Emptybottle.org: January 2002 Archives
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Image : Cartoon dog, yapping viciously, running at the source of its frustration, all a-slaver, until - glurk! - it's hauled up by the tether it forgot about, and sails into the air, landing on its back with a mighty whoomp! Little birdies commence to tweet around its head, in circles.
It's a novel and fascinating facet of this new medium (to me at least) that people can immediately call you on your sh-t, either with kindness or rancour, and force you to think more carefully about your offhanded rants and screeds. I called the guy I linked to in my last post a 'cretin' and opined that he represented the worst of what his country has to offer. Joanne sent me an email and asked a few good questions about why I said those things, and I'll try to respond in public, at a little more length.
Joanne points out that the main thrust of the professor's article is that Koreans should not be ashamed of eating dog, and that criticism from the west shouldn't make Koreans feel ashamed of their culture, and that these points, based on things I've said before, are very much in line with the wonderchicken take on the whole issue.
True.
She also says, in my opinion correctly, that every culture has things of which to be proud and things of which to be ashamed, and that eating dog meat is neither, if one ignores the cruelty that is often employed in their slaughter. In this I also agree with Joanne, but the last point is an important one, which I'll touch on in a minute.
So where do I get off calling the professor such horrible names? It actually has little to do with the point he's arguing. I tend to agree with him that Koreans should eat what they wish, and let the west take care of their own backyard. I believe my suggestion to Koreans was to say "Kiss our hairy asses!". 
My primary problem with the good professor's essay lies in the politicizing of the issue, something that not only annoys the hell out of me, but happens constantly in Korea, for complicated historical reasons. He pulls out old chestnuts like the sovereignity and submissiveness ones quoted below, like (to paraphrase) "it's a conspiracy against to Korea to make us import beef", like "the attitude of feeling shame by eating dog meat, of humbly lowering ourselves, shifts the cause of the problem and only hinders the solution, spoiling our pride", and "in many ways, Korea is historically and culturally among the top in the world, but it lacks not only in a firm pride and belief in a traditional culture, but also in a strong will to make it known worldwide" to quote a few examples.
It may well be because I have heard things like this about "Korea's magnificent culture" so many times that each further repetition becomes an annoyance. When people tell me (as they do, all the damn time) that Korea is unique in that it has four seasons, I nod sagely. When I'm told that kimchi (which I love) is the greatest health food ever invented, I smile in wonderment. When someone insists that Hangul (the Korean alphabet, which may truly be one of Korea's greatest achievements, I admit) is the greatest alphabet ever created, I agree that that may be possible. When a colleague insists that Cheju island is more beautiful than Hawaii and Tahiti combined, I murmur my amazement quietly to myself.
I understand, as much as it is possible for a waeguk-in to grasp, perhaps, that the Japanese colonial occupation in the first half of this century was one of the cruelest things done to a people, ever. The Korean language was banned, Koreans (for whom family ties are perhaps the single most significant things in their lives) were forced to take and use Japanese surnames, cultural treasures and temples were destroyed wholesale, tens of thousands of young women were forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers, the litany of evil goes on and on. I understand how that, coupled with the devastation and horror of the Korean war, a scant few years after the Japanese were driven out, has resulted in a people that, considering they were dubbed the Hermit Kingdom before any of this happened, are still painfully sensitive about both domination and cultural meddling from outside. I understand that the slightly pathetic assertions of Korea's uniqueness and marvellousness, perennially overplayed as they are, come at least in part from the pathologies that grew from the rape of the country at the hands of outsiders like myself.
But it's time to let that go. Korea and its people are truly one of the wonders of this age, and talking Korea up in a whiny, wheedling voice like this professor does, smacks of the same tired, masturbatory self-justification that has allowed all that is bad about Korea to poison all that is good. The country is being held back by people like him, and it annoys me.
The last point I feel like I need to make is that every time on Metafilter or Plastic or even gotta-love-em lowbrow Fark that the dogmeat issue comes up, it is invariably the consensus that "Koreans should eat whatever they want," with the proviso that the preference would be for the practice of beating the dogs to death to end. Now.
Koreans like this professor entirely miss the point here. The vast majority of people in the west don't care much about the issue, except when it comes to outright cruelty. By glossing this, and by defending the entire practice of eating dog, which I and many others are fine with, he is implicity defending the abhorrent and evil practice of beating animals to death before cooking them. This practice, where it occurs, happens because the belief that the adrenaline released into the flesh of the fear-crazed animal as it is beaten to death tenderizes and adds more of the mysterious healthful properties the meat is said to possess.
This I can't accept. And I can't accept that all the defenders of dogmeat in Korea so far miss the point so badly - that this cruelty is the only thing most people in the West object to.
You know, I love Korea. I really do, in a tangled-up, possibly unhealthy way, and it drives me up the wall when cretins like this, who represent the worst that the place has to offer, somehow end up being noticed. I have a strong suspicion that reading badly-written, speciously-argued tripe like this will push more people to blindly condemn something they might not have cared much about in the first place.
How about a steaming cup of shut the f--k up? For the sake of your country, at least.
Nonetheless, here I am, linking the little essay. Short version for those who can't be bothered to click through : it's another episode in the Dog Meat story. I've talked about this issue here and here and here and here and here and here.
This time I'll just let you draw your own conclusions, I think. Read this too, before you do.
Further to a comment I made here:
It's being reported in today's Korea Times that the government has decided that its incredibly successful rollout of DSL and cable, that has effectively given Korea pervasive broadband access, is just the beginning (I pay about US$17 per month for my 4 MB DSL, uncapped). It plans to have 5 Gb fiber pipes into homes by 2006. Judging by the success of the first wave of broadband rollout, I think they'll do it.
