Scribblings of the Metropolitician

"Pursed"

Continuing in my series exploring the construction of femininity in Korea, this flash of color caught my eye. I have been thinking lately about the interesting and truly creative ways the ajumma fits into this notion of femininity, one that is inevitably agassi-centered.

I'll leave you all to mull over the somewhat obvious implications of the picture's title. Have a good weekend!

Dance for a Good Cause

Shake dat azz to some cool beats while knowing your cover charge won't be going to some thuggish peeps who are going to blow it on overpriced whiskey in Kangnam.

Ahem.

Anyhoo, this is part of an ongoing series of benefits for various causes (this site donated a chunk to one recommended by one of the organizers) and does it with flavah, funk, and yes, a whole lotta flair.

This is one of their famous dance party benefits (an example of one of their other types can be heard in the left menu in podcast #17) and well worth the cover. Held at übercool Monghwan, you can chill with a drink and peep some art upstairs, and get your crunk on down below.

You know the old run-around in the city on a Saturday night – same old haunts, same pricey bars, same old scene, right? If you haven't already gone, why not give it a go? And there are many cool, artistic, and interesting people in this crowd.

Ya gotta go. Tell 'em the Metropolitician sent ya.

Erm, or not. Doesn't really matter; I just wanted to say it.

Go. You'll like it.

SeoulGlow #6 - Susan Eats Jokbal!

Finally! In this 6th episode of SeoulGlow, Susan treats us to her second installment of "Seoul Food," in which she eats jokbal naked. Ahem. Er, umm, perhaps it's better to say she eats naked jokbal, that being without the sauce and, erm...condiments.

Umm, I think I'm digging a hole here. Help? Anyway, we warn our viewers, however -- if you watch this video without reasonable access to large amounts of freshly cut pork, you may end up hurting someone close to you. Do NOT watch on an empty stomach. Unless you want to start knawing on the flesh of other sentient beings, of course, since pigs and humans are such genetically close cousins.

I apologize for the spotty releases of our SeoulGlow video podcasts, but I am beholden to being "lost in translation" when it comes to the subtitling stage, especially when going from English to Korean. We need interns! And we're paying!

If you have any Korean friends who are looking for something, just send them over to this link (I put together a Korean description as well) and let them get in touch.

Also, for the Korean speakers out there who might want to practice their English and listening comprehension, we've provided the transcript (thanks, Dylan!) for their use, available after the jump.

And don't forget to let your Seooooooooul glow!

Get Crunk 'Cause Susan's Back!

Well, some of you likely already know that the Suddenly Susan, the Sassy Siren of Snark, is back and big blogging. She took her site underground with her for awhile, but she's resurfaced in weeks of late and is dishing out fresh helpings of one of the best personal blogs I've seen here in the Land of the Morning...After.

I had taken her out of the links when her site went private, only because it was like giving people an invitation to a party they weren't actually invited to – I kinda felt like a tease that way. Well, no more, because the door's open and everybody's on the dance floor. Let's just not have any hateration in her dancerie, mmmkay?

I think her writing is some of the funniest and snappy I've seen, and a welcome departure from the usual thematic suspects one tends to see on expat blogs. Sass, wit, and good writing – man – I need me some more of that.

And if for nothing else, you gotta read the post about ear candling. Who knew it actually kinda maybe sorta works? Although I'll have to reserve true belief until after I get a burning candle stuck in my ear, I'll take Susan at her word. If she says it works, then something must be going on.

The New York Times Makes Pajeon

And nice pictures, too.

Continuing on its cool Korean coverage kick, The New York Times has a nice article and how-to video of making pajeon, the drinking side-dish of champions:

On the other side of the spectrum is the Korean pa jun, a whole-pan pancake whose batter is stout enough to handle just about any ingredient you can think of, including chopped vegetables, seafood, meat, bean sprouts or kimchi. Pa jun are fun and easy to handle; with a little practice and a nonstick skillet with sloping sides, you can flip them without a spatula. They are strongly seasoned and real crowd pleasers.

The video is on the front page right now, but is part of the I wonder if this article makes me any less "anti-Korean?" Probably not. Oh, well. Hehe.

"They Didn't Study"

These are the actual answers to some students exams in the US – since the students didn't study, their answers were, umm, creative. Actually, they were quite funny. Here's a few:

He just describes the graph with prose. Brilliant!

Elegantly explained!

Well, he followed directions! Kind of. God bless American snarkiness and the ability to BS! I posted this to the little site I keep for my history students. I'm sure that hardcore Korean test-takers will find this hilarious – and frightening, since there's mostly no multiple choice on even math exams.

Click here to see them all at the original web site.

Dr. Ken Is Silly

First off, big hat tip goes to commenter Stephen, who turned me onto this. I am waaaay out of things, it seems.

Dr. Ken! Who knew?

Since the first Asian Americans really went mainstream in the public culture – that would be the landmark Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, not the awkwardly independent Better Luck Tomorrow – I've been loudly proclaiming the death of the media emasculation of Asian men.

Of course, there are the occasional throwbacks to the old representations, but there's been a sea change; what with the growing complexity of roles for Asian Americans in general, the rise of various Asian national cinemas, and an American public that is growing increasingly stereotype-averse, there's a lot more facets of Asian America to see.

Calling the "end of emasculation" for the Asian American man doesn't mean that I think there will be no more idiotic representations here and there, but only that the beginning of that end has indeed begun.

And with a Korean American standup who does comedy, doesn't apologize for fitting the mold of the "model minority" yet breaks it every moment he is on stage, the world is a brighter place with Dr. Ken, whom I've been checking out on YouTube.

