Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Metropoliticking in OhMyNews!

After a whole lotta blogging, looks like some of my efforts are being rewarded and appreciated, which makes this Seoulite a very happy boy. OhMyNews International has been kind enough to translate my turgid prose into Korean and place it on their website, allowing Korean folks a chance to read it and me the honor of having access to a wider audience.

Here's the link to the translated (and slightly edited) version of my Hines Ward piece on this blog.

Here's the link to the previous translation they did for me, of my post about representations of Black people in a Korean dictionary.

Here's a link to OhMyNews International, a great source of news for the international community and a welcome alternative to the right-tilted slant of just about all the foreign-language press in Korea.

Paying the Light Bill

I have come to love blogging.

And as the quality of my posting goes up, so do the number of people who link back to me and trackback to me as a resource. I've learned in the last few weeks that putting up more detailed, well-thought, and graphic-laden posts gets more readers in. All of these thing are part of me improving my game as a blogger; I am also working on doing the same as a podcaster.

I got my podcasting bandwidth covered (1.2 TERAbytes per month, with 16 gigs added to my limit per month – sweet!), but Typepad is pretty tight with bandwidth, although they are fair. But since I've started getting listed on a couple of "real" news sources, one of which was translated into Korean and linked into an online news source – the Korean-language version of OhMyNews – bandwidth costs have now officially started exceeding my standard monthly allottment. This means I'm gonna start having to pay for the boost in readership.

Well, here's some help, offered as plug-and-play options from Typepad. All I've done is activate a simple little banner, which I've placed at the bottom of the right sidebar and also enabled a "Tip Jar" button for those of you Daddy and Mammy Warbuxes out there who want to drop a buck or two towards my bandwidth charges. It's all voluntary and I'm not being threatened with being shut down or anything, nor is this blog going away anytime soon. But not having to pay extra per month would be nifty and anything anyone throws my way is appreciated. And just visiting the site is also a help in itself because of the banner ads.

So thank you for visiting – please do so often – and I also thank you in advance for dropping me a tip through the "Tip Jar" if you're feeling generous.

Thanks, fellow Metropolitickers!

Thoughts on Minjok and The Matrix

What do we mean by "race?"

As I teach my students, both at the high school and the university level, "race" – along with other concepts such as "gender" and "nation" – are all socially constructed categories that are not real. By this, I mean to say that such a "social construction" does not empirically exist outside of the social system that made it. Much as in The Matrix, the system and all of the meanings inside don't have any real meaning; but what I think makes that film – and the inherent social critiques it provides – work is the fact that despite the system having been constructed, it and everything within it becomes real because everyone within the system agrees on its reality. And if you die in the Matrix, you die in real life. I like that, because, as I explain to students, just because race is constructed as a social category doesn't mean it hurts any less when a cop is beating you with his billy club. Rodney King couldn't have stopped and said, "Please stop, good sirs! Remember that race and my very blackness is a social construction no more real than your constructed whiteness!" POW, POW.

But at the same time, we can't forget that the very social categories we are trained to use are never constructed outside of the context of maintaining social hierarchy, control, and the interests of the greater power structure. The Matrix takes this literally, as human beings are represented as being the source of the system's power, yet that system is also the source of the individual's enslavement. "Sweet," I thought when I first laid eyes on this spectacular film back in 1999. "Now I finally have an easy and cool way to explain ideology and social constructions."

The complete control of the Matrix works only and precisely because it essentially hides its very existence. In Gramscian and Chomskyian terms, I can now more easily explain to students that overt, forced coercion and control don't work; people inevitable resist, dictatorships eventually destroyed. Like a Lucasfilm ending, the Death Star always gets blown up in the end. But when you create a system of complete hegemony – a term overused and hardly understood by most undergraduates who use it to sound cool – you really got something.

"Hegemony" is something I define to my high school history students as "control not through coercion, but consent." If you fool people into desiring certain things, into believing that they actually made a choice about their present situation within a system of choices, people generally tend to accept their fate, their social position. That's why Chomsky talks about the need to "manufacture consent" in liberal democracies; indeed, he says, it is within such systems that it is so difficult to resist and challenge the power structure. The media sets the terms of the debate, people protest through socially acceptable channels, voters decide between two candidates from two political parties that are essentially the same, and the show just goes on. So, as the Oracle says in the second Matrix film, everything is about choice. This is obvious from even the first film, when Neo is given the blue and red pills with which to make the symbolic choice to wake himself up from the Matrix – you have to choose to see the light; it can't be simply shown to you.

If you want to get deeper and talk about our ability to choose – what is known in critical theory as agency – the fact that Smith is the key factor that sets the whole Matrix off course and into the hands of Neo is a brilliant expression of this idea within the plot: Neo having accidentally overwritten part of his resistant nature onto Smith at the end of the first movie, when Neo apparently "destroyed" him, made Smith into a literal "free agent," able to operate and make choices – self-interested ones – outside of the system. As it stated in the third film, Neo and Smith are Alpha and Omega, the flip-sides of the same coin. The only question is that of whether Smith's viral form of "free will" will eventually spread and take away that of humanity's, or whether the consequences of Neo's choice – as obvious Christ-figure and inevitable sacrificial lamb when he uploads himself as the code that will destroy Smith – will give humanity back its freedom, it's agency.

See, as we found out in the conversation with the very Freudian Architect in the second film, the role of "The One" is actually as a function of the system's full knowledge that some people – a very small fraction – will reject the program (ideology, social constructs) and resist. "This is about Zion," Neo realizes. The system plans for this eventuality by making the Matrix as real as possible – full of pain and pleasure, joy and pain – and the element of choice. The Oracle was "the intuitive program" who figured that shit out. But there's still that niggardly (and oh, yes, I do assign a lot of meaning to the fact that there were indeed a lot of niggas in the Matrix films, a series about resistance to enslavement) problem of the people who don't accept the program and will unplug, organize, and fight. "The One" is the control key that will take the best resisters and restart Zion as the Machines hit restart on the Matrix. Smart – "keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Better to have a group of resistance fighters whom you created and controlled and can eventually destroy when the time comes, rather than a real group of rabble-rousers outside of the system that is more difficult to co-opt and control.

In the end, everything ends as the Machines would want, with the one new caveat that those who choose to live in the fantasy world are now actually doing so by real, albeit passive choice, as defined by the fact that if you want to wake up and unplug from the Matrix, you can do so and live truly free. Mankind gets its freedom - its agency – back because of Neo's original choice and ultimate sacrifice.

"Shit gets deeper."

Let's come back to Earth and the matter of our "matrix" of the social construct. Now, some Korean folks might say that such concepts are "Western" and don't apply to Korea. Well, that might be a good argument were it not for the fact that the very notions of "race" and "nation" and "history" itself were all first invented in the West and had great influence on the East. Does that mean that these concepts are inherently Western and that the East exists in a western mode? No. What I mean to say is that like any idea that spreads far beyond the borders of its origin point – this being the intellectual equivalent of the gene, the "meme" – such ideas continue spreading because of their own inherent merit, regardless of the place where they originated. And the further away it runs and evolves away from its original creation point, the less it is tinged with the specifics of the culture that produced it. So such memes such as "democracy" or "inalienable rights" may have started with the American constitution, but that doesn't mean such ideas remain uniquely American anymore.

Such is the case with Korean academia, which, for people academics and intellectuals who know something about the origins of the ideas in places such as history and anthropology, owes a great deal of its intellectual origins with Japan, China, the United States, and Europe – in that order of degree. The very idea of the use of a "nationalist historiography" to overtly create pride in the nation and a sense of national identity itself – one that Koreans trace back to Shin Chae Ho – goes back to its original Japanese architects, who were greatly influenced by Prussian ideas of "History" all the way back in Europe.

The fact that most Koreans really don't know much about Shin – except for what they read in tertiary sources (textbooks), which were themselves compiled by companies outsourced by the Korean Educational Development Institute, a government body directly supported by the Ministry of Education – illustrates this point.

Even if the general Korean wanted to wade through the Chinese characters Shin heavily utilized to write his works and knew about the great intellectual debts he had to Chinese and Japanese scholars, it would be still nearly impossible to get direct access to his collected works; they recently went out of print and I am desperately trying to find a copy of one of the three key volumes in the series. Such is the importance Korean society gives to its most vaunted historiographical founder; the collected works of the architect of Korean history itself is something that most Koreans can't read without assistance, and can't even buy.

