have energy to be anything but thankful that you're still a peninsula and not a new Atlantis."

Winter in the Bay Area Summer in Korea

Likewise God spends winter in a conversation with California that goes something like this:

"So, I'm getting the feeling you're getting a bit shallow, what with the great climate and the easy to acquire drugs and free love and all."
"Dude, free love!"
"Yeah, the other states are starting to complain."
"Dude, drugs!"
"I'm thinking I should stick you with a little rain. Not for a long time or anything. Just winter, you know. Just so it's a little more fair."
"Dude..."
"This isn't making an impression at all, is it?"
"Duu-ude..."
"*Sigh* Well, maybe it'll work in NorCal..."

2. The aroma: Thanks to the massive summer downpours, summer in Seoul is also accompanied by nasty little mosquitoes which can be felled only be burning this kind of incense coil that smells just like a woodfire. Walking down the street at night you get that odor out of every window, coupled with the wet pine tree smell from the mountains. It is awesomely akin to the Christmas tree + Christmas fire smells around Kings Mountain in December.

3. ...okay, so I don't have a third point. I could probably stretch and try to find something, but as the first two are more than sufficient to transport me into flights of holiday fantasy I think they should be good enough for everyone else as well.

More on Dating: Chivalric Chauvinism in Korea

2007-07-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

This post was inspired by a conversation with two classmates combined with some of my accumulated frustration with Korean gender roles. The tone, therefore, might diverge a bit from that of my previous posts.

The Language Institute's school day is broken into 50 minute chunks with ten minute breaks to ease the monotony. During break (fondly of somewhat prosaically referred to as "shinoon shigan") the courtyard fills with the student cliques; the Chinese just to the right of the main doors, the Mongolians claiming the benches under the overhang, and so on. The Turks are the rowdiest and most mobile of the groups, waving their cigarettes and designer shades at almost every girl they pass. It surprised me, then, to hear from my classmate Sean that almost to a man the Turkish students at school retain a rigidly conservative take on appropriate female dress and behavior. He even knew of one who, though breaking boundaries by dating a Korean girl, complains that this girl constantly wants to have sex which he constantly has to refuse (at least until conversion to Islam and marriage). The irony was that my classmate Sean is in the opposite situation: a white man dating a Korean girl who is constantly trying to persuade her to sleep with him.

The resultant conversation on cross-cultural dating and Korean girls was between Sean, myself, and another Korean-American classmate, Eric. Sean is British, has lived in Korea for almost nine months, and like most non-military Caucasians here, seems to have fallen prey to yellow fever. Eric, on the other hand, was born in the States to a couple that had immigrated from Korea and has always felt the pressure to date and marry a Korean girls, despite which not one of his girlfriends up to now has even been Asian. Surprisingly both of them had the same complaint about Korean girls - a chronic lack of confidence.

It's not surprising that any female growing up in contemporary Korea would lack confidence. In fact, given the multitude of opposing influences bombarding them, it's surprising so many women emerge with anything remotely resembling individual agency. I once heard a lecture on the relationship between chivalry (of the Arthurian sort) and feminism, in which the professor proposed that the Chivalric code was the most constrictive of all chauvinist devices because it demanded that it's women embody simultaneously contradictory concepts. One the one hand they were to exist above and beyond the realm of humanity as the legendary "lady", a shining goal that knights aspired to. On the other hand, they must eventually fall. As goals, as prizes, they were expected to be "won" (those that were not were the sorceresses of legend). The difficulty was in maintaining more-than-human status while falling into the arms of the "savior".

Korean society has always been strongly chauvinistic. In the old days women developed a game of jumping with each other on a see saw in the hopes of seeing over the house walls that they weren't allowed to leave. According to my mother even in a couple as relatively progressive as my grandparents my grandmother would always walk a few steps behind my grandfather. To this day I have an uncle who refuses to enter the kitchen, and while he is in his house does not lift a finger to do a thing. If he needs a glass of water, even if the bottle is several steps away, he makes his wife get it. Popular media, however, seems to have wrought a change in this old-fashioned Korean chauvinism and instated in its place a new, but no less dangerous form: chivalry.

