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Ruben Navarette, Jr. had it right in his article over on CNN: that was cheap and divisive. And if you think that West Virginia and Kentucky aren't very working-class and white, and that Clinton's not doing all she can to use that, you're living in fantasyland. Her little WINK*WINK quip:
"Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again."
Talk about Reagan-era "code words" and veiled racial politicking. It isn't nearly Willie Horton, but Clinton indeed sounds more like some conservative, southern Republican stumping straight outta the 60's, rather than the dyed-in-the-wool "liberal" she's supposed to be, the wife of the "first black president."
Shit, if Obama wins, McCain is looking like a better choice than her. She also voted for the Iraq war, but at least he's not trying to get sneaky with old racial prejudices -- ahem, or actual fear and animosity towards black people.
Leave it to Hillary to look more "conservative" than the Republican guy. What wonders she is doing for the Democrats! I certainly am thinking about not voting for her if she wins the nomination -- I wonder how many others are starting to get a distinct distaste for her that will go beyond a realistic recognition of the things one has to do to best one's opponent in the nomination?
I mean, if I'm going to vote for a Republican, I'll at least vote for the one who at voted for the war resolution and has the courage to stand behind that choice even after the war has become unpopular -- instead of doing the "flip-flop" the Rovians successfully pinned on Kerry. And I'll also be wanting to vote for the candidate who DOESN'T look like a racist prick. On that score, Hillary stands alone right now.
Guess what? What many foreigners have been saying for a long time would happen HAS! While the Seoul Metropolitan Government wastes time asking western foreigners whether or not they like the toilets and tries to encourage tourism in Korea by just saying the country is now "sparkling!" foreign investment in Korea has been falling faster than a crackhead's mean body weight.
Any and all foreigners who've been in the middle of Roh Moo Hyeon's anti-American, anti-foreign, kneejerk nationalism has wondered how Korea would ever become the "hub of Asia" if any foreign firm who makes money here is constantly vilified beyond reasonableness, even as actual North Korean propaganda is allowed to be taught to schoolchildren by members of the Korean Teachers' Union, and the media continues to set up foreigners as the ultimate scapegoat for everything they can't now blame Lee Myung Bak for.
If you're going to make Korea a place where it sucks to live, not to mention invest and make money, do you think anyone but the craziest or most committed are going to stay? Especially with the open and welcoming arms of China right next door? The first thing that Korean slogan and campaign planners need to figure out is that Korean automatically being the hub of anything was only a truism before there was international plane travel. Because now, people can fly OVER Korea without going THROUGH it.
I hate to say "I told you so." (Well, actually, I don't.) But "I told you so." And so did any other foreigner who's been here a long time and has been constantly shaking their head as Korea continued to embarrassingly piss yet another dream of being a "hub" down the proverbial drain.
And in this particular case, there's no one to blame other than -- wait for it -- the usual suspects: a formerly anti-American government and a continually anti-foreigner news media.
Congratulations! This time, there's no one to blame but Korea itself! And with the hysterics over the KORUS FTA, wow -- for better or worse, Korea sure knows how to create a hospitable atmosphere for making agreements and then having the population go absolutely berzerk over it for the most irrational of reasons.
Needless to say, I couldn't find any answers to the question of where the "94% of Koreans more genetically susceptible to mad cow disease" claim came from, so I did my own research, since not knowing such things bothers me. Here's the answer, in terms of where this flimsy set of ideas is coming from. The article on "kuru" on eMedicine.com, which was reprinted from WebMD.com, and was written by:
Paul A Janson, MD, Instructor, Tufts University School of Medicine; Director, EMT/RN Consultants; Consulting Staff, Department of Emergency Medicine, Lawrence General Hospital
Along with coauthors:
Rachel H Chung, MD, Consulting Staff, Department of Family Practice, North Clinic, North Memorial Hospital; Mary Buechler, MD, Per Diem Staff, Department of Emergency Medicine, Caritas Holy Family Medical Center; Stuart H Cohen, MD, Director of Infection Control and Epidemiology, Associate Professor, Department of Internal Medicine, University of California at Davis School of Medicine
Here's the excerpt of this article, last updated on October 15, 2005:
"Prions are thought to be both the infectious agent and the cause of spongiform encephalopathy in animals and humans. The prion is a naturally occurring protein (termed prion protein [PrP]) found in the CNS and elsewhere.