Here's my point: most of the intellectual concepts with which anyone in the world uses as the bases of their national identity – in the Korean case minjok is the key organizing concept – is in itself little more than 100 years old. The myth of Korean history and people going back to 5,000 years depends on a self-defining concept of "us" that must be inherently de-historicized in order to work. Think back on Korean history; it is fraught with fighting kingdoms, battling "nations." They inherently thought of themselves as different from one another to fight with each other, and whatever identity one had was surely defined as different from that of the others. And yes, Korean "culture" has links to them all. But historical links do not a national identity make. Ask Shin Chae Ho or any other nationalist who has helped construct a national history – you need to actively build a national identity through myths and heroes, stories and fables. There must be central organizing concepts chosen to organize the others – the notion of minjok so close to Shin's heart was not naturally understood to be "real" before the 1900's – the construction of the modern notion of minjok and the nation is Shin's legacy. If it had existed before, why would historians remember him?

In the scan below, taken directly from the same stash of textbooks I lifted from my school and put in my bags before departing Korean in 1996, I have presented a section of the "Morals" textbook in the course of the same name that first-year middle school students are required to take.  And by the way, for the people complaining that the previous dictionary excerpts I presented were too "old" – my whole point in talking about these things is that is partially from such books and materials such as these that my former students – who are now in their early and mid-20's – form not only their own self-images, but images of others (non-Koreans) as well.

In this excerpt, the book asks why "we" would feel embarrassed to see a Korean behave recklessly in front of a foreigner, "our" face turning bright red in shame. Why would we feel like that? Because we all share the same "bloodline" and the same "consciousness" flows through that blood. I'll translate directly the paragraph I made a red star next to:

The minjok can be defined as having been passed down the same bloodline, using a common language, and that which has lived on between a common history and culture that is the basis of a consciousness of a community of 'us' that constitutes the group. Therefore – just like how we are constituted from the same blood as that of our ancestors – the minjok is made up of the concepts of family, ethnic group, or tribe, we sometimes point to the race and call it a large family. Just because a member of a large family lives far away doesn't mean that they stop being called family. In the same way, as a person born as a member of our race living in a foreign country, even if they have acquired another nationality, that person cannot come to the conclusion that they are not a part of our race.

Click the pic to enlarge.

So it's not difficult to see why Koreans tend to be so essentialist about "race" and "nation" and "people" as they are conflated into the concept of minjok. When your school textbooks are busy defining the limits of the nation in such strict and blood-based ways, it is difficult to even try to imagine something else as being true; in fact, since so many people talk and think about minjok in this way that supports what the textbook says, where in everyday Korean culture could one find an alternative model of identity, a different way of imagining being Korean? Is it any surprise, then, that the news announcers actually talked about the "crisis" in the national blood supply? It's not that there's missing a certain rare type of blood, but it was a minor scandal in the early 1990's that "foreign" blood was "diluting" the "pure" Korean blood that would be given to transfusion patients. It sounds ridiculous to Western sensibilities, which are used to thinking about race in mostly genetic terms; but in a country obsessed with consanguinity, family lineage, and a Korean "blood quantum" (to borrow a term from Indian country), it makes a perverse sort of sense. Especially when your textbooks have been saying so for years.

It's a difficult thing to wrap one's mind around – since we were all born, raised, and educated to not only think of such concepts as "race" and "blood" as real; but remember that we were also trained to not question the origins of such notions. If we did that, then the whole fantasy would come tumbling down, like being unjacked from The Matrix; for this reason, no matter how much importance middle school textbooks place on the importance of the minjok, they will never, ever discuss the origins of the term itself. I don't think it's even a grand conspiracy theory – the textbook authors, as writers of a tertiary source, probably never even thought of this issue as they compiled information from the available secondary sources (books), and they almost certainly did not do original historical research themselves, consulting primary sources from the times. No one ever thinks to ask the questions:

"How old is the present concept of the minjok?"

"When did the modern notion of Korean identity itself begin?"

"What were earlier versions of identity that existed on this land we now call Korea?"

If such questions were asked – in any country – the results would be surprising. They would also reveal what most national propagandists are loathe to reveal – that the structure (albeit not the content) of national identity itself across all the nations in the world is more similar than it is different; in fact, it is almost the same. We all have different myths, symbols, and rationalizing ideologies, but the way in which we use them is exactly the same. If you want to check out Benedict Anderson's foundational work in the field of nationalism studies, you'll see that while it is somewhat centered on many European examples, the mechanics work, even in the cases of Asian nations, and especially in the case of Korea.

How dissimilar is Korea, really, from Anderson's explanation? Like most other nations in the world, what was required to create the present, modern notion of "Korea" was a national language, the spread of literacy, forms of mass media such as newspapers, the creations of "invented traditions" that perhaps pre-existed the nation but surely found new authority once the state gave them official sanction, etc. The list could go on, and there are always historically specific reasons parts of the Korean case doesn't fit into the Western model written in the 1980's. But when you look at modern Korean nationalism's founding moments from the 1880's and the colonial nightmare that gave them real power, or the appearance of Commodore Perry's black ships in the 1850's and the resultant "choice" of the Japanese to abandon their old ways and modernize from 1868, or the case of what is now France, Germany, the United States, or any other modern nation – the details and individual contenst differ, but the vessel is exactly the same.

In this way, one can't find any such thing as a "natural" national identity that isn't enforced by unnatural concepts instilled by unnatural institutions such as schools, national media, and invented traditions. People who live in what is now the "United States of America" still considered themselves English citizens up even until early 1776, even after the shooting war already started. How many times has the basic conception of "German" changed even in a single century? Germans alive in 1942 had a completely different notion of who was and wasn't a citizen – a true German – and the basis for inclusion within the group was based on notions of racialized pseudo-science which created concepts that the state wanted. Before that, there was a previous republic and before that "German" identity was centered around villages and provinces organized around the whims of royalty.

Look at the present notions of identity between even the two Koreas. What streak of historical continuity do the two Korea's really have in common between them? Yes, the two modern nations are "cultural cognates" of one another, but they are far more different than they are similar to one another. Historians always think in terms of the two competing concepts of historical "continuity and change" and try to trace historical connections to the past against historical breaks that mark the introduction of something new. One of the arrogant fantasies of South Koreans is that they share a lot in common with their "brethren" in north by these constructed notions of "blood" and consanguinuity; but I think it will come as a huge shock if and when the two Koreas come together to see that the differences of even a little more than half a century make for two really different peoples. Notions of social responsibility, the government's role in the life of the individual, and the fact of two hugely different economic/social ideologies of blind capitalism vs. authoritorian communism is going to make for two very different peoples coming together. Next to that, the rosy notion of minjok doesn't stand a chance.

Don't believe me? Let history play out – wait and see. See if the following doesn't come true:

– In the South Korean economy and society, North Korean men will become the most desired unskilled laborers, as they replace the undesirable foreign workers (because they are a threat to the "purity" of the Korean race) and will become available at whatever price the South Korean economy wants to pay them. They will be mostly based in the North, where the majority of South Korean factories will be, and on a limited basis as the result of special work visas that will be issued to them if they work in the South. These North Korean males will be shunned as marriage partners for South Korean women, and most South Korean families will 반대 the marriage of their daughters to North Korean men.

– North Korean women, however, will be the #1 hot commodity for South Korean men, as the recent disgusting media display of public (male) salivation over "North Korean beauties" and the re-popularization of the old saying of "남남북녀" (southern men for northern girls) indicate. Considering the fact that advertisements for "Marrying Vietnamese Virgins" are a common sight all over any Korean city – because of the ever-present problem of the male-tilted gender disparity caused by pre-natal screening that leads to the increasingly higher rate of abortions of girls as a couple without a son heads towards 2nd, 3rd, and 4th children – who better to marry than someone within "our" own minjok? I wonder which will win out – the dropping birth rate and the increasing expense of raising kids leading to less children overall and increased use of pre-natal screening to exterminate would-be daughters, or the inevitable (and positive) decreasing importance of gender itself in South Korean society. Hopefully the latter factor will grow such as to decrease the power of the former one, but only time will tell. But considering the myriad ways that women's bodies are already commodified as objects of consumption in South Korean society, North Korean women, with their lack of economic and social power, don't have much bright to look forward to in South Korea.

A movie with the popular saying as the title.

Yes, there will be famous examples of prominent and successful former North Koreans on formerly South Korean televisions, and in movies, newspapers, and other places in the public eye. But mark my words, the Korean notion of "minjok" will be utilized – as it has for a little more than 100 years – to accomplish the goals of the state and the elite that is largely in control of it. Images of reunited families and touching stories will abound on Korean televisions after any big national reunification. But that is, ladies and gentlemen, will be simply the beginning of another sad story, even as it will seem like the ending to one previous. Ideologies of nationalism shift and change with the times, but their utility to the group in power does not. I know many people won't agree, but see if this little chart of social hierarchy doesn't seem like it won't make sense, even before the fact:

– South Korean man
– South Korean woman
– North Korean woman
– North Korean man

Who would you want to be 10 years from now? Who do you think will have the most soci0-economic options? The least? How much will the power of the concept of minjok have once North and South are reunited? Who do you think will have the power to dominate the way North Korean history will be written and taught in the schools if North Korea ceases to exist?

And ya'll thought Ethnic Studies wasn't useful. Homework responses can be submitted in the comments sections.

Why Be Critical?

I've noticed a few patterns of argument in many of the comments over the last several weeks, as well as in the occasional posts that actually got some people riled up enough to start some controversy. It seems that certain people seem to have the idea that being critical of Korea is in some way inherently negative and/or out of bounds. Let me dismiss the following typical arguments I've been getting, which are not just limited to this blog:

"We're just a poor, little country."
Well, as the wise old saying goes, you can't have your cake and eat it too. Most Koreans point with pride to having risen out of the ashes of the 1950's to becoming the 11th largest economy in the world, the national coming-out party that was the 1988 Seoul Olympics, being the most wired society in the world, being a leader in the production of semi-conductor chips, and myriad other minor miracles, such as apparently having started a "Korean Wave," or being the "hub of Asia" or the new "hub of stem cell research." Umm, well, scratch the last one. Point is – Korea's got a strong economy, high overall standard of living, and foreign workers who immigrate here to send money back home to countries over there. Sorry, Charlie – you've joined the club – you're an "advanced nation" now, you've reached the ever-so-coveted status of 선진국. Whether by dint of concrete economic markers, public perception, or the inflow of foreign workers come here to get ahead, Korea's officially made it to the status of "developed." Now, it's time to step up to the plate, take responsibility for one's own collective actions, and become open to international criticism because you now constantly demand to be considered (and rightfully so) an international player. Don't go crying "foul" when you get treated as a big playa should, for better or worse. Nobody's buying it anymore.

"Look in your own backyard."
Related to the above argument, critique of Korea is not only bad, but it's ethnocentric and even – let me sit down here – "racist." Or it's tantamount to "Korea-bashing." Sorry, I don't accept that as legitimate, either. I look in my own backyard all the time, and use the same analytical/critical eye to identify problems inherent and endemic to my own society. I am a trained academic, have a complex understanding of American history and society, and have the rhetorical and pedagogical skills to put this all to good use. Yes, I point out a lot of things in Korean society that may be uncomfortable, but given my academic training, my complex understanding of Korean history and society, and those same rhetorical and pedagogical skills, I think I am capable of doing so in a constructive way. Sure, I am still an "outsider" and have to rely on some crutches, but this still doesn't mean I am not able to point out useful things, especially as they have to do with things outsiders are especially good at seeing. So when I bring critical social theory and ethnic studies attitude to the Korean context, it usually adds up to something interesting and productive. To the people who would say that what I'm doing is harmful – I check myself all the time with younger Korean students, undergraduates, and fellow intellectuals. It's also part of the reason I blog. I'll listen to and engage with intelligent debate; poorly articulated comments by identity politics nationalists with a grade-school knowledge of history don't do much for me; and I often wonder to myself just what productive discourse do such people actually believe they're producing, anyway? OK – for example, so there's racism in America. And sexism. And homophobia. Who said there wasn't? I'm not talking about that right now. I'm talking about Korea, in a Korean context, dealing with the issue in terms of the particulars of the Korean situation. If I had been constantly referring to America as the source of my critique, wouldn't I be guilty of true ethnocentricism anyway? Think about what you're saying, people.

"You shouldn't air our dirty laundry."
Sure I should. This is an argument as old as the hills and is not specific to Korea. And it sometimes has a point. There's a time and place for everything. Focusing one the internal political strife within the Black Panthers during the late 1960's probably would not have been a good time to do that. Breaking ranks and criticizing one's political party probably isn't something you want to do right before an election you'd like to see it win. But sometimes – most of the time – this argument is just a bullshit cover for being uncomfortable with challenging the status quo, or just being plain uncomfortable. But embarrassment has its benefits, if you are familiar with history. The treatment of Blacks during the 1960's was embarrassing to the US's image abroad, especially in our Cold War fight with the Soviet Union for the right to look right. Pictures of dogs being sicced on peaceful demonstrators while being picked up off their feet by firehoses were placed on the front pages of Pravda and used to ridiculed America's boast of fighting for "freedom" in the world. That embarrassment led the federal government to want to solve the problem quickly, the sending of federal troops to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, and was generally responsible for the institutional support of the Civil Rights Movement. I am pretty Hegelian in my belief that progress comes from the inherent clash between thesis and antithesis, one that leads to a better, higher balance between opposing forces. For Korea, now is the time. In a country that has developed and now needs and wants to live up to its own stated principles of "liberal democracy" and "freedom", it's time to put up or get come-upped. Photographers and writers, performers and artists, intellectuals and academicians, politicians and pundits – it's time to air out them dirty secrets and try to get 'em cleaner. And by the way, in an increasingly globalizing economy and world, there's no such thing as any "dirty laundry" that outsiders can't see, anyway. Maybe that was true for a Korea nobody cared about, in which there were no significant numbers of Korean-speaking non-Koreans, in which no one really had any real stakes in this place. But now – we read ya'lls books, newspapers, and watch your television and movies. Isn't that what you wanted? Which brings me back to that cake saying...

"You can't know Korea."
Ah, the argument of cultural essentialism. Resting upon faulty assumptions that "culture" is some magical commodity passed down through the blood, or that a real understanding of Korean history is only available to those possessing Korean surnames, is the idea that foreigners have nothing really useful to say about Korea because foreigners are incapable of really knowing anything about Korea. The seemingly innocuous version of this manifests itself after, for example, having given a complex, highly theoretical conference presentation on changes in the nature of Korean national identity in relation to the growth of the economy in the late 1980's and early 1990's, in which I talked about all sorts of esoteric things that rely on obscure primary sources in Korean – afterwards the Koreans sitting around my table at dinner marveled at the fact that I could order food in Korean. How the hell did you think I did all that research if I couldn't speak Korean? I scream to myself in my mind. The truly irritating flip side of this is when I make assertions about Korean history or offer my informed opinion about some aspect of Korean society and am dismissed by some university undergraduate who has never cracked a textbook that wasn't approved by the Ministry of Education, and wants to point out my American "bias" and how there are some things that "only Koreans can know." Oooook. Just being "Korean" doesn't guarantee a knowledge of Korean history, nor does it mean that person has the right – and certainly not the qualifications – to speak for all Koreans. Too many times, I've heard in heated conversations that "No Korean would ever..." or "You just don't understand how Koreans think" deployed in order to prove a point. In all such cases, I know or know of lots of Koreans who have done just that thing, and I think I do have some sense of how Koreans think, but I just happen to disagree with the speaker's point. Equating me disagreeing with a Korean on a specific issue with "Not understanding Korea" is a rhetorical cheap shot and just plain arrogant. And most of the time, the "No Korean would ever..." argument is easily refuted by simply reading the newspaper. Korea's a big society, with lots of people doing all sorts of things for all sorts of reasons. It's telling that most of the people I've ever heard utter this argument come from sheltered families, probably do not read the newspaper, nor think critically about what it does and doesn't say, and accept state propaganda as fact. Like the female grad student who butted in on a conversation to offer her "expert" opinion that sex work (the topic of much conversation when the government released new statistics at the end of 2002) wasn't like we were anecdotally describing and that we were just weird foreign guys looking at Korea the wrong way. When I irritatingly asked her, "Then do you think they actually give haircuts at barber shops?" she snapped back, "What else would they do there?!" When we told her about the almost universal experience of most foreign guys who walk into these places with the barber sign and quickly learn that there ain't no hair being dealt with in the damp, dark depths of these mostly underground establishments, she was near tears. We decided to change the topic because it's hard to be unplugged from the Matrix against one's will; it's a shock to the system. But for foreigners – especially foreign people who actually know a thing or two (and who were actually relying on the government's own stated conservative statistics in this case) – encountering this kind of argument is really irritiating: "I'm Korean. Don't you think I would know?!" No, actually, I'm saying that being Korean doesn't mean one is automatic "expert."

"Only Koreans can understand certain things."
Well, if there are only certain things that people can know – if there is nothing universal in the pursuit of higher knowledge – I guess we all better stop studying each other's histories, translating great works of literature into other languages, and stop trying to understand different people's views of the world based on their individual experiences and identities. What's the point, eh? Knowledge is too particular for the Other to want to gain it, anyway. Let's leave things to the red-faced, self-assured undergraduates and angry nationalist bloggers to educate the rest of us. After all, "It's an X thang; ya'll wouldn't understand." All irritated complaining aside, I do believe that our experiences and identities allow insiders a point-of-view that is somewhat unique; but I refuse to believe that the nature of human experience itself is so specific that one cannot empathize by affective analogy and sympathetic imagination. Can a man understand being raped? Can a white person understand a black person being called "nigger?" Can a Japanese person understand many Koreans' anger towards them? My answer is a resounding "yes." One might not understand actually having the experience, but every human being is wired to have the same emotions, even if we all don't have the same exact experiences. But the human ability to imagine by analogy, to generalize from the specific, is endemic to the way our brains work, to the way we organize the world, to being what we define as intelligent creatures. And regardless, ghettoization of both identity and the intellect leads us nowhere. At least striving in the other direction – that of empathizing with analogous experience – leads in a positive direction. So when Koreans say that the emotions of "jeong" or "han" are things that foreigners can't know, or that only Koreans could really possess the "soul" to make a traditional instrument sing, I beg to differ.

"Adventures in Ambiguity"

I've finally got up the gumption to do it. What with this Hines Ward and sudden attention given to mixed-race people and the rare fact that black-Koreanness is in the news, I decided that it was going to be either now or never the time to pull this old project out of the digital dust and let some people see it.

This is a work-in-progress, one of the several major projects in my life over the last few years that never quite got completed. Since this was last updated in October of 2000, just a bit before the popularization of the word "blog." In my case, I didn't even know that I was "blogging" and since I was just doing old-fashioned HTML, technically, I wasn't. So what I was doing technically wouldn't qualify as a blog, although my idea to web publish my work so that my friends and fellow writers could critique it easily without me having to send lots of boring MS Word files was, in retrospect, a pretty good one.

I submit this piece of writing quite tentatively because it is 1) unfinished, and 2) personal. Either of the two being true by themselves wouldn't be a problem, as this was designed to be a personal piece that I had hoped to publish as a book, but it being unfinished gives me pause, as we all want to put out best foot forward.

I considered editing up just the introduction and first two chapters, but after spending a couple hours just dealing with the fact that I had designed the graphics to go against a black background and they looked horrible repasted into my blog, along with the task of either editing forever or just allowing the work to just "be" as-is, like I left it – in the end, I just decided to at least let myself get credit for the significant amount of work I'd already done on the site. I do like the simple and bare design, as well as the white-text-against-black thing.

But please – read it with a few grains of salt: I wrote this several years ago, it's unfinished, and I also have never been satisfied with the title. Additionally, I was in a different mindset then, when I had been thinking about how to critique identity politics and race in the United States, something that is a bit different from all the Hines Ward and mixed-race discourse I am critiquing in Korea these days. The errors in thinking about the reality of "race" as socially constructed categories and obsessing over "identity" are very American, but related concerns exist in Korea as well, although out of different circumstances.

So read, enjoy, and please give your comments back to this post!

Read "Adventures in Ambiguity"

Wireless Internetting in Korea [v. 1.0]

If you are attached to your mobile computing equipment as much as I am – and are equally dependent on it for your well-being – you'll know how important it is to be connected to the Internet these days as one researches, writes, blogs, or even just looks to kill some time surfing around.

With that in mind, I encourage you, if you already haven't done it, to look into getting hooked up to SK Telecom's wireless Internet service Nespot. If your Korean isn't in full effect, I'd still suggest you go and burden a Korean friend of yours with the task of helping you out. And how many random resumés, emails to an overseas company rep, or other random piece of English text have you had to pitch in on? C'mon – you've got the help karmically coming. You've earned it!

So ignore the tons of animated icons, blinking crap, and doodads that Koreans like to cram into webpages; after the eternity letting everything load, simply go to the bottom of the screen and get the phone numbers. Or let me do that for you. The irritating, overloaded, little web page wouldn't let me pull of the little graphic they had, so I screenshat it out for you.

It's a bit blurry – so just call 100 from a cellphone or 1588-4520 or 080-2580-452 (toll free) from a land line. After 5 minutes or so of irritating your Korean friend by answering the operator's questions through him/her, you'll be able to fax in the docs you will have already prepared as a single copy, already ready to fax over from your office, local Kinko's, or very fancy computer/fax setup. Once the operator has it, you'll be good to go.

And for 15,000 a month to be connected to just about anywhere where there's civilization, that's a price that can't be beat. And the connection is standard at 11 Mbps, which is faster than most of your friends get on cable and DSL at home. Anyway, I depend on being able to use search engines, their image searches, and Wikipedia to get my work done. If you do too, you need to read up on some of my favorite little wireless hookup spots that I know throughout Seoul. You might already know them; but you also very well might not, on top of not knowing where you can get a cocktail or something to eat while you wireless the night away working. Anyone who'd like to add to this list, please do so in the comments and I'll add to the list as updates to this post.

Wireless Heaven
– Lotteria has got the sweet hookup when it comes to Nespot. I've never seen one that wasn't blasting out wireless power at the full four bars of the little wireless meter on my Mac. Four bars, baby. But – and there's always a big, fat "but" in life, isn't there? – they're outlet Nazis! They cover them over with serious duct tape and in all but two of the many Lotterias where I've dared to plug in, the employees went buck wild – BUCK – when I tried to plug in anyway. They were, rude, dude. Make sure your battery's got some serious crunk in its trunk, baby.

– Mickey D's are supposed to carry wireless, although that don't mean all of 'em, and they also generally don't have outlets lying open for you to use. But they are a pretty good marker that this is indeed "civilization" and that a Nespot signal will be streaming in from somewhere.

– TGI Friday's has the magic combination down. They are all official Nespot carriers, and they actually have outlets all over the place. In the Shinchon one, for example, they even have booths that have outlets and modem jacks leftover from the Ancient Times when people still were wetting themselves over being able to connect at 56K baud rates. And on top of that, you can order girlie cocktails and really get your creative juices flowing. Strawberry daiquiri, power jacks, and wireless access? It don't get no better than that.

– Starbucks either has them officially or they just happen to be around places that do. You can pretty much count on a signal in one, as you can in the States.

– Pretty much anywhere in downtown Seoul, or on a corner where there's lots of people and neon signs. Also, all of lower Myeongdong is basically a hotspot, because there are so many antennas overlapping that it's literally one big zone. Near corners where there's a lot of city action, sit near the windows and not above the 2nd or 3rd floor (if you're looking for random signals) and you should get something.

Where Wireless Doesn't Roam
– Outback. I now hate them, their food, and their lack of wireless. On the other hand, I got mad love for Krispy Kreme, but they gotta hook up the wireless down in Shinchon, although they got it in the Myeongdong outlet, but only because they're across from a Lotteria pumping wireless through half of the Lotte Department Store. I sometime wonder if their signals will cause cancer.

– Inside Seoul, there are some "dead zones" where the digital gospel hasn't quite shined its light of ever-connecting truth. In older parts of Seoul, especially along the #1 line, for example, there is just nothing. Last time I checked (last year), there was nothing even in Cheongnyangni Station, where there was a bank of computers for quick Internetting, yet nothing even resembling a signal, even right in front of the Lotteria. I was shocked and quite discombobulated. Actually, I'm quite shocked right now to see my spellchecker accept that "discombobulate" is actually a word; all my life I thought it was funny slang. Looking it up, it goes back to the 19th-century. Whoa.

– Outside of Seoul, I think you're gonna be having to hunt around, although it's been a couple years since I've been roving the streets of small towns looking for a wireless signal. Still, in some places, you might find something. On this, I am in the dark. Depending on how far wireless has penetrated the Outland outside Seoul, you may be, too. I'm sure it's hooked up in major cities, but I really wonder about when you go out the the East Sea for summer vacation. Anyone want to fill me in?

Some Links
– Here are a few links to some recommended Internet hotspots. They're just recommendations from sponsored vendors who've taken the time to actually register themselves. Don't take them as definitive or representative; I've found wireless in the most unexpected of places.
– Here's the brand new(!) English web page if you want to call and figure things out. Tip – you can't register for normal wireless through the English web page – they just provide some silly map to a counter in the Incheon International Airport (for those of you who will be here temporarily, definitely go over there and sign up, although I'm sure they're gonna gouge you a new eye socket) because I guess it's still common business practice to assume that all foreigners are not actually living here, but tourists on their ways to see Korea's amazing palaces and scenery. *AHEM* You still might want to call the normal main line with a Korean friend and just get signed up over the phone, like I did. All I needed was a copy of my passport, foreigner ID card, and bankbook. Faxed it over, got signed up.

