Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Aoki Was Awesome!

For those who read FeetManSeoul.com, you know that Steve Aoki -- perhaps the world's most famous DJ -- came to Seoul. If you went to the show, you also might know that he rocked the house.

Also, Cut Chemist, formerly DJ for the Jurassic Five and who really tore up the turntables, was in total effect.

Both the Chemist and Aoki definitely kept the crowd entranced.

I also got snapped by the (in)famous, super-duper party photographer, The Cobrasnake. It's an honor to have been shooting with him, and to make the Cobra Snake party page. He definitely has a Zen style to his shooting, and gets some really fun stuff -- check it out!

Got me!

FMS is getting invited to some cool stuff these days, and I'm having a ball shooting both folks of fame, as well as folks just having fun. It's a salve to get some people actually paying more attention to my pics these days, instead of just continuing to be the ignored street photographer.

And it's a hard job getting the word out there about a new kind of magazine, in a new medium, but we're learning, and building, and having a great time.

Check out the full, ongoing coverage of this and more fun stuff at FeetManSeoul.com.

Korean Designer Profiles: Hwang Jae Bock

FMS is starting a series on Korea's most famous and influential fashion designers in the field of Korean fashion! This first episode kicks off with Hwang Jae Bock, a leading fashion designer and head of the Seoul Fashion Designers' Association. Check it out!

For those who prefer the YouTube version (compatible with more browsers):

What I really liked about the interview was the fact that I was able to stick in one of my little working theories about Korean fashion -- as the balance between a pressure to break out from the crowd as powered by a new boldness largely enabled by the Internet in constant tension with a a very Korean "social monitoring" that keeps people generally within the socially-acceptable range of the crowd -- and she saw it exactly the same way. Having one's observation be confirmed by someone much more knowledgeable is a very reassuring feeling and gives a certain boost in confidence.

At the end, I liked the fact she bought it in terms of my "Korean street fashion is ready-to-wear" and "Japanese street fashion is couture" metaphor. And I think I got a lot of credit for that one in her eyes. I thought it was a good interview to lead off the series with. And you might have noticed ExpatJane's voice in there, as she had arranged all the interviews for the show. Major hat tip to her!

Get more into Korean fashion by going over to FeetManSeoul.com and taking a look around!

Colbert Got Rained On!

Good stuff. I guess his profile got big enough with Speed Racer that they thought of a way to bring him on without a translator. That line when Rain entered was a sample from the movie, I think. Clever. [HT to Ggamssi!]

Noooooo!

While my personal distaste for the Wonder Girls is well-known, this takes the ca -- err, ddeok.

Nooooooooo! The humanity! Oh, the humanity! (HT to Stephen!)

Hehe - I Called It!

Six months ago, baby! So, with all that Speed Racer prep and being denied a chance to come on Colbert last year because they wouldn't allow him to use a translator [didn't reader Cat drop the beans on that one?], it seems that Rain has been brushing up on his English.

Now, let the dance competition begin!

This Just Takes the Cake

OK -- I just about popped a gasket when I saw this. The important points (where they chopped together "negative" things she said) are where she jokingly said the facilities in Russia were old and the bathrooms smelled, but then she went on to say how not upgrading keeps things safe, how that's different from the accidents that happen at NASA, which always upgrades with fancy and expensive, new equipment, and how much she respects those who went up and died before her is a point she emphasizes in two videos, if memory serves. And it's also about two years ago and before she was chosen as the final candidate. Before even that, they take a snippet where she said that she'd buy her mom a house if she got rich and famous, but that was 2 summers ago, and she also happened to say she'd give to science programs and help fund one at KAIST as an example to other Koreans of how to use that power. But that's not what you get in the video. And that's just where they abused MY footage. They've got more.

[If you can't see the video, click here to the direct link.]

OK, I'm not sure how the Korean law applies here to attacking a person and what defines the Korean equivalent of "defamation", I can't be the one who would sue them for that, even if that's possible. But I could get them for copyright violations. As far as I understand copyright law, you can excerpt segments for educational purposes as well as for critique, but my understanding is that you still have to attribute. Hmm. I'm foggy on this, and any help would be appreciated.

As for the legitimate suggestion that I should just let things like this pass, I'd suggest you do a Naver search for 이소연 (Yi Soyeon) and look at what comes up in the video section. It's ridiculous. Or, you could check out the "Anti-Yi Soyeon Cafe" on Daum.

Link here.