The doomsayers in America who have recently offered the opinion that 'everyone who wants broadband internet access already has it' ought to visit Korea, and see the impact pervasive fast access has had here, and how the technology, once it reached critical mass, has begun to snowball, economic crisis or no economic crisis. One small but significant effect is that all the major TV networks have video-on-demand services, which allow you to stream past episodes of pretty much every show they air, or watch whatever is on the station at the moment. Think of that, and think about the endless verbiage and millions upon millions of dollars that have been wasted on failed video-on-demand schemes in North America. The Korean stations just went ahead and did it, without fanfare or IPOs or launch parties. And the services are heavily used...when the provision of data as a service reaches the level of a utility (that is, cheap and pervasive enough not to really be noticed anymore), thinking about what is possible, or necessary, begins to change, I think.
In four years or so, when the current 3G wireless network has been replaced by whatever's next, and I can get a 5 Gb datapipe into my home for the price of a pizza, the mind boggles at the potential uses. Even beyond pr0n!
I hope by then I speak Korean well enough to take advantage of it.
You crazy EFT kids! I saw a referrer today in the magical instant referrer-thingo toy over there on the left that was a Google-search for "I want to f--k stavrosthewonderchicken". I thought that was odd, but promptly forgot about it when the pizza arrived. Just now, though, I saw a Google search referrer string for efts+want+you+back+stavrosthewonderchicken and this not only warms my crusty old wonderchicken heart, but it would seem to be a completely new use of Google to send private messages, the recent-referrers doodad being the enabling technology! Congrats, whichever EFT-friends are sending me messages via Google. You be genii! That's a totally new geekmeme (I wonder if it will spread?) you have unleashed, and at the same time you put a smile on my jaundiced face for the same low low price!
{EFT}
Update : Shelley has picked up the idea and given it a name (Google Instant Messaging - snazzy!), and I see a couple new messages in the instant referrer list from her and the mightay Bearman. This is fun.
Update the second (Jan 30) : This recent referrer search string - How about a nice cup of shut the f--k up - may or may not be an explicit message to me, but I seem to be ranked number 2 on AllTheWeb for that phrase, depending on your engine-settings, and that makes me very proud.
Update the next (Jan 31) : This idea is taking off, at least judging by all the hits I'm getting today. Go Go Google Instant Messaging! Also, Dan had an interesting idea for an extension, which I'm not sure I completely understand, but sounds funky anyway.
Totally unrelated post-script so that this becomes a post about Korea and thus I am not breaking my 'rules' : I saw a large 'cherry-picker', I think they're called, today on the street. You know, those big-ass trucks with the extendable arm, at the end of which is a little pulpit for someone to stand in while rescuing a kitty or something. It made me laugh out loud - emblazoned proudly on the side was the name : it was a Hyundai PutzMeister.
I may be way off, but I think that means something quite rude in Yiddish.
I think I might like Rolf Potts, if we met. 'Vagabonding' is something I've done my entire adult life. It is actually possible that we could have met, as I lived in Pusan at the same time as he apparently did, a few years ago. His face looks oddly familiar. Unfortunately, my near-perpetual state of blissful inebriation at the time renders the recollections a mite blurry. Anyway - go read his stuff, about Korea and elsewhere. Some nice writing there, and some of the best I've seen about modern Korea.
He says in an interview "this would have been impossible without the Internet," which is interesting. It sounds as if he began his wanderings about 10 years after I did, and as such, was able to get his best, freshest travel writing out to the world via this miraculous inTaRweb, while mine lies mouldering in the bottom of a box somewhere in Canada, as far as I know.
I'm not bitter. Honest. If I'd actually wanted to say anything to anyone other than my friends (sporadically) and my future self (onanistically) over the past 15 years, I would have done it. Submitted, published, lived outside the moment in order to write about it. I suppose I'm finally getting started at that now. I just wish my powers of recall were a little...sharper.
I am sick. It's terrifying being really sick, for someone who rarely is. Face of mortality and all that.
Just to keep my thousands of screaming fans (heh) happy, I'll offer this update in the Korea Herald to a topic I wrote (badly) about in my WorldNewYork piece of a month or so ago.
I'm going back to bed.
Update :
OK, so I switch on the TV this morning as I'm drinking my morning coffee. I usually don't bother, but I woke up before the alarm. There are women parading around in their underwear on the Shopping Channel, which must have been where SK left it when she came to bed last night.
The models are mostly Korean, which in and of itself is interesting, because 5 years ago, and still to a large extent today, you would never see a Korean woman modelling underwear, in catalogues or on TV. That sort of slutty thing was for foreign women to do - no self-respecting Korean woman would allow herself to be photographed almost! naked!, and certainly no advertiser would presume to ask. Tantamount to pornography, that. Imagine how her family would feel. Ruin her chances for marriage, it would. So, if you did see women in Korea modelling underwear, in catalogues or on posters in department stores, it would always be western women, or Russians.
I watched for a few minutes, for, uh, edification, and soon realized that this wasn't actually a bra-and-panty ad I was watching. The girls would model-strut forward, smile wide and vacant as if they were gazing on the Face of God, and hold up to the camera these flesh-coloured, plastic, crescent-shaped objects. They'd shift their weight to the other leg, cock the other hip, switch hands, and then grin some more, all the while holding this thing towards the camera like an offering at a shrine.