In the alpha-helical configuration, PrP usually is sensitive to protease degradation and is termed PrP-sen. Disease results when the PrP is reconfigured into the beta-sheet configuration, which is resistant to protease degradation. This configuration is termed PrP-res. The PrP-res proteins are resistant not only to protease degradation but also to radiation, heat, and most other processes that destroy proteins. Neither the transmissible agent nor the disease-producing agent contains any DNA or RNA. Because they are naturally occurring proteins, immunologic response to the infection is absent.
The prion of kuru is infectious orally and is capable of transmission to nonhuman primates by this route and by direct introduction into various tissues. Scrapie may be transmitted to sheep from pastures that have previously been grazed by scrapie-infected sheep and have remained unused for as many as 30 years, demonstrating the extreme resistance of prions to degradation. CJD also has been transmitted iatrogenically by transplanted tissue such as dura mater grafts. Potential transmission via the blood supply has been suggested but never demonstrated.
Prions are capable of replicating themselves in organisms; or, more correctly, prions are capable of changing the existing PrP-sen to PrP-res. This change takes place particularly in the CNS. Resistance to degradation is the probable source of disease because prions accumulate within the CNS, causing amyloid collections and resulting in neurologic symptoms and the spongiform appearance on pathologic examination. Hence, the term spongiform encephalopathy is applied to this group of diseases.
The name prion has only recently gained wide acceptance, replacing previously used terms such as slow virus, infectious proteins, infectious amyloids, and crystal protein. Mice that lack the gene responsible for PrP cannot be infected with the agent causing spongiform encephalopathy. The lack of this protein has no apparent effect, except an alteration in the circadian rhythm of these mice. They have a normal life span. For this reason, the PrP has been proposed to be a redundant protein.
The PRNP gene has recently been identified as altering the susceptibility to prion infection. The gene has a polymorphism at site 129 for either methionine or valine and has been noted as showing a strong increase in susceptibility to kuru if methionine is present on both genes (M/M). All cases of vCJD in the United Kingdom have occurred in people of the M/M genotype as well.
The pathologic similarity between the spongiform encephalopathies and other degenerative brain diseases, such as Alzheimer disease, is the subject of speculation at this point."
OK, now that's something I can work with. The problem is, it still doesn't lead us to the conclusion that Korea and Koreans are somehow more susceptible to getting mad cow disease, even if it is established that the M/M genotype is expressed in 94% of the Korean population and only 38% of the American population. [And where did these numbers come from?]
The main problem is still the same: preventing tainted meat from reaching the population. If tainted meat hit the shelves of American grocery stores, it doesn't mean only 38% of the population would get it, nor does it mean that 94% of the Korean population would get it.
Neither population would find such a figure acceptable. The fact remains that one has to be exposed to said tainted meat, and a single case of vCJV in the United States in 2003 doesn't establish American meat as any worse than say, E. coli infections in Korean beef, which actually HAVE killed people, and have killed many more people in Korea than any cases of "mad cow" in the US. If there's something more logical to crow about, it's E. coli infections that have forced mass recalls of American beef -- not mad cow disease.
In the end, this is about fear-mongering and existing anti-American sentiment. The question isn't supposed "susceptibility" but whether or not mad cow disease is in the meat of that country. I'm still waiting -- for the over one million Americans of Korean descent (myself included) who've been eating American beef since they were born, how many cases of mad cow disease were there? Was that single case back in 2003 with a Korean American?
Where's the logic, people? It's about the absence or presence of contaminated beef -- not genes.
Some people automatically say "you're just defending America because you're American." That's fucking stupid, if you read this blog (which takes aspects of US society to task every bit as much as I do for South Korea), and my main argument is that if you want to protest the KORUS FTA, do it.
The Korean beef industry wants to protect its market, Korean farmers don't want the FTA bringing in American-grown rice, Korean car manufacturers don't want Ford, Chrysler, and GM selling its cars without the tariffs that have kept them out by keeping their prices double those of domestic cars. Fine. That's all economics, interests, perfectly reasonable arguments, whichever side of them you fall on.
But this fear-mongering about the certainty of death if American beef imports begin again is illogical: even assuming a 94% distribution of the M/M genotype (versus a supposed 38% prevalence in the US) doesn't mean 94% of the Korean population is going to get mad cow disease. In the end, one still has to demonstrate that American beef is particularly dangerous vis a vis "mad cow disease" actually being present, which so far, hasn't been demonstrated. Otherwise, I would have stopped eating American beef a long time ago.
