CAVEAT DVMPTRVCK

Caveat: Terrorists Everywhere!

I guess the South Korean government, feeling jealous of all the fabulous anti-terror work being done in the US (see comic, below - it was sarcasm, OK?), decided they could play that game, too.

The South Korean government arrested some left-leaning parliamentarians from the UPP (members of the national legislature, i.e. Korean congresspeople!) on charges of plotting to destory infrastructure and collaborate with North Korea. This is way too reminiscent of the current president's father's dictatorial behaviors in the 1960's and 70's. Sigh.

Here is an interesting editorial on the subject.

Thanks to my friend Peter for pointing this out to me. I had a good visit with him yesterday, when he came out.

Here's a comic I  ran across, unrelatedly, but that seemed oddly relevant in its USA-centric way.

 

Caveat: Imperial Invigorate Moxibustion

Andrew, Hollye and I had an outing day in Seoul.

First we took the subway to Insadong, where we wandered the crowded streets and then had lunch at my favorite vegetarian restaurant.

After eating we were walking over to find a subway station, and we passed a restaurant with this sign in the window.

I thought it was quite funny: it says (or seems to say):

Japanese:   OK
English:     OK
Chinese:    meh. But we love you.

Then we headed over to 동묘 [dongmyo] is the site of a major flea market neighborhood. It just goes on and on. I've experienced many Korean fleamarkets, but only in rural areas - never in Seoul and never on this huge scale.

We walked around a lot.

I saw a box with an incomprehensible name (the English part, I mean).

But it turns out this is an actual thing - moxibustion [the 뜸 of the Korean name] is a folk remedy where you burn mugwort against accupressure points on a patient's skin. Perhaps I should have invested in it? Andrew is huge believer in mugwort, and my mom is a believer in accupuncture. This would combine both, and might therefore be doubly effective.

I decided to actively shop for one of my strange manias: I'm seeking a Korean manual typewriter. Not a made-in-Korea English (i.e. Latin) typewriter, but a manual typewriter made for typing Korean. This isn't as impossible as many people who don't know Korean might think - Korean is not like Chinese or Japanese, because the number of underlying symbols in the native Korean writing system (hangul) is quite small.

I love manual typewriters: I have several (Latin ones) in my storage unit in Minnesota. This one guy we visited had many, many typewriters - mostly Latin, but several hangul. He was honest, however: he told me none of them worked. So I didn't buy one.

Walking back to the subway, we saw a bicycle that looked Army-style.

And a peaceful, desolate collection of greenery in an urban wasteland.

Finally, we took the subway out to Bucheon, where we met my friend Peter. Peter is only a few weeks left from ending his teaching contract, and he intends to do some on-foot travel in Korea and then return to the US.

We ate at a 짬뽕 [jjambbong] joint near his apartment and then Andrew, Hollye and I came back to Ilsan.

Caveat: Around Camp Edwards, To Palm Springs

About once a year, I make a trip out to Camp Edwards. It's not far. I figured with Andrew here, it was as good a time as any to go look at it.

I was stationed at Camp Edwards, 296th Forward Support Battalion, Bravo Company, 2nd Infantry Division, in 1991. Camp Edwards no longer exists - the US Army closed it in the late 90's. A few years back, when I went there, the buildings were still there but abandoned, but the last few times I've gone, it's just a vacant lot with a fence around it.

From a block from my house, we got on the #600 bus and that dropped us right at the "front gate" of Camp Edwards, after a wending half-hour bus ride through Gyoha and Geumchon (neither of which really existed in 1991). This is the front gate, below. The bridge structure is the railroad track, now elevated. In 1991 it was at grade level.

We walked along the fence and I pointed out where the various features of Camp Edwards were located: the dining hall, the barracks, HQ, the warehouse, and the motor pool. Here is a picture of where the motor pool building was - I remember that spindly tall white-barked tree (birch?) that's kind of in the right of center of the photo, as being in the motor pool's "front yard."

I spontaneously decided that I was feeling healthy enough to try to walk around Camp Edwards. I haven't ever tried this. I'm sure we circumnavigated the camp at various times on PT exercises and activities back when I was stationed there, including things like our periodic off-post runs. But certainly I'd never tried it since.

So we set off northward down a country lane.

The country lane led to a farm.

And it led through some woods.

And we came to another farm.

And we saw a Korean farmer in his field.

Then we got a little bit lost in the woods. Although we ran out of road, we didn't run out of abandoned chairs.

After tromping through the brush a bit, I decided I wasn't up to cross-country hiking, so we went back along the road, and around a small hill and came to a gravesite (which abound in rural Korea).

We came to an area that I recognized, through 22 years of mental haze, as being the "back" of Camp Edwards. There was a small concrete wall with old machine-gun emplacements, and this gateway, where Andrew posed with his umbrella (it was raining at this point, though not hard).

We walked along the road, back south, now, having gotten at least halfway around Camp Edwards moving counterclockwise.

We came to giant "tank trap" of impressive engineering and dimensions.

I saluted Andrew from inside the tank trap.

Then we walked up the road and came to a new development called PalmSprings (팜스프링). 

We passed a Korean mini-mall with the parking in front, American-style. This is sufficiently rare in my experience, in Korea, to be notable, so I took a picture. I believe this is all on land that was formerly part of Camp Edwards.

Then we walked to Geumchon station and took the train back to Ilsan. In Ilsan, I wanted to wait for a package that was being delivered at KarmaPlus - even though KarmaPlus was closed due to the summer break.

So we stopped and had a very, very decadant lunch at "Burger Sharp," a restaurant right next door the KarmaPlus building, that's very popular with the students.

I swear, in 5 years of living in Ilsan and working in this Hugok neighborhood, I have only eaten at this place once or twice. But I figured, what the hey? I'm living somewhat free-and-loose with respect to my normal strictures, lately.

Then, due to a communication error, we waited for more than an hour for a package that was already there waiting for me. Ah well. I need to improve my Korean so I understand when they tell me these things.

Then we came home.

 

Caveat: 폭력을 당해서 이 회사를 떠나고 싶습니다

I have been intending to write the blog entry longer than any other unwritten blog entry.

The story behind it is that maybe 4 years ago, I ran across a book in a bookstore entitled Quick and Easy Korean for Migrant Workers. Of course, my interest in immigration policy combined with my interest in the Korean language made the book a guaranteed "win."

I was prompted to write this entry now, after so many years of having it just beyond my consciousness in the back of my mind, because I'd pulled the book off my shelf to show to my brother Andrew, who is visiting.

After spending some time with the book, I discovered some really revelatory and interesting phrases. Of all of the worst of these phrases, however, this phrase, from page 82 (image below right), takes the cake. I remember very hard and yet bittersweet laughter because of reading this 4 years ago.

폭력을         당해서          
pok-ryeok-eul dang-hae-seo    
violence-OBJ  experience-CAUSE
이    회사를       떠나고     싶습니다
i    hoe-sa-reul tteo-na-go sip-seup-ni-da
this company-OBJ leave-CONN want-FORMAL

I want to leave this company because I have experienced violence.

I rather like the poetic version given by the googletranslate, too (although like most of googletranslate's oeuvre, it is incoherent): "Five people I'd like to leave the company of violence."

Or as the book translates it: I want to leave this company because I was beaten.

This is a sorry commentary on the state of migrant labor in Korea. Foreigners working in the hagwon and EFL biz don't really realize that we are truly elites, no matter how badly we are treated.

