Park Geun Hye's Downfall

Damn, y'all. What a time to not be in South Korea. This is the kind of thing I would have loved to talk about with my students, at least to hear their perspective.

When you're the first minority anything (or at least the first in an official capacity—black people were playing baseball before Jackie Robinson, and so on), the burden is on you to not fuck it up. Beyond that, the burden is on you to be unbelievably good at what you're doing. Twice as good for half the credit, as the expression goes.

As the US is on the brink of its first woman president (knock on wood, get out the vote, etc.), and as I left the country almost four years ago (where does the time go?!), it's a little shitty of me to sit high and mighty and talk about Korea's patriarchal society and its relationship with Park. From a distance, her presidency has looked a little troubled, but I don't know the details. But it's not the details I'm interested in at this point (or well, I am, but you know), but the ramifications.

The next woman to run for office in South Korea is going to have to contend with this shitshow. It doesn't matter which party she's in, or her career up to that point, or how long it's been—the pundits will all bring up Park Geun Hye. Whether it's a favorable or unfavorable comparison doesn't matter; thanks to this scandal, it'll be hard work to come out of the shadow of Park's legacy.

On Saying Goodbyes: Foreign vs Korean

As I leave the country on Friday(!!), I've been saying goodbye to a lot of people. I've never been very good at goodbyes, in that I am kind of resistant to any kind huge change at all ever, so it's been rough (but I'm glad I took a month off to do it). There is definitely a different attitude, on my end, between saying goodbye to my other foreign friends and to my Korean friends.

My foreign friends here are all ~*~free spirits~*~, as in they put stock in traveling and seeing the world and so forth. They know there's a couch in Stockholm for them; it's not goodbye, it's see you later, as the saying goes.

My Korean friends, though, are mostly of an age where that traveling is more or less behind them. They have already traveled and done all of that and now it's time to find a career. Either that or they're of the aggressive and ambitious type who intend to get into a career as soon as they can; forget taking time off to travel. Those goodbyes are goodbyes. They sting. And while I intend to come back to Korea, who knows if I will. Who knows if time won't diminish our friendships.

I've been singing a lot of this recently. It definitely makes it on to my "Korea: Round Two" soundtrack. It keeps me sane to insist to myself that we will meet again.

Division of Labor

INP has an interesting little write-up about Chuseok and men and food preparation, which got me to thinking about my own Busan (the Boy).

When we live together, the cooking gets divided more or less evenly, because the Boy is (praise be to the homemaking gods) competent in the kitchen. If anything, the Boy cooks dinner more often than I do. We each have our "signature" dishes, and whoever cooks is (well, partially) determined by what we feel like eating. Whoever doesn't cook does the dishes. Plus I gladly go on dessert-making binges that last us for weeks. Balance is maintained.

Of course, the Boy doesn't live in a country that expects its men to be the only breadwinners and works them 60 hours a week, so he has plenty of time and energy to learn how to cook. Also, I don't think his mom ever threatened to make a eunuch out of him if he set foot in the kitchen (a threat some of my male Korean acquaintances have gotten from their grandmothers wielding big fuck-off knives).

My running joke that if Sweden and the Boy don't work out, I'll come back to Korea, enter into a marriage-of-F6-visa-convenience, and open a 24 hour breakfast place. A marriage-of-visa-convenience only, note; the prospect of shifting from the kind of relationship I've had for approximately a million years to the kind I could expect with most Korean guys is a depressing one.

Olympic Fever

I am, at best, apathetic about the Olympics. All I can see is: wasted resources! Cheating! Glorification of jock pageantry! And so on.

Never mind rooting for America. Why should I root for America? I didn't choose to be an American; there's so much about America I find alienating and antithetical to my very core that it's no wonder I never get homesick.

Yet as an expat in a foreign country, I find that I actually give a shit about the Olympics. I finally get what the appeal is.


Last Friday, my friend/former coworker Jenny (Yeojoo) and I went, as we usually do on Fridays, for a couple of beers and some anju. The hof we were at had the Olympics on, of course, and it was the men's archery gold medal match between South Korea and Japan. Everyone's eyes were glued to the screen. The hof patrons had temporarily coalesced into an amoebic hivemind of patriotism. Despite being only one beer deep, I had to resist the urge to yell, "Dae han min guk!" and pound the table appropriately.

There was no question for me: I wanted South Korea to win. I wanted that smug Japanese bastard with his douchebag sunglasses to eat shit. Not just me; we. An entire nation. Every arrow shot was another blood pressure spike towards a heart attack. We cheered when a Japanese arrow strayed (relatively) far from the mark for a paltry eight points. We let out exasperated sighs when a Korean arrow missed the bull's eye by what looked to be a mere neutrino of displacement. The idea of victory became more than victory: it became almost a cosmic, mystical sign. A mark from the universe or some distant deity that this country was blessed above all nations.

I found myself getting frustrated with the Japanese archer. Why was he so good? Why did he insist on making it so difficult for South Korea to win? Why did he just get another bull's eye?

Every Korean bull's eye netted a loud cheer from the bar. When the last one secured victory, the hof exploded with joy. One particularly drunk individual, too young to be an ajosshi yet, yelled what we were all thinking:

"Dae han min guk!"

Why does South Korea elicit drunken groupthink cheers from me, but not the US? I've come up with a few reasons.

First and foremost, in a lot of respects, South Korea is very much an underdog. I guess you could argue they're not, but the pervasive attitude I've encountered, among adults and students alike, is that South Korea has a reputation for being weak.

"People think South Korea is easy country," one of my students explained. "But in 2018 [Ed note: when the winter games come to South Korea] we will strike back."

And really, what's more American than an underdog story?

There's also great good guy/bad guy drama with the Korea-Japan rivalry. Korean participation in international sports has a built-in compelling narrative. (Maybe I'd be more patriotic if the US were still in the midst of the Cold War?) If America loses, so what? But if South Korea loses to Japan? Oh shit. Wailing. Gnashing of teeth. Rending of garments.

And, finally, South Korea is a place I chose. Everything that happens here is imbued with that choice; it reflects back on me and, ultimately becomes an extension of myself. Likewise I also root for Sweden in the Olympics, because Sweden is yet another choice.

Tonight (KST) is the bronze medal match in men's soccer football between Korea and Japan. This shit just got real. I'm holing up in my apartment tonight and avoiding what will either the celebratory or dejected throngs of people. Either way, they're guaranteed to be three sheets to the wind.

Dae han min guk! South Korea, fighting!

Birthday!

I taught, I got a cake and happy birthdays from students and coworkers alike, I came home and cleaned in anticipation of a visitor tomorrow, and then the SCOTUS upheld Obamacare. With just an hour to go before midnight KST, so it happened on the calendar date of my birthday on both continents.

I don't like to get political here, but that last one pretty much made my day. I don't think I've been this stoked about American goings-on while in Korea since the Phils won game 1 in the World Series back in 2009. Incidentally, that was also a Thursday.

I don't think I'll drink quite so heavily this time around, but I will have a little makgeolli to celebrate. And some of my cake.

It's also another weird expat thing, how much more deeply you feel about news and goings-on at home while you're living abroad. I was at home when Obama won in 2008, which was AWESOME but also sort of like....yeah, okay, whatever. I don't know if it's the distance, or the shift in medium (I found out about Obamacare via Facebook), but something is different and you get so AMPED. You want to call and text and Skype all of the other American expats you know (either in rage or glee), you feel a particular surge of pride to represent your homeland even though you simultaneously know that most people around you don't know or care about it.

It's a good feeling.

Men Behaving Badly: A Call to Action

A few assorted things have gone wrong enough this week (goofed up some assignments for work, boyfriend apparently has some serious sleep apnea so now I worry about him DYING IN HIS SLEEP HALF THE WORLD AWAY FROM ME, dinner plans canceled) that I'm going to put on my Piss And Moan hat. However, I'm going to try to productively channel my frustration and take it above and beyond My Life Is So Hard into Have Some Constructive Criticism. Also, with the Piss And Moan hat come the Feminist goggles, so if that's not your thing, well, fair warning.

I like to think of my Feminist goggles as sexy cateye glasses.

