Scribblings of the Metropolitician

The Mis-execution of Korean "UCC"

Ah, "user-created content." Or, as Korean Konglish goes – "UCC." (I know it's supposed to be an "industry term," but it's only used in Korea.)

As I'll elaborate on in a more substantial, later post, I always says these days that "Korea is the country that should have invented YouTube."

I say this with all seriousness, but with some disappointment, because I continue to think it a shame that so many smart and technically capable people make use of the bleeding edge of technology (even ahead of more developed countries such as the US), but don't actually do much with it.

What I mean by this is the fact that Korea's had streaming audio and video, as well as "video-on-demand" before most Americans had even heard of DSL or cable modems, and well before anyone was actually getting their hands on them, even after they had.

In 1999, most Americans were using broadband at work (which is the only place most people could get it) to pass around funny, gross, or naughty videos around on email, in multi-megabyte files. You had some movie trailers being offered online (wow!) and even on the Internet before they hit the theaters, such as was the case with Star Wars: Episode I, a fact that actually made the news at the time ("StarWars.com had its web sites go down because of the trailer – wow!")

At that time, Koreans were moving into apartment buildings with 10 Mbps connections, which some small offices were sharing back in the US. There are a lot of governmental, organizational, and plain geographic factors behind this, but such are the facts – Korea had a particular structural advantage in getting most people into the country onto broadband.

So people missed an episode of the soap opera, they watched it later' the security guard in the booth outside the apartment building would watch the news as if it were television – on his computer. All the major networks web pages had links to top stories as well as the transcript (!) for each story in a scroll menu right next to or under it (and generally still do!).

Korea is also a networked society – not just in terms of technology, but in terms of people as well – such that most online activities, gaming, and use of media is incredibly interactive; many cite the near ubiquity of the PC "game rooms" and the fact that most Koreans played heavily networked games as the reason the major game consoles generally don't do as well as they do in Japan or the US.

You ever wonder why Korean names always topped the list of Starcraft players? Well, if you imagine a nation damn-near filled with large, smoky rooms of mostly men playing computer games on multiple-megabit (up and down) connections for hours – or days – at a time, you can imagine the Darwinian implications for developing master Starcraft players; Korea's had video game strategy channels on cable well before CNet.

So with the broadband backbone, a culture of social networked use of the Internet (note the ubiquitousness of Daum cafes and Cyworld), why didn't YouTube get invented here, the world capital of online video, where everyday Korean folks were streaming it before Americans had weaned themselves off of 56K modems?

I think there's a culture gap in there, to be more specific, a creativity gap combined with a high degree of risk-averse behavior. We'll start from there.

Frankly, there aren't a lot of people dropping out of grad school to write cool new software, along with a dearth of real venture or other options to capitalize such ideas (hence, less reward for trying or even succeeding with making something new and cool), as well as top-down structure to the Internet here that resembles the Korean conglomerates (재벌) such as Hyundai or Samsung, i.e. do everything, control everything.

That's why almost everything on the Korean Internet, from searching to news to shopping to internet cafes to blogging is pretty much done on Daum or Naver.com. And that's the kind of things that keeps things simple (and limited) for the Korean user, but generally leaves the development of new ideas, new modes of interacting, and new forms of media from developing.

Basically, Korea's got the best tech, but the least creativity on the Internet. It's a Darwinian paradise for the Internet, where great conditions and perfect weather and a lack of change keep everyone (especially the huge Internet conglomerates) happy, but doesn't provide much impetus for innovation, nor motive for mutation, on top of the other more cultural or social factors.

Perhaps it was the need for more efficient ways to deliver video that spurred the idea, in a less connected US market. Surely that was a factor. And so was the culture of innovation that is Silicon Valley, that characterizes one aspect of American entrepreneurship: bigger risks, bigger gains.

Hence, you get kids dropping out of grad school on what most people would consider whimsy to work on newfangled ideas in their garages, from Apple to Microsoft to Yahoo to Amazon to Napster to Wordpress to YouTube. And those are just the obvious ones.

Microsoft. Ouch.

