The Seoul Essays IV: To Hell and Back
[Working draft of chapter 4 and the ending to the book! I have to get something to the editor by today, so I'm posting this 90% finished (a section to flesh out in the middle, a few images to scrounge up, and some proofreading to do) – but I have an ending! Yes, it's first draft and has typos, but I'll be giving it the once-over within days.
And no, you're not hallucinating – Chapter 3 has not gone up yet, but it will within the week. This book is getting first-draft finished this week, come hell or high water! Any suggestions or comments will be very appreciated!]
PASSIONS OF THE NIGHT
At night, the streets and spaces of Seoul becomes quite a different kind of "playground," one which remains comfortably out-of-sight and out-of-mind for many of this city's early sleepers. After night falls, and especially after around midnight, balloons go up, neon signs on portable trucks are lit, while men in dark suits with red faces stumble about laughing and joking loudly, streaming into places that cater to the darker, more elemental desires of the human psyche.
Seoul nights are marked by drink, song, and the press of flesh for sale. For better or worse, Seoul – as is true with most urban areas of Korea – switches into a new economy driven mostly by the consumption of carnal desires. Some economists might call this a part of the "shadow economy" while a political scientist could call this a part of the "informal" economy or nodes of control. Some might even call them the "play spaces" of an older economy, one that many people would like to be rid of, preferably without having to look it in the eye, or confront the large role that this shadow lifestyle has taken in Korean life.
By the end of this chapter, most readers will be more than ready to think about moving out of "the passions of the night" and back into the warm, reassuring sunlight of the day, where reality tends to be more comfortable, where it tends to resemble the world your parents and the schools worked so hard to present a certain kind of world. It is the world that most people think of themselves as inhabiting, the overt, obvious world that is easy to acknowledge, easy to see, easy to explain.
But there is another world, one harder to see, and much easier to want to ignore. What is perfectly obvious to the outsider – me, the American whose culture is relatively quite conservative about sex and liquor – is often something to which everyday Koreans are often completely, willingly oblivious. To ordinary Korean people who don't tend to walk around thinking about "Korea" all the time, these are the bars, night clubs, barber shops, room salons, "business" and "미인" clubs, and red light districts; there are also the connected businesses that support the main industries of night life, as seen in the many all-night restaurants, street stands, convenience stores, and the huge clusters of "love motels" that charge by the hour, situated around any large university or other area where people are out at night.
<INSERT FANCY LOVE MOTEL INTERIOR SHOT>
- the carnality of seoul night life is defined in the lack of limits, the basics of painting the town truly red, for better or worse: liquor, women, and places to play.
- in seoul, there are more places to imbibe liquor than there are probably in the entire Midwest put together.
- In many of these places, there are also women whose express purpose is providing the social lubricant when needed
- not surprisingly, near any of these places of music, drink, and women are places to consummate all kinds of acts
- Often, you have to look closely, either the kinds of service are not merely the traditional types of sexual services, but rather are all kinds of sexulized services, and the obvious availability of them is also quite surprising.
- america, as much as many koreans mistakenly think is a "liberal" culture, has many Puritanical limits
- public drunkenness, bars close at 2AM
- red light districts? room salons? as if.
- hostesses? you bring your entertainment with you.
- no affiliated industries of 대리운전, most cities don't have readily available taxis,
- the landscape is generally not punctuated by loud shouts, cursing, or fistfights. Generally, vomit is only visible on the sidewalk in the morning around college campuses, and there aren't businessmen sleeping on the streets, surrounded by last night's piles of trash left by the late-night crowd. One might see similar scenes on New Year's Morning or after Mardi Gras in New Orleans, but almost every night is a limited version of these celebrations in the neighborhoods mentioned above.
<INSERT POST-VOMIT SHOT>
One might think a foreigner to be the last person to know something about the innermost circle of Seoul's "Hell," but one thing that many Koreans haven't thought about is that fact that it is the foreigner's very separateness, that allows him or her to often be the unlikely observer, chronicler, and holder of secrets.
In addition, it is easier for a foreigner who speaks Korean to enter sensitive social situations, or deal with people who otherwise might not trust talking to a fellow Korean, especially when it involves something about which general society might judge them harshly or negatively. The homeless man, whom I accidentally bumped into and entered into conversation with, assented to pose in this photograph after I simply treated him – probably for the first time in a long time – as just a normal person.
He started confiding in me and talking about no end of things in his life, not simply because he was "crazy," but because I think he saw me as outside of the world he knew. I also found it easier to talk to him, since in my own culture and society, I don't recall ever having had a conversation with a homeless person beyond forced smiles and feeling extremely guilty about wanting to end the conversation as quickly as possible. I also found more difficult to emphathize with the angry elderly lady who was following the man around, yelling and chastising him. She was indignant that he was "lazy" and living off of the discarded waste of others here, at this first "Hi Seoul Festival," where I saw many homeless people wandering about, finding large amounts of uneaten food in the trash cans. Here, I simply asked the man if I could take his picture – he gave me permission and seemed to warm up to me simply because I treated him as a human being.
This is one reason anthropologists are more effective outside of their own cultures and why, as I mentioned previously, they are encouraged to leave their own cultures to do their field work. In some ways, as an outsider, access to the inside is difficult; but in certain other, more important ways, access to the true, inner core of a culture, where the dirty secrets lie, is actually far easier.
The most problematic and perhaps deeply embarrassing parts of any culture are usually kept wrapped tightly beneath layers of social taboo and willful ignorance of that subject. In America, the pain related to the subject of race is difficult to talk about frankly, so many aspects of it are as controversial as they are taboo. This is one reason that in America, race is a favorite topic of comedians and movie comedies; many Americans are, deep inside, quite uncomfortable about the subject, so it is often as source of embarrassed laughter and shocked expressions when certain obvious things are pointed out that everyone thinks about, but which most people find too embarrassing to say aloud.
[TRANSITIONAL PHRASE SETTING UP SEX WORK AS THE THING THAT KOREANS DON'T LIKE TO TALK ABOUT]
The Korean media was abuzz with the issue of sex work from around 2004, when the Special Anti-Prositution Law went into effect and Korean society was witness to the protests of sex workers in front of the National Assembly; it is only now that the noise of postured indignance and moralizing has settled back down into the normal, willful ignorance of the subject. It was just after that that the Korea Herald asked me to do a photo story on the aftereffects of the law; I was surprised at what I found, as well as surprised at how little Korean people actually knew about what one could argue is one of the key social problems of modern society, albeit a problem that masks itself very well. I think that the reason it flies under the radar of many Koreans in everyday life is not because it isn't there, but rather because it is so pervasive that one can't continue to be struck by it all the time. Humans are socially adaptive animals; the socially distasteful idea of sex work in society is like a bad smell you come across when stuck in a room you can't leave – you simply adapt and soon cease to notice the smell at all.
This is not to say that most Korean people are not aware of the fact of sex work in Korean society, but rather that people tend to not want to recognize the social pervasiveness and ubiquitiousness of what is undeniably a social institution, as well as a major part of the national economy. Both are undeniable facts, obvious to anyone who has been keeping up with the government's own conservative statistics, or who keeps an observant eye opens when walking down just about any street in any town in Korea; from barber shop to room salon to business club to sauna to "sports massage" parlor to neighborhood hostess bar to out-and-out red light district, it is hard to find a street where sex itself, or value-added sexual services, are not offered in some form. But even if one is able to deal with the reality and enormity of the industry, most people are still in denial that a lot of men and women are involved in a thriving, sex-based economy.
