Thinking Too Much About K-Drama: "Dream High"

I've settled nicely into my new job at Cassandra Academy (not the school's real name, obviously!). I feel like I owe you an update on that, but everything is so mundane it would make for trivial reading.

The one perk is that my schedule involves a lot of science classes. I get to spend about half of my day geeking out at small Korean children (although they all seem to be on a "rocks and soil" unit that is literally as boring as dirt; nothing about volcanoes and the rock cycle and minerals to be found!).

The other perk is that I have grown-up Internet this time around, so I've been torrenting entertainment with abandon. Abandon! In addition to some old-school Star Trek and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (don't judge), I have the Korean Dream High.



It ran for 16 episodes on KBS2 from January to March of this year. At the outset, it is at least nine merciful episodes shorter than Boys Over Flowers. But it seems no better in terms of...anything. I've only made it through the first episode but I wanted to articulate my expectations and thoughts so far.

It takes place at a "performing arts" high school that is exclusively devoted to churning out pop idols (in-story justification for intricately-choreographed dance routines and heartfelt ballads? check! excuse for all kinds of K-pop star leading roles, cameos, and performances? check! chance to market new musical material and further solidify pre-existing hits in the public consciousness? check!). I can't imagine a place like this exists in Korea; or rather I should say, I hope it doesn't.

Do K-drama writers realize that they're coming up with absolutely ridiculous premises? Boys Over Flowers deals with wealth that's absolutely obscene; Winter Sonata (the king of all K-dramas) brings on the amnesia, brainwashing, and identity confusion; in Dream High one of the protagonists is blackmailed into attending said school because loan sharks are after her father. She is coerced into repaying his debt by becoming a K-pop sensation.

Doesn't that seem like a roundabout way of getting money from a teenaged girl? Send her to a school and bank on her becoming an idol in a few years? I mean, I can think of at least one obvious alternative, especially if you want the money, like, now (but pimpin' ain't easy). In the first encounter with the loan sharks, he even makes some creepy comment about her paying "with her body" which sounds a lot more sinister than "become a member of the next Girl's Generation."

The first episode ends with the main female protagonist (played by singer Suzy from the relatively new Kpop group "Miss A") dropping to her knees in front of the head director, a man we're instructed to believe is pretty much some kind of sorcerer when it comes to scouting and nurturing talent, begging him to "save her." Something about that just skeeves me out and makes me kind of sad/frustrated, because you know a male character would never do that.

(Aside: I wouldn't be surprised if the raison d'être of Dream High was to garner a fanbase for the freshly-produced girl group Miss A and solidify their media presence. The other leads are well-established in the K-Pop world: 2PM, IU, T-ara, etc.)

There's also an "overweight"/"ugly" girl who struggles with body issues (who is honestly adorable and it's appalling that the show treats her terribly), which are magically solved by losing weight (though this happens later on the series, not in the first episode); that whole situation is so broken and so enraging I won't even comment on it.

All right, time for a manicure and episode 2!

Connected

I finally have my own grown-up Internet, which means I can start pirating movies planning Skype dates, streaming media, and updating on a regular schedule! How about that?

Photos of the neighborhood and the apartment and so forth will go up. Eventually. The irony is now that I have the ability to post content from my own computer again, I'm just too tired to do so. So instead I'm going to stream some awful K-dramas and think about them too much, and pass it all on to you!

Landed, Part 2

I've more or less established myself in Bundang. Unfortunately, as it's only my first full day here, I lack an alien card and am thus barred from important things like a phone or my own internet. (People in Bundang are much smarter about WEP-encrypting their connections, and I ironically need an Internet connection to get the WEP-cracking program I would normally use. =P) At least I still have a bank account and debit card!

So happy birthday to me, I get to spend it in this PC-bang and then at the hospital and then (maybe) training.

Bundang is definitely a bit more happening than the sleepy old 'bu. Which isn't necessarily a good OR bad thing. Just different. It will take some adjustment.

Visa Notes AND a CHALLENGE!

I am in the midst of getting my E-2 sorted for re-entry into the ROK. Everything was going swimmingly (if at that sleepy pace one is accustomed to when dealing with bureaucracies) until today.