Caveat: 홍삼

Koreans love their ginseng (인삼 [in-sam]). It's a matter of both tradition and national pride (not to mention a profitable national industry, too), and they strongly believe in ginseng's curative and health-supplementing properties - and then there's the aphrodesiac cult that surrounds it.

Yesterday when visiting Curt, he bought me a gift of Red Ginseng Extract. The "red" in red ginseng (홍삼 [hong-sam]) refers not to a subspecies of the plant but rather to a result of a specific curing process involving steaming and sun-drying.

The extract comes in little foil envelopes, which you open and then you squeeze the juice out into your mouth. So I got a "one month" set, 30 individual-dose envelopes (see picture below) that I'm supposed to take once-a-day. I opened and took my first extract this morning.

Like most forms of alternative medicine, I harbor my scepticisms. But red ginseng as an anti-cancer agent actually has a double-blind-study paper trail (mostly the work of fanatical Korean scientists trying to justify their traditional medicine - but still) where at least some of the studies have not been rejected on methodological grounds by the established global medical community. And there's not any evidence of harm from red ginseng. So I figured, what the hey - I'm becoming Korean, right?

Straight up red ginseng extract has a strong earthy taste. I have sometimes described it as "dirt flavored." Being charitable, I would describe it as similar to the aftertaste of strong maple syrup, but with absolutely zero of the sweetness. It's not horrible, anyway. I had some red ginseng flavored cooking vinegar that went well in certain savory concoctions that I used up a few months back.

Anyway, because Koreans take their Red Ginseng so seriously, it comes packaged (and priced!) like a luxury good (see picture above). I think Curt spent way too much money on this gift - let's just say, it's more expensive than an outpatient visit to the cancer hospital by a factor of about 500 (see yesterday's post).

Caveat: The 8 Cent Wait

I promised I would tell this story, so here it is.

My check-out from the hospital, yesterday, was bureaucratic, as such things tend to be. But there was a kafkaesque moment that far exceeded the norms of bureaucracy, even.

After settling our account at the discharge counter, we had to go over to the outpatient pharmacy, to receive the medications that the doctors wanted to send home with me. We collected our medicines after about 25 minutes of waiting, only to note that one of the medicines the doctors had had me using in the ward was missing. Did they mean for it to be missing, or was it an oversight that it wasn't included in the check-out prescription?

The pharmacist consulted with a doctor and the nursing staff on the 10th floor, and concluded that yes, indeed, I deserved this other medicine, too.

But they couldn't give it to us, because by adding on that extra medicine, our accounts needed to be adjusted and resettled. So Curt and I trooped over to the discharge / accounts counter, drew a number and waited 20 minutes to talk to a representative there. It seemed like they had become short-staffed - perhaps it was lunchtime. Curt pestered the woman at the counter and finally, she produced the new printout.

That's that printout that I displayed in my prior post about my bill. I'll add a pointer to the same picture, below.

So on the new, "adjusted" bill which now included the extra medicine, the new total due was... 90 won (see yellow oval, in picture). That's 8 cents, at current exchange rates.

Curt exasperatedly slapped down a 100 won coin (a Korean dime, more-or-less) on the counter, and the woman made him wait while she fetched change: 10 won (a penny).

Curt shook his head and handed me the tiny, coppery 10 won coin. "Here is a souvenir of your time at this hospital."

"Gee, thanks," I smiled, glibly. I pocketed the coin.

And then... we had to go back to the pharmacist and wait another 10 or so minutes to get the extra medicine. So discharge took an hour longer than it might have.

But if that's the worst the hospital can do, I still insist, elatedly, that Korean Healthcare is NOT broken.

caveat: 會者定離. 去者必反.

My roommate and now close friend Mr Cho taught me the following Buddhist proverb, today - despite himself being a catholic deacon or something like that. Thats the sort of openmindedness that warms my heart.

會者定離.                     去者必反.
회자정리.                     거자필반.
hoe·ja·jeong·ri.            geo·ja·pil·ban.
meet-people-intention-part. go-people-again-come.

This pair of sinisms refer to the great wheel: we all are cycling through the rebirths and deaths. "We meet and then we part again. People go and people come again."

Incidentally, the vow of silence has been relaxed somewhat, with doctors' permission. 

caveat: caregiving

an observation in an email from my friend bob made me realize there is probably a lot about undergoing medical treatment here in korea that is quite different from what similar treatment in the US would involve, that i have either failed to explain or have elided over.

bob was mentioning when i undergo speech therapy (for the tongue) or occupational therapy (for the right arm). i think it unlikely i will experience anything like these US concepts. the doctor tells me things to do - move your tongue like so or move your fingers like so and asks if ive been doing them later, and thats the extent of it.

patients are expected to be much more autonomous and self-providing, because the patient includes the family caregivers. patients without caregivers end up hiring them - a bit like hiring a home hospice worker to come help you in the hospital. every bed has a cot next it, and those cots are almost always occupied by caregivers - family, friends or paid workers NOT on the hospital staff. the cot by my bed is occupied by andrew, now - and was occupied by peter my first night out of icu.

an example of "caregiving": the hospital doesnt provide for patient hygiene. caregivers handle bedpans, spongebaths, emptying and maintaining various external subtance receptacles, etc. if the hospital has to step in its begrudgingly and at extra charge.

because of these caregivers, my hospital room has 5 beds but arguably 10 or 11 inhabitants. its crowded and like a campout. 

patients are quite autonomous. for example, i am only escorted to "clinics" in the event their location is new to me. otherwise a nurse will say "go see dr ryu" and im expected to go to the elevator, get to the second floor, and find my way across the building to where his work area is.

andrew attached the flowerpot gifted to me by my friend seungbae to the top of my iv stand. i was a bit sceptical - i imagine a nurse oh dont do that. but the head nurses reaction was only 예쁘구나 [oh pretty - not sure i spelled the korean right].

caveat: back bonking

although my korean remains lousy, in other ways i am fully become ajeossi.

koreans use various wooden and plastic doohickeys
to massage their own backs when they cant get someone else to help, generally with a high degree of percussion.

grace brought me the wooden morningstar thing (photo on my windowsill, below) last night, and this morning i dutifully stood beside my bed and bonked my back, like a real ajeossi. it worked ok.

koreans are firm belivers in curative powers of back bonking - they would organize gangs of orderlies in the icu and go around bonking all the patients every few hours. i dont doubt that human touch can be curative, and well placed massage too, but im slightly sceptical of percussion on the back as curative per se.

caveat: giving the white man's nod to ajeossi

i was doing one of my "orbits" of the ward earlier while my friend grace was visiting. there are plenty of other patients trundling their ivs of varying complexity around the halls at almost any time of the day or night. we all walk around like somnabulent ghosts of diverse mood and genre.

because, currently, i cannot walk and talk at the same time - to walk i need a hand to steer the iv stand, while to talk i need a hand to put pressure on my tracheal hole, and my sum total of working hands is less than two - we just keep a pensive silence as i trundle purposively.

"there. you did it again," she laughed.

i stopped, carefully parking the iv stand close to a corridor wall. i picked up my folded sheet of clean gauze, and pressed it at the base of my neck. briefly clearing my throat first, i finally managed a weak, "did what?"

"i see you're giving the white man's nod to ajeossi now." she seemed surprised.

there are some terms in that statement that require explanation to anyone not inhabiting the narrow english-speaking expat community of south korea.