The three common "vices" go great together.
Most people, understandably, find it hard to personalize the stories they see in the newspapers or on television, and do not want to consider the fact that it is may be their daughter or sister, or perhaps their mother, aunt, or even grandmother might have been involved in this industry at one time in their lives. What makes this fact obvious is the way sex workers are treated by the Korean media: we generally only hear about the extreme cases, in which women are hapless victims, who don't resemble "anyone I know." They are simply "pitiful" or alternatively fallen women, in need of help and sympathy in the former case, or derision and contempt on the other. These extreme representations avoid the fact that many of these women are largely somewhere in between the tragic cases, and that many of the women are motivated by the same emotions and material concerns that any drive you, me, or anyone else.
These are women making a living, and in the views of every single woman interviewed for the photo essay I originally published in the Korea Herald, they don't think of their work as fundamentally different from the way you or I makes money to put food on the table or pay their bills. That is one common view that all women spoken to in relation to this piece made, which they claimed was echoed by everyone else they know. One common reaction I received was one of great hostility and suspicion, especially when I introduced myself as a "reporter" for a newspaper; they were largely quite angry with the way the Korean media has dealt with this issue, which made my initial interviews quite hard to carry out, and this story nearly impossible to photograph.
There are so many different kinds of sex work, and accordingly, various kinds of sex workers, in Korean society. My first and most useful informant was, surprisingly, a woman who owns a bar in Itaewon's infamous "hooker hill," which would be the easy and expected place for the foreign photographer such as myself to start a story such as this. Ms. X, as I shall call her, was helpful because she had the most perspective on the issue, both in terms of the fact that she was in her late 20's, as well as because there were specific reasons why she did not want to enter the much larger and more lucrative Korean-oriented sex industry.
Ms. X described sex work in Korea as being of two main types: that having to do with "entertainment," with sex as an option for the girl to make extra money (most bars or hostess positions), or as a straight sex-for-money relationship, such as is found in a typical red-light district. Ms. X had worked in the American-style "entertainment" end as a "juicy girl" for most of her 20's, earning money from customers by making 50% on every 20,000 won drink a male customer bought her. "Juicy" bars are generally only found in places such as Itaewon, which caters to foreigners.
The Korean-style "entertainment" establishment that is not to Ms. X's liking generally involves drinking prodigious amounts of alcohol with male customers who tend to come in large groups. In most room salons, "mi-in clubs," business clubs, etc., the women don't have a choice as to which customers to take, and according to Ms. X, tend to be far more demanding and disrespectful of their hostesses, as Korean men tend to drink far more than American men in their socializing, on top of the fact that Korean men tend to come in groups, whereas men come either singly or in pairs. In both cases, women make their only money from the actual premises based on the drinks they encourage their clients to have. but in the Korean-style case, drinking/hostessing establishments give the workers a flat fee for the group, usually in the range of 30-50,000 won, whereas in places catering to foreigners, the money is a 50/50 split for every drink purchased, with no upper limit. So the woman working for a Korean place is saddled with the burden of constantly drinking large amounts of real alcohol and having to make her money from "the second stop" - going somewhere to have sex with the customer for usually a couple to a few hundred thousand won.
The Koreans-oriented room salon girl, in order to make any decent money, needs try to stay sober while as a rule convincing the customer to go out for sex after drinks, whereas the foreigners-oriented "juicy girl" makes the most money drinking "special" (read "non-alcoholic") cocktails while encouraging their clients to spend their cash on buying as many drinks as possible. Sexual services, if the "juicy girl" actually wants to offer any (some, she tells me, do not ever or often leave the bar), are occasional and usually involve a returning customer, or a customer who has spent an inordinate amount of money on drinks.
Of course, there are places that offer straight sex and really only use the bar as a front, but most of the money in Itaewon is made on drinks, drinks, drinks, with sex as an option if the girl is willing and the price is worth it. In the Korean case, the game involves trying to imbibe as little alchohol as possible while trying to not appear to be doing so, even as you encourage the client to drink more. But there is no direct financial incentive to drink more, or even to get the client to do so, after having received a flat fee for the group, and the real money is made by leaving with the customer, in which case all of that money is the hostesses' to keep. Ms. X is a "juicy girl" who saved her money and bought out the owner of the bar, so she keeps all of her drink tab, since she is the owner and operator. She has another female friend working for her during the days, of whose cut Ms. X keeps an unspecified amount.
But what of straight sex-for-money? What of the many and much more typical red-light districts that are exclusively for Korean men? I spoke with Ms. Y, who is in her early 20's, lives in a small town in the southern part of the peninsula, and was frank about her reasons for entering into the more direct style of sex work, the red-light districts found in almost any medium-sized Korean city as well as all over Seoul – Cheongnyangni, Miari, Yongsan, Yeongdeungpo.
My talk with her was brief, not to mention expensive. Her room, which she said is typical of many and any others these days, was surprisingly spacious and clean, albeit suggestively red. I had about 15 minutes to talk, since that's about all the time I'd get as a customer. I decided to get right to the point and broach the big question of how people generally got into this kind of work – was she in debt, were there cases she knew of women trapped in debt bondage, or perhaps even women being kidnapped from the countryside? Her reply was a dismissive laugh, whereafter she chided at how ridiculous a notion that was. Perhaps such things were true in the 70's or 80's, and you heard about such cases sometimes in newspapers, but there are so many women wanting to work in red-light districts that there was no need for such ruthless recruiting.
A panoramic photo-stitch of Ms. Y's room.
Contrary to what many people want to think, there is such a high supply of women wanting to do this work, with the competition to attract and keep the best girls so strong, that women scarcely needed to be coerced. In fact, her room and all the furniture in it was completely free and part of a package deal, such that women could walk in off the street, not pay a dime, and start earning money for herself and the house. The way she described it, supply was so abundant that it was in everyone's best interests to aggressively recruit with clean, fully-furnished rooms.
Ms. Y laughed off the "Special Anti-Prostitution Law" for what I already thought it was – a show for the media and the public, after which it was back to business as usual. Brief talks with a few other women confirmed that the crackdown had scared a few girls away and briefly kept recruitment down, but it was apparent that it was business as usual in the major red-light districts around Seoul.
Ms. Y explained that most working girls lived and worked in their rooms, with a day off once a week. Girls came for all kinds of reasons, from supporting family members back home, to paying off personal debts, to wanting to gather capital for starting their own businesses, or for no particular reason other than make a lot more money than they could otherwise. "That doesn't happen anymore" she said, snickering as if even suggesting such a thing was utterly ridiculous. "There are so many girls wanting to come to do this work - why would you have to force them?"
The sign warns customers to "Watch your head."
She continued to emphasize the ludicrousness of the notion that anyone was forced into this sort of work anymore, before proceeding to explain her own circumstances. In her case, her mother had become hospitalized, so she had made the decision to come to Seoul and earn the money to cover the ongoing bills. She had been allowed by the house to adjust her schedule to three weeks on and one week off to travel back home, so she lamented the fact that she had no rest days for that long stretch of time. In the end, she seemed to be implying with her answers, as well as through her expressions and demeanor, that it had been a financial choice, albeit one inevitably influenced by circumstance and the social reality that she was able to easily make more money through sex than any other kind of labor, but she did not equate this with not having had a choice.
