Scribblings of the Metropolitician

On the Korean Obsession With Educational Success

Now, many Koreans are not going to like this article, because it reveals a lot of dirty little secrets that depend on them staying dirty little secrets. And I am also not making sweeping generalizations about ALL Korean students or people; but as someone who has worked directly in the education field on levels that most Korean educators have not, I feel I am qualified to make these observations.

I've worked as a US History instructor in two of what are generally considered the top three elite high schools in Korea that send large amounts of students to the US for foreign study, have similarly lectured in two top-tier universities here, and even taught in normal Korean middle schools in the countryside, which I did for the Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship program, which was the only way a foreigner could get into a Korean public school in the mid-1990's. There were 27 of us in the entire country in 1994; now, they are legion.

Moreover, I have done academic work on the Korean alternative education system, and worked in several alternative schools and youth centers teaching photography as the reason to be there, conducting class and working with the kids completely in Korean. In short, the depth and range of my experience as an educator in Korea is at least, if not deeper, than that of a Korean national.

That being said, I have never in my life seen nor heard of the level of unethical practices on the scale that I observed in Korean schools. Now, the question of corruption is a tricky one, and brings in the question of cultural relativity and not directly comparing for the sake of doing so, so I'll leave the question of Korean "ethics" and their cultural context out of this critical essay.

However, as it has to do with fairness vis a vis the American students in the application pool, a criticism is only fair. In general, top American students completing applications to attend top American universities generally complete their own application essays – with some heavy help and editing oversight, surely, but they are fairly representative of the students' work – and that's without even getting to the fact that teachers' recommendations are what they appear to be, and aren't bought, nor are they written by the student him or herself.

Maloberti cited the downside to the over-emphasis on study and competition among Korean students and families. “Squeeze a kid too hard and he’ll cheat.” There were 15 instances where Korean test score authenticity was questioned last year, as compared to only 11 instances out of the 55,000 U.S./Canadian test takers. On a grander scale, the Korean Education Ministry threw out over 300 students involved in organized cheating on the national college entrance exam (Harold Tribune, March 30, 2005, “Education Ministry goes after Cheaters”, The Korea Times, March 29, 2005, “Test Scores for 226 Suspected Cheaters Invalidated”).

Intense memorization of writing sample responses, interview question responses, and hundreds of vocabulary words misrepresents language fluency allowing a student to potentially test in the 90th percentile in language and, in reality, have only a 19% ability to speak and understand English. Moreover, the custom of paying Korean teachers to write recommendations for students is not considered corrupt, allowing for the possibility of teachers exaggerating student strengths in English fluency. (source here)

In a society that values results over process, names over quality, and getting as much reward as possible at any cost, that applied to the pretty fair American system is veritably scary. Yes, the American system has its flaws, but even the most obvious favoritism or prioritizing – legacy admissions, affirmative action, special talents – are well-known, transparent, and open for public debate.

Many Koreans I talk to absolutely don't believe me when I say that money in white envelopes doesn't change hands in the American system. Is there corruption in American government, politics, or society? Sure. But as it relates to education, even the nepotism and unfairness is relatively open and rare.

Daddy builds a building the year Muffy applies to college? Well, yeah, she's in. But most schools' legacy admissions are actually factored into the formula, most admissions offices state the extent to which they are "needs-blind," and whatever other occasional problem cases pop up surely don't involve a white envelope filled with $500 in cash.

But in Korea, this is common enough that people actually think this is commonplace in the rest of the world. And from observing what happens in Korean schools, from listening to my students, and from getting into raging clashes with administrators as I refuse to be cooperate with such corruption directly, I know it is commonplace. I have seen incident after incident with my own eyes, yet I can't describe them in detail lest I be subject to the overly-aggressive libel laws that prevent the best muckraking in this society. If truth were a recognized defense against libel suits...wow.

Originally designed as an office building with four floors, Lee Joon, the future chairman of the building, redesigned the building as a large department store later on during its construction. This involved cutting away a number of support columns in order to permit the installation of escalators. When the initial contractors refused to carry out these changes, Lee fired them and hired his own building company to construct the building...Later on, a fifth floor was added to the four-floor building, which was first planned to be a skating rink; the skating rink was added due to regulations that stopped the whole building from being used as a department store. Lee changed the original plan for the fifth floor to include eight restaurants. When a construction company tasked to complete the extension advised that the structure would not support another floor, they were fired, before another company finished the job. (source here)

That quote above sounds eerily familiar, as I found myself searching for another job this past summer for similar reasons.

As a foreign observer familiar with Korean society – or you can listen to Michael Breen's take on it, who is a more venerable and informed figure than myself – I can say that incidents like the Sampoong Department store collapse, exploding gas mains in Taegu, the Seongsu Bridge collapse, the intensely embarrassing Hwang Woo Seok "fake cloning" scandal, or even the fact that right now, Lotteworld, Korea's longest-running amusement park for kids, has been temporarily closed because the structure has been deemed structurally unsound – these are all results of the generally recent social attitude that the ends justify the means, which is why what would be considered "plagiarism" in academic work, "cheating" on tests, or just plain "unethical" practices in the US are really, truly everyday practices here.

Admittedly, Korean society is working through these problems, as recent political scandals over the Education Minister having been accused of plagiarism have sparked public debate over the issue, as have accusation of cheating in top Korean universities, or a slew of mass cheating incidents at the national college entrance exam.

By far the most shocking case of Asian-style academic plagiarism, however, took place last year in South Korea, where the country's last education minister, Song Ja, was forced to quit his job after a citizens' group revealed that an entire book he published, in 1982, was virtually identical to a book written 14 years earlier by two American scholars.

Dr Song, formerly the president of Yonsei University, a prestigious institution in Seoul, originally came to prominence in South Korea for his outspoken views on the need for greater originality of thought in Korean education. In the preface to his 1982 book, which he titled Managerial Accounting Principles, Dr Song acknowledged having been influenced by the writings of other international academics, but, using the standard disclaimer made by writers of original work, he went on to assume authorial responsibility for the book's content. He wrote that he hoped his book would help improve the quality of accounting education in South Korea.

Like most of the recent international cases, though, the South Korean scandal was not without its brighter side. As Kyongsoo Lho, a professor of international politics at Seoul National University, points out, the case involving Dr Song doesn't so much show that plagiarism is on the increase in South Korea, or anywhere else, but that the means to catch such cheaters is so much easier now, thanks, largely, to the ubiquity of the internet. (source here)

But all that goes against the grain of an "education industrial complex" that is so large, powerful, and deeply interested. Michael Seth describes it in detail in his expansive book on the subject, Education Fever: Society, Politics, and the Pursuit of Schooling in South Korea, probably the best, most objective book written on the subject in Korean or English, especially because of the fact he is more of an impassive observer looking in. (Read review here.)

Even I myself find it difficult to write this essay, since I am inextricably tied into a web of job-related concerns as an educator here. It helps pay the bills, which makes it harder to be frank and honest about it; but I would rather keep my dignity and self-respect than an easy lecturing job. And as much as some Koreans may think me evil for daring to write about this subject frankly, without pulling any punches, I think that any honest citizen of this great republic must know, deep in his or her heart, that what I assert here is not a pack of lies or distortions, but far closer to the truth than people want to admit.

To American admissions offices, on both the elite boarding school and university levels, I encourage you to be more stringent in your analysis of Korean students, and make an effort to identify the ones out there who refuse to cheat, who try to represent themselves fairly, who don't have enough money to have a team of American university graduates and teachers essentially complete their application parts for them.

American admissions offices, I would like you to explore ways to sift between the majority of recommendation letters that are written by the students or a "college counselor" rather than actually by the teacher him or herself, translated by a truly disinterested third-party, and mailed in a sealed envelope.