"the white man's nod" is the subtle acknowledgement, short of actual greeting, that seems to arise between the confreres of any visible minority in any place, so it doesnt belong exclusively to white men - the naming of the term is more the exception that proves the rule. any non-asian who has spent time in korea knows - when youre walking down the street and pass another non-asian, you almost always share a little nod or duck of the head, as if to say "oh, there goes another foreigner like me. here we are, foreigners in korea."

the other term here is ajeossi [아저씨] which just means an older korean male of indeterminate social status.

both these terms being known to me, i quickly grasped what grace was talking about. "i suppose." i said without hesitation, "its not really a white mans nod as a cancer patients nod." 

and its true - our pajamas and our iv stands a-trundling, we are highly visible and almost a majority. i think the nod has always been more about a sort of solidarity in shared difference as opposed to any kind of greeting at all: "oh, there goes another cancer patient. here we are, cancer patients in the halls."

graces insight is to point out the sociological identity of two seemingly unrelated situations.

Caveat: Check-in 6:30 PM

I got the call. The poor man. I answer my phone in English, nowadays, to establish at the outset that I'm a foreigner, because if I answer in Korean people just plow into mile-a-minute Korean that is beyond my comprehension. So, I answered in English.

Long silence. "Uh. Cancer Center. Me."

"Yes," I said.

Long silence. "Korean do you know?"

"조금 밖에 몰라요." This is my standard answer to that question - it means "I only know a little bit."

Sigh of relief. Then launching into rapid Korean. I asked him to slow down. Finally I heard the time, and recognized "check-in." I confirmed it back to him, first in English then Korean. He said "Yes, 6 30."

So now the waiting shifts to being ready. I'm already packed - not much to pack, a change of clothes, laptop computer, 2 books plus notebook, some toiletries. I guess if I need something else I can have a friend fetch it from my apartment later.

I think I'll make a few blog posts and surf the internet and meditate and walk in the rain.

I found a comic circulating online that I really liked. It made me laugh.

It's attributed to an artist named *Inkless-Pencil. I looked at her other stuff and found this, too, that was very funny.

 

Caveat: Can Linguistic Anxiety Lead to Health Problems?

Interestingly, yes.

I can now state tentatively that my linguistic anxiety has led, indirectly, to my rather unpleasant health problem.

I've been sick for a while. Flu-like stuff, mostly, but also, for more than a month, a persistent ear infection type thing that causes a lot of pain and discomfort, especially while eating. Probably, the ear infection thing is a lot older than a month: I had some pain in my ear last fall and early winter, but I ignored it and it seemed to go away. Then it recurred in February for a few weeks. But I avoided the doctor in both those instances.

And so I still hadn't gone to a doctor when it returned again last month. Partly, I hate going to see a doctor, anyway. I've always had issues around seeing doctors. It's not really a "fear" of doctors, but a sort of social or even philosophical dislike of them. Perhaps I don't feel comfortable with the idea that someone else knows more about what's going on with me than what I know about myself. I distrust doctors. I have had some negative experiences with poor diagnoses in the past, too - not least, the time I nearly died in Mexico due to a misdiagnosis and mis-treatment of typhoid.

But in Korea, that discomfort around doctors has only grown much, much worse. Aside from a single mostly positive experience with the doctor I saw for my food poisoning incident down in Yeonggwang in 2010 (which was a case where I already knew the doctor socially and thus had a high comfort level with him - I was very lucky), every other experience with a doctor, dentist, or medical professional in Korea has been deeply unpleasant, not to say downright depressingly insulting to my intelligence and human dignity. The Korean health care system is efficient and I'm very thankful for the national health insurance, which it makes it stunningly inexpensive by American standards, but Korean health professionals are, as a class, difficult people to interact with.

Korean doctors are mostly arrogant and intensely uncommunicative. More than once, I've had doctors make snide or unkind remarks about my appearance and language ability, too. This latter is what I'm talking about in the title to this blog post.

I've been feeling so much embarrassment and shame, lately, about my lack of progress in learning Korean, and this anxiety and frustration has bled over into other aspects of my life - including, it seems, the fact that I have been avoiding going to the doctor for much too long for my seeming ear infection. And so gradually it has become worse and worse. Each time I imagined going to the doctor, I would merely remember previous visits, when a doctor said things like "How can you be in Korea for so long and still be so bad at speaking Korean?" (yes, a doctor really said this to me, at the same moment he was prodding me in some ungentle manner).

Remembering this, I would say to myself, "aughg... maybe I will go some other time... maybe this pain in my throat and ear will go away on its own, like it has before... maybe my Korean will magically improve so I don't feel ashamed to go to the doctor because I can finally talk about my ailment in decent Korean..."

I finally went to doctor today. As usual, he said almost nothing communicative, but at least he didn't insult my effort at Korean. He even understood a few things I said, although I understood nothing he said. I can't even be sure what language he was muttering in. He said "hmm" and "uhnn" and wrote out a prescription for some medications which I'm now researching. Maybe some antibiotics - if that's what's called for.

I guess I can't really say that linguistic anxiety led to my health problem. But it wouldn't be inaccurate to say that my language-centered social phobia has worsened my health problem.

Sigh. *Popping pills*

I reproduce my prescription below, immortalized for posterity on This Here Blog Thingy™.

Caveat: хлеб ржаной кисло-сладкий

When in Seoul on Sunday and showing my friend around we went into the Russianish neighborhood just west of Dongdaemun, where I stopped in an Uzbek/Russian bakery I sometimes frequent. It used to be you could buy dark rye bread, locally made in the Russian style, but the last few times I've been there they haven't had it. Now they're selling packaged dark rye bread imported from Tashkent (Uzbekistan). It's just as tasty but it rather violates any notions of localism or freshness. I suppose it's not different than going to Homeplus and buying cheese from Europe or getting fruit from Chile. The world is round.

The label says "Sourdough rye bread" in Russian ("хлеб ржаной кисло-сладкий") and under that the same in Uzbek, I think (using roman letters "lotin") - I figured that out because "javdar" is Uzbek for rye (Russian: рожь / adjective form ржаной).

There are a lot of interesting and complex commercial relationships between South Korea and the Central Asian countries, driven partly by the large Korean diaspora found in those countries (engineered by Stalin during his rearrangement of ethnic groups, such as moving Koreans native to the Russian Pacific [i.e. just northeast of Korea] to all kinds of far-flung places), but also by the fact that South Korea was viewed as a "neutral" country with which to develop commercial relationships after the fall of the Soviet Union - unlike the other major economic players: the US or EU or Russia or China or Japan or India or Iran, all of which had various perceived geopolitcial agendas. As a result, Korean businesses are quite strong in Central Asia and there are a lot of Central Asians in Seoul, for whom the lingua franca is generally Russian (the Soviet legacy).

I often gravitate to Russian when feeling frustrated by my efforts with Korean. I studied Russian in college, 20+ years ago, and progressed pretty far with it. I was probably better at Russian in 1989 than I am in Korean now. But having not used it at all for more than two decades means it's all dormant and rusty in my brain. I suspect I could resurrect it pretty easily, though.