Korean boyfriends today are whipped. They carry their girlfriend's purses. They walk their pink-leashed poodles. They buy matching pink T-shirts to wear around town. They don't walk ahead of their girls, but hold hands with them...constantly. What worries me about this behavior, however, is its condescension.

"Goong" - one of the big tv shows today

Watch any recent Korean drama and watch how the female lead acts: cute, slightly brainless, given to fits of hysteric distress over the smallest of problems. Look at her posture, the way she tightens her shoulders together and hunches slightly forward. Check all the close-ups on her beautiful almond eyes as she gazes up (always fucking UP) from some apologetic bow. And then watch the stoic male lead fall for the cute little train-wreck, forgive her whatever stupid little mistake she made, dry her cute tears, enjoy the sound of her halting and high pitched Korean.

Read any interview with contemporary male music or film stars about what they look for in a girlfriend: innocence and purity always top the list. Always. As though deliberately echoing the first of the chivalric code's requirements for it's women. And on top of this Korean men have figured out how to solve the problem of winning the prize without losing the idol. A simple transference of affection: the idol become a child that needs salvation and forgiveness. And Korean men are more than happy to comply.

What are Korean girls today to do? They must embody all the virtues that make an admirable lady, show the confidence of a strong lady that first pulls a man is. But that is not feminine. They must also embody femininity in all its cloying, whiny, whipped puppy dog glory. And on top of that they must now also be sexy, and grapple with the issue of a small and quiet sexual revolution that is creeping slowly into a country that still doesn't understand the concept of sex-education. One of the greatest shocks for me is seeing girls on the street dressed like they work the corner night shift, but in the awkward manner that makes it clear that the clothes were bought for fashion, not enticement, value.

The resulting insecurity and neuroses that Korean men seem so happy to bundle up and take home with them can apparently be baffling to Western men (who, to be fair, also arguably embody their fair share of colonial neuroses). Sean complained that he can't joke with his girlfriend because she will get easily offended and question his love, commitment, attachment, attraction, etc.

Growing up I always heard my mom talk about how she could never go back to Korea, both because of gender roles and the unrelenting societal pressure for conformity. Now I can see it, and I don't understand how she or so many of the amazing Korean woman or girls that I've been lucky to know in my life came out on the other side. There are so many strong women here. But you can't see them on TV. You can't hear them on the radio. They're sure as hell not on the big screen. This has been the most frustrating part of an otherwise thoroughly enjoyable and educational journey. Almost everyone I've dealt with in Korea, male or female, has been incredibly friendly. And I'm not a sociologist or historian, so my thoughts on the subject are all Inga-organic and subject to serious debate. It just annoys the fuck out of me that girls who are demonstrably intelligent go to such pains to mask it, beat themselves to a pulp conforming to formulas of gender behavior, cultivate vapidity and neuroses in an effort to "fit in" to a media culture that I am convinced will eventually (if it has not already) trample them underfoot.

On Midterms and Dating

2007-07-08T20:04:00.001-07:00

Having hit the halfway point of my Korean sojourn, marked this morning by a celebratory set of midterms, I thought it worth marking the milestone with a story or two.

I. The Epic Love of Jiyun and What's-his-name

Since I've been here I've been privy to the unfolding of a romance that will, I hope, eventually make headlines. Hell, maybe even some new Shakespeare. It began with the boy. My hasukjip is up at the very end of a little alley, so to reach it I have to pass through a tangled little web of narrow roads. Picturesque, if laced with the scent of shit. Anyway, in my first weeks here I would pass a boy standing at the same corner almost anytime I went out in the afternoon. Maybe in his late teens or early twenties, skinny corn-stalk of a kid with flimsy, grimy glasses, messy hair...kinda an Asian Harry Potter type. From 2pm or so until after the sun set he would always be at the same friggin' corner just staring up at the house behind the wall. I'll admit to just pegging him for a bit off in the head.

Then one day a girl showed up in the third floor window. What's-his-name was suddenly playing a two-way game instead of engaging in a spectator sport. And my creep-factor was activated so I started taking walks around the neighborhood on my smoking breaks waiting for something to happen. And lo and behold one weekend, when I had just about given up on them and abandoned my stalking to get wasted, I wandered home in the rain drunk and umbrella-less to a beautiful sight: the boy and the girl engaged in a sweet and passionate hug (fat chance of juicy pda on Korean streets) under the same umbrella. I seriously considered getting under the umbrella and giving both of them a sloppy congratulatory hug, but thought better of it.