American admissions offices, I would like you to find ways to identify the many Korean students who would be veritable sponges sucking up the glory of a quality, American liberal education and make some of the best students on earth – really, the combination of intense work ethic and robotic education system has made my experience as a history teacher really the best I've ever had, with the most responsive students I've ever known – and separate them from the kids who've had all their work done by tutors, who only understand the mind as a place to cram information, and only see the crown jewels of American education as another notch in the belt of the resume they want to become a "master of the universe" back in Korea.

Given the intense nature of educational competition here in South Korea, you cannot trust a book by even a cursory flip-through of the pages, let alone its cover. Supplementary materials, recommendations, and the application essays are often overtly faked; and even the sparkling test scores and GPA's are more the reflection of intense institutional engineering than true academic learning. Even interviews are often prepped for through the rote memorization of dozens of well-thought responses.

My point is that there are so many Korean students storming the walls of American education, and the stakes so high in South Korean society, that if American admissions officers use the same standards of scrutiny to evaluate prospective Korean students, it will be difficult to discern the true gems from the large amounts of students who don't add up to much more than flash and gilded promises.

As an active member of the overseas alumni community and potential alumni interviewer for both Phillips Andover Academy and Brown University, I plan to do my best to discern the pearls from the pebbles when it comes to whom I decide to send to my schools. The way I see it, no amount of prepping can help fake a real desire to learn and broaden one's mind. I do as it relates to the schools that are part of my personal sphere of concerns, and I would encourage American admissions officers to do the same, as Korean students occupy another #1 slot, that being the status of having the highest number of secondary students studying in the US than any other nation (no citation here, sorry).

American educators – be diligent, be fair, and please try to find the most deserving students, not the most primped and privileged.

On Helping Foreigners

[This post has been significantly altered from the original.]

Well, the recent set of developments has been interesting, given my recent posts about photography and the law, but everything has worked out quite well.

See me in the picture down there, on the pamphlet for the "Seoul Help Center for Foreigners?" Well, now that things have been smoothed over with Seoul Selection as to proper remuneration for services apparently rendered, I have requested that a significant monetary donation be made on my behalf to the Amerasian Christian Academy in Dongducheon to help out up there (pending their approval, as these are just preliminary arrangements that have been made between myself and Seoul Selection, to be clear).

So now, I am OK with having my face associated with "education" and things related to foreigners – especially since thousands of pamphlets have already been printed – so if I and Seoul Selection can turn this into a project to help even more "foreigners" in Korea (even if Amerasian kids in Korea are "foreign" in purely involuntary, social terms), then that's a truly good thing, I say.

So, I guess now I am associated with the "Foreigners Help Center" trying to make the lives of all foreigners just a little bit better, especially for ones who tend to be more brown and socially abandoned. It's the least that Seoul Selection and I could do. Don't you agree?

The site where this is published is here.

I've actually posted about the school here before, in the "Spoken Word in Seoul" podcast, from which I'll quote (this is from the publicity blurb from the fundraising organization, except for the title headings, which came from the blog post):

ABOUT THE BENEFICIARY
All proceeds from this special holiday edition will be donated to the Amerasian Academy to support their mission to empower Amerasian students in Dongducheon City with a bilingual, challenging education from kindergarten through 12th grade. In the face of widespread discrimination, nearly 20% of Amerasian children in Korea drop out of school during junior high, while 10% drop out during elementary school. Amerasian Christian Academy was established in 1999 to meet the educational needs of single parent Amerasian children. Using English as the main mode of teaching and communication, ACA's aim is to provide a challenging and creative environment where Amerasian students are all welcome.

ABOUT PB&J
Started in February 2005 as a nonprofit volunteer collective to raise money for and promote awareness of local and international non-profit organizations, PBJ has successfully organized eight different arts, music and dj benefits in the year 2005, supporting the following diverse non-profits in chronological order: CARE for Tsunami Relief, Adoptee Solidarity Korea, Burma Action, Migrant Worker TV, Ae-ran-won Single Mothers' Home, organizations working on Hurricane Katrina relief, artist project OKAYBOOK, and Medecins San Frontiers for their work with survivors of the October South Asia Earthquake.

Contact us at
[email protected]!

When arrangements are made to actually complete the donation, there will be an update to this post. At that time, there will also be information as to how to make your own, individual donations if you'd like.

And be sure to get on PB&J's mailing list as well!

On Great and Mediocre (S)Hooters

Got this picture from The Lost Nomad, taken from the newly-opened Hooters – ho hum – here in Seoul.

I'm going to spare you, my dear readers, the expected diatribe about women's place in society besides making the singular comment here that points out the perfectly obvious fact that the appeal of the "wild" concept of "hooters" with drinks and over-priced celery sticks should be expected to be completely lost on a country in which you can get a lot more than just perky service and sexual innuendo in any number of "bikini" or "sexy bars" and similar establishments, except with anju and hard liquor.

Hooters seems much more the product of an American culture in which socially accepted consumption of value-added sexual services essentially doesn't exist in public culture, besides the heavily-regulated strip club that is another mainstay of American culture, which is also notably absent, and apparently unmissed, in Korean society.

My point is simply that the low or no-contact nature of American-style sexual services seems out of place in the Korean context, where anything goes – direct, unregulated sexual content can be had in all types of Korean establishments, possibly for not too much more than the tab at an overpriced American chain.

That being said, given the highly gendered nature of almost all the American chain restaurants here in Seoul – go to your average TGI Friday's, Outback, Sizzler, or any other such space and you'll see primarily only groups of women or men with women who are obviously the main reason they are there – Hooters may be a good move, in that there aren't really many places that Korean men can go to as a venue for the conspicuous consumption of American-style "sports bar/family restaurant" culture. And I think that even the more conservative group of Korean salarymen might sick of the large-style "hof" with surly wait staff that are the general norm for Korean places.

So, Hooters seems to be a savvy move to one who might have observed the potential market for American-style, super-saccarine service with a smile and a standardized experience. After all, Korean women have been enjoying that for years, as a place where you "know what you're getting," with the hot bread, Bloomin' Onion, or chicken quesadillas that come consistently and conveniently with a smile. And from a Korean point of view, it's a welcome departure from 골뱅이 or dried squid and nuts. It's a standardized experience that's simply a bit "brighter."

If that's the plan, if that was the marketing strategy, I'd say it might work. Without trying to reproduce the litany of comments made in the mostly-male Korean blogosphere about the seeming inherent contradiction of opening a mammocentric enterprise of large proportions in a country not known to be generally, genetically thusly predisposed, I'll just say that such a niche is certainly open.

But the "hooters" here, given the very different context within which they will find literal exposure, has to offer something pretty particular so as to distinguish itself from the background din of more scantily-clad women working in etablishments with far dimmer lighting catering to darker pleasures.

Which brings me to the politics of this picture, which is my whole point for posting, actually. I don't usually have a lot to say about other people's pictures, but this picture – which I understand to be from the Chosun Ilbo's website, the story link to which is inexplicably down – strikes me as particularly unprofessional and generally poor.

If this is the standard "newspaper shot" of cute ladies that dominates most puff pieces on new establishments, stores, or trends in Korean newspapers, it is a pretty poor one. All the women are looking at another camera, the woman on the far left closed her eyes on the shot, and the facial expressions looked forced even given the inherently forced feeling of their obviously prepped and practiced pose with samples of available menu items.

It looks like a shot from the B-roll, or the shots gleaned from the last seconds of someone else's request for photos. If I were the photo editor at the Chosun, I'd be plenty pissed. It feels to me like someone got to the game late, and either didn't know that this, their best shot, was extremely lame, or were too pressed to get to their complimentary wings to ask the girls to repose, refocus their energies, and "give up just one more smile for the Chosun Ilbo."

Yeah, it's gets progressively harder to get everyone with their eyes open the more people you add to the picture, but come on – it's not that hard if you have wait staff who are making a point to pose for publicity shots. And you can at least have them look at your camera. Shoddy, shoddy photo work, I say.