Caveat: More Jeongier Than Ever Before

My friend Peter made a pass at defining 정 [jeong] (juhng) in his blog. I've done that, too (see Caveat: 情 from two years ago). But I really think Peter has figured it out. He writes:

When push comes to shove, hwe-shik was/is a chance for building the emotion Koreans call Juhng (정), which I learned to be a special kind of bond formed with those with whom one has undergone mutual hardships, like the bond of soldiers who've served together. As I understand it, Juhng doesn't necessarily mean friendship or even necessarily admiration, but a kind of recognition of, and appreciation of, shared-experience itself, "we are [were] all in this together". It's especially true for emotionally-important experiences, like (again) combat, or working together at a such-and-such company in difficult conditions. The harder the situation, the stronger the Juhng.

So then we had a conversation, via comments on his blog entry (and/or email). Here it is:

jaredway 05/16/2013 2:49pm

I think that's the best definition of 정 (jeong or as you trascribe juhng) that I have ever seen, written by a foreigner. I have attempted definitions of it before, mostly describing it as a cross between platonic love and sentimentality, but that concept of "shared experience" really encapsulates it well. "Intense Camaraderie" e.g. "brother-in-arms" is a possible comparison.

Peter 05/18/2013 3:11pm

Thanks, Jared. I see one place you attempted a definition:

"I find the workings of Korean jeong mysterious and impenetrable. It seems to be a hybrid of irrational loyalty and intense platonic love, with a strong seasoning of smarmy sentimentality." (Tinyurl.com/azano28 -- I'd make it a link, but I can't figure out how, yet)

I wonder in what context Curt said that you "lacked" jeong. If someone working with Koreans "lacks jeong" (whatever that means), it would seem to be an institutional problem rather than a personal problem. Example: At my job as of this writing, "I" (along with the other foreigners) definitely lack a jeong connection with the Korean teachers and to a lesser extent with the students (when I compare it with my Ilsan job). Why: There is a wall carefully erected and maintained between foreigners and Koreans at this place. I complained about it in this very entry (above). In brief, I blame the weakness of management here.

Also in your entry:
The idea that jeong (정) is uniquely Korean. At first glance this reminds me of some other sweeping Korean cultural ideas, like the idea that English has no ABILITY to express politeness in speech, an idea coming from its lack of a 존대말/반말 distinction. Both of those ideas seem culturally..."insensitive", at least.

It's easy to criticize those ideas. I'd have to admit, though, that in terms of the USA I know, the one I was born into, those two concepts (jeong and politeness-in-speech) are at once both more 'important'/explicit in Korea, and less important than they once were in the USA.

jaredway 05/19/2013 8:13am

You're right that I've been trying to figure it out for a long time. But I definitely believe you've identified the essential feature - the "intense shared experience" factor. And in fact, your insight has allowed me to retrospectively re-think some of my past experiences, such as the unbearable yet utterly compelling staff field trips when I worked at the public school in Hongnong: they were jeong-building exercises, and thus there was a sense in which, of course they had to be unbearable - how else could jeong be built? More and more, when the idea that there is no equivalent concept in English comes up when talking to Koreans, I have thrown out the word "camaraderie." And your new definition goes the same way. "Camaraderie" lacks the high-frequency-of-use that the word "jeong" has, and may seem milder or narrower in focus, but I think it captures the core aspect. Another translation might be "comradeship" but that always makes of communards standing at barricades.

Why am I sharing all this? Because I think jeong, and the conversations about it, are culturally fascinating, and because I have now come full circle from where I stood in 2008 when my friend Curt told me I "had no jeong." I believed at first that he was wrong, and it was just a language issue, and then I started to believe it was in fact a genuine cultural difference, but now I've returned to the view that it's a language issue.

The key factor is to remember that jeong is between people. The word doesn't describe an emotion felt on one's own by one person, but rather an emotion felt between two or more people (family, coworkers, classmates, etc.) So in that sense, Curt was right: when he told me that, of course I had no jeong - not with him. The funny thing is that, these many years later, I do have jeong - again, with him. He's even said so. It resides in the shared experience (especially hardship of some kind), which he and I now have (i.e. the struggles of working together with him as boss at Karma).

When Peter identifies jeong as being the sort of emotion that seems rarer in the US (and perhaps rarer these days than in the past), I think he might be right, if only because ours is a culture of individualized hardships and experiences more than of shared hardships or experiences. Kids go to college and have experiences, but so much of what they experience, even though it's social, is nevertheless always conceptualized individualistically. If I look for the points at my life where I've developed "jeong" with people, they are places there that individuality gets broken down - team efforts: the army, living (and quarrelling) with housemates, intense (and fulfilling) workplaces (the Casa in Mexico City, ARAMARK in Burbank, etc.), graduate school.

Caveat: 19.74 km

I used Google maps to diagram my long walk on Friday, which I did with my once-upon-a-time fellow Arcata High School student, Mary, who was visiting Seoul for the first time - because both of us like to walk.

How weird is it, by the way, that there are two AHS class of 1983 people living in South Korea at the same time, exactly 30 years after our graduation? That's weird.

But anyway, such as it is, we took a long walk.

I  took the subway (line 3) into Gangnam and met her there. Then we went to my favorite Kyobo Mungo (giant bookstore thingy). Then we walked back north to the river and across the river on the old Dongho bridge (동호대교 [dongho-daegyo]). There our luck got interesting. Nestled at the base of where the subway crosses the bridge and then tunnels into the mountain to become subway again, near Oksu station, there is a Buddhist temple called 미타사 [mita-sa]. Because it was Buddha's birthday, the  temple was very busy - imagine a Buddhist version of a church Christmas street fair and festivities. Children were darting about, and old women were ushering and monks were clacking  their monk clackers. An old woman showed us a lantern and subsequently invited us in. Now in all my six years in Korea I've only been invited in once before to an on-going Buddhist service, and certainly not into something so festive and interesting. Mary took a lot of pictures while I tried to speak along with the chants (=prayers, with the words projected onto a big screen). It was interesting an entertaining. A talented woman sang pop songs and Buddhist "pop" music - sort of a parallel to Christian pop music that goes on in worship services, I suspect.

Here, I found another rendition of one of the songs we heard. (What I'm listening to right now).

"빙빙빙" [bing-bing-bing].

Imagine exactly what you see in the video, above, but with a giant gold Buddha as a backdrop. Here's a picture I took right after that song ended and the singer was departing the stage. The projector screen still says the song's title.

It was a lot of fun to be inside the temple. They wanted us to stay and eat but we pleaded busyness and so they dispensed some rice-cake sweets to us and sent us on our way.

Then we walked to Itaewon.

We had lunch at a Spanish restaurant called "Spain Club." It was pretty good - we had some  tapas.

Itaewon is, among many other things, Seoul's (and Korea's) only predominantly Muslim neighborhood - and it being Friday (Muslim sabbath) combined with it being a holiday (Buddha's Birthday) meant that everyone was out in force. The mosque was packed with prayer-goers at a giant outdoor picnic. Here's a picture of the entrance and the inside of the courtyard area.

From Itaewon, we walked along the east side of the Yongsan U.S. Army base and on up the south side of 남산 [nam-san], where the iconic Seoul Tower is located. I've taken many pictures at Namsan before so I didn't take any this time.

At the top of Namsan we looked in various different directions and then we went down the north side of the mountain into downtown. We walked through Myeongdong. It was so crowded that it was like being at a rock concert but instead of music it was Chinese and Japanese tourists absorbed in a consumerist frenzy (Myeongdong is a popular fashion shopping area). Finally we made it to Cheonggyecheon, the restored stream that flows eastward through downtown Seoul.