American or not, I'm not stupid enough to eat infected beef. So I would appreciate it if Koreans dropped that line of argument. If and when it is demonstrated that American beef is unsafe, I'll stop eating it. And so should Koreans struggle to keep it out. Until that day, I'll still be getting my occasional beef fix at the local Burger King.
And so will most Koreans, after this all blows over. Illogical and extreme gesticulations and much ado about nothing are usually followed by completely forgetting about the issue.
Because Koreans are just almost even more "mad" about "cow" than Americans, what with the allegiance to foreign fast food chains such as Burger King and McDonald's. I predict a slight drop in sales in both establishments right after American beef comes in, followed by complete amnesia and business-as-usual two weeks later.
Such is the way of things in Korea, and why this whole thing amounts to a whole bunch of silliness. If people were really so worried about their health, they wouldn't eat beef AT ALL, since my vegetarian friends, plus the American book Fast Food Nation, illustrates just how unhealthy the beef industry is in general. Yet, I'm a carnivore. Can't help it.
Alternatively, if Koreans were so concerned about random and inexplicable death, they would also wear their seat belts. But generally, not only don't they, all my friends outright refuse to buckle up in the rear seats.
Here's an old post I actually forgot to publish, which I discovered while preparing a post on the US beef issue. It was originally saved on 12/25/06 at 4:33 PM, which is more of a note for me than anything useful to you. But enjoy the post, and hopefully it will provide you with more ammunition to convince your Korean friends to use their seatbelts. Basically, my logic is this -- if you're not using your seatbelt in Korea, you might as well enjoy your life more and stop using condoms, since your likelihood of being killed or seriously injured in a car here is probably higher than you being "killed or seriously injured" by having sex here.
If you're gonna live by a roll of the dice, that is. You gonna use that seatbelt now?
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I want to start off this post by saying that I wear my seatbelt.
Well, as much as I can, considering the fact that many taxi drivers stuff the rear seatbelt locks down under the seat, or actually take the latch by force and place it above the plastic guard, where it sits, unable to be drawn down to the seatbelt lock, useless.
Half the time I do use the seatbelt, the taxi driver laughs and says, "You don't need to do that in the back." Oh, really?
"This is Michael. Today, he's going to hit his girlfriend so hard,
she's going to end up with permanent brain damage."
When I bring up the fact that I, as a 113 kg man, would become a human missile and likely kill whomever is in the front seats, or actually that anyone not strapped down in a serious accident would become like a billiard ball, careening all throughout the car, severely injuring or killing whomever he or she hit, I am suddenly the 분위기 킬러. But I'd rather be a mood killer than an actual one.
Did you ever think that by not using a seatbelt, it's not actually you you're killing, but the other people in the car, perhaps even someone you love? In an accident, there's no front or back seat – it's just whatever isn't strapped down. Killing someone else is a pretty tall price to pay for you being lazy. Pretty selfish, huh?
Korea is #1 among OECD countries (hat tip to Fence Rider, whom I saw come in through my server logs) in not only traffic accidents, but in fatalities from traffic accident fatalities. I've been saying this since 1994, when this fact was also true, and Korean people generally thought I was making that up. But it's been true for a long time, but surprisingly, public awareness of the consequences of simple things such as not wearing seat belts in the most dangerous country in the world to drive in, simply hasn't changed much.
Now, this statistic means that there aren't just more little fender-benders that artificially boost the statistics, as Koreans who hear me say this like to counter (albeit with no information or context other than simply not wanting to believe the statistic), but that those accidents also produce the most number of deaths out of all OECD countries surveyed.
Simply put, the statistics back up what simple observation and common sense should have already told you – Koreans taken as a whole routinely ignore traffic laws, city governments haven't done enough to protect pedestrians from motor vehicles and guarantee their safety, and public awareness about the importance of such things as wearing your seat belts, observing traffic signals, or yielding to pedestrians is abysmal.
And instead of turning into a nationalist feeding frenzy over who gets to roast the USFK – the death of the two middle school girls and the public reaction to it are a prime example of why all countries in the world (yes, including South Korea) try members of their own militaries internally and why diplomats enjoy immunity while working in host nations – what should have happened was a conversation over the fact that 490 children died from traffic accidents in 1999. Do the math – that's 1.3 kids per day.