But as a blog picture done by a non-paid blogger, the shot's fine. I just assume that it came from the Chosun (no photo credit is given) because of its proximity to the link in question and characteristic publicity shot style. It also looks like it was taken with a 28mm lens, which suggests higher-end equipment than your standard point-and-shoot, although the lines between pro and low-end have blurred in recent years. Anyway, if this appeared in the newspaper, it strikes me as a pretty lame shot.

That's what I wanted to say, actually. Damn, I be long-winded.

Here are some photos, taken by Chung Sung-jun/Getty Images, and published in the Orlando Sentinel, of the girls being trained by their American founders. Definitely better photo work there, and definitely working with a 20-24mm lens length.

Obviously made in a single trip, it's not the best work in the world, but it does the job – professionally. And as a photographer, you can't always get the perfect shots within the restraints of the time schedule and the time the company wants to allow you free reign to shoot, but you can at least get the women in the publicity shot to look at your own camera for a shot or five.

Here's the Korea Times' contribution, photo credit to Shim Hyun-chul. Ho-hum. Lots of generally non-distinct, out-of-focus action in the background and, "Oh, look! A white chick!" Pretty sub-standard fare.

Which goes to show you that the best photographers tend to be the ones that are part of groups of good photographers (e.g. Getty, Magnum). It also goes to show that the old adage, "You get what you pay for" is true. Good shots from Getty – pricier than sending a single reporter with a "dica" to grab the amatuerish-looking shot that led off this blog post. Which is why the Orlando Sentinel got better shots than Korean domestic photographers.

All the photographers were Korean; it's just that the good one was sending his pictures to an international picture agency.

As always, the Korea Herald won't allow access to anyone other than "Premium Service" subscribers. Well, in the age of Web 2.0, with blogs and deep linking being the way a lot of content gets passed around, this 1997-era idea that anyone actually cares enough to pay to read old news stories online – unless you're the New York Times and it might actually be lengthy, well-researched, and worth reading – that's a pretty stupid idea.

The Korea Herald gets the real booby prize today for worst (by it being unaccessible and hence, to me, non-existent) picture of them all.

Pun intended.

"Agassi"

A lone woman unknowingly "cuts a flash" out of the crowd as she stood at a Shinchon intersection. For this photographer, she seemed the veritable symbol of the concept of "agashi," which in Korean simply denotes an unmarried woman, but more than that, is a conceptual category that connotes feelings of youthfulness, colorful emotional brightness, and the draw of sexual possibility.

It is obviously an image – organized around a word and concept – that is shot through with the "male gaze." If one were to get academically analytical about this shot, which is what I'm about to do, you can also detect some of what one of my favorite scholars (Laura Mulvey) calls "fetishistic scopophilia." Here's another scholar's words describing the concept (which is usually used in relation to moving pictures and sexual conventions in film, but that's just a little note):

"There are, then, two contradictory aspects in the act of deriving pleasure from the screen: 1.the scopophilia aspect or the act of deriving pleasure from looking at another person as an object of sexual stimulation, 2. the narcissistic identification with the image in the screen. Active scopophilia implies a separation from the erotic object on the screen, narcissistic identification demands identification with the object on the screen through the spectator's fascination with the recognition of his/her likeness. Active scopophila derives from sexual instinct, narcissistic identification with ego libido or sexual wants and processes associated to the ego."

I don't apologize for my "male gaze," but rather try to harness it, focus it, and use it as a way of looking at the nature of this often unexamined relationship between the way men and women relate in general, but more specifically in Korean culture, in which gender roles, norms, and boundaries are far more clearly and concretely proscribed than in my home culture.

Laura Mulvey looks at this relationship mainly in cinema, which is a great help to me as I look at this relationship. One main difference – a key one – is that I am not using her concepts to look at "fetishishtic scopophilia" in photography in general, which would be like the photography-based analog of the work Mulvey does in cinema, and what far more capable theorists might do; rather, I am using certain concepts to look at how my own "male gaze" and "fetishistic scopophilia" encounter and objectify the female Korean subjects.

The usefulness of doing this – the whole point – is to look at not just the photographer's gaze and the details of my psychology, but more interestingly, the real point of interest is in how my gaze is drawn.

One base assumption I have here is that the gaze does not occur spontaneously, but in a relationship, on the female side of which women walk, talk, dress, and socially present themselves as, in the end, objects of that all-persuasive gaze; interestingly, even women have it, and subject themselves to it.

For me, what is interesting to analyze with the photograph are not the ways my gaze objectifies and sexualizes – and remember, my male gaze here not most important as a function of me, but rather as a stand-in for the male gaze in general – but crucially, the way women objectify and sexualize themselves, on both conscious and unconscious levels.

For this, I need to take a lot more pictures, and get a lot more caught up with some of this theory. A book I need to pick up, and which I missed since taking most of my feminist and film theory classes as an undergraduate, is Fetishism and Curiosity, also by Laura Mulvey.

After gutting the bibliography for a few other key texts of interests, and then their bibliographies as well, I am planning on completing another photo project the likes of which the photo world hasn't recently seen. At least, that's the plan and a good way to focus the direction I've been shooting in over the last couple years.

Yeah, my previous photo project is in limbo, but it is largely done. There's no need to stop working, and I've already got a model for some fiction elements that will be added to the documentary stuff.

So, this is the direction of my new project, which I'm working out both in my mind and on this blog.

I think it'd be pretty hot stuff, both photographically and intellectually.

This was just to let ya'll know that this Metropolitician is still shooting.

"Open Arms"

A happy and inebriated couple playfully greet each other late at night on a Shinchon street.

With a mind to a recent discussion about Korean law and photography, I purposely chose this shot as opposed to several others like it because it happened to be the moment when the tension before them meeting and hugging is the highest, even as the woman's face is unclear due to motion blur as she walks quickly forward towards the man. Obviously, the man's face is obscured, making this the perfect kind of street photography shot that will not get you in trouble with the legal "right to one's face."

And as couples meeting late at night go (it was nearly 3AM), I am pretty careful with that kind of stuff, because I don't know if it's an illicit and dangerous liaison for them.

As for the popular question of whether I use Photoshop to blur out faces, the answer to that is a hearty "no" and "never, ever."

For me, fair game as a photographer is to use Photoshop as just that – a tool that digitally simulates what would have been done in traditional darkrooms, which is lighten and darken, slightly increase and decrease both saturation and contrast (when exporting to JPEG from a raw PSD, you lose a lot of color saturation, so I bump it up to compensate, and when I was upping photos for Seoul Selection's newsletter way back in the day, I purposely pushed sharpness and saturation a bit over the edge to degrade the picture enough to prevent them from looking good if printed), and crop. I don't blur out faces, add zoom effects, or otherwise mess with the actual content of the picture.

A lot of Korean photographers don't take the line between street/documentary photography and other kinds of commercial and art photography as seriously as in the West; you don't repose, set up, or fundamentally alter any photographs, period.

Still, sometimes Koreans push me even more and ask, "Well, how can you know? How do I know you didn't change something?"

Well, it's a matter of trust. By photojournalism standards in the west, the assumption is that sources are real, quotes are double-checked, and photos that are presented as reportage are unsullied; and if you've faked a story or used the clone tool in Photoshop to touch even the tiniest element in a story, you will be blackballed from the field for life.

Your career will be over, as it well should be, because it corrodes the trust required in the general public to allow our work to have meaning. And given the many scandals and fakery that's taken place on a large scale in Korea over recent years, as well as the practice of messing with picture elements being so common, I am not surprised – albeit disappointed – that Koreans are so suspicious of photographs as documents of apparent truth.

Truly, truly unfortunate.

Time to Learn Chinese?

"Ni hao may," as Chris Tucker so painfully and memorably mispronounced that Chinese greeting.