Visa issuance number, passport, and photo in hand, I went wide-eyed to the consulate general in NYC, eager for the piece of paper in my passport that would unlock the doors of the world—or at least of the Land of the Morning Calm. Finally! I thought to myself. No more waiting! No more nail-biting! I can get my ticket and finish my packing and maybe make some last-minute visits!

All of those hopes and dreams were dashed in one fell swoop after I pushed my papers through the little document slot. In one simple word.

"Transcript?" the ajumma behind the window asked me, in a thick Korean accent.

Transcript.

"I was told I didn't need it," I stammered, which was the truth. I had asked multiple recruiters if I still needed a transcript and they assured me that with the new E-2 rules, I didn't. That the apostille-certified copy of my diploma would suffice.

"No, no. No more interviews. Just transcripts now." To her credit, the ajumma dealing with me went to work clipping and gluing my photo and was generally patient and as helpful as she could be. She confirmed my visa issuance number and told me that I could leave everything there, and they would grant the visa if I could fax them my transcript, and that everything would be ready a full 24 hours after they received the transcript.

I canceled the afternoon appointment I had made with a friend so I could get back home in time to fax off transcript request forms and make some calls before offices closed at 4 pm. And as I pushed buttons through the consulate's phone tree, the recorded message informed me that I did indeed need my transcript.

Oh. Great.

Only I had never bothered calling the consulate directly before then because everything I could find on the website seemed to point to only needing money and a photo. I've decided to do something productive and potentially helpful with my rage and frustration and embarrassment, and as such here is an incomplete collection of notes that I would have found very useful 24 hours ago.

VISA NOTES

• You no longer need your transcripts to acquire the visa issuance number, but apparently you do need a copy to actually acquire the physical visa itself. What you no longer need is an interview. (NB maybe you can circumvent this by bringing your diploma with you, if what they're after is proof of your education. I might try this tomorrow.)
  
  
• Special note to those of you serviced by the consulate in NYC (which would be: the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the states of Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware): there are two locations in NYC, one near the UN and one on Park Avenue. The office at Park Avenue is the one that handles the visa processing. (I made this mistake the first time I applied for the E-2.)
  
  
• I've seen some recruiters list letters of recommendation as necessary paperwork. Neither time have I needed those, and my guess is that they are for the schools and not for the Ministry of Justice (which handles visa applications).
  
  
• The consulate in NYC will accept transcripts from universities by fax, so fortunately that cuts down on mailing time and costs if you find yourself in a bind like me. No word on if they accept the transcripts by fax from you.
  
  
• If you have to leave your passport at the consulate, you may enlist the help of a trusted assistant to pick it up (in lieu of shelling out the money for a courier, or risking your passport in the mail). So long as they have the receipt issued to you upon the deposit of your passport, the consulate will give it to them.
  
  
• If you need to call the consulate for any reason, you will default to a phone tree. But as of this writing (June 2011), the "press 0 to get a human" trick still works on their phone system. You'll probably get connected to someone who doesn't speak English well, but they will connect you to someone a bit more capable in the language.
  
  
• The fee is $45 (at least for the E-2, I saw other numbers floating around the website).

THE CHALLENGE

Had I been thorough in my planning, I would have called the number listed on the site and found out through the phone tree that I still needed a copy of my transcript. (I would have Googled, too, but a post-visit Google search was fruitless so it wouldn't have helped me any.)

Had the Korean Consulate's website not been a useless monstrosity of fluff, tiny text, Konglish, and animated everything, I would have also found out that I needed a copy of my transcript.

I will own up to bad planning, but I believe web designers should also own up to poor design. Hence my challenge:

If you can find, on this Korean consulate's website, a clear and concise list of the documents necessary for the E-2 (specifically where it explicitly mentions a college transcript), I will buy you dinner. Seriously. Should I lose, it will be a humbling experience for me, but it will also be extremely helpful for other people navigating this international job hunt process. Should I win, I get to feel really smug and slightly vindicated. Basically, there's no losers with this contest!

RULES FOR THE CONTEST

1. To qualify for the dinner, you must email me (should be on my blogger profile) a link to the page in question, as well as a description of the search path you used to find it. (As in: "The Immigration tab, and then the Visa bullet point..." etc.) If there is no search path description, it doesn't qualify. (This is to help me verify that you found it organically, and didn't get lucky with Google or knowledge of some direct link.)
   