I naturally assumed that following this juncture the two would be a neighborhood fixture, walking about holding hands, wearing "couple shirts", What's-his-name carrying the girl's purse, etc. But for a week after the hug...the boy disappeared. A solid week of no melancholy gazing, moping on the corner, anything. Disappointed again, I spent another Saturday night getting soused, returned home and passed out, only to be awoken early in the morning by Korean TV drama type wails. Pissed at my neighbors I made my way outside (again in the rain) only to see the boy back at his corner, no umbrella this time, screaming "JiYun-ah! JiYun-ah!" up at the window. This was money, so I fetched my cigarettes and sat on my doorstep as he screamed, shadows moved in the window, the girl's face appeared, then disappeared, then appeared, and was finally replaced by her father's, yelling back down at the poor kid. Damn. Who needs TV?

I assumed that would be the end of it. Young love or not, there's only so much you can take. Especially with so much rain about this season. Yet again I was proved wrong, however, by the sweet strains of Kim Ahjoong's rendition of "Maria" (미녀는 괴로워 ost) blasting me out of sleep at 3am this morning. Apparently the kid had taken a page from John Cusack. And now I await further developments...considering buying popcorn to take up the time.

The best part was I saw the girl's dad riding his bike around the Gwanaksan parking lot today, just wheeling it in circles through the flock of pigeons over and over and kinda chuckling to himself. An insane dad. This story just keeps getting better and better.

II. Dates and Drinks

This weekend's discovery was that Koreans like couples. And drinking. And they like to celebrate couples by drinking. My steadiest barhopping buddy is a guy named Felix, and since in Korea guys and girls don't go out alone together unless they're dating, we're constantly getting pegged for a couple and correcting people. This weekend we just got tired of going through the rigmarole and decided to play along. Jackpot. Free drinks, free food, compliments, conversation. Drinks on the house. Drinks in other customers. Good God. Talk about a racket.

I like that whilst serving witness to the unfolding of an epic love I crassly fake it in the interest of an extra beer. Oh well. We can't all be star-crossed or whatever.

Random...

2007-07-05T05:37:00.000-07:00

"스킨십 is a difficult concept to translate. To the best of my understanding / what Korean people have told me, 스킨십 is any physical contact between two people. So a six year old girl hugs her grandmother, that’s 스킨십. A pair of leather men fuck each other in the ass…well that’s 스킨십 too."

The hangul, for those of you who can't read it, is romanized "sukinssip [skin-ssip]", a konglish (pseudo) sex term like "carsexu" or the like.

-from Dave Shea's Blogsome site: http://sojuandi.blogsome.com/2005/07/25/366/

Daily Dose of Cynicism

2007-07-05T04:33:00.000-07:00

Saw a teenager on the subway today wearing a stylishly distressed, unflatteringly tight T-shirt. It said:

"The mainstream that we have achieved."

I think that pretty much sums up Korean attitudes towards individuality vs. conformity.

Itaewon and Insadong

2007-06-30T23:13:00.000-07:00

Met up with the daughters of one of my mom's college friends and explored Itaewon and Insadong.

Itaewon:
Tons of foreigners in Itaewon. And lots of restaraunts to prove it. Even an honest to god mexican restaraunt (Happy Burrito. no i didn't try it). While I was huddled under my hat outside the subway station in the rain (my umbrella having been confiscated at school when Yuyang betook himself to smash another guy with it) an American lady wandered up to me, offspring in tow, and pulled out an "survival korean" phrasebook to try to ask me where a hotel was. Not only did i know where the hotel was, but i could tell her in english. talk about a friggin' gold mine.
After meeting up with Chaeyeon and Hyeyeon proceeded to wander the underground clothing shops for a while. all the shops have designer clothes, but they're all factory rejects (missing buttons or such) and therefore gloriously cheap...if tagless. However, korean clothing and me still have a somewhat complicated relationship, therefore we left Itaewon for...