Put into the math of reality, that's 13 kids every 10 days, or about 9 kids per week.
"Under what circumstances do people die from traffic mishaps? Listen to a representative from the Korean government give the number one reason:
'South Koreans jaywalk more than other OECD members, as the nation has insufficient facilities to prevent people from jaywalking and secure their safety, such as median strips or guardrails,' Lee pointed out.
'In advanced countries, the number of collisions between vehicles is larger than that of accidents between vehicles and pedestrians. But in Korea, about 40.2 percent of the total accidents were cases of vehicles hitting pedestrians,' Lee Eui-yong, an employee of the authority, said."
Simply put, there aren't enough sidewalks, guardrails, and ways to ensure pedestrian safety on the roads.
So, whatever one's political agenda, the reality of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of those two middle school girls is the same reality that results in the unfortunate death of 9 children per week, and even more adults. What is striking about the 2002 accident is how everyday and normal it is for children to die of traffic accidents – the only reason the nation shouts the names of those two unfortunate victims is because they became the center of a political firestorm.
If you saw the road where there accident took place, you would gasp. It's what would be considered in the United States a "state route," technically a highway. There is no sidewalk, and the road curves up around a bend where the girls were killed, so visibility is even further reduced.
The point is that no pedestrians should be walking there, and I think that perhaps military or large vehicles shouldn't be driving there if pedestrians are, in reality there. The way I saw it, and the way I heard it described from people who've actually seen the details of the case as well as the accident site itself, it was an accident waiting to happen. Well, more accurately, as in many places in Korea, it's many accidents happening all the time.
In the call for those two soldiers heads (whom I feel were guilty of no murder, but rather a traffic accident due to no demonstrated negligence), in the call for amending the SOFA, in the call for the removal of the US military from the Korean peninsula, in invoking the materially irrelevant cases of actual military crimes committed by US personnel here or in other places in the world, what has remained completely and utterly unchanged were – drum roll, please:
The actual circumstances that led to those middle school girls' deaths.
Simply put, if there had been a sidewalk there, those girls would still be alive today.
What makes this ironic and unfortunate for the Korean peninsula is the fact that children are getting run over daily here, and nothing is being done to change the circumstances that lead to the high number of children being killed here. That road remains as is, unchanged, for all the many who yelled Miseon and Hyosun's names and were apparently shocked at their deaths.
What is sickening to me – an American, yes, but a man who started out his experience in the Korean countryside teaching in a middle school for two years – is that the nation wasn't protesting or even apparently angry (aside from people from the local community near where the two girls died) when the two girls actually died; it was only when the politicized trial and its outcome was an apparent insult to the nation that it became an issue.
For a clear thinker, and for those interested in justice and solutions – not scapegoats and emotional salves – the entire thing was a farce.
Proof of that was an American jeep being driven while on official duty killed an ajumma in another traffic accident sometime in November, when the protests were rising into a fever pitch. Why didn't the Korean media report it? Why don't Koreans still not know about that to this day?
The driver was a KATUSA, a Korean national.
Had that driver happened to have been an American soldier, same accident, same victim? It would have been a further media frenzy. In the end, people were concerned about politics, not the actual lives of anyone involved.
I'm not speaking as a nationalist, as an American, as George Bush's appointed representative – which unfortunately, many Korean folks assume me to be if I speak outside of the "conventional wisdom" around this incident. For you see, if there is anything remarkable about this case, it is how unremarkable it is, at how predictable and preventable their deaths were, and how sad and telling it is that nothing has changed.
Instead of placing the heads of two scapegoats on the chopping block because of Korea's changing set of relations with the United States vis a vis Korea's increasing sense of national pride and desire to be independent its former "big brother" – which is really what that incident was all about – if people in this country, foreign or non, care about the lives of others in relation to their cars, they would stop killing children and other pedestrians in small strokes.
If Korean nationalists really care about the lives of those two middle school girls – and the 9 more children who die every week in this country, but for whom the drivers don't happen to be American soldiers – then they would buckle their seat belts, stop at crosswalks, and slow the heck down in school zones.
Yes, school children die in other countries because of traffic accidents, too. But in a country that has national protests that allegedly concern themselves with the deaths of just two of them, but then doesn't do anything to actually change the material circumstances of their deaths while a nationalist witch hunt is led in their names, and where the traffic accident and traffic accident death rates are the highest in the developed world – this indignation and anger seem a little misplaced.