It's amazing how much energy certain Koreans are putting into thinking about the monetary value of the space program all of a sudden, or are so eager to believe the ridiculous assertions that people are putting up. And now, they're even blaming Soyeon for the stupid questions SHE'S being asked by reporters, for example, how much she has swollen or gained 5cm in height. Those were stupid "issues" brought up by the idiotic Korean press corps, and now she's being attacked as if she was speaking out of vanity.

Here's the article that will be up on Ohmynews.com either today or tomorrow, as it's getting translated. I think it says what I need to say, although my English version is a bit rough. They edited my repeated points down a bit. Hence, the advantage of having an editor.

I'll link to the Ohmynews story here when it goes up. My goal here is to get the other angle on the Soyeon-attacks out there -- that it's totally misplaced, dishonest, and just vicious -- and look at the other issues that I think are mixed in here: how Soyeon's trip is actually stepping all over some very touchy Korean hotspots, as she violates certain rules of her gender, age, status, and even region, her being from Kwangju.

This, on top of the intense levels of intense jealousy that one often sees displayed whenever someone receives something more than the rest of the group (I think it's important that she won a spot in an open contest, rather than come out of the Air Force as a test pilot or something equally elitist). I think a lot of things are coming together in and around Soyeon that would make for some very interesting international press treatment.

----------

Wow. As the maker of the "UCC" interviews of Yi Soyeon that have been going around the Korean Internet, I am a bit shocked and disappointed to see some people twisting Soyeon's frank and honest words made in a Shinchon coffee shop in 2006, before the marketing term "UCC" was even invented in Korea. Made by a foreigner (me), for a foreign audience (such shows are called "podcasts" in the US), she was far, far from being an "우주인." She was just my friend who had done well in this interesting contest, since she had made it to the final 30 in Korea's Astronaut program.

Who could imagine where she would be 2 years later? At the time, I was interviewing interesting people in Seoul, and I had found her insider experience with this program interesting. If she made it to the final 2, it would be so great that it would be nearly unimaginable -- I just thought it was really cool to have made it as far as she had. And she herself said so. She was humble, and was so surprised and happy to have made it that far. She talked about her dreams, why she became interested in science, and how the process was affecting her life. And as she progressed through the process, of course we made another video, after she had made the final 10, and what was interesting to notice was how quickly she was maturing, how well she was growing into the role of great responsibility that was now becoming all the more real.

By the third video, shot after she had made it to the final two, she had become much more serious about her role, because now, it had now become her reality. She would go through the training, and it was just as likely as not that she would go into space. I never interviewed her after the final decision was made, since I never had the chance and now, this was SBS's territory; I just found it poignant and fascinating to watch an everyday person grow into a public figure before one's eyes.

But that's not how certain Korean netizens took it. Partially based on sloppy journalism as found in the in the Donga.com article called "우주인 이소연의 솔직한 지구인 이야기", her words were misquoted, twisted, and taken completely out of context to a point that even I had never even imagined. The DongA.com article merely misquoted her, emphasized certain aspects of what she had jokingly said in 2006 with the headline “돈 벌어 엄마한테 아파트 선물”, and did so did so without properly attributing the source of the video, which was readily available, so that people could judge for themselves. To just read the DongA.com article or the words of some Korean netizens after that, Soyeon had joined the space program to get rich. Or perhaps it was to promote this "UCC" -- a concept that did not even exist in Korea at that time (remember that the large media companies started pushing this marketing term around Auhust 2006) Or perhaps she was going to space just to promote my web site, which Soyeon also jokingly said she would support? But if you watch the interview from the beginning, you would know she didn't even know about which site that was.

Firstly, it's amazing to see how little respect major UCC media companies and Korean bloggers have for copyright and intellectual property. Instead of taking my video and cutting into chunks that totally eliminate the context of much of what Soyeon actually said and how she said it, people should have just left the intact video as it was, so people could at least see for themselves. And I think, "Why cut out parts, especially when the other parts make the point you're trying to prove silly?" My point is, anyone presenting an excerpt from this video is suspicious. Simply watching the video, knowing when it was shot and why, you can see that the assertions being made by certain netizens are patently ridiculous. I shouldn't need to convince you. Just watch the video from beginning to end.

Then, you would have seen that any comments about "what would you do if you make it?" were no more real to her than if I asked any of you "What would you do if you became President?" when you were a child, but then upon becoming an adult, it really happens. I'm sure if one does become president, one's choices and sense of responsibility would be far more serious than when you were just an everyday person. And this is just what Soyeon was when she sat down with me for a cup of coffee that day in Shinchon in 2006.

