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World-famous figure skater Kim Yuna says, in her ads for Smoothie King, to "Be White." In Korea, that's sage advice. Just like the smoothie -- and Korean positive associations with things and people "white" -- one should be "soft" and "innocent." I even remember the 90's music group called "White" (화이트), which sang saccharine love ballads that overflowed with affected expressions of innocence, youthful purity, and other positive emotions that reflected true love unaldulterated by the vulgar passions. Those emotions would be too dark. Ahem.
EBS has finally done the experiment I had always wanted to do, since coming back to Korea in 2002, when anti-foreigner sentiment was peaking. I remember in the 90's, when I first came here, I'd take my friend Beth around for the "blue-eyed special," as we named it, where Koreans would give us free food, drinks, and even tickets to shit for free. "Welcome to Korea."
I did an impromptu experiment at a CGV once with a white friend in 2002, who went up to buy his movie ticket after me. I spoke in Korean, got my ticket, came back. My friend, without prompting for any of it, not only got a free ticket, the ticket girl, enamored of his white, manly good looks, apparently, gave him another free movie pass and her phone number. I mean, I'm not asking for extras, but come on. I do little experiments like these with my white friends ALL THE TIME.
KOREANS LOVE WHITE PEOPLE.
And if you're a brother with another color, well...they just don't like you.
Now, I'm not saying that every single person won't like colored folk, nor that individuals aren't nice to us brown and black people -- but in the aggregate, Korean society just don't like black or brown people. And if a Filipino is standing on the street looking for something, he ain't gonna get nobody giving directions, walking his ass to the station, or even getting offered a phone number. The darker he is, it's much more likely that the police might come and stop him and ask what he's doing, and if he has a valid visa. And if you can't produce one on demand, they can arrest you and take you in.
And to those white folks who continue to insist "well, *I* never had any problems, or love to pontificate on how it must all be in our (colored folks) imaginations (because they would know, right?), try to walk a day in an coolie's skin, a sandnigger's clothes, or even the three-piece suit of a jiggaboo from Nigeria. 'Cause that's all a South Asian, Arab, or black man is in Korea, until proven otherwise.
That's why I apply for jobs by sending in the resume first, following up with the phone call and doing the dog-and-pony show in Korean second, then hoping for a first date in the interview chair. Funny thing is, without exception, unless the institution was told what I look like from jump, I walk in at the appointed time and am greeted with, "And you are...?" or "How can I help you?" I then remind them that I am Michael Hurt and I've got an interview at 3PM, at which point the person at the door or desk is like "Oooooooh! YOU are Michael Hurt! Oh, come right in..."
Yeah, fuck you, too, I think, but keep it to myself.
Most fun was when I was first learning Korean in the 1990's, on my little island, and I'd go around with Beth. Since there was no English at all where I was, people had to speak Korean. In doing so, they would have to pick between who they thought was more likely to speak it, since Koreans assume 1) Korean is so amazingly more difficult than other languages and hard for foreigners to learn, and that 2) any foreigner who does must be really smart to have done so -- so they would always speak to Beth.
It was so frustrating and stupid that it was nearly hilarious. I'd be in a camera or electronics shop in Seoul doing pretty OK in Korean, asking questions about something I was looking for, and they'd answer back to Beth. The triangle would continue, even if I was the only one talking. That's changed in the 2000's, since there are a lot of brown and black folks come here to work who now speak a lot of Korean, which Koreans assume "they learned in the factory" since they had to -- and it's funny that those folks are given next to no credit for learning the language.
But as my former director, Dr. Horace Underwood III, liked to quip, "If a white man stumbles out an an-nyee-ong-ham-sheeeem-neeker," Koreans lose their goddamn minds. "Oh, you speak Korean so welllllll!" What-the-fuck-ever.
Anyhoo, I propose more experiments!
How about a handsome, tall, black man and lithe, attractive Korean woman walk as a couple through the #1 subway line, from head to tail, on hidden camera? Watch the fun -- and verbal and perhaps even physical assaults -- ensue!
Or the same couple just walk through the Shinchon CGV as an obvious couple and watch all the people behind them snicker and point, as I did just a couple years ago? It was fucking ridiculous. Really? A couple at the movie theater?
Maybe we should have a black man in a suit try to get a cab next to his white buddy looking 90's-era Seattle grunge? Let's place bets! (I'm betting on Whitey, boys!)
Or sit an Indian man (or me!) on a crowded city bus and watch if the empty seat next to him is ever taken -- with a timer! First one who loses the bet that Koreans will choose to stand for an hour rather than sit to a dirty curry-eater buys lunch!
You know, every step of the way, I've been giving the warnings.
People scoffed when I said, years ago, that there was a "pattern" in the media's treatment of foreigners. Now, I doubt anyone can imagine it to be otherwise. You know, being a teacher here in Korea - even a foreign one - used to garner respect. And I'd say the quality of foreigners in Korea was much worse back when the numbers of foreigners wanting to live in Korea was low and the professionalization of the industry was in its infancy.
People actually gave me a lot of shit on this very blog when I warned that this pattern was dangerous and would lead to concrete consequences, such as changes in policy and even the laws. No one doubts that link today.
Has the discourse really gone this far? Don't you all see this as the last straw? How much has this discourse categorically dehumanized us so far that a newspaper can publish this kind of thing? A man has an alcohol problem and commits suicide, and he's added to the mental ticker in Koreans' heads of "deviant, criminal foreigners?"
Because there aren't any Koreans with alcohol problem, or killing themselves.
I actually teared up when I read this, not so much because of the tragic death, to be honest. I'm another product of urban modernity, and my heart has hardened, unfortunately, to the reality of others' pain laid bare in the news.
But what really gets me -- and adds insult to this man's pain and injury to those who knew him -- was realizing just how MUCH the Korean media hates us, how much people have come to accept their construction of all foreigners as some kind of social monsters.
It doesn't get any more callous, inhuman, and hypocritical than this.
We've become a social monster -- it's out of control.
I don't know what's worse -- the media's irresponsibility or the willingness of the everyday Korean person to believe the worst and most ridiculous things about us.
It really is enough to make me stop caring about trying to fix things and just concentrate on becoming more commercially successful in my photography, stop reading the newspapers, and make that scrilla. Just get paid, get laid, and fuck thinking about social issues and problems.
Maybe that's what happens when one starts bumping up against one's forties, or lived in Korea long enough, or just care too much.Who knows?
I think it's time to think more about making lots of money and buying bright, shiny things that will keep me distracted from the people in the world who obviously want to leave the place a shittier place than when they found it.
Because, as you travel through life, you realize that there's nothing you can do about those people, and they're going to win in the end. Time to go make that money and meet more honeys. In the end, that's the only way to be comfortable, gain real power, not to mention regular health care.
With pictures that apparently draw a link between being an English teachers and being an interrogator at Abu Graib.