Then we walked to 인사동 [insa-dong] where I bought some 보이차 [bo-i-cha = puer tea] I had been wanting - I have it in tea bags but I wanted the kind that I could make in a pot. Then we went over to the 조계사 [jogye-sa] temple which, despite its understatedness, I consider to be the St Peter's Basilica of Korean Buddhism - it's the administrative heart of the Jogye Order which is the predominant zen (chan / mahayana) style branch of Korean Buddhism.

Then we went to find my favorite vegetarian restaurant and on a wrong turning we met some cats on a rooftop. They watched us.

Finally we ate dinner at the restaurant. I had sesame noodle soup.

It was a pretty good Buddha's Birthday hike. Now my feet are tired.

Caveat: IIRTHW Part II - The Business Environment

[In the form of various unstructured entries with fairly random thoughts, I’ve been working on this project for several years, and it’s come to have the name "If I Ran The Hagwon" (abbreviated as IIRTHW). This topic seems to be evolving into my first effort at something resembling long-form journalism on my blog. Here is Part II. I posted Part I last month. Additional parts (number to be determined) will follow.]

[Part I]

Part II - The Business Environment.

To understand what would make a better English language hagwon, it's important to get some broad understanding of the business and cultural context in which a typical hagwon has to operate these days. There are many aspects that make the hagwon environment "alien" to people from Western countries (and even, to some extent, perhaps other non-Western countries too). I'd like to talk about these aspects. In fact, they all derive from a single overarching fact: the hagwon "system" as it currently exists in South Korea is an example of unbridled capitalism in the field of education. This basic fact leads to a whole bunch of concomitant issues that come to our attention once we understand it.

Since I believe that ultimately, the key to success in business is customer loyalty, regardless of the business in question, I will try to connect each of these observations to the concept of customer loyalty. This will provide a sort of unifying theme for this exercise.

1. Alienation and workplace regimentation.

A core fact of capitalism is that it leads to alienation. South Korea's capitalist economy doesn't just generate alienation, but requires alienated, conforming workers as a precondition to function efficiently. This being the case, one of the purposes of South Korean education is to create appropriately alienated workers out of whole human cloth. Because of this, just like the military (another alienation-making-machine), Korean schools and hagwon have as a key non-explicit mission the alienation of students.

It's hard to explain how important this is to the ultimate character of the hagwon business environment. Setting aside complex questions of what teaching methodologies actually work and what ones actually don't work in a wider, theoretical context, in South Korea, specifically, there isn't a lot of cultural space for what we might think of as empowering styles of teaching.

Korean students tend to be fairly passive, and require a fairly high level of supervision and extrinsic motivation. Efforts at cultivating intrinsic motivation will create discomfort and even suspicion among not just students but, more importantly, among parents and fellow teachers, who will ask questions such as, "why are you letting this child have fun at school? How is that going to help little Haneul for her next test?"

I might state, just as an observation for future reference: suspicious customers are not loyal customers.

2. Parents-as-consumers, children-as-products.

One thing that even the Korean hagwon owners rarely seem willing to admit is that on this capitalistic model, the children are not our customers. They are not paying the bills. The children are essentially products. I don't mean this in a necessarily bad way - it's just the reality and it's better to have a firm grip on the reality. To be more precise, the students' hopefully improved test scores are a service being provided. In light of this, a bad test score is emblematic of a defective service, and will lead very quickly to lost customer loyalty.

Nevertheless, within this conceptual frame there is still a lot of room for variation. Different parents have different opinions as to how they want their kids' scores improved, and they may have various rigid or not-so-rigid views as to what methods should be used. They may be sophisticated consumers of education or naive; they may be traditionalists or innovationists.

Identifying and catering to these different types of parents (i.e. customers) is the key to acquiring and retaining their loyalty.

3. Market fragmentation and niches.

Given that some 80% or 90% of Korean students attend some form of hagwon, the market is huge. Although Korea is not an ethnically diverse country, it is an ideologically and culturally diverse one, with parents running the gamut from communards to vaguely Randian libertarians, from atheistic hippies to Pentecostals to Buddhists.

Education is (has been, will always be) an area where ideologies and subcultures play a major role, and capitalism is a system that encourages market fragmentation. The consequence of this is that there is a nearly infinite number of possible market niches out there. Not all of these market niches are viable, but I think this insight underscores one very important point: a given hagwon - especially a non-chain, "mom and pop" style, single-location hagwon - can occupy one or more of any number of possible market niches, providing anything from "fun English" to "hardcore pass-the-test cram English."

4. The importance of "counseling" (상담).

The Korean word is 상담 [sangdam]. It means, roughly, "counseling." In a customer-oriented business (e.g. telecoms) the work the people who talk to you on the phone trying to sell you stuff or solve your problems is called 상담. In the context of running a hagwon business, too, I would argue that is, in essence, a sales position. Rather, it is not just sales, but the after-the-sale "account manager" position common in large, service-oriented businesses.

Hagwon counseling includes mostly telephone "counseling" but also plenty of face-time with parents, too. If counseling is so critical, why do so many hagwon force the teachers into this critical, customer-facing position? Let's take note of something: good teachers are not necessarily the best sales people. And good sales people are not necessarily the best teachers.

Obviously, in many people, there is some overlap - the skill sets are not, in fact, dissimilar. Conceding that fact, however, if I was running a small business I would work very hard to make sure that anyone who dealt with parents in this counseling role had lots of innate talent and lots of training (training in that account manager style counseling as opposed to just training as teachers) and that those counseling-based, customer-retention statistics (as compared to statistics linked to things like quality-of-teaching or student test score outcomes) were tracked and documented.

In a small hagwon, this counseling role can be consolidated into a single person's role. It can be that person's sole job in a slightly larger institution, and in a large, successful hagwon, I can imagine a whole cubicle farm of "customer account managers" whose sole job is keeping parents satisfied.

This leads to a certain complication, however: if the sales people (the account managers) aren't the same ones teaching the kids, there needs to be very clear lines of communication - a centralized database of student progress, teacher observations, parent requests, etc. I've never seen anything resembling this in the hagwon business. This is where providing some reliable means of communication between teachers (service people) and counselors (sales people) is critical.

Just remember what this really boils down to: marketing is king.

5. The purpose and deployment of technology.

Technology is popular in Korean classrooms - more so in public schools than in hagwon, but certainly in hagwon too. I think it's critical to understand one core fact - for a hagwon, where costs are critical and methodologies trend toward the traditional, technology is 95% marketing, and at best only 5% pedagogy. In other businesses I've been a part of in the U.S., in the past, technology is what is sometimes called "the bells and whistles."

Perhaps it doesn't help that I, personally, have always been severely skeptical of the genuine usefulness of technology in pedagogy. I think you can create a world-class school with chalkboards and dirt floors, and you can create content-free educational pap with computers, video conferencing, etc. There are definitely some things of great value. I love using a video camera to put the pressure on my students, to evaluate them, and later to review our progress. But I view it as unnecessary and irrelevant from a pedagogical standpoint. It's "bells and whistles."

Customers, on the other hand - the parents - have great interest in these bells and whistles. It's smart to try to leverage our technology in ways that make customers feel like they're getting something extra, something personalized, something valuable. Building and leveraging social web tools is critical, probably. My only point here is that we must never lose sight of the core fact: it's about marketing.

Marketing is king.