If people didn't cut the video up into little pieces, you would see that this was a conversation between a FORIEGNER and her; you should also notice that the entire video was subtitled -- it's made for FOREIGN audiences, made BY a FOREIGNER. No one was interested in "UCC" in Korea at the time. No one was interested in Soyeon, either. In fact, most Koreans weren't even really interested in their own space program. But a few foreigners like myself found it interesting, and I decided to record her experiences in it. So the stupid conversations about "how will this look overseas?" are simply just that -- stupid. That firrst video was up on YouTube for about a year-and-a-half, and making very positive impressions about Soyeon as well as Korea far, far before the Korean audience learned about it, or cared.

Perhaps this is telling: I put it on MNCast and Daum, and there was nearly no reaction. No one cared, and I didn't expect them to. Almost no one watched it.

And the reaction on YouTube? Overwhelmingly positive. People remarked about what a great sense of humor she has, how humble she is, how intelligent her answers are, and how mature she seemed -- even from the beginning, far before she was actually chosen. The fact that she was a woman was a sign to most foreigners that Korean society was becoming more liberal and fair towards women, and even after the other candidate was initially chosen to go to space, all the foreigners I knew were rooting for Soyeon. Especially Americans, we like the underdog. Before Soyeon had even arrived in Russia, I had learned from the blogging community and people linking to my site that the NASA astronauts and people from other space programs had already seen Soyeon through the videos even before they had met her.

What continues to both surprise and disappoint me is that Koreans are still so worried about "what foreigners will think" and still so steeped in 사대주의 that people wring their hands over a few words spoken in passing well before the fact, despite the fact that Soyeon has shown nothing but respect for the people who have come before her at Soyuz, whom she mentions as having died so she can go into space safely, who have developed technology that she has dedicated her life to helping develop back in her home country.

Yet, context doesn't matter when you can simply attack someone out of spite or jealousy, right?

It seems to me that Korea is still so caught up in the psychological scars of bitterness over 사대주의, the national humiliation of having loss its sovereignty, the destruction and horrors of the Pacific and Korean Wars, followed by loss of freedom under dictatorship, rapid development and urbanization, along with the social problems created cutthroat competition for scarce resources, which has manifested in the education system, women feeling the social pressure to define their self-worth primarily through their appearance, and the drive to be first, first, first no matter what the cost, as we saw in the cases of the Sampung Department Store, Seongsu Bridge, Taegu gas explosion, or finally in the case of Hwang Woo-seok.

But in the case of the typical "national hero", he was from the establishment, old, and a man. He "deserved" his fame, right? He fits the image of the national hero. It doesn't matter that he violated ethical protocols to do it. Who cares where the eggs come from, right? When it comes to the nation, it's still "하면 된다" right? And when he's a Seoul National University scientist, an older man with connections, and wearing a white coat, he is names "hero" before the ink even dries on the textbooks. And then "Korea" embarrasses itself.

[Source]

There's a huge unspoken message behind the attacks on Soyeon, and how my videos are being used (stupidly, I think, but they are, nevertheless). It bothers a lot of people that she got into space through a process that had been open to anyone, and that she won it fair and square. It bothers a lot of people that she's a woman. It bothers a lot of people that she's a YOUNG woman. And for certain people, the only place for a young woman is in high heels and behind a cake of makeup, shaking their shoulders and calling them "오빠!" These are the people who seem to be the most offended by Soyeon's mere existence.

For Soyeon, I'm glad she wasn't chosen initially, and it was Ko San's own mistakes that got him disqualified. If she had been the first choice, I think the netizens would have been even worse: "Woman are too powerful" or "She was just chosen for PR because she was a woman!" Ridiculous, in a society that treats men like veritable kings, and a woman I know with a Ph.D. in the sciences was told by her mother-in-law to not work because it "would make her husband look bad." For certain people in Korea, for whom it is still the Joseon Era, Soyeon's success is very, very offensive, indeed.

If people are really concerned, as some say they are, with Korea's national image, then they would stop behaving as they are, for the obvious reasons that they are. It is absolutely shocking to see how eagerly and viciously so many of her fellow Koreans try to tear her down.

When YouTube came to Korea and opened its site, you know what appeared for the first time on Soyeon's videos? Statements appeared for the FIRST time attacking this nanotechnology engineer going up into space for "being too fat" or "having a big head" or just for the apparent crime of being a woman. You know what was the real "나라 망신?" It wasn't Yi Soyeon, but the negative and vicious words of her fellow Koreans, made in front of beweildered foreigners on YouTube. And I sometimes can't keep up with the 악풀, since I delete them. I wonder what the foreigners think of that?