I thought at first that the crescent-shaped things were falsie-related. There's a huge market here for padded bras and other non-surgical breast 'enhancements'. But after a few minutes of, uh, cultural research, a brief computer animation revealed what these things were actually (my Korean's not good enough yet, sadly) Vibrators. Breast-vibrators. Under the breast, crescent-shaped, vibrators. I can only assume from the animations that the theory is that vibrating the boob at a high frequency somehow stimulates breast expansion.
Yeah, right.
Well, at least judging by the glazed, pseudo-orgasmic grins on the faces of the models, it feels pretty nice.
Heh. I didn't make the finalist list at the bloggies awards thing. Ah well, the soup pot's only been boiling for about 5 months. Nonetheless, I wonder if I didn't make the shortlist :
a) 'cause I suck
b) 'cause I said I'd rip the heart out of anyone who voted for me
c) 'cause I say the word 'f--k' a lot, in a consistently gratuitous f--king manner
d) 'cause I blow
e) some combination of the above
Despite the fact that I kinda think awards for blogging are a bit ridiculous, I feel a tiny shiver of disappointment, originating somewhere down near my butt. And, well, that's a pretty scary place. How easy it is to get sucked in, huh? Even for a cantankerous auto-exile like me.
Regardless, congratulations go to all who are on the shortlists, and especially to Lia, who is the Queen of the Left Shore, in my books.
I talked last month about why there are so many crosses scattered across the night-time skyline of any given Korean urban area, at least according to some. To quickly summarize, the theory is that Koreans just tend to have a great deal of difficulty getting along with each other, a lot of the time.
An article in the Korea Herald recently has inspired me to revisit that idea. It seems one of the candidates in the upcoming presidential election, Roh Moo-hyun, is campaigning, at least at this early stage, on a platform of reducing regional rivalries within Korea. It seems slightly risible that such a small country could have such powerful antagonism between 'regions', but it is the case. It's common to hear people talk about the way Kyongsang province people talk, or Cholla province people behave. And worse, the major political parties, constantly splitting apart and reforming as they do, tend to be polarized around regional lines, rather than policy-driven. Roh is quoted as saying "Politics [in Korea] cannot take even one step forward and no political reform can succeed under the current circumstances."
This is not a new problem for Korea. Although the line along the 38th parallel was drawn by the Americans in 1945 as a halfway point for Soviet and American armies to meet and accept the Japanese surrender, the eventual permanent partition was at least in part due to the inability of the Korean negotiators to agree on a path to unity. In the three years leading up to 1948 there were a number of attempts to reach a compromise, including a proposal for a 5 year joint US/Soviet trusteeship, and one for UN-sponsored elections. None were accepted, and in fall of 1948, two separate states were born. Although Koreans are not accustomed to taking responsibility for their history, it is the opinion of some that the partition can be laid at the feet of the multitude of nationalist groups and their constant bickering at the time as much as it can be attributed to superpower machinations, or anything else. Two years later, North invaded South, and failed, thanks to Alan Alda, as we all know.
For what it's worth, I tend to agree with Mr. Roh, that little will change in this country until it can outgrow not only regionalism but ingrained reluctance to cooperate towards a common goal.
Yesterday was a good day on the planet for me. I ate french fries for the first time in almost five months (found a fastfood joint only 4 subways stops away). I decided that I'm going to finally finish a book (it was the idea of finishing a novel that was blocking me. I'm going to write about Korea, non-fictionally, but in that inimitable smart-ass wonderchicken style - I can't tell you more or I'd have to kill you - and the ideas are just pouring out of my head. I'm very excited about it.) I got some kind, positive feedback on my stuff here (thanks, Shelley). I woke up this morning to find an email from a publisher requesting use of some of my yammering at Metafilter for use in a book about online communities (take that, Basil Boy!)
A nice way to roll into the weekend. The keyboard will be smoking over the next few days, I hope.
Though I've not seen much about it in the English language newspapers, the TV news and current affairs programs are wringing their collective hands these days about the growing proliferation of high-school girls selling their asses (and other bits as well, one assumes) to predatory middle-aged scumbags. This sort of thing has been happening for a long time in Japan, but it's new here. Apparently most of the connections are made in net chat rooms, and the girls are frequently the ones to make overtures. It seems that these girls are, almost without fail, perfectly average upper-middle class teenagers who Want More Stuff. The news items I've seen indicate that most of the girls who've been caught at it confess that they just wanted extra money for clothes, and whoring themselves to a few drooling middle-aged salarymen was the easiest way to get it. I understand the impulse. I've whored myself out to businessmen, too - heck, I was so good at it in Sydney that I doubled my salary in 18 months - but I draw the line at letting them drool all over me.
But seriously, folks. I'm here until Thursday. You've been a great crowd! It's been a long time since I lived in North America, but I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen a lot there. Or am I completely out of touch?
An informative article from the New York Times (free registration required?) about the resort at Mount Kumgang, which opened in North Korea not long ago, amid much fanfare, for South Korean tourism. One thing the article doesn't mention is that as such a highly visible manifestation of Kim Dae Jung's 'sunshine policy', the fact that it's recently been losing money and popularity as the novelty wears off hasn't much helped the chances of more such projects being undertaken. (thanks Lia!)
From the Metafilter discussion here, an interesting first-hand commentary on racism in Korea, and the double standard that the author felt dominates here.
(thanks again y2karl!)
This post never happened. You tell anyone about it, I'll have to kill you.
(I have this thought at the moment that weblogs are a stupid f--king idea. That link propagation, which most folks seem to think as the primary function of a weblog, particularly when presented sans commentary, tends to be worthless circle-jerking.