In each case, it wasn't just a successful American company, but businesses that were models for a whole new form of media, or using that particular tool: from GUI operating systems to licensing software to inventing the a "search engine" for profit to revolutionizing the way people shop to getting organizing the illegal (and legal) exchange of MP3's to bringing blogging to open source, respective with the list in the previous paragraph.

In Korea's case, the technological infrastructure was there, but not the institutional and cultural support for innovating and taking risks on a large scale. People might open online shopping malls and engage in other commerce online, but generally for a fee that goes to pre-formed software and subscription fees to either a Naver or Daum e-commerce service; whether you make money or not, Daum gets paid – you're just a subscriber, in the big picture. Low risk, low gain.

The same is true for UCC, which is really a top-down attempt on the part of the big Internet conglomerates to squeeze more money out of the Korean consumer online, with one eye on YouTube, one firmly on the wallet. But somehow, I feel things aren't lining up.

You don't have the culture or community of a YouTube as having pre-existed the move to commercialize it in Korea, combined with the context in which most Korean consumers are confronted with the prospect of online stardom: do it for a monetary prize!

As I watch PandoraTV or MNCast, I am instantly turned off by the commercials that precede the video I want to watch, or the vacuum cleaner or some mini-gadget's price blinking in my face.

And then the videos – whoa. Most of them are pretty clearly commercials from big companies done in a "YouTube" style, or individuals who are obviously put up to do things; and even when you see real people doing something, it's often pretty derivative or they are obvious attempts to win a prize or gain fame in other venues, i.e. "if I get famous here, I might get on TV!"

If you are a YouTube watcher, you'll know that there are such things there as well, but there is also an avid community of people having video conversations, responding to and commenting on each others videos with their own videos, and all kinds of quirky stuff that comes perhaps from inflated egos, delusions of grandeur, or a desire to be a star; but you also get a lot of people who just do something with friends to be funny, or sending a political message, or even have stuff that you have no clue as to why someone even put it up.

As a Korean "UCC" watcher, I just find most of the stuff either way too obviously commercial or one-dimensional. And the recent popularity of someone like the "Beautiful Girl" who is making the rounds of the online press is actually somewhat sad – this is news?

Sadly, this stuff is only viewable with PC's (hello, why is a Flash-based viewer technology somehow made to be only viewable on PC's when YouTube can be seen on any platform and is on 98% of computers? How the Korean UCC companies managed that one, I don't know.)

And even more sad is the fact that her even doing this is somehow transgressive, somehow funny, or even at all interesting. So she dances around in pajamas lip-syncing (badly) to a song? Oooo-K.

I'm not beating her down – I'm actually pointing out that the fact her video is apparently news is what's sad. I know about the confluence of factors that prevent something like this, such as "What if her teacher's watching?!" or "what if someone pauses the video and puts her face on a porno actress?!" or "she may get cyberstalked" or "people are going to rip on her mercilessly" – the sad thing is that I know why this is news, because what this girl is doing is actually very risky behavior in a society that has been noted by foreign journalists for having a particularly conservative and vicious Internet culture. Clearly "Dog Poop Girl" was only the first of several vicious attacks that have left Koreans noticably more suspicious of each other when it comes to one's image or identity being given to strangers. As a photographer, it has become actually a dangerous thing to do to even work here because of this incident and the cultural aftermath of ones like it.

People forget that it wasn't the taking of the picture itself that was illegal, but the cyberstalking and revelation of her name, home address, citizen's number, and university, along with her major that was the problem, as well as highly immoral and illegal. Still, people just think that taking someone's picture is something akin to a crime.

Still, I don't have much hope for Korean "UCC." I think it's over-commercialized and way too fast, and it goes against the grain of how Koreans actually tend to feel comfortable using the medium. Videos are not cute face shots; they are harder to control, and harder to control how they are used, how your identity is exposed. There's an intimacy that makes Koreans right now extremely uncomfortable.

Who knows? Perhaps in a year, I might be wrong and things might change. But for right now, from where I sit, the fact that a girl in pajamas lip-syncing is news is sad news to me.

"Options"

On the first truly warm night of spring, a couple seems to weigh their options as they leisurely stroll through a bright and busy intersection in Shinchon.

