Scribblings of the Metropolitician

Top 10 Images, Cliches, and Other Annoying Contrivances That Korean Culture Promoters Should Stop Using

Why, you might ask, should certain images stop being used in advertisements and other promotions aimed at non-Koreans? Well, because they're cliched and trite, mostly, and based upon faulty assumptions of what foreigners know/can know about Korea. They also are images that are the result of an ethnocentric myopia that produces images of what Koreans think foreigners should see about Korea, as opposed to what a non-Korean might want to see. Cases-in-point: putting singer Rain in a "Korea, Sparkling" ad when most people in the target market has no idea who he is. Means a lot to Koreans, but nothing to non-Koreans. Same with an ad that put Korea's president at the time on the screen, which was an expression of desperation in itself -- note, you shouldn't have to put your nation's political leader into tourism ads, hawking the nation's wares, especially when no one knows what he looks like. Besides you, that is.

And certain images, such as b-boys breakdancing, has meaning more to Koreans than outsiders. What do break dancers mean to Koreans? The practitioners and the only-recently-recognized art form in Korea symbolize a shift to more cultural openness and a new fusion that exists between "East" and "West" and are living symbols of the "new" that goes with Korea's "old." We're dynamic and hip, dude!

To say, North Americans and especially beyond, they're symbols of American culture. Or black American culture. What do break dancers have to do with Korea, again? Oh -- I get it. Korea's hip and cool. Err, kinda. It's trite and cliched. Think about it another way. I'm watching a commercial promoting Malaysia as the "new destination in Asia" or some shit. And then I see break dancers pop-locking across the screen. WTF?

So, with that, I begin the perfunctory and arbitrary Top Ten list of images, cliches, and other annoying contrivances that I never, ever want to see again, and which sully or confuse Korean brand imaging:

10) People breakdancing, especially with other folks in Korean traditional clothing and/or playing traditional Korean instruments. I just think -- why the fuck am I watching "Breaking: Electric Boogaloo" in some Korean tourism spot? And anyway, it's cliche. Get over this image, please.

9) Grinning Korean celebrities smiling and holding their arm out in any welcoming gesture, or in the direction of another graphic. We don't know who they are, and even if we do, it looks desperate. Kim Yuna sells everything, but I don't want to see her in her skates in a Korean tourism ad. Do you really think that makes me want to come to Korea more, or does it just make you look desperate to try anything?

8) Foreigners marveling at things that are actually quite normal, or at least not worth busting a nut over. Like trying a dish, at which point a look of astonishment and wonder washes over the white face of the taster, who then gives an overly-hearty thumbs up and a smile right into the camera. Cue vomiting.

7) Obviously forced shots of foreigners looking into the camera and yelling unison the words "Fighting" or "Number one!" Or the words "I love Korea!" It's obvious and contrived, unconvincing, and I'm not fucking 5 years old. Korean media people underestimate their audiences, even their own Korean ones. People these days watch The Sopranos, CSI, 24, and other shit. The average media consumer isn't a child anymore. And web-savvy and relatively more media-sophisticated foreigners certainly don't respond to "Korean kimchi, number one! I love Korea!" That's just plain fucking lame and lazy.

6) Any swooshing graphics, energetic bass lines punctuating video, or those awful synthesizer orchestra "hits." No trumpets played over news footage of Koreans winning any prize, and you only get to show either the national flag or a graphic of the peninsula on the map, not both, and only once.

5) No images of factories producing cars, robotic arms putting microchips onto a circuit board, or Korean tech workers wearing white suits in a clean room, inspecting a machine part prominently in front of their visor and before the camera. For that matter, no shots of Koreans in anything white, for safety's sake. That would eliminate the danger of researchers in white jackets, scientists in white jackets, or doctors in white jackets. Taekwondo is an exception, though. Those things they wear when doing the cool, jumpy, spinny stuff aren't jackets.

4) The use of any superlatives. Korea is the "best" or "most" of anything, or being the anything-est in Asia, or the "first" when they weren't (note Yonsei, you weren't/aren't "the first and the best" at anything, at least according to any list I've seen lately). Koreans just literally make that shit up, and it just sounds either arrogant or annoying, and often, both. Shit, even Harvard would never arrogate themselves to have a slogan like "the first and the best", even though there's some legitimate argument to both claims. You just sound like a dick.

3) Authoritative narrative voiceovers. Try to sound friendly and engaging. Again, not like a know-it-all dick. Western media left that behind in the 1960's. Except for James Earl Jones saying "This is CNN" or something, which is cool. But there's a reason Morgan Freeman does so many voiceovers. He's nice. James Earl Jones was Darth Vader. Americans are afraid of Darth Vader. He's your father, he cut off your arm, and he's a dick. Westerners don't like authority. Koreans are still used to Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan-style, apparently. In Korea, father still knows best, it seems. In the West, daddy cut off our arm, symbolically castrated us, and that pisses us off. Germans, Italians, and many others don't like big daddy figures any more (you know who I'm talking 'bout, ya'll). Darth Vader encapsulated western fears in 1980's "The Empire Strikes Back," as he uttered the words that reverberated in our culture across the decades, with "No, Luke. *I* am your father." He was the big, black dick who threatened the very integrity of the known universe. Anyway, it's very Freudian. Just trust me on this one.

2) Don't ever make a picture of a Korean woman in a royal, Chosun-era hanbok prominently using a cellphone again, ever. EVER. I threw up a little bit in my mouth when I saw that.

1) Stop using the word "wave" with anything related to Korea again. The "wave" has ebbed, and no one but Koreans who read their own press releases (because that's what the reporting generally was) believed in any fucking "wave," anyway. And once the suits got into it, they ruined it, anyway. You raised censorship restrictions, Korean media has high production values these days, you no longer live in a military dictatorship and have actual freedom of expression. So now, you have some media that non-Koreans might actually find interesting. Cool. Don't get a huge fucking complex, or have a touchdown party every time some Korean actor shows up in a 3rd-rate Hollywood film. You're not destined to "take over" or "dominate" anyone else's film industry. You just have freedom of speech, good production values, and more artists making cultural products than during the old days of dictatorship and economic deprivation. Cool, we like you, welcome to the club. Just attend a few meetings before declaring yourself president.

Korea's Unique Selling Proposition (USP), Or Lack Thereof

As those of you who've been paying special attention during my long bouts of blogging inactivity will know, I've been heavily involved with organizations and committees tasked with the job of promoting Korea as a tourist destination, or Korean culture itself. I do a bit of work here and there for government bodies, and am a member of the mostly-symbolic Presidential Commission on Nation Branding. And the closer I get to the core, the more clear it becomes that the promotion of "Brand Korea" is inherently crippled and continuously doomed to failure.

The main problem with the promotion of Korea, above several others, is that Korean ethnocentric myopia, or what I affectionately call the "Korean ethnocentrism reality distortion field," prevents an objective assessment of the basic, necessary assumptions that are required to even start thinking about the promotion of Brand Korea.

This ethnocentric myopia prevents even the most basic question that must be asked in the fields of advertising and marketing from even being asked, which is: What is Korea's unique selling proposition (USP)? This is basic freshman Marketing 101, but Koreans are remarkably bad at thinking about this question objectively, if at all, when planning a promotion or media campaign.

In other words, as a non-Korean sitting on my ass eating Cheetos in Iowa, nursing a cafe latte in NYC, eating muësli in Copenhagen, or fish & chips in London, why on God's green earth should I care a whit about Korea? The corollary question is: Why should I care about China or Japan any less, enough to think about Korea, about which I know next-to-nothing, nor have any reason to find out more? Japan has ninjas and samurai and geisha, as well as Godzilla, naughty schoolgirls, and cool animè. China has the Great Wall, kung fu, and Jackie Chan, not to mention sweet-n-sour chicken, huge buildings, and other things that only 1.4 billion people could both create and enjoy. China's China and Japan's Japan, man. To ape the words of the immortal Mel Brooks: "Branding? We don't need no fucking branding."

I know, I know. Koreans, at this point in the argument, are usually chomping at the bit to point out what they think we should all know about Korea's unique history, aesthetics, and other aspects of the culture. Korea's had a hard time, a difficult history, has generally been screwed over by bigger powers, Japan stole this and that cultural treasure, etc. Or that Korean temples are as defined by the empty space as much as the presence of objects; that Korean companies lead in the semi-conductor industry, Samsung makes superior cellphones, or that Koreans invented the movable-type printing press before Gutenberg.

The point is - no one cares. To a complete outsider, to the fanny pack-sporting tourist, this JUST DOESN'T MATTER. Korea, on a superficial level, is just not as exciting as the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, or Tiananmen Square. Hallasan ain't got nothing on Mt. Fuji, and Kyoto makes Kyeongju look like an empty parking lot by comparison. Sorry - it's true.

Back to the USP: Why would Joe Schmoe come to Korea? Not from the point of view of a proud Korean, but from the wallet-view of a breadwinner living in Florida with a hankering to take a trip to Asia WHO HAS NO PARTICULAR REASON TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT KOREA NOR CARE ABOUT ITS HISTORY OR PEOPLE beyond the latest news about North Korea, occasional Korean figure skater, or famous Korean actor who manages to become an overblown extra in a Hollywood movie or the main character in a B-rated genre flick - no one cares about Korea.

Sorry.

In the standard Korean way of presentation of the country's attributes, it's a losing proposition, not a winning, unique one. On the level of objects and monuments, dances and rituals, places to go, things to see, China and Japan have simply got it on lock. You just can't touch them. At all. Fugeddaboutit. Give up.

Proud Korean citizens and nationalists, please calm down and put your guns and knives away. I'm not saying that China and Japan ARE objectively better in any sense, but just that, at least on the level of big monuments and other touristy cultural ephemera, their shit is just bigger, brighter, or more famous. Period. This is an indisputable fact. YOU, as the Korean nationalist direct descendant of King Sejong himself, might think Kyeongbok Palace to be superior in some way to the Forbidden City, but 99.99% of non-Koreans don't. And that's mostly because most foreigners don't even know the Kyeongbok Palace exists.

So, on the level of superficial touristy shit, Korea has no USP over that of it's nearest and more famous neighbors. Similarly, in this situation, if you were a marketer or copywriter tasked with promoting a little-known, niche product that most people have scarcely heard of, against two monster ones that everyone knows and dominates the market, you'd have your work cut for you.

And you surely wouldn't start out by trying to compete in terms of the strengths of your competitors. Why on earth would you do that? Famously, Muhammed Ali wasn't dumb enough to start trading punches with George Foreman; he would have been shattered from the inside-out. So he fought according to his strengths, did the infamous "rope-a-dope" and egged Foreman on until he exhausted himself. Then Ali took his shot, and the much-beloved underdog knocked Foreman the fuck out.

Similarly, although less dramatically, Korea working her opponents on the level of their strengths is pretty silly. Sure, from the Korean point-of-view, Korea's cultural treasures are points of pride and demand proud attention; but on the international level, especially from the point-of-view of the more traveled tourist that would even consider coming to Korea in the first place, Korea just ain't that interesting. There's not even a recognizable cityscape. For interesting buildings, I'll go to Shanghai. Again, sorry.

So, we return to the question: What is Korea's USP?

Korean Tourism Organization (STO), Seoul Tourism Organization (STO), as well as pretty much every PR firm and marketing company contracted to do cultural promotion work to international audiences, I'm giving you the Million Dollar Answer.

Korea's USP is found in EXPERIENCES.

Sounds simple, don't it? I've told this to countless suits working in these orgs, but they don't listen. They don't bother to think about the factors behind the rising numbers of foreigners coming here and even choosing to live here, who then have friends visit them, and of this group, many more people fall in love with Korea. Many people who otherwise had nothing to do with Korea ended up coming on a trip, a stopover, a visit to a friend, a stint in the military, and ended up coming back - to STAY. Of course, the only way to do this is to whore oneself out by teaching English, but hey, it's work. And it's not that bad a life, at least, for a time.

So wait - Korean culture is actually pretty sticky, once you get introduced to it. So, one might assume that if you can communicate what is sticky about it, get the word out there, then more foreigners might be interested in coming to check it out. But this is where the problem begins:

1) Koreans have no idea, because of ethnocentric myopia, what it is about Korea that foreigners tend to like. They're too busy asking us if we know what kimchi is. or worrying about some fantasy of having to present a certain national image of Korea.

2) Koreans also have no idea that they indeed DON'T KNOW that they have no idea why foreigners come here. In other words, they don't even know there's a fundamental problem with this cognitive disconnect. Put yet another way, Koreans in these fields don't even know how unable to see the big picture they really are.

3) Koreans are, by extension of the same problem created by the "ethnocentric myopia reality distortion field" that surrounds everything related to the catchphrase "culture," that they spend all their energy promoting things that THEY THINK NON-KOREANS SHOULD KNOW ABOUT without thinking about WHAT NON-KOREANS MIGHT ACTUALLY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT.

4) And even with what Koreans think they do know about foreigners, it is usually based on flawed, untrue assumptions. That's why Koreans always ask if we know what kimchi is (it's like common knowledge, yo), or that Americans don't eat fish (we have coastlines and fishermen, too, and seafood restaurants, duh), or that we don't eat spicy foods (salsa sells more than ketchup in the US and all peppers come from the Americas, what up?).

Back to the $1,000,000 answer, seen through these 4 major problems: Koreans are too busy underestimating what foreigners DO KNOW and CAN KNOW about Korea, even as there is a knee-jerk response to engage in the simplest possible conversation about "culture," as defined in palaces, temples, foods, and dances. And Koreans continue to draw a line not-to-be-crossed around the culture, because Koreans are generally still uncomfortable about thinking of non-Koreans as insiders. The idea of the foreigner centers around the idea of them as "perpetual guests" and not 2% of the population. Or even as tourists, they cannot really know anything about Korea, so just show them some palaces, walk them around a museum, and take their money.

But Korea's strength is in EXPERIENCES. Even the Korean food that has become popular overseas, from kimchi to kalbi, Korean chicken-n-beer houses, taekwondo, tv dramas, and on and on - these are EXPERIENCES.

When foreigners come to Korea accidentally, but then end up falling in love with the culture, it's about EXPERIENCES. Drinking soju while roasting meat in a back-alley meat joint, staying out all night in the clubs of Hongdae that never close, going to bars where there's no "last call," sitting outside a convenience store, eating dried squid and sipping a beer - these and a million other aspects of "life in the big city," which is hip and fun, but much cheaper than Tokyo, while being much more cosmopolitan and compelling than Beijing - define Korea's USP.

Back in the day, Seoul was not a place to live for foreigners, even 20 years ago. Koreans had never heard of nachos or email, wine tasted like cough syrup, internationally famous DJ's didn't include Seoul on their tours, and things were general rustic and rough around the edges. Tokyo was a beacon of light by comparison, and China was still China, however you cut it, even back then.

But Korea's got something now, with a mix of the rough and rustic, but elements of a culture flyng headlong into the far-flung future. And as many aspects of that mix, remix, and otherwise come together, many, many points in the culture just become COOL.

And that's part of the problem.

the abstract coolness of Korean culture is a tough thing for cultural nationalist-style Koreans to wrap their minds around, as they fumble about bragging about monuments, sites, and such, thinking only in terms of superlatives and flattering statistics. This, even as Koreans generally only think about Korea AS KOREANS, without even bothering to consult foreigners about it, or even try to think in terms of their possible point-of-view. A telling point: no foreigners sit in positions of editorial or budgetary power in these organizations, if there are any foreigners involved AT ALL. Often, promotions aimed at the international audience aren't even proofread by a native speaker of English, let alone have anyone international involved in the actual planning or content.

And this practice really drives the nails into the coffin of Korean promotional planning. If you were an ad agency tasked with selling a new form of brassiere to women, would you proceed without any women in creative? If you were marketing a product to African-Americans, would you not try to have African-Americans involved in the process? Or me, as an owner or a PR agency in say, New York City, wouldn't I be insane to take a huge account (and money) to reach the Korean community WITH NO KOREANS INVOLVED IN THE PROJECT AT ALL, EVEN AS PROOFREADERS?

Of course that would be crazy. But this is exactly what happens every single day in Korean creative agencies, involving millions of dollars in operating budgets, all over Korea, ALL THE TIME. And the government wonders why still, more tourists go visit Vietnam each year than come to Seoul. And the numbers don't improve, even as the government dumps more money into the process.

Yeeeeah. Umm, DUH.

The old story of the frog in the well applies here, on so many levels. Or, to use another metaphor, it's an actual case of the blind leading the blind. And this is just the beginning of the problem...

Korea's Dream Come True!

Why, this is just perfect!

You get a cheap brown worker whom you don't want here physically to provide the labor, you literally put a harmless white face on it, and instead of teaching kids to be more open about using a foreign language with a foreign PERSON, you simply let them play with a robot. Because of course, that's the best way to solve the problem, since foreigners are so SCARY, have HIV, molest children, destroy the honor of hapless Korean women in their free time, etc.

And the only reason foreigners break their contract (there's actually only a midnight run rate of 3%, despite the stereotype) or have friction in the workplace is because of us, not the hagwon owners who lie about working conditions, create a completely unprofessional workplace environment, and who exist in a system that completely rewards them for exploitative practices, but provides many foreigners with little real recourse other than to simply leave. Instead of fixing that, we got robots!

Less brown people behind a fake white face, learning foreign languages without the annoying associated crap of having to learn foreign ways of thinking or interacting with foreign people?

Like Korea's love of b-boy culture, rap, and other kinds of black culture -- black culture without black people!

Now, the pattern's expanded -- learning English without having to deal with dirty barbarians!

It's Korea's dream come true!

(HT to Alia)

Oh, Go Screw Yourself, "GO! Overseas!"

Just got tweeted a link from some site called "GO! Overseas", which has a "10 Don'ts for Teaching Abroad in South Korea." Sounds like it was written with the following editorial guidelines in mind: "Be as frank as possible, but don't make Korea look bad, since we're a promoter of overseas workers and need to make everything seem as pleasant as possible." With your amateurish, out-of-focus classroom shot and generic stock image of Korea.

Typical seeming helpful-but-not pap. Like any of you idiots have any deep knowledge of the problems on the ground here.

What really got me, though, was the following quote at the end of their insipid article:

For some reason, there are teachers in Korea who don’t like teaching and don’t like Korea. Do they leave? Some do, but others opt to stay on and gripe to anyone who will listen about how things “make no sense here.” Stay away from these downers. Instead, make friends who enjoy teaching and who can help you through your problems. Make friends with Koreans who can explain why certain cultural bits are the way they are. Just don’t bitch. You’re only spreading negativity.

Readers, you all will have to excuse me, because I'm gonna have to make it raw for these idiots.

A hearty "fuck you" to Go! Overseas.

"For some reason?" You know, I am really sick and tired of this glossing over of why perfectly decent college graduates from North America, who are no better or worse than their peers, overall, get no understanding as to why many "gripe" or "complain" after working here. I've seen and sent (with recommendations) many an undergraduate I taught in my classes to Korea. I myself went on a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) in 1994, well before the English teacher boom started. I saw the Korean government's horrible attempt to launch a program like ours -- the EPIK/KORETA program -- fail miserably in its first years, and continue to limp along today. I see the thousands of kids coming to work their first jobs in hagwons get crunched on by this very corrupt, largely unregulated system and spit out again.

It's not the kids, folks.

Let's just talk about the Fulbright ETA program, which has a primary goal of promoting cultural exchange and international understanding -- not exploiting these kids for all the English they can get. Beginnning with this markedly different assumption, we also get an applicant pool with a ratio of about 1/5 people applying being accepted. Fulbright ETA is actually not super-comepetitive, actually. But it scrutinizes enough. And we don't even have TESOL or any certificates! Yet, we've always been the most-desired teachers in any provinces. What keeps the experience pretty positive? The Fulbright office in Seoul is an advocate for the TEACHER, not the school or institution. Go into KORETA and you're getting screwed on your contract? You don't have anyone in your corner. We also have a 2-month orientation, including language training and all kinds of pedagogical work, from the history of the Korean education program to classroom workshops, lesson planning, etc. Fulbright draws upon the same pool of kids who are always accused of "bitching," yet our program's turnover rate is nearly negligible, and our returnee rate getting higher every year. And the Korea ETA program has been lauded by the US State Department (who sponsors it) as not only one of the best programs of its type, but one of the best-run ETA programs of any country with one.

Why is that? And why did Fulbright turn down the Korean government cold when it proposed expanding the Fulbright ETA program to "2000 by 2000" in 1994? After which it began its KORETA (later, EPIK, after that program's massive failure) program?

Because Korea is a backwards country when it comes to business adminsitration, strategic organizational planning, human resources management, and simply the fine art of doing business and sticking to contracts.

I know many, many businesspeople who HATE doing business in Korea, or bitch about it to no end, for the same reasons as English teachers do. There is no respect for contracts here, there is little recourse for breach of contract or illegal treatment, and often, Koreans will just plain lie when entering into a business relationship.

So, it is precisely BECAUSE Fulbright in Seoul runs interference for its grantees that the vast majority of us (myself included) have a positive experience as an English teacher here in Seoul.

Now, I won't even list the comedy of errors that is common to just about any Korean government-run program. Suffice it to say that it is a matter of INTERESTS. The government-run programs have the same set of interests as a hagwon does, which is telling: "Milk that teacher for all s/he's worth, for as little money as possible. And since they are essentially indentured servants with no legal recourse or rights (as a practical matter, anyways), we can violate contract terms and generally act like dicks. Or you can go the fuck home."

And many do, after completing their contracts. A few even do a "midnight run." It's really funny that no one ever asks the question of why foreigners sometimes do break their contracts and just go home. Most of the people who come here are not surly losers who plan to uproot themselves from all they know, move to East Asia, and plan to dedicated a year or two of their life to working here, fresh out of college. I would characterize most of these people as being possessed of some sense of adventure, discovery, and a desire to have some decent fun while doing it.

And what do they find here? Not only are many disillusioned by the lies they've been told, their work environments are very unprofessional. Given no specific training on-site, with textbooks that are often handed to them the day of class, and the supervision of mostly uncouth and crass owners, emotional and overly partial Korean managers, and the illogic of Korean office management, on top of having no help with cultural adjustment, etc.

These young kids go negative, get unprofessional, and start hating "Korea." Which they don't, but their work life defines 90% of "Korea" to them, and it SUCKS.

So, those who tend to have a negative view of Korea are those who tend to have a negative work experience, in my broad base of experience. And by extension, many young people who come in through different vectors -- internships, exchange programs, etc. -- tend to be far more positive.

And again, many of those in say, the ETA program, have had a positive experience by virtue of the fact that we have ample PROTECTION from same backwards administrative practices, etc. Because they do HAPPEN, but we have a particularly well-connected HAMMER OF THOR who can squash just about any problems that comes up, such as when your country-ass principal starts grumbling about farming you out to the local community college because his best friend works there, or your vice-principal starts bitching about why you shouldn't just sit in your desk staring into space until 5PM, like the other teachers, when your last class ends at 11AM. Like you can do anything useful in the school, anyway, as a foreigner.

Point is, the big, motherfucking, fat elephant in the room is KOREAN ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE and UNPROFESSIONALISM, which even Koreans are sick and tired of, but just can't do anything about.

OK, BREATHE.

You really want to know how to have a good experience in Korea teaching English? You don't need 10 fucking tips from an idiotic copywriter. You need only two, from someone on the ground, who yeah, hates Korean business culture, but doesn't hate Korea.

1) Find a program like the American-run Fulbright ETA program or something similar, which has someone running interference for you and has your back if you have a problem.

2) Try to find a job or Korean-run program in which you've heard people had generally good experiences, not by fiat of luck, but because of the administrative practices themselves.

And go fuck yourselves, Go! Overseas for publishing pap that you try to pass off as "helpful tips," while avoiding conversation about the real problem and blaming the victims.

Again, a hearty "Fuck you," Go! Overseas!

On the Subject of Subway and Other Violence...

I've been talking about this subject for literally years now.

In the case of my own bogus arrest for committing the crime of being harrassed by a drunk, homeless asshole, or the many cases of assaults on young women and foreigners that have been rising for years, and regarding why I don't even take the subway in Seoul, given a choice, and the ongoing pattern of either directly or virtually attacking any woman who dares violate the social norms -- note that no MAN has every been the subject of one of these video/viral/netizen witchhunts for bad behavior and WHY IS THAT? -- I've been going on and on for years.

And now, the Korean populace is beginning to pick up on the pattern. FINALLY. Especially with the video of a crazed gramma beating the living shit out of a middle school girl who apologized TWICE for brushing her shoe against the woman, then understandably cracked and called her on her bullshit after she kept harassing her about it.

No, it ain't the Chosun Dynasty. And crazy motherfuckers who are old on the subway are not to be venerated. In modern Korea, they're just crazy motherfuckers. When did the defenders of Confucianism forget that old people are supposed to be MODELS of ideal virtue and wisdom and earn the respect of young people? Being old doesn't give you the license to be a dick.

I think I've figured out what's going on. I've been saying it for a while, but I'm gonna recap.

Korea is going through all kinds of social changes, and there's a misplaced sentiment that women are "out of place" and taking over society. Really, there is. It's like the "reverse racism" accusations in the 80's and 90's in America, when everyone was all hot about affirmative action. Now, there's a backlash against young women being "out of place" in society.

It's as plain as fucking day. I barely should have to even point this out. Just look -- an ajussi can burn down Namdaemun and barely get the same social condemnation as a sassy girl who dresses down her college dorm cleaning lady. Or he can rape a small child in a bathroom until her vagina is hamburger helper, but -- "Hey, we have to understand the unique situation of the ajussi. He was drinking. Let's reduce his sentence. He didn't mean it."

Then there's the obvious-as-fuck vilification and scapegoating of foreign English teachers, who are apparently the root of several, if not all, social evils, which I'm not even going to bother to link to -- just Google that shit. (OK, I did it). 

And that results in more foreigners being harassed. And it's bad enough that I never take the ghetto-ass-drunk-ajussi-filled #1 line, and I hardly ever take the subway anymore. I have made an entire guide to avoid being assaulted in Korea, which several people have found useful and relevant, apparently. 

If Korea keeps it up, soon there'll be a foreigner pushed in front of a subway train by a drunk ajussi. Or maybe there'll be a real case of a foreigner molesting a Korean kid (instead of all the lies published in the newspapers) and there'll be cases of random violence against anyone who looks foreign! I mean, it happened before -- but the Korean media didn't report it. A Korean photojournalist friend covering the reaction to Kim Sun-il's beheading in Iraq both saw and photographed Koreans beating the shit out of random Muslim fools at a mosque.

That's the country we foreigners live in, ya'll. Don't get it twisted. Koreans love to kiss white people's ass and make all nice in public, as well as just before major events such as the G-20 summit, but we're ONE INCIDENT away from a fucking race riot.

Pretty much happened that way in 2002. I was HERE.

Korea ain't going much in the direction of multicultural tolerance. Korea's multi-culti in terms of official policy and the freedom to drink Chilean wines, have a few cultural festivals, and fuck more Russian hookers, but don't get too comfortable here.

The backlash is already here. 

Yeah, the post's a little harsh, but I'm keeping it real. That's what I see.

'Cause this is a country in which if you're a foreigner, walking around with a Korean chick on your arm might get your ass stomped. Or, at the very least, constantly harassed.

Hmm. I wonder if some ajussi called my wife a "Yankee whore" and I beat him like a red-headed stepchild, how that would look on YouTube. 

I guess it depends on when they start the video from.

So Long, Andre -- We Hardly Knew You!

I would be writing this even if I hadn't become peripherally involved in the Korean fashion world, or hadn't met Designer Kim himself. What I find a bit distasteful at this point in time, as the lionization process has begun, is just how little appreciation there seemed to be of not just Andre Kim the man, when he was alive, but just how little sense there has always been as to why he is significant in Korean society in the first place.

As I became more involved in the Korean fashion world as a photographer, and even included Andre Kim in a photo book about Korean street and runway fashion, I noticed that many people seemed to have referring to Andre Kim as a sort of joke, one that had become as cliché as it was now irrelevant. Some people even wondered why I included him in my book. Even in the contemporary designs he was often commissioned to make, say for elite private schools or Korean Airlines, there was always a hint of a snicker when his name was mentioned, accompanied even by some elements of subtle homophobia.

There is the constant denial of his gayness -- which anyone who interacted with him closely knew to be a fact, and not a vicious slur or accusation, but a mere fact -- which continues today. In the end, it is additionally a tragedy that someone who was obviously gay, or at least someone out-of-sync with a cultural of heavily enforced heteronormativity, was never able to "come out" lest he pay a heavy social price. He was never able to see a Korea that would accept him for whom he truly was, however he might have defined that identity-wise. Or perhaps he was quite lucky, in that he fit well inside the stereotype of the harmless gay male fashion designer, which allows everyone to kinda "know" but not have to talk about it in polite company.

But the point of this essay isn't that we didn't know enough about certain details of his life, or that there is some other Andre out there that we never knew; the real point here is that it seems that Andre Kim, as the man and idea, was so ubiquitous that many people either forgot, or never even knew, why the man is so important. It's because the man was an integral part of the birthing process and identity of South Korea itself that maybe a lot of people took him for granted.

Kim was like the funny old uncle who insisted on wearing old suits that were in fashion when he was a bachelor, but just can't seem to let go; the one who told off-color jokes at Thanksgiving that the kids didn't get and the more responsible adults at the table didn't find appropriate; he was kind of embarrassing, but was still family. And by the time Funny Old Uncle dies, you realize you never knew him. He was just that funny old uncle to you, but you realize he's not around anymore, and you missed the chance to know him.

Before abandoning this metaphor, it must be added that Andre Kim was Korea's funny old uncle who was really, really famous but few really knew why. And Designer Kim had carved out a space for himself so safe and inviolate -- especially in reserved Korean society -- that his eccentricities inevitably became his signature and came to the fore, overshadowing his real historical and social significance.

See, America's Funny Old Uncle, who died just last year, was also awash with not just eccentricities, but outright weirdness. He was not just the Funny Old Uncle who wore and said the wrong thing at the family reunion, but he was the Funny Old Uncle Who Touched Us Inappropriately. The difference with Michael Jackson was that his cultural significance wasn't from a different America, someone who existed outside of most of our lifetimes. For all his idiosyncrasies, Michael Jackson's cultural significance in both American and world culture was clear -- and he was still making music up until the very moment he died. And we know I don't mean this figuratively -- MJ literally collapsed and died while making his next piece of music for US. And no matter how much we winced at his embarrassing public gaffes, or even the possibility that he was a sex offender, the power of his fame and significance in his field made us forgive him. Or at least kind of look the other way.

Korea's Funny Old Uncle enjoyed that kind of privilege, to some extent. He was not nearly as eccentric, but then again, he could scarcely afford to be. Conservative Korean society had given him his place to express himself, but there are limits. What if he was outed, like Hong Seok-chon had been? What if he had a public sex scandal, or the question of his having adopted a boy become a subject of conversation? Did the power of his cult of personality really have the power to withstand a real scandal? The point is: Would people even remember WHY he was important or HOW he had become Andre-Kim-pronounced-with-a-comical-French-flourish enough to even cut him some slack?

I think some of that is coming out, as we offer him accolades as the first male fashion designer, the first Korean to take a fashion show to Paris, and the recipient of a request from America's Funny Old Uncle (and then-King of Pop) to be his personal fashion designer. But his fame in fashion aside, Andre Kim is even more than that.

Kim and his stardom are built into the social and cultural DNA of Korea itself. Several weeks ago, when I first heard a rumor of cancer and Kim's hospitalization, I asked a few random Korean friends, "Can you imagine Korea without Andre Kim?" Upon thinking about it, they remarked that this would be really sad. Because South Korea has never existed WITHOUT Andre Kim. He's one of the old school; he really is Korea's Funny Old Uncle, even as most other seminal figures in Korean public consciousness are Founding Fathers who are long since gone, or have been disgraced into the unconscious: Syngman Rhee, Pak Chung Hee, Chun Doo Whan.

I'm not making a false comparison here. Andre Kim really was Korea's first international celebrity, he was one of the few Koreans whom the international world talked about, and probably the only one who was not an actual statesman.

And he knew who was buttering his toast. One reason Andre Kim loved Americans so much -- and he really did, as me introducing myself as an American to him before a 2008 fashion show caused him to personally escort us to the front press seats and have the usher give us special privileges attests to, and this is just one of many similar such stories -- was because the US was his only true patron when such a thing was truly needed.

What the Korean media forgets, even when they show old footage from his 1960's fashion shows, with white folks in the audience smiling and clapping appreciatively, is that fashion shows were OUTLAWED under General/Chairman Pak's martial law and lists of "austerity measures" ostensibly designed to make Korea a cleaner and better place. Andre Kim didn't present fashion shows overseas just because he wanted to -- he HAD to. The footage shown in the reports I've seen were all taken from his shows on American military bases, the only place he could have them IN Korea.

Which is WHY he became an international fashion designer -- he was unable to be one here in KOREA. So, Andre Kim was very much a sign of his times. And very importantly, he was Korea's first international superstar, a Korean of some renown outside of his home country who was not a statesman or diplomat. He very necessarily was above the common man's concerns in a society that had banned fashion shows as part of martial law's austerity measures; he existed outside of the limitations of petty everyday life because he was one of a very few Koreans who COULD travel overseas; he was a huge part of a popular culture that was very, very small, in comparison to the power of the government dictatorship. There was a very small and powerless civil society, popular culture was controlled and highly regulated by the state -- there was little room for play here. Pak Chung Hee had just gotten started trying to ban rock music in the mid-1970's, and had successfully just illegalized marijuana.

So when the King of Pop himself is asking Andre Kim, during the early 1980's, to become his personal designer -- that's HUGE. To both Andre Kim as well as Korean pride. And Kim turned him down! As international as he could have -- might have -- become with such an opportunity (and others), he remained based in Korea, remained a true son of Korea. He could have done what many Japanese designers have done and just become based in Paris, or Milan. As the personal designer to the King of Pop himself. As a designer with the international connections to leave the little dictatorship, relatively backwards and restrictive society that Korea was and blow up overseas. Or at least, establish a comfortable living somewhere else.

But he didn't. And given that, I don't think that the young generation of fashionistas and designers I've come into contact with should have been calling him a "joke" or even an "embarrassment" to Korea or Korean fashion, when it was Andre Kim who had such a huge influence on Korean fashion, when it was Andre Kim who kept the very idea of a "Korean fashion" world alive at a time when fashion shows were outlawed and even the idea of conspicuous consumption frowned upon.

I just wanted to say that. There were too many fashion people snickering and apologizing for the existence of Andre Kim up until his death, and I think it's important to point that out, in this time of fair weather Andre Kim acolytes. More than almost any other Korean celebrity, Andre Kim was both a big baller in his field, and also internationally known in a way most contemporary Korean stars could only dream of, even today. 

More Respect

RIP, Andre Kim.

This year, as part of my portrait project, I wanted to take a really edgy portrait of Andre Kim, and I heard he was pretty open to such media inquiries, especially from foreigners. However, when I would mention this to most Korean people, or even to some prominent folks in fashion, they would all laugh and dismissively say, "He's not a real fashion designer anymore," or "Look at his sprayed-on hair!" Or "Why does he always wear that silly white outfit?" Now, he's gone, and the country seems to realize that there's never been a South Korea without Andre Kim.

I just think that people should have remembered more just how many contributions he made, not only as a fashion designer, but also as a Korean citizen representing his country overseas at a time when nobody had even heard of South Korea. That fact doesn't change whether one is alive or dead, and people should be able to appreciate others for what they have done, especially for their country, well before they go off and die. Even if said person decides to spray on his hair in his 70s or wear white all the time. The man still did more for Korean fashion and his country before the age of 35 then any other Korean fashion designer, or even most other prominent Koreans, have in their entire lives. It would behoove us to remember people like that for what they contributed well before they pass away. And to allow oh that results in respect to hold our wayward tongues.

Korea, No Place for Young Women, but about Whom Policy Is Decided by Old Men

Those of you in the ROK and in the know might know that there is a crackdown on abortion right now.

Huh? Well, what was the state of things before, you ask? Well, the way of things has been that abortion is nominally illegal, like many things in Korea, but de facto legal in that it's easy to get done. Reputable clinics and doctors perform clinical abortions, and you just do it. And the unrecorded rates of Korean women who use it as retro-active birth control is sky-high. Surely, one of the reasons so few Koreans use condoms here. 

And yes, precisely because Koreans have a collective mental block and inability to talk frankly about the sex most adults are already having, it must also be said, in order to lay out the nature of things here, that condom use is FROWNED upon in Korea. Sure, a few -- a very few -- might insist on using one, but it's generally considered a near-insult to even ask, as if you were saying, "You seem like one of the dirty THOSE who might 'have AIDS' or some disease. So I want to use a condom." 

If you're a girl and ask for one, you're implying you're a slut because that means you obviously have enough experience and partners to worry about it, and it's a reflection of what you apparently think about the ethical and physical cleanliness of the man.

If you're a man, you are casting suspicion upon her potentially problematic poontang, and/or are obviously a "playboy." If you are a truly up-and-up guy, you'll be "clean" and won't pose a threat. Only "dirty" people get STD's.

And the question of getting pregnant? Well, whatever you think of the matter, the fact is that it's been historically easy to get, and in the Korean way of (non)dealing with sex and contraception in a responsible manner, the only barrier between being a boyfriend and a baby-daddy. Or the difference between a woman with a little secret (to add to the other 1,000 skeleton bones stacked in the closet) and being a baby-momma and being socially ostracized and remaining a ruined woman for life. 

So, abortion, for better or worse, is a major means of contraception. Well, put more accurately, in Korea, abortion is the only consistent barrier between being a campus couple or a shotgun wedding. Other than luck, pulling out, or trying to plan around her cycle -- none of which are techniques that are considered reliable means of birth control. 

Generally, in other countries, condom use is default. Here, as many expat men and women have come to find, MANY Koreans will REFUSE sex if a condom is insisted upon. Especially Korean men, they insist on barebacking because of the better feel. Well, no one will deny that barebacking is better than wearing a Jimmy hat, not in terms of raw feel -- but in terms of the relatively higher risk being worth it, to most westerners I know, it's a dealbreaker. Again, in Korea, you have to understand that USING a condom is often a dealbreaker. 

Now, super-proud-Koreans-who-think-such-talk-is-an-insult-to-the-pride-of-the-nation, first of all, it isn't. It's reality. And for those of you who insist that Koreans-are-all-innocent-and-still-live-the-ideals-of-Joseon-virtue, you aren't. Shit -- Koreans were fucking even back in them hanbok-covered days. And this information and basic knowledge about Koreans under the sheets is WELL-KNOWN by anyone sticking someone regularly or getting stuck. If you don't know nothing about it, Korean or not, you're obviously not getting any and don't qualify for commentary here, anyway. That is, again, if you actually believe Koreans aren't fucking just as much as people in Western countries. 

But in modern Korea, which only started selling condoms NOT in a pharmacy like 10 years ago, where a woman can't have a reasonable conversation about birth control with her best female friends, where people actually thought that ONLY MARRIED WOMEN would ever have a reason to use a tampon and doing so means she's a whore -- it's hard to have a reasonable conversation about sex, let alone the issue that now comes along with it.

The LOW BIRTH RATE. 

Nowadays, the government is conducting a crackdown on clinics and doctors that actually has people -- doctors and clincs -- running scared. The ostensive reason for the crackdown is the low birth rate. How can we, as a nation, have so many abortions, but the lowest birthrate in the world?

Now, Americans, take your America-centric mind out of this for a moment. In the US, the abortion battle is a moral one. It's about right vs. wrong, Christians vs. non, left vs. right. It is a battle that goes all the way to our crazy, Puritanical roots, Ruth Benedict's characterization of America as a "guilt culture" vs. one of "shame," all that shit. Although argued in these terms, the battle is about MORALITY, not medicine, human rights, or necessarily, religion. These are aspects to the battle, but it isn't really about practical issues.

In Korea, abortion has not been a hot-button political issue, and nary even one for public discussion. It's a PRACTICAL matter, having to do with the mechanics and logistics of sex, and has been mostly a solution to dealing with indiscretion. It is so much the case, that, to many Americans' surprise, it isn't even a hot-button issue amongst Korean Christians or the right wing here. Abortion, in Korean culture, exists squarely within the conversation about sex that NO ONE IS SUPPOSED TO HAVE. Period.

Essentially, the "dirty little secret" of sex in Korea, that abortion is a de facto means of birth control, hasn't met with any formal opposition of any large kind. Why would it? Like many embarrassing social problems here, it doesn't exist. 

But now, Korea has the problem of having the lowest birthrate in the world. And the DUMBASS POLITICIANS, in trying to solve the problem, have taken the approach that the problem is merely in the supply chain -- not one created by huge societal forces, like most patterns of individual behavior that one might study: well, to get that birth rate back up, we gotta REDUCE ABORTIONS. Output not good? INCREASE INPUT.

Now, this is one of the dumbest fucking ideas I've ever heard. To answer the question of why I think that, one has to look at why things happen in societies, and why it's folly to try to wring and wrest things in other directions through sheer force of will. 

The reason the birth rate is the lowest in the world here in South Korea has nothing to do with small forces or fleeting ideologies. I've heard idiotic pundits on television and radio attribute the ongoing trending upwards of the divorce rate to "Western influence" or "feminism," for example, when the rising rates of divorce were themselves controversial not more than a few of decades ago. 

Even in the west, a sober sociologist would not give much credit to the "feminist movement" or to women burning their bras in public as much as to the recession in the 1970's forcing women into the workplace, thereby increasing their relative economic power, and hence, the increased ability to separate themselves from marriages that don't work, since they now have the socio-economic option to work, pay bills, and cover rent. It's a wonder to think that the movie "Kramer vs. Kramer" was ever controversial in the United States, but I remember seeing that myself in the late 1970's. Now, that drama wouldn't be fodder for more boring episode of the Jerry Springer Show. 

Another Korean pundit attributed the rising divorce rate and average age of marriage to the equally-dubious, but conveniently vague spectre of "the IMF period." Huh? Really? As I see it, it was during this period that many of women's gains in terms of raw rates of employment and rising levels of advancement got nipped in the bud by mass firings of women first, given an option between keeping a man or a woman. It was during this time that women were purged from the workplace on a massive scale. 

How exactly did this serve as a causal factor in increasing average age of marriage, or lowering the birth rate? No answers were given -- it was just "the IMF." Dumb. Who are these pundits, anyway?

"It's the economy, stupid." Bill Clinton knew what was up. But it's also the entire society, stupid. It's easy to see what's going on, especially since it mirrors the exact same pattern observed in many countries/cultures around the world: as a culture of nominal equality becomes the norm, as women are entering the workplace in droves and STAYING there after marriage  and even pregnancy, their relative socio-economic power increases. They have more say in the home, in the relationship. They have more social options in case of a marriage gone bad. The bar for tolerating even what is defined as "bad" in a relationship goes down. Single women are working earlier and longer, and in a consumer society -- which, importantly, Korea was NOT a mere half-generation ago -- that means increased consumer power, leisure time, the ability to concentrate on "me."

Korean society snidely resists and derides this pattern through the negative depiction of independent women with names such as "bean-paste girl" and other societal characters who dare veer from the Confucian norm -- the campaigns against many women who "err" are cases-in-point, from the cyberstalking of the Korean girl who dared dance in a wet t-shirt with two white guys in a Hongdae club, or "dog-poop girl" or even the recent case of the rude college student who verbally abused a cleaning lady. 

In any case, Korean society holds no place to "socially discipline" individual MALE netizens for acting out; but a rude woman can incur the wrath of an entire nation for getting a little out-of-line. 

The recent move to fix the problem of the low birth rate by cracking down on abortion clinics is not only another example of this short-sighted and misogynist kind of thinking, it also won't work. Of all places where the rule of law doesn't function to simply fix or alter a given social situation, it's Korea. The government should know better than this. 

This, before even getting to the fact that the only way to fix the birth rate is to change the social conditions that make it a socioeconomic penalty to have baby. Really beefing up laws to protect women's maternity leave, offering significant financial incentives and breaks for each baby one has, offering daycare and other facilities for working mothers, and even other more creative things such as vouchers for hagwons, supporting single-mothers by protecting their legal rights, and other things other, more informed people might think of. 

The point is, effectively cutting off the right to safe abortions, in a society that already neglects the subject of sex education and contraception so much that abortion is akin to a backup form of contraception itself, then pulling the rug out from under this system and effectively trying to force women into full-term pregnancy is simply a crock of immoral and dishonest bullshit. 

Korean male-dominated society -- if you law and policymakers want to raise the birthrate, stop the immature attitude that sex is a taboo topic, teach proper sex education to match the fact that yes, unmarried people are fucking, as are 30% of Korean high-schoolers before graduation, and a whole lotto other people. When a single woman gets pregnant, stop vilifying her and anyone like her, so she can not only have the baby without social stigma, but actually receives financial and social encouragement to do so.Dummies -- a lot of the women who are secretly running to the gynecologist to have these abortions are SINGLE women -- you want to trick/force them into pregnancies, but you socially shun them. Many real-estate agencies won't even rent apartments to single women, yet you expect these very women to carry an accidental zygote formed from an over-zealous fuck or failed birth control measure to carry it to full term?

What kind of idiots are making these policies, anyway? Oh, I know the answer. Upper-class, blue-suited ajusshis who are ill-informed and don't have a clue about how to solve social problems except to make short-sighted and simply counter-productive policies that don't at all even address the real forces that create the problems in the first place. 

Hey -- I just got an idea! Our education system is in crisis and we don't know how to fairly distribute resources or teach crucial skills such as creativity and critical thinking. Also, the costs of private education and English instruction are getting out-of-control. What should we do?

Robot teachers! Yay!

Because the Korean education isn't already robotic enough NOW. And it just goes to show what Koreans think the jobs of native English teachers are, anyway. WALKING DICTIONARIES. Perhaps it's better that robots teach English. Because robotically is how Koreans learn English, anyway. 

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto!

Why You Should Always Do the Right Thing, or Why You Shouldn't Fuck the Bears

I've lived in this society for a long time and have come to understand a lot of things, adapted my behavior to others, and learned to define what I won't allow myself to change.

For example, I will never accept a bribe, especially since they usually require one to do something quite odious, like change a grade, accept something deemed unacceptable, do something harmful to the greater good. That's why you're being bribed, right? And that's an active choice I made.

Some things you just become inured to. When I was first placed in a Korean boy's middle school on Cheju Island in 1994, horrible beatings of students by teachers was an everyday matter. The first time I saw a boy being slapped, punched, and kicked while he was on the ground, I teared up. As violent as people think America is because of highly public (but relatively rare on the everyday level) gun shootings and whatnot, I'd never experienced such levels of violence on a nearly daily level. And the verbal abuse that accompanied this attitude towards discipline was just par for the course.

I began thinking -- what does this do to the group being forced to accept this? What is this doing to me?

The fact that I didn't tear up anymore, or even get interested enough to want to react anymore, meant that something, some part of my humaneness, no matter how small, had died. And that is what saddened me after a year of working in that school. And even into my second year, in a co-ed and much less hard-hitting middle school, another member of my program had a student she knew die as a result of extreme beatings. He was forced to run around the school, and at the end of the lap, was beaten with several blows. Another lap, another beating. No water for several hours. When he was finally sent home in the evening, he died of massive heart failure. A 17-year-old kid. In the end, the parents tried to do something, they were shunned and ostracized, the teacher was moved to an administrative position. Welcome to Korea, foreign teachers.

At that time, before YouTube and there being no foreigners around in this particular institution, our program collectively saw one kind of Korea's dirty little secrets and how they are dealt with. We lived in host families, sat in the teachers' room, went on the school field trips, and saw everything because we were small enough to be ignored. When one friend of mine saw male teachers bringing female high school students into a hotel room and giving them soju and other hard liquors, and reported it to her vice-principal, she was brushed off because she apparently didn't understand that this was a "Korean custom." (Hmm. I wonder if the girls parents would agree.)

Some people out there who come across this blog accuse me of some kind of cultural imperialism because I refuse to budge on certain moral points that I refuse to cross. And that I use these moral boundary lines as the launching points for some criticisms of the culture. What these people usually don't realize is that one doesn't live here, learn the language, successfully make a living, and maintain social relations without doing some serious adaptation to this culture. And having lived here off and on since the early 1990's, back then, before Internet and cable TV, before ubiquitous "air-con" and the days of having to teach class in a winter coat with students competing to sit nearest the gas heater in the center of the class, when I lived in the countryside and the big bookstore only carried 3 copies of international Newsweek that I was rarely quick enough to catch -- Korea was a lot harder to get used to. I put in my time, baby. And I'm as culturally adjusted as I can get. I've given ground on just about every aspect of my life and personality, adapting to the Korean condition.

But on a few things, I won't budge. To some people, me criticizing the mental (and formerly, physical) violence of the school system, or the ubiquitousness of prostitution, turning a blind eye to obvious and clear human rights abuses in the North, or the fact of the massive corruption that continues to eat away at Korea's own values of equality of opportunity -- makes me some kind of cultural imperialist. To me, these are either people who just don't like me and will attack me anyway, or they assume that I haven't thought about the fact that these values are shared by many Koreans themselves. The "right thing to do" is often clear and obvious, actually -- the only thing that makes certain issues huge contestations is the fact that on one side stand people who want to do what everyone agrees is the right thing, and on the other side stand those who simply stand to use their power to exploit others.

To return to my question -- what does living in an environment that forces you to make huge moral concessions to to a person -- this society has huge moral and social problems that one either accepts or fights against. Take corruption, for example. Right now, Samsung is a company whose very structure depends on corruption, whose success often relies on unfairly clearing obstacles and clearing the playing field, whose government connections give it protection even the mafia couldn't touch. And it's been exposed in great detail by a whistleblower whose acts should be commended and praised to the hills. But instead, his name is cursed. And not just by the expected corporate types who obviously want his head on a platter, but by the society in general.

In the distorted version of Confucianism that this society follows, a notion of morality is not at the center. It is not the fulcrum around which things find balance. Morality is secondary -- the maintenance of social rules, the sanctity of the hierarchy, of relative social positions -- this is priority number one. This is why I say that Korea is not really a "Confucian society" in the sense that a full set of Confucian-based moral values dictate how things go; no, for post-Chosun Korean society, it is a merely a rulebook mostly designed to maintain a rigid social structure.

And traditional Korean society only cares about whether or not one violates the rules, not with what moral/ethical values the rules are designed to preserve or actively foster.

That's Korean style. Take the typical Korean ajussi. He simply wants respect and deference because he is older, might have a higher place in the hierarchy, has put in his time as a junior for a long time. And those junior to him are supposed to defer and kowtow. But what is he supposed to do? In the typical Korean way, you da younger, you da bitch. Period.

But traditionally, the Ajussi the Older also has an obligation. He is obligated to stand as a living example of virtuous behavior for the Youngers; he is supposed to use his power to help deserving Youngers advance in life; the Older has a moral obligation to earn the respect he is given. Contrary to common Korean social practice, the Older does not deserve automatic respect, especially when the Older has clearly stepped outside of agreed-upon social/legal bounds. Hence, the Confucian justification for standing up to unjust rulers, resisting social oppression, etc. Because that's in there. 

So, am I supposed to respect a drunk ajussi cursing at me on the subway? Or an administrator who is altering the rules to take bribes? Or, closer to home -- a supervisor in my school who wants to change my grades after the fact, which tacitly involves me in their bribe-taking and the unfair altering of the life paths and life-chances of dozens of students? Or how about just sitting and listening to the screams of a middle school boy being kicked in the face and chest? By doing nothing, I am tacitly participating in his abuse. That's the only way to cut it. And why I teared up -- by following the accepted social rules that gave this teacher the right to be a monster, I was, even though it was to the tiniest extent possible, becoming a monster, too. Because he was a student, and I was a teacher who did nothing.

For all those who sit on the sidelines, criticize those who criticize Korean society -- you all have the luxury of truly being outsiders. This is obviously the case. Because my social criticisms aren't rooted in some abstract, America-based objection to the way things are in Korea because of the ways I think they should be in my own country -- I'm not that fucking stupid. But I've been here long enough to see bright-eyed, eager children chewed up by the system and become the sad and cynical teachers who abused them; I've seen kids beaten within an inch of their lives and known of one who was literally murdered by the teachers who are supposed to love and nurture them; I've been forced to sit and accept a policy that would make me an accomplice in such huge corruption that I could scarcely feign moral innocence, even if I didn't stand to get any of the money; when you're deep enough within the system, you don't have the luxury of choosing whether or not to take a position, or to be on one side of the fence or the other. You're already there, and you make the choice whether you sit on your ass or standing up for what you believe in. For those who think it's wrong to do anything, you're deluding yourselves.

Or, you're "fucking the bear," as a good friend put it, in jest. Like the anthropologist so invested in simply following the ways of the natives that even recording their sense of morality becomes secondary to the simple and superficial aping of their "ways," or the animal behavior scientist who lives with gorillas (or, more comically, bears) and studies their ways, lives among the animals, forgets to be human -- and starts "fucking the bears."

That cracked us both up at the bar, but my friend was dead serious. You learn to survive here, then truly adapt, and then -- you truly become inured to things here to the extent that things that should bother you, and which even bother a good percentage of the people here, don't anymore. Because you've become used to it, because you're dependent on some aspect of it, and maybe you've even become a party to some of the thing you once found morally detestable.

Because you've been "fucking the bears."

The point is, if you're part of the society, if you've developed meaningful human ties here, if you do work that emotionally and materially affects others -- how the hell can you feign non-involvement? Or on the flip side, assert the fiction that you either aren't or shouldn't "get involved?" I mean, anyone here teaching English, for example, is part of the same soul-crushing system that we criticize. And don't say you're not -- you fucking get paid to teach this Language of Power. I get paid to teach in it. We've all been been fucking the bear since we got here; or at least, we've been doing a slow dance and copping a feel. 

My point is that standing up for what is right isn't that hard to do, isn't that complex, isn't as fraught with issues of "cultural imperialism" or power dynamics or "problematics" as you would think. Because if you've done your due-diligence here, if you've put in your time, if you've figured yourself out vis-a-vis the many, but superficial cultural differences you observe -- you know that refusing to participate in a bribery scheme, or watching your boss openly and crassly put his hands repeatedly all over the new girl's thighs, or not stepping in to tell the Korean teacher kicking a student in the face, "That's ENOUGH!" isn't some cultural faux pas.

People use the word "culture" like its some magical invocation, as though, once named, it becomes a thing of religious significance, as though it's some kind of blasphemy to "interfere." But it's not that fucking complex. In fact, once you've figured out how things generally work here, it's not hard to figure out what's culture and what's just plain wrong.

I guess you could say whipping "nigger" slaves in the South was "culture." I mean, it's what people did, right? Not educating women was "culture" in Chosun Korea, especially amongst the yangban, which makes Mary Scranton an ethnocentric bitch, right? Fucking Underwoods, too. Establishing universities and shit, trying to educate women and people from the lower classes. How dare they?

Or calling the South the Uncle Tom, money grubbing hypocrite that it is for so wanting cheap North Korean labor and economic concessions from the North that it actually downplays or even bans reporting on clear human right violations in North Korea because that might piss them off.

Or disturb relations enough to mess up things for the Kaesong slave wages camp, oops, I mean "industrial complex." I mean, they DO make $42 a month for 52-hour work weeks. That's $.20 per hour! My bad.

Again, there's nothing wrong with standing up for what's right, even (and especially) in another place. And if a lot of people agree with you, or are already standing up for something, and you're part of the society, too -- you can't act like you're not involved.

So, power to the whistleblowers who take a baseball bat and chainsaw to the machine of corruption and abuse of power. These people, in the end, make our lives better, even if it hurts. And it doesn't matter whether you're an American or Korean or whatever. If you live here, you are an insider enough to know right from wrong. You didn't leave that cognitive power at the Incheon immigration desk. 

And finally, to the Daewon Foriegn Language High School principal and administration with whom I last worked in 2005, with whom I did not cooperate when they tried to use my US History grades (which had the largest weight in the GPA at the time) as monetary leverage to adjust class rankings, after which I was harrassed by the Korean teachers to the point where even students were coming to warn me of the things other teachers were saying in their classes about me, actively encouraging students to file complaints about me, for simply asking to be left out of their corruption scheme -- BOOYAH!

Now accused criminal, former Daewon FLHS Principal Choi Won-ho

You got caught! Principal Choi, remember when you said you were "going to get me" and "destroy my life" in our last conversation? Well, karma's a bitch, ain't it? Who done gone and got got? You were and are an evil man, and you simply got what you deserved. And I continue to be eminently proud of the fact that I'd rather turn down a $100-per-hour teaching job there than continue to work with you and your mostly-evil administration. And now, you can't sue me for defamation any more than you can The Korea Times, because I'm just asserting I saw the same corruption as documented in a national newspaper. And this issue definitely lies in the realm of "the public interest."

And if anyone wants to talk to me about what I saw there, I'd be MORE than happy to cooperate.

And this post is gonna live on in Google FOREVER. And hey, Won-ho, I'm not even publishing your face -- it's on The Korea Times' server! Whoo hoo! I love it!

Still gonna "destroy me," Won-ho?

I guess it's really true that sometimes the universe simply does unfold as it should.

Pimping "Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics"

I had a debate last night with some Korean folks about the "social problem" of prostitution (which I define in my classes in the standard sociological sense of the term), which is a part of the class I teach on the subject. Basically, my argument was that "prostitution has become a part of Korean culture," which bothered one woman who felt I was generalizing about "culture" too much. I got her point, but went on to explain that I'm not talking in terms of generalities, but specific histories and circumstances peculiar to Korea. Like any country, there are historically specific conditions and circumstances that lead to particular "social problems."

For example, the US has a particular relationship (problem) with race that Korea does not have. It may seem obvious to state here, but the US was built on immigration and the movement of populations -- whether forced, coerced, or voluntary -- and in particular, theft of Indian lands and use of chattel slavery to build the capital for America's industrialization; as was true for waves of Scotch-Irish, German, Irish, Chinese, then Japanese, and Eastern European immigrants brought in to supply the grist for America's industrial mill. These structural circumstances led to unique and peculiar changes in the culture, which can be loosely defined as the habits, norms, and roles one finds in the lived experience of a given society. In other words, the way blacks behave towards whites, Asians in California were treated by caucasian workers, or Latino migrant workers now, or more specifically, the Jim Crow system or specific discriminatory laws against Chinese in San Francisico -- these things become a part of the "culture."

And as a culture evolves, social norms and mores changes, and the definition of what is viewed as a "social problem" changes. If you didn't read the definition found at the link listed above, here's the definition:

"Social problems are societal induced conditions that harms any segment of the population. Social problems are also related to acts and conditions that violate the norms and values found in society."

Racially discriminatory laws and practices that were part of the culture of the US and more viciously, the Jim Crow South, came to be seen as a "social problem" in America. And as recorded incidents, clearly-defined patterns in economics, politics, law, and lived experience point out, racism still remains a social problem in the United States.

Now, to the problem of prostitution in South Korea. Using a similar definition of the "social problem," which forces us to keep things non-ethnocentric in that it is squarely grounded in the "norms and values found" in Korea, not just in the norms that I as an outsider might bring, it is clear that institutionalized prostitution has been defined in this society in the news, academia, and by numerous government bureaus as 1) a social phenomenon that continues to occur far out-of-sync with what is generally expected in a developed society, and 2) an institutionalized practice that, as such, violates the "norms and values found in society."

Therefore, it is, by definition, a "social problem" in Korea. Period. And the utility of comparing the social problems in the US versus Korea is to point out the usefulness of the definition itself: WHAT IS CONSIDERED A SOCIAL PROBLEM DIFFERS FROM SOCIETY TO SOCIETY, COUNTRY TO COUNTRY, CULTURE TO CULTURE.

Of course, when someone talks about something inherently viewed as negative as a part of one's culture, one gets emotionally defensive. That's natural. But one thing bothered me about the conversation: it was that ultimate of dismissive folk sayings I hate, usually attributed to Mark Twain, that there are three types of falsehoods: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics."

What Marky Mark was actually pointing out was that statistics can be used out of context. They have, inherently, flaws and margins of error. There can be problems with their generation, as they might have to do with sample size, sampling methodology, or interpretation. And they have to be matched against common sense and/or observation -- this is when they become MOST useful, not less.

Case in point is the standard story of the finding that 40% of sick days occur on Mondays or Fridays. So this led to middle management panic that workers were bilking the system. But 2/5 days of the work week is 40%, stupid. and the other three are 60%. DUH.

Or the standard confusion of correlation and causation. The size of my belly and the continuing expansion of the universe may be 100% correlated in terms of time, but my belly is NOT the CAUSE of the universe's expansion. Nor is television watching the CAUSE of shorter life spans; it's the sedentary activity that tends to follow in a person who watches more TV than others, most reasonably.

Or the white researcher interviewing blacks about their opinions on race, or the Korean researcher studying the "Korean face" using his own standards for Koreanness and handpicked samples from nursing colleges in Malaysia, Mongolia, and Korea. Of COURSE you're going to get statistical differences between the types when YOU YOURSELF DEFINED THE IDEAL TYPES. Again, Duh.

But what bothered me, after I gave my standard delivery of the statistics gathered on prostitution over a long period of time, using different quantitative and qualitative models, from differently-interested domestic and foreign bodies, from both the government and private sector -- as found in stats kept by the Korean Bureau of Criminology, Ministry of Gender and the Family, and the YWCA, to name the main ones -- was that this piece of bolstering evidence was dismissed BECAUSE they are statistics.

I don't mind people quibbling with the methodology or context of any given set of statistics. But what is absolutely a pet peeve with me is when people simple EQUIVOCATE, e.g. "Well, statistics can't be believed because both sides can just cook them or make them up." Or some variation on the myth that STATISTICS are not to be believed. Or that because there is a problematic aspect in a set of data, the argument has to be thrown out.

Well, what's the point of doing social science, then? Or science at all?

And in the context of the discussion we were having last night, as people were telling me not to point out Korea as a special case in terms of the SCALE of institutionalize prostitution, and that prostitution exists everywhere, there are no differences, just leave it alone -- how can I do that, when the historical, social, statistical, and observed evidence is all indicating one thing:

Prostitution happens to exist in Korean culture in a particular way, due to particular historical circumstances most directly related to its initial existence as a clear social status in the kisaeng courtesan, but then amplified a great deal as a part of the economy during the Japanese occupation period, especially in the concrete processes created by the "comfort women" system during the latter part of the Pacific War, which then found huge amplification under the Park Chung Hee regime as an industry protected and encouraged by the state. Park is infamous for bringing the institution to even the negotiation table in his "kisaeng diplomacy" and the present-day, measurable statistic of organized prostitution being 4.1% of the GDP (about the same as fishing, agriculture, and mining combined, which is 4.3%), or many NGOs' estimate of it being as high as 5-6% with informal prostitution included -- even these pale in comparison to what percent that might have been before it was being measured, but when it played an even larger role in the economy.

No American government officials ever came to a meeting of camptown prostitutes to praise them as "true patriots for the nation", with the equivalent of "축하" banner and all.

Now, me making that comparison is NOT to make a value judgement, which many Koreans tend to take it as. It is to point out that such a thing doesn't make SENSE to have existed in American history, politics, and in the end, culture, because it just didn't happen to be the way America needed to gather lots of capital. It just isn't part of the American story. And because of this difference, it doesn't also happen to be a stubborn leftover, legacy, or remnant that society now defines as a "social problem."

But if you take America's dependence on cotton as a cash crop, and the enslavement of African-Americans to maintain it, and the social relations that develop around the institution to justify its existence, you get RACISM as a peculiarly American social problem. One doesn't even REQUIRE statistics to admit, "Yeah. I guess that's a social problem," because the basics of the history is so clear. The historical reality of slavery has been well-defined for all Americans.

I posit that the resistance to what every outsider observes as KOREAN SOCIAL REALITY in terms of the commodification and subjugation of women in this society, especially as embodied in the rampant institutionalized prostitution that is as observable in terms of the sheer numbers and types of such places of business (room salons, business clubs, barber shops, massage parlors, handjob rooms, juicy bars, miin-chon, 단란주점, 도우미 노래방, which goes without even mentioning the vast numbers of red-light districts in every part of Seoul and every city in Korea) NARY REQUIRES statistics, either.

What I see as the frequent resistance of people to believe something that is OBVIOUS in observed reality if one simply COUNTS the number of houses of prostitution on a single city block in any part of this city -- Kangnam Station to Shinchon to City Hall to Apkujeong to Chungdam to nearly any neighborhood after midnight, when the plastic balloons, mini-trucks, and neon signs come on that aren't on during the day -- is partially a denial of obvious reality, coupled with the urge to throw out the many statistics that bolster easy observation because they make one very uncomfortable.

But I'm a human being. I understand emotions. But what makes it so easy for me to recognize that the US brutally kidnapped, displaced, and murdered MILLIONS of human beings for the sake of material gain, which has resulted in creating some negative aspects to my culture, i.e. discrimination and institutionalized racism? But when I mention institutionalized prostitution as a legacy of compressed and authoritarian development in the Korean context, people instantly start equivocating and dismissing my argument, while holding it to such an abnormally high bar of scrutiny, one would be hard-pressed to assert ANYTHING particular about Korean society.

Point is, had I mentioned that Korean women in factories were heavily exploited during the development period, as the result of overall labor exploitation, both gendered and not, people nod their heads. People "know" that this was a problem.

Or that migrant workers are both stigmatized and demonized in Korean society, even as their work is a crucial part of the economy, and nearly every horror story I tell about their treatment by Koreans and the amount of sheer human drudgery emphasized in the telling is greeted without an inkling of doubt? People "know" that this is a problem.

Or that blacks have a lot of trouble getting hired in Korea, since Koreans a) don't think blacks are as smart as whites, b) have "bad" accents, and c) hagwon moms won't want them, no matter what the hagwon wants. Even when I make a sweeping generalization in a fit of frustration or anger, such as "Koreans are racist and generally don't like black people," Koreans still nod their heads in sympathy, while shaking their heads in apology. People "know" this to be "true."

But when it comes to the easily-observed, trackable problem of organized prostitution in this country, bolstered by studies of history, politics, and the economy, coupled with tracking and statistics drawn from a variety of interests and sources, the issue is generalized and equivocated away ("prostitution is everywhere, not just Korea"), and any source, no matter how specific or valid, is instantly batted down ("Any side can manipulate statistics").

And suddenly, the statistics THEMSELVES are suspect, BECAUSE they are statistics.

That bothers me the most. Why the high level of scrutiny when I am making the LEAST amount of sweeping generalizations, but uncritical agreement when I am making the MOST?

This seems to me to be a question of what is "OK" to know or assert as social reality, rather than a reasoned counter-argument.