The problem isn't really anything Soyeon said -- it is really the fact that no matter what, so many of her fellow Koreans (especially men) are eager to attack her, eager to tear her down. The content isn't important; vicious netizens would have found something. I think Yi Soyeon represents some very sensitive points in Korean modern society, and is the point at which public notions about ability, fairness, and relative success converge with older notions of traditional related to age, gender, scholastic background, and yes, even regionalism. In short, Soyeon is young, female, outspoken, and obviously articulate about expressing herself frankly. Honestly speaking, how are such women generally regarded in Korean society?

Are Americans perfect? Nope. But I think we have a sense of fairness about the people who become figures of public ridicule. Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, or any popular entertainers who make their own scandals, Americans tend to criticize, too. But do we attack Condoleeza Rice because of the gap between her teeth? She has one, you know. It's very apparent.

[Source]

But is that important to her job, though?

When Sally Ride became America's first woman into space, I can't remember -- and I can't even imagine -- people talking about how she needs to be prettier, or "fix her face" or "she should get rid of her freckles" or something like that. Yet, the Korean media asks the dumbest questions possible on the short and expensive time communicating in space. When I heard about this question, "Which star would you most like to travel to space with?" I just shook my head in embarrassment. This is the level of the broadcast media? Korea should be thankful that Soyeon handled such an obviously stupid question politely when she replied that she would rather take someone qualified to perform experiments with.

[Source]

Korea and the Koreans who live here always seem so concerned with becoming "globalized" or "international" or the "hub" of something. But it takes more than just words and the simple desire to be something in order to make it so. It takes a real change in attitude, a fundamental change in the way of thinking -- not just installing more western-style toilets or sweating bullets worrying about speaking a few words of English to a foreign customer.

What is really embarrassing to the nation? What should Koreans really be thinking about? It's the fact that there is such a strong desire to cut a figure like Yi Soyeon down because she's a woman, or young, or doesn't look like she's had thousands of dollars of plastic surgery. Or insipid questions such as the one noted above, asked in her ISS interview. Is the problem really that Soyeon doesn't take her ROLE seriously, or that really, even the broadcast media sponsoring her doesn't take HER seriously?

[The note at the top of this actual resume reads, "Too old."]

So what is really ironic is watching Soyeon's fellow Koreans abusing her in public on YouTube, while foreigners scratch their heads. These comments call her ugly, fat, a "disgrace to the nation." Yet, our impressions of Soyeon are fine. They are great, actually! In fact, they've been great for nearly TWO YEARS. The only thing that is sad is watching Koreans tear each other down for nothing. This is the only country I know of where netizens drive their stars to suicide. Several times over, in fact.

What is driving this incident isn't anything Soyeon said, but the sheer, pathological desire of certain netizens who have already decided to hate her for no real good reason, other than petty jealousy and traditional prejudices. Really, only in a culture such as this can the old maxim hold true: "If a cousin buys some new land, my stomach hurts."

Now, this is being played out on a national scale, since this was an open competition, and technically, any Korean was eligible. Now, old social prejudices related to age, gender, and region have mixed with new ones related to the hyper-commercialization of nearly everything in Korean society, including the commodification and over-sexualization of female bodies that was embarrassingly pointed out having the South Korean president make his appearance at the space launch ceremony surrounded by young women in tiny skirts, who asked all the questions.

[source]

Is everything in South Korea made more palatable by extremely young women in miniskirts? From a new bakery opening in the neighborhood, the girl selling toothpaste in the grocery store, all the way into space, apparently, a lot of South Koreans seem to think so. Frankly, I think Korea's first astronaut would have gotten less flak if she simply was another plastic surgery toothpick with a magic perm, rather than a nanotech engineer from KAIST with a Ph.D.

[Source]

What is even sadder than a cynical statement like this is the fact that I actually believe it to be true, given a lot of the comments I've read about her, which reveals the deep-seated prejudices and bitter jealousies that many South Koreans seem so eager and willing to display whenever they get the chance. To me, many South Koreans need to think about whether they want to live in the past, along with all the scars and wounds that it has produced, or a future without such petty jealousies and horrible rancor against anyone who seems to be getting ahead of oneself in the hyper-competitive rat race of Korean life.

Until then, the horrible words many South Koreans aim in Soyeon's direction will continue to bewilder many foreigners who see nothing but a spectacular candidate and a great representative for the Korean nation. It's too bad that today's reality is, at least on the global level and Korea's international image, the worst enemies of Koreans are Koreans themselves.

Watch the Drummer!

Animal the muppet ain't got nothin' on this guy.

A Sad Day Has Come

This is the last time I will post here. My time as the "Metropolitician" is up.