Insadong:
Awesome place. Cute cobbled street. Cute little souvenir shops. Cute artsy-fartsy galleries. Cute little cafes. And then the not-so cute price-tags that kinda just sit behind the products glaring at you menacingly. I'm fine with window shopping though. And I got a sweet dinner at a really traditional restaraunt out of it. Best part of dinner (aside from HeeWon joining us) was HyeYeon, exhausted from a day of shopping in wedges, leaving our table for the adjoining one and just passing out on it.
Left ChaeYeon and HyeYeon to hit Gangnam with HeeWon for drinks and batbingsu, which meant catching one of the last trains home, which meant RUSH HOUR.

You know its rush hour in Seoul when:

You don't have to move yourself at all. In fact, you can't. The massive human wave kinda has a life of its own. Resistance is futile.
You can actually smell the sweat on the people around you. And see their pores. The rest of the time I kinda assume that Koreans (a) don't sweat, ergo (b) don't have pores.
Someone is probably unintentionally grabbing your ass. And if you are lucky you are probably unintentionally grabbing someone's too. It's the ass or the crotch.

Things I need to learn how to say in Korean:

2007-06-28T02:36:00.001-07:00

Please move out of my way. It's raining and I just want to go home.
Please stop waving your bible in front of my face.
No, I would rather not take your random survey on my spiritual beliefs.
What do you mean by "Where do I believe the Spirit and the Bride reside?"
Yes, I know who Jesus is. Yes, I know who God is.
Yes, I can read.
Please don't condescend to me.
Do YOU know how to read?
Doesn't your proselytizing manual have a chapter on subtlety?
You're retarded.
Fuck off.
No I will not give you my number. And I don't want yours.
Have a nice day.

The consequences of my linguistic inapptitude in this regard was a half-hour konglish discussion with two of the finest from the "Elohim Seminary" on the finer points of Genesis 1:1-3:1 cross referenced with the last five lines of Revelations. Fucking A.

Also of interest, the best thing I heard today:

"The most important thing I learned in college: anal girls really love it when you go downtown."

...of course that was in English from some Korean-American on the street, so it really doesn't count as a cultural gleaning.

KyeoRyon-Chic (결혼식)

2007-06-24T03:16:00.000-07:00

Highlights of the Wedding:

The Ceremony - short. and full of tears. and wedding planners and camera men who ran around the bride the whole time rearranging her dress, hair, and potentially runny makeup.

The Music - timeless. they began with "o mio babbino caro" in korean, which was a bad idea and followed it with "all i ask of you" in english, which was worse. i quote: "rove me. dat's arr i ass o' yuuuuu!" ajuma turned to ask what i thought and was touched that i had "eye water". but they were earnest. which is what counts.

The happy couple

The Attire - varied. hanboks on the very old, the very young, and the members of the wedding party who had to switch from korean to western clothes every half hour or so. and then me. in my jeans. but not alone in my blasphemy, thank god.

The Company - i got to hang with my mom's old high school crew. none of whom speak passable english. all of whom evaluate me on my relationship status. ChaeYeon Ajuma rallied her linguistic powers for her single foray of the day into a full english sentence with, "I sink if American girl no have boyfriend, is no very pretty, yes?" to which i did not have a ready response.
kinda cool though, getting to hear what my mom was like back in the day. sounds like a bit of a badass. a math-spouting, ocean-hopping, underage chain smoker with a keen dislike of domestic responsibilities. awesome.

엄마!!!

Lala-lala, Lala-lala, LotteWorld!

2007-06-22T00:11:00.001-07:00

Summer 07 Level 3 Field Trip

Time: Year 2007 Month 6 Day 22 (Fri) 9:45 - 12:30
Destination: LotteWorld Traditional Museum
Meeting Place: Chamsil Station, Subway Line 2 in front of the fountain plaza (Go towards exit 4, which leades to the LotteWorld department store in front of the subway plaza: Do not go outside!!!)

Teacher Contact Information

Class A Kim MiSuk Teacher 016-398-0774
Class B Park HyeJin Teacher 011-223-3042
Class C Oh OonYung Teacher 016-288-5245
Class D Yu JaeSun Teacher 010-6638-1005

If you are late or cannot come please make sure to contact a teacher!