2. It must be from the Korean consulate English website here: Korean consulate. Answers from recruiter's websites, Dave's, and assorted expats-in-Korea communities, while helpful, are not valid to win the dinner because the point is to prove how utterly useless Korean web design typically is. (However, the best of the helpful links will also be posted when I announce the winner, so others will still benefit from the fruits of your labor!) I will accept other websites if and only if the above Korean consulate links to them.
   
3. Contest ends July 31st in Korea. Americans, this means you're at a disadvantage. Sorry.
   
4. Please put "blog contest" in the title of the email, that way I can find it easily!
   
5. The search has to be conducted in English. First time teachers probably don't speak Korean and mine's way too awful to navigate a government webpage. Or any webpage.
   

RULES FOR THE PRIZE

1. The contest is open to anyone but I can only offer dinner compensation to people in or near Seoul—basically, if you are serviced by Seoul metro, I will hunt you down and buy you food.
   
2. Food offer is good for: gimbap holes-in-the-wall and sandwich shops; sit-down galbi, samgyeopsal, duck, hot-pot, barbecue, boshintang, gobchang gui, etc. joints. Or something Western. Or Indian or Uzbek or whatever tickles your fancy. Just some place you would be willing to pay for on your own. In other words, please don't try to bankrupt me. ^^ But the dinner bill will also include the drinks as well!
   
3. In lieu of buying you dinner due to geographical constraints, I will donate the dinner equivalent to a charity of your choice. Aww, warm fuzzies!
   
4. If more than one person submits a winning answer, the first answer received gets a dinner. Maybe other respondents will get some soju or cash money from me. I don't know. I'll decide later.

Go to! Winner—assuming there is one, between what I believe is the Herculean nature of the task and my absolutely non-existent readership—will be announced August 1.

Autism in South Korea Skyrocketing?

Study suggests autism is diagnosed more frequently in South Korea than in the US.

South Korea just sent autism prevalence rates surging north. Autism-spectrum disorders affect an estimated 2.64 percent of the nation’s schoolchildren, or about 1 in 38 youngsters, a new study finds.

That’s a considerably higher figure than has been reported in the United States, England and elsewhere, where prevalence estimates range from 0.07 percent to 1.8 percent. A 2006 report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that 1 in 110 children had an autism spectrum disorder, at that time considered a surprisingly high rate.

I'm not sure what I make of this at the moment, though it's interesting food for thought.

Boys Before...Feminism

Everything I'd want to say is basically here: Why Boys Before Flowers Sets Feminism Back 20 Years at Da Hee's Plastic Castle. In a nutshell: Boys Over Flowers / 꽃보다 남자 takes a surprisingly feisty, empowered, stubborn female protagonist and turns her into a wilting delicate flower, trembling for the love of her broody, emotionally constipated man. I won't rehash everything that's wrong with the series; instead I want to know what the Korean feminist reaction to this series is.


Each person in this photo is individually responsible for setting feminism back exactly four years.


Jong-min once described feminism in Korea as "less feminism and more a special interests group for women." Since I don't have access to whatever the Korean academic world is discussing and postulating (as regards feminism or anything else) because I don't speak Korean, I can neither confirm nor deny this. All I have is Korean pop culture through the filter of white Western feminists and that's obviously going to be a whole different kettle of fish. By his account, academic feminist reaction to 꽃보다 남자 has been mostly to shrug at it, or forget the glaring issues in the story in favor of handsome curly-haired man—far from the outcry that still reverberates in Western circles as regards Twilight.

If anyone has any insight regarding the reception 꽃보다 남자 has enjoyed in the feminist circles in Korea, I'm keen to hear them. I sincerely hope that Jong-min is wrong (the only time I'd ever say that!)...but I have a sinking feeling he's not.

J/K Crossover Movies (Part 1 of ?)

Korea and Japan have a complicated history. Complicated. Kind of like how the Titanic sprung a leak. Movies that touch upon Koreans in Japan, or the relationship between Koreans and Japanese, or Japanese people in Korea fascinate me—whether directed by Koreans or Japanese or whoever else. There's not really a whole lot that I've seen, and some of them are just plain bad (there's a disappointed rant/review about 2009: Lost Memories forthcoming, some day).