6. Do all customers have the same value?

As mentioned above, the market is fragmented. That being the case, it's critical for hagwon to identify and occupy specific market niches. Most of them do, but they often do so rather naively - which is to say, they occupy the niche without a clear understanding that that's what they're doing.

To get a leg up on the competition, explicitly identifying and pursuing specific market niches is indispensable. There should be a lot time spent figuring out what niche to pursue, and in recognizing that not all customers are the same. Different parents have different expectations, and different children have different needs. We shouldn't try to be all things to all people.

This idea leads to a corollary: sometimes it's OK to tell a customer we don't want them. Some customers are not "worth the trouble." I like to think of Steve Jobs, who famously didn't give a damn about customers who didn't like his product. He would typically say something to the effect of: "Let them buy someone else's product, if they don't like mine."

Likewise, the pursuit of customers just for customers' sake is a really bad idea. I have seen hagwon management investing far too much energy and time and teacher goodwill in trying to satisfy parents or teach children where it's clearly not in the hagwon's interest to do this. Let bad customers go. Identify the good customers and work hard for them and earn their loyalty, but acknowledge that not all customers are the same, and some customers can't be pleased.

We should be efficient. We should measure just how much effort a customer is requiring of us, and have a "cut line" whereupon we have to say, "I'm sorry, but I think this relationship isn't working out." Big companies do this very well - that super friendly and helpful customer service rep you spend so much time with is being kept track of, and there will be a point when his or her boss will tell him, "let that customer go."

7. Reliable curriculum vs innovative curriculum.

The purpose of having a reliable curriculum is pedagogical. By reliable, I mean that it produces consistent and predictable results, which, in the hagwon context, of course, means rising test scores and satisfied parents. The fields of EFL pedagogy and teaching methodology may or may not have a great deal to offer on this front, but what I want to address here is something else.

A lot of hagwon try to convince themselves or their customers that they are providing innovative curriculum. This does not serve a pedagogical purpose - it's a sales gimmick. In this way, innovation in the area of curriculum mostly serves a purpose similar to that identified with respect to technology, above: curricular innovation is a component of marketing and niche-building.

Innovation is perhaps required if a current curriculum isn't producing hoped-for results, but in the long run, if a curriculum is producing results, innovation is a bad thing, not a good thing. Innovation makes loyal customers uncomfortable and more often than not fails to impress new customers. It's better for a business to find what's working and stick with it, and most successful hagwon seem to operate this way.

8. The demographic problem.

South Korea has a demographic time-bomb ticking. The fertility rate has dropped far below replacement rate, immigration is still low relative to most OECD countries, and furthermore structural and social problems mean that despite this, youth unemployment is quite high.

That's not what I want specifically to talk about here. What's critical for someone wanting to run a hagwon business in Korea right now is the understanding that, beyond what I just mentioned, education is a shrinking market - and there's absolutely nothing that can be done about it.

I made the graph below using data from Wikipedia (sourced, in turn, from a Korean government agency).

This graph makes very clear two things. First of all, explains why the elementary hagwon business was booming when I first arrived in Korea, in 2007. The 1990's bulge on the left of the graph was just passing through the elementary system. Secondly, though, it explains why that boom was utterly unsustainable, moving forward, and why hagwon are struggling to find new elementary students to teach. Quite simply put, there are fewer students entering the system. The number of births suffered a precipitous decline of more than 20% in a single decade, and has stabilized at a new, much lower level. The number of hagwon in business in the 2000's is unsustainable in the 2010's.

This being the case, it underscores the importance of two things I've already mentioned. Customer loyalty is crucial. But also, in identifying a niche in which to operate, the focus should be on quality rather than quantity. The so-called upmarket niche is the only one sustainable or growable given current demographics. We can't be churning out PC clones, we have to be making the Macs or Sparc workstations of the hagwon business.

Conclusions.

The preceding has been my effort to make a list of some of the issues that face the hagwon business in South Korea, as I have experienced them. It's not meant to be an exhaustive list, and it may in fact have substantial lacunae. It's only things as I have seen them, with an emphasis on the things that seemed most notable to me. But I think they provide some idea as to the business and cultural context in which a successful hagwon must operate.

In my next part, I want to go on to the original purpose of this essay: what makes a good hagwon? How can I make one? What would I do if I could make one as I wanted?

[Part III]

Caveat: Diving giraffes and other miscellany

A. Have you seen the famous French diving giraffes?

I believe they are computer-generated.

B. Unrelatedly... over the weekend, there were fireworks at Lake Park (호수공원) a few blocks from my apartment - because of the Childrens Day festivities. I knew what they were, but I also thought: that's what it would sound like if North Korea attacked.

Then, yesterday, as I stepped out my apartment to walk to work, the civil defense sirens sounded. "Ah, right," I thought. "It's exactly 2 pm, first Tuesday of the month." That's a typical time for a civil defense siren, although they seem to move around a bit within that general coneptual frame. But normally I'm either already at work or still sitting at home when the 2pm sirens go off. I think I witnessed one once before, some years ago, although they happen every month.

Everyone stopped driving. People in yellow vests went out into the street and stopped cars and even pedestrians. So I was standing on the corner of Junang-no and Gangseon-no for 15 minutes until the drill was over, thinking once again about North Korea. I took out my phone and looked at the Korean-language news site, to pass the time. The first article I read (er, tried to read) was about the USS Nimitz (nuclear aircraft carrier) visiting the South Korean city of Busan [美항모 니미츠호 11∼13일 부산항 입항(종합)]. Is there a pattern here?

In fact, the Norks seem to be behaving better lately. Or else they got what they wanted: South Korea gave them some money recently. Extortion works.

C. Lastly, another bit of miscellany:

"You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy; then you should sit for an hour" - old zen saying (or just someone on the internet).

Caveat: Double Demographic Whammy

I ran across a pretty interesting article at Quartz. Quarz is an annoyingly-formatted spin-off of The Atlantic - perhaps I'm just too old-school to appreciate the smartphonesque stylings at Quartz. Regardless...

The article is about South Korea's demographic problems, which are even worse than I'd been thinking. The article includes the graph below, which the article reproduces from KNSO (Korean National Statistics Organization, I think), which covers the range from 1960 projected out to 2050. The proportions between youth, working-age and elderly is striking.

The article goes on to talk about the youth problem. The idea that a country with 22% youth unemployment has a shortage of workers is something I'd already sort of realized. The article attributes this to the country's over-obsession with college education, which leads to a vastly over-qualified workforce relative to the types of jobs available, but I'd like to suggest a different reading.

South Korean society has changed so much, and so fast, that there is a kind of "culture-gap" between the youth and the older members of the society. This was observed in the recent elections, for example. In a country where personal relationships - those built between peers, especially, but then between one's family and one's peers' families, too - are so important in finding jobs and building careers, the fact that youth and older workers essentially pertain to different cultures means that they no longer have a space in common where they can build those critical relationships.

If, for example, the young people are no longer interested in working until 10 pm and then going out drinking with their older work-mates in an appropriately deferential way, then those older work-mates are going to begin to view those younger workers as "bad workers" and begin to exclude them from the social circles where jobs are retained and careers are built.

This is just speculation, on my part. But I think there's more going on that just an "education gap" in Korea's weirdly astronomical youth unemployment rate.

Caveat: IIRTHW Part I - What is an English hagwon?