This brought me to think once again about the issue of supply, which is positively staggering. The Korean government's own late 2002 estimate places one million women engaged in sex work at any one time, which is almost unbeleiveable until one remembers that it would take a high number to support an industry that was 4.4% of the GDP, which is more than is constituted by forestry, fishing, and agriculture combined (those three industries make up 4.1% of the GDP). And this is a conservative estimate, based on the of formal places of prostitution that can be tracked, in terms of numbers of workers and estimated revenue; other, less trackable forms of informal prostitution are still nearly impossible to quantify.
An old-fashioned "Phone-in rooms" are where men go to small rooms to receive calls and female "freelancers" call in to meet the men. Such stickers are not obvious, but often plastered all around neighborhood telephone poles and bus stop signs.
When one realizes that these statistics easily translate into something from 1 out of 10 or even 1 out of 6 adult Korean women having worked in the sex industry at the present moment – and this goes without mentioning the number of women who might have worked at any point in their lives – the social implications of these estimates simple take the breath away.
What seems apparent in this whole public discourse about sex work and its treatment as a "social problem" with a clear and concrete solution – public crackdown and a "zero tolerance" policy – is just how unrealistic and ignorant of history it is. Obviously, sex work has become as important a part of the economy as any other "legitimate" one; more important than even that, it is an integral part of everyday culture as well.
Unfortunately, the Korean media treats the issue as they do any other – superficially, and represented through atypical and extreme examples that work better to spice up the story than convey a more realistic slice of reality. Political groups use the issue – and the women – as alternatively whipping boys or sad sob stories that further their own agendas. What is really being ignored is the very culture that legitimates sex work as a part of everyday life, or the use of the female body to sell everything from bread to even toothpaste – as something that has been completely normalized.
Whether sex work is "good" or "bad" is not the crux of concern here, but it would seem that this is the only truly interesting aspect of the matter, and is the only worthy question of consideration for anyone truly concerned about this issue. What does the fact that there are more sex workers than schoolteachers mean for society? What should one make of the fact that it is easier to gain employment as a sex worker through a neighborhood jobs circular than it is to get a job in McDonald's? What of the fact that, anecdotally at least, some significant amount of the capital that goes into starting "legitimate" businesses in Korea can actually be traced back to a women working on her back? This leads us to the big question: How does this affect men's views towards women in general?
"Marry a Vietnamese virgin" proclaims this banner, common on street corners and residential areas throughout Korea.
What these questions speak to – as well as the several people interviewed for this article – is the fact the "social problem" approach to this issue becomes an exercise in futility when we, as a society, simply morally condemn all sex workers, or the industry itself, or even the police forces and government agencies that protect and regulate this trade in sex for money. The problem is deeply structural – it is not a matter of mere morality, or one of passing new laws, or having temporarily enforced, zero-tolerance crackdowns. In order to deal with this deeply-rooted structural problem – one that is also a major underpinning of both the economy and culture itself – it is most useful to contextualize this issue – or the cases of the girls with whom I spoke for this piece – within a much larger picture. One must see the problems as they are linked together, rather than simply scrutinize the smaller parts of the equation.
For example, one might consider the fact that Korea ranks 63rd out of 70 countries measured in the United Nations' commissioned Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM), which is calculated based on the number of women in actual positions of economic or political power. Just to give this statistic some context, the US is ranked 10th, Japan is ranked 44th, Thailand 55th, Russia 57th, and Pakistan 58th. The only other countries that actually managed to score behind Korea were all places in which women's inequality is overtly and sometimes even brutally enforced; in ascending order of GEM rank: Cambodia, where domestic violence is not even legally a criminal offense, comes in right behind Korea at 64th. The United Arab Emirates, where a man can still legally take up to four wives, is 65th, and Turkey, where "honor killings" of women who have had the audacity to be a victim of rape are still often committed by male relatives of actual victim, takes the 66th spot. Sri Lanka follows, with Egypt, Bangladesh, and Yemen bringing up the rear, last out of of the countries measured.
Does this statistic really have absolutely nothing to do with the high rate of state-supported, socially sanctioned sex work in South Korea? Does it have nothing to do with the fact that appearance is still, realistically, the key factor in most women getting jobs, all other factors being equal? In many other developed countries, including the United States, requiring pictures on resumés, or even asking to indicate age, place of birth, ethnic origin, religion, and marital status is illegal and is the grounds for lawsuits if asked for. Is it really surprising that in a country in which the sale and importance of the woman's body plays such a large part of the economy and culture that even the Ministry of Gender Equality has not even addressed this obvious issue?
"Too old," as the handwriting at the top of the note says.
If the sex industry is as much a part of Korean life and the economy as any other, then what seems important to consider are the demands of the sex workers themselves, echoed in the comments of all those interviewed for this piece, to be treated as what they are, for better or for worse – integral parts of the economy and culture. If someone has a bone to pick with the ramifications of this on greater society, it seems wiser to call into question the overall position of women in society, the legal and structural factors that create gender inequality and sex discrimination, as well as the overall societal attitude that so disproportionately values consumption of the female body over any other kind of work that a woman does and can do. If one wants to address this so-called "social problem," the best strategy would seem to involve ceasing to focus on individual cases, and instead squarely address what is a macro-level issue with macro-level solutions that speak directly to the problem of women's overall status in Korean society, as opposed to alternatively demonizing or lionizing the cases of individuals for the sake of news ratings or use as a whipping boy for one's moral agenda.
INTO THE LIGHT?
"Light" is often the metaphor for talking about the future; Korean media campaigns and propaganda slogans often talked about the "bright future" linked with an open heart. I am of two minds about the subject; I believe that the future of Seoul and Korea indeed to be bright, but that with every silver lining, there is a hidden price.
moving from golmok to "playground" to where? There are, of course, the many places where people live, and people have made great effort to combine the seemingly contradictory goals of cramming as many people as possible into a given amount of space, while making it a space humans would actually want to live in. So city planners and apartment engineers build up, seeming to try and reach higher and higher away from the gritty reality of the ground.
Old Seoul overshadowed by the ever-encroaching presence of huge apartment complexes.
But there seems to be a price paid for Koreans' sudden obsession with everything modern, new, and branded with names of seeming wealth, status, and power. As an outsider, as someone who comes from a country that has naturally developed into its industrial and economic power, I see something else that comes with the nouveau riche naming of apartment buildings – "Golden" and "Mansion" and "Palace" and "Tower" and "Castle" can be combined in any way you like, along with specific words that connote feudal status, such as "Noblesse" or "Noble" or "Rich" or "Intelligent." The furniture that Koreans tend to buy seem like a veritable parody of the concept of luxury, a hodge-podge of European baroque gaudiness and a tribute to conspicuous consumption.
<INSERT: Artist's conception of the Tower Palace Apartments.>
The very spaces of the city have come to no longer resemble anything Korean. And perhaps it is too simple to glibly call this "Americanization." I think it's something more, perhaps the first steps to a truly global culture that America and other capitalist democracies came to define first. The future is indeed fun, since I'm told that Starbucks tastes better, movies in a Megabox theater are punchier and more dynamic, the comfortable cars of Hyundai, Daewoo, and now Samsung have smoother rides than the sputtering, manually operated vehicles of old. Maybe this move "forward" is inevitable? But need we do so in this way?
Why do corporate visions of urban spaces and reality have to dominate over others? What about the democratization of the landscape? Is it not tragic that the spaces that come to define the boundaries of all our activities are largely not created by most of the people who occupy them? In democracies, we tend to find it important to participate in the choosing of our political leaders. We expect to have a say in the people we associate with, the freedom to move about and travel, and revel in our freedom to define our private spaces.