Riiiight.
Go over to the site, leave a piece of your mind (be smart and don't seem like whom they stereotype us to be), and let the warm sunshine of reasonableness and the truth be their own downfall. In other words, let their hyperbole and indignation-based-in-ignorance-and-racism be their own downfall.
Stupid people don't suddenly act smart when confronted by intelligent people. At best, they hem and haw themselves into irrelevant reasonableness (feigned as it may be) or they just break down into hysterics.
What they're going to do is come into my blog and try to find some choice post that they think they can exploit to embarrass me. Let them. It'll probably be some piece of sarcasm that they'll misinterpret. Or they'll simply try to paint me into one of their stereotypes of foreigners, which I don't fit, but that doesn't mean they won't try.
I doubt, however, they have anything meaningful to say about "English teachers" other than false accusations based in faulty or fraudulent statistics, or based in obvious racist motivations such as "the white men are dishonoring our sacred, Joseon maidens" or that we "spread AIDS" or...
...torture Korean children much like the prisoners of Abu Graib?
It's just stuff like that that means these guys will implode under their own sheer size, since there isn't much to the blog other than tired, old racist blowharding.
Let's blow 'em up and watch the fur fly, feeble arguments fall.
Oh, and let's see if the author has the cojones to sign his names to what he says. Or if he's like the rest of the cowards who populate the Internet with venom and vitriol...
The security blanket of anonymity, when taken away, generally reveals only rats and other vermin scurrying into the safety of darkness.
My name's Michael Hurt and my email address is at the top right of this page.
Why, you might ask, should certain images stop being used in advertisements and other promotions aimed at non-Koreans? Well, because they're cliched and trite, mostly, and based upon faulty assumptions of what foreigners know/can know about Korea. They also are images that are the result of an ethnocentric myopia that produces images of what Koreans think foreigners should see about Korea, as opposed to what a non-Korean might want to see. Cases-in-point: putting singer Rain in a "Korea, Sparkling" ad when most people in the target market has no idea who he is. Means a lot to Koreans, but nothing to non-Koreans. Same with an ad that put Korea's president at the time on the screen, which was an expression of desperation in itself -- note, you shouldn't have to put your nation's political leader into tourism ads, hawking the nation's wares, especially when no one knows what he looks like. Besides you, that is.
And certain images, such as b-boys breakdancing, has meaning more to Koreans than outsiders. What do break dancers mean to Koreans? The practitioners and the only-recently-recognized art form in Korea symbolize a shift to more cultural openness and a new fusion that exists between "East" and "West" and are living symbols of the "new" that goes with Korea's "old." We're dynamic and hip, dude!
To say, North Americans and especially beyond, they're symbols of American culture. Or black American culture. What do break dancers have to do with Korea, again? Oh -- I get it. Korea's hip and cool. Err, kinda. It's trite and cliched. Think about it another way. I'm watching a commercial promoting Malaysia as the "new destination in Asia" or some shit. And then I see break dancers pop-locking across the screen. WTF?
So, with that, I begin the perfunctory and arbitrary Top Ten list of images, cliches, and other annoying contrivances that I never, ever want to see again, and which sully or confuse Korean brand imaging:
10) People breakdancing, especially with other folks in Korean traditional clothing and/or playing traditional Korean instruments. I just think -- why the fuck am I watching "Breaking: Electric Boogaloo" in some Korean tourism spot? And anyway, it's cliche. Get over this image, please.
9) Grinning Korean celebrities smiling and holding their arm out in any welcoming gesture, or in the direction of another graphic. We don't know who they are, and even if we do, it looks desperate. Kim Yuna sells everything, but I don't want to see her in her skates in a Korean tourism ad. Do you really think that makes me want to come to Korea more, or does it just make you look desperate to try anything?
8) Foreigners marveling at things that are actually quite normal, or at least not worth busting a nut over. Like trying a dish, at which point a look of astonishment and wonder washes over the white face of the taster, who then gives an overly-hearty thumbs up and a smile right into the camera. Cue vomiting.
7) Obviously forced shots of foreigners looking into the camera and yelling unison the words "Fighting" or "Number one!" Or the words "I love Korea!" It's obvious and contrived, unconvincing, and I'm not fucking 5 years old. Korean media people underestimate their audiences, even their own Korean ones. People these days watch The Sopranos, CSI, 24, and other shit. The average media consumer isn't a child anymore. And web-savvy and relatively more media-sophisticated foreigners certainly don't respond to "Korean kimchi, number one! I love Korea!" That's just plain fucking lame and lazy.
6) Any swooshing graphics, energetic bass lines punctuating video, or those awful synthesizer orchestra "hits." No trumpets played over news footage of Koreans winning any prize, and you only get to show either the national flag or a graphic of the peninsula on the map, not both, and only once.
5) No images of factories producing cars, robotic arms putting microchips onto a circuit board, or Korean tech workers wearing white suits in a clean room, inspecting a machine part prominently in front of their visor and before the camera. For that matter, no shots of Koreans in anything white, for safety's sake. That would eliminate the danger of researchers in white jackets, scientists in white jackets, or doctors in white jackets. Taekwondo is an exception, though. Those things they wear when doing the cool, jumpy, spinny stuff aren't jackets.
4) The use of any superlatives. Korea is the "best" or "most" of anything, or being the anything-est in Asia, or the "first" when they weren't (note Yonsei, you weren't/aren't "the first and the best" at anything, at least according to any list I've seen lately). Koreans just literally make that shit up, and it just sounds either arrogant or annoying, and often, both. Shit, even Harvard would never arrogate themselves to have a slogan like "the first and the best", even though there's some legitimate argument to both claims. You just sound like a dick.
3) Authoritative narrative voiceovers. Try to sound friendly and engaging. Again, not like a know-it-all dick. Western media left that behind in the 1960's. Except for James Earl Jones saying "This is CNN" or something, which is cool. But there's a reason Morgan Freeman does so many voiceovers. He's nice. James Earl Jones was Darth Vader. Americans are afraid of Darth Vader. He's your father, he cut off your arm, and he's a dick. Westerners don't like authority. Koreans are still used to Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan-style, apparently. In Korea, father still knows best, it seems. In the West, daddy cut off our arm, symbolically castrated us, and that pisses us off. Germans, Italians, and many others don't like big daddy figures any more (you know who I'm talking 'bout, ya'll). Darth Vader encapsulated western fears in 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back," as he uttered the words that reverberated in our culture across the decades, with "No, Luke. *I* am your father." He was the big, black dick who threatened the very integrity of the known universe. Anyway, it's very Freudian. Just trust me on this one.
2) Don't ever make a picture of a Korean woman in a royal, Chosun-era hanbok prominently using a cellphone again, ever. EVER. I threw up a little bit in my mouth when I saw that.