It's all about voice, about words, dammit, and in this I'm very much ready to snort whatever powder is blowing into drifts at the foot of rageboy and his kin. Simple linking to what someone else has said is purely lame - rat-push-button-get-electrical-stimulus stuff. It's the evil detritus at the bottom of the blog waterpipe net.folk have been puffing on for the last couple of years. Give me one well-written rant, one single viewpoint that is informed from hard-won experience rather than obsessively reading thirdhand comments on secondhand reports from old-media talentless hacks. Or talented hacks. I don't f--king discriminate.
Realizing, of course, that the sh-t I type here is read, if at all, by a few old friends, a few new, a few net aquaintances, a few google-nauts and a tiny handful of interested parties. It's not like this semi-inebriated screed matters.
And that's the point, innit? Shouting out the words, and hoping to find a few that will gather around your mental hearthfire, a few who are, if not entranced by your words, at least willing to listen. For me, it's a digital analogue of my wanderings around the planet for the last 15 years, In Search of An Audience. f--k that for a bad joke, really.
In my geographic wanderings, I was in search of the perfect bar as much as anything else, and as I do tend to preach a bit when I'm in my cups, sometimes people would gather around for reasons that didn't include pelting me with rocks and garbage. So is it now as it was then : I'm glad the folks that come back here regularly derive some pleasure from what I have to say, but the reality is I'm doing it more for me than I am for you. And lately I'm starting to feel a need to remember what the hell I was saying, and the technology is available to do it.
What I find it hard to understand is what the hell people are thinking who post.more.links.over.and.over.again.every.day with little or no hint of what they actually think about the things they link to...
Of course, I don't propose to claim these half-formed ideas as my own. This sort of deflationary thing has been said before, by others, and better. I'm in a mood at the moment, is all. This rant here just kind of popped out of the old mental cloaca as I was doing a beery weblog-tour this evening, and since I'm still logged into blogger, I figured I'd just start typing. This kind of contrarian bullsh-t probably ain't gonna help my chances in this bloggies thing, and that's precisely why I'm posting it.
Hello, I love you, vote for me and I'll rip your heart out.
No, not really. But stranger things have happened.)
Thank you for your cooperation.
Please do not comment. It'll burst my self-involved bubble. No, seriously.
Yikes. If the referrer doodad is telling me the truth, it would seem that someone has nominated me for a bloggie. Shucks. For the second time in a week, my thanks go out to some mystery net.niceperson.
*tugs at cowlick, kicks pebble.
At least I think 'thanks' is appropriate. I'm not really sure if more traffic would be a good thing or not. Ah well : whatever is, is good.
I promised a Waeguk Mini-essay, and here it is :
Kibeun (variously romanized, roughly pronounced 'Kee-boon') has been translated into English as 'mood' or 'state of mind', but this a very pale concept compared to the Korean one. Kibeun is regarded as much more important a matter than most westerners would regard mood. In another of those seeming contradictions of Korea, Koreans have a tendency to dwell, involute, on their more delicate feelings, despite their rough-and-ready, earthy exteriors. The degree to which they can focus on their emotional states can seem almost effete to a westerner, particularly one who, like me, grew up in a rough, tough northern town. Kibeun is of overarching importance in social relations, is constantly discussed, and attempts are always made to ensure kibeun is preserved.
It might be described as the part of you that goes beyond your physical presence, that not only permeates your being but surrounds you, invisibly, like a cloud. But it can be damaged, by unhappiness or disrespect, by losing face, by thoughtlessness or humiliation, by anything that's disruptive to the harmony you feel with other people. Damage to your kibeun is damage to your essence, and can have negative effects both mentally and physically.
It is this consciousness of an inner life, one that is molded by the degree of harmony one achieves in one's relationships with other people to whom one feels any degree of responsibility, that gives Koreans their almost preternatural ability to sense peoples' mood, and their character, and modify their own behaviour to lubricate the social gears. That's the nice part. The infuriating flip side of that, though, for many foreigners, is the tendency to dance elegantly away from any potential confrontation. An angry waeguk-in, until they understand what's happening, is likely to become angrier when the Korean with whom they have a bone to pick says 'Maybe' when they mean 'No', or 'tomorrow' when they mean 'never', in order to try and re-establish harmonious dealings. The accompanying, ever-present potential too, is when someone is pushed too far, and they lose face, in which case 'social harmony' can take a flying leap, and the only way to regain face and salvage personal kibeun is to blow up and stomp and yell. This happens a lot, too.
In this consciousness of the relationships between people and its effect on your own wellbeing, rather than the 'correctness', 'objective truth', or self-interest of an individual or his arguments, there is a minefield of potential misunderstanding. Most foreigners to Korea trip through it over and over again, myself included, before they realize that putting the kibeun of the people around you first, even in a situation of confrontation, will bring results.
(As an aside, this is what Bush and the Americans do not seem to understand, or care to, when they deal with North Korea in ways that I've discussed earlier)
The importance of kibeun for Korean people should never be underestimated. It's not merely convention, it's baked-in. Koreans can make crucial, important decisions based on kibeun. Business decisions, choice of a mate, career and employment choices, all may be taken on the basis of what feels right, or what will result in the most socially harmonious outcome for all concerned. Koreans will discuss kibeun, but rarely attempt to analyze it in this way. To do so would perhaps damage their kibeun.
This is not to say that decisions, important or otherwise, are made strictly on a non-rational, intuitive basis. Things like love and marriage, about which westerners can be decidedly irrational, are approached with a combination of cold, rational analysis and intuitive leaps here, for example. It is another of the contradictions that drive me to drink.
Well, actually, I'd be drinking anyway.