But do we ever think about the fact that we have little knowledge of who determines the shape of the majority of the public spaces that define our lives? Do we ever think about the fact forces beyond our control have effectively turned most human interactions into required acts of consumption? When did we give our permission for this? Did we even realize that this happened? Every day, we give our tacit consent by meeting, eating, and conducting business in the "playground" of consumption, while agreeing to live in the ultra-modern, yet lifeless and sterilized utopia of glass and steel, living an automated and electronic life of convenience.
In one essential way, we have become like ants in a colony, placing little stock in the importance of thinking about the meaning of the spaces around us. Much of our feelings of a lack of control and ownership of our own work is summed in the old American quip, "Hey, don't ask me. I just work here, man." In modern, super-fast, high-rise Korea, it may have gone a step further: "Hey, don't ask me – I just live here. I don't make the decisions."
Still, there is a certain saccharine pleasure in the mass consumption even in the corporatized and commercialized atmosphere of urban culture, the tension between the old sensibilities and Korean personality that are the legacy of times spent living in the golmok, which conflicts with the newer attitudes created by a new Korean affluence and obssession with things "luxury" and "comfortable." Within this whirlwind of change, you have both the disappearance of individual choice that comes crashing up against old-fashioned Korean dynamicism that makes Seoul a truly "interesting hell."
This is what will really mark the beginning of the end of the "old Seoul" – the remnants of pre-development Korea that was and is a welcome counterbalance to the ever-encroaching invasion of glass, steel, and plastic. Yet, it is not the materials themselves that spell the doom of everything that makes Korean city culture unique. It is the unquestioning willingness of the city's denizens to knock down all that is old or stained by years of use, or to welcome the corporatized versions of what was once original and individual; the taste of Seoul's food is already becoming notably bland and uninteresting, as the basic ingredients for cooking most foods now tend to come from the same sources, forcing even the most old-fashioned and talented grandmother cooking her favorite recipes to work with the most uninteresting of creative palettes. No matter how talented, even the most inspired artists cannot create well if limited to a few simple colors.
But by the time the taste of dwaenjangjigae/된장찌개 starts to taste the same everywhere you go, it will already be too late. When the clothes we buy are the same as what everyone else's, we lose something. When we all drive the same cars, live in the same apartments, eat the same food, and even spend our free time in exactly the same ways, and even as our own desires are now largely no longer our own but what advertisers and marketers have convinced you to need and want – where does one define the self?
The pieces of Seoul life that have made it unique, like little bits of heaven surrounded by what people have mistakenly called "hell," are going to disappear. When the street food stands either disappear or become chains, the crooked streets so full of character have been paved over by high-rise officetels and apartment buildings, and the open-air markets all become E-Mart outlets for mass consumption – what will define Korean life so specifically from Japanese, French, Canadian, or American life?
Even Korean movies, now hailed as part of the "Korean wave," have lost as much in character as they have gained in production values, creative marketing, and growing star power. I used to find Korean movies quite interesting, daring, and provocative right after the lifting of heavy governement censorship in the late 1990's. Now, as an American, I have little interest in most of them. If I want to watch Hollywood movies, I'll watch Hollywood movies.
But there is something more than just this downside. One cannot deny the sheer, unadulterated fun that defines Seoul life, Seoul nights. There is pleasure, especially as an American, at going to the E-mart or watching movies at massive cineplexes. Watching the overwrought melodrama of Taeggukki play out on the big screen was almost painful to watch; yet, I couldn't help but shed a tear in one scene, despite the fact that I hate all of that director's films. It's slick, pre-packaged claptrap; but it works.
Many Koreans who move to the US or Canada describe, to their surprise, that these are boring places to live, in comparison to Korea. With America's overall economic development and relatively high standard of living, with that long-developed stability, comes a lack of surprise, tension, or social danger. Korea is a country whose development happened in fits and starts, partially under self-determined, Japanese, and American regimes, against the backdrop of war and the insecurity that followed it, combined with the conflicts and contradictions caused by a rapid, forced, and often violent development regime. Korea gathered its capital through both hard work and borrowing, through means both moral and immoral; individual sacrifice, lack of freedom of dictatorship, gains offered by the US through the dispatch of troops to Vietnam, capital gained through sex work, the exploitation of labor, as well as countless acts of individual selflessness – both good and bad were part of the development story. Both good and bad manifest themselves even today.
So in all honesty, I cannot say that I don't feel a conflicted relationship with the ease of life here, especially as Korea and the world globalize along increasingly similar lines. And yes, there is obviously real, palpable pleasure in the older ways of playing as well, as found in drinking, dancing, singing, and sexing the night away. There is a "dirty" underside to the clean, polished face of Seoul and Korean life. It is, strangely enough, that dark side that gives the one of light a certain kind of meaning. There is a constant, nearly indescribable tension here, one I had never felt before coming to Korea, marked by the dichotomies of old and modern, dirty and clean, corrupt and pure, light and darkness. That tension is what marks Korea's charm, its irresistable new lure to the outside world.
But there is a sadness, too. There is loss here. As Korea walks away from and becomes more and more of a stranger to its own older way of life – as the cultural memories of the golmok pass out of memory, as Korea becomes more of the 선진국 it has so desperately wanted to be – a certain unique and peculiar aspect of the Korean character is being lost. From the early 1990's to just a little after the now is what I see as the "golden age" of the Korean street, when Korea stands at a fragile balance point between the past and the present, the then and now, un- and over-developed. In a way, it will never be worse and always seems to be getting "better."
Once Korea comes a bit further into the realm of the modern and postmodern, when the rule of law become pervasive and people no longer ignore traffic lights, all wear their seat belts, and don't curse at each other any longer; when the street stands are gone, restaurants are all chains, and we all eat lunch in food courts; when the red light districts are closed, people stop drinking to excess, and the streets are empty after 12 – for many people, Korea will have taken a step closer to being a "heaven," the dream of decades of development. But for all the hard work and feverish effort made to get ahead – without ever asking the question of "why?" – many Koreans will have forgotten all the guilty pleasure of having lived in "hell" along the way.
Doesn't Cho Nyo (sorry, I'm not at a Korean computer so I can't type it out in Hangul) mean unmarried woman and not virgin? I'm not sure if there is a cultural difference to the word or not, but that's what I thought.
BTW, great post.
Posted by: dw | May 29, 2006 at 10:25 PM
I liked this entire post.
I agree with you that Korea is changing at a rapid rate and that in doing so it is losing its.... Koreanness... or character. But the thing is, are the changes so terrible? I think that enforcing laws and empowering women are great benefits for Korea. Yeah sure, Korea loses it's uniqueness or whatever but was it really so great before? I wouldn't want to sacrifice principles such as equality and independent thought for some romantic view of the way Korea once was.
And yeah, Korea is increasingly becoming Americanized but perhaps it will result in a unique Korean culture that incorporates American culture and Asian culture.
Korean values are largely different from American values and the further development of Korea may lead to an interesting mesh of the two.
Posted by: wwidgirl | May 30, 2006 at 10:39 AM
Oh, and in addition. Korea's low GEM ranking may be in part because of the mandatory military service. How many other countries that are higher on the GEM list have mandatory military service for males only?
I think the military service encourages a kind of "men's club" that persists long after the service ends.
Posted by: wwidgirl | May 30, 2006 at 10:56 AM
I think you remember me because we met around last Christmas when my fried, Ted came here. I have been alwasys enjoying your post a lot, even though it doesn't mean I always agree with your analysis on Korean people's lives.