1) Stop using the word "wave" with anything related to Korea again. The "wave" has ebbed, and no one but Koreans who read their own press releases (because that's what the reporting generally was) believed in any fucking "wave," anyway. And once the suits got into it, they ruined it, anyway. You raised censorship restrictions, Korean media has high production values these days, you no longer live in a military dictatorship and have actual freedom of expression. So now, you have some media that non-Koreans might actually find interesting. Cool. Don't get a huge fucking complex, or have a touchdown party every time some Korean actor shows up in a 3rd-rate Hollywood film. You're not destined to "take over" or "dominate" anyone else's film industry. You just have freedom of speech, good production values, and more artists making cultural products than during the old days of dictatorship and economic deprivation. Cool, we like you, welcome to the club. Just attend a few meetings before declaring yourself president.
But I did feel angry about only one thing, to those paying attention -- I was mad at Robert, whom I consider a friend and colleague. For those who remarked I was "proving him right," actually, not. I didn't think much in particular about the statistic or the survey in question besides, "Oh, that's interesting." There's nothing to get angry about, from where I sit.
Me and Robert hung out last night, as planned because of an overlapping engagement, and drank makkoli with a bunch of other blogger folks. While we joshed around about it, I did express in person what the whole thing was about -- I don't appreciate the comments in his peanut gallery, many of which are outright racist, although most of the frat boys over there engaging in it pat themselves on the back, thinking their comments pass as some sort of incisive wit, e.g. "Yeah, Metro was conceived out of the same slime that the dude fucking that Korean chick on video probably had running out of her pussy!" Metropolitician rant in 3...2...1...
Witty. See, it's just plain old racist locker room banter, with the boys going "Let's see if we get a rise out of him." Well, yeah, you're being a racist prick. For example, in the post with the video with the black dude who filmed a Korean chick having sex with him, that man has nothing to do whatsoever with my father except he's BLACK. The dumbass Korean chick in the video with him has nothing to do with my mother except she's KOREAN. I'm not in the conversation, have nothing to do with this situation other than my parents' RACES. And making jokes about my deceased father, who never made sex tapes of hapless Korean women, or my mother, who worked hard to re-attend college and get her bachelor's degree in the US after her Korean degree didn't transfer over, become a registered nurse and become one of the senior staff in the intensive care unit at one of the biggest hospitals in the Ohio tri-state area -- yeah, I get to brag about my mama -- she has a strong a logical relationship to some whore some black dude picked up for a one-night stand and put on the Internet as the topic of human rights does to a discussion of Chinese politics. Other than the obvious fact that "Duurgh, they're black and Korean."
Which is racist as a motherfucker -- period. It's not funny. None of those white motherfuckers on the Hole would ever say that to my face, because they know they'd leave my face minus an eye or two. But it passes as witty banter on the Hole, as does any random discussion in which people want to bring up random, irrelevant bullshit and then attach my name to it, as if my name was Bennett and I was all all innit.
That's why, to the unobservant, I seem "sensitive." To those who listen to what I say and know me in person, they know I say shit, and respond to shit, because I treat what people say to me as what they SAY, and I don't say shit in writing that I wouldn't say to someone's face.
Back to Robert, I'm not mad at him for him saying anything racist himself, nor do I consider him a racist. But, given the fact that he DOES often police his comments, and that he HAS been known to ban people, it has bothered me that out-and-out racist assholes get to act their worst on the Hole, as do outright sexist pricks, but nothing is ever said, not a word gets spoken to be cautious. I'm not talking about censorship, but plain old racial slurring.
It's not condoning the behavior, but it certainly not sanctioning against it. And in 1) bringing me up from out-of-the-blue, and 2) expressing such a fundamental misunderstanding of my personality as to think that particular news story would at all get me "angry" -- I was pretty surprised and disappointed with The Marmot at that point in time.
Of course, we hashed it out over makkoli and noodles, two literally big bloggers having at it, as it were. But I think he got -- and I said this in person -- that I didn't appreciate him encouraging the exact kind of behavior, even if not in degree, but in type, that his dumbest commenters engage in.
This is more of a personal beef, with a longer context than most casual readers here are aware of. Back to even that psychopath Scott Burgeson, who contacted me via email from out-of-the-blue, yelling and screaming about why I was avoiding him and not reacting to some proposal I'd never heard of, and then cursing me out even further for asking him to clarify himself, before finally getting irritated and telling him to go fuck himself after the fifth time-wasting exchange. On the Marmot, he published my last, irritated email in which I told him to go fuck himself, as if he wasn't being a complete psychopath by yelling and screaming at me in his own emails from 9:04 in the morning. I simply countered by publishing the entire exchange, which was brought on my Scott crossing that line, at which point The Marmot deleted the entire exchange, and I was known as having had a non-existent "public breakdown" online, an impression the Hole didn't counter or clear up. Of course, I should have just stopped publishing on the Hole and taken it home to here, but I didn't. And anyway, after that, I never published anything worth discussing on the Hole again. Although the commenters didn't forget about it.
Hence, my extreme irritation at the "taking my pills" comment, because I've been pissed about that implication of having "lost my marbles" simply because I decided to call Scott Bug's lying bluff and show what was said, from the very beginning. Because again, HE was buzzing in MY ear -- I've never met Scott Burgeson, I've never contacted him, and I could give a fuck as to whether he lives or dies. But he, figureatively, picked up the phone and called ME, not the other way around. And then decided to act like I went buck wild on HIM. A clear sign of paranoid schizophrenia, by the way.
Anyway, I call shit as I see it, and always have been. And since then, I'm sick of my name being brought up in shit I ain't in, then being called to task for reminding them that I ain't got nothing to do with the conversation. Then, when I say that, it's like, "Aha! We got him!"
Fucking juvenile.
And from where I sat, eating my oatmeal and going through Digg and other blog feeds, I was pretty irritated to see that Robert was seemingly encouraging it by example.
And yeah, I can see why people think I "overreacted." I myself hesitated for minutes, thinking about whether to hit "Publish" or not. But I wanted to publicly say -- while expressing my irritation directly to that friend -- that my reputation for jumping into conversations and being THAT guy is so unearned. I keep any ranting I do to HERE -- I don't know why Marmot's Holers have such a boner for me that they keep bringing me up, having fantasy conversations about what they think I WOULD say in all kinds of situations. The only thing I post about over there in YEARS has been a video about Korea's first astronaut (including completely uncalled for banter about whether I "banged" her or not -- WTF?!), free movie tickets to a Tarantino premiere here in Seoul (to which commenter Whitey once again brought up the non-issue of me mentioning my school names or other lines on my resume, something that seems to bother only him and a few other commenters, since they seem to remember my resume details better than me), or about Seoul Fashion Week, which also brought another attempt at a jab, which I didn't grace with an angry rant, either.