Don't know why that occurred to me when I read this article in the Christian Science Monitor, but that's the way my warped brain works. But the need to learn Chinese has been tickling at me for years now, and is just getting stronger as China's economy continues to accelerate like a locomotive into an 9.5% annual annual growth rate and the recipient of the largest levels of foreign investment of any nation in the world.

With all the cheap labor and centralized government control, China looks a like like Korea in the late 1960's, I reckon, but with a larger population, more natural resources, and more stratified and diverse global markets to serve.

And there ain't no stopping 'em, it seems.

Considering the help that studying hanja has been to my Korean vocabulary (albeit the traditional characters that the Koreans and Taiwanese stick to) and how it's a key to other Asian vocabularies, maybe it's about time to start.

"Ni hao may."

The Politics of Pictures and Privacy

A commenter said:

If you took my photo without my permission, which I would find to be an invasion of my privacy, would you destroy the image if you were aware that I disapproved?

And if you were not aware, what would you do?

Is it not polite to ask someone's permission first?

Another matter if you were a member of the Korean Journalists Union, but then you would still be subject to the above laws.

I find those that appropriate another's image without permission arrogant and offensive.

Taking a picture of someone without their explicit permission isn't an "invasion of privacy." Come on – you're not Princess Diana, nor is the majority of the things that anyone does on the day-to-day very sensitive. Here are some famous examples of the kind of "arrogant and offensive" images that you seem to think make this world a worse place to live:

Walker Evans' "City Lunch Counter" (1929)

Lee Friedlander's "New York" (1963)

Gordon Parks' "Beggar Man" (1950)

Garry Winogrand in New York (1961)

You know, if Winogrand were alive and working in Korea, he'd probably arrested as a "foreigner sexually harassing Korean women" instead of being considered a man with a vision and an inexplicable drive to make images.

Or maybe take the infamous images of the little girl – Phan Thi Kim Phuc – running after her clothes were burned off after getting napalmed by American bombs – should Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut have gotten her model release before taking the picture (this link is an interesting background on that picture)?

Or maybe you might even interpret this as "child pornography" because she is a minor and this was published without her parents' expressed, written consent? After all, he didn't ask permission. She was a minor. And surely he just abandoned her and made a million bucks off the pictures, which is why us photographers obviously must do this work – because it pays so well. Here's an excerpt from a good account of this picture online:

Both David Burnett and Hoang van Danh changed film in their cameras during the peak moments of the action. Danh managed a few pictures when Kim Phuc had reached the line of photographers and soldiers and sold a few of them to UPI. "Nicky, you got all the photos," said David Burnett.

Nick Ut recalls that Kim Phuc screamed "Nong qua, nong qua" ("too hot, too hot") as he photographed her running past him. When the girl had stopped Nick Ut and ITN correspondent Christopher Wain poured water from their canteens over her burns.

Kim Phuc's relatives gathered around her and the reporters. Nick Ut heard her saying to her also injured older brother Phan Thanh Tam, "I think I am going to die." (Tam is seen in Ut's award winning picture, running alongside her, at left).

Kim Phuc's parents were still hiding inside the Cao Dai pagoda.

Urged on by Kim Phuc's uncle, Nick commandeered his car, and being one of the few reporters able to communicate with the injured villagers he took over and carried Kim Phuc into the car. Then other members of her family - her younger brother Phan Thanh Phuoc (5), her older brother Tam (13), her uncle and an aunt rushed into the car. Ut climbed aboard the now overcrowded minibus last and ask the driver to speed towards the provincial Vietnamese hospital in Cu Chi, halfway to Saigon. "I am thirsty, I am thirsty, I need water" Kim Phuc continued to cry. When the van moved Kim Phuc screamed out loud, obviously in great pain and then lost consciousness. Nick, beside her, tried to console her saying "don't worry, we will reach hospital very soon."

They reached the hospital within the hour. The doctors and nurses there had seen and treated burn and shrapnel wounds for many years. Even in situations when the hospital's emergency wards were suddenly overcrowding with war injured an atmosphere of quiet medical professionalism prevailed rather than panic and confusion. Nick Ut knew very well that the doctors would attend first those whose lives could most likely be saved, and put others, who were expected to die, aside for later treatment. It was a battlefield experience Nick Ut had often shared with soldiers and civilians alike.

He pleaded with the doctors and nurses to take care of Phan Thi Kim Phuc - and they did. Ut told them what he had seen on Route-1, what he had photographed and that he expected his pictures to be published everywhere.

Only when Kim Phuc was on the operating table did Nick Ut leave the hospital and head towards Saigon, to bring his film to the AP.

When a newsman later de-briefed Nick Ut for a by-line story of what he had experienced on Route-1, Nick did not mention that he helped Kim Phuc.

It was 28 years later, in London, that Kim Phuc said in front of the Queen: "He saved my life."

Eddie Adams similarly didn't have a model release handy when he took this photo just as the South Vietnamese officer summarily executed a suspected Viet Cong man:

Yes, all of them, arrogant assholes who lived to make the lives of everyone around them miserable. Yet, because of pictures like these, public opinion about the war itself shifted.

I know these photojournalistic examples are a bit extreme, but people need to realize that "asking for permission" is not a reasonable nor feasible thing to do, and if you actually stop to think about the situation for a moment, it's not even really necessary.

The great – and even the mediocre – photographers in the world have the urge to make images that can't be judged in terms that most people understand. No, we are not "normal" in the pure sense of the word, since most people buy cameras to take pictures that are explicitly used for personal purposes only – basically pictures of oneself, friend's birthdays, or major events in one's life.

But for a select few, we buy cameras and lenses to take pictures of people we don't know, situations in which we are newcomers; we have an unexplainable urge to make pictures of the world around us. Take this typical street photography shot, taken from my private collection and is one of my favorites:

Now, I think this is classic street photography, and an image many, many people I have shown it to said conveys some of the beauty of a particular moment, an endearing moment of a couple being playful, in which a man teasingly "stole" his girlfriend's ice cream cone while she looked on with this priceless, slightly amused expression. I got lucky in terms of framing and composition, and this was the product of me standing on a Shinchon street corner for hours.

Yet, if someone like the commenter had happened to catch me, I would have been subjected to "Who the hell are you?" or "Did you take my picture? Erase it!" or perhaps they might even had called the cops, and since Korean cops like foreigners just as little as I like Korean cops, they probably would have erroneously charged me with a crime.

And let's be serious – even in publishing this picture, which I feel brings much more social good than any real harm that could come to the subjects – how could they really be harmed? Is this man going to lose his job for being in this picture? Or the woman for holding hands with a man in the street? The only real way this picture could get me in trouble with the Korean law as it is written is if perhaps the man is married and is with his girlfriend, his wife finds out, and he gets divorced and loses his job. Then, according to Korean law, I could be liable for having caused that. That's the only way that a person could realistically be "hurt" by an innocuous picture such as this.

Were this American law, if they were in a public place, they have no legal "right to their image," unless I were doing something like casting people in a "false light" or certain other specific things that aren't really going to apply to a couple walking around in broad daylight eating ice cream. If I were sticking a zoom lens into their bedroom window and showing this, then yes, both personally and legally, I would feel this to be an invasion of their privacy, in just about any country you go to.

But the funny thing about Korean law is that this couple could actually sue me just for publishing their faces without permission. The general public is correct in that assumption. But what they don't understand about the law is that you actually have to show specific damages – according to Korean law – for this to be anything other than a colossal waste of time for everyone involved.

It is that over-inflated sense of "right to one's image" that leads people to actually think that the law legally defines damages as having occurred at the moment the shutter opens and closes. But in fact, the damage happens in the printing and distribution stage, after said publication results in specific harm to people that can be demonstrated in a court of law.

In the end, the funny thing is that photographers are rarely sued, for just that reason here. But the popular paranoia is so high, and the average citizen's legal perception of the grevious harm done by photographs is so overblown, that on the everyday, Korean folks are waaaaaaaaaay over-touchy and sensitive, and downright aggressive about people taking their pictures.