In the end, American armored cars aren't killing the majority of children every year in Korea. Bad drivers and lack or proper city planning do. Nationalists and others who want to save Korean children – let's do this for the children, let's make a new resolution for the new year:
Stop at all traffic signals.
Stop at all crosswalks.
Obey the speed limit on roads with pedestrians.
Don't assume that pedestrians will yield because you honk your horn. They might not have heard you. (The two middle school girls were listening to an MP3 player when they were hit, which is another convenient fact omitted from Korean media reports, because it was an inconvenient fact).
Stop cursing because you're late and realize you are driving a multi-ton, potential instrument of death. Your car is not a toy.
Use your seat belts.
Taxi drivers, stop disabling the rear seat belts. You actually want to prevent me from choosing not to die?
This will do more to save Korean children and pedestrians than any other measure. Changing the SOFA or putting two American soldiers 1) would not have brought the two girls back, not 2) would it have prevented any further people from dying on that road.
Installing a guard rail and sidewalk would have and will do both.
So everyone who was angry, upset, or shivered in the cold during a candlelight vigil in 2002/2003 – you're going to follow all the above rules, right?
This is in response to the superficial puff piece written by the New York Times on the Korean school system. While the Times generally practices great journalism, the depth of inquiry in this piece was woefully inadequate, especially considering what a contested and troubled topic the education system in Korea is -- well, if you know very much about Korea, that is. (HT to the Marmot's Hole for posting on this one first!)
I taught at Daewon for a year-and-a-half before quitting in the middle of my contract (having an F-4 helps with that) because of me finally being faced with two roads -- participating in evil, or maintaining my sense of ethics. Beyond that, I can't elaborate. I've already waxed about it at my blog here and here.
Their rival institution, Waedae's boarding school in Yongin, recruited me once they learned I was quitting. I worked there for a year before choosing not to renew my contract after the Ministry of Education made it illegal for a foreigner to teach a non-language-based subject based pretty much entirely on a hack-attack job done on my school by a reporter from the Kyunghyang Shinmun because I was teaching an AP US History class taught during normal school hours. A disgrace to the nation! That made the morning radio news nationwide. Lovely.
I now teach at Ewha Girls Foreign Language High School, which is small and very much not a pressure cooker. I teach American History to about 20 girls, not 120 test terminators, which makes my life markedly easy. I'd never teach in a Daewon or Yongin again, since the kids' life is a living hell.
The reason I think the NYT article is superficial and lame is because it's just a recycling of the PR stats. The problem with these schools is that they apply the best aspects of the Korean system (test assassination) to the requirements of getting INTO American colleges (SAT, SAT II subject tests, and now the AP's which have become de facto required). The kids do remarkably well on these tests. But when they get to the American schools, they are woefully ill-prepared. But the schools don't have a vested interest in caring about that -- they just want their kids to get INTO famous schools, and it doesn't matter how they DO at them.
Daewon is one of the few schools that actually has the clout and money to attract sparkly foreigners and lets them teach a few "discussion-based" classes, which are, though, linked to an AP test of some kind. Still, though, most of the FLHS system in Korea is basically tests, tests, tests. One of the struggles in the FLHS has always been to actually teach them something substantial, rather than for the tests.
Now, I am in contact via chat and Facebook with many of my former Daewon students, whom I first met 3 years ago. They agree that their first year in American college was like getting hit with a Mack truck; I had always told them that it would -- "it's true for native speakers attending their own American colleges, so it'll be triple-true for you." They always kinda rolled their eyes. Now, they get it.
Anyway, I did what I could to prepare them, and it was always a struggle, fighting against the stream. Other teachers fought the same battle, and usually got attacked by the Korean teachers for it. Most of the foreign teachers at these schools quit after a year. When I was in Daewon and Yongin, I was not the first teacher at either school to quit before the year ended. Turnover rate is nearly 100% per year for foreign teachers. And Daewon paid an hourly rate of $100 per hour, average part-time teaching load 12-15 hours per week. How bad must it have been for people to quit, or not renew their contracts? Don't just do the math -- try to imagine the extreme suck of one's life to consider quitting a job that paid sometimes as much as $6,000 per month for (technically) half-time work.
Won't find that in the NYT article.
Nor this pic of my Daewon kids taking the chance to do what they have so little time to do, which is sleeeeeeeeep.