I would like to give you simple coments about this post. As far as I understand, this will become a part of an article or dessertation, i would likt to give you some comments.
I like your attempt to relate prevalence of prostitution in Korea with overall women's status by mentioning GEM.
The amount of supply, according to Korean government statistics, 330,000, not one million. Some human rights activists assumed one million without correct evidence. And I would like you to reconsider the using of expression of " 1 out of 10, or even 1 out of 6". I am afraid about that it may evoke useless argument or hatred from some groups.
Secondly, it is more complicated issue about what concept is more adjustable to make your point correct among "sex work" and "prostitution".
Did I tell you I was deeply involved to make this law "Anti-prostitution law"? Before enforcing this law, from 2001 when there waa a fire and some prostitue were dead beacuse the door were locked, we gatehered about 30 people from every part such as scholars, human rights activists and feminists as well as policy makers from each departments. Almost 1 and half year, we had anlyzed mechanism and treid to hear women's voice who engaged in the "prstitution". So I am feeling kind of pain when you just mentioned about the crackdown policy. Becasuse I had met so diverse prostitutes from the women who though that she just sold her body to everybody instead of selling it to just one person, husband to the women who actually escaped from serious physical abuse of pimps. However, it's OK. I believe that your analysis will contribute finally to increase people awakening on this issue in different way as I did. (I am sorry, I might became sentimental a little bit)
Usually, if you choose the word "sex work", it means you support the idea of "legalization of prostitution".
As you know Korea, the U.S, and Sweden, according to govenment policy based on the result of scholasic argument, use the term prostituion. However, German and Holland use the term, sex work and sex worker.
So if you dont want to involve the argument about "legalization of prostitution", how about useing two terms together. In my opinion, policy on prostitution shoud based on each country's social context. So I think you better not involved too deep on this topic in this article.
Good luck....
Posted by: Geumjoo | May 30, 2006 at 11:20 AM
Innnnnnnteresting points, Geumjoo.
Also, wwidgirl, thanks for the reply.
Let me chew on your comments for awhile and check around.
Statistics-wise, those were th figures reported by the Bureau of Criminology back in 2002, with accompanying news reports that basically just presented the stats.
Were there major changes in their position or their numbers? Let me check around, and if you know anything, I'd love for you to drop me a line. In the comments section is fine – this conversation can benefit other readers, so much the better.
Let me respond more in-depth to the comments when I'm not checking my email from the Kwanghwamun Burger King.
;-)
And dw, it means virgin, but doubles traditionally as "unmarried woman." In the old days before Korea got hipper, back in 1994, people used to ask me all the time if I was a "virgin," which they were translating straight from Korean into English. Somewhere in those intervening years, people got wise to it; probably because of a bunch of embarrssing moments with foreigners, such as I had, in response to that question. Not only is it a weird question, I don't think people were thinking that the concepts of "unmarried" and "No, I haven't done the nasty before" were anything but mutually exclusive concepts.
From Naver:
virgin
1a 처녀, 숫처녀, 동정녀;미혼 여성;소녀
2 [the Virgin] 동정녀 마리아;[a Virgin] 성모 마리아의 그림[상]
3 《속어》 미경험자
4 동정남(童貞男)
5【곤충】 단성(單性) 생식을 하는 암컷
Posted by: The Metropolitician | May 30, 2006 at 12:13 PM
sorry, but you're along way off with ur info on room saloons. In the more upscale places, a girl makes a flat rate of 100,000 a table, with 10% going to the house. They can make more than that per table. On a slow night they earn about 300,000 without sex, on a good night 1,000,000 without sex.
And juicy girls think they have it better off? Its more that the girls that work as juicy girls are fat and ugly, and most rooms wouldnt employ them
Posted by: komtengi | June 03, 2006 at 12:27 AM
About the lamentation of the destruction of traditional things in favor of the modern... it makes us happy, don'tchaknow? I find this a curious and self-indulgent attitude, as well as being rather condescending, like "these silly people don't know what they'll be missing in 10 years time..."
Pleasure in mass consumption is "sacharine" is it? That's not how it tastes to me, nor the vast majority of Americans, I'd wager.
"The pieces of Seoul life that have made it unique, like little bits of heaven surrounded by what people have mistakenly called "hell," are going to disappear. When the street food stands either disappear or become chains, the crooked streets so full of character have been paved over by high-rise officetels and apartment buildings, and the open-air markets all become E-Mart outlets for mass consumption – what will define Korean life so specifically from Japanese, French, Canadian, or American life?”
Koreans deserve more than to have their country be an exotic throwback-of-last-resort to Americans who are either weary of their own country’s offerings or looking for an exciting adventure.
While I am generally supportive of your mission, Michael, and sympathetic to your rebuttals to Koreans angry about your investigative journalism, bear in mind that hardly anyone likes to hear criticism of their own coming from an 'other.' One example I can think of are the letters sent by British citizens to ordinary Americans in the Midwest (I think) prior to the 2004 elections that were returned with incredibly condescending and vitriolic replies, essentially telling "all foreigners to STFU" and mind their own damn business. You do a good job in not crossing the line between indignation and reverse discrimination, though.
here's what I mean:
The lack of public transport in American cities is something readily and painfully noticeable to visiting foreigners, and equally absurd is the notion of driving 2 miles on a freeway (which reminded me of those endlessly rolling “Flintstones” landscapes) to buy a quart of milk. America has puritanical social limits enforced “from above” but also a strong hedonistic imperative gushing through society. Teenagers in the Midwest have adopted the "shocker" hand gesture to represent cool - (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shocker_(hand_gesture)), and high school proms look more like orgies these days. And have you been to a frat party lately?
Also: America has problems with overcrowded prisons, violent crime, ethnic tension, corporate corruption.. 10% of Americans live in poverty. The streets of San Francisco are filled with the mentally disabled homeless. I could go on for hours, but I won't.
Find me the American who will sit there and listen to things like this from a foreigner without getting just a *little* riled up. It’s inevitable, really.
---
*edit*
I don’t mean this post to be an attack on you or the site, and I think there’s some fine writing here, but I have to admit that even I, a Korean permanently moved abroad, who is totally independent and extremely critical of my own country, to the point of having NO Korean friends left at all, found myself writing an angry retort before I knew what was going on.
To leave on a conciliatory note, I have great respect for you as a biracial individual living and thriving in Korea at this time, and I see your site as a very valuable reference.
Posted by: Andy | June 04, 2006 at 05:30 PM
Good article, but I would like to see more facts accompanying your commentary.
Andy, I'm an American citizen and I accept that your observations about the ills of my country are legitimate. Perhaps what needs adjustment is your definition of an "American." I agree that STFU-type of reaction from an American, whether living in the Midwest or elsewhere, to a criticsm from abroad is fairly common. I would suggest that such a reaction is more common among white Americans who are several generations removed from immigration. As you may know, such Americans are now the minority of the population, and they are no more or no less "American" than my parents who were naturalized. I would argue that recent immigrants such as my parents and their children are generally more willing to engage in honest discoure about the social ills around them and even welcome outside perspective from time to time.
By contrast, Korea has a rather exclusive definition of who is or is not Korean (why is the author of this website an "outsider" in Korea?), which retards the infusion of fresh ideas and different perspectives.
Posted by: Paul | June 05, 2006 at 11:53 PM
Hi Paul,
I assume the requests for facts were directed at Michael?