As the spring rolls around, I find myself shooting a lot of couples again. I did a lot of that when I first came to Korea, since there are so many conspicuously conjoined couples on the streets in certain areas, especially Shinchon, near Yonsei and Ewha Womens' Universities.

There are a lot of young people who flock to the area who are not actually from these schools, but yet often make the pilgrimage to this Mecca of generally middle-to-upper class youth in their early 20's, who congregate in what is what is an entertainment district that fits student budgets and sensibilities.

Unlike the Chongno area, which is much centers much more around a late-20's and early-30's working crowd, or the much more vast and staunchly working-class party area of Yeongdeungpo, Shinchon makes up for food and fun that cater to a less refined and monied set of sensibilities by being the marker for the new trends in consumptive habits: the new theme cafe, "in" cuisine of the season, or next development in street amusements that will hopefully yield a stuffed animal for an eager young lady.

It is also a repository of trends that have come and gone in most other places, but where there is enough foot traffic and couples looking for something new to do to keep them afloat: the board game cafe, jjimdak chicken restaurant, or coffee shop where you can get a foot massage or cruise the Internet in "couple chairs."

Kurt Vonnegut Dies at 84

If you don't know who he was, you betta go ask somebody.

From The New York Times:

Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died Wednesday night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long

His death was reported by Morgan Entrekin, a longtime family friend, who said Mr. Vonnegut suffered brain injuries as a result of a fall several weeks ago.

Mr. Vonnegut wrote plays, essays and short fiction. But it was his novels that became classics of the American counterculture, making him a literary idol, particularly to students in the 1960s and ’70s. Dog-eared paperback copies of his books could be found in the back pockets of blue jeans and in dorm rooms on campuses throughout the United States.

Like Mark Twain, Mr. Vonnegut used humor to tackle the basic questions of human existence: Why are we in this world? Is there a presiding figure to make sense of all this, a god who in the end, despite making people suffer, wishes them well?

I still remember my mind being opened by him in uncomfortable ways by the books Fahrenheit 451 and Slaughterhouse-Five, the latter of which was written by Vonnegut. I saw both of the films as well, and they tripped me out, like seriously. And my experience with those works is far from unusual, since they are standard in any serious high school or college course that includes major works of modern American literature.

More from the Times:

His novels — 14 in all — were alternate universes, filled with topsy-turvy images and populated by races of his own creation, like the Tralfamadorians and the Mercurian Harmoniums. He invented phenomena like chrono-synclastic infundibula (places in the universe where all truths fit neatly together) as well as religions, like the Church of God the Utterly Indifferent and Bokononism (based on the books of a black British Episcopalian from Tobago “filled with bittersweet lies,” a narrator says).

The defining moment of Mr. Vonnegut’s life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a young prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids, many of them burned to death or asphyxiated. “The firebombing of Dresden,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote, “was a work of art.” It was, he added, “a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany.”

His experience in Dresden was the basis of “Slaughterhouse-Five,” which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote the critic Jerome Klinkowitz, “so perfectly caught America’s transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age.”

And there it is. I didn't have a lot of time, but I just wanted to get this post out.

Why Korean All-Nighters Are Better Than in America

3 AM. The hunger won't end. Another bowl of cereal won't do.

$20. Twenty minutes. Pound o' pork and raw garlic.

Any questions?

"Korea, Sparkling!"

OK, the cat's officially out of the bag and I don't have to hold my tongue anymore, even though it had been leaked already by others. But not even wild horses got it out of me, a fact of which I am very proud.

So, Korea's official tourism brand is fresh out the box from the Korean Tourism Organization, and ready for your comments.

A key excerpt from the press release:

For the first time in its history, Korea has officially adopted national a tourism brand to nurture the tourism industry. Many countries, in fact, have already developed tourism brands to promote various aspects of their tourism resources and leverage them effectively to entice global tourists. Examples include, 100% Pure New Zealand (New Zealand), Yokoso Japan (Japan), Visit Britain (the U.K) Keep Exploring (Canada), Uniquely Singapore (Singapore), Truly Asia (Malaysia). It is expected that “Korea, Sparkling” will similarly serve Korea’s tourism industry in communicating the country’s redefined image around the world.