We received this bit of information on Tuesday. It took me until Thursday night to get around to the task of translating/sorting it all out. And then, this morning, I was:

a) late
b) did not contact a teacher
c) went OUTSIDE the subway station

All my failure, however, pales in light of the fact that Seoul National University's Institute for Language Acquisition and Study made the unspeakable blunder of sending its entire intermediate class, ranging in age from 18-35, half of whom are married and have children, on a cultural visit to LotteWorld.

For those of you not familiar with Lotte, it is the largest commercial presence in Korea. It brands every snack food, novelty item, consumer clothing line or whatever else that you can find here. It basically owns this country. LotteWorld, the largest indoor amusement park in the world, is a tribute to that hegemony.

Ruled by a kind of Big Brother-esque chubby racoon character who squints down at you in what is presumably a friendly-cheeky grin from every corner of the "world", LotteWorld is a massive kingdom complex (yes, there is actually a castle) to the triumph of capitalism in the R.O.K. There's no blank wall space in the hallways, which are packed with stores of every variety. The plazas enjoy themes ranging from the disgustingly pretentious (a marble lined room adorned with Italian wall frescoes) to the kitschy (sp? - a layered cake of fountains that delights in a techno-water display) to the bizarre (a folk museum comprised almost entirely of tiny traditional landscapes peopled by cartoonish figures with heads almost as large as their bodies and bodies almost as large as their abodes. That, and to-scale recreations of neolithic Korea and Koreans sporting what are hopefully not-to-scale recreations of the neolithic penis. No women in these scenes. Although at half and inch I don't know if you could really call these men either.)

Level 3 got sent to the folk museum to (a) make T-shirts, and (b) wander with a page of questions and answer them according to three methods: fill in the blank, essay and illustration. Meanwhile simultaneous field-trip groups from three Seoul elementary schools were engaged in similar tasks. We were the only group that got to make T-shirts though.

To distract themselves from the humiliation, my classmates engaged in a photo marathon of smiles and peace signs and myspace-esque angles. To distract myself from my life I went with some friends to the Lottelounge to share a Lottebrew...otherwise known as Mountain Dew.

This has been an epic update on a not so epic day in tribute to the blogging prowess of Ryan CB Erickson, whose poetry I can never hope to equal.

Things that are awkward in my life:

2007-06-19T22:48:00.000-07:00

most conversations (in class, on the street, in my head...)
the extent to which i am touched/stroked/hugged by brand new acquaintances
the old man next door who always takes his cigarette breaks the exact same time as me
texting in korean: impossible
my relationships with -

Omale, to whom i mistakenly offered a light when he asked for my number
Johnson, who insists on not only discussing Taekwondo but demonstrating it with vocal accompaniment during breaks
My landlady, to whom i have not yet paid the electric bill

...oh, and nipples.

Satuday: Dongdaemun Sijang & Hondae

2007-06-17T21:32:00.000-07:00

What I learned in: Dongdaemun Sijang

1. In the states I dress casually. In Korea I dress like a bum. In Dongdaemun, where "Fashun is our *Heart*", I am an abomination.

2. Korean girls either like their clothes very big or very small. A nation of 80lb-ers and they sell clothes that would fit Bob and his bitch tits...accompanied by tiny little tanks for when the whale cover inevitably falls off.

3. In Korea I have abnormally large breasts.

4. And feet. But thats okay, cuz Minsu, the salesman's son, will be my "pu-riendu" and buy me beer if I go back and talk to him in English. Sweet.

What I learned in: Hondae

1. There is such a thing as a "Sexyish Time Golden Hip-Hop Club".

...actually that pretty much takes everything else I learned this weekend.

Homefront Update

2007-06-15T19:04:00.000-07:00

Chicago - University of Chicago students spent their last few weeks escaping the stress and academic rigor of their finals in the following manner.
Kangnam - On a prominent building by the subway station a supplemental English study program shares advertisement space with the "Slimming Outward Alteration" plastic surgery office. Both endure coating in the steam rising from the octupus donut hole stand below. Pop one in your mouth and you're good to go!

Sillimdong - A certain halfie correspondent awoke at an ungodly morning hour to an invitation from Ajuma to accompany her to a wedding next weekend and now ponders just how unacceptable jeans actually are if the party in question is completely unknown to the happy couple?