He was on BET's Comic View?! Introduced by Cedric the Entertainer? From what I've seen, he pokes fun in all directions, and doesn't even shrink away from putting a new spin on age-old Asian stereotypes, which realistically, as an Asian American entering the field of comedy, he's nearly bound to address.

And he does a damn good job.

Now, there's a very silly man.

Two words: "Chemo, bitch!"

"Men in Motion"

I've been taking pictures of people in motion lately. There's just something about Seoul that moves quickly in a visual way, which I'm trying to capture with the camera.

This sense of motion also has something to do with color, and these two cues – hurried motion and vivid color splashes – is what fires my itchy shutter finger. I am nearly compulsive these days with my camera; it often accompanies me to the bathroom.

I rarely actually keep the camera in its bag, and if you see me, you'll see it there with me. Were this not the case, I would never be able to capture scenes like two men whizzing past me, one on the back of his friend's bike, who doesn't even bother to grab a hold as he calmly takes a toke. Technically, it's not compelling, but it is a sign that I'm still no slower than my camera warmup cycle.

But when I'm walking through the city, it's never in sleep mode – the camera's too busy taking pictures.

The Value Deflation of Korean Schools

OK – like most op-ed pieces in Korean newspapers, the logic is pretty specious, but this time I get the point, which is that "if Bill Gates been born in Korea," the poor state of the public education system would have prevented his star from rising. But then talking about the fact that he would have come of age in 1967 doesn't really help the argument, since lunchroom-sized computers were the last thing any Korean would have seen that year. Anyway...

The point is well made, by the way. The public school system here is failing – have any of you out there spent time in an average Korean school, because whoa – while those who can, to the extent that they can, take refuge in the private sector, the hagwon.

Those who are academically gifted are doing their best to actually leave the country, and I don't blame them. Any non-Koreans out there planning on sending their kids to an average Korean public school? I mean, there aren't guns or drug problems, right? Ahem.

And the talk about school violence, bullying, and even rape? Suicide being the #1 cause of death for young people? Kids starting to lose respect for their teachers and the system? Well, is anyone actually surprised? With all the pain, frustration, anger, and abuse that kids experience in the meat-grinder Korean education system – who is surprised that it's going to find expression in horrible ways?

Kids jumping off buildings. Girls beating other girls students and having male students rape her on camera and keep the tape as a blackmail tactic. What?

It's chickens coming home to roost. It's a brutal, development-era system that has completely lost its relevance in a more open, democratic society. It's the inevitable result of all the legions of utterly incompetent, selfish, and corrupt teachers, administrators, and school officials who are keep the system structurally inured against any sort of meaningful reform, since this would expose the fact of their incompetence, selfishness, and corruption.

Harsh? Well, as someone who has thought all this since first working in a Korean middle school in 1994 – and made this very prediction that the school system would come to a screeching, society-wrenching halt very soon – and has worked in two of Korea's "best" high schools and found they were run no better than the "worst", and have taught in top Korean universities and found them no better except for the quality of their facilities, that's my read of the situation.

A big storm's a-coming over the next 10 years for Korea, and I'll say what I've been saying for a few years now: Korean schools are undergoing such serious "value deflation" that what has already happened to Korean graduate schools (you can't get a decent professorial job in Korea without a foreign Ph.D.) is going to happen on the undergraduate level as the bleeding of the best minds out of Korea via the foreign language high schools is going to accelerate.

The government is doing its best to clamp the flow, but those with the means are getting the hell out of dodge.

12 years ago, almost no general people aside from a few of the elite knew about my my undergraduate alma mater, Brown University, let alone my boarding school.

Now, Brown is the booby prize for kids trying to go to Harvard, Yale, or Stanford. Now, Koreans are flooding not only the secondary prep schools, but even the middle school and elementary boarding schools as well, since there's a better chance to get into the top schools from an earlier age.

Top schools like Ewha Womens' and Yonsei have special internal programs that act like the foreign language high school, except within the college, where classes are ostensibly conducted in English. FLHS kids are essentially applying to these FLHS-in-a-schools to continue the hamster wheel of "international" education, of which the logical extension is simply more kids who are leaving the country. The ones who did not are generally the ones who could not – no bones about that.

The government is passing an English-only law for its schools that will only further diminish the already poor state of Korean academia by not allowing non-English professors to teach their subjects in their native tongues.

Oh, I could go on.

I try to do what I can, teaching my history course and trying to jumpstart a few minds into actually starting to think, analyze, and criticize. But even the few of us out there who even have the rare chance to do that and not be treated like walking dictionaries (foreigners) or dreamy idealists (Korean teachers who haven't had the inspiration beaten out of them yet) – our efforts are, in the big picture, doomed.

Ah, depressing but true. I'll continue to fight the good fight, but hardly anyone, save the few students who will remember and appreciate me when they finally come out of their test-induced haze a few years from now, will even notice.

Sigh.

Orenji and the Mario Man

Sounds like those spy thriller titles, right? Or other movies from the 80's? The Serpent and the Rainbow. The Falcon and the Snowman. The Scarecrow and Mrs. King. Wow. Those were certainly cheesed-out titles. This is just for fun – please indulge me my little indulgences.

Yes, I inherently think my cat is better looking than other cats. Is this fact not obvious?

What, you ask – I am being vague? Which fact is not obvious – that I inherently think my cat is better looking than other felines, or that he actually is? Whatever. Worship Orenji. Envy me. Your choice.

And this other totally unrelated tidbit relates to my testing another internet technology, namely the embedding capabilities of my blogging program ecto™ and Mncast. It also gives me another chance to use the ™ symbol, because I like it and I can. If you see a movie linked to an animated Lego™ Mario (there I go again), then it works. If not, hmm.

The movie won't center. Damn. Oh, well. Enjoy anyway.