[In the form of various unstructured entries with fairly random thoughts, I’ve been working on this project for several years, and it’s come to have the name "If I Ran The Hagwon" (abbreviated as IIRTHW). This topic seems to be evolving into my first effort at something resembling long-form journalism on my blog. Here is Part I. Additional parts (number to be determined) will follow.]

Part I - What is an English hagwon?

To talk about this topic, first we need to define some terms, and provide some context and background. "Hagwon" is a transliteration for Korean 학원 [hagwon], often translated as "academy" or "institute," but I'm not at all comfortable with those translations. In fact, a hagwon is not an academy or an institute in the way we understand those ideas - both words convey a different although overlapping set of concepts that fail to exactly match up with what is conveyed by the Korean word "hagwon."

A hagwon is an after-school supplementary educational institution, sometimes specializing in a particular subject area or sometimes more general. Sometimes they are focused on "exam prep" (in the style of what are called 学習塾 [Gakushū juku = "Cram Schools"] in Japan), but not always. In Korea, there are hagwon offering almost any subject you can imagine: I've seen chess hagwon, baduk hagwon (baduk is the game that is called by its Japanese name of "go" in English), computer-game design hagwon, lego hagwon, and robot design hagwon. The most common type of hagwon, aside from the broad-based, multi-subject test-prep sort, seems to be in the following topics: math, science, English, Chinese, and 국어 ([gugeo] i.e. Korean writing and literature for Korean native-speakers). Hagwon serve all school grades, but the high school ones tend to be more strictly in the "exam prep" style (because the 수능 [suneung] is king - which is the Korean SAT-analogue), while the elementary and middle school levels are more diverse. (As a minor note on usage and linguistics, I have opted to treat the nativized word "hagwon" as an uncountable noun, hence the plural is also "hagwon." I think this sounds more natural than putting an "-s" on it - e.g. "hagwons" - given that Koreans don't make much use of plural markers.)

For the purposes of this essay, I will mostly talk about "what I know" - that is to say, I will focus on talking about hagwon specializing in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) instruction for the elementary and middle school levels, essentially grades 1 through 9. Before going into specifics, however, it's worth the effort to make some more general observations about the "hagwon market" and the nature of South Korean education.

South Korea has been ranked near the top of all the world's countries on many lists of quality of education. The UN Education Index from 2007 puts South Korea at number 8 worldwide. A recent report by the Economist Intelligence Unit put South Korea at number 2, after only Finland, which includes data from OECD's PISA project. But as someone who has worked in Korean education for the last 5 years, I find it remarkable - even inconceivable. My gut reaction is: are all the other countries really that bad? How does Korea do this?

The fact of the matter is that Finland and South Korea are almost diametrically opposed on most matters of education policy. Finland essentially bans private (tuition-charging) schools. In South Korea, private education flourishes, and, if you take into account the hagwon system in its broadest brush strokes, South Korea is arguably one of the most privatized and capitalistic systems of education on the planet: it's an Ayn Rand fantasy version of education policy, given how lightly the hagwon system is regulated by the government.

My personal conclusion has been that Korean education is good not because of matters of policy but rather because of Korean parents and culture. Korean culture values education, and Korean parents value education, and so they jump into the education market (on their children's behalf) with both feet forward and with their wallets wide open. Without having been there, my suspicion is that Finland, in its almost diametrically opposed way, is successful for a similar reason: Finnish parents and Finnish culture value education, and they demand quality education from their system. Beyond such generalizations, I can't really figure it out.

With that in mind, though, the conclusion is obvious: education policy isn't as important as people make it out to be. Otherwise, how could two countries at such opposite extremes of policy both be at the top of the charts?

Korean public schools aren't really that good. The year that I spent in a public, rural elementary school in South Korea was eye-opening. That time led me to understand that in point of fact, education in South Korea doesn't take place in public schools. Public schools are more about socialization and building cultural consensus, and education, to the extent that it occurs, is mostly peripheral. It's a sort of side-effect, or hoped-for outcome. And hence we find the flourishing hagwon system. If you want your kid to learn English, don't count on the public schools, despite their requiring English from 3rd through 12th grade - it won't happen. Instead, send them to a good English hagwon. Likely the same applies for other subjects as well.

The hagwon, then, is the real epicenter of Korean education. The main thing that schools do that is related to education policy is give tests. These tests, standardized in the extreme and mostly centralized by the government, are the engine that drives the hagwon industry. Parents don't, in fact, enroll their kids in hagwon for the purpose of education, but rather, their explicit purpose is that they want to improve their kids' test scores. Even here, education, to the extent that it occurs, is a sort of side-effect.

It's worth pointing out that this is hardly new. Since the beginning of Joseon in the 1400's (and probably well before that in some form), ambitious families have been sending their kids to various academies and institutes with the goal of getting good scores on various types of tests. In pre-modern times, it was mostly the various civil-service exams, which when executed successfully could lead to government work and sinecures. This is how ambition has been fulfilled in Korea from time immemorial.

The hagwon system, then, is merely a sort of modern expression of this ancient system. Indeed, looked at in this way, the hagwon system is Korea's native education system, while the public school system, introduced mostly by the Japanese during the colonial period, on Western models, is just a sort of Western cultural window-dressing, and a convenient way to administer tests.

This is my effort to summarize what a hagwon is. In the next part of this essay [maybe next week?], I want to explore how the unapologetically capitalistic nature of this hagwon system determines what is possible and what is not vis-a-vis various educational methodologies, and vis-a-vis the presumed purpose of English education - which is to provide some degree of competency in English.

[Part II]

[Part III]

Caveat: Ideologues and Hipsters and Enablers, Oh My

I want to make three short, unrelated observations about life right next to North Korea.

1. Ideologues. I have been reflecting that perhaps all the ramp-up of tensions (per the media, anyway) doesn't really worry me because I am a child of the latter half of the Cold War, when we all lived under an umbrella of irrational ideology-driven nuclear oblitaration, all the time. Having grown up under the paradigm of Brezhnev v Nixon, Park v Kim doesn't feel that weird or uncomfortable to me. It's like the mini cold war. All very nostalgic. Heh.

2. Hipsters. Day-to-day life in South Korea doesn't really seem to care about what's going on. For the South Koreans themselves, there's PSY and his latest antics (exhibit 1):

Clearly it's just about decadence and the self-indulgent, half-ironic denunciation of decadence, with little regard for broad ideological or geopolitical concerns.

For the expats such as myself, there's lots of alcohol and fun-with-friends and ain't-this-a-neverending-party (exhibit 2):

The expat club is not a club I really enjoy being a member of, but I accept my membership, and - sans the copious quantities of alcohol and the fun touring around in my own particular case - the above video is a more-or-less accurate and not entirely unsympathetic portrayal of daily expat life in South Korea. At the least, it rejects the alarmism rampant in the international press, if only to replace it with a sort of sentimental hipsterism.

Is that too harsh? I don't really mean to be - maybe I'm just resentful because my life in Korea is more boring than that because I'm feeling old and run down, lately - because hipsterish partying and running around might be fun when you're in your 20's, but in your 40's it just looks silly and vaguely irresponsible. The one cultural value that unites South Koreans and Americans almost perfectly: ageism and obsession with youth culture. OK - that was a bitter digression.

3. Enablers. A foreign policy analyst named Edward Luttwak has an essay at Foreign Policy magazine (the site is "gated" - but registering is free, just very annoying) which places a large part of the blame for the North Korean crisis squarely on the South Koreans' denialism and "enabling." I very much recommend reading this article. I actually agree with him on his analysis of causes, but his apparently "get tough" prescriptions are scary. Here's my amateur response: Of course South Korea is enabling North Korea; but that's OK - it's really better than having a giant war... so, have at it - enable some more!