I've realized a lot of things over the last week or so, since falling for a certain young lady of a more conservative persuasion, who has quite literally rocked my world. I realize that a lot of the liberal ideas I had formerly and formally adhered to were largely misconstrued notions I had held, distortions of ideological ramifications that simply had no precedence in either established fact, dilapidated fiction, or even (and not either) the demonstrated dialectics of most people's dystopic desires.

In short, a new kind of love has made me into a harder, more turgid man.

No longer will I carry the torch for a a deluded liberalism, nor be the voice for lefty illiberality. What I truly hanker for is a haughty helping of a hunk of cheese that isn't defined in terms of a mere neo-Freudian kitsch, but the kind of cheese one can count on, like money in the bank; indeed, one needs sustenance so solid and reliable one can literally stick it in a pipe and smoke it.

So I can no longer continue to write here, after having fallen for someone like the one who has learned to call me "oppa." Such is an experience I never thought I could have had, either as a black man, or a Star Trek fan, and her highly-developed sense of what I have previously called here mere "fetishized femininity" has caused in me an emotional rise that is quite epic in its tense and torpedo-like tautology. Indeed, they didn't call Moby a "Dick" for nothing, as they say. Unlike the proverbial Ahab, my little lady has actually caught her whale.

When wondering why I have decided to forgo any further forays into formalism and endorse not Barack "Aladdin" Obama, but rather John McCain, the answer becomes perfectly obvious, does it not?

When you ask yourselves these questions, as you struggle for the answers, yet still can't bring yourself to face the truth, realize that Tom Cruise once said, quite poignantly, that the "truth could not be handled" and that in a similar situation, Al Pacino pointed a finger and said that the entire Supreme Court was indeed, very much "out of order."

In the same way, I was once out of love, and was so lost without her, but believe you me -- I now realize that it's hip to be square. Or did not Huey Lewis not give you that news?

So, it is with heavy hands that I make my last entry here, since the Metropolitician that was me has completely and totally ceased to be he.

For Pak Geun-hye's youngest daughter knows how to hit me where it counts, and to not just do that to me once, but likes to hit me, baby one more time, all the time, if you catch my meaning, number one Negaroni! See, I don't shrink away from saying, loudly and proudly, what needs to be said. And if you didn't get it from the passage above, you need a double dose of dis doubletalk. April mothafuckin' fool's, bitches!

Word to your mother, yo!

Harisu in Love

According to PopSeoul, Korea's transgendered superstar Harisu and babyfaced hubby, Micky Jung, are still in love, as displayed when our camera caught them at Hwang Jae-bok's show during F/W 2008 Seoul Fashion Week. We were there, and got our own pics of the the still-happy couple, although ours were properly exposed. This is the second time we've met Harisu in person, and I must say that we do like her demure and classy style.

For more coverage of Korean Fashion week, and more star shots, take a stroll over to FeetManSeoul.com and look around. With a lot to shoot and the challenge that poses to me photographically, I'm producing some of my strongest work yet, and having a blast while doing it.

Next - The Korean FASHION Wave?

As many of you already know, I've been thinking about and doing a lot of stuff related to Korean fashion, since my interests in photography and the street have led me in that direction. Still, I don't think this interest is a function of just my personal whim and whimsy amplified large by the web; I do actually think there's something big cooking here, something bigger than my personal interests.

I was actually not explicitly interested in fashion per se, until I started observing certain patterns that made me sit up and take notice. In short, my observations of the shape of things heading in a certain direction is what started dragging me down that road, as opposed to any particular predisposition to already be headed in that direction. Hence, the faith in my hunch is all the stronger, as it was when I was watching Korean films in 1996-98 and thinking that some of it was some of the best stuff I had ever seen, as opposed to my already-present interest in Korean culture being responsible for that notion.

The last time I had such a hunch, it ended up being a "wave." This time around, that feeling is even stronger, because of the precedent of the so-called "Korean wave." And I think that line of thinking will be similar for many others as who see that parallel as well.

And like the "Korean wave", it will not be government support nor the Korean public's desire for it to be a "wave" that will make it so, but rather the inherent quality of the thing itself. What made the "Korean wave" crest and crash was a convergence of factors that no one planned for, that no one really predicted.

In the same way, the fabulousness of Korean fashion -- in terms of how the Korean public is interpreting, transmitting, and actually defining it with their own bodies -- cannot be created or controlled by central government planning, the desires of the fashion industry, or even the dictates of commercialism. Those factors can help quicken any "fashion wave" into reality, but everything begins and ends with what everyday Koreans are wearing on the streets.