The Incident

Last Saturday was kind of a whole parade of Men (And An Ajumma) Behaving Badly. You should bear in mind that because of said parade, this particular incident struck a rawer nerve than it might have otherwise. (In other words: psychologists would say I was "prepped" for FEMINIST HULK RAGE mode.) However, those other incidents are boring and personal, while this one has implications for way more people. Hence my sharing it (and my reaction) here.

It was a nice night out, so my friend Yousef¹ and I decided to take some air and enjoy a street performance by two high school guys with a guitar and bongos in Uijeongbu's attractive new downtown pedestrian mall. A small crowd had gathered, including two very American military looking guys who were working their way through an assortment of Cass and soju bottles (and who had already struck me as douchecanoes for entirely unrelated reasons²). After a while, they decided to try and get a couple of Korean girls to drink with them (and, in my cynical and somewhat misandrist viewpoint that particular night, to later sleep with them, but in the interest of fairness neither of them mentioned or indicated anything sexual, as far as I could hear).

When I say "Korean girls," I don't mean "Korean women in their 20s." I mean, "girls who are definitely still in high school." Yousef was convinced they were still middle schoolers. So yes, I mean actual, literal, pubescent girls. Girls with whom it would be sketchy and inappropriate for men in their twenties (if not older, though I am a poor judge of age) to be socializing with, especially with alcohol present.

Naturally the girls declined, and after some more back-and-forthing as best could be had considering neither party had a fluent common language, they got up and left. Not surprising, since it was around or after midnight. The men who had been pestering them immediately turned resentful. "Well, fuck you, then. Bitches."

Interlude: An Outside Resource

Now, take a break and have this Cracked.com article: Five Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women. It's not really directly relevant, but I think it does a lot to explain (to me at least) the venom and resentment in the end of that above exchange, in the deployment of  the words "fuck" and "bitches." I mean really, all you need to read is the first point alone and you don't need any more explanation than that.

Call To Action

So what am I getting at? Aside from "SHIT LIKE THIS PISSES ME OFF," I mean. Good question! Here are my theses:

1. I'd like to live in a world—in any country—where a woman's refusal to join a man for drinks and/or sexytimes would be met with nothing more the same silent chagrin I feel every time I try to speak passable Korean or introduce myself to a new co-worker. No resentment, no misdirected rage ("How dare she not want to hang out with me!"), no name-calling: just feeling that small sting of rejection or awkwardness and then moving on.

In some ways I already do live in that world because (drunk) men typically don't invite me for drinks and/or sexytimes because the women I drink with are invariably prettier than me, more outgoing than me, or both. But I'd like everyone to have that experience, regardless of personality or sex appeal.

2. I'd like to live in a Korea without people perpetuating the awful stereotypes about foreign men and their douchey, lecherous behavior. I get to dodge this one a bit by being a foreign woman (thereby making it harder for me to be a lecherous douche), but it still bugs me. It bugs me because it still kind of follows me around, and it bugs me more because I know plenty of foreign guys who don't play into those awful stereotypes—let's be real, most of you don't, even if I don't know you—and who knows what kind of crap they get nonetheless.

So, my call to action is this: if you're a guy, and you see a guy being a lecherous douche, tell him to knock it off. This goes doubly-so if you're a foreigner and so is the lecherous douche.

Justification

"But Katherine!" you cry. "Isn't that asking the menfolk to stand up for the weak, useless women? Or the white savior to stand up for the Eroticized Other? What kind of feminist are you? And telling people to go stick their noses in other people's business? Really?"  But hear me out.

First of all, I don't advocate White Knighting. Especially if it's for the sake of getting into someone else's pants. I'm definitely not endorsing the "Say honey, is this guy bothering you?" trope.³ Rather, my intent is that if we as a society or a people or a community or whatever word start etiquette-policing against scumbaggery, it'll become less viable an option.

Likewise I am not calling for an end to drunken bar-flirting or hookup culture. Whatever consenting grown-ups want to do with each other, awesome. But the above scenario was not two consenting adults, it was two belligerent and drunk adults on one side and two sober, clearly not interested  and clearly uncomfortable teenagers on the other.

Nor do I think women are inherently incapable of diffusing these situations on their own. We can be clever enough, gracious enough, classy enough, whatever enough, to be sure. Sometimes, though, other factors outside of sex and gender (in this case, there was a clear language barrier) make it hard to summon those traits. Other times, it's nice to know there's some kind of vocal and active support from the vast majority of men who aren't gross scumbags.

In a nutshell: my focus isn't on "saving the (non-white) woman," here. My focus is on, "Men receiving censure from fellow men." It's on: "Someone telling someone they're behaving poorly." I mean, how else do we learn how to function in society? A lot of things we intuit, sure, based on what seem to be inherent a priori rules: causing other things pain is bad, helping them is good, and so forth. But other things we need to be told; what's more, what one person can intuit another person needs an explicit explanation for.

And the truth is, sometimes it takes someone "of your kind" to meaningfully communicate that explanation. (Hence why Tim Wise, a white guy, is such an effective speaker against racism.) I'd like to think that if the guys in question here had enough straight, cisgendered men tell them, "Hey, I think you're being really creepy, why don't you lay off because she's clearly not interested and it's making you/the rest of us look really bad." every time they tried to drunkenly pick up disinterested women⁴, they'd get the idea. They'd stop. Maybe. ⁵

Of course we don't live in a perfect world and if anyone took this call to action as seriously as I think it should be taken, they'd no doubt end up in at least a few fights and other unfortunate scenarios. That's why I realize it's a pipe dream. But hey, a girl can dream, right?

---

1. Yousef is never a Man Behaving Badly. In case you were wondering.

2. "Freebird!"

3.  In fact, confronting these kinds of douchebags with the intent to show off to the lady how much of a Nice Guy you are is even worse than the initial scumbaggery, in my book.


4. I know I am making an assumption here about these guys'  consistent behavior over time, but I don't think it's so much of a stretch.


5. I realize that this is a method that deals only with surface level behaviors and not underlying thought patterns (ie treating the symptoms instead of the disease) but that's a discussion for another day.

A Thousand Times Yes

Since I can't comment over at Scroozle's post on "Why Stay in Korea?", a quick hit and run post here:

This is one of the things my family in Canada doesn't often think about. Chumming around with an international crowd opens a whole new perspective on things. Attending events or meet-ups means getting together with a hodgepodge crowd of different nationalities. Being part of an expat community is something “regular” folks don’t take into consideration, and it’s empowering in a sense. Traveling back to one’s native land all of a sudden you encounter people who have never ventured outside the confines of their culture and have no interest in doing so. It’s a little dull once you’ve lived the other life.

I had this same reaction when I went back home after my first contract in Korea: the peer group I used to hang out with seemed different, somehow. Less glamorous, less exciting. That transformation was really bizarre, and it's one of the reasons I know that I can never permanently live in the States. It's not really fault of their own, and I still like my peer group back home in the Valley...I just know I could never permanently settle in that location or with that crowd. And I'm sure they were tired of my stories of: "One time in Korea..."

Does anyone else know/understand what Scroozle and I are talking about?

The "Microaggressions" Article Everyone Has Been Talking About

Looks like this blog is going to be current for once!

So I have seen people everywhere linking to this article about microaggression and relationships between Japanese and foreigners and saying, "This is my life!" My reactions, in chronological order:

1. "This hasn't been my experience at all. Maybe I just haven't been here long enough."
2. "I wonder if shit like this would piss me off."
3. "This guy seems kind of bitter."

"This hasn't been my experience at all."

It just hasn't. It took me fourteen months to get a, "Wow, you use chopsticks really well," from somebody. The first time Jong-min and I had dinner together, he even made fun of my poor use of chopsticks: "It's like watching a deer learn to walk."  Sometimes my students refuse to believe I can eat spicy food until I demonstrate it by chowing down on some Shin Ramen without any water. The only microaggressive comment I ever get consistently is about my Korean, and my Korean accent. I could see years of that getting frustrating. As it is, it already makes me feel super guilty and self-conscious because my Korean is really quite awful (and should be better). For the moment, I just demur and insist that it isn't really. Maybe if I stayed another four years I'd start raging out and flipping tables.

The other difference is maybe it's a "Seoul versus everywhere else" thing. When I lived in Bundang, I got more comments about my Korean (and how great it was) in four months than I did for an entire year in Uijeongbu. People seemed to default to English far more often. My foreign friends who speak decent Korean talk about Koreans who insist on using English even after they've demonstrated their relative fluency in Korean, and those stories almost always seem to happen in Seoul. No one's ever amazed when I pick up chopsticks, dowse my bibimbap in gochujang, or order a drink at a bar.