Okie dokie. To explain the logo:

The word “Sparkling” is synonymous with shining and dazzling. Additionally, it conveys a sense of revitalizing energy and freshness. In sum, “Korea, Sparkling” intends to denote the concept of “vital refreshment,” – a unique experience available to tourists traveling to Korea and being exposed to the incredible passion of both Koreans and Korean culture. The brand also delivers the message that experiencing Korea offers unique emotional rewards unlike any other.

I'm gonna leave it at that. So, what do you all think? Chime in with your comments.

ADDENDUM: Here's the guy who masterminded the campaign, info about which was on the Korea ESL Cafe, and linked in from Dogbertt at the Marmot.

He seems none too "sparkling" himself. Kind of somber looking for a publicity shot. In any case, his bio reads:

Simon Anholt is an independent policy advisor to the governments of numerous countries, cities and regions on the branding aspects of public diplomacy, economic development, public affairs, cultural relations and trade, tourism and export promotion.

He has written many books, papers and articles on the image and reputation of places and is a well-known public speaker, editor and broadcaster.

He is Editor of the quarterly journal, Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, published by Palgrave Macmillan Journals.

He is the founder and author of three major global surveys of the reputations of places - the Anholt Nation Brands Index, City Brands Index and State Brands Index. These surveys are carried out quarterly on his behalf by Global Market Insite, Inc., in Seattle and are used by many national and city governments to monitor their international standing.

He's an expert, I guess. And apparently, really expensive. Apparently, he didn't spend so much on his 1998-era web site.

The Dangers of Politically Correct History

It's unfortunate that something so obviously a valid argument (English and Korean) – that there were Koreans who collaborated, especially in the recruiting of the so-called "comfort women" – are still beyond the bounds of scholarly debate.

Given the fact that there is a good bit of evidence to show that there were Koreans who collaborated in this horrible, ongoing act, making the assertion is a reasonable thing for a scholar to do.

What makes me suspicious about any "correct" vs. "distorted" history is the political context in which certain issues are raised, and the fact that there is a "right" answer before the question is even fully articulated. The Korean government and media seem to want to construct a history of black-and-white absolutes, in which Korea was a hapless victim; and even beyond the issue of the colonial period itself, if we're assigning national "blame" and talking about collective guilt, then isn't the Korean government, by having fostered, protected, and developed a sex industry (based in no small part on Japanese roots) around the US military for the gathering if capital for the nation – if we're talking about guilt on national and government levels, how is the Korean government also not morally culpable for having perpetrated a continuation of nearly the same kind of oppressive system of sexual labor?

Put another way, from the perspective of the so-called "comfort women," was being forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers much different from returning to Korea and having no other social option than to do the same for American soldiers, especially at the behest of the Korean government?

On a related note, it is also scary to me is how convicted Korean war criminals can be absolved of responsibility after having been convicted of war crimes from eyewitnesses who identified them as having been infamous to their cruelty in the prison camps where they had served as guards over captured American servicemen. There's even a site demanding that compensation be given to the Korean war criminals, with no additional evidence other than they were Korean, and couldn't have really been morally culpable.

The rationale, in a nutshell? They were Korean, and just doing what they had been told. Well, the Americans tortured under certain of these individuals apparently couldn't make that distinction as their guards went above and beyond the call of duty to psychologically and physically torture them.

Huh? Even the Jews had the kapos in the death camps. But Koreans are somehow, by virtue of being Korean in the colonial period, with no additional evidence presented, impervious to guilt, because a court in 2006 assumes so?

So basically, being Korean during the colonial period absolved individuals of any responsibilities for their actions, and by retroactive extension, the then non-existent Korean nation under colonial rule.

And then for the Korean government to sell away future moral culpability for past wrongs – without informing the victims nor ever having compensated them since (which declassified documents talked about here and here and here and here and here revealed to be true in 2005) – isn't that enormously problematic?