The forces of Konglish are strong, and they're winning. It's inexplicable to me how this could happen, even though it happens every day. The entire last page of today's Korea Herald has a huge, colour advertisement from KT, Korea Telecom, one of the largest companies in the country. This is the ad copy, in its entirety :
It's KT! It's future!
I have no problem with people mangling the language, making mistakes. That's fine. Everyone who learns a new language does it. But how in the name of the dangling purple testicles of Lucifer does a full page ad in a nationally distributed newspaper (edit : it's an English language paper ) with language like this get published? Does no one check these things? Ever?
This is just sad, and a little stupid. It seems that a group of Korean 'anti-japanese' h4x0rs (hardly, but I just love typing 'h4x0rs') attacked the websites for the US TV network WB and French state television, with only minor disruptions to their services. The attacks were supposedly in response to slanted and inaccurate reporting about the dogmeat issue, and the Korea Times reports it is "conceived by many to be a 'gallant action' which defended the nation's traditional culture from biased views."
In defense of these net.boneheads, it sounds as if the French broadcast was purest racist drivel, with reporters apparently dressed in Chinese clothes and holding up menus in Japanese, and describing, with no relation to reality, Korean students bringing dogmeat for their lunches (according to a Korea Herald print edition article which does not seem to be on their website).
But this kind of childish retaliation for perceived slights against the nation will do nothing at all to raise the reputation of Korea in the eyes of the world. It's more likely, particularly given the ineffectiveness of the 'attacks', to increase the chance of Korea becoming a laughing stock. More's the pity.
Whoops. I promised a mini-essay on the Korean concept of ki-bun, but I cocked an ear to the siren call of the beer, and ended up writing a rambling reminiscence at my blogversation with my old friend the Bearman instead. Old loyalties run deep. I am a bad wonderchicken. Bad!
Wow. It would appear that an unknown benefactor has paid for me to be ad-free. This was totally unexpected. Thanks so much to whoever it was - please email me!
I literally don't know what to say. That rarely happens to me. Thanks again. And thanks too for doing what I should have done months ago - give Ev some money. I promise to try to make this thing worth reading.
Not-really-that-much-fun fact of the day : Korea has been invaded more than 900 times in its recorded history.
Update to the North Korea commentary a couple of days ago : the Bush will be in Korea next month for his third meeting with Kim Dae Jung, which will be his first one in Korea. During the meetings, President Kim will ask Bush to 'be nice to North Korea'. "Seoul's request will be part of a package [...] in order to allow Pyongyang to save face and come to the negotiating table," is the description of the request from a government official.
It is interesting (to me, at least) to note that my comments recently, to the effect that America's refusal to play a positive role in negotiation between the two Koreas is politically and financially motivated and not based upon any rational or realistic estimation of the 'threats' involved, are confirmed to a degree by this article in the Washington Post, which states, among other things, that:
"Nobody believes the CIA estimates," said a longtime counter-proliferation expert from another government department. Another analyst said that "nuances" tend to get taken out of the estimates as they proceed up the bureaucratic ladder. "The job of the CIA is to warn, but they never back down from previous warnings," the analyst said. "
An argument could be made (and I can hear it on Metafilter already) that it's in America's larger interests to behave in the way it has, and that Americans need only be concerned with what's in the best interests of America. That's fine, but tell that to the two million people who've starved to death in North Korea over the past few years. Better yet, tell that to those who've managed to survive while family members died. Even better, have a representative few of the fat, burger-inhaling, obnoxious drunken louts that pass themselves off as 'American soldiers' in this country do it, with a beer in one hand, a fried chicken in the other, and a prostitute hanging around their neck.
Sorry - I got off on a rant there.
Crikey. I'm turning into a ranting, bizarro-world Steven Den Beste, here. Time to post some more silliness, toute de suite!
I was thinking this morning about asking one of my friends to translate this into Korean, and making a few hundred cards:
and handing a card to every guy I see horking an oyster on the pavement or platform or stairs or any other public thoroughfare. The thing is, I suspect that would push me over the edge from amused, sardonic observer into raving crank. I also suspect that I'd go through a few hundred cards over the course of any given weekend.
*sigh*
I do like the way I've managed to work in a Metafilter injoke though. Almost makes it worthwhile.
Snrrrf...kchhhh...phppooo!
This is a very blog thing to post, but I'm amused enormously to discover, thanks to my referrer logs, regardless of my enormous arrogance, that this wee blog is ranked Googly-4rth for the phrase Massive Inferiority Complex. Zoinks.
Update : Thanks, Lia! I think...
This is old news, by the way. Just on my mind.
Ah, President Chimp. Always willing to take time out from Defending the Free World, snorting cocaine off the bellies of teenage hookers (Note : this is an unsubstantiated statement. I have no proof. Honest. None.) and passing out after swilling too much beer choking on pretzels to wave a finger and lay waste to nearly five years of slow, careful diplomacy. A Korea Herald Op/Ed piece today lays it out in some detail :
After several months of reviewing U.S. relations with North Korea, the Bush administration offered to have a comprehensive dialogue with Pyongyang, pledging to hold discussions "any time, any place, without preconditions." But when Pyongyang was weighing the offer, terrorists with Islamic fanaticism attacked the United States on Sept. 11, which dampened the prospects of an early resumption of dialogue.