Basically, your life sucks at these schools for 3 years, but the kids and parents swallow their pride and ire, since it is the fast-track to America's best schools. Period. That's the exchange. But it absolutely brings out the worst of the Korean school system in a soul-crushing nightmare of pain that many students realize only gets them to the door of the institution they wanted, but has woefully under-prepared them to make it through.
I can't believe the Times was comparing the SAT scores of Exeter and Daewon, playing into the "Asian powerhouse" myth. Scores aside, a school like Exeter prepares you to think, gives you a spectacular education. Because you're not spending all of your time sitting in a chair.
And if the Times reporter actually thinks THAT school approves of rock bands (or the cheerleading squad that was summarily crushed by the principal when I was there) or anything non-academic that isn't a 1-hour-per-week weekly meeting so the kids can put it down on their college apps as filler without it technically being a lie, I've got a bridge on the Han River to sell him.
And now, more grist for Daewon's PR and human test factory mill, since the NYT writer didn't think to insert nary a dollop of critical social context into the sweet and savory soufflé he was baking. Intentional or not, this piece on Daewon couldn't have been written better by a well-paid PR firm.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
OK - I've been out of things for a little, partially because I forgot to pay my Typepad bill on time, and partially because I've been kinda keeping a low profile since the launch. The media frenzy has been crazy, and besides an SBS interview that I gave because SBS is the network doing the publicity for this whole project (and presumably predisposed to not putting Soyeon in a bad light), I wanted to say what I wanted in a controlled fashion (Ohmynews articles and the videos) and stay out of things. As this site's regular readers know, I have a strong allergy to the Korean media, and I've almost never been in a Korean news media piece without misquotes, gross factual errors, or extreme reality distortion.
Here are links to what I wrote up about her on Ohmynews.com, where I've been working with a very good editor whom I met and trust to do a good job. I've not always been friends with Ohmynews, but so far, our work together has been great. Here are the two articles:
"소연아, 한국여자의힘을보여줘!" ("Soyeon! Show the Power of Korean Women!", in which I wrote a public "personal message" of good luck to Soyeon and told her that she didn't need the "good luck" and "safe journey" wishes as much as being told to simply enjoy the hell out of the trip, since it it's going to be the kickass ride of a lifetime. I basically just said, "Have fun" and see you on Earth. It also contained the 3rd video in the series I made.)
이소연씨 인터뷰 두 편을 소개합니다 ("An Introduction to Two Videos about Yi Soyeon" was an article about the first two videos I made as well as the backstory behind how and why they were made.)
I felt that these were the best way to get the videos wider exposure, and that they would be a valuable addition to the mostly PR fluff being produced about her. One of the original hopes with these videos was to point out the somewhat obvious point that SBS should have thought ahead to do pre-interviews with all of the candidates, that it would show the power of new media to bring the real, frank story to the fore in a way the stiff Korean news media can't seem to, and to also show Soyeon's true personality and get her more grassroots support in the public as a way to help tip the scales in Soyeon's favor at final candidate selection time.
I don't know if I accomplished any of those goals, but I do think the interviews are fascinating materials, and capture a side of her that will inevitably be gone once she returns to Earth as Korea's superstar and national hero. I think her status as a woman, as a qualified and capable women, will give this entire propaganda exercise the crucial PR value and power that will raise it above the status of hackneyed flag waving and ham-handed science education boosterism.
This is because had it been Ko San who'd gone up, it would have been the same old story, the standard plot, the expected narrative; given the fact that the entire ceremony in City Hall was ludicrously corny, with the President of South Korea entering the stage flanked by girls in short miniskirts and appearance by the pop group Girls' Generation, the plastic tackiness of the entire space project seemed to come to the fore. The narrative would have read, "Korea sends man into space. Ho hum. And in other news..."
But somehow, Soyeon's story seems to better resonate with people who know Korean culture, who know how serious gender discrimination is here, and who also know how blatantly many men still defend their right to judge even the most capable woman by the shape of her face or curves of the ass -- her story and the fact that she has received constant criticism for not being an anorexic supermodel who covers her mouth when she giggles and walks pigeon-toed in 4-inch heels has become very, very interesting.
And then came the irony of Ko San shooting himself in the foot while conducting what most reasonable people assume to have been a really incompetent attempt at industrial espionage and the resultant switch in chairs -- that was like the other team going up for the decisive slam dunk during the final seconds of the game...and then biffing it! Suddenly, the space program story had our (my) attention again and the underdog had gotten the ball, alley-ooped it across the court, and swished it, to everyone's surprise and amazement.