This has been an unauthorized news briefing indebted to our Asian correspondent, Heewon Suh, recently returned from an international sojourn to tend to her national duties: mainly, translating for me.

Best Conversation of the Day: A Translation by Me

2007-06-12T23:31:00.000-07:00

BaTu: Wah! These sausages are so good!
Miri: Yeah they are. (Helps herself to all of BaTu's)
BaTu: What are you doing??? Those are mine!
Miri: Shut up. You can go get more. I finished mine and I still want some.
BaTu: So why don't you go?
Miri: Because I'm eating.
BaTu: (whispered to me) She's such an idiot.
Me: Be nice.
BaTu: I am.

Oh, how my Korean improves by leaps and bounds.

Night Out on the Town

2007-06-08T23:35:00.000-07:00

A funny thing about Seoul public transportation: it doesn't run between midnight and 5:30 am...which means that I did not get home from this weekend's adventure until 7:00 in the morning. Sweet.

Last night's destination was Sinchon. According to an online Seoul nightlife guide Sinchon has a "distinctly feminine ambience" as far as college neighborhoods go. I didn't feel it, but maybe I just don't have the feminine radar. If by feminine they mean quiet, then I guess I can buy it. Stuff was open late, but for a Friday night it seemed pretty tame.

Soju: it has come into its own. Got four bottles to share: Chal, Lemon, Cherry and Yogurt. And four pitchers of Korean beer (which is pretty much water) to break in between the hard stuff.

When, at 4am, a sensible person finds the subway station closed, they probably wait around the hour and a friggin half for it to open. Not being sensible, however, Felix and I wandered down a south street aimlessly, kinda figuring it would loop back around again. This leads me to my first bit of advice from Korea: if you're ever in Sinchon, get drunk and WANDER!!! we made it all the way down to the Han River, randomly hit a bridge, and walked across the river. When we left one side it was still dark and the moon was up. By the time we got to the other side the sun was coming up. Friggin gorgeous.

But exhausting. Thank god for drunk koreans who hang around on street corners directing drunk non-koreans to subway stations...and exchanging numbers for future communal drink fests.

Oh, and inga advisory #2: if you're going to wander a hilly city for 9+ hours, don't wear sandals.

?

2007-06-06T07:24:00.001-07:00

Question: Why are Koreans so friggin obsessed with marriage???

...and are people really allowed to speculate on the theoretical nearness of my childbearing years half an hour after meeting me?

food for thought anyway.

INTERNET BITCHES!!! WHAT NOW??!!!

2007-06-04T05:45:00.000-07:00

ahem...

actually yeah, that's basically it.

For anyone who cares for a lengthier disclosure, however, (note to Delio: read this and stop bitching...and by the way, how the hell did you wander across such an obscure site?) the basic summary so far is:

Korea is - muggy in the mode of a communal sweat bath. and hilly. and crowded. and very...korean. where's the damn starbucks around here?

Koreans are - short. with dark hair and squinty eyes. prone to filling the streets and walking slow (that 'asians are smart' thing must be just in the states). and loud, so i guess the 'asians are quiet' thing is just in the states too.

Class is - two americans, one canadian, two mongolians, one japanese, one uzbekistanian, one kyrhzakstanian, one hong konger and four chinese. i guess the best way to make a class stick to korean is by making it the only common language.

I am - hungry. and penniless. but optmistic (in case the general tone of the blog thus far has not made this sufficiently clear). Item: today i braved the bus ride from campus to the nearest subway station, promising more courage for a weekend visit into the heart of Seoul...after a few stiff ones.

squishy

2007-05-03T19:21:00.000-07:00

You are very squishy. So I shall name you "Squishy". And you shall be my little squishy.

-Dory (Finding Nemo)

First post to end the emptiness...

2007-04-30T01:13:00.000-07:00

I'm not actually going to be using this blog for anything worthwhile for another four weeks, but I thought I'd get it up and running anyway and once I did I realized that without any posts at all it just looks sad and empty. So now it maybe looks a little less sad.
Maybe.
Or maybe I just accentuated the vacuum around this one, tiny, apologetic post.
Great.
This blogging thing is getting off to a kick-ass start.