The last reason I can identify for this is perhaps also related to the Korean company I keep: former Korean co-workers who earn their living working alongside foreigners and thus aren't really surprised by any of the things we can do; and Koreans who speak English with some level of fluency.

In conclusion: I haven't noticed microaggressive behavior in excess of what I consider "normal" or "tolerable." Certainly nothing like the kind of ridiculous nonsense minority groups in the US typically face. (For example, the "Where are you really from?" question.) This may be because of my location, because I haven't been here long enough, or because of the company I keep. I can see why in greater quantities it would be frustrating  and I don't fault anyone for being annoyed with this kind of behavior.

"I wonder if shit like this would piss me off."

Most of the time I would say I'm a mellow person. Yes, I have my blustery table-flipping rage-fueled moments (actually I have a lot) (especially after a bottle of soju), but they're gone as soon as they arrive. It's a rare thing for anger to sit and fester within me. Annakin Skywalker I am not. Something annoys me? I write an entry here, complain to a couple of friends, and then it's like it never happened. 

Honestly, and even though I understand on an intellectual level why they're annoying, these microaggressions that the author mentions seem really petty to me. I'd like to think that they wouldn't piss me off; not in the same way as my cell phone taking a massive dump and ruining my weekend sent me over the edge last Saturday, certainly. Do I have any evidence to believe that I would be able to brush my shoulders off indefinitely? I guess not, but I would honestly be surprised if such things got to me. I mean if I can spend 20-odd years being a fatty without it getting me down, I'm sure I could handle Koreans. But again—different people have different boundaries and different thresholds so I can certainly understand why it would bother someone. Or why it would even bother me eventually. Certainly I am as capable of self-delusion as the next person, if not more so.


"This guy seems kind of bitter."


I didn't drift to this thought until I saw a comment posted on Breda's Facebook after she linked to the article in question:

The guy who wrote that, "Debito Arudou" is a total asshole. He's racist, cynical, and somewhat of a hypocrite. He lives in Japan now, but all he seems to do is talk shit about the culture and wants the culture to be more like the US.

I recognize that this is a textbook ad hominem attack, but it does highlight the need for greater context. First of all, do other foreigners in Japan relate to this experience? Is he describing a typical situation, or is he exaggerating for the sake of making a point? The way foreigners in Korea seem to be reacting is: yes, I've had this experience too; no, it's not exaggerated.

I am not trying to condescend here, or deny that microaggressive behavior exists, or to imply that I am so lofty as to believe myself better than people who are frustrated by this. Microaggression is something that happens every time a mainstream culture encounters a minority culture, and every time it happens it's problematic and needs unpacking. It's good that this idea is entering the conversation. I think this might be a case where if enough A-list K-bloggers pick this up, the Korean netizens who also follow these blogs will take the time to read the article and think about the implications of their most well-meaning questions.

That all being said, I'm moving away from examining microaggression in and of itself and more towards people's reactions towards it and towards their expat lives in general. In the case of Arudou, what is the larger context of his attitude? If, indeed, all of his published writing is talking shit about Japanese culture and bemoaning the fact that it isn't more like the US (or Canada, or England, or wherever), that's kind of important.

I guess here comes the important part, folks. This is the point I want to drive home.

Living in a foreign country for a long time doesn't necessarily make you any more enlightened or sensitive to the culture, though it helps. An expression from one of my CELTA instructors, originally about teaching but really applicable to life in general:

"Some teachers have three years' experience. Other teachers have one year's experience three times over."

Never grow complacent. Never stop growing, asking, learning.

Because if you're expecting Korea to be just like home only with Asian window-dressing, you are going to be disappointed. You can have that expectation fresh off the boat, or you can have that expectation after you acquire linguistic fluency or start dating a Korean or start a family or after whatever milestone you set. It's sneaky like that.

When you start expecting that—when you start thinking Korea should be just like home, that people should magically know to act as if you're Korean, now that you've done X, Y, or Z—you're going to be frustrated. Is it fair? No, not really. But welcome to life. Ask immigrants, refugees, foreign adoptees, or anyone else who looks different from the mainstream back in your country of origin, because they can tell you all about it.

 Is it presumptuous and frustrating when a Korean assumes that because you're a foreigner, you're American? Or that you can't read Hangul? Or that you can't eat spicy food? Yes, of course. But step back and think about Korea's recent history for a minute: a violent civil war and a continued American/mostly white/"Western" military presence that has not always had an easy relationship with the populace (nor the most mature, educated, or responsible of members). You can't take every conversation with Mr. Kim on the street or Mr. Park the cab driver and put it in a vacuum without that context.

(Cab drivers who say they don't pick up people of color because "everyone knows they don't pay their fare" or children who squeal deliriously and shout, "Ugly! Ugly!" at images of African-American entertainers, I should note, are a separate issue entirely and not what I'm talking about here.)

Korea is changing. The more foreigners come to Korea and live and work and establish roots forge a presence, the more the annoying stereotypes about our chopstick prowess, culinary preferences, and countries of origin will change until they're no longer necessary. Every time you have a positive, friendly, and educational exchange with a Korean, that stereotype dies a little bit more; becomes, both for that individual and for the culture, a little less true. This doesn't give Koreans a pass, though. Understanding is a two-way street. Sometimes there'll be assholes who just don't get it, but they are hardly unique to Korea, nor are they in any way the norm or the majority. Remember that, and be a pimp. Brush your shoulders off.

Oh, and happy Children's Day. And Cinco de Mayo. I plan to celebrate both of them by drinking miniature tequila shots after I go to Camarata Music Company's performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah. It's at the Methodist church near City Hall in Seoul at 7:30. You should go, if you can. They're excellent.

Hanging Out at the 편의점: A Defense

The weather is finally warm enough for my favorite Korean past time: drinks and 안주 in front of the local 편의점. In my case, it's a FamilyMart.

Arguably, it's not the classiest of past times, but I think patronizing the 편의점 gets an unnecessarily bad rap. Perhaps I am too much of an apologist, as Jong-min insists I enjoy it more than Koreans do. If that's the case, my rebuttal is that obviously Koreans don't enjoy it enough, because there are plenty of reasons to loiter in front of the GS25 instead of throwing your money into the shadowy recesses of a bar!

1. Economics


It's just cheaper. I can go to a bar and pay six thousand won for one cocktail, or I can go the FamilyMart and use that six thousand won to get two bottles of soju and a bag of chips. One drink? Or fourteen drinks plus snacks?

2. Why waste the weather?


So many Korean bars are either basement affairs, or up on the third, fourth, etc floors without so much as a good view, never mind a balcony or outdoor dining and drinking area, it seems a waste to spend mild evening boxed inside after you've been cooped up in school or work for the better part of eight hours.

3. Save your lungs.


Korean smoking laws are not as strict as American ones. Any time I go to a bar, I have to be prepared to spend it around clouds of cigarette smoke. Nothing against my smoker friends (I have been known to indulge), but it seems as I age my asthma only gets worse. My lungs will not quickly forget a night in a smoky bar (though my liver certainly will!).

Of course, points 2 and 3 are irrelevant if you're patronizing the rare drinking establishment that's either rooftop or first floor. They do exist.

4. Narrow your focus.


At a bar, there's a lot going on: there's loud music, there's other patrons, there's dart games, there's the bartenders, and so on. It's a really overstimulating atmosphere. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and sometimes you need to be overstimulated. If I don't have a drinking buddy lined up but I still want to have a few beers, I head straight to the bar to get that need for stimulation out of my system.

But more often than not I'm with a friend or two. When that's the case, it's not stimulation (or a near-fatal BAC level) that I want, it's meaningful exchange. Drinking at the 편의점 has all the essentials (drinks, snacks) at a good price, without any frills that might detract from the experience.

5. Zoom out.


Granted, this is kind of the opposite of the above point, but in a nutshell: the people-watching is better outside the MiniStop than it is in the bar, most of the time. Instead of just the bartenders and the bar patrons, you can spy on anyone who happens to be walking by. Maybe this isn't important to everybody, but I guess I'm too much of a writer to pass up a good people-watching opportunity.