And then there's also the fact that the government actively suppressed any talk of this stuff for decades, since it seriously contradicted with the state's interests in keeping this quiet?

How is that not sharing in a great deal of moral culpability for the lifelong pain and plight of the "comfort women" who lived on for far, far longer than 1945? Does anyone really think their suffering was due solely to the Japanese before 1945, or that that suffering ended immediately upon liberation and thereafter?

In other words, when did I step into an alternate universe in which Korean society has valued women's bodies at all throughout most of Korean modern history?

Was that when the Korean government was sending representatives to encourage prostitutes in the "camp towns" around the US military bases to gather capital for the nation? Or perhaps that was when the Park government was exploiting feminized labor throughout the 1960's and 70's? Is that why there are estimated from 300,000 to a staggering one million prostitutes working in the Korean sex industry in South Korea today (4.1% of the GDP by the government's own 2002 estimates)?

Why is this news, from a hardcore feminist perspective, at all surprising? There were Koreans who colluded in the kidnapping of the comfort women. Wow – not surprising, since most of the Koreans involved in the ongoing sex industry employing Korean women, as well as the importation of Filipino and Russian women under the same conditions that Korean women were kidnapped in the colonial period, as well as in the recent upsurge in the human trafficking of Korean women now all over the world since the 2004 Anti-Prostiition Law crackdown...

Seriously – are people around the nation holding their hands over their mouths and fainting in disbelief? In a country in which there are "masturbation rooms" and brothels next to elementary schools?

Come on.

And all the accounts you see present serious problems for the serious historian (as opposed to the kneejerk nationalist kind). As I tell my students of history all the time, refrain from using the passive tense as much as possible. This is not just for stylistic reasons, but also because it's an easy way to elide concrete historical references and credible evidence, which is what good history is based upon.

Most accounts read "were abducted" and "were taken" or "were misled into thinking they were applying for domestic labor" – something like this. If we have the facts evenly laid out and they are apparently distributed such that they offer a similar level of credible density across the entire argument, then why don't the histories tend to read, "After having been kidnapped by a roving band of Japanese soldiers searching for young candidates to be recruited into the ranks of the so-called "comfort women," Yumi found herself placed on a train and bound for..."

Too many of the accounts tend to skip right over recruitment and procurement and emphasize only the horrors of being a sexual slave itself. I'm not pooh-poohing that description, but merely pointing out that I know; I get it. I fully acknowledge the horror of that experience as well as the Japanese military and government's well-documented and historically compelling participation in the entire process.

But the question no one on this side of the East-Sea-of-Japan/Tokdo-Takeshima divide wants to look squarely in the face is the extent to which the overall low value of women's bodies in both societies at the time (which is still partially reflected now) contributed to not only the easy operation, but the relatively easy procurement of soon-to-be "comfort women."

Given the fact that the Japanese state and Korean/Japanese-run industry were in collusion at the time (which brings up the thorny issue of Korean collaboration), and that industry and organized crime were also closely linked (and were well into the development period as well), and that we know that many of the Korean women were brought into the industry by paid domestic recruiters, why is it akin to career suicide to pose the same question of collaboration, especially since the same historical actors – the state, industry, and organized thugs, for example – were on the scene.

Because that's a messy question.

But we forget that historical narratives are constructed around political purposed. The "Holocaust" didn't gain that moniker until the mid-1960's. It didn't become the historical lesson for the world that it is until a significant amount of time after the fact.

This doesn't change what happened. It changed how it is represented. "The Holocaust" happened like a motherfucker, but it took some time for the West to make sense of it, for the considerable political power of both Israel and those who support her to makes its presence felt (and not as a worldwide conspiracy, but as a political force like any other that exist in the world of politics, especially one enabled by a mixture of nationalism and a recent historical "quickening"), as well as for the rest of the world to begin to mold a coherent historical narrative out of such an overwhelmingly horrible act.

The situation with South Korean politics and constructions of "correct" versus "distorted" history makes for any true, deeper exploration into the painful, complex, and stomach-turning morass of the Japanese colonial period nearly impossible, quite ironically, in South Korea.