In the same way that the Korean public had to be ready, to some extent, to receive films as diverse as Shiri, Old Boy, The King and the Clown, and The Host, the streets and other social factors define the sandbox within which domestic Korean designers and the fashion industry get to play with. What Korean people are wearing and not wearing define the range of options available; like a film such as Old Boy having been released in 1975, wild couture styles from the present having been introduced to a top-down, Korean star-centric, pre-Internet Korean public in 1990 would not have had much influence. Things have changed a great deal.

One of the things that I noticed when I got off the plane in South Korea in 1994 was that Koreans are formal. Yes, skirts were far shorter than I was used to back in the United States, and it was strange to see that even office uniforms were and are, technically, miniskirts by more conservative American standards (the traditional definition of the miniskirt since the 1960's was being able to place your four fingers between your knee and hemline).

What really surprised me was that Koreans, for some reason, seemed to think (and still tend to now) that Americans are more wild or risque dressers. I also quickly came to realize that many Koreans also thought that Americans all carried guns, black people are all good singers, or that we can't eat spicy food (despite the fact that more salsa is sold per year in America than ketchup, and all the world's peppers actually originated in the Americas).

Yet, this is because American reality is defined, for most Koreans, by movies and television shows. Still, this is only part of the answer. In Korea, trends and the realm of fashion possibility itself is defined by television and movie stars, whereas the same is not true for Americans, as a rule.

Americans are essentially a casual people. We don't dress up unless we have to and we tend to value comfort first -- we are the land of bad men's jeans, sweatshirts and tees, and "casual Friday" at the office. Outside of our pop culture epicenters in Hollywood and New York, people wear suits to weddings, funerals, and graduations; the same tends to go with high heels and makeup for women, many of whom might wear such things only a handful of times per year outside of formal office attire. Still, tends to be worn when it's a requirement. Most people are comfortable to follow trends to the extent that they are casual or comfortable -- hence the prevalence of hip hop fashion and other similar modes of cool. Personally, I think that if the "grunge" or "hip hop" looks involved uncomfortable shoes or tight-fitting clothes, neither would have ever made it. The same goes for the horrible biker shorts craze, heavy metal t-shirts, or jelly shoes. Those fads were as comfortable as they were aesthetically criminal.

Koreans, however, are essentially a formal people. Until very recently, suits or other formal wear were requirements for men, as were dresses, heels, and makeup for women. As any Korean knows, a man walking the streets in the 1990's in shorts and sandals would be stared at, or a woman without makeup in an office situation thought of as rude or lazy. The tendency in Korea is for there to be no limit to the amount of effort one should put into one's appearance, hence the "pancake makeup" look of the 1990's, men wearing a 3-piece suits and ties on the hottest days of summer, and even the widespread graduation gift of eye-and-nose surgery for high school girls (and now boys, too!) about to enter college. Plastic surgery rates are among the highest in the world, in a country whose per capita income still doesn't match many more developed countries that have more people with the disposable income to afford such procedures. Indeed, such competition is natural in a culture that still requires pictures on one's resumes. In a competitive environment, who can afford to not look their best, even to the point of surgically altering one's appearance? It goes without saying that one would spare no amount of effort or expense to be as dressed up as possible.

So, I came to realize that Koreans actually tend to have the expectation (or at least experience the pressure) to actually look like the people they see on TV. Any trip down below the river to Apjujeong or Kangnam should confirm that; it seems like there are more plastic surgery clinics than fast food restaurants. Indeed, if one has the money, why not get something nipped, tucked, cut, or clipped? It is certainly just as easy as buying a hamburger, as long as that's what you want.

This is the "ratcheting effect" that characterizes Korean-style competition. Out of ten people, if one person has something better, the other nine want it as well, which brings up the overall level of competition; and once you reach that level, like a one-directional ratchet wheel, one can never go in the opposite direction. I see that as responsible for the intense competition in private education: if my neighbor's kid goes to 3 hagwons, my kid will go to 5, which will make the next person send their kid to 7, which...

The cycle is endless. I think the same is true for fashion, especially for women -- if something can be done to be "prettier" -- then it must be done. Of course, 10cm high heels makes any woman look "prettier," but the question is really of how far one is willing to go in order to look pretty; in the end, it comes down to the question of how high a priority appearance is. And for many American women, such sacrifice for the sake of fashion is too high a price to pay for most situations. Hence, most Korean women wear high heels most of the time, and most American women do not wear heels most of the time. Even when required for work, many women wear running shoes during the commute.