And yes, you make an important distinction. Of course I was not asserting that there are not many sides to the US. I went on a one-sided depiction just to prove a point. In reality, I admire the US a lot, and I usually find myself defending and criticizing America in equal measure to others.
For instance, when people point to America's lack of history, I point out the fact that it has the world's oldest civilian government, predating the French Republic; I believe the drafters of the Constitution were truly remarkable men. And it is true, that far more than any other large country, it defines citizenship on much more permeable criteria than racial bloodlines.
I would not go as far as to say that they represent a clear minority of public opinion, however. The 2004 elections showed the world, and millions of clearly shocked urban Americans, how large, vocal and powerful the conservative agenda in their country is. I have been subject to blatant racial epithets in San Francisco and Palo Alto, two of the most liberal areas in the US.
I used the word 'other' (and not 'outsider,' btw) to refer to the matter of citizenship - and Michael, as far as I know, is not a Korean citizen, just as I am not an American citizen, despite the fact that I have lived, studied and worked there for 6 years and am fluent in the language and customs. I am still legally an alien, nor will it be an easy matter for me to gain citizenship, should I want it (although I suppose the anthropological use of the term 'other' implies cultural membership rather than legal membership. OK my mistake).
As far as standards of racial harmony and inclusiveness are concerned, it is more the case that, legally and for the most part socially, the US is far ahead of the rest of the world. America more than any other country has taken the issue on and tried to deal with it through changes in their legal system. In Germany for instance, an immigrant cannot become a full citizen unless his or her family has been there for FIVE generations. I am guessing that this is the norm around the world, not the exception.
I do not dispute the contention that the US is far ahead of most of the rest of the world in terms of true (and successful) interethnic harmony, but bear in mind how long and hard-fought this was.
The condemning of racism in America has become so firmly established that it is now self-evident to the majority (and the vast majority if you're only looking in the big cities and college campuses) that all humans are equal in value, worth and potential. So convinced are they that this is the natural order of things, that when they see displays of the type of racism that were widespread in the US as recently as the 50s or 60s, they see an evil so urgent they forget that there is a progression here.
It's like smoking - America was the world leader (and a lead exporter) in indulgence of this habit until the 50s, but made such advances in a short space of time that it now leads the world in the opposite direction, and in the same way that ex-smokers become the most virulent of anti-smoking activists, righteous Americans nowadays love to lecture and hassle others who are not yet at their level of development. Lecturing and hassling are GOOD, and necessary, but it takes time for people to change, so don't be too disheartened if just telling someone they're being racist results in denials/avoidance and doesn't change them overnight. It will probably take a generation or two for that to happen. Not that this is guaranteed to happen - things like the Hines Ward debate are exactly what this country needs a LOT more of.
Incidentally, while Korea is not a multiracial society, with a GDP of $16,500, it is hardly a rich or fully developed country either, but in truth one of the handful of true 'middle-class' countries in the world today, sandwiched between the US/Japan/Western Europe and the rest of the world), and its mish-mash economic, civic, ethical and legal development perfectly reflects that. If you want to see horrific racial discrimination against black people, just go to any Eastern European country of your choice, and listen to the monkey chants, see the hurled banana skins, etc. Further down the development ladder, witness the rampant genocidal tendencies between religious, ethnic/racial, tribal groups in many parts of Africa.
I don't find Korea's development trajectory as alarming as many on this website and others like Marmot's Hole do. It will be frustrating, because you won't find the society you would love to find yourself living in during your generation, but it (probably) will happen.
Posted by: Andy | June 06, 2006 at 04:32 PM
"In Germany for instance, an immigrant cannot become a full citizen unless his or her family has been there for FIVE generations. I am guessing that this is the norm around the world, not the exception."
That is a patently false statement.
Posted by: dogbert | June 07, 2006 at 10:25 AM
What I wanted to emphasize was that Europeans continue to conceive of national identity in primarily racial terms. For most Germans, someone of Asian descent can never be a true German. Of course there are progressive pockets, but they're a small minority, and this can be seen in their legal systems. It is the same with Italians, the Spanish, and the French.
As for the FIVE generations statement, after doing a bit of googling, I realize this isn’t true anymore. I was told this by some Turkish-German friends when I went to Germany in 2000, who had faced quite a bit of discrimination bespite being third generation Germans. They were looked down on by others, could not get jobs and lived in Turk-only projects. The third generation Korean-Germans I met were much more secure in their sense of citizenship, but still self-segregated themselves to a degree I found remarkable, and one commented to me that he often heard from white Germans that he was not, in fact, a true German.
Despite the new citizenship laws passed in 2000 and 2005, Germany is still a very restrictive environment for immigrants:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,410102,00.html
Here's Oezdemir, the first German of Turkish descent to be elected to parliament:
http://www.workpermit.com/news/2005_11_24/europe/turkish_politician_discusses_german_immigration.htm
Dogbert, do you have any complaints about the rest of my comment?
Posted by: Andy | June 07, 2006 at 08:14 PM
The longer I stay in Korea, the more I am surprised at the enormous quantity and variety of sex for sale.One thing I've been curious about is the history of sex work in Korea and how much the Korean and Japanese sex industries may have influenced each other as there seem to be many characteristics in common going back to the times of Gisaeng and Geisha. What effect did the Japanese occupation have? And what aspects can be traced back to the Korean War?
I've been thinking about how much the structure of one's environment (political, cultural) affects one's choices or lack thereof, but hadn't considered the in-my-face reality of the form and purpose of the space I live in as you pointed out. Good stuff!
As to the modernization and loss of cultural flavah, I used to have a romantic ideal of an ancient Korea of humble, earnest farmin' folk. But this is simply an idea, what I wanted to imagine Korea was once like. Now Korean popular culture seems to be perpetuating its own fantasies of its past as it moves farther from those origins. Yet I don't completely buy the argument of a McDonald's-ification, bland new world. Culture, like most everything, is not static and always evolves.
Posted by: sungwon | June 08, 2006 at 02:56 PM
I just have a thing about accurate information. When someone makes a statement (such as yours) in support of his/her argument that is significantly far from the truth, I may mention it. I don't do it to upset you, but because other people may believe something you say without taking the trouble to check its veracity. By the way, are you asserting that the "five generations requirement" was true at some point?
As to the rest of your generalizations about the attitudes of a nation of some 80 million people, those are rather subjective, so I can't correct you on those. If I were interested in that subject more than what affects me here in Korea, though, I could certainly add my own contradictory anecdotes, based on having lived in both Germany and Austria for several years.
Posted by: dogbert | June 08, 2006 at 06:18 PM
hey there dogbert,
no, I get your point, and in retrospect it was clearly an error on my part :) If I didn’t make it clear: Germany never had a five-generation requirement! I asked you again because I thought your dismissal of my statement either meant you had good knowledge of it, and thus could enlighten and correct me (rather than just saying I’m wrong and leaving it at that), or you were poking away at the credibility of my comment by fixating on one mistake, without commenting on the rest of it.
Not to belabor this issue, but I’m almost certain that until Germany passed new citizenship laws in 2000, there was a 2 or 3 or 4 generation requirement before an immigrant could gain citizenship (unless one could prove ancestral blood-ties to Germany). I’m sure there were newspaper articles about this, around the time of the first riots in France and other places in Europe. I hope you realize I’m not being confrontational here; I’m hoping you can clear this up for me, because I’ve believed this for some time now.