Think this isn't true? Look at the reactions to professors who even hint that Korea might have benefitted materially from the colonial period – they are summarily fired and their names turned into mud. And to the crazies who don't tend to read very closely before hitting the comment area, I'm not concerned with whether Korea benefitted or not at the present moment; I am only concerned with the fact that, given such a complex period with so complex and dependent factors, this isn't even considered a legitimate historical question.

"Did the Holocaust happen at all" is not something I consider a legitimate question, given the staggering, mind-boggling amount of evidence that anyone who has taken even a passing interest in the subject is faced with. Holocaust denial is political extremism because it is so very historically untenable a line of reasonable inquiry. You would have an easier time convincing me that Neil Armstrong never went to the moon (and yes, I've seen all the conspiracy theory videos and been to the web sites). And it is even more suspicious because it is usually only political extremists who are ever behind it.

However, "To what extent did Korea materially benefit from colonial occupation" is a legitimate historical question. "To what extent was there Jewish collaboration in the camps?" is also a legitimate historical question. And outside of a very narrow zone of unreasonable, undocumentable, and untenable extremes, most historical questions are at least worth asking, even if they may not be fun to hear answered.

And what is frightening about the Red Guard, knee-jerk reactions to Koreans in difficult moments in history, the logic behind people wanting certain professors' heads for even broaching certain historical topics seems to essentially stem from the idea that "they were Korean; that couldn't have happened."

It such professors were met with overwhelming, damning evidence of just how daft and dumb their arguments were, I wouldn't have a problem with this; but most of the reaction, as in the past with similar incidents, is simply knee-jerk nationalism guiding historical and popular discourse, even in the face of someone who might have something worthy of hearing. I'm not saying she's right about her historical assertion; I'm just saying that anyone covering their ears while calling for her head on a silver platter is most unequivocally wrong.

And given all the other sacred cows of Korean national ideology that poses as history from the colonial period, I think I'd like to hear what she has to say. And I'd like to hear more about who did the recruiting, how it was done, and what role the Korean government played in covering up this entire period after the war.

"Latest in Korean Education: In Vitro Violin Lessons"

From The Yangpa:

The world's tiniest violin, a long-time staple of sarcastic sympathizers everywhere, has actually been created by scientists at Seoul National University and is being used to provide violin instruction to newly created fetuses.

"Sarcastic sympathizers." Haha. And there's more:

This new technique is part of a range of prenatal education techniques that Korean parents have begun employing to give their children a head start in an intensely competitive society. Other techniques include eating foods that are thought to help with brain development, reading books to the unborn baby, and hiring a white guy to come shout English lessons up the woman’s vagina.

The Yangpa's back, apparently. Dudes, keep it coming! More than once a month, ya know?

Apple Supports the Troops

Well, I don't know about Apple's political leanings, but apparently iPods help stop bullets:

My wife’s uncle works in a military hospital and told me about this. Its pretty amazing. Kevin Garrad (3rd Infantry Division) was on a street patrol in Iraq (Tikrit I believe) and as he rounded the corner of a building an armed (AK-47) insurgent came from the other side.

The two of them were within just a few feet of each other when they opened fire. The insurgent was killed and Kevin was hit in the left chest where his IPod was in his jacket pocket. It slowed the bullet down enough that it did not completely penetrate his body armor. Fortunately, Kevin suffered no wound.

I guess that wouldn't fall under the warranty, eh?

Of Vulgar Pride and Moral Cowardice

I just got this gem in my email box, with the lovely subject line, "u racist":