I was just pissed to see the Marmot himself, in my eyes, encouraging his own peanut gallery. And I've expressed as much in person.
So, there's no battle, no war, no Godzilla vs. Mothra showdown in Seoul going to happen. From one blogger to another, I got mad at something I thought was inappropriate. I get Robert's point and true intention that it was light ribbing -- I truly do, and there are not lingering hard feelings about it. I can take a lot of ribbing, and do in person -- how can you be fat, black, and look like a Samoan while living in Korea if you can't?
I was just pissed at Robert for a minute, and basically told him what I'd tell him in person, had he been around to be on the receiving end of me spitting up my oatmeal. "Dude -- WTF?!" Anyway, I don't regret it -- that's how I felt at the time, and there's a LOT of context around it, to me. Now, Robert knows about it. He can do what he wants -- it's his blog. I'm just saying that, as a friend and colleague, I wouldn't tolerate people constantly attacking, say, his or his wife's racial or ethnic origins, nor his future kids, or allow them to be compared to some slime running out of blah, blah, blah. You get it.
And since I'd draw the line at that, I kind of hoped that Robert could draw his own lines about how to deal with his many racist and sexist commenters, in addition to the tendency for his commenters to drag the conversation down to the lowest levels possible a lot of the time.
Here I am, eating a late-night bowl of oatmeal for dinner, checking out the blogs that I've missed out on reading for the last couple weeks. So, no matter what you think, remember who started this shit -- and it ain't ME.
Sooooo -- over at The Marmot, it's now not just belligerent commenters, but the founder himself, who suggests that I must be crazy (hence, the pill-taking, I assume) because 1) I report that I am regularly harrassed in places such as the subway in Korea, along with dozens of other instances I can cite, as well as countless other people whom I know and 2) he implies that I either bring it upon myself or, alternatively, must be crazy to report it back to others as a pattern.
This is the same ribbing (and source of doubtful stares) that I get from most of my white male friends who constantly counter with, "Well, nothing ever happens to ME" but then go on to either doubt or discount my experience with harrassment as somehow not being reflective of reality. Because the white man's experience is obviously the valid one, or those of the majority. Same with Koreans who counter with, "Well, no one ever harrasses ME." Uh, duh?
Well, Robert, I'm not a white man who walks around the city wearing a white hanbok. That might make our experiences a tad different.
And as for the report, I don't see why it's assumed that its mere existence would send me into some kind of rage, or a bout of apopleptic writing rage. I don't doubt at all that a good number or Koreans welcome multiculturalism and are open to new ways of doing things in society, as reflected in that survey. It still doesn't change the fact that a good number of angry, drunk men constantly single me (and certain kinds of other people whom they seem to be bothered by) on the subway and other places for harrassment.
It doesn't change the fact that, if you're black in Korea, you either need major personal connections or a golden resume just to get the same shitty hagwon jobs they hand out to any white folks with a pulse here.
Or, regarding how the report talks about there being few reports on attacks against foreigners here, it might be because a police officer actually TOLD me that a foreigner's testimony has no meaning against a Korean's, when I was arrested for calling the police on the drunk man who was harassing ME. They just don't keep those statistics, Bob.
What's most annoying is the fact that people who read about my irritation with these things assume it's because I "hate Korea" -- rather than look at all the things I like to do here, from photography to podcasts to all kinds of personal reasons I like living here, and see that it really, really, really irritates me that a few assholes can ruin the entire party.
I like living in Korea, and it's BECAUSE of that fact that little things like being called a nigger on the train, being verbally attacked in Seoul Station in front of a cop who does nothing, or having a good friend have to go back to the States last month because her recruiter straight up TOLD her that it was too hard to get her another job because she was black -- shit like that can ruin your day.
It's BECAUSE I like Korea, because I've worked hard to learn the culture and language and society, that stuff like this bothers me, Bob.
You want to bring up my blog out-of-the-blue, based on a random news peg? What about the many reports that now reflect the fact that yes, random violence against women is on a major rise, another thing I've been anectdotally arguing is the case, for about 4 years now, and which cell phone cameras and YouTube videos are also starting to bear witness to. It's funny how, from when the police started keeping those kinds of stats, this violence has been on the rise. So, it's crazy to say that this might also be the case with foriegners? Does this make me a person in need of taking "his pills?"
You don't seem to consider any of the OTHER shit I say, which ain't too crazy -- I guess now you just like to pick and choose fights with the personality, much like your commenters.
Remember, Robert, YOU brought this shit up, brought my name into this, and implied in front of thousands of readers that I would have an extremely violent reaction and a specific opinion to this topic (which I don't) -- all completely UNSOLICITED by me, out-of-the-blue. Just like your commenters, I'm not only not even talking about any of this within earshot of you people, I'm not even THERE for the conversation -- YET YA'LL KEEP BRINGING ME UP.
My reaction to something like that isn't unreasonable, nor unexpected. I'm not in your grill, nor on your blog, talking about race, violence, or anything else -- I've been wise enough not to even broach any serious topic on your blog, what with the puerile nature of your commenters. Even with that, I've always either linked to or written on your blog respectfully, and spoken of you in the same way. We don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things, but I thought there was at least respect as colleagues.
So I don't see the need, or how it's at all appropriate to be talking about me going into histrionics, needing to "take my pills," or some such shit, basically making me the unsolicited whipping boy for all that is liberal, related to race, or blackness in your part of the blogosphere. Like the post about the black dude who filmed himself fucking some Korean chick on secret camera, where some commenter started talking about my MOTHER and something to do with the slime or other bodily fluids that your commenters guffawed about me being the result of. And I know you DO sometimes intervene and police your commenters -- just not for unsolicited, disgustingly racist comments. You tacitly approve them, and probably find them as funny as your peanuts gallery apparently does.
Because now, you're apparently participating in the baiting. Because that's what it is when I'm sitting over here eating my fucking oatmeal only to read about how you apparently think, like your readers, that I'm some fucking comic book character who's lost his marbles, is going to go vitriolic batshit over anything touching the subject of race, or is constantly engaging in self-serving name-dropping when YOU people are the only ones bringing either me, or that shit, UP.
I expect as much from your commenters, but not from you. I was pretty goddamn surprised, actually.
So, a very hearty "fuck you" to you, Bob.
Now, of course, I expect criticism that I'm overreacting, or that I'm being sensitive, or some such. But the bottom line is that your little post steps over the line of reasonableness and just plain level of professional regard that I'VE always kept up, no matter what bilious bilge your comments section brought up, no matter how much we disagreed occasionally on political shit or issues. Now you're engaging in the same immature baiting that I made the conscious decision in my head to just blame your COMMENTERS for. Now, after not having had anywhere near a serious discussion within miles of you or your peeps, you wanna just start randomly calling me out, implying I'm the same Loony Tune I thought just your commenters like to think of me as? That shit was uncalled for, Robert.