The other funny thing is that most of the "incidents" that Koreans point to of pictures going too far are actually really rather clear examples of ones' right to privacy being violated, rather than a photographer causing them harm directly. Again, the examples of "dog poop girl" and the girl in the Hongdae club are the ones that often stick in the minds of Korean netizens, but let's be real – the photographers in both cases weren't the ones who violated those womens' rights, and in the latter case of the Hongdae girl, the picture was taken with her full cognizance and permission anyway – she just underestimated the racist reaction of certain Korean males in finding her being in a picture scantily clad with two white boys.

And there were a couple instances during the recent World Cup, of the Korean woman and white man humping on top of the car, or the woman who was scantily-clad beyond the pale and was angry that her picture was getting around the Internet. But to me, those were examples of "stupid is as stupid does" because if you don't want people to take pictures of you that might get on the Internet in the day of the cellphone camera, you should probably restrain from simulating sex on top of a car while drunk and in public in the middle of one of the most highly-photographed public events imaginable, all while people are obviously rolling their cameras and flashes are going off. The same principle applies to wearing a mini-skirt that shows your thong, as well as the extent to which you wax or not in your nether regions, and then walking around Shinchon in such an outfit with crowds of thousands of people with still and video cameras is just, well, stupid.

A good rule of thumb, rather than vilifying the real photographers who tend to be more worried about the law than the average citizen, actually – would be to simply use common sense when in public spaces. If you are really worried about your "privacy", then instead of beating up the innocent photographer who simply took a picture of a cute couple together – and little did he know that this was his secret lover and had just come out of an illicit S&M session in a love motel together – perhaps those people should use the same effort to simply not be in a position to be embarrassed.

And if some hapless street photographer happens to snap their picture, rather than getting all enraged for doing something not at all unreasonable, they should just tell the photographer to please not use their image, instead of the man trying to get all gangsta gangsta about it. I'm not doing anything unreasonable, so I expect them to not be unreasonable with me. Again, I'm not standing with a zoom lens outside their love motel window; I'm standing on a busy intersection with a huge black camera.

One infamous "Hongdae club incident" shot, as shown in this article.

Most reasonable photographers follow the general rule of taking pictures in public places, where people generally aren't doing things that they wouldn't do in public. A reasonable assumption, right? I'm not waiting outside yugwans for couples and publishing their faces on the Internet, nor am I stalking women and sticking my cellphone camera under their skirts, nor am I using a zoom lens to snoop behind closed curtains.

That is what I would consider "arrogant and offensive." Standing on a public street corner is not, by any stretch of the law, constitutive of "sexual harrassment" or an act of "sexual violence", nor is it, in my extensively thought-out and reasonable opinion, an invasion of "privacy" because of the inherent public nature of the places the pictures were taken.

Now, there are exceptions, and the best pictures are the ones that sometimes step over the boundaries of the comfortably public and are able to achieve a feeling of intimacy. But even still, such pictures can't reasonably be called an overt "invasion of privacy." Take this example:

Am I "invading their privacy"? Technically. Would publishing this picture cause either of these girls mental, physical, or fiscal harm? Come on, probably not. My point is, reasonable photographers think about that problem all the time – because the vagueness of Korean law forces us to – and I am far more thoughtful about the consequences of my actions than any overly-angry citizen might think just from being pissed off because s/he overheard a shutter go off and thought their civil liberties were being violated. And yeah, there are weirdos and perverts out there with cameras, but they generally hide them and sneak around – not walk around with huge SLR's and WIDE ANGLE LENSES THAT FORCE YOU TO MOVE C-L-O-S-E-R TO THE SUBJECT, as opposed to the zoom lenses and other technically tricky tools that Korean citizens should waste their time worrying about.

The problem isn't even with the REAL photographers, who by nature of them attaching their names to their work and publishing in places where they could be tracked down if they were breaking the law, but with the idiots who harass people with cameras, but aren't actually artists.

And to the question of "If you took my photo without my permission, which I would find to be an invasion of my privacy, would you destroy the image if you were aware that I disapproved?" I would say that I don't destroy my images or stand on the street erasing images for anyone, simply based on principle alone. You don't want me to use the image? Fine. I'll give you my contact information and/or my business card. I think that's fair, since I did take the picture. But I don't pull out film, I don't rewind tape, and I don't erase pictures on my memory card – half of the reason being that I'm busy and don't have time to be dealing with silly requests like that. But I would give you my business card and promise to not use the image – I think that's fair, since you clearly expressed the desire to not have your image used and I've just given you my information to track me down if I did – but I haven't harmed you or you "privacy" at all.

If you had been those girls sitting in the KFC and were pissed I was taking the picture, if they made it clear that they were pissed about it, I would have explained who I was and that I'm just a street photographer (and implicitly not the sex pervert or whatever most people assume you to be – just out of curiosity, I'd like to know the address of that obviously perverted web site where people apparently publish pictures of other fully clothed people in public places doing completely normal things, but who somehow consider that sexy or erotic, since I've never seen a site like that, although everyone seems to think it exists) and not doing anything nefarious. That's enough for most people. And if my name card and perfectly reasonable explanation isn't enough, then frankly, I think you're paranoid.

Yeah, I understand that a person snapping your picture might not place you in the best of moods, but that doesn't mean you're right to fly off the handle. Like I was in that very same film festival opening night mentioned in the previous post below, and some photographers for the event were trying to get pictures of me – you know, the "foreign guy" mixing and mingling with the Korean staff, which would make the event much more international and be far more likely to be used on promotional brochures and the like – but I don't like having my picture taken (trade secret: most photographers hate their pictures being taken). But since I'm a photographer and understand how much I don't actually like my picture taken, I simply shifted my angle to prevent them from getting a good shot, and once even put my hand in front of my face to ruin their shot – they got the message. If I had been really feeling overzealous about it, I'd have asked them to refrain from taking my picture.

But I also realized that they were photographers at a public event, in a private venue, and that I was a legitimate target of their shots. Why would I get angry about that? And as a member of the audience, I didn't even think about it – it's unreasonable to think that a video camera getting audience reaction shots is violating – in any way, shape, or form – my "right to privacy." What are the even organizers supposed to do – pass around model releases to every member of the audience? Check the tape and identify each person who happened to come into frame? That's just fucking stupid.

Point is – being irritated by a photographer standing on a street corner doesn't constitute a crime being committed against you. And most photographers who get the signal that someone in the street has even noticed them – let alone is actually annoyed by them – don't take those pictures anymore. The beauty of the street photographer's art is in not being noticed; inherently, in people having even noticed me, the aesthetic beauty found in the shot's naturalness is ruined.

Street photographers don't want to disturb their subjects any more than their subjects want to be disturbed.

That's a pretty obvious point, but one lost on the overly paranoid. So I believe I've answered most of the questions posed by the commenter. If I were aware that the subject was aware of me and didn't want to be photographed, I would stop photographing. And as for being a member of the "Korean Photographers' Union" or not (I don't know anything about such a body), it doesn't affect whether the law applies to me, you, or any member of that group, so I don't understand that point. I have to think about the Korean law whether I were a member of such a group or not.

The point is, the actual law as it relates to photography is far less paranoid than the citizens who misunderstand it.

And anyway, I think anyone who thinks a picture like the one below is "arrogant and offensive" needs to have their head adjusted, for these are the iconic images that make the world a richer place to live, and photographers who push the boundaries of the socially acceptable to produce art for the rest of us should be applauded and protected, not attacked and derided.

And if I took this picture in a Korean context, I'd publish it, because it's perfect – their faces are not shown and these two people could be anyone, which probably occurred to Alfred Eisenstaedt at the time he took it. No one knows who these people are.

Could the photographer have known they were going to kiss? No way. And he was photographing a rare moment in history, and if he had to walk around asking for contact information and signing releases, he probably would have been too busy to actually TAKE PICTURES, which is what photographers do.