The United States is saying that despite the terrorist attacks, the offer of unconditional dialogue is still valid. In a move that makes it difficult for Pyongyang to accept the offer, Washington is also claiming that North Korea poses a potential threat to U.S. security both as what it calls a "rogue state" supporting terrorists and as a producer of weapons of mass destruction. "
I was living in Australia when President Kim Dae Jung visited North Korea. I watched on TV as he shook hands with Kim Jong-il, and sentimental bastard that I am, I misted up. The dangerous halfwit that is ostensibly at the American helm has perpetrated all manner of outrage on the world since his inauguration, and no doubt will continue to do so, and perhaps this particular arrogance is low on the scale of importance. And I will grant that it is true that the regime in North Korea cannot be trusted, and occasionally appear, if not completely whacked out, at least to have a very tenous grasp on reality.
But, while the Americans continue to play their games, another million children might die of starvation in the North when the next famine hits. Sure, it's the fault of Kim Il Sung and his cartoonish son and the government they created. But if there were an opportunity to hasten its demise, or at least soften its hardline, and prevent those deaths, and it were so clearly within their power, don't you think the Americans could at least give it a shot? No, of course not. Foolish of me to think that, dreamer that I am.
A brief summary : with the blessings of the previous US Administration, Kim Dae Jung (who I repeat, for the benefit of those who have started following all this recently, has been referred to as the "Asian Nelson Mandela" and has received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his 'sunshine policy' in attempting to end the 50-year war between North and South Korea) embarked on a mission over the first 4 years of his presidency to open a dialogue with North Korea. Almost immediately after Bush was sworn in, he made it clear that, Peace Prize or no Peace Prize, there was no way that he'd support further efforts toward ending hostilities on the peninsula.
It is, of course, no coincidence that there are 44,000 US troops here, and peace, let alone reunification, would leave them without much to do.
Several months after Bush's initial meeting with Kim Dae Jung, the American administration offered to meet with North Korea unconditionally out of one side of its mouth, while proclaiming out of the other that they pose a threat to U.S. security as a "rogue state". This virtually guarantees that North Korea, historically hypersensitive to hyperbole like this, will not participate in any talks, let alone propose them. A fait accompli.
Quiz : The corner that the Bush regime now has South Korea, their ally, backed into, is a minor miracle of :
a) Diplomatic sleight-of-hand
b) realpolitik
c) clear thinking
d) cheese, glorious cheese
Vote now, vote often!
Update : Sorry, when I posted this last night, I forgot to add option (e) Pure, unmitigated evil. Thanks for playing.
Feh. I've been thinking about why I'm doing this lately, and I'm not sure if it's worth continuing. It's all a wank at the end of the day, isn't it?
Ah well. In the meantime, I'll note that the signs in all the subway stations (at least out here in the boondocks) that said "Seoul Thorough" (which I mentioned in passing a while ago) have all been taken down and fixed or replaced. They now say "Seoul". Score one for the anti-Konglish brigades! The world is slightly less amusing, perhaps, but also slightly less annoying. That's not a bad thing.
Brief followup to the Dr Dogmeat mention yesterday. The Metafilter thread fizzled fast, but here's the corresponding one on Plastic, which may be of interest.
Dr. Dogmeat to the rescue! I love it. Since the Japanese occupation, Korea's constantly believed deep in its collective heart that it is unworthy, that its traditions and culture have no real value, while showing the public face of that kind of pathology : blustering declarations, vociferous but shallow, about the glory of the march into the future and the glory of the Korean nation. In '88, the government 'passed a law' with fingers crossed behind its back, 'outlawing' the consumption of boshintang, while the only real change on the streets was that more obvious restaurants joined their back alley kin in the shadows.
This is a much better approach, and perhaps a sign that South Korea is finally overcoming the self-loathing brought on by a century that included the Japanese occupation, the agony of the Korean War, and the indignities of being an American lapdog (thanks to the understood need for the 44,000 American troops stationed here in Korea). The nation was (re)built in the last 50 years, and this tiny little dot on the map has the 11th biggest economy on the planet now. (Happy voice) Mad props, you guys! (Serious voice) What a heartbreaking price you've had to pay, though.
Maybe it's a step forward to be able to stand up and say (in Korean) "f--k you, mate. We'll eat dog if we want. And you can kiss our hairy asses if you don't like it!".
Perhaps the collective averting of Korean faces from the recent past is almost over. Koreans have collectively turned a blind eye, and it has resulted in a nation so ravaged by lack of civic pride, by runaway industrialization and it's concommitant cancers, by a blind forced march into an unclear future, and so completely unable to fruitfully connect threads of its cultural heritage to the realities of the present that I fear for its survival.
I chronicle the symptoms of the crisis here, couched in the rhetoric of an annoyed bystander, padded with attempts at humour, but it's real, and it's coming. Maybe Dr Dogmeat is a step towards Korea coming to terms with its own identity, and understanding that there are other strengths than the merely monetary.
Or maybe I'm just talking sh-t. Hard to tell sometimes.
(via Metafilter, and though it hasn't started as I write this, the discussion there is probably where you want to head next, if you're interested.)
Object lesson in cultural differences : on the subway today, I attempted to give up my seat to a woman who appeared to be more or less in my age bracket, plus perhaps five or ten years. She gave me an incredibly sour look of annoyance, and waved me back down, while casting quick glances left and right to check whether anyone had noticed our little interaction. I was confused, a bit, as I frequently am, and wrote it off to some kind of weird manifestation of xenophobia, which I usually do.
Turns out that I had offended her. It seems that in this strictly Confucian society, one gets up to offer one's seat to the elderly. Only. In other places I've lived, I have pretty much always had a habit of mock-chivalrously doing the same for women, of whatever age, as that's the way I was brought up. That's not the way it works if you're brought up in Korea, though, and by offering this woman who may have been 40 to 45 years old, I had implied that she was, or at least that she looked, an old biddy.
Ooops. Another success for international relations, courtesy of the wonderchicken.