As they say on the playgrounds where black folks go, "Don't start no shit, won't be none."
Just got tweeted a link from some site called "GO! Overseas", which has a "10 Don'ts for Teaching Abroad in South Korea." Sounds like it was written with the following editorial guidelines in mind: "Be as frank as possible, but don't make Korea look bad, since we're a promoter of overseas workers and need to make everything seem as pleasant as possible." With your amateurish, out-of-focus classroom shot and generic stock image of Korea.
Typical seeming helpful-but-not pap. Like any of you idiots have any deep knowledge of the problems on the ground here.
What really got me, though, was the following quote at the end of their insipid article:
For some reason, there are teachers in Korea who don’t like teaching and don’t like Korea. Do they leave? Some do, but others opt to stay on and gripe to anyone who will listen about how things “make no sense here.” Stay away from these downers. Instead, make friends who enjoy teaching and who can help you through your problems. Make friends with Koreans who can explain why certain cultural bits are the way they are. Just don’t bitch. You’re only spreading negativity.
Readers, you all will have to excuse me, because I'm gonna have to make it raw for these idiots.
A hearty "fuck you" to Go! Overseas.
"For some reason?" You know, I am really sick and tired of this glossing over of why perfectly decent college graduates from North America, who are no better or worse than their peers, overall, get no understanding as to why many "gripe" or "complain" after working here. I've seen and sent (with recommendations) many an undergraduate I taught in my classes to Korea. I myself went on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in 1994, well before the English teacher boom started. I saw the Korean government's horrible attempt to launch a program like ours -- the EPIK/KORETA program -- fail miserably in its first years, and continue to limp along today. I see the thousands of kids coming to work their first jobs in hagwons get crunched on by this very corrupt, largely unregulated system and spit out again.
It's not the kids, folks.
Let's just talk about the Fulbright ETA program, which has a primary goal of promoting cultural exchange and international understanding -- not exploiting these kids for all the English they can get. Beginnning with this markedly different assumption, we also get an applicant pool with a ratio of about 1/5 people applying being accepted. Fulbright ETA is actually not super-comepetitive, actually. But it scrutinizes enough. And we don't even have TESOL or any certificates! Yet, we've always been the most-desired teachers in any provinces. What keeps the experience pretty positive? The Fulbright office in Seoul is an advocate for the TEACHER, not the school or institution. Go into KORETA and you're getting screwed on your contract? You don't have anyone in your corner. We also have a 2-month orientation, including language training and all kinds of pedagogical work, from the history of the Korean education program to classroom workshops, lesson planning, etc. Fulbright draws upon the same pool of kids who are always accused of "bitching," yet our program's turnover rate is nearly negligible, and our returnee rate getting higher every year. And the Korea ETA program has been lauded by the US State Department (who sponsors it) as not only one of the best programs of its type, but one of the best-run ETA programs of any country with one.
Why is that? And why did Fulbright turn down the Korean government cold when it proposed expanding the Fulbright ETA program to "2000 by 2000" in 1994? After which it began its KORETA (later, EPIK, after that program's massive failure) program?
I know many, many businesspeople who HATE doing business in Korea, or bitch about it to no end, for the same reasons as English teachers do. There is no respect for contracts here, there is little recourse for breach of contract or illegal treatment, and often, Koreans will just plain lie when entering into a business relationship.
So, it is precisely BECAUSE Fulbright in Seoul runs interference for its grantees that the vast majority of us (myself included) have a positive experience as an English teacher here in Seoul.
Now, I won't even list the comedy of errors that is common to just about any Korean government-run program. Suffice it to say that it is a matter of INTERESTS. The government-run programs have the same set of interests as a hagwon does, which is telling: "Milk that teacher for all s/he's worth, for as little money as possible. And since they are essentially indentured servants with no legal recourse or rights (as a practical matter, anyways), we can violate contract terms and generally act like dicks. Or you can go the fuck home."
And many do, after completing their contracts. A few even do a "midnight run." It's really funny that no one ever asks the question of why foreigners sometimes do break their contracts and just go home. Most of the people who come here are not surly losers who plan to uproot themselves from all they know, move to East Asia, and plan to dedicated a year or two of their life to working here, fresh out of college. I would characterize most of these people as being possessed of some sense of adventure, discovery, and a desire to have some decent fun while doing it.
And what do they find here? Not only are many disillusioned by the lies they've been told, their work environments are very unprofessional. Given no specific training on-site, with textbooks that are often handed to them the day of class, and the supervision of mostly uncouth and crass owners, emotional and overly partial Korean managers, and the illogic of Korean office management, on top of having no help with cultural adjustment, etc.
These young kids go negative, get unprofessional, and start hating "Korea." Which they don't, but their work life defines 90% of "Korea" to them, and it SUCKS.
So, those who tend to have a negative view of Korea are those who tend to have a negative work experience, in my broad base of experience. And by extension, many young people who come in through different vectors -- internships, exchange programs, etc. -- tend to be far more positive.
And again, many of those in say, the ETA program, have had a positive experience by virtue of the fact that we have ample PROTECTION from same backwards administrative practices, etc. Because they do HAPPEN, but we have a particularly well-connected HAMMER OF THOR who can squash just about any problems that comes up, such as when your country-ass principal starts grumbling about farming you out to the local community college because his best friend works there, or your vice-principal starts bitching about why you shouldn't just sit in your desk staring into space until 5PM, like the other teachers, when your last class ends at 11AM. Like you can do anything useful in the school, anyway, as a foreigner.
Point is, the big, motherfucking, fat elephant in the room is KOREAN ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE and UNPROFESSIONALISM, which even Koreans are sick and tired of, but just can't do anything about.
OK, BREATHE.
You really want to know how to have a good experience in Korea teaching English? You don't need 10 fucking tips from an idiotic copywriter. You need only two, from someone on the ground, who yeah, hates Korean business culture, but doesn't hate Korea.
1) Find a program like the American-run Fulbright ETA program or something similar, which has someone running interference for you and has your back if you have a problem.
2) Try to find a job or Korean-run program in which you've heard people had generally good experiences, not by fiat of luck, but because of the administrative practices themselves.
And go fuck yourselves, Go! Overseas for publishing pap that you try to pass off as "helpful tips," while avoiding conversation about the real problem and blaming the victims.
I've lived in this society for a long time and have come to understand a lot of things, adapted my behavior to others, and learned to define what I won't allow myself to change.
For example, I will never accept a bribe, especially since they usually require one to do something quite odious, like change a grade, accept something deemed unacceptable, do something harmful to the greater good. That's why you're being bribed, right? And that's an active choice I made.