There are downsides, of course. Going for an all-out bender at a 편의점 is just in poor taste. They're often in residential areas; if you act like a hooligan in a bar, you're not really bothering anyone who hasn't, to some extent, agreed that they don't mind being bothered. If they are bothered, they can leave. But act like a hooligan outside the MiniStop? Best case scenario: you reinforce all of the negative stereotypes about foreign English teachers in Korea. Worst case: someone calls the police.

After all, the 편의점 is not for your "trying to recapture my college years" bender, it's for a quiet night out with friends.

Which do you prefer? A bar? A restaurant? A 편의점?

More On Being Fat In Korea: Shopping

As a reward for taking care of some stressful errands, I went to the "plus-sized" clothing store downtown. I'd dropped in a couple times before and found some cute leggings and tops. My goal today was a new pair of jeans and some spring t-shirts.

I only succeeded in one of those missions (the jeans). Definitely one of the more unrewarding of my shopping ventures.

If this were America, I could have gone to Target, Wal*Mart, or Sears, and found everything in a "mainstream" store, alongside the size 0s and 00s. Sure, the fancy boutique-type places are off-limits to my size 14 badonkadonk, but there are alternatives. There's even places like Fashion Bug, Lane Bryant, or Torrid, that cater nearly exclusively to fat chicks like me.

That's not quite the case here. I can comfortably buy t-shirts in department stores that are the equivalent of Target or Wal*Mart, and the occasional elastic-waisted bottom, but jeans, trousers, or fitted blouses are not happening. Like at home, the cutesy boutiques you find on almost every street are only so much fashion-critic window shopping for me. The only place I can buy any clothes beyond t-shirts is one called, creatively, "큰 옷." Literally: "Big Clothing." Not the most inspiring of names.

It's a small store, like all of these boutiques, but they manage to cram a lot of clothing in there. That's a plus. The sizes range from L to 5X. Also a plus. But that was it.

For whatever reason (finances? lack of opportunity? bad timing on my part?) the spring selection was simply not there. Everything was still fleece leggings and gray winter long-sleeve tops. Ninety percent of the color palette in tops and bottoms was gray, black, or brown. Not really the most cheerful, spring-like fashion choices. The first strike of the day. I ended up getting my spring t-shirts at a men's store in the Underground Market.

People complain a lot about vanity sizing in America and how it's nonsensical and confusing. It's even more so if you get clothes overseas, because all of a sudden I went from a 14/M/L/XL (depending on the company) to a XXXL. Kind of depressing, but more depressing for the fact that there are obviously women (and men) in America who are much larger than me. I couldn't imagine being a XXXL in the states and coming to Korea, stuck with trips down to Itaewon or Internet shopping, and then seeing signs that said "3X" in this store—what bitter, awful disappointment.*

She'd probably be a XXL.

Even when garments were outfitted with measurements (which almost all of the trousers and jeans were: another plus), they seem to correspond to hip measurements, or something else that's not your waist. Observe: I have a 35" waist; pants marked 38" would (sometimes) be impossible to get on. Yet the denim skirt I got labeled 38" fit about how I would expect a 38" skirt to fit my waist (it comes with a belt, which is why I got it). The jeans I went home with have an easy couple inches of give at the waist, but none at the hips/stomach. They're also too long (even in Korea, I'm short!) and just not as nice as the pair I had to retire.

The worst, though, was the dressing room. Again, props for even having one (a lot of times these kinds of stores won't let you try things on), but it was the most miserable fitting room experience of my clothes-shopping life. It was an ad-hoc affair, akin to the dressing rooms of a Salvation Army or Goodwill, but on a raised floor that creaked every time I shifted my weight. Silly little things like that are magnified infinitely when you are in your underwear, struggling with a pair of jeans that won't reach higher than your thighs, with only a flimsy plastic curtain without a latch or lock between you and the public.

Assuming you even get the pants on, there was no mirror to inspect your choice in the privacy of the dressing room: you had to step out from behind the curtain to see how you looked. Instead, on the walls there were ads for what was on sale (modeled on fairly conventionally-sized women, of course) and maternity clothes. As if the only reason anyone could have for being this size was being pregnant. (Though, to be fair, I don't think I've seen a lot of maternity sections/stores, so maybe this is the only place in the 'bu to get maternity clothes.)

That wasn't the worst part, though. The worst part was:

There was a scale right there in the dressing room.


What sadistic individual thought that would be a good idea? As a (fat) woman, to have that scale there in a moment of shame, stress, and self-loathing is just so much more salt in the wound. I am a badass and beyond giving shits about how much I weigh, but obviously not everyone is a badass. As soon as I saw that scale I decided that I was done shopping there for the day.

So now I'm torn: I haven't really been frustrated or had issues shopping here before (well, one kind of rude sales lady, but just one time), but this experience was so unpleasant that I'm afraid it means the store is on its way down/out; either that, or it was simply never what I wanted it to be. Do I keep shopping at 큰옷, or hold out for Itaewon/Dongdaemun?  Or go the rest of my contract without new clothes? (Obvious answer is: go through the rest of the contract without clothes-shopping, because I don't really need anything. Hopefully I won't need any more retail therapy before November.)



*Aside: now, I realize that Americans are just plain bigger than Koreans, and that as a country we have higher rates of obesity; a quick stroll between Uijeongbu and Hoeryong stations will be enough to tell you that. It's rare (though not unheard of) for me to see a Korean woman my size, let alone even bigger. I'm not calling for a radical readjustment of the clothing sizes in South Korea, merely observing. As for the Korean women my size, or larger (they do exist), I can't imagine where they shop: places like this store? GMarket? Or do they make things themselves?

How to Be a Great Teacher

I'm editing a document for my boss at the moment. It's a speech her son wrote for the high school English speech contest, about how to be a good teacher. His points are:

1. Be funny.
2. Put effort into class preparations.
3. Demonstrate your expertise (ie actually know what you're talking about).

Thinking back to my CELTA days, we had to rank a certain number of teacher characteristics from most important to least important. Then we compared our list to a list generated by CELTA students (though I wasn't sure if it was every CELTA student ever, or just ones that had studied at the Institut Britannico). Kindness was the top one, but unfortunately I can't remember the other two. I do remember, however, that I ranked "demonstrates considerable knowledge of the subject they're teaching" (or whatever) pretty high, and that was down near the bottom of the list compiled by the students. That baffled me: I don't care about nice if one teacher is a bitch who has her shit together and another is a nice guy who doesn't know what the hell's going on. This may be why my favorite teachers were almost always the ones who were universally loathed for being boring or mean: I could recognize that they knew what they were talking about. Likewise, if it was clear to me you didn't have your act together or had some serious intellectual honesty/cognitive dissonance issues, I don't care a jot if you're nice or mean or the Queen of England.

Or, as this anonymous Korean high school author put it:

That is to say, as teachers are people who give us information we didn’t know, providing more thorough explanations and showing that they are fully ready to teach us can make the students admire them.

It's interesting to see how similar my answers are to his, and how different ours are from the CELTA list.

What do you think makes a great teacher?

Sexism, Korean Culture, and White Whine

This is old news, first of all (the blog post that inspired me to write this is from early November). But sexism is an issue that comes up a lot when foreigners complain about Korea and so blogging about it is always relevant, I think.

Second of all, this is going to be kind of scatter shot, so bear with me. To help navigate, I've organized my thoughts into sections.

How to Properly Complain About Sexism

Let me be clear: I think a lot of aspects of Korean culture are sexist. What gets left out of the discussion (usually populated by white American males) is that America is sexist, too. I have no hard data (or even anecdata) about this, but rather I will simply say this: if you are "outraged" at how Korean society treats women but have never given a second thought to women's status in American society, you are (as we say on the Intarbutts) "doin it rong."

I've seen this point come up vis-à-vis religion a lot, too—more specifically, about Islam. And again, there are parts of Islamic culture that are sexist. There is no doubt. But to say, "I don't like Islam because of how they treat their women," and then brush off instances of sexism within your own non-Islamic culture is not how you do feminism, y'all. That's how you use feminism to justify racism. That is how you use feminism to justify your own personal beef with religion. In short, that's how you fail at feminism and it happens in our awesome enlightened white culture all the fucking time, most recently with the "Elevatorgate" kerfuffle between basically "Team Richard Dawkins" and "Team Rebecca Watson."