To this day, no one really knows who was in this picture, although a million people have come forward as that couple (these two people didn't know each other, by the way – the man just grabbed the nearest woman he could find and she obliged, and they likely never saw each other again). Well, it's understandable, since a lot of people probably did this on that day in New York in 1945.

Perhaps we should think about the "bigger picture" and think reasonably, rather than just assume that photographers are just out to get us, and realize that photographers like myself consider their work to valuable in that it's not easy to do, and we are some of the few people out there trying to express ourselves in a socially positive way.

Else, why would we subject ourselves to people's misunderstandings, insults, and even physical attacks? And since most of my photo work in Korea has been on film, one wonders what motivation it takes keep buying this film alone – at nearly 800 rolls of film at around $5 a pop, you do that math. And doesn't include the cost of developing, scanning, and the time it took to edit, process, and parse all that film. The way I see it, given the cost of equipment, film and processing, and other variables along, I've put out around $15,000 out of my own pocket, not counting the endless hours I've spent being out there shooting, Photoshopping, etc.

I'm not complaining. I loved every minute of it, and I learned a lot about myself, Korea, and people in general.

But I guess I'm doing all that just to annoy you, dear commenter, because I'm an "arrogant and offensive" man.

You got me. Guilty as charged.

Korean Photo Paranoia, 초상권, and Legal Inexactitude

Cases like this are pissing me off.

Korean cops seem to know the law the least in this society, and leaving vague laws open to the whim and interpretative powers of guys who I wouldn't trust to return a wallet with the money in it still intact (I have found three purses in taxis and on the street and returned them all with cash intact, after I had the police contact the owner's credit card company and arrange to have it picked up in person, after I verbally confirmed the amount of cash I had found in the wallet – they hated that part, which is why I don't trust them as far as I can throw them, and boy, would I like to) does not seem like a good idea.

So here's what I have known since first started taking pictures here – see, I do my homework – and what paranoid citizens, journalists, and even the cops seem to be unable to understand: taking a picture in itself, barring mitigating circumstances, is not a crime. And I've know the law since my ass deplaned here in late 2002.

Here's the relevant text, taken from a book for photojournalists called 한국신문사진인론, or, roughly translated, "Korean Photojournalism Theory." It deals with the tricky question of "초상권/choseungkweon" or "the right to one's (facial) image," which is a concept about which the average Korean citizen holds an inflated, paranoid, and nearly erroneous misconception. From the book, here's the relevant section that talks about the subject as it relates to Korea:

헌법 제10조: "인간으로서의 존엄과 가치를 가지고 행복을 추구할 권리"

헌법 제16조: 모든 국민은 사행활의 침법과 자유를 침해받지 않는다.

형법 제32조 제4항:촉탁에 의한 초상화 또는 이와 유사한 사진 저작물의 경우에는 촉탁자의 동의가 없을 때에는 이를 전시하거나 복제할 수 없다(그러나 형벌 규정을 두지 않음으로써 민법 제750조에 의해 손해배상만 청구할 수 있다.)

현재 한국의 법률상 초상권과 관련돈 판례는 거의 없으며 학문적으로도 관심 밖에 있다. 다만 민법 제750조에 의해 손해배상만 청구할 수 있다고만 결정되었을 뿐, 초상권에 관해 정확한 판례가 없고 다만 외국의 판례를 적용하는 경우가 있으나 그것은 극소수에 불가해 초상권에 대한 법률 제정이 시급하다.

So what I see here are some basic things, and you legal eagles out there, please tell me if any of this is wrong, and/or add to the conversation.

1) According to the 10th and 16th articles of the Korean Constitution, which defines a "right to happiness" and "right to privacy," respectively, as this is expressed in concrete terms in article 32, clause 4 of criminal law, a person entrusted with a picture of someone can't use or reproduce it without one's wishes or according to commercial whims, but "because there are no stipulations for punishments, one can only seek compensatory damages according to clause 750 of civil law," for which you have to show clear and concrete damages to one's person or reputation. That means, you gotta have lost a job, gotten a divorce, or something else o which you can put a dollar (or won) sign.

2) According to the book, since there are almost no actual precedents for seeking damages to "chosangkweon" alone – most of the cases shown in the book that set significant legal precedents were all cases in which individuals' images were used without their permission for commercial purposes – it is "little more than an academic issue."

Well, since the advent of the Internet, "dog poop girl," and the woman in Hongdae who posed in a picture with two white boys and was essentially cyberstalked and threatened, Koreans are worried about their faces in pictures more than ever before.

The funny thing is, pretty much any case that most people chalk up to violations of one's "right to their image" are actually clear violations of their "right to happiness" and/or their "right to privacy." In the case of the woman whose image of her and her poopy pooch were passed all over the Net – along with her home address, telephone number, school, and major – her rights were clearly violated. The same is true of the woman who dared appear in a photograph with foreign vermin.

So, short of using a camera to sexually harass or threaten someone – clearly not really "photographic crimes" anyway, but just harrassment with a camera as the tool of choice – that man with the cellphone in this recent case committed no crime. She had obviously accused her of sexually harassing her with the camera, and after clearing him of that, didn't press charges.

But one thing disturbs me – the only person in this case who committed a crime was the lady in question, when she took his camera phone from the man. I myself have visited a police station to check the above laws and specifically asked, "Does anyone have the right to force you to erase a picture?" Of course not – that is your personal property, until proven otherwise.

"Does anyone have the right to take my camera from me?" The cops replied with a hearty negative, since that would be "강도" robbery and constitutes a crime. The same is true in the US, where a cop does NOT have the right to search you without probable cause, and absolutely cannot take your film nor equipment.

According to common sense, as well as the cops I asked, the same is true here. One case I read about in the US had a mall security guard take a photographer's camera away from him (he doesn't have that right, since he wasn't a cop and wasn't preventing a crime). When the police arrived, the photographer turned out to have the right to be on those private premises (there was a newsworthy event that made the venue temporarily a legal place to shoot freely despite the fact that malls are technically private spaces and can ask you to put your camera away, lest you be accused of trespassing) and the security guard was arrested for theft. Hehe. I love it.

In any case, taking another person's personal property is, cut and dried, illegal. The only person who should be arrested in the end is the woman on the bus. No one has the right to touch me or my property, even according to Korean law. That's the only crime that was clearly committed here.

The other thing that makes me uncomfortable is the fact that the determination of whether or not this was a crime was left up to the keystone kop going through to see what parts of the body he photographed. Whether or not that woman was being sexually harassed should have been determined by his behavior and witnesses present at the time. That is quite a separate issue from the content of the pictures.

Basically, if he wasn't using his phone – or a book, or a laser pointer, or his penis – to harass her in a clearly inappropriate or sexual way (and they determined anyway, that he hadn't been), then no crime has been committed. And the woman should have been arrested for theft. If someone touches my camera, or actually takes it, they're going to feel every bit of legal action I can through their way.

What the problem is that stupid decisions such as this are adding fuel to the paranoia.

For example, I attended the opening program of a film festival – ResFest, actually – and there was a hip-hop group performing there and a couple cameras rolling on them from which I wanted to snag some footage. So I followed the camerawoman upstairs and found an organizer who was talking to a woman who had come up right before me. This was a woman in the audience who was visibly shaking with rage and bright red with anger that cameras were rolling and taking pictures "without the audience's permission." She said she wanted to check the camera and personally see any images of her erased – this, all while the event was still going on.

Personally, I would have told her that she had come to a private venue voluntarily, and at MOST, I would tell her to leave a picture of herself – ha ha – to make sure she didn't get emphasized in the editing. But I would never let nobody force me to erase tape, and I can't believe that these organizers were indulging her paranoid behavior.