Some things you just become inured to. When I was first placed in a Korean boy's middle school on Cheju Island in 1994, horrible beatings of students by teachers was an everyday matter. The first time I saw a boy being slapped, punched, and kicked while he was on the ground, I teared up. As violent as people think America is because of highly public (but relatively rare on the everyday level) gun shootings and whatnot, I'd never experienced such levels of violence on a nearly daily level. And the verbal abuse that accompanied this attitude towards discipline was just par for the course.
I began thinking -- what does this do to the group being forced to accept this? What is this doing to me?
The fact that I didn't tear up anymore, or even get interested enough to want to react anymore, meant that something, some part of my humaneness, no matter how small, had died. And that is what saddened me after a year of working in that school. And even into my second year, in a co-ed and much less hard-hitting middle school, another member of my program had a student she knew die as a result of extreme beatings. He was forced to run around the school, and at the end of the lap, was beaten with several blows. Another lap, another beating. No water for several hours. When he was finally sent home in the evening, he died of massive heart failure. A 17-year-old kid. In the end, the parents tried to do something, they were shunned and ostracized, the teacher was moved to an administrative position. Welcome to Korea, foreign teachers.
At that time, before YouTube and there being no foreigners around in this particular institution, our program collectively saw one kind of Korea's dirty little secrets and how they are dealt with. We lived in host families, sat in the teachers' room, went on the school field trips, and saw everything because we were small enough to be ignored. When one friend of mine saw male teachers bringing female high school students into a hotel room and giving them soju and other hard liquors, and reported it to her vice-principal, she was brushed off because she apparently didn't understand that this was a "Korean custom." (Hmm. I wonder if the girls parents would agree.)
Some people out there who come across this blog accuse me of some kind of cultural imperialism because I refuse to budge on certain moral points that I refuse to cross. And that I use these moral boundary lines as the launching points for some criticisms of the culture. What these people usually don't realize is that one doesn't live here, learn the language, successfully make a living, and maintain social relations without doing some serious adaptation to this culture. And having lived here off and on since the early 1990's, back then, before Internet and cable TV, before ubiquitous "air-con" and the days of having to teach class in a winter coat with students competing to sit nearest the gas heater in the center of the class, when I lived in the countryside and the big bookstore only carried 3 copies of international Newsweek that I was rarely quick enough to catch -- Korea was a lot harder to get used to. I put in my time, baby. And I'm as culturally adjusted as I can get. I've given ground on just about every aspect of my life and personality, adapting to the Korean condition.
But on a few things, I won't budge. To some people, me criticizing the mental (and formerly, physical) violence of the school system, or the ubiquitousness of prostitution, turning a blind eye to obvious and clear human rights abuses in the North, or the fact of the massive corruption that continues to eat away at Korea's own values of equality of opportunity -- makes me some kind of cultural imperialist. To me, these are either people who just don't like me and will attack me anyway, or they assume that I haven't thought about the fact that these values are shared by many Koreans themselves. The "right thing to do" is often clear and obvious, actually -- the only thing that makes certain issues huge contestations is the fact that on one side stand people who want to do what everyone agrees is the right thing, and on the other side stand those who simply stand to use their power to exploit others.
To return to my question -- what does living in an environment that forces you to make huge moral concessions to to a person -- this society has huge moral and social problems that one either accepts or fights against. Take corruption, for example. Right now, Samsung is a company whose very structure depends on corruption, whose success often relies on unfairly clearing obstacles and clearing the playing field, whose government connections give it protection even the mafia couldn't touch. And it's been exposed in great detail bya whistleblower whose acts should be commended and praised to the hills. But instead, his name is cursed. And not just by the expected corporate types who obviously want his head on a platter, but by the society in general.
In the distorted version of Confucianism that this society follows, a notion of morality is not at the center. It is not the fulcrum around which things find balance. Morality is secondary -- the maintenance of social rules, the sanctity of the hierarchy, of relative social positions -- this is priority number one. This is why I say that Korea is not really a "Confucian society" in the sense that a full set of Confucian-based moral values dictate how things go; no, for post-Chosun Korean society, it is a merely a rulebook mostly designed to maintain a rigid social structure.
And traditional Korean society only cares about whether or not one violates the rules, not with what moral/ethical values the rules are designed to preserve or actively foster.
That's Korean style. Take the typical Korean ajussi. He simply wants respect and deference because he is older, might have a higher place in the hierarchy, has put in his time as a junior for a long time. And those junior to him are supposed to defer and kowtow. But what is he supposed to do? In the typical Korean way, you da younger, you da bitch. Period.
But traditionally, the Ajussi the Older also has an obligation. He is obligated to stand as a living example of virtuous behavior for the Youngers; he is supposed to use his power to help deserving Youngers advance in life; the Older has a moral obligation to earn the respect he is given. Contrary to common Korean social practice, the Older does not deserve automatic respect, especially when the Older has clearly stepped outside of agreed-upon social/legal bounds. Hence, the Confucian justification for standing up to unjust rulers, resisting social oppression, etc. Because that's in there.
So, am I supposed to respect a drunk ajussi cursing at me on the subway? Or an administrator who is altering the rules to take bribes? Or, closer to home -- a supervisor in my school who wants to change my grades after the fact, which tacitly involves me in their bribe-taking and the unfair altering of the life paths and life-chances of dozens of students? Or how about just sitting and listening to the screams of a middle school boy being kicked in the face and chest? By doing nothing, I am tacitly participating in his abuse. That's the only way to cut it. And why I teared up -- by following the accepted social rules that gave this teacher the right to be a monster, I was, even though it was to the tiniest extent possible, becoming a monster, too. Because he was a student, and I was a teacher who did nothing.
For all those who sit on the sidelines, criticize those who criticize Korean society -- you all have the luxury of truly being outsiders. This is obviously the case. Because my social criticisms aren't rooted in some abstract, America-based objection to the way things are in Korea because of the ways I think they should be in my own country -- I'm not that fucking stupid. But I've been here long enough to see bright-eyed, eager children chewed up by the system and become the sad and cynical teachers who abused them; I've seen kids beaten within an inch of their lives and known of one who was literally murdered by the teachers who are supposed to love and nurture them; I've been forced to sit and accept a policy that would make me an accomplice in such huge corruption that I could scarcely feign moral innocence, even if I didn't stand to get any of the money; when you're deep enough within the system, you don't have the luxury of choosing whether or not to take a position, or to be on one side of the fence or the other. You're already there, and you make the choice whether you sit on your ass or standing up for what you believe in. For those who think it's wrong to do anything, you're deluding yourselves.
Or, you're "fucking the bear," as a good friend put it, in jest. Like the anthropologist so invested in simply following the ways of the natives that even recording their sense of morality becomes secondary to the simple and superficial aping of their "ways," or the animal behavior scientist who lives with gorillas (or, more comically, bears) and studies their ways, lives among the animals, forgets to be human -- and starts "fucking the bears."