In any case, I’m certainly not disputing that Korea has major issues with racism and sexism, and that these are worse in degree than in the West. I realize this is a website about Korea, but social-cultural anthropology has always had a taint of condescension to me, and this was what I was reacting to. I decided to drag the names of the US and Europe through the mud a bit to make that point. That’s all I’m saying. I just did a bit of armchair anthropology with the 80 million people of Germany. Personally, I wouldn’t take comments like that too seriously were I thinking of visiting.
Now there’s little doubt in my mind that sexism and racism are big problems in Korea, but that doesn’t absolve the observer of the obligation to stick closely to empirical evidence and not get carried away with impressive-sounding narratives, even, or especially, when that evidence seems overwhelming. A – because anthropology is fuzzy enough as it is and B - because I don’t think that approach is very useful in the social-activist context: beat the Koreans over the head with the numbers by all means (they are scary enough as they are; I would hope that they speak for themselves). Just don’t give them an excuse to ignore your thesis because they don’t like the way you said it.
Posted by: Andy | June 09, 2006 at 05:39 PM
by the way, work is really starting to kick my ass so I won't have time to check this website for a long while. I'll be happy to discuss anything you want; just shoot me an email. I'm serious here; my boss is going to start monitoring internet usage tomorrow.
bye for now
Posted by: Andy | June 09, 2006 at 11:04 PM
In light of this series at the San Francisco Chronicle, do you think you need to adjust your thoughts about sex and Korea?
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/10/06/MNGR1LGUQ41.DTL
After all, if this much forced trafficking abroad is going on, stands to reason there is more than a little lingering here. imho.
Also, since Seoul is about to lose all its major red light districts (Yongsan, Cheongnyangni and a couple others all go under the wrecking ball in December-ish) (not because of any anti-prostitution drive, but because of simple development), I think it would be great if you took more photos from these neighborhoods. Soon, those spectacular (literally, as in "spectacle") neighborhoods could be history, and it would be nice if they were well documented.
(Which makes me wonder, Joni Mitchell style, if they torn down all the trees and put 'em in a tree museum, what will happen to 588?)
Posted by: Haisan | October 07, 2006 at 04:43 PM
Interesting stuff, and worth learning more about. I'd already seen around that Koreans are nearly on top of every major bust's list of perpetrators.
But that still doesn't speak to Korea's issues, at least in terms of mainstream sex work. You have the business here, which is pretty much just that – big business, not much in the way of strong-armed coercion – and you have the business overseas, which is, to some extent and by definition, a different business. And some of it, since the crackdown, is overseas.
Like many industries, there are different stripes of it. I think the big mistake is looking at it as a singular, unitary entity. You've got lots of young girls in it domestically for the relatively quick and "easy" money, you've got rings being run of girls going to say the Phillipines, China, and other Asian countries to engage in it – then there's Japan, which is a whole 'nutha story – and then you have the seedy people who team up with local law enforcement in the States and run the rings of "massage parlors," which are decidedly much "more" illegal than they are here. In the end, in the US, they have vice squads and undercover agents who bust these rings (remember the San Jose one?) and it makes news headlines, whereas there's an "Anma" place on nearly every major intersection in Korea where salaryman buddies go after work.
So I think we're talking about related, but different animals. Sort of like how there's the mainstream porn industry in the States, but then there's the criminal "kiddie porn" peddlers. When the present witch-hunt hysteria over kiddie porn really took off in the 1990's, I remember people saying that we should "illegalize all porn" to prevent kiddie porn. But then, when you realize that the porn industry wants as little to do with kiddie porn as anyone else – probably more so – because kiddie porn is already illegal (hello!) and immoral and all other kinds of adjectives, you realize that we're talking about big money, which makes the interests of a porn production company in LA that of making darn sure their people are all of legal age. Who wants to go to jail for 50 years because you didn't check that fake ID? Or have your production company shut down?
I don't think the two are nearly as distant cousins – I mean, domestic and US massage parlor prostitution – but you might see the difference between a few people who want to make a quick buck exploiting young women in an extremely illegal environment overseas – where the girls have no recourse and nowhere to run – versus organized criminals here, who have an interest in running much more "up and up" businesses (i.e. paying the girls their contracted amounts, ensuring their (relative) safety, giving them vacation days – seriously – it's not that these are big-hearted people – it's what the market will bear, and it's one of the biggest industries in this country.
So if the domestic industry were bringing in girls under false pretenses, violating agreed-upon terms, physically or mentally abusing the girls as a rule – what, umm, is more common in the hagwon, industry, actually – girls wouldn't come, or at least, only the more desperate would sign up.
And as someone who has seen and talked to a lot of different kinds of folks here, in both a professional and non-professional aspect, I've seen a lot. I've even sat in a car with the head gangsta who runs Cheonngnyangni, along with a local police official (in UNIFORM, no less!) having coffee with him in the front seat. Funny where photography can lead you, but what you could also never publish. If I could only publih some of the pictures I have...
Anyway, I totally feel you on the historical aspects of preserving the visual memory of these spaces, which will be gone in a few years, simply because they'll be giving way to bigger, more monied interests. But the industry is well-entrenched in Korean society and culture, and will move to neighborhoods where the real estate is lower, as well as much more online.
But I've already started taking these pictures. I want to take more, but there's always a high "pucker factor" with taking these pics. Contrary to the beliefs of those who castigated me for even covering this topic in the Korea Herald piece, it's pretty stressful and hard work to walk around taking pictures of stuff that most organized criminals don't want you taking pictures of. And in the red light districts, as a foreigner, you're truly a stranger in a strange land, and you're not wanted there. And if you get caught snapping shots...well...that's one frontier I haven't had to cross into yet. But I assume that if I start taking a lot of pics, I'll eventually get caught. And I don't exactly look forward to that moment.
Anyway, I've got enough pics to fill a pretty good book about the subject now, especially since the Korea Herald article forced me to get some discipline about the subject. Too bad they didn't publish any of the pictures except for the old one I took back in 2003.
And too bad that book will probably never be publishable, given Korea's crazy libel and defamation laws, coupled with public paranoia about cameras, linked with the petty moralizing that goes on over gender, sex, and power. In the end, if I published any of the "real" pictures I had on the subject, the girl would just end up being victimized by society.
Thanks, Haisan, for that thoughtful comment.
And as for my post-Herald detractors...
If only you knew what I've seen...
Too bad there are too many legal/ethical obstacles to talking about this issue frankly in this society. With just 5 of the best pictures I have, man...I could...
But anyway...
Posted by: The Metropolitician | October 07, 2006 at 05:22 PM
@Andy:
In your discussion of "inclusive" and "exclusive" countries and cultures you gave the following example of an "exclusive" country:
"In Germany for instance, an immigrant cannot become a full citizen unless his or her family has been there for FIVE generations. I am guessing that this is the norm around the world, not the exception."
As a German citizen, who holds a law degree (albeit one from a British university and related to the law of England & Wales) I can assure you that the above-mentioned statement is nonsense. And I am saying this despite the fact that I am certainly most critical of Germany (a country to which I have returned only recently after 27 years of absence). I do, on the other hand, fully concede that many aspects of German immigration policy are quite irrational and have written extensively about this in various comments over at "The Asia Pages".