Yeah, people say that this is because I'm Soyeon's friend, but I would have thought the same thing had I been just another viewer of the vids and not their creator; I like to root for the underdog, especially when said underdog looks like the more interesting choice. In a way, had Soyeon been the chosen candidate up front, I'm sure many netizens would have grumbled about "women being too powerful" and "discrimination against men." I'm absolutely sure that discourse would have popped out; but with Ko San having done himself in, and seemingly at the behest of the government/corporate spooks that define the worst of Korean corporate/national culture, it was just perfect. Absolutely perfect.
I don't think this whole thing could have gone down any better than it did.
One thing, though. DongA.com did an article that essentially used quotes from the first videos as making up about half the article. You don't even have to speak Korean to see how much these quotes make up the article. Yet, not only did they not attribute the quotes properly and specifically, like any article should when taking specific quotes from a clearly defined source, the article opens with "Yi Soyeon wants to make a lot of money and buy her mom a house!"
Now, not only was that taken out of context (since it was said half-jokingly and along with the more serious statement that she would give money to her school and help support scientific research), without a link to the video in question (which, as a UCC, is openly available, and as a source for nearly half the article, should have been linked to so that readers could see it for themselves), one might actually forget the very important fact that this was said back when she had made the final 30 candidates, well before she had actually assumed any responsibilities as either one of the two final candidates or before going into space.
At the time, we were sitting in a coffee shop in Shinchon and just having a chat about the interesting fact that she had even made it this far. Important to note in the video is the fact that she really only wanted to make it as far as getting the free trip to Russia before being cut -- one could not even try to claim that she was in the mindset of a final candidate and that she was "in it for the money." She was just talking and joking a bit about the future -- a future that was more than two years away and one which I am sure she could barely even imagine as coming true. Really, who could have?
In any case, the main problem here is that this article is based on a video interviews that are not explicitly shown or even referenced. The name of the video wasn't given, nor was the name of the interviewer (me), nor even the title of the interview itself.
If this isn't close to plagiarism, or copyright violation, I don't know what is. Technically, the piece mentioned that it was from "a UCC made by Soyeon's friend," but that's not enough. I'm not concerned about getting my name out there and getting fame and fortune off of this. Sure, I would like publicity for the video magazine SeoulGlow, even though it has become a back burner project; one of the reasons for doing the interview was based on the "what if" nature of the whole thing. We both joked during the interview that she'd promote my site and hook me up if she actually made it. That was then.
Now, I scarcely expect that Soyeon will look into the camera on the ISS and say, "Go to www.seoulglow.com! That's S-E-O-U-L-G-L-O-W-dot.com!" In the end, it's just about as ludicrous to say that Soyeon went through the grueling selection process as a "UCC publicity stunt" as to say that she did it to "buy her mom a house." But hey, she said it in the video, right? Two years before the fact and well before any of this had become a reality, she said it, right? Soyeon's in space to promote a web site she barely knew about and to buy her mom a fat crib. Riiiight.
I just think credit should be given where it is due. If I write a book and you lift quotes from it left and right, the author's name and title are expected. If one makes a movie, credits are crucial. What is different about this situation? This is intellectual property, and one of the bases of intellectual property law is the assumption that if you can't guarantee ownership of the work, if you can't even be guaranteed to be recognized for works done, then it decreases the motivation to create such works. Didn't the author learn this in journalism school?
I wrote a letter to Yang Hyeong-mo, the author of the Donga.com piece in question, addressing these points. Here's the reply I received, which was apologetic, acknowledged the mistake, and agreed to update the information to link back to the original video so that any reader could see the context of the quotes and authorship of the work is clear and obvious again:
Now, that's all well and good, except for the fact that I sent a reply letter that continues to be blocked by the spam filter, no one at the editorial desk has ever picked up the phone at the number I was given initially (02-2020-1200), and the number at which I was told "someone will definitely pick up" (02-6749-2000), no one has. I called the DongA.com main line (02-360-0400) four times, the first three of which were cut short by someone picking up the phone and only to immediately hang it up, and on the fourth time, exasperatedly took my call. Here's the letter, which I don't know if the reporter ever got. I was polite and gracious, and have been waiting for something to be done:
