Scribblings of the Metropolitician

The Present State of the Metropolitician

I've been working on a lot of stuff these days, and really getting settled into a nice, calm rhythm. Still, someone remarked, in a recent conversation with me, that I seemed to be getting angrier and angrier, at least on the blog. I guess that's true, but the funny thing is that it actually reflects the fact that I've been feeling more focused on other projects and chilling out.

As little sense as that makes, it been working like this: I've said a lot of what I feel needs to be said on certain topics I'm more concerned with, namely racism, sexism, the education system, and things in Korea. So, my long, serious, more academic posts on these subjects have been waning. Yet, things still pop up in the news, so I do respond to the more egregious things I hear about, which tend to be the things that make me angry enough to actually sit down and write something about. So, all you hear these days is the more reactionary side of me, with less of the more pro-active thinking and writing that marked the earlier days of the blog.

Which isn't a bad thing, I think. It just seems that I need to highlight some of the other directions I've been moving into more, especially in the realms of photography and fashion. As with any person, life brings changes to one's activities and interests. I've been doing a lot more traditional fashion shooting, which brings changes to my frequency (less) and type (more fancy lights) of shooting on Feetmanseoul.com.

I was involved in the aborted launch of a Korean fashion magazine (Faddict), but gained a lot of connections and experience through it. Since I have a column in a fashion industry newspaper called TINNews (Textile Industry News), I leveraged the support I can get from them in terms of picking up the phone and getting models, interviews, and other kinds of face time to start my own "social networked magazine," which happens to also be about Korean fashion and lifestyle called Yahae!

"Suki, 1949."

The idea here is that, if you look at the majority of traditional magazines, they're in a state of flux because media itself is in a state of flux, and that a lot of money still gets wasted on delivering content. The cost of printing, layout designers, shipping and distribution, and a myriad of other things related to the physicality of paper and the medium makes paper magazines expensive. Even with the "online magazine" that exist on professional levels, a lot of effort is required to construct and keep a web site, maintain the server, collate the content, etc. Long gone are the days of the HTML equivalent of the Wild West, back in the late 1990's, when anyone (including myself) could be a "web designer" and put up simple sites. But even then, the barrier to entry was somewhat high, which is why I was able to make extra money in grad school making sites for mom-and-pop shops, even though I was little more than an avid amateur. Because nearly everyone was, back then.

But, as Biggie Smalls, "things done changed" and "this ain't back in the day." Nowadays, slick content delivery vehicles spread ideas around specific communities faster than you can say the word "meme." What is "publishing," anyway? Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, and Tumblr all allow you to get the word out, to connect with communities, to have arguments, plan events. I realize that a lot of my energy to speak out and connect with others has been subsumed by Facebook. In fact, many of my most recent posts are digested and adapted forms of a Facebook-based debate or even an annotated photo set I put up there.

So, the idea is that I have reached a professional-level ability to produce fashion content about Korea, from the street to the studio to the runway, shoot pro models and Korea's top fashion designers, and have the connections to start my own major photo projects (such as the one I started with Darcy Paquet in which we do an edgy, interesting portrait of a Korean movie star (my part), accompanied by an in-depth interview, with both types of content working on a level a bit different from that seen in the mainstream Korean media.

Look for that and many more samples of this work in a new column about to start late this week or early next week in Oh My News!, which might seem a strange place to publish a picture column, but makes a lot of sense because of its high readership through both itself directly and through the Naver news feed. I plan to gain a lot of  expsoure this way -- most importantly not just to the expat community, but to the greater Korean community at large -- so expect to hear a lot more about my pictures from that end of things in the coming weeks.

This doesn't mean I'm going to be doing less here. In fact, I want to focus more on light social critique through photography, as opposed to long, textual scribbles, going into the future. This blog originally started as a photography blog, to those who remember. It served its purpose to me in the way it evolved into the purpose it served. Now, I'm just naturally going in a slightly different direction, back to more expression through the camera.

What that should mean is more interesting content, as I continue FeetManSeoul.com and do street photo (and feed some of it into Yahae!), continue to blog and show pictures here, on my own personal blog, and gather a team to bring more fashion content into the Yahae! project. That project is in development -- live, not offline -- and producing magazine content already. Right now, a lot of it is experimental, but it's gelling together fast and is most definitely interesting. And that's what real "content development" is all about.

Expect a lot in the next several weeks and the immediate months to come. And keep track of me and these projects. Gonna do some shameless social networking promotion, but hey, it's my blog. If you can't do it here, where can you?

Follow me on Twitter @metropolitician.
Follow Yahae! on Twitter @yahaemag.
Read the world's first social networked Korean fashion magazine!
Yahae! at http://yahae.tumblr.com.

And of course, sign up for Seoul's only photo classes taught by a native speaker of English!

See you here, as well as 'round the Net!

The Absence of a "Korean Google" and the Failure of the Korean Intranet

My argument has always been that with Korea's robust internet infrastructure, it should have been the breeding ground for the growth of global internet companies from Korea, on the level of Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Digg, examples ad infinitum.

But it hasn't been. Korea hasn't grown a SINGLE world-level Internet brand or idea. Not a one. I'm not talking about tech and infrastructure and things. I'm talking about the "cultural content" (문화컨텐츠) that's the buzzword these days, as well as the huge amounts of "soft power" that Korea's supposed to have, which people like former culture minister and public intellectual Lee O young (이어령) are always pushing as the next frontier for Korea to conquer. "Nation Branding" is a complete failure, and that I define not as the absence of an image or a set of associations for Korea, but that the government and private bodies who strive to achieve mastery over the message of Korea's brand have not had any success. After millions of dollars and much fretting, years later, Korea -- as the sum of many campaigns, silly slogans, and irrelevant mascots -- is no more able to actively control the message and its image than any time before. 

As much as the Korean goverment is pushing esoteric Chosun-era, royal foods, Korean BBQ and chicken dominate, especially in the Koreatowns across the world. A tipping point factor? In LA, one reasons Korean places became so popular, besides the good food and universal appeal of roasting meat, is because they stay open late and ignore no-smoking laws. And the universal combination of chicken and beer is so successul because -- DUH -- in the States these days, there's no established way to consume chicken and beer! Together, that is. Fried chicken is primarily delivered through fast food restaurants, or as dinner. But not as a specialty unto itself.

But it wasn't top-down, Korean government campaigns that were responsible for any of Korean food's popularity.

Nor with kimchi, whose growth in popularity has been as organic as most of its ingredients. While the government now is singing the praises of fermentation (and, no, it's "not sexy"), or people are still worried about whether "it might be too hot for foreigners" (umm, guys, we're not "foreigners" in our own countries, can we do something about that term?), or if it smells too bad (note that feta cheese is very popular, but it literally smells like shit), kimchi's popularity has simply naturally grown. The involvement of Korean government suits hasn't affected things one bit, either way.

Same goes for Korean film, pop, and the like. Certain things become popular on their own merit, but the government is inherently incapable of pushing anything that people actually like or want, before the government knows that people like or want it, before it becomes an obvious trend. Remember that Old Boy, a film the government would never have wanted "foreigners" to see had it not won at Cannes, started the so-called "wave" as the government named it, but that was more the result of the relaxing of censorship laws and the maturation of the Korean film industry, which was more of a "perfect storm" than a perfected plan.

And back to the failure of the Korean Intranet. Korean business and forward planning in general is all about laying the groundwork and creating the environment for growth. That's why we have specially zoned areas like Guro and such, so as to grow certain industries. But what about the Korean Inter(intra)net? We are talking about Korea's "soft power" in having a culture that can be promoted and spread overseas, Korea being a hub of "cultural content" production, etc.

But no one is willing to ask the obvious question of why there isn't a Korean Google, YouTube, or ANYTHING on global level? We've ALREADY done the experiment, which has to do with the creation of the concrete conditions conducive to the building of stuff --  the Korean Internet had/has all the technical advantages there can be -- no "digital divide," broadband internet penetration on a level that boggles the mind, widespread computer/electronic literacy, no upload speed caps, you NAME it.

Where has Korea's "soft power" been? Sitting idly by, waiting for just the right moment to formulate itself?

People are afraid to deal with a key issue -- while Korean IT and infrastructure, with the help of the government clearing a path, has done really well as a physical structure, where's the beef? Why has it FAILED to produce anything?

You know what the answer is here.

It's other factors -- the "soft" ones that have added up to a crisis. An outdated, colonial education system that has evolved into increasingly more stringent, but less educationally-effective testive regime, a social structure that owes more to nearly a century of militarized culture than true Confucianism, and the myriad ways that has added up to stifling innovation, not rewarding creativity, penalizing people for having new ideas, and causing an aversion to risk.

All of THESE things are the key to LEVERAGING whatever potential for "soft power" you might have. But would anyone really argue that Korea is a culture -- on ANY level -- that encourages innovation, creativity, risk-taking, and going against the grain?

Somewhere in the magical mix that created global companies, which were ALL created WITHOUT major government help running interference, since if you remember, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, Digg, etc. were once the ideas of nerdy punk kids with an idea in their figurative garages -- creativity, risk-taking, innovative thinking were all KEY ingredients.

That's what's missing in the Korea's secret sauce here.

And government can't help with it. Even the PERFECT infrastructure and growth environment didn't help Korean IDEA PRODUCTION one bit.

And now that the Korean Internet has essentially been OPENED by the smartphone, mobile devices, and open-source software and such, Korean Internet is in no condition to even compete.

As a person who'd LIKE to see Korea produce some ideas, who'd LIKE to see Korean "soft power" find traction, I'm worried. I'd call this a crisis. Twitter came in here and kicked Me2Day's ASS. Facebook is about to put the finishing moves on Cyworld. Groupon and dozens of others are entering the markets agresssively. And yeah, Google is working out, improving its Korean searches (have you used Google these days in Korean recently?!) and pumping up its muscles, like the little dawg on the cellblock who is prepping to someday soon make the big man in the yard his little byatch.

Excuse my French, but things aren't looking good.

But like before, I'll probably be accused, at worst, of fan-boy boosterism (remember my predictions about the iPod or UCC or Facebook -- "you're crazy! Koreans will never..."), or at worst, of being "anti-Korean."

YAWN.

More predictions to come true: Korean Facebook users are being added in exactly the REVERSE direction that they were in the States. Here's it's also classed and cultured -- those with more interntional biz/social connections were there first, concomitant with English-speaking Koreans, and those who were generally more tech-savvy and open-minded. It tended to start with professionals in their late 20's/30's and internationally-based students in their early 20's. Right now, Koreans in high school and below are the last to go. But they'll be mostly on board by the end of the year, and Cyworld is going to shit a 황소.

Twitter's won. Game over.

Tumblr's only being used by those in-the-know, the super-coolios, as in the States, but it's spreading.

The smartphone is driving it all -- Korean friends, all the time, say things like, "I plan to register for Facebook as soon as I get my smartphone!" And after they "study" it, with the help of a couple best-selling books with titles such as "How to Use Facebook" and such.

And Google? With the infiltration and integration of Android, along with it generally being the standard on the iPhone as well, Google is getting trojan-horsed in like a mofo.

Bad news for Naver. Along with its archaic, pay-for-play search results. And the more financially squeezed Naver gets, the more it'll sully the quality of its search results. Even as Google has a worldwide user base and many more income streams, such that it doesn't have to compromise the quality of its search.

Google making Naver its bitch? Crazy talk?

When I was talking up YouTube Korea, when I was involved in its launch, everyone laughed. Korean video sites are so much faster! And they have HD (YouTube was just starting then). YouTube "isn't right for Koreans" (I haven't heard THAT a dozen times!) And with the real-name verification system, YouTube doesn't even have an advantage here -- and yet, they're still the standard.

When's the last time a high school kid uploaded a video to MNCast to expose an abusive teacher?

Oh, right. MNCast doesn't exist anymore. And the videos on domestic systems -- along with most of their content -- are just rips off of YouTube, or put there as an afterthought.

Whatever. I'll be right about this again, and when it all comes true, people will respond like they knew it all along. I'm just glad these blog posts have date stamps.

I wouldn't be writing this if I weren't wincing at the idea of "Korea" getting its ass kicked on the playground. Or slowly being made into a bitch in its own backyard.

Photo Classes for May

Spring's here, and it's time to get your photo skills together!

We've got Beginner, Intermediate, and a special Studio Master Class forming up for the May cycle. Check out the roster of classes in detail and remember the new page for the best English-language photo classes in Seoul. Six years and running, mostly by referral and word-of-mouth, I've been spreading the word farther and wider through Facebook Ads and better promotional ideas. Here's our Facebook page address:

http://www.facebook.com/photoseoul

Ain't that cool?

Check out what we got, sign up, and get to lairning that camera of yours once and fer all!

Ya hear?