i understand the reason for your blogs, and everything, but you're generalizing against the whole race. Why target the specific country "South Korea"??, why not care about the country you live in now, instead of a place thousands of miles away. Your listing many of the problems, and negative things in South Korea, but its not such a bad place. You make it sound like all koreans are so bad. "You shouldn't air our dirty laundry", You make it sound like every single korean is saying, "our country is bad ,but don't tell everyone. And finally, "...What is the point in making blogs such as this??. Granted I have never lived in Korea, but is the situation that hopeless and hostile as you have proposed. After reading your blog I have a distinct fear of being followed, attacked maliciously stared at or even arrested on sight from reading your views of Korea. I need to know this before I step on a plane and travel there. If the feeling of isolation will be that great why would anyone bother to even travel there. There surely must be something of beauty in Korea. someone commented this on your blog. This is waht you have done. You gave South Korea a bad name. You made people scared to go to the country. Why?? Why?? It is a peacful place to live in, a place without all the" bomb iraq, send more troops to iraq, stop the war". And i understand that you have been educated in high institutions and all that stuff, knowing all that history, culture stuff but it really doesn't matter. I surely can't make you stop your actions for it is your right, but just think about what you are doing. Your making Americans oppose South Korea, and its people. Asians are already weak victims in America, so why make them hate them more. I am a South Korean, and i understand what it's like. I understand the things that the government has done wrong, but you have no reason to just make south korea look bad it self. Please be careful when you say about korea, Many aspects of Korea, I am proud of and really enjoy, while you don't understand it, and just talk trash about it. Thank You For reading this

And here was my pretty irritated response. This whole "Why do you hate Korea" schtick is getting old:

I have lived in Korea for 7 years total, off and on, from 1994. I live here now.

If you READ what I say, instead of what you think I say, you'll know I don't generalize to all Koreans, and this is a blog about academic social critique in a mostly casual way.

Most of my blogs use evidence and examples, and most of what I talk about is being talked about in Korean newspapers and television and is considered a social problem by Koreans, too.

The main difference is – I'm not Korean. So I must "hate" Korea, right?

But since this is one of the only sources in English that engages in social commentary, I guess I have to take responsibility for people's views? If they want to believe the thousands of pounds of publicity and media published by Korean tourism agencies, the books, etc, they can. The vast majority of the stuff about Korea is overwhelmingly positive, to a fault.

But I'm an academic. I'm a scholar who specializes in Korean Studies, has learned the language, and places my ass where my mouth is – I live and work and pay taxes and contribute to society here in South Korea. So you know where you can stick your silly accusations of "racism." I report and comment on society as I see it – I don't work for the Ministry of Tourism, so I could give a flying fuck what conclusions people draw, as long as I am fairly conveying what I have seen in its appropriate context.

You want flowers and puppy dogs? Then go somewhere else.

I "don't understand" Korea? And you said you've NEVER LIVED HERE?! I've lived here for seven years. I worked my ass off to pay my dues, learn the language and culture, and have rolled up my sleeves and pitched in to make this a better place. What right do you have, as a person who's never lived here, to just shut my mouth? To tell me to retain silence? Because your name is "Oh" and you have Korean "blood?" Because you are embarrassed that sometimes Korean people can do bad things?

How selfish and petty of you. You sit in your comfortable place somewhere not in Korea and criticize my blog as hurting Korea because it's offensive to your rosy notion of Korea and Asia that's a function of YOUR ethnic pride and identity in ANOTHER COUNTRY? Oh – you certainly are doing a lot to help. Too bad that it is not really concern for KOREA, but more motivated out of personal pride and your fanciful notion of the place, a place you yourself say you have never lived.

How DARE you excoriate me for what I say? If not only because you have little way to actually fairly judge the validity of my points because you yourself say you haven't lived here, your ASS isn't here, tied up with the fate of other Koreans in this place, working together to make it a little bit better. You imply concern out of an AFFECTIVE commitment to Korean pride, but it is little more than an AFFECTED commitment that is based more on your own sense of ethnic pride in a completely different cultural and social context than any Korean living on the peninsula gives a flying fuck about.

Whatever. That's about the dumbest statement out of the several contained in your inane email.

YOU TELL ME WHERE I GENERALIZE ABOUT THE WHOLE RACE, based on some racist or essentialist assumptions. I don't ramble on about how Koreans can't do this, or the "Korean mind" can't understand that, or engage in facile pseudo-cultural arguments that assail Korean people, mores, or values.

I talk about social structure and learned behavior and the specific problems of this society based on this country's particular history. I take a good, hard look at this society and base my critiques on pretty universally accepted notions of fairness, democracy, human rights, and social justice. Koreans arguably take pride in being treated as a modern, rational, and developed society – in fact, newspapers and the person on the street bristle whenever the country is treated as anything but, and rightly so – but when I engage in social critique based on these assumptions, I am "racist?"