Clearly, the formality factor is a crucial one. Historically, the yangban has come to define Korean culture, since it seems like 99% of Koreans claim that elite lineage, even though, in history, they made up only 10% of the population. But when Koreans imagine back into the past, few people see themselves as descended from white-clad cheonmin, but from fashion and status-obsessed yangban nobles, sitting around in their finest robes and playing the kayageum, instead of sweatily dancing in dirty white clothing while beating a buk on a farm. Such is the formal way in which most Koreans even imagine their past reality.

So status is something Koreans think about a lot, whereas this is what Americans inherently do not think much about, in a culture that literally invented the notion of egalitarianism. Korea has a different history, with a culture steeped in Confucianism, which defines the individual only in relation to others. So even now, ethical behavior and normalcy is defined by the group, which strictly regulates its members; and when it comes to clothing, trends, and style, standing out too much can get you in trouble -- or at least stared at and gossiped about.

What does this all add up to? Up until around just a few years ago, Koreans tended to conform to trends and were generally followers. Domestic stars, television, and the fashion industry tended to define what was to be worn and what wasn't -- hence, everyone wore a lot of black-and-white, everyone had the same makeup scheme, and haircuts were practically uniform. But then something significant happen, something central to the life of any fashionista worth her salt in Korea -- the Internet.

Suddenly, fashion information was bypassing the filter of the domestic cultural elites, and Koreans (especially women) began to track fashion trends directly. Anyone who subscribes to the "Best Dresser" Daum cafe knows this, which has millions of members, who collective collect, analyze, and digest American and European fashion magazines, paparazzi shots of mostly American stars, and all sorts of other bits of information.

Indeed, where did the recent nose and belly piercing trends come from? Or even the previously unspeakable idea of getting tattoos? Surely, the domestic fashion press would have never pushed such ideas on the public -- they got these ideas directly. In a recent interview with a Seoul tattoo artist, for example, the recent acceptability of tattooing can be traced to David Beckham's back and Nicole Ritchie's ankle. I doubt any of the domestic Korean press would be recommending young Koeran girls to get tattoos, which are still technically illegal in Korea, although actually easy to get.

Yet, Korean culture does seem to place certain limits on what people wear. These are not limits set by comfort, but rather by a certain kind of social conservatism that still exists here. Yes, there are many more fashion and style options in Korea now, and dress styles have become far more expressive and experimental, but the Confucian-style monitoring of others keeps things from getting too wild.

For example, despite the fact that most Korean women still don't dare to bare their shoulders, skirts can travel the way up to pretty extreme heights. Many Americans would find it pretty scandalous to go to a wedding in a super-short miniskirt, or wear the same to a university lecture; Koreans have simply gotten used to it. As I mentioned, even many bank uniforms are technically miniskirts by American standards, and heels over 5-6 inches are considered a bit too sexy for anything other than going to a club or a cocktail party.

However, if one wear a spaghetti-strap blouse revealing the shoulders, or a sweater in which one can see cleavage, Koreans generally consider that too risque. Or exceedingly bright colors, or unusual patterns, or tattoos, or belly-rings. Young kids do challenge the norms, but the norms still exist.

The combination of "at all costs" formality that keeps people dressed "to the nines" tempered by a Confucian social conservatism that tends to keep things a bit on the conservative side, which is then pushed and stretched by new norms and styles that are now being directly connected to via the Internet, results in a Korean street that is very pret-a-porte, or "ready-to-wear."

But contrast, Japanese fashion is quite peculiar and unique, but perhaps too much so. To continue the analogy, much of Japanese fashion on the street seems more couture, in that it is a bit wild, peculiar, and often just not very generalizable anywhere outside of Japan.

The average Korean working girl in Myeongdong, or the hipster in Apkujeong, or the student in Shinchon, would be considered well-dressed by almost any standard. From where I sit, Korea is where mostly American and European styles get filtered through a Korean lens into something altogether different than the original. Add in a dollop of Japanese influences, and you get a lot of palatable options.

And when Koreans meet a high-fashion trend, it gets expressed on the street, much more than it does in many other more comfort/casual countries such as the US. So, while there was a rising interest in shoes in the USA with Carrie's character from Sex and the City, it was nothing compared to the shoe trends here, where people are very concerned with brand names and wearing something that looks like what they've seen on TV. After all, most Korean women actually wear high heels every day, whereas most Americans don't. Who's going to actually buy more shoes?