That cracked us both up at the bar, but my friend was dead serious. You learn to survive here, then truly adapt, and then -- you truly become inured to things here to the extent that things that should bother you, and which even bother a good percentage of the people here, don't anymore. Because you've become used to it, because you're dependent on some aspect of it, and maybe you've even become a party to some of the thing you once found morally detestable.
Because you've been "fucking the bears."
The point is, if you're part of the society, if you've developed meaningful human ties here, if you do work that emotionally and materially affects others -- how the hell can you feign non-involvement? Or on the flip side, assert the fiction that you either aren't or shouldn't "get involved?" I mean, anyone here teaching English, for example, is part of the same soul-crushing system that we criticize. And don't say you're not -- you fucking get paid to teach this Language of Power. I get paid to teach in it. We've all been been fucking the bear since we got here; or at least, we've been doing a slow dance and copping a feel.
My point is that standing up for what is right isn't that hard to do, isn't that complex, isn't as fraught with issues of "cultural imperialism" or power dynamics or "problematics" as you would think. Because if you've done your due-diligence here, if you've put in your time, if you've figured yourself out vis-a-vis the many, but superficial cultural differences you observe -- you know that refusing to participate in a bribery scheme, or watching your boss openly and crassly put his hands repeatedly all over the new girl's thighs, or not stepping in to tell the Korean teacher kicking a student in the face, "That's ENOUGH!" isn't some cultural faux pas.
People use the word "culture" like its some magical invocation, as though, once named, it becomes a thing of religious significance, as though it's some kind of blasphemy to "interfere." But it's not that fucking complex. In fact, once you've figured out how things generally work here, it's not hard to figure out what's culture and what's just plain wrong.
I guess you could say whipping "nigger" slaves in the South was "culture." I mean, it's what people did, right? Not educating women was "culture" in Chosun Korea, especially amongst the yangban, which makes Mary Scranton an ethnocentric bitch, right? Fucking Underwoods, too. Establishing universities and shit, trying to educate women and people from the lower classes. How dare they?
Or calling the South the Uncle Tom, money grubbing hypocrite that it is for so wanting cheap North Korean labor and economic concessions from the North that it actually downplays or even bans reporting on clear human right violations in North Korea because that might piss them off.
Or disturb relations enough to mess up things for the Kaesong slave wages camp, oops, I mean "industrial complex." I mean, they DO make $42 a month for 52-hour work weeks. That's $.20 per hour! My bad.
Again, there's nothing wrong with standing up for what's right, even (and especially) in another place. And if a lot of people agree with you, or are already standing up for something, and you're part of the society, too -- you can't act like you're not involved.
So, power to the whistleblowers who take a baseball bat and chainsaw to the machine of corruption and abuse of power. These people, in the end, make our lives better, even if it hurts. And it doesn't matter whether you're an American or Korean or whatever. If you live here, you are an insider enough to know right from wrong. You didn't leave that cognitive power at the Incheon immigration desk.
And finally, to the Daewon Foriegn Language High School principal and administration with whom I last worked in 2005, with whom I did not cooperate when they tried to use my US History grades (which had the largest weight in the GPA at the time) as monetary leverage to adjust class rankings, after which I was harrassed by the Korean teachers to the point where even students were coming to warn me of the things other teachers were saying in their classes about me, actively encouraging students to file complaints about me, for simply asking to be left out of their corruption scheme -- BOOYAH!
Now accused criminal, former Daewon FLHS Principal Choi Won-ho
You got caught! Principal Choi, remember when you said you were "going to get me" and "destroy my life" in our last conversation? Well, karma's a bitch, ain't it? Who done gone and got got? You were and are an evil man, and you simply got what you deserved. And I continue to be eminently proud of the fact that I'd rather turn down a $100-per-hour teaching job there than continue to work with you and your mostly-evil administration. And now, you can't sue me for defamation any more than you can The Korea Times, because I'm just asserting I saw the same corruption as documented in a national newspaper. And this issue definitely lies in the realm of "the public interest."
And if anyone wants to talk to me about what I saw there, I'd be MORE than happy to cooperate.
And this post is gonna live on in Google FOREVER. And hey, Won-ho, I'm not even publishing your face -- it's on The Korea Times' server! Whoo hoo! I love it!
This may seem like a very clichéd thing to blog about, especially in the context of Korean society, or education, especially because it seems like such an obvious thing to criticize, even to the newbie. Even fresh off the plane, people from other countries talk about the lack of creativity here, the regimented education system, the reliance on rote memorization, and so forth.
But most of the time, the conversation is superficial and remains stuck just under the surface of the completely opposite. It remains a conversation that requires little actual knowledge about the structure of the education system here, its history, or any number of specifics that my choir someone to actually do some research or even read a book about the subject. Unfortunately, the "problem of Korean education" or "lack of creativity amongst Koreans" receives little deeper treatment than can be found in beer conversation after work.
"They should just get rid of the college entrance examinations altogether!" Well, "they" have before. Or the other one I've heard, "they should just make hagwond illegal!" Well, they have been before. And ALL kinds of private education, including private tutoring, have also been illegal at one time or another in recent Korean history.
Oftentimes, these conversations reek with cultural condescension and outright ethnocentric arrogance. Does some noob fresh off the plane and here less than three months really think that such revelations have never occurred to Korean reformers, government officials, or specialists in education, such as teachers or principals, or to the students themselves? Take, for example, our own screwed up education system in the United States. In the final analysis, the major source of disparities between school districts and individual schools has to do with the division of resources from property taxes. Why don't we just "fix" these things and get on with it? What the hell is America's problem? The solution is "obvious," right?
Well, without getting too deeply into it, we have a particular problem of race, class, and other differences that prevent people from doing just that. "You want MY tax money going to pay for THEM?!" America. Just recently got over integrating public school systems -- does anyone really think that the richer are going to pay more than their share for the poorer of American citizens? Especially if they're black, Latino, or some other undesirable Other? And that's without even going into the very American allergy to anything that even remotely looks like what people consider "socialism." Can you imagine getting that one even past city council, let alone the state legislature, or God forbid turned into something like a national law? Forget about it.
But this is just the kind of unsophisticated thinking that many outside observers apply to the Korean situation. This is why many Koreans tend to get irritated upon hearing this kind of simple criticism. Of course, we also know that national pride stokes the fires of defensiveness, but that's not the whole story.
And that's where the problem lies. As outside observers, we should think about the limits of our observations, the fact that probably many Koreans have had them already, in combination with the fact that, in general, our actual knowledge about the details of the situation, "problem," or what have you does not run very deep. So that's why, when one throws one's hands up in utter frustration, while saying, "This is just so freaking obvious! Why doesn't anyone change the system? Why isn't anyone doing anything?" Well, that's probably because you're right. It's IS absolutely, positively, FREAKING obvious. And yes, we need more than the observations that even a non-educated outsider can make in order to solve these mostly complex and intricate social problems.