Posted by: Fantasy | October 09, 2006 at 07:56 PM
@Andy:
I wrote the last comment without looking at the sequel:
"Not to belabor this issue, but I’m almost certain that until Germany passed new citizenship laws in 2000, there was a 2 or 3 or 4 generation requirement before an immigrant could gain citizenship (unless one could prove ancestral blood-ties to Germany). I’m sure there were newspaper articles about this, around the time of the first riots in France and other places in Europe. I hope you realize I’m not being confrontational here; I’m hoping you can clear this up for me, because I’ve believed this for some time now."
I am sorry to say so, but this is nonsense, as well. The reason why some immigrants with long-term residency choose not to become German citizens is that their naturalisation leads to the relinquishment of their previous citizenships - a step which may cause their legal positions in their native countries to deteriorate.
Multiple citizenship is permitted in German law only if the entitlement has existed as from birth (e.g. birth on US territory with a Danish and a German parent leads to a permanent entitlement to all three citizenships).
In cases of the acquisition of German citizenship (or of other citizenships for those who already hold German passports) in later life, entitlement is restricted to the citizenship of one country only - which means that applicants have to give up all their other passports.
There are good reasons to find this rule unfair and irrational as, indeed, I do. But I do not want to see it misrepresented in such a crude and non-sensical manner as in some of the above posts.
And as for your subsequent comment on the subject
"I was told this by some Turkish-German friends when I went to Germany in 2000, who had faced quite a bit of discrimination bespite being third generation Germans. They were looked down on by others, could not get jobs and lived in Turk-only projects. The third generation Korean-Germans I met were much more secure in their sense of citizenship, but still self-segregated themselves to a degree I found remarkable, and one commented to me that he often heard from white Germans that he was not, in fact, a true German."
it must be stated that, while I do not deny the existance of discrimination against Muslims in Germany and in other countries, your own use of language indicates that you have only a limited grasp of the subject, as you seem to regard Germans of Turkish descent as "non-whites", a description which is acceptable to neither the Turkish community nor, indeed, even to the most right-wing anti-immigrant Germans. In fact, it is virtually impossible to make a distinction between Germans of Turkish extraction and those belonging to the majority population on account of the mere visual appearance of either group.
German Gyopos and Germans of African extraction do, however, visually stand out from the crowd. But there are, as of now, by far fewer complaints of discrimination from this side (even in proportion to the size of these groups) than from the Muslim community. Must have something to do with the religious background, I suppose...
Posted by: Fantasy | October 09, 2006 at 09:10 PM
Hello!
I've been away from this blog for a long time..
Fantasy: Hi, thanks for your posts. You're right, my knowledge of many of the subjects on which I posted was rudimentary. The truth is that it became impossible for me to stay objective on this matter. A weird thing happened to me: I'm normally actually very critical of Korea, but when someone ELSE started being critical of it, I took it (by that I mean 'felt it') personally. Yes, that was my fault, and I didn't return to the site for a while partly because I felt myself slipping into irrational, emotion-driven defenses, one aspect of which was to drag in the whole nation of Germany into the discourse! I'll take your word on every aspect of Germany that you describe. Consider me suitably chastised.
Metropolitician, keep up the great work. Reading your blog can be onerous for me because it is relentlessly critical, but I'll take it like a man from now on.
Posted by: Andy | December 05, 2006 at 08:22 AM
No problem at all, Andy. I did not take your criticism personal.
I am quite critical of Germany myself - and to some extent you are actually right to say that Germany is an "exclusive" country, though not necessarily in relation to the acquisition of citizenship. What really bugs me here is the stubborn and nonsensical non-recognition of the vast majority of foreign qualifications.
It may be easy to gain access to the country - but, once in, the hapless immigrants find themselves locked at the bottom of the social ladder, due to the fact that few people hold any esteem for their hard-earned qualifications they've obtained before their coming to Germany.
Employers over here make all hirings dependant on the posession of a relevant German degree or a relevant German professional qualification specified for the respective job - they are invariably most reluctant to employ those who merely hold a foreign qualification, or even a foreign university degree.
Even self-employment is not really an option for immigrants, because this requires a formal qualification, as well, for anything more demanding than the opening of a corner shop. The idea behind this stupid policy seems to be: Let the foreigners come into the country but be careful to keep them away from the honeypots. Under the the given circumstances, only extremely few immigrants manage to climb the social ladder.
One friend of mine aged 39, who is actually of German extraction (and much whiter than me) but was born and brought up in Kazakhstan, never managed to find a job after coming to this country despite having been a university professor at a Kazakh university. Now he is waiting for his turning 67, when he will qualify for a state pension. He is also undergoing treatment for depression, because he feels rejected by society.
It comes as no surprise that unemployment among those born and brought up abroad is generally exorbitantly high, to the detriment of the immigrants, and at the expense of the German taxpayer who has to fork out the social security payments for them.
This kind of discrimination is not related to the categories of "race" or "skin colour" (Blacks or Asians with German qualifications are not discriminated against), but the entire system is nevertheless very problematic, indeed, and has rightly been called xenophobic in another thread of this blog. Complete idiocy, in my view.
Posted by: Fantasy | December 07, 2006 at 03:58 AM
Hello! Very interesting issues. In regards to your discussion of a globalizing South Korea (one poster used "McDonaldization"), I wonder what you believe once did, or should define South Korea as a nation and culture different from any other. I lived in South Korea in the early 90s, and I am currently living here now, and after more than a decade long leave from South Korea, simply stepping into Incheon Intl. Airport (rather than South Korea's old pride, the Kimpo International Airport) forced me to recognize the dichotomy you speak of - between the "golmok" and the "COEX mall." But I've heard many foreigners speak of South Korea as a "globalized" nation, even some people have gone as far as to say "mini-America." Another American once told me he was disappointed in South Korea - there were perhaps more McDonald's in Seoul than in many cities in the US, he said. "Why would I come all the way out here just to feel like I am back in America?" I asked him to try to step into a McDonald's here in South Korea and see if he felt like he was stepping into his hometown McDonald's in the United States (I've definitely never seen shrimp burgers or bulgogi burgers, and I've never had a burger pre-cut into halves for me in the United States). I am not saying that I believe the presence of McDonald's in South Korea should be celebrated - I just don't believe multinational corporations and governments are successful, nor necessarily interested in the uniformity of the world. Money-making is the concern, isn't it? As for culture, of course it will always exist here - people simply may not refer only to history to define it. One of the biggest parts of the national project has been defining and compartmentalizing areas of land and the people on it referring to a common history. The belief that all Koreans have shared a particular common history is as much a falsity in South Korea as is the notion of racial homogeneity here.
When you mentioned South Korea's future, when "people stop drinking to excess," it reminded me of all the recent ads I've been seeing, particularly anti-drinking and anti-smoking. These ads don't seem to necessarily represent the greater public opinion. Do you have any idea where these campaigns are coming from?
Posted by: matt | January 05, 2007 at 09:14 AM
People always get so worked up about the amount of sex and sexually spiced social services for sale. This is ofcourse (in my view) very legitimate.
However, I feel that the really astonishing thing is the amount of said services apparently being bought...
Has anyone been able to ascertain what has the bigger influence on the size of a society's sex trade: the willingness to sell, or the willingness to buy? (other factors being equal (which they are not but work with me here))
Posted by: Axel | May 13, 2007 at 03:12 PM
Beautiful. So melancholic and romantic... I almost forgot about all the information about the sex industry here... Michael, you are a true master of your craft. Bringing in such a tsunami of information and then going all emotional. Maybe you should give yourself a try at writing a script for a melodramatic Korean movie :) Congratulations, keep it up!
Posted by: extreme webmaster | February 12, 2008 at 09:32 AM