So, if you are a Western guy blogging about how Korea is soooo sexist and how they could really learn a lesson from Western culture, kindly shut the fuck up.

In short, I am prefacing this essay with the huge and bold and super important admission that Korea is not the only sexist country in the world. Not by a large margin. Not even the only sexist "developed"/"First World"/whatever country. My own home country fails at feminism pretty hard, too, and I think overall the gap between the two countries is negligible at best, because it's give and take. Horrible abortion laws in Korea? Well, they also have cheap and readily available over-the-counter birth control.

You see my point.

Basically, I call sexist bullshit where I see it: US, Korea, the moon, whatever. I just usually keep my hairy-legged man-hating soapboxing off of here because it's not often relevant to Korea and I'd like this blog to be, for the most part, Korea-relevant.

Being the Fattest Girl in the Jjimjilbang

This time, the hairy-legged man-hating is Korea-relevant. Here is what is prompting me to write:  My Manifesto: Fat, Health, Why Don't You Have a Boyfriend? and Korean Culture, from ThingsEveWouldDo.

The teal deer version is that after fourteen successful (minus body-shaming comments and unwanted inquiries about marital status) months at a hagwon, Eve was told she "must" lose weight. She refused, and ultimately resigned because her principal went apeshit about it and presumably because fourteen months of your boss commenting negatively about your body is going to grind you down.

I had actually talked about exactly this kind of scenario in the form of a hypothetical with Jong-min before I returned to Korea and started at Cassandra. I was concerned that the economic upgrade from Uijeongbu (which, while looking very upwardly mobile these days, is still not as posh as Bundang) would mean greater scrutiny placed upon my personal appearance.

Let me also backtrack and remind y'all that I'm a bit of a chubster. Also, for any new readers: here, it's me! For my family and friends: look, I'm at a famous temple!

This is not an attempt at compliment-fishing or female neurotic body-hatred: it's just fact. My body does all kinds of awesome things for me and I love it for that. I'm pretty healthy overall and I rarely get sick because my immune system is baller. As far as bodies go, I've done all right for myself, and my boyfriend really likes it too (not that a body's worth should be based on whether or not a man finds it attractive!). I can go running on a regular basis (three days a week) without any pain or discomfort, I can take long walks on the mountains on the quickly-warming weekends and enjoy the beautiful nature out here in Uijeongbu.

So no "but you're not fat!" or "you're not THAT fat" or "it's just a bad picture" comments, or assumptions that I hate my body. That's not true, and that's not the point. As for the "lose some weight, porker" comments: whatever. Haters to the left.

Naturally, I was worried about the kind of situation that Eve outlined above coming to a head at Cassandra, despite not experiencing a single weight-related workplace issue at Sherlock. My kneejerk, loudmouthed American feminist reaction would be to flip some tables and give them the finger, but I knew that wouldn't get me anywhere. I asked Jong-min what he thought a reasonable reaction would be to such a request.

"If that happens, just look a little sad and say, 'I'm trying,' and they'll feel bad and probably leave you alone." 

As it turned out, I had no reason to worry. Cassandra would turn out to be a miserable place to work for numerous other reasons, but body-shaming was not one of them. As I mentioned in my comment on Eve's blog, I have worked at three different hagwons now and not a one has made my body or appearance in any way a professional issue. Sometimes students say something, but it's not all that often and they're kids. Kids have a notoriously poor filter between brain and mouth. This was the most "dramatic" incident, which happened with one of my kindergarten classes at Cassandra.

Jaymon: "Teacher, you are very big!"
Me: "No, I'm not! I'm very short!"
Jaymon: "No, I mean you are fat!"
Me: "Is that a problem? Am I a bad person?"
Jaymon: *thinking about it* "No..."

Me: "Okay then!"

And he never brought it up again. Though, I did also leave like six weeks later so maybe it would have continued to be an issue—but I doubt that.

That was it. That was the sum total of my experience of professional fat-shaming in Korea.

The Manifesto Itself, and "Korean Culture"

So when Eve posted her story and got responses from SMOE, other bloggers, and other Koreans that getting hounded about her weight and marital status was just "Korean culture" and that she should just shut up and take it, I went into Feminist Hulk Rage mode. When people linked to her as an example of how this was an example of how Korea is "omg so sexist," I went into Cork Up the White Whine mode.

First, such reactions are bullshit because Eve's experience totally fucking isn't Korean culture. Not for Western women, anyway. Like I said, if professional body-shaming were part of "Korean culture" for Western women here, I would almost certainly have experienced it by now. I would have heard of it more often by now. And while my friends and I trade stories of "awful shit our students say" and it sometimes comes up, it has never been a professional issue.  I will admit, though, that maybe I've been lucky. Maybe my friends have been lucky. 

Don't get me wrong. There are loads of other things you can use to support the "Korean working culture can be really sexist" thesis, definitely: sexist remarks and awkward personal questions at job interviews, ageism in hiring, disproportionate numbers of layoffs falling on female employees, a rather low and shatter-proof glass ceiling. These are all widespread, institutionalized things that are awful and should change. These are most certainly sexist aspects of Korean culture. 

Eve's experience was not a result of Korean culture, but the result of one jackass. That jackass may have been informed and influenced by Korean culture, sure, but the fact that neither I nor my heavier female teacher friends here have experienced major professional issues because of our size is a pretty strong indicator that his behavior is far from institutionalized and condoned. Lest you forget, the US has its fair share of douchebag body-shaming bosses. Japan was looking at a program to make waist measurements mandatory for employees and to punish employees above a certain threshold just a few months ago. A culture isn't sexist because you hear about one $cultural_member_douchebag, it's sexist when wide-scale sexist practices are the norm within that culture. Taking it that way treads dangerously close to the "White Whine" category.

The second reason they're bullshit is that even if it were "Korean culture," neither Eve nor a Korean woman should ever be subject to body-shaming and body-policing from an employer. Ever. It's that fucking simple.

Closing Words

Maybe Eve could have handled it in a more "Korean" way (see Jong-min's suggestion). Maybe they weren't happy with her as a teacher and were looking for a way to pressure her out without firing her outright. Maybe Eve's version of the story is unfair and there was more going on than she told. Even if these things were true, it doesn't matter. How people react to a story and what they say about it can often be more important than the story (and its truth value) itself. While I think I may have reacted to that situation differently than Eve, I can't know for sure. I'm just glad she successfully got herself out of what sounded like a very poisonous place, and I can only hope her former principal will either be removed from his position or be less of a jackass in the future.

How to Improve Your "외dar": Some Preliminary Thoughts

I'm about two months late to the bandwagon, but here, have this post on "외dar."

I read other K-blogs here and there, but a lot of times I cannot be arsed because the writing is twee as fuck, or there's little to no actual content involved. Sometimes both.

This particular article at least avoids being twee but I think Mr. Boothe really missed out on a chance to start an actual discussion or at least impart some useful knowledge by just dropping the term "외dar" out there without any context. Okay, we should improve our 외dar, but how? What should ping? What has pinged yours? Because otherwise it's just like high school all over again: avoiding the weird kids just because they're weird. (More on that in a second...maybe.)

I do agree that there are foreigners over here who immediately (or even after a time) ping on my 외dar as "whoa, this guy is bad news, stay away," yet they fail to really register with other people (usually Koreans but other foreigners as well) as a bad idea. Is it just different cultural norms? Is it, as Michael suggests, Koreans trying extra hard to be inclusive? Is it because foreigners act differently around other foreigners than they do around Koreans? It's probably all three.

Thinking back to the few "weirdos"/unsavory types I've met in Korea, I've come up with things that I believe should ping on your 외dar.

I should preface this by saying I tend to prefer avoid douchebags and just generally immature people, not necessarily people who are just "weird." I'm awkward as fuck most times (or at least I feel like I am) so I like hanging out with weird people because they probably won't notice or give a shit if I'm awkward. Which means I should rephrase: these are things that ping on my 외dar. Your mileage may vary.

Danger, Will Robinson!: The Checklist

1. An obsession with finding a Korean girl/boyfriend.
2. Related to the above, saying, "Korean girls/women..." or "Korean guys/men..." a lot.
3. Spending an inordinate amount of time in Itaewon.
4. Likewise, spending an inordinate amount of time in Hongdae.
5. Probably Apgujeong, too, but I haven't run into this personally.
6. Wide-eyed, naive wonderment at the marvel that is South Korea that lasts for more than their first two months.