The most recent one I've seen is Linda Linda Linda. It's a Japanese movie and it's mostly Japanese, in that Korean-Japanese relations are barely even a tertiary issue. Much more central to the movie is the infectious love of music and four high school girls' push to get ready for a performance at their school festival.

Even without the Korean angle, I would have loved this movie. The cinematography is exceptionally well-done, as is the characterization. But the fact that the lead singer is a Korean exchange student (Son) whose Japanese is sometimes lacking pretty much seals it for me. Add in the fact that Son is played by Korean actress Bae Doona? Consider my heart warmed to the very cockles. (You often get Japanese movies about Koreans in Japan that simply cast Japanese actors as Koreans. Come on guys, they're right next door. It's not so hard to find the real thing.) Also, Bae Doona is amazing—you might recognize the name from Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance or The Host.

The movie makes a point of highlighting the Korean Son as the school's "token Korean"; when the movie opens up, she is the only student in charge of organizing the "Japanese-Korean Culture Exchange" for the upcoming school festival. She has a perpetually confused air about her whenever she interacts with people around her, like you can tell she's working really hard to listen and comprehend and formulate her thoughts. You also get the impression that this leaves her socially stranded; the only people with whom you see Son interact prior to joining the band are the teacher in charge of the "Japanese-Korean cultural exchange" and Son's "host sister," an elementary school student who reads manga with her. Son is Korean, and because of that (at least in part), she's alone. Not an outcast, not a pariah—but without a group.

Bae absolutely steals the show as Son, as far as I'm concerned. She's a lighter, slightly chattier version of Ally Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club: earnest and to the point and charming.

All of the girls are worth watching, though, and I appreciate the fact that Nobuhiro Yamashita made sure to find actresses who could at least pass as musicians. The girls all play their own instruments, at least on screen—I haven't done enough digging yet to see if they also performed on the EP released, with music from the movie.

What I found kind of interesting was the subtitle job, at least in English. In other movies I've watched where more than one language was spoken, an attempt was made to differentiate between them, for the sake of the foreign audience. Not so here. Which isn't really a big deal, I guess, but there's a couple of parts where the essence of the scene is lost if you don't realize that the language you're hearing is Korean instead of Japanese. I guess Viz figured, "The only people interested in this movie are going to be able to tell the difference anyway."

For all of the frenzy inherent in the story of a thrown-together band pulling through last-minute rehearsals for an important gig, the pace of the movie itself is relaxed. People have complained that it moves too slowly, but I disagree. It never really drags or gets bogged down; I guess the best way I could describe it would be "dream-like." It has less of the tone of nervous anticipation for the future, and much more nostalgic recollection of the past. As if the story we're watching unfold is being presented through the framework of remembrance, and not current experience. It does help, though, that movie is quite visually striking and well-shot, as I mentioned before.

As for Korea and Koreans and their relationship with Japan, it's hard to tell. There's the odd scene or two where it seems like Yamashita was trying to present some larger message about Korean-Japanese reconciliation (Son doodles and dreams up the name of the band on the back of a flier for the Japanese-Korean culture exchange), but in the end it's really a movie about the music, and about a love of it. This is no gritty immigrant tale like Yôichi Sai's Blood and Bones or Fighter in the Wind; no drama like Go!. It's about how one outsider finds her place in a foreign country because of a shared love of music.

When you see Son rock out and belt out "Linda, Linda! Linda, Linda, Linda~!" with her classmates, what you feel inside is very much a warm fuzzy. You don't get the impression that she's been mindlessly assimilated into her new culture, without any room for Korean-ness. On the contrary, Son very much thinks and feels "in Korean"—her innermost thoughts and most heartfelt exclamations are in Korean, not in Japanese.

(Also a scene where the girls are shopping for dinner supplies, since the bass player is making them dinner: Son gleefully adds a whole bunch of garlic to the cart. I had a laugh.)

Maybe the larger point is simply that people should stop making a point; that there are things two cultures can love and have in common and that if we focus on those, the differences don't matter anymore.

No matter how you spin it sociologically, Linda Linda Linda is a solid movie with great acting and an awesome J-punk soundtrack. Definitely worth watching and (in my opinion) owning. I leave with you one of the songs covered by the movie's fictional band (since "The Blue Hearts" were a real and much-beloved Japanese punk band):



Owaranai Uta (Endless Song) by The Blue Hearts