Mac Users (and others, read this anyway)
– There's still some crazy people at Nespot who think that their system doesn't work with Macs. They be crazy – don't listen to them. They're just customer reps who just have the simple instructions that they can't install their special PC software on Macs; they don't have a Mac version. Well, because Macs are infinitely superior to PC's, they don't need any special software.  Just tell the rep to shut up and register you (if they say anything) – "Yes, ma'am, I know it won't work with my Mac; just do it, please" – and when you choose the two types of login, you will use your MAC address (this has nothing to do with "Macintosh" but rather with "Media Access Control"). The MAC address is the unique identification number that every computer – Mac, PC, or whatever – uses with wireless. The system knows your number when you register with Nespot, so when you appear on a network somewhere, you get instantly connected. Doesn't matter whether you're a Mac, so don't take no smack!

Korean Language Question

This is a first, but I thought I'd answer the question in a post, since I'd like to get some other opinions on this. I don't want to give the wrong answer. First, here's the email I just found in my inbox:

Hey I just found your site today and I love it.  There's so much to read.  From your posts is seems you've got the Korean language down pretty well.  I'm a Gyopo and can speak at a good intermediate level and I'm wanting to continue learning.  But I've been looking for someone to ask some basic questions.  There are some basic grammar questions I want to ask someone who's basically fluent in both languages (which is actually hard to find)....because I know when I speak sometimes I don't say it the way a korean would say it.  Just for example.....in your mind how do you distinguish and decide to use -니까 and -어서.  I've read several books and they seem to contradict each other and not make sense.  Just from my 'feelings' I think of the former as "because" and the latter as "so" but it's hard to say when youc an use one and not the other.  Anyways, if you're not the right person to ask or if you don't have time I completely understand.  For some reason I felt I should try asking you after reading some of your articles.

Well, in my head, I kind of have the feeling that when I use -니까, it's a strict "because" tied with the fact that the person I am speaking to already knows the fact in question, or that they reasonably might. When I use the 어서 form, I have the feeling that it's more of a flowing "cause and effect" as part of an explanation. And in the big picture, I use them somewhat interchangeably.

I can't go because I'm too busy. / 너무 바빠서 못 가.

(As you know) I can't go I'm too busy. / 너무 바쁘니까 못 가잖아. (Or it's a more "direct" way of saying the fact...)

(I said) I'm too busy! / 너무 바쁘다니까!

Because I'm too busy. / 너무 바빠서.

I displayed this post on the projector in my class, and my students all agreed with the interpretations here. I hope this is helpful!

I Spanked My Cat

It's been so damn serious up on this blog that I had to post something to break the mood. Can't talk about ideologies of racial superiority all the time – that makes Jack a dull boy.

So I have decided to do what many of the legions of blogs out there do – post about something completely irrelevant and personal. No, this is not a sign of the times or a change in the blog – it's just a function of the fact that I have the cutest, yet most annoying cat ever.

And the annoying thing is that Orangee (오렌지) – the little bugger's name – knows he's cute – all trying to look coy and whatnot. Well, I guess he deserves his prince-complex, since he is a pretty good-looking cat. I mean, that's the reason I picked his ass up off the street out of the box of cats being raised by a whole bunch of middle-aged Korean men; I don't know what was weirder, actually – the sight of cats in a box in Namdaemun Market or the fact that the men were treating these kittens like their own children.

"You're going to take gooood care of him, right?" asked the man who was giving me the orange-and-white one that later became my little, lazy devil. It was kind of touching, yet disturbing.

My rationale was that I needed a pet to get my borderline high blood pressure down, a condition caused partially by my previous place of employment, which was like working in a lunatic asylum. So one day, as I was accompanying a friend to the markets in Namdaemun, I spied these ajussis hovering over a box filled with cats. The bright orange one was just such a looker that I made the strange and still-shocking decision to become a cat owner. Cats are clean, ya know – dogs weren't an option with my schedule.

Many months later, my frisky cat has grown an enormous ass and gotten increasingly lazier. He's been snipped down there – an operation I took pictures of, by the way – which thankfully slowed his roll. He was always jumping and leaping and bouncing off the walls; I just wanted a lazy orange cat. I guess he was young. Now, he's pretty frisky for a cat with no working male glands, meaning he lies on his side to paw at cat toys. He's also taken to licking himself in strange positions. It's quite unnerving to onlookers, and I would think humiliating to be seen. Therefore, I made sure to take a picture.

He's also been joined by an all-black cat named Ebony. His name is Orangee (Korean pronunciation, please). Together, they play with each other all day while I'm gone, and generally just sleep in my general vicinity when I'm home. They're two lazy, well-pampered mofos. "Ebony...and Orangee...live together in perfect harmony...!" Yes, I am now an annoying cat person. At least I recognize my sickness.

But here's my "dilemma." I've always raised my cats like dogs, punishing them on the spot and spanking them – or simply scaring the bejeezus out of them with my alpha-cat animal yells. The latter usually is enough. But sometimes, like today, I have to spank my cat. Yes – I'm a cat-spanker. Does that make me a bad man?

See, though – the way I see it, my cats are well-trained. They come when called, and scatter when I make the *snake-hiss* sound. They know better than to go wandering in my closets – they do sometimes, like today – but they know they're not supposed to. So on days like today, I have to get medieval on a cat's ass.

I do feel bad. But I believe in good pet discipline.

Does this picture make him look innocent, and me a bad man?

Don't be fooled. He's one naughty cat.

And his ass can handle it.

Obviously, I am fishing for comments.

Textbooks: What Koreans Think about German People

Please excuse the over-simplicity of the title.

Since I've been wanting to talk about more than just Black folks these days, as well as share a little more of the interesting things I've been finding in my dissertation research, here I offer my readers an excerpt from a 1994 copy of a first-year middle school Doduk (Morals) textbook, taken from the chapter talking about "Present-day Society and Citizen Ethics." On this particular page, the book talks about ethical codes and behaviors that are worth learning from other countries. This whole argument takes place within an argument assuming the reality of "national character traits" and essentialist ways of thinking. It also is awash in sweeping, sometimes dangerous generalizations. Here's an interesting one below, which talks about the "German people." Funny, when I hear folks these days talking about the superiors traits and unity of "das deutsches Volk," I reach for my gun. Well, I would, if I had a gun.

For those of you who read Korean, the page is offered below, along with my underlining and notes made back in 1996, when I wrote a paper on the Doduk curriculum for a graduate seminar. Interesting stuff, people. Here's the general gist of what it says (making a word-for-word perfect translation is too much work for this blogger, but a 90% approximation will allow me to simply do it without the stress of perhaps getting flamed or making a small mistake:

"Germany – In Germany, a responsibility to the community has been emphasized more than personal freedom. Because their group consciousness is so strong, ignoring the community and only thinking about oneself and engaging in chasing luxuries or waste is considered a sin. Because Germans think of one's work as a mission that has been decided by God, they possess the best possible attitude about one's work. As the result of this kind of 'work consciousness', Germany was able to achieve the surprising economic success that became the 'Rhein River Miracle' out of having been defeated in World War II and being reduced to a lump of ash.

In addition, the Germans have a pervading sense of frugality and conservation. Just as one example..."

"The Germans' sense of frugality and conservation brought the 'Rhein River Miracle.'"

Here, it's pretty obvious to see where some of these generalizations come from, especially if you are familiar with the other parts of the book. In a previous section (as well as in the World History curriculum), the textbook authors place great stock in the legacy of Martin Luther and John Calvin as the dynamic duo behind the "Protestant work ethic" that Weber so famously argued as the cultural component explaining capitalism's rise in the West. In the mind of Korean textbook writers, Germany = "birthplace of the P.W.E" and this carries over through time, no matter what major historical breaks there may have been in this tradition, or whatever other problems may have arguably been claimed to have resulted from it, e.g. the rise of fascism, the particular impact of Nazism and WWII on the German psyche, the resultant disillusionment and modern culture of guilt extant in German identity, and especially the suspiciousness with which many of the modern Germans talked about in this book now look at the concept of "group consciousness" and placing the group above the self. One might argue that it's dangerous to uncritically laud the lemming mentality as a postwar national trait, especially since it's safe to say that this is the very "group consciousness" that got Germany reduced to "a lump of ash" in the first place. Umm, to put a fine point on it.

This book's arguments – and I'll give more examples later – is dangerous because it relies on completely dehistoricized cultural arguments to explain the concrete rise of things like economic indices, standards of living, per capita income. In this book, the inherent hardworking and self-sacrificing nature of the Korean people is lauded as the dependent variable – the one element that, if you removed, would completely change the outcome – in the whole equation. It's not being deprived of democratic rights under a dictatorship, the brutal suppression of organized labor in Korea, nor the exploitation of feminized labor. Put another way, in this kind of argument, the only explanative factor – inherent cultural traits – is necessarily removed from any concrete consideration of history; in this way, the only conclusion one can come to is that Koreans achieved their own "Han River miracle" purely through the virtue of the will, not because of anything concrete.

Similarly, as we shall see in posts to come, Americans are regarded as worthy of emulation in terms of their "frontier spirit," the French for their "frugality," and the English for their class-conscious attitude of the "gentleman." So, you combine American aggressiveness, French penny-pinching, German group-think, and the the Englishpeople's success in having preserved old social hierarchies despite all this – and you get traits Korea can and should use to strengthen and bolster its own social norms. Ah, "morals."

What should also be clear is how grand, sweeping generalizations are par for the course in Korean textbooks; what is most disturbing, however, is the length to which the textbooks authors blatantly pick and choose to represent the desirable "national traits" of other nations to fit into a picture of what Koreans want their nation to be. Alas, this is the project of the doduk curriculum itself, so I guess it's no surprise; but what it unfortunately teaches students who read this book (to the extent that they swallowed it) is to think in sweeping generalizations, to regard outside countries through a strictly Korean lens (the World History curriculum reproduces this view), and most dangerously – to think of "Korea" and "Koreans" and their "national character" in a similarly simplisitic and reductionist way.

You ever wonder why Koreans always brag about Korea having four seasons? Because textbooks – including this one – are always talking about this as a special attribute of this country.

You ever wonder why Koreans think all Westerners (i.e. white people) are physically incapable of eating spicy foods and have an inherent hatred of fish? The fact that I saw this bluntly stated as fact in elementary school textbooks surely can't have been a coincidence.

You ever wonder why Koreans think real American = white? Surely the fact that I've never seen anyone non-white represented in language textbooks must be part of this greater, overall pattern of other materials doing the same thing.

The list could go on forever. I hope you see my point – especially in a centralized education system in which all students are literally on the same page in the book at any given time during the year, combined with the fact that disagreement with the teacher's – and textbook's – word is still considered a near-sin in the classroom, general Korean attitudes and stereotypes become much less mysterious.

And this is in 1994. If you've ever seen textbooks from the 1960's – whooo, boy. North Koreans with horns, tails, sharp teeth – oh, my!

Blast from My Past: "Black Culture, Not Black People"

I've been blogging for a long time. More than that, I've been blogging since before there was a word for it. My first blog was an attempt to write my observations on race and culture via my experience as a "mixed race" person in America and Korea on a website I maintained all by my lonesome. The idea was that since me being of Korean and Black descent means that people seem to find me "interesting," I would write something thoughtful that such people might want to read; still, from my perspective, I don't see myself as all too interesting at all. Yet, it was a good excuse to write some essays, one of which ended up getting published in the Koream Journal. A small point of pride – I got to be a published writer!

Anyway, back from the year 2000, I was publishing short, chapter-length pieces to the web – on a site that I am loathe to link to, but would rather pick and choose pieces to republish here one by one if parts become suddenly relevant – and encouraged the close friends to whom I sent the link to write back with feedback. I would wait with bated breath for any word about my writing; it encouraged me, and I pounded out quite a bit of it.

When I first returned to Korea to conduct dissertation research in 2002, I was writing a lot, as my head was simply swimming with ideas, thoughts, flashes of inspiration. Much of it ended up being read the next day as  waves of embarrassment rushed over me – "inspiration" followed by hurried typing at 3 in the morning often turns into revulsion upon reading what you wrote while not high on Diet Coke and ramen. I wrote about "Why Korea Can't Be Global," and many other small pieces that arrogated themselves to being worthy of being published somewhere.

But sometimes, I wrote "letters to Korea." They were really more like healthy ways of venting anger, written for the purposes I write this blog, which is partially to spark more critical but constructive thought about Korean society, as well as partially to keep my thinking and writing sharp. When writing a letter mostly to oneself, the latter reasons are the more realistic. Still, it also felt good to say what I wanted to say, even if I only tortured my friends with them in mass emails.

Enter the Blog. Now we have these communities growing up around writers, formed out of political sympathies with the writer, his or her apparent skill in the crafting of words, and the chance to exchange ideas with members of the same community voluntary community.

I have pulled up an old "Letter to Korea" that I wrote sometime in early 2003, when I was still recovering from the negative experiences had here in Korea after the middle school girls furor had blown over. The Bubble Sisters, a music group in the spirit of Gloria Gaynor meets The Weather Girls, released a couple hits with the questionable gimmick of dressing up in black face. I posted once about this several months ago, but I never published my full-on take on this issue. Here's my piece, taken raw from early 2003 and not edited; it's a real blast in the past for me, so please excuse the rawness of the piece. I've lifted it from an old file as-as and sharing you with it now. I tried not to edit it much, because I don't want to alter this slice of my mind from three years ago, so I left things be, outside of fixing a few awkward phrases and cleaning up obvious structural mistakes. But the message is just like I left it – so I think it's pretty honest.

Although the Bubble Sisters' incident is now in the past, the issues that it raises, as we have been seeing in recent weeks, are quite relevant. So please note that this is a slice of the Metropolitician before taking on that moniker, that this "Letter to Korea" wasn't originally written with this particular audience in mind, and that I offer it here as a curious glance at my thinking on this subject, much earlier in my present stint here. If there are differences between me now and then, bring them up, ask about them. But give me the leeway to have changed stances about things over the course of three entire years living in "Dynamic Korea." Also note that I'm experimenting with the big "anchor quote" thing that magazines use to keep readers interested and not totally bored when reading long pieces, as well as a lot of links and accompanying images that weren't present in the original "Letter." Let's see how much they help with understanding my points.

And heeeeeere we go!

Blast from My Past: "Black Culture, Not Black People"

Some Koreans were surprised to hear that many Americans, upon seeing the Bubble Sisters on television,
were absolutely horrified. Blackface is arguably the most offensive and painful symbol of racism in American history. It is painful even to watch in American history classes, and it is definitely one thing Americans never joke about. Americans generally have a pretty liberal sense of humor, but no one laughs when one is shown images of the black "pickaninny" smiling and dancing for white folks. It is a remnant of post-slavery discriminatory culture, when Blacks could not look a white man in the eye without fear of being attacked, and one could disappear in the night, never to be seen alive again. For Koreans who don't know, blackface in America is associated with racism, hatred, and the legacy of slavery. Old television shows and cartoons showing blackface are never shown in public anymore; it's not illegal - it's just that no one wants to see it. It's simply not funny.

"I have to understand that Korean people's prejudices about Black people and others with dark skin come mostly out of ignorance, not a history of hatred."

So when I was standing in a Chungmuro photo store last month waiting for negatives to be developed, I was shocked to see four young women performing the Weather Sisters' song "It's Raining Men" in blackface. I have seen a lot of things in my life, but I was standing with my mouth open, in utter disbelief.

Now I have lived in Korea for a long time as a Black man, and speak Korean well enough to talk with people and get a feeling for the culture. I know that there are not many Black people in Korea, and that much of what Korean people think they know about Blacks come from mostly negative images in American movies and television. I understand that most Korean people have never talked to a Black person, even though many people think they know what Black people must be like. I have to understand that Korean people's prejudices about Black people and others with dark skin come mostly out of ignorance, not a history of exploitation, fear, and hatred.

I even have an understanding heart when I sometimes see a Black man with a Korean woman on a subway and every single person on the train stares at them, and young girls laugh and even point. Even though dark-skinned people, especially Black people, live less-than-human lives here in Korea (even as those with white skin are nearly figures of worship), I can understand Korean people and society enough to know that these reactions are largely the results of not knowing any better.

I've lived in Korea for more than three years in total, having worked as a Fulbright in Korean middle schools in Chejudo, focusing on Korean Studies in graduate school, then returning to study more of the language, and staying here this time to finish my dissertation research, and work with Korean kids in alternative schools. I have Korean friends, family, and was even able to endure the anti-Americanism of recent months. Even though I have friends, men and women, who were regularly verbally assaulted, prevented from going in some stores and restaurants, and I know of a few people who were even hit just for looking like an American, I had an understanding heart about the matter. I know Korean history and recent frustrations with Bush and the American government. Even though I and most young people voted for Gore and don't think at all highly of Bush and our conservative government, I understood why many Koreans wanted to lash out at me and people like me, even though I did not think it fair to blame individuals for the actions of their government. I certainly hope that Russians and Filipinos don't blame Korean tourists for the fact that many of these women have been tricked and forced into prostitution, and that their governments have asked the Korean government to alter the E6 "entertainment" visa, which was a thin disguise for importing cheaper sex workers for Korean cabarets, nightclubs, and other establishments. Of course many Korean people are nor even aware, nor are they responsible for their government's tacit support of exploitation of other country's women. And they should not be harrassed, spit upon, or physically attacked, no matter how angry Russian or Filipino people might become. So even though I was disappointed to hear about such things happening to Americans here - something not at all reported in the Korean media - I was able to be understanding.

But as I watched the Bubble Sisters video that day, I seriously questioned why I even bothered to be here. I really questioned how such a horrible emblem of hatred could find itself onto Korean television. Even though most Koreans are unaware of the history of blackface, surely those responsible for creating the look could not have been. The images were not just people putting on dark makeup and trying to look more like black people, as I saw Roora do in the 1990s, but it was blackface done PERFECTLY. It was not accidental - it required someone to research these images, downloading pictures, printing them, and then using them to create the makeup and hairstyles. All of the old images were there, including the "pickaninny", who is the chubby character with little sections of hair sticking out from all over the head. The red lips, dramatic looks of silly surprise or happiness, and the childish pajama costumes were all elements of the "minstrel shows" of the early 1900s. It is absolutely impossible for those who researched these images to not have known that these images are considered to be the absolute lowest expression of racism in American history. These images are not easy to find; you have to know what you're looking for, and once you find these images, they are usually a part of books and articles about the mistakes of racist Hollywood images and the history of American discrimination. For the person/people researching the topic, feigning ignorance is like trying to say that someone trying to find a recipe for kimchee on the internet, who then reproduces the look and taste of it perfectly, did not happen to notice that it is a Korean dish. "Oh, it's Korean? I didn't see that." Then how did you get the asian cabbage, 고추가루, and 쩟? It's not very plausible.

One can't really blame the performers themselves. I have heard the story about how the girls were told that they were ugly, and despite their talent, would not be able to succeed without a gimmick.

"Ugly" Korean women – The Bubble Sisters sans blackface

This makes sense, since I see so many untalented singers on M-Net who simply have no singing talent and have obviously done or given something to someone in order to be there. I know that this is a society in which appearance counts above all else for women; it makes sense that this is also the country that has, if I am not mistaken, the highest rate of plastic surgery per capita in the world. But you can't blame the women who take the surgery option to get a job, or a man, or an opportunity to sing on television. You have to look at the society that in general values women more for their bodies than their minds. So in this context, the blackface gimmick makes a certain amount of perverse sense.

But unfortunately that makes the present situation more ironic, since this makes a subtle link between blackness and ugliness. "If the Bubble Sisters are too ugly to show their true face in public, no matter how talented they are, then why not just make them look like black people? Wouldn't that be funny?" Unfortunately, few Americans would. And I would bet my firstborn that no black American would. But again, look around. Do you see any black people here?

Have you ever wondered why there are almost none, besides the few soldiers that are sent here, largely against their will? (Korea, I am told by members of the military, is the absolute bottom of the list request for newly recruited soldiers, partially because of the real military threat and also because it is known for being a very unfriendly place to GI's). Well, as MBC reported last month, although it is something that I already knew – Korean hagwons won't accept black instructors, no matter how qualified they are. Why, you ask? The answer's easy. Because we all know that moms across the country want the best possible instruction for their kids, so if they see a black instructor, they may assume that the person is less qualified. Which hagwon would you send your kid to – the one with the tall white man who looks like those people you see on TV, or the black man who might be qualified, but first we have to see his qualifications, resumes, references, etc. He just doesn't "look" as smart. From the hagwon owner's perspective, it's not his or her fault - they've got a business to run, no? They're not discriminating, but just responding to reality. It's funny that this is what real estate agents in America have always said when they refused to take black customers who wanted to move into white neighborhoods, or restaurant owners who would not allow blacks to eat there, or black children to go to schools with whites. "I'm not racist - it's just the way things are. I can't change that. I'd go out of business." It's ironic that Black Americans face the same kind of discrimination everywhere in the world, even in Korea.

"One taxi driver here I spoke with told me that he tried to make a point of picking up foreigners that night because...he had heard reports on his radio that some Americans had been beaten up."

But this isn't new to me. Korean folks, no matter how much they claim to be culturally liberated, are very much in the thrall of American ideology, especially when it comes to race. In fact, I even think this is one of the inner conflicts that fuels recent bouts of anti-Americanism among youth. Don't get me wrong - there are lots of reasons to resent the inconsistency and inherent selfishness of American policy towards the Koreas and the rest of the world. But that's not the discussion I'm having right now. I'm talking about a different thing - the long-standing relationship with the United States that did not end in the 1990s, during the time of increased consumerism, longings for reconnection with a so-called "lost" past, and increasing expressions of national pride. I wasn't here for the World Cup, and to be frank - I'm saying what few would say in public - I'm very glad I missed it. As a typical American, I don't have much interest in soccer, and personally, not much interest in spectator sports. I respect Korean national pride, but I didn't think that a true pride was being expressed there. It felt more like what it was - rooting for the home team, disguised as proud nationalism. I understand that it was fun, and I probably would have had some fun myself had I been here. But from a serious perspective, painting oneself red, cheering, praying, and even crying for the home team is simply an exaggerated love for the team. It's a place where pride in the nation happens to overlap with who you want to win the game. It's fun, but pretty meaningless.

"The flip side of national pride is ugly jingoism, and the line dividing the two a fragile and fickle one. "

I think superficial national pride masks a lot of things. Like the fact that many Americans I talked to - who were not sports fans - actually say they were relieved that Korea won the game, because they literally feared for their safety if America had. That sentiment was backed up in a news report online that noted that security had been doubled for the Korea-America game, and that the officers on duty that day were also relieved to not have to handle an unruly crowd. I have heard many stories from other Americans here at that time about Americans cheering for their team - or even those just simply walking around - being verbally harassed or physically assaulted. One taxi driver here I spoke with told me that he tried to make a point of picking up foreigners that night because he heard that many taxi drivers were refusing to do so, and also that he had heard reports on his radio that some Americans had been beaten up. So he simply felt to 미안해 to them and made an extra effort that night. And I'm sure there were many others like him. But had I been in Korea that night, I am sure that I would have stayed at home and watched it on TV. The flip side of national pride is ugly jingoism, and the line dividing the two a fragile and fickle one.

Yet Hiddink is worshipped like a god. And I don't use that word lightly. I do mean "worship." When I saw Hiddink on television around two months ago, a talk show had invited him for a retrospective on his coaching and victory, and the audience was treated to the standard slow motion shots of hugging, crying, and cheering on the field. People on the street were asked to give their greetings to Hiddink, thanking him for what he had done for Korea, while girls squealed and screamed that he was their hero, men wanted to drink with him, etc. The only thought on my mind was that he was truly Korea's perfect hero.

He was taking the place that had already been created in Korean post-war culture, but could not be occupied because of a new kind of pride that wanted to distance itself from America. But he was older, white, and reasonably good-looking. He was the new MacArthur, the great white father himself, reborn. The older generation, which is quickly dying out, has fond memories of MacArthur's fabled landing at Incheon. Now the younger generation, a little more jaded and cynical about showing any signs of 사대주의 (the Korean historical/cultural idea of "deference to the greater") to a so-called "big brother," can have a new hero arriving at Incheon, although this time on a plane and not American. But he's just as white, old, and authoritative. And he does the unexpected, taking Korea further than it ever could have gone without him, using unconventional techniques and old-fashioned wisdom. Only this time it was with a soccer ball.

But what has Hiddink really done for Korea? Before I try to address that question, I have to say something that I think all foreigners think about, but won't say in public. Koreans worship American, and by extension, white people. OK - I'm making a broad generalization, but for the sake of discussion, I'll just speak in generalities. The smell of the old colonial big brother/little relationship is as strong as it ever was. Did Korean women try to shape their faces and bodies along Western features before the arrival of the Americans? No. Korea has the highest concentration of fast food restaurants than I've ever seen, even in the United States. I've eaten more hamburgers in Korea than I have in my entire life in the States. People dress like white Americans (when dressing casually), listen to popular music that reproduces and follows the exact same popular genres in America, eagerly consume American popular culture, and generally live the same lifestyle that capitalist consumerism dictates. Korea has been a good "pupil" of the US, in that it is in many ways more devoutly Christian and anti-Communist that the US has been for years. What's so independent about Korean mass culture, besides what the state and media tells the public?