Any other traits in foreigners that raise your eyebrows?

I React to Western Adults Reacting to Western Kids Reacting to K-pop

I don't know about elsewhere on the Internet, but LiveJournal's "Oh No They Didn't" community, at least, is having a massive hatefest over "Kids React to K-pop."  My reactions are entirely based on how the K-pop fans at ONTD are taking it, but if  Roboseyo is to be believed (which I think he is), the entire K-pop army has similarly imploded at the sight of it.

Here's the video, it's gone down periodically but hopefully now it's up for good:

If it goes down again, the Cliff's Notes version is: comedians show kids videos of things, film their reactions, edit them together, and put it on the Internet.  This particular instance was kids reacting to K-pop: Girls' Generation, Super Junior, and 2NE1 in particular.  And at first blush, I thought it was funny.  Shit, I still DO think it's funny (sometimes the kids are a little too performative, but hey, they're kids).

On the one hand, I try to think about stuff like this.  And certainly, upon reflection, I realized that a bunch of white kids mugging up their incomprehension at Korean pop music for the camera is kind of...unfortunate.  But they're kids, and they're being cajoled into being funny because presumably they know this is going on a video for YouTube for millions of people to watch.  Everyone is an attention whore at some level, but especially little kids.

Instead, as only one commentor on ONTD (in ten pages of comments) pointed out, we should really be thinking about the adults who picked the videos: if they picked certain videos hoping for a specific effect, if they goaded the kids off-camera, and so forth.  They're the ones creating and perpetuating the white hegemony, and so on.  But no, everyone on ONTD immediately goes on their "herp this is why I'm child-free" rants because they enjoy having the license to be bitter about kids, instead of taking a moment to consider the man behind the curtain (or video camera, as it were).

And finally, I love all the butthurt from the K-pop fans about how "the music's really good they don't know what they're missing waaaaaaaah"  Seriously? Seriously?  There are great Korean musicians and talents, but trying to argue that they're coming out of the child abuse factory that is JYP (or whatever other company) is so ridiculous I don't know where to begin. If anything, talent emerges in spite of it, not because of it.

And child abuse isn't an exaggeration, either.  Limiting teenage (read as: still growing) girls who do intense bouts of cardio every day to just 1200 calories?  Abusive and potentially metabolically damaging.  Bear in mind, K-pop groups train for years before they ever even drop a single, and so many debut when they're just sixteen or seventeen years old, or younger. That means training at thirteen, fourteen, fifteen.  Shit like that can fuck up your body for life. Not to mention the long and exploitative contracts, exhaustive touring schedules, and so forth.  But K-pop fans like to conveniently ignore that and just continue to squeal about how CL is just so ~fierce~.   DANCE MONKEY DANCE.  ENTERTAIN ME.

Embracing K-pop but rejecting American pop  just because the latter is ~Korean~ and therefore ~exotic~ is nothing more than a bunch of bullshit exoticizing/eroticizing the Other.  Liking something just because it's Korean isn't really a whole lot better than disliking something because it's Korean.   And guess what?  If you haven't seen it before, K-pop is going to look really fucking bizarre.  It still looks bizarre to me (even if I get the larger cultural framework in which it fits), because I didn't grow up with it for twenty-odd years, but I get where it fits in the scheme of things.

What I also notice about Koreaboos/weeaboos is that there's a certain segment (not all of them, by any stretch) that only catches the stuff that floats the top—in other words, the bands and songs the industries really push to make internationally.  It's like they're only interested in a shallow, surface-level interaction with another culture; it never occurs to them that Korea or Japan would be capable of producing any kind of indie music scene. I'm not trying to play the hipster card, here ("I like Neon Bunny, but you've probably never heard of her.") but rather pointing out that it takes a minimal amount of digging to find some really great treasures (thanks, IndiefulROK!).  Like me saying, "Oh, I really like Korean movies!" having only seen Oldboy and The Host.  "The Housemaid? No, never heard of it."

I bet if you had kids react to this video from Linus' Blanket, there'd be a lot less cultural befuddlement and all of the bullshit Koreaboos wouldn't know what the hell this was.  Here, have a palate cleanser.

Un-Korean-ness and White Whine

I originally wanted to call this entry title, "Eat a Dick, Chris."  I panned that for obvious reasons.  The next title was going to be, "Let Me Tell You All What It's Like, Being Male, Middle-Class, and White," but that's kind of long. Fortunately, after my knee jerk reaction of "eat a dick," I have moved on. Now, I  just hope Chris was just having a bad day when he wrote up his bit of white whine about embracing his un-korean-ness, and I hope he feels better now.  Because to that Chris, in that moment of time, I still say, "eat a dick."

Before we go any further, I feel that this is an incredibly appropriate soundtrack.  Facebook won't embed any goddamn videos ever, so just read this on my blog at the link here.  I'm also posting the NSFW version with all of the swear words because I'm ~edgy~ like that.  If ever you listened to a song I've posted here, listen to this one.  Never has a song been more apropos.

Korea is not a perfect place.  I don't need to enumerate the many ways in which it is not perfect because that's not my point.  My point is that when white "waygooks" (good Christ, how much do I hate that word, especially in anglicized form?) suddenly complain about racial and ethnic other-ness, about not being able to integrate, about being judged and presumed about based on their race, I have one and only one response: eat a dick.

Never mind the UNSPEAKABLE FUCKING HILARITY of someone from a pretty privileged class complaining about being treated differently because he's a minority, let's just talk about the big reason all of us teachers are here in the first place, the giant elephant in the room when it comes to our lives as teachers.  Okay, yeah, we all love teaching kids or molding minds or kimchi or whatever, but the biggest, fattest reason of them all is

MONEY.

Of course there are people who are just so unfit to teach that no amount of money would make life worth it for them.  And there are people who are glad to be doing the teaching no matter where they are or what they were being paid, because they're saints.  There are people who came for the money but stay now because they have adapted well to the country, put down roots here and have (gasp!) integrated into society. But if you take a quick survey of foreign teachers here, you'd probably find that the vast majority are relatively fresh out of school and in need of a job and this was easier/more exotic/better-paying than back at home.  At some point, it was indeed about the Benjamins.  (Or the Shin Saim-dongs, rather.)

Because of this, we get paid better than the typical Korean does, too—and they're often on their own about the housing, plus the workload-to-payscale ratio from native speaker teachers to Korean teachers is (usually) ridiculous.  Who among us has the typical Korean work schedule?  Who among us has the typical Korean salary? What Korean enjoys the liberty of being able to quit a too-demanding, too-miserable job because their particular demographic is just SO UTTERLY IN DEMAND?

It's not quite an exploitative system, but it's damned close.  Roboseyo (I think?) mentioned a while ago that the overall attitude of English teachers in Korea is a pretty mercenary one and I'd generally agree with that assessment.  Whether it applies to Chris, I don't know, I haven't met him personally (and however much of a person's blog you read, you can never get the full picture).  But to ask a culture to embrace you with open arms (which seems to mean giving you a magical foreigner bubble through which no ajosshis can shove you or ajummas can elbow you, even like they do to other Koreans; through which no biographical details or "typical" foreigner questions can be put to you; through which only the "acceptable" Koreans can pass) while also (presumably) demanding that they pay you a relatively handsome salary and not work you too hard for it? To also have the luxury of never needing to learn even the most basic bits of the language to survive? Jesus Christ, did you also want the happy ending?  Maybe you work ten hour days, six days a week (and spend your Sundays at the Korean hagwon), Chris, but I'm going to go ahead and doubt that.

And yes, I get that sometimes people have bad days, or that sometimes they need to vent, and that no one is perfect.  I have also been an entitled foreigner in Korea, more often than I'd care to remember or admit: I read back on earlier entries and cringe. It's necessary to recognize your entitlement, though, and to see how it affects your attitude towards Korea and Koreans.  For people like, say, Roboseyo, The Grand Narrative, I'm No Picasso, and so on—the "big names" of the K-blog network, you know who you/they are—there is an especial burden/expectation of you to think twice before you post this kind of white whine.  It reflects poorly on other foreigners and it reflects poorly on you, as well.  (I mean, not to beat a dead horse, but mocking Koreans' crappy English accents?  Really?  Especially as an English teacher, that's poor form.)

Instead of closing with another dick joke, I'm just going to say: I hope you feel better, Chris.  I hope writing and posting that was cathartic.  I also hope that next time you're tempted to vent your frustrations, you either take a critical look at them and realize what kind of impression you're giving, or you find another, much less public (and much more anonymous) space to air them out.   What you choose to do with your blog is your own business, of course—I'm a true 'murican at heart and no one but you should dictate what you say in your own space on the Internet—but I think we all expected a little bit better from you.

Korea, China, and Arirang

Recently, China decided to put the Korean folk song Arirang on their Heritage List. Specifically, they put a particular version sung by ethnic Koreans in Yanbian Prefecture, Jilin Province.

Now, for some background: China has a population of about 1.4 billion. Two million of that number are the ethnic Koreans living in China. About half of them live in Yanbian Prefecture in Jilin province in northeastern China. A visual reference:




It's an autonomous prefecture specifically because of the high number of "joseonjok" (Chinese people of Korean descent), as with other parts of the country where any of China's 56 recognized minority groups live in dense populations. I don't have sources on this, but I assume many of them are North Koreans who fled when they had the chance. A significant portion of China's landmass is actually taken up by these autonomous prefectures/regions/etc:


All that green out in the northwest is Chinese Muslim territory.

The problem with these "autonomous prefectures" is that despite the name, they enjoy something of a second-class status in terms of legislature and so forth; they are actually more restricted than non-autonomous prefectures. You'll notice that Tibet is one of those autonomous regions. So autonomous is actually not-really autonomous. Apparently every day is opposite day in the PRC.


In case you didn't know which one was Tibet, I'm saving you the embarrassment of having to look it up. You're welcome.

This is all to say: China may or may not respect the rights, desires, and wishes of the joseonjok living within its borders. It's safe to say joseonjok probably get the short end of the stick. And they don't even get the fringe benefit of American celebrities ignorantly trying to champion their cause using the situation to make themselves out to be better than everyone else maybe knowing where they are on a map knowing that they exist!


Free Tibet, free Mandela, free Mumia. Whatever.


China has listed other distinctly Korean things on their "Intangible Cultural Assets" list. Quoting from the English version of the Chosun Ilbo:

Earlier, China had designated as its own cultural heritage the traditional Korean feast celebrating one's 60th birthday, traditional Korean wedding ceremony, the traditional Korean dress hanbok and a farmer's dance, saying they are practiced by ethnic Korean in northeastern China.

Not Chinese.

Unfortunately, the news trail is difficult to follow beyond the superficial responses of REACTIONARY KOREAN RAGE, so I don't trust that everything coming to the top is unbiased. Unsubstantiated rumors are that China wants to make a push to put (this version of) Arirang on the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List as well—for China. There's shadowy Internet talk about how this is related to China's Northeast Project and possible plans to absorb North Korea.* I can't find anything to back this up, so at the moment I'll give China the benefit of the doubt. All I know for certain is that China has included a bunch of Korean stuff on its list of intangible cultural assets already (presumably in a totally domestic, "for-our-use-only" way), and has now gone and added a version of Arirang to the list.

Roboseyo (a blog worth reading whether or not there's controversy) asserts: "Nobody owns Arirang."

The Korean begs to differ.

Nonetheless, Roboseyo stands by his point. In a four-part series, no less.

So. Does China have any claim to ownership of Arirang? In any capacity? What about hanboks or farmer dances or 60th birthdays? Who wins, Roboseyo or The Korean?

Well, first of all, what the heck is Arirang?

Here is the hotly-contested Arirang. Or well, not necessarily the specific version currently under contention. I don't think this is the version China intends to lay claim to, but I'm also not sure if this is "the" version of Arirang (that is, the Seoul version; the most popular one).



You can look on YouTube and find hundreds more.

It is old. The all-knowing Wiki says the "standard" version of Arirang is about 600 years old, though it also says there are other folk versions that are even older. Importantly: it is old. It is old and it is a song every Korean knows and probably loves—or at least associates with being Korean, with their country, with their family, with the assorted accomplishments and achievements of their people, with their history that stretches back for thousands of years.

I think North Americans have a tough time understanding things that are just so old. We absolutely have culture, and we have songs and traditions and celebrations that are American (or Canadian) as much as there are are songs and traditions and celebrations that are Korean.

But at the same time, they are young practices. And because of their youth they are inherently plastic, flexible, transnational. I heard a performance of Handel's Messiah and Irving Berlin's White Christmas by a Tico choir while I lived in Costa Rica. I wasn't outraged at the theft of my American/anglophone culture; just mildly amused at a bunch of Ticos singing about their desire for a white Christmas in a tropical climate. The closest thing I ever came to cultural theft outrage was the recent cellphone commercial that used images of Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, and the fucking Greensboro riots to sell their product—but that was race rage, not cultural theft rage. I don't think there's a single American cultural item at whose cultural appropriation I would be utterly and grossly offended. America's culture has all come from somewhere else to begin with, after all.

Part of the reason for this is that those cultural items are practices that have come into fruition in a relatively globalized age and place: the great composers of Europe all had news of what the others doing and developing, even if not instantaneously; Shakespeare set many of his plays in locales very far from England. There was no radio, no TV, and little contact with the outside international world in Korea when Arirang was establishing its hold over the Korean mindshare. It developed in an extremely Korean setting and has continued to be associated with "being Korean."


So basically wait 600 years and Americans of the future will be listing this among their "Intangible Cultural Assets".

I think we also have a tough time understanding what it's like to be a minority culture. (Minorities within the US or Canada probably get it, at least a little bit better.) It's kind of easy to roll your eyes and scoff about China's claim on Arirang, or even to respectfully and intelligently argue for it, when you've never experienced your identity being the non-normative one; when you've never been a colonized people, or a citizen of a country forcibly divided in half exclusively for the benefit of other outside powers. I'm not trying to play the race card here, but my point is that if a significant number of Koreans are pissed off about this, there might actually be a good reason to be pissed off. And as a white guy from a relatively privileged nation, telling them they shouldn't be comes off as a wee bit patronizing.

(If you couldn't tell, I tend to fall more in line with The Korean's argument than Roboseyo's.)

There are a few factors, however, that mitigate things, some of which Roboseyo already outlined so I'll try not to repeat them:

1. Is China listing Arirang as a whole, or only the Janbian variant thereof?
2. Are they listing it domestically, or pushing for an international recognition of (one particular version of) Arirang as Chinese?
3. Are they doing this to make amends with the joseonjok in China, or for less altruistic reasons?
4. Are they doing anything else to foster better relationships with the joseonjok?

I think those go a long way towards deciding if China's actions are laudable, neutral, or reprehensible. My own take on it:

On the face of it, China's attempt to list anything as distinctly Korean as Arirang** in their own list of Intangible Cultural Assets smacks of hubris. Especially when you consider the attitude China has towards contemporary international IP laws (to which I think this is an analogous situation), this can only make China look bad.

That said, I do think China has a claim on any traditions that have arisen among joseonjok people since their move from the Korean peninsula. Culture doesn't appear in a vacuum, nor does it change or adapt in one. No doubt there are plenty of "Intangible Cultural Assets" that belong distinctly and uniquely to Chinese people of Korean descent, and the credit for those assets goes just as much to their Chinese environment as it does to their Korean heritage.

Plus, if China is doing this as a step to recognize the value of their Korean citizens, and to assign a value of worth and respect to the native culture of their immigrant/minority groups, then this should be encouraged. Presumably it could open up the door to Yanbian and the other autonomous prefectures actually becoming autonomous. Not opposite day, PRC-style "autonomous." This is good, and this is a case where I think it would be worth Koreans to bite their lip and deal with it.

It's my own estimation that this take is a bit too Pollyanna, however. I admit I may be buying into the modern-day "Yellow Peril" hype that gets propagated around the US ("The Chinese own us! Evil Commies!") but the current Chinese government doesn't really do a whole lot of things that are in any way commendable. Why they would suddenly reverse SOP on this particular topic?

But where does Arirang specifically fit in with all of this? If it is significantly different than the versions of Arirang that are well-known on the peninsula (above and below the 38th, by the way), then can China still lay claim to it? Or is it simply just too Korean?