Because the reason that social problems remain entrenched is not because of ignorance of their very existence, but has to do with that very fact --- they are ENTRENCHED. They are not easy to fix because, and I know this seems obvious, they are not easy to fix; it is not usually because Koreans are woefully ignorant of the problem's existence. To the extent that some Korean folks are not looking at the problem from a particular angle, or a new approach, the outsiders point of view may be useful. Additionally, people in their own societies tend to be like fish accustomed to the water in the bowl: air show in your society and the system that there may be something that go unnoticed, or willfully ignored. For example, it seems that many Koreans don't like to talk about the scale of prostitution in society, the large role it plays in the economy, and the resulting cultural embeddedness of prostitution as a normalized societal institution. Often, in that case and in my own classes that I teach on the subject of social problems, the screens. I talk with find themselves quite shocked when forced to confront the issue openly and without embarrassment.
But that particular social problem is linked to embarrassment about not only the topic of sex, but a very deep cultural shame about this being a public topic of conversation that puts Korea in a negative light. But the education system issue, however, does not suffer from some deep rooted social stigma against people talking about it. It's simply a deep rooted societal problem with no easy, obvious answers. And pretty much what any new to Korea, fresh foreigner is going to come up with in his or her head as a grand solution to one of Korea's fundamental social woes is probably something Koreans have already thought about, and more often than not, something that has already been tried.
In the end, it's quite arrogant to assume, as a foreigner and a newbie, that after 2 weeks of thinking about the subject, all social problems would be solved if people just thought like you. It's also arrogant to keep stubborn and unwavering opinions without having done much thinking about the subject, nor any background reading, anything. You just sit there at the bar with your beer and have the answer.
Isn't that what we often get on Koreans' case for?
Wow. "Curry munchers." The overt racism of this entire comment stream isn't surprising, nor is the instant dismissal of this man's concerns. Did you people even READ the article? It was highlighting this as a common occurrence, not one man's crusade. And the observation that these incidents usually occur in direct proportion to the victim's unfamiliarity with the culture? Whatever.
People get on me for the same shit -- even when I am standing in a suit facing the subway door engrossed in my iPod, I have some drunken, crazed ajussi I hadn't even noticed screaming and cursing at me at the top of his lungs. Or this past weekend, with two Korean American friends discussing in a normal tone of voice which exit to use when we got off at Coex station.
This shit happens all the time, and it's getting worse. I never take the subway, and each time I violate that rule, I get nearly physically assaulted. Verbal harrassment is par for the course. And to those who continue to dismiss my or others' experiences as invalid simply because you never have anything happen to you (and chances are, you're white or fit into Koreans' sense of acceptability), good for you. That still doesn't change reality for others.
And for those who argue that Korea's situation is in danger of becoming like that of France -- that's beyond idiotic. The particular brand of French racial and religious intolerance, mixed with similarly rigid reactionism on the part of the Islamic minority there -- that isn't at all what's happening here. We're not talking about drawing lines in the sand over social norms and religious edicts -- this is a matter of simple, common courtesy, on a kindergarten level:
-- You should be drunk off your ass in public.
-- You shouldn't yell at or curse people out.
-- You shouldn't hit people.
-- People who violate the law (especially those who assault others) should be punished.
-- And the standard of treatment? Korea OWN laws. No one is asking for special treatment here.
What's this guy, others like him, or people like me really asking for? To stop being harrassed, harangued, or even hit for daring to do things such as be with a Korean woman, use one's own native language, or be a different skin color.
And right now, I've about had it with this bullshit. The stupid commenters' solution? "Go home."
Sorry. I AM home. And I believe Korea to be too full of decent people, to be too good of a culture, to be a far better place than one that deserves to have a few assholes ruin everything.
Because it IS that bad these days. And the problem is that, like always, most decent Koreans don't want to do anything about it, while a few bad apples make life nearly miserable for minorities here.
Publicity like this will hopefully wake up enough decent people to the point where they will stop taking this kind of shit from the usual suspects, the people who cause 99% of these incidents:
DRUNK, MIDDLE-AGED AJUSSIS WITH AN INFLATED SENSE OF ENTITLEMENT.
No one likes these assholes, not even most Koreans in the subway car, office space, or classroom there with you. They are just too used to taking it or looking the other way.
But engaging in conversations about how much certain groups of people do or don't ACTUALLY smell, or making "Clash of Civilizations"-level, hyperbolic predictions of cultural doomsday in Korea is just as stupid as it is non-productive. The problem is actually very simple: stop accepting this bullshit and stigmatize it away.
The one thing that I do believe happens quickly in Korea is change, especially when you deal in the cultural currency Koreans really operate with: chemyeon, or social "face." And you know what? When things get embarrassing enough, Koreans either sweep it under the rug or fix it.
And the ability to sweep this under the rug in Korea is quickly waning. This is the kind of practical positivity I have about Korea. And it's not based in ignorance of the culture, way of life here, language, or any of that. In fact, anyone who knows this place should understand the logic of chemyeon, group shame, and the power that gives the outsider here.
The ones who REALLY display their ignorance are those who engage in the same racism as the dumbass ajussis on the subway, or Chicken Little-esque prognostications about a cultural jihad or snickering about the need for an American-style civil rights movement in Korea, complete with Martin Luther "Kim" and all.
All I'm asking for is the basic civility that is afforded to the average Korean here. Which means not being cursed, spit upon, or hit. It ain't that fucking much to ask for.
Before you say this site is "anti-Korean" or bashing Korea – read this: "Why Be Critical?" Chances are, if you're simply angry because I am a social critic in Korea but not actually Korean, see if your argument isn't just a kneejerk response that follows these patterns.
Session 1: Just the Basics
Dealing with the basic operations and functions of your DSLR, explaining each function, button, and doo-hickey. The bulk of the session is likely going to stick around the relationship between aperture and shutter, as well as depth-of-field. Basically everything on your camera has something to do with this relationship.
Session 2: Composition and Shooting (Shooting Session 1)
We'll take those examples and look at them on the big screen, while also answering the concrete questions that will pop up about the stuff we learned before. Then we'll talk about composition and other framing issues, including lens lengths and why some lenses are worth $100 bucks and some are worth $10,000.
Session 3: Flashes and Advanced Exposure (Shooting Session 2)
Dealing with flash, in terms of compensating above and below exposure levels (bracketing), as well as other bracketing techniques in general.
Session 4: Final Session/Critiques
Keeping it open, determined by the class.
Four 3-hour sessions, as well as shooting sessions, photo discussions, and critiques. An individual photo essay will also be done as part of the ongoing class assignments. Inquire at the email address at the top right of this page.
As for my photo book (now in limbo due to editorial differences with the publisher), you can see the representative chapters from the "Seoul Essays" posts below. Note that Chapter 3 remains undone and in limbo on my computer:
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