If I had put on an event in a private venue, for which there would be a very reasonable expectation that cameras would be rolling to record it, I would have tell her to go fuck herself and have a nice day. Not only was she being commonsensically unreasonable, no crime had been committed against her, although she believed one had been.

In short – crimes involving the "right to the face" don't become crimes until they are published and cause someone specific damages. That's the law. If it's sexual harassment, that is literally a different story. But now, most citizens are going to even more erroneously think that actually taking a picture constitutes a crime.

It does not, even in cases that might be arguably called "sexual harassment." If I stalk someone, invade their personal space, say "shake it for me, baby" or whip out Mr. Happy while taking my shot, the actual picture's not the problem, is it? And since they cleared him of sexual harrassment charges anyway, why are cops warning people to be "careful" with their cameras when 1) the camera's not the problem, and 2) in fact the ajumma in question is the only person who clearly committed a crime?

Even if everyday citizens can't figure this out, the cops should better.

Advice for photographers? Do what I plan to do. I plan to copy the relevant pages in that book. keep a few copies wrapped around my name card with contact information, and if some crazy person wants to make a legal issue out of it even after I explain to them that 1) since s/he clearly has protested against their image being used, I would never use it, anyway 2) you have my contact information and venue of publication to use in a suit against me even if I inexplicably – I would quote them my hourly rate and inform them that I would also seek damages for wasting the hours I would spend going down to a police station.

After giving the person the relevant laws in Korean, your contact information, as well as your promise that you're not going to use their stupid picture anyway, there shouldn't be any trip to the police station.

I recently took a picture of a woman looking quite princessy and interesting walking in front of a neon sign background. Little did I notice that her boyfriend had noticed me take the shot. As I was having a conversation with a friend while waiting for the movie – we were in a CGV – he came up all threatening and asked me if I took a picture. I said I did, because I don't lie, and when he told me to erase it, I told him that I don't erase pictures. He then said – and this is rich – that he was a cop: "난 경찰입니다." At that point, I turned in his direction – because I had been, to this point, been snidely not really looking in his direction because I was pissed he was trying to roll up all hard instead of act like a normal human being, on top of him now talking stupid – and told him that if he were a cop, he should arrest me, and if he were a real cop, he'd know that I hadn't committed any crime (yet), and he didn't have to right to make me hand over shit, even if he did have identification, which he hadn't produced. So right when I was about to go tell him what to go do with himself, my female companion tried to calm the situation down by saying that I wasn't going to put it on the Internet (99.9% of my pictures never get used, and that had been a throwaway shot, anyway) and that I was a real photographer and not going to put it on some weird site – as if a fully-clothed woman in a public place is real titillating stuff, anyway.

Since even his girlfriend seemed to not even care about the pic and had been trying to prevent him from stomping over in my direction in the first place, I was even more irritated, since this was more about his testosterone and not liking me than about any naughty picture. And he probably didn't like the fact that he was being made to look more stupid when I called his ill-conceived bluff (I don't know this aspect of the Korean law, but in most countries, it's a crime to impersonate a police officer). What I should have done was actually call the police and tell them I had been arrested by a man who was claiming he was a police officer and hadn't produced identification – oh, what should I do? But I actually wanted to see the movie I had bought tickets to see, and didn't particularly relish the idea of talking with the idiotic fuzz here for hours under flourescent lights. I just wanted to see the Devil wear her Prada, dammit!

If that guy had been smart, he would have called over a store security guard, who would have likely just removed me from the building, which he would be well within his rights to do – a CGV or a mall is a private place and they have the right to remove whomever they want. I woulda been pissed, but powerless to resist.

Which is the opposite case of when I went to a Carrefour and was freely taking pictures of the staff in clown outfits playing with kids and well-dressed ajummas consuming, consuming, consuming. Fun stuff, and half my pictures were of staff who knew I was taking their pictures. Well, I made the mistake of wandering over to the makeup section and snapping a shot of a particularly interesting stand, which brought down the hammer of literally 6 or 7 large security dudes and two managers.

He said that I wasn't allowed to take pictures in the store. I said, cool, I understand, I'll be on my way now. When caught in a private establishment, they usually warn before ejecting. So if caught, I just stop taking pictures and comply – I'm not taking pictures of anything important enough to get booted for, especially since I'm usually with other people and not there to take pics in the first place.

Well, these guys seemed to know enough of the law to not actually try to take my camera or make me give them my film (this was before I went digital). They're worried about corporate sabotage, not anybody's face. I told them that I understood, I would take no more pictures, and that if we were all done, I had to get going. Well, Asshole Manager #1, who didn't seem to fully understand the law – although I was flying by assumption that Korean criminal law would resemble American law, which is actually a pretty good assumption in most cases – wanted to know where I was from. I said that I was from the United States, I was a researcher and photographer, and that's all your ass needs to know.

He wanted to know where I was from, (meaning "are you working for another company?") he repeated in an insistent tone. Since I caught his gist, I simply said that I was a private photographer and that I wasn't working for nobody. But he kept insisting I tell him something more, at which point I asked very loudly, "Are you a police officer? Are you arresting me?"

TIP: When in a situation and a crowd is gathering in a department store, that's a couple of questions that will bring the situation to an interesting head.

When he said that no one was a cop, and that he wasn't detaining me, I promptly said that I would be leaving then, at which point the overzealous guards made a circle around me and one made a move like he was going to grab me. I was pissed.

"Then why are you preventing me from leaving!?!?!" I yelled very loudly, at which point the manager saw the situation was spinning out into embarrassing zone. He said no one was preventing me from leaving – umm, they were, in fact, doing just that – and wanted to know "where I was from."

I told him that if I committed no crime, and I wasn't being arrested, then he had no legal right to prevent me from leaving, and that *I* would like him to call the police, because now their store was committing a crime. I had answered his question satisfatorily, asked if I had committed any crime, and asked if I was being detained – and had received the answer that I hadn't and wasn't – so I wanted to know why 7 thug rejects who looked like they wanted a piece of me were standing between me and the door.

In the end, my horrified Korean companions came down and explained that I was just a private photographer and wasn't working for any companies or agencies – umm, hadn't I just told him that? – and she defused the situation by being real sweet and flowery with her voice and assuring him I was just an ignorant foreigner who didn't understand the situation.

Well, in fact, I was a stubborn, son-of-a-bitch foreigner who fully understood the situation and the fact that he had no right to do anything to me but kick me out of the store, and my exit was something I was actually trying to expedite. Yet he wanted to get all Dragnet with me, despite the fact that he couldn't arrest me, beat me, or otherwise coerce me to do anything other than tell him to go screw himself.

Grrr.

Yeah, I know, I know. It sounds aggressive and paranoid; but trust me – if you want to be a photographer in Korea, you have to be aggressive and paranoid, since everybody else is. The one time I was very nearly physically assaulted – I shit you not, as this drunk guy who was standing next to me when I was taking a picture of someone totally in the other direction from him, but he heard a shutter *CLICK* and saw me being a foreign man, which is sometimes a no-no in Shinchon (did I ever tell the story of the completely innocent Fulbright kid who was beaten over the head with a folding chair and had to receive a large number of stiches, and he never even saw his attackers?) and after he and his friend cursed my existence for a minute while I walked around the corner, he came at me at a full run with fist cocked back, at which point I had actually gotten into a low crouch and cocked back my camera to use as a weapon in self-defense before his friend literally jumped atop him from behind and brought him to the ground – I hadn't even been taking the guy's picture.

Basically, if you're a photographer in Korea, you're going to run into the paranoids and bozos who think you go to jail if you push the shutter button, or that taking a picture gives them the right to assault you. And rulings like this just add flame to the fire.

And it's a numbers game – you're gonna have a run-in someday, if you're burning through film or memory cards here. I dare say that you're not a real photographer unless you've faced the wrath of some paranoid person who thinks that you taking their picture automatically means that you have violated their rights, or that you have to pay a "model fee" to them (this actually happens, I swear).