I think there's a simple litmus test you can apply in this situation. When Korean people in China sing Arirang, do they think, "Wow, I feel so Chinese right now!"? When Irish immigrants, and second- and third-generation Irish in the US sang Black is the Color of my True Love's Hair, did they think, "Wow, I feel so American right now!"? Like Roboseyo asserts, the people who practice the culture should be in charge of labeling and preserving it, not governments.


(Of course all this discussion of "Who owns Arirang?" is so much less important than doing what we can to help the DPRK normalize, excise the corrupt regime, and save its people. That goes without saying. But culture is still important!)








*Why would one want to absorb one of the most backwards, bankrupt, chaotic countries in the world? Two reasons. One, upon total regime failure and national collapse, the flood of DPRK refugees into China would be extremely disruptive, and quietly absorbing the country minimizes that damage (or even turns it into an advantage: lots of cheap, educated labor!). Two, North Korea has vast mineral resources. Vast as in, valued in the trillions of US dollars (give or take, obviously it's hard to get solid data). They just lack the means and manpower to extract it due to, you know, starving to death.

**I know that the burden of proof is on me to demonstrate how Arirang is "distinctly Korean" but I don't feel like going into that right now. My proof is this: most Koreans feel that it is part of their culture as Koreans (as opposed to part of their culture as Asians), therefore it's something uniquely Korean.

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!

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.

Fat Chick Rock: Piggy Dolls

A new girl group has surfaced during my absence from Korea. This, in itself, is not newsworthy. New musical groups pop up like mushrooms over there, at a breakneck speed that mirrors the bewildering frenzy that is life in South Korea.

This one is newsworthy because they're fat. Or they're fat by Korean standards. And this is the number one gimmick their label is pushing. What label it is, I'm not sure, as it's not one of the big K-pop powerhouse labels (YG, SM, and probably the granddaddy of them all, JYP); it's merely being described as "independent." One website lists their manager as "위닝인사이트".

There is so much ground to cover, I don't know where to begin. So, let's start at the beginning.



(Left to right: Park Ji-eun, Kim Min-sun, Lee Ji-yeon)

Yes, their name is Piggy Dolls. And yes, the name of their debut "mini-album" (only five tracks long) is Piggy Style. (Reference to Will Smith's Big Willie Style? "Doggy style"? Pussycat Dolls? None of the above? Who knows. I don't!)

The whole premise is: "Look at these fat girls sing!" One line that keeps getting bandied about everywhere is that their combined weight is over 200 kg. That's about 441 pounds. For three people, that's an average weight of 147 pounds / 66.7 kilos. I would like to say, first and foremost, how cracked it is to reduce three talented women to, and sell them on the basis of, numbers. I cannot stress that enough. Who cares how much they weigh? Why doesn't anyone give a flying fart about SNSD's combined weight? Oh, right, because they're all skinny. It's only fat people that need to be conceptualized strictly in terms of numbers.

But even then, look at those numbers. 147 pounds is enough to merit the nickname "Piggy"?! If that sounds messed up, that's because it is. Korean society is perhaps more enamored with a slim physique than the US, given that their expectations of celebrities and pop idols are generally much stricter and narrower. Most female pop stars are underweight to one degree or another, surviving on a strict 1500 kcal / day regimen. A 20-year-old, 5'5" and 147 pound girl has a basal metabolic rate of 1498 kcal / day. Now, if this girl is also a K-pop sensation, then she's going to have loads of intense dance routines to practice and perform—like daily, hours-long aerobics classes on a fairly regular basis. On a schedule like that, you either lose your weight or your mind.

When you take into consideration that Kim Min-sun also clearly weighs more than the two other girls, that becomes even more bizarro-land. The maths suggest that Park and Lee weigh less than 147 pounds. It's great to see pop stars with figures like (albeit young) adults instead of 12 year old boys—singers who look like real people—but on the other hand, I cringe at associating "realness" and normality of figure with being a "piggy doll." It's not the name "Piggy Dolls" in and of itself that bothers me (unlike Mixtapes and Liner Notes, who rejects it—and with good reason—categorically). I'm excellent at being a self-deprecating fat chick and I'd be stoked to be in a band called "Piggy Dolls." What bothers me is that two of the three "Piggy Dolls" aren't even.

Part of this "weight marketing"/"it's a FAT group" gimmick might simply be that due to the fact that Kim Min-sun is the designated "leader" of the group, in addition to being the largest. In the promotional materials, she's the clear centerpiece:





And like the back-up singers to the lead, Lee and Park can't out-do their larger leader Kim—including in size. The whole phenomenon of pop groups also being a cohesive social unit and having actual leaders (maybe with implied hierarchy?) is another mainstay of K-pop; I don't think that's ever been as much of a marketing ploy for bands in the West. I'm sure there's a whole lot of sociological digging and commentary to be done on that but that's a post for another day!

Most of the conversations I've been reading online have been dealing with a few repeat issues: the band name, the whole "gimmick" of a chubby girls' group, and their debut single "Trend." There is so much more I could say that I haven't already, so instead I'm going to focus on something I found very striking while watching the music video for "Trend," that I have yet to see anyone mention. The video that everyone keeps posting has been taken down, so here's one that should be available, at least for the moment:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sVmBlHyD7w

This is the shortened version of the song; the official music video released opened with a rather deplorable introduction of the girls lazing around eating pizza. Inspired by a series of interviews with overweight girls (overweight by Korean standards only, pretty much) tearfully discussing their weight-related angst, the girls get on their feet and proceed to rock out. Not only that, they rock out about being fat chicks, with lines like, "My body? So what? My face is unique" and "I'm sexy, I'm looking good, check it out in the stage. I'm looking good, we are trend."

I don't have much to say about the song itself: it's catchy, you can actually hear some talent under the autotune, what lyrics I've found translated are empowering and body-positive and awesome. Rather, let's compare this video to 2NE1's "Fire (Street Version)" video, since both bands seemed designed to target the "grrrl power" market.



http://www.youtube.com/embed/Cwq-XdPfpeA?rel=0

(First of all, it would do goddamn wonders for Piggy Dolls if they would fire whoever the hell is in charge of their wardrobe. Some of their outfits tread way too closely to ajumma land. And stop dressing Kim in muu-muus!)

The most interesting thing in these videos for me is how "they" (as in the editing and directing eyes assembling the video) treat the clearly designated, well-advertised leaders. Kim doesn't get the kind of show-stopping front-and-center treatment that CL does. The vast majority of "Trend," the choreography is done within in a triangle, with Kim being at the point in the very back until a full three minutes in; in "Fire," CL commands the front and visual focus for most of the song, except parts where she very visually "hands off" to one of the other members. And the closing shot of the video? Kim strikes a pose behind her girls. CL? Right up front. It seems like Piggy Dolls is still hoping to sell on sex appeal in addition to gimmick by featuring Lee and Park much, much more than Kim. I will grant that it's possible Kim simply isn't a good dancer—on their live MNET appearance, Kim rocks it out even less than in the video. But if that's the case, you can clever edit around that. Even just have shots of her singing. But no—guess Korea isn't ready for a fat "leader" yet.

People are also comparing them to Big Mama, a group I know nothing about because their downbeat, soulful numbers aren't the kind of thing to appeal to 12 year olds, and because I'm a teacher, I only ever confront Korean pop culture through the lens of a 12 year old. Truth be told, I honestly prefer the style of the stupid dance-y K-pop for my daily music needs—I listen to music to keep me perky, mostly. Nonetheless, it is so refreshing to hear strong vocal chops stand on their own. Their version of Lean On Me is right up there with any American gospel rendition.



http://www.youtube.com/embed/qx-u22-vkN8?rel=0

(The second soloist does go flat, but that's easily a nerves issue from singing in English.)

Normally I don't bother expounding on Korean pop music to such a degree, but body image and being a chubster fat chick is a really big part of my life. (No pun intended.) It might be tough to be a fat chick in the West, but it's even tougher in Korea. That's why Piggy Dolls is so shocking and making so many headlines. At the very least, maybe Piggy Dolls will be able to broaden the spectrum of typical K-pop fare, if not in style (because even if they've got pipes, you can only do so many variations on a synthesizer) then in image.