It would be "racist" to treat these things around me as quaint idiosyncrasies of an undeveloped, immature people and simply shrug my shoulders and say to myself, "What do you expect? They're Korean."

But I have higher expectations. People accuse me of being a cultural imperialist, or ethnocentric; but these same people – do they sit in bars and restaurants and converse, argue, yell, laugh, debate some more, and finally learn from one another – IN KOREAN? Do you?

The fact that I talk with folks, I hash out my ideas, that I am brave enough to do have these conversations with Korean folks in Korean, means that I have a right to have a voice and an opinion, too. And for as much lip service as you give about wanting to defend Korea or whatever – what have you done? Have you paid your dues? Do you even talk to real Korean folks in their own language about these things?

This blog is the result of thousands of conversations and having gone back and forth with Korean folks, living and working in Korean society, about putting my ass on the line to back up my moral and ethical beliefs. So I quit a lucrative teaching position because they were a bunch of unethical assholes who were forcing me to make choices that I felt would no longer allow me to function as a moral person, to maintain my self respect. Would I be a cultural imperialist for doing that? Or like you, should I have just kept the job, ignored the people certain policies were hurting, and actually participated in the immorality?

You would have shrugged your shoulders and said, "Oh, well. It's Korea." Right? Or excoriated anyone who spoke out about it?

You're so stupid that you don't even realize that amount of LOVE it takes to tenaciously try to change the world you occupy, to leave it a better place. You're so stupid that you don't realize that all of the social issues I am so angry about has emotional relevance to me because they materially affect people I know, I teach, I work with, I share this earth with.

And YOU DARE accuse me of racism? How DARE YOU?

You don't even realize the amount social good that can come from social work, criticism, taking the harder path.

Who is responsible for "giving a bad name" – the people who commit immoral acts, or the people who resist and report them? And exposing them makes them more difficult to carry out.

You are the person who blames the victim for reporting the rape because it shames the family, because it makes others look bad. You are the person who tells the students to keep quiet about the bribery scandals because the "school's name" would suffer. You are the person who attacks the whistleblower and ignores the problems. You just want to kill the messenger and close your eyes to reality because it embarrasses YOU?!

You, sir, are a moral coward.

The simple-minded, knee-jerk responses of people who are more concerned for Korea's "image" (their image, actually) that the actual welfare of Korean people irk me not just because the entire perceived slight is so obviously selfish, but also because the people who take the most offense tend to be the ones who don't even live here, or they once did and left.

In my flurry of keyboard rage, I kind of misunderstood the boldface quotation and thought the writer was saying he hadn't lived in South Korea. Brainfart. But the point is that this is just the kind of moral cowardice that, yes, in my country, enabled practices such as Jim Crow laws and lynching, which got my people hung from trees.

Yes, it was the Cold War and civil rights movement protest pictures of police officers hosing down non-violent protesters and one image of a young boy being viciously attacked by a police dog were showing up on the front pages of Pravda and across the Soviet Union. Yes, they were destroying the image of the United States. They were traitors.

No, the police weren't the ones embarrassing the nation. Or the Ku Klux Klan, which was murdering civil rights workers. Or the terrorists who murdered Medgar Evers on his front lawn, or the cowards who bombed four little girls into oblivion in a black church.

Yes, the people committing the immoral acts were not morally culpable. It's those who report them, right?

Where does the moral burden lie if there are embarrassingly unethical or even inhumane aspects of a society? On those who commit the acts, or those who report and resist them?

So – to paraphrase Janet Jackson – what have you done for Korea lately?

Coward.

Land of the Lost - Is This Tripping You Out Yet?

Kathy Coleman from TV's Land of the Lost – if this little video doesn't trip you out and time warp you back to the 70's, I don't know what will.

Man, I had a crush on Holly. Haven't thought about that for years. Such a nice, wholesome girl. And pretty tough, too! How many girls with pigtails do YOU know who fought dinosaurs? Huh? HUH?

And I think she was just about the smartest, too.