After reading the mewlings of at least half the participants in a discussion at Fark (a site where I consciously don't bother with reading the discussions, as they are too often dominated by flailing adolescents and bumptious booby-seeking yahoos for my taste, and it just pisses me off) about the link I propagated below, I got to thinking a bit about how utterly different matters of gender are here, compared to the West.
An example : the over-riding desire for male children, particularly as a first born, coupled with a focus on children, a cult of reproduction, so fervent that women are often addressed not by their given name but as "Mother-of-child's name" after they've squeezed out their first progeny, has created the necessity for some fairly unique legislation.
In the mid-80's, as mass-produced ultrasound machines became freely available, doctors would naturally inform expectant mothers of the gender of the fetus, once it became distinguishable. This led to a fairly common, but not-discussed, practice of aborting female fetuses, particularly if they were to be the first-born, and 'trying again'. This led in turn to the government decreeing that, by law, doctors would not be allowed to disclose the gender of a fetus. Many still do, of course, and the number of male births in Korea has outnumbered those of female by considerably more than the natural 106/100 ratio. This will have deep consequences when these boys come of age over the next decade or two.
Those in power would do well to learn from history:
Male babies were valued as potential food providers and contributors to the family income while females were another mouth to feed and could only be married off at great expense to the family. In this time of desperation, reducing liabilities, such as female children, was seen as a viable survival technique. As a result, during this century there was an average of 129 men for every 100 women in Huai-Pei.
This skewed sex ratio became a problem when the men were ready to marry. Because of the lack of females, many men had no hope of marrying, raising a family, or supporting themselves; consequently, they grouped together and began small-scale banditry throughout the province to steal and provide for their families. Eventually, nearly 100,000 of these men, known as the Nian, led a rebellion on the Chinese emperor from 1851 to 1863 that contributed to the fall of the empire."
A mainstream media article about Korea, this time talking about 'booking clubs'. More or less accurate, except for the utterly ridiculous translations of quotes into Amurrican slang. âHowâs it going, bro?â reads one such message sent to Mr. Park on a Monday night. âCome quick. Itâs a complete girlsâ bathtub tonight. Hurry and make your pick.â
This is meant to be an SMS message from a waiter at a club to a patron? Not a chance in hell.
Interesting phenomenon, though.
A 'Paris Baguette' bakery franchise opened up in our determinedly-crappy-but-slowly-upscaling neighbourhood today. As is the tradition* in Korea, there was a trio of young women out front, gyrating to painfully loud disco music. It is bitterly cold today, so the artificial grins that they are required to wear were perhaps a little more forced than is usual. These girls must dance, non-stop, for anywhere up to 10 hours or so, while exhorting patrons to come and enjoy whatever wares the newly opened shop is flogging. They come from an agency of some kind. Mr. Kim, the proud owner of a new boshintang restaurant, will ring up and say "Yeah, I need three girls tomorrow. No, dancing girls, you idiot. Yeah, all day. Thanks", and they magically appear with their uberdisco sound system the next day, rain or shine.
The really amusing thing (there's always more than one amusing thing in my World of Anecdotes, sucka!) though, was they didn't have a single f--king baguette in the place. At least we got a free bread knife.
*tradition being anything that's been done for five years or more. 'Or more' may extend to a couple of thousand years, but who can tell?
As promised : I was in the toilet, from whence many of my best thoughts seem to emanate, and the phrase 'cultural cargo cult' sprang, fully formed, into my mind. It was early in the morning, and I see no real connection with my dream about the Irish Monk who required that I bring him the largest lettuce leaf I could in order for him to fashion a cloak from it, for me. The leaf I managed somehow to unwrap from a perfectly normal head of lettuce was not only purple, but approximately the size of a bedsheet. After fastening it to a headpiece made from a piece of furry animal hide, I went to meet my destiny, which, it was understood, due to the enormous size of that lettuce leaf, was necessarily regal.
What was I talking about?
I've been struggling for months to come up with a way to describe the way that Korea, and to a much lesser extent these days, Japan, hijack those elements of western (tangentially, in other words, adolescent-targetted) popular culture, twist them just the amount that seems appropriate, and amplify to the point of parody, but with a straight face and boundless enthusiasm. At the same time, they either negligently or deliberately strip the imagery, sounds and ritual of any of the meaning, the historicity from which they originally sprang. It is a 'cultural cargo cult', where it is assumed that, for example, with the correct combination of haircut, clothing and sampled guitar riffs, a song so saccharine that Anne Murray would gag is transformed into an anthem bristling with street credibility.
Of course, you can't blame the entertainment factories here. When manufactured entertainment like The Backstreet Boys or The Spice Girls or the latest soulless piece of cinematic sh-t by Jerry Bruckheimer sweeps the planet and takes the trailer parks by storm, dollarsigns sparkle in the eyes of greedy morons the world over. Korea is no different. The product is tailored to make the most money.
Perhaps it's just that with examples like the three I mention above, I feel sure they know that what they're doing is pointless, all-about-the-dollars pap, and that there is such a thing as pop-culture art, or at least authentic feeling and experience filtered though the lens of popular culture relics. Here, I can sense no such subtext. The latest Korean boy-group seems to be uncomplicatedly serious about their fame, and everyone takes them seriously. Art? Not even an issue. 'They're cute, they're personable, they're guaranteed drug-free, they sing well enough once you add enough digital processing in, that's enough'
But they never seem to have made a deal with the devil, or feel that they've given up their integrity to sing cheesy pop songs to 13 year old girls, and no one seems to have considered that there might have been another path, a path that isn't a 'sell-out'. Integrity isn't on the agenda, nor is (in this case) music's role as catharsis.