If you have a crazy, delusional sibling, what's smarter: confronting him such that both of you end up dead or injured, or going along with his craziness because at some level you care about him and you have feelings of human compassion and at some point he may realize on his own he has major issues and will seek help? The parallels aren't perfect, but they illustrate my point, I hope. You might object that the metaphor is broken, because there are millions of innocent bystanders being harmed by this crazy sibling. But in fact, it's also true that millions more innocent bystanders would be harmed by any kind of violent intervention. Let's tweek the hypothetical slightly: yes, it's true the crazy sibling locks his children in the basement and tortures them, but it's essentially guaranteed that if you try to confront him violently, your own children will be killed or gravely harmed too. He's got bombs pointed at your house! So... what course of action minimizes harm?

Caveat: like willow catkins in the wind

I have a book that I read from sometimes, entitled Oral Literature of Korea, compiled by Seo Daeseok and edited by Peter H. Lee. In a section called Classical Archival Records (i.e. I'm assuming they're things written down from the Joseon dynasty period from 1400's to 1800's), there's a story called "Chosin's Dream" [pp. 215-17]. The compiler says it's from a document called Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, which would make the story much older than Joseon, since the Three Kingdoms were pre-668 AD. The story's first sentence mentions Silla period, however, which would put the story between 668 and 900's.

Chosin's Dream

During the Silla period, there was a manor of Segyu Monastery in Nari county, Myeongju, and the monastery sent the monk Chosin to be its caretaker. Upon arrival, Chosin fell in love with the daughter of the magistrate, Lord Kim Heun. Infatuated, he often went to mount Nak and prayed before the image of the Bodhisattva Who Observes the Sounds of the World to grant him his wishes. In a few year she married another man. Again Chosin went to the bodhisattva, complaining to her for not answering his prayer, and cried till sunset. Worn out with longing, he fell asleep.

In a dream Lady Kim suddenly entered the room, smiling, and said, "I have long known you and loved you. I could not forget you even for a moment. I married another man because I could not go against my parents' wishes. Now I have come to be your wife."

Overjoyed, Chosin took her to his village, and they lived there for forty years with five children born to them. Their house had only four walls, and they could not provide even coarse bread for their children. They wandered about in search of food. They went on like this for ten years, roaming the hills and fields in rags. Their oldest child, aged fifteen, died of hunger on Haehyeon Ridge in Myeongju. Chosin wailed and buried him on the roadside and moved on with the remaining four to Ugok district, where they built a thatched cottage. The couple, old and starved, could not even get up, so the ten-year-old girl begged for food. She was bitten by a stray dog, however, and collapsed in pain on her return. The parents sighed and wept.

Wiping away her tears, the wife suddenly spoke. "When I married you, I was young and beautiful, had many clothes, and was clean. We have shared every bit of food and clothing these fifty years, and thought that our deep love must have been ordained. Now we are weak and sick, our sickness gets worse, hunger and cold get worse, and no one in the world wants to give us shelter or even a bottle of soy sauce. The shame of going out begging weighs down heavier than a mountain. We cannot feed and clothe our children, so how can we enjoy married life? Red cheeks and artful smiles are nothing but dewdrops on the grass, and the fragrant pledges of love are like willow catkins in the wind. I am a burden to you, and I worry because of you. Our former joys must have been the beginning of our grief. How did we come to this pass? I would be better to be a lone phoenix (luan) calling its mate in the mirror than like many birds dying together in hunger. It is intolerable that lovers should meet in prosperity and part in adversity, but it is all beyond our wish. Meeting and parting are ordained, so let us part." Chosin was relieved. And when they about to leave, each taking two children, the wife spoke again: "I am going to my old home. You go south." At this parting, Chosin awoke.

The candle was sputtering, and night was about to end. When the morning came, his hair and bear had turned all white. He had no more thought for the world. Though tired of the hard life - the hardships of so many years - he felt the greed in his heart melt away like ice. Ashamed to face the holy image of the Sound Observer, he could not suppress his remorse. When he returned to Haehyeon Ridge and dug up the grave where he had buried his child in his dream, he found a stone image of Maitreya [Maitreya is the returned Buddha - a sort of Buddhist second coming]. He cleansed it in water and enshrined it in a nearby monastery, went to the capital, and resigned his position. With private funds he build Pure Land Monastery and performed good deeds. We do not know how he died.

I remark as a comment: after reading the story and closing the book and recalling the past, I wonder, how could Chosin's dream alone be like this? Human beings know the joy of mundane life; sometimes they rejoice, sometimes they toil, but they are not yet awakened. I write this poem as a warning:

With a moment's accord, one's mind is at ease.
Unaware, sorrow made a youthful face old.
One should not await the cooking of the millet,
Now I know - a life of toil is a dream.
Cleansing the mind depends on a sincere wish,
A bachelor desires beauty, thieves treasures.
How could you only dream on an autumn night
And attain the clear and cool with eyes closed on and off?

I have a book that I read from sometimes, entitled Oral Literature of Korea, compiled by Seo Daeseok and edited by Peter H. Lee. In a section called Classical Archival Records (i.e. I'm assuming they're things written down from the Joseon dynasty period from 1400's to 1800's), there's a story called "Chosin's Dream." The compiler says it's from a document called Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms, which would make the story much older than Joseon, since the Three Kingdoms were pre-668 AD. The story's first sentence mentions Silla period, however, which would put the story between 668 and 900's.

 

Chosin's Dream

 

During the Silla period, there was a manor of Segyu Monastery in Nari county, Myeongju, and the monastery sent the monk Chosin to be its caretaker. Upon arrival, Chosin fell in love with the daughter of the magistrate, Lord Kim Heun. Infatuated, he often went to mount Nak and prayed before the image of the Bodhisattva Who Observes the Sounds of the World to grant him his wishes. In a few year she married another man. Again Chosin went to the bodhisattva, complaining to her for not answering his prayer, and cried till sunset. Worn out with longing, he fell asleep.

 

In a dream Lady Kim suddenly entered the room, smiling, and said, "I have long known you and loved you. I could not forget you even for a moment. I married another man because I could not go against my parents' wishes. Now I have come to be your wife."

 

Overjoyed, Chosin took her to his village, and they lived there for forty years with five children born to them. Their house had only four walls, and they could not provide even coarse bread for their children. They wandered about in search of food. They went on like this for ten years, roaming the hills and fields in rags. Their oldest child, aged fifteen, died of hunger on Haehyeon Ridge in Myeongju. Chosin wailed and buried him on the roadside and moved on with the remaining four to Ugok district, where they built a thatched cottage. The couple, old and starved, could not even get up, so the ten-year-old girl begged for food. She was bitten by a stray dog, however, and collapsed in pain on her return. The parents sighed and wept.

 

Wiping away her tears, the wife suddenly spoke. "When I married you, I was young and beautiful, had many clothes, and was clean. We have shared every bit of food and clothing these fifty years, and thought that our deep love must have been ordained. Now we are weak and sick, our sickness gets worse, hunger and cold get worse, and no one in the world wants to give us shelter or even a bottle of soy sauce. The shame of going out begging weighs down heavier than a mountain. We cannot feed and clothe our children, so