Now, as the overall fashion-consciousness of the Korean people meets international trends, Korea is becoming a fashion hotspot to watch. And now, even The New York Times found itself way behind existing Korean trends recently, when it declared that there was a "return" to conservative fashion as a new trend in the US, whereas in Korea, this look had never left. Quoting ourselves from a recent column we wrote for the English-language SEOUL Magazine,

One look that has always been uniquely Korean is marked by more conservative hemlines and less revealing cuts, as well as a generous helping of bows and ruffles, which themselves are often accented with flowery and other feminine patterns: what this writer calls the “pretty princess” look. This has been expressed in 50's-era formal dresses, matched outfits, or formal suits common on Korean streets, often accompanied by thick opaque stockings, shiny pumps and matching bag, and a dress coat. These days, the look has become a bit more 60's-era "mod" with sleeker, minimalist lines, but the overall effect is the same: formal, feminine, and demure…

한국 여성들에게 늘 사랑받는 고유한 스타일. 이 스타일은 깔끔하게 떨어지는 헴라인과 최대한 노출을 배제한 디자인, 주로 리본이나 러플로 장식되고 꽃무늬나 다른 여성스런 패턴으로 포인트를 주는 특징이 있어요. 기자는 이런 스타일을 "예쁜 공주님"이라는 이름을 붙였어요. 이런 스타일은 원래 50년대 쯤에 유행한 포멀한 드레스같은 데서 보여지던 건데 최근에는 한국 거리에서 포멀한 수트르 보여지고 있어요. 이런 옷들은 보통 도톰한 불투명 스타킹, 반짝반짝한 펌프스에 잘 어울리는 백과 드레스 코트 등과 함께 코디하죠. 요즘에 이런 룩들은 좀더 60년대 풍 "모드"가 되어서 좀 더 매끄럽고 미니멀한 라인이지만 전체적인 느낌, 포멀하고 페미닌 하고 얌전한 그런 느낌은 그대로인 경향이 있어요.

…If one wants to truly understand the nature of frilly feminine beauty here, one need only wander through the forests of the many Cyworld pages that are temples of worship for Audrey Hepburn or Grace Kelly, and are noticeably absense of the more risqué and sexy Marylin Monroe. Indeed, such homages, as well as the looks that accompany them, exist in a mode that is, as the NYT article quoted a fashion forecaster saying, “absolutely without irony.”

프릴이 잔뜩 달린 페미닌한 여성스러움의 진실을 알고싶다구요? 그럼 싸이월드의 수많은 미니홈피를 보세요. 이거야말로 오드리 헵번과 그레이스 켈리를 숭상하는 사원같을 테니까요. 좀 더 외설적이고 이고 섹시한 마릴린 먼로의 느낌같은건 완전히 찾아볼 수가 없어요. 정말로 이런 존경심을 자신들의 스타일로 그대로 표현하는 현상은 NYT의 패션 기자가 말한 "아이러니라고는 철저히 배제한" 것이 현실에 존재하는 것이라고 해도 과언이 아니에요.

Although Koreans might not recognize it as such, with its bolero, fitted cut, and higher hem, and combined with the feminine frills and detailing, this is so unmistakably a Korean style. Combined with the slipper-like summer slings, this is a Korean-style dressy casual that doesn't exist in other places. For better or for worse, such styles are the result of a lot of special and unique factors combining together in a truly Korean way. Not in Italy, Japan, Paris, New York, or LA would one see such a style.

Indeed, Korea's unique position has produced not just a trend, but a permanent look in Korea, one of many produced by the unique mix of cultural influences and social tendencies here. I do think this can result in a lot of attention being paid to Seoul, as it was the case just last week, when several design associations joined together for the first time to call the largest single fashion show series to date "Seoul Fashion Week" instead of holding several separate different exhibitions, as they have for nearly two decades now.

Now, with the support of the Seoul Metropolitan Government (the mayor made a point of attending a show last week as the city renewed its support for Korean design associations and promotion of Korean fashion abroad), it is easy to imagine Seoul being mentioned along with Tokyo, Milan, Paris, and New York within a few years, and for people to be as concerned with what everyday Koreans are wearing as much as the clothes top Korean designers are producing.

When that happens, one will be able to truly call that a "Korean fashion wave," as people from all over the world, through magazines and television, stop to take notice of what people are and aren't wearing on the streets of Seoul and perhaps even Pusan. Who knows? Would anyone have thought of Korea as being a major destination for auteur cinema and hot new directors and their films even in 1998?

A lot can happen in a mere 10 years. Let's wait and see. In the meantime, join me in keeping a closer eye on the streets of Seoul, as we see the upside and some good effects of Korea's obssession with status and appearance. For as bad as those things may be in many other ways, one can't help but note that Korean fashion is looking very fresh and innovative, both on and off the runway.