I'm usually polite, but prepared. But if someone wants to get igg'nant, you're advised to have your laws in your pocket, quick verbal and physical reflexes, a thick skin, and a plan as to which side of your camera grip is best used as a clubbing weapon in a pinch.

I may be oversensitive as a photographer, but who wouldn't be in a country this paranoid about photography, but with such vague and misunderstood laws surrounding it?

In the end, the only thing that suffers here is freedom of artistic expression, the will to document, and good journalism, while the idiots who really abuse the rights of their fellow citizens continue to sully the craft in our name.

People ask me all the time – "Isn't what you do illegal? Did you ask for permission?" I ask, did Cartier-Bresson ask for permission? Did Winogrand? Did any great photographer who worked the streets? I'm not saying I'm them, but I am saying that in an atmosphere like this, it's not wonder the only good Korean photo-documentarians since the great Kim Ki Chan passed a couple years ago are all dead.

Depressing, but true. Which explains why most of the Korean contemporary photographers these days are either nervous journalists who pose their shots anyway, or self-obssessed, self-described "art photographers" who shoot flower bulbs or black-and-white pictures of thatched-roof huts in the countryside surrounded by clichéd dead trees.

No wonder street photography doesn't exist in Korea as a genre – who could put up with the grief?

If even the police and journalists are too stupid to be able to tease photography apart from real criminal activity, how can we expect everyday Korean citizens to?

And that's the triple truth, Ruth.

Podcast #28 – The Marmot Speaks!

The man, the myth, the Marmot unplugged. The Marmot's Hole is surely the most influential and highly-trafficked expat site in the Korean blogosphere. Many an expat read him and his guest authors faithfully, more like a newspaper than anything else. But where did it come from? Who is the man behind the keyboard? What makes this hairy mammal tick? Join host Michael Hurt and "solitary man" Robert Koehler for an interesting conversation with a truly interesting political animal.

You can listen by clicking on the direct link in the menu to the left, or you can subscribe to my podcast in iTunes and download this latest episode at the same time by clicking on the white iPod symbol in the top of the left menu.

Running Time: 1:09:28
File Size: 27.8 MB
File Info: 56 kbps (mono) at 44.1 kHz, MPEG-2, layer 3 (MP3)

Show Links:

The Marmot's Hole
http://www.rjkoehler.com/

iPhone Korea Guesses

UPDATE #1 – Didn't know that the market is already crippled here. Not good news for the immediate future for Korea and the iPhone, Read this thread about the issue of not only the CDMA and compatibility, but about other little protocol requirements that the Korean Ministry of Communication has used to keep the Korean cellphone market Korean. And here, all this time, I thought it was pure consumer nationalism and strong Anycall phones. Unfair, dude! (And thanks, Brendon, for being a pillar of that thread.)

I still think that the logic and economics of cool still dictate that the iPhone released in the Korean market will wipe the floor with the phones of its competitors.

And as for using the phone? I might just buy one from the States anyway, if and when I can use SKYPE from it, since it (or a widgetized version of it) will run on the Mac OS loaded into the phone. Surely, someone's gonna make a version that's gonna let SKYPE use the phone in a WiFi area. With access to Nespot, this little baby should still be quite useful. Worth thinking about.

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Now, I don't have any inside information here, and haven't heard any specifics about how the iPhone will come out here in Korea. So this is the perfect time to make some educated-but-wild guesses and see what happens. See if ya'll agree with my logic.

CONFIDENT PREDICTION #1 – Apple Korea go with Korea Telecom (KT) as the sole carrier for the iPhone, which is their way, because they are particular about standards and want stability when it comes to making sure their product isn't crippled by technical issues. KT (the company with the prefix 011) also serves Nespot, the wireless internet service that is cheap and ubiquitous in Korea. There are, effectively, no competitors. Apple will want the carrier with the strongest service and coverage, both in cell and wireless services, for this phone/Internet product. KT is the clear choice.

CONFIDENT PREDICTION #2 – Cellphone prices will plummet if this things enters the Korean market uncrippled, because the iPhone is like the sexy girl who just moved in next door and likes to sunbathe in a pink thong and nipple pasties, while Samsung Anycall's basic menu layout and system software hasn't effectively changed in like 5 years, and is like the other girl next door who drinks beer and gives chunky belches on her porch to passersby, since she hasn't had any competition, anyway. And now, of course she hates thong-and-pasty girl and will go on a crash diet-and-exercise regiment and come out swinging looking a lot better – but too bad thong-and-pasties girl is a genetically-engineered sex cyborg from the planet Venus. Who can compete with that?

CONFIDENT PREDICTION #3 – And for 600,000 won, to boot? My prediction on the price. Samsung and the other manufacturers behind them are crapping their pants right now, since the Korean cellphone market is so saturated. Yeah, Koreans are more apt to buy new cellphones every year or so than Americans, say, but really – now the consumer is eyeing that sexy new iPhone in the window next to the suddenly very iPhone-like clones that will not being able to avoid looking like the lame wannabees that they will undeniably be. Has this happened before? Umm, hello, white iRiver with white scroll slide (because using a full scroll wheel would have violated Apple's patent). Embarrassing, but inevitable. Anyone seen trying to talk to beer-and-belches girl will be soundly mocked.

LOFTY HOPE #1 – That Apple Korea will get all its ducks in a row and get an iTunes Korea store running so that they can make domestic partnerships and allow people to use the FULL potential of the iPhones (which are just iPods, you know) and get content downloaded. Yeah, there are still problems with copyright protection and pirating, but there's also a pretty healthy DMB market that seems to be finding Koreans more than willing to waste money for connection privileges. You also would open up the market to easy podcasting and the heralded "UCC" that Korean portal sites crow about, despite the fact being that there is not real democratic distribution network to allow "user created content" to be seen except on...portal sites. Who's really getting used here? Apple will have a much larger user base and people on buses and subways itching to not be bored, coupled with a huge latent desire to be the next "UCC" superstar. iTunes and podcasting are free added-value content. Hello, perfect opportunity? Get that iTunes Korea store working and deliver the killing blow, please. I'd like to see a lot of these sheisty companies, who've been resting on their laurels and a captive market, die an ignominious death.

LOFTY HOPE #2 – iPhones with Macs are like chocolate and peanut butter: they just go great together. Sexy, clear iPhone docks with sleek and naughty white Macbook. Ooooh. Gives me the shivers. But more than that, it's a perfect trojan (ahem) horse to get even more Mac users, since the iPhone is running OS X and you're getting people used to software made right, and is a pleasure to use. More people will start noticing that – oho! – the Mac computer works just as sleekly and sexily well as that iPhone they just bought – umm, and Macs crash a lot less, too. At the very least, the colors and styles will match. And lame, Korean-brand knockoff notebooks that copy the Mac's case (there's always a whole slew of these machines every time Apple comes out with something new, all trying to wrap up Windoze crap in a silk wrapper). Let's hope that the iPod-cum-iPhone (ahem) will show people why Macs just "feel right." Or at least, for the incorrigibly vain, iPhones and those white Macbooks that now run Windoze just look better together.

LEFT FIELD LONG SHOT CALL – Apple Korea's gonna come out swinging like Mike Tyson in the 1980's when this thing hits the streets, because all the planets are aligning for a grand push up in market share and brand presence like a mofo.

I do hope all my wishes come true!

Let's hear some of yours and check back on this post in a few months. See if I look like a total idiot or a marketing genius. Anyway, it's always fun to speculate. I swear, I have no inside information – just my observations mixed in with a dash of my own hopefulness there.

I waited until the 4th generation before buying an iPod. But I'm gonna be first in line for this baby if and when it hits the streets here. My Samsung piece-of-crap has always been just that – since the day I got it, although my true hatred of my cellphone actually started a few days later. I've suffered with it for more than 3 years.

I would love my new phone to be a sexy piece of Apple machine, baby, yeah! Here's to hoping!