And the thing that weirds me out is that Korean pop groups absolutely rule China and Japan and Taiwan. There are schools that teach Beijing hopefuls how to dance like Koreans! It's puzzling, and a little depressing.
Am I being an elitist? Perhaps I need to think about this some more. There are some (very few) real rock groups here : The Yoon Do Hyun Band, for example.
As always, I welcome your comments. I'm trying to sort this out in my mind a bit....
After you get over the initial fear, loathing and 'stop poking at my ego-balloon' sensivity of the first few months of culture shock, it's amazing how many little things you begin to take in stride, things that friends or family would pick up on instantly if they were to come and visit.
One that struck me as we were lazing around watching one of the infinitude of 'variety' shows on Korean TV last night (all of the major networks stream on the net live or on demand, by the way, if you're curious and have a fast net connection : the big three : MBC, KBS, SBS. Even without being able to read Korean, you should be able to find the streams pretty easily...) is the 'schoolgirl howl'.
This is a sound, that, whiskey-ravaged as I am, I cannot for the life of me reproduce. It is reminiscent of the kind of pre-orgasmic squeals that teenyboppers in the early 60's would emit when faced with the Beatles, or Elvis, and I suppose, in a deliberately more chaste fashion, that's what it's modelled on. It sounds a bit like a very high-pitched : 'ooo-WOOOO-OOoo!". The thing is, though, that it's delivered with clockwork regularity every 10 or 15 seconds, when anyone does or says anything even remotely interesting.
"Oh my goodness I am uncontrollably excited in a non-sexual fashion by the fact that that dog just jumped through a hoop!" is the message, it would seem.
To add an extra layer of weirdness (which I almost never notice these days, having become accustomed to it), this schoolgirl howl is also omnipresent on prerecorded segments! It would seem that they have invented, parallel to the cretinous laughtrack machines in the West, Schoolgirl Howl Machines here (good name for a band!). I imagine the guy in the booth, bored look on his face, cigarette dangling from his lip, pushing the lever for another howl, and twiddling a knob if it needs an extra bit of oomph because the current howl-ee is a member of g.o.d or something.
Lengthy hangover? Run down like the foreign dog that he is by a sleep-deprived taxidriver? Felled cedarlike by an especially nasty virus? Composing word by word the ultimate post that will drive women and wonderchicken-loving men to previously unreached heights of lexically-ecstatic mental fibrillations?
Nah. Fightin' with the Mrs.
This is a post that's explicitly about me, rather than my take on something, which I try to avoid here. Apologies. Ignore it if you wish.
So here it is. Another arbitrary milestone, but sucker that I am, I find it hard to ignore those little markers beside the road, arbitrary or not. For me, 2001 was one of those years of reinventing myself, ones that seem to come in more or less three-year cycles. I decided that, for the moment at least, the IT industry was not where I wanted to be, even if Australia was.
Throwing heart and soul into a project that I believed deeply in and having it sh-tcanned because of arbitrary, ego-driven political bullsh-t (I will never forget it, Mr. Bastard, and when you least expect it I will leap from the cover of darkness and rip your f--king black heart out and feed it to you, still pulsing) gave me pause, and triggered some re-evaluation of what I need as core in my livelihood, to keep my sanity. I've always needed friendships (if at arms length, perhaps, and on my terms, arrogant control-freak that I am) to sustain me, coupled with plenty of time to sit alone and think and drink. The first was possible in Sydney, the second, not.
Serendipitously, this university teaching job came to my attention at almost precisely the same time that I was re-evaluating how rewarding (in any but a monetary sense) the IT work and my role at OmniHyperGlobalMegaNet.com was to me, and precisely how much sh-t I'd have to eat to fit in with the new corporate regime. I've been called naive, and foolish, and perhaps I am, but teaching has always seemed to me to be a noble calling. In the right situation, a teacher, a good one, can see how they have done some measurable good in the world. It's a lot harder to see that result in the software biz, particularly when the results of a year's labour is a piece of 'groupware' which ends up getting shelved, anyway.
Happily, since I'm nothing if not skilled in uprooting myself and flinging my sorry ass halfway across the planet at the drop of a hat (and happily, since SK is cool with that), the move back to Korea wasn't the potentially shattering thing it could have been. I made (and renewed) some good friends in Australia, and I hope we'll go back, sometime. I took a 60% cut in my gross salary, and that is a price that I gladly pay to be free from feeling coerced to lick corporate ass, to have the time to write, and read, and think, and drink, to teach again, and have my efforts appreciated, and to give the woman I love a chance to live in her own country again. I've made (and renewed) some friendships here, and as ever, all my friends that I can keep in touch with through this amazing InTArWeb thing sustain me, every day.
2001 was a stressful year, as my Years of Reinvention always are, but I think there is a chance that I'll be a better man because of the hard decisions I made. And at the end of the day, at the close of another year, that's all I can really strive for.
Peace, friends.
It's New Year's Eve, and we are off to the Opera. That sounds mind-wobblingly odd to me, but such is life. Cho Su Mi, who is apparently Korea's most famous diva, will be singing. Joining her on stage will be a friend/student, Chung Ho Yoon, who is Korea's most promising up-and-coming young male tenor. It will be interesting, and a novel experience for me.
Gives me an excuse to wear that ridiculously expensive suit I bought last summer, too.
Since this will be my last post of the year, before we head into the first palindromic year of the millenium, I wish all who have visited and all who will visit my meagre efforts here a most happy, fulfilling and peaceful New Year (even the guy who crapped all over the comment thread from yesterday) .