I'm not trying to denigrate Hiddink. He was a great coach and helped the Korean national team immensely. But has he done more for Korea than the hundreds of thousands of dark-skinned wage laborers that so many people won't even look in the eye on the subway? These are the people who do all the things that are too dirty and dangerous for Korean laborers. Unions have formed, wages have gone up, working conditions for Koreans have improved, and society has become highly-industrialized and information oriented. Korea has enough money now to bring in low-wage workers to do all of its dirty work. It's an inevitable fact of capitalism and development, and the same things happened in the States, although not in such a compressed period of time. But when a white man opens his mouth and stutters out an "anyoong ha sheemneekers" in public, everyone is so happy and surprised and flattered. The white American standing on the subway usually has all kinds of people come talk to him or her during the course of the day. What of the tired brown man who gets on the subway every day and has lived in this country for ten years, speaks fluent Korean, and has worked his skin to the bone keeping the labor capacity in this country cheap and efficient? An Indian man living here is absolutely invisible. Although it's possible to become a permanent resident or citizen, the standards in reality are kept so high that they are nearly impossible to meet. These people can't send their kids to Korean schools, although many of these children have been born here and have never stepped foot in their parents' country. Yet Hiddink, who has no intention of living in Korea or struggling as a member of society here is offered honorary citizenship. In fact, it's not even simply that - it's a special visa status designed to allow Korea to make the show that it is open to the outside. Although this image is a lie, it sometimes can be if you fit the role of Great White Father.

In this way, Korea is America's star pupil in its worship of whiteness. Getting back to the Bubble Sisters, the one thing that this recent incident makes clear to me is the fact that Korea has related itself to Blackness in exactly the same way whites - well-intentioned or not - have in the States. Youth culture, these days, seems to love Black culture. Gangster rap, R&B, and soul styles have been stolen from Black culture ever since Seo Taiji and the Boys took its style from Cypress Hill in its fourth album, back in 1995. Well, actually, there were cases before that, but I don't need to make a list. Turn on the TV and you can easily see young Korean "gangster" rappers mimicking and aping what they THINK black people act like and how they live, pretty girls on each arm, looking tough, sneering at the camera. The Bubble Sisters say they were praising black culture in their use of blackface. They say they had no idea it was offensive. The sad and funny this is that I actually believe them.

"Only in a culture so deeply in the thrall of whiteness, and filled with a similar animosity towards blackness, can black culture be so ignorantly insulted."

Only in a culture so deeply in the thrall of whiteness, and filled with a similar animosity towards blackness, can black culture be so ignorantly insulted. It is precisely because Korea prefers BLACK CULTURE WITHOUT ACTUAL BLACK PEOPLE that disgraces such as the recent blackface incident is possible. It is not an innocent misunderstanding, or an honest mistake. It is a sign of the deep enmity Korea has for those it considers racially inferior. The United States has always had the exact same love-hate relationship with black people. "We love their food, music, and women. We just don't like to be around them." Contrary to popular belief, many white Southerners swear that they LOVE black people, and always have. As long as they "know their place." That's the key assumption that's never stated. In Korea, people can say that Korea loves Black culture and people - as long as they don't live here. This blackface incident is just a part of the general social ignorance about black people that is actually the result of an underlying, strong distaste for people with dark skin. Part of this distaste is related to the the fact that foreign assistance and short-term labor is wanted, but foreigners are not. Not in any sizable numbers, anyway.

So - as I looked at the remaining signs from the World Cup days, that are getting ever harder to find as they get cleaned up and taken down, I am bemused. The signs that encouraged Korean people to smile at foreigners is the most amusing. The only time it's important to be concerned about Korea's treatment of foreigners is at the time when the eyes of the world are upon it, and the government and business interests are eagerly anticipaiting tourists' money. As a foreigner who can read such signs in Korean, I feel the effort was a little cheap, a little ungenuine. Has the culture really experienced "internationalization," or "globalization," or any of the other fancy catch-phrases of the last ten years? Not in any significant way. Look at the irony of the World Cup. Korea tried its hardest to make a good name for itself in the eyes of the world and attract tourists to the games it had been planning for almost 7 years. I hear people talk about how international and open Korea felt during that time. But only months later, the "Fucking U.S.A." song had been revived, 미국놈 is the word of choice at rallies and websites expressing anger at the deaths of 미선 and 효순, and Americans are being verbally and physically harassed in the streets. I read the bulletin board of antimigun.org regularly, where I had been told to go to "learn more about the 사건," and was treated to educational and informative postings such as "I'm going to kill the next 미국놈 I see," or the one that posted a picture of a black GI and a Korean woman merely standing in the same frame, with the caption "A traitor to her race" with people saying that this "slut" should be "executed" for sleeping with "animals." Even after the recent demonstrations died down, at the recent anti-war rallies, I heard the word 미국놈 in several of the speeches at the rally, even though an American was one of the invited speakers. I'm glad he couldn't speak Korean in that case. I wonder whether any Korean people mentioned the fact that he had been repeatedly insulted, even though he agreed with the cause the Koreans were fighting for.

"60 Minutes," America's longest-running news show, had a full segment about Korean anti-Americanism last month. Despite such horrible displays, I know truly hateful people are the minority here, and that anti-Americanism is not as serious as it appears on the surface. I was disappointed to hear about the 60 Minutes piece, not because it was inaccurate, but because Korea's expressions of anger towards the US, many with which I agree, were doing more to hurt the country than help it. What else does the foreign press see? What can you expect of reporters, no matter how knowledgeable, who don't live here? I had a friend planning to come visit me in May, her first trip to Asia. Along with the tensions with NK, she was concerned for her safety as an American. Despite the fact that I explained many things to her, she simply felt too uncomfortable to come. She canceled her trip, which she had been looking forward to for more than a year. This story is not unique, and many foreign tourists do not have friends trying to convince them to come to Korea.

"We know about the "ganguro" girls who darken their skin and try to make themselves look "black." But these displays are not taken as insults as much as mere expressions of how much certain Japanese youth really like Black culture."

Displays of ignorance like the Bubble Sisters' use of blackface simply hurt Korea. They prove the assumptions of the outside world that Koreans are close-minded and racist. They are not going to stop and think about whether or not the Bubble Sisters knew what they were doing. And it is wrong to blame the members of the group, who are talented young women I only wish the best of luck to, but without blackface. My only point is that in a truly internationalized and globalized culture, the people who should know better would simply know not to do things like this. In a country that actually had enough black people who were listened to and whose opinions were valued, this would never happen. In Japan, a country I rarely laud, hip hop groups have always made Tokyo a major stop on their world tours. Japanese fans of black music actually know something about it, to the extent that black DJ's and performers have always included Japan as part of the black music scene. The Source, America's monthly magazine and authority on hop hop culture, always covers the Japanese hip hop scene. We know about the "ganguro" girls who darken their skin and try to make themselves look "black."

But these displays are not taken as insults as much as mere expressions of how much certain Japanese youth really like Black culture. Even if you don't buy this, at the very least it is a true Japanese creation that "plays" with racial markers, that being dark skin, blonde hair, peach lipstick, etc. It's not hip-hop, rap, or anything American. It's undeniably – and quirkily – Japanese. As an African-American, I don't feel insulted, but rather somewhat bemused. They seem to have their own thang going on, and it's alright. To me, it feels more akin to a celebration of "ghetto fabulous" than a form of racial "slumming."

That is the context within which one can argue that such emulation can be seen as a compliment. But within a culture of complete ignorance and cultural theft of Black culture here in Korea – or the flip side, being the reproduction of white racist images of black people – the Bubble Sisters' intended "compliment" is something I can take as nothing more than an insult of the lowest and vilest degree.

But rather than excoriate the performers themselves, Korean people reading this article should take a good, honest look at the cultural attitudes and alignments that allowed such an embarrassing thing to happen. As an outsider, my perspective is the most valuable thing I can offer to people who live here. I mean this critique to be constructive; but sometimes my patience is really tested, and I wonder why I even bother. Although it may seem self-serving to say, I don't mean this to be narcissistic: in the long run, well-meaning cultural critics such as myself are exactly the ones Korea can ill afford to lose. Hopefully the response to this incident will give me more reason to maintain the optimistim that continues to allow me to believe that Korea really intends to strive for a goal of a truly "global mind." Because if they don't, burned out former-allies-turned-enemies who take home only negative things to say about this country will have much more power to shape the outside world's opinion of South Korea than any World Cup or Olympic festivals. The world is watching now, South Korea – are you ready to step up to the plate and live according to your so-far empty slogans of "globalization" and dreams of being a world leader? It's time to walk the walk or continuing to talk the talk, as they say.