Pass and Cross is a blog written by a Korean woman studying ethnic literatures in an English department in the States. She often talks about Korea and Korean identity from a critical perspective, while offering an interesting point-of-view on American culture as a person with an outside eye. Is she my American doppelgänger? Well, I won't arrogate to say she's the "American version of me" or perhaps draw a false conclusion in saying "I'm the Korea-based version of her." That's almost as irritating and problematic as saying "Hyo Ri is the J-Lo of Korea." Don't even get me started.
What's more accurate to say is that we're interested in the same project, or in other words, have similar agendas in being motivated to talk about certain things. So, in the same way that one could say "both Hyo Li and J-Lo are engaged in similar attempts to leverage affected sass and shows of ass to offset their relative lack of vocal talents even as they dominate their respective commercial music markets" – I can also say that both Pass and Cross and this site are engaged in reasoned and thoughtful social commentary and criticism as different kind of outsiders in the respective societies within which we both find ourselves. Hehe. Or something like that.
Here her site announces a new research fellowship that sounds pretty cool – The Kyujanggak Fellowship. Since there aren't many real fellowship opportunities for scholars in need of support in order to conduct research in Korea, this is a welcome opportunity. Many who need such research fellowships may very likely already be in the know; since I am so out of the loop, I don't trust myself as the best source for such information. But this blogger seems much more in the mix than me.
Also, in her most recent post, she waxes poignantly about the sorrowful fact Koreans still prefer anyone white with a pulse over a fluent and academically-trained Korean for the same job. So the theoretical Mr. Kim, responsible for filling an English Lit position at theoretical Korean university, would be sitting in a small meeting to discuss candidates, would give the position to a person in possession of an MA in something most likely related to the mechanics of teaching English (which is, to be frank, simply not ideal), rather than a person with a Ph.D. actually trained in teaching...hmm...English Literature. Sad, very sad.
I see this as all due to belief in "native speaker magic" combined with a healthy dose of being in the thrall of American whiteness. Yes, there are a lot of Canadians teaching English here, but let's be real about the fact that it was around the relations of capital and anti-Communism, vis-à-vis the interests of the United States, that Korea formed a large part of its relationship with the West. Everything else seems a market-influenced substitution for a "true" Americanness, which assumes whiteness as an essential part. So for the most part, Filipinos won't do, ethnic minorities from predominantly white, English-speaking countries are also noticeably absent, and ethnic Koreans are to be avoided – even if they, too, are native speakers of English.
In a way, from the logic of 사대주의 (sadaeju'ui – "deference to the greater" is one way I hear it translated) to America, whiteness, and English – it actually makes a certain kind of sense. But that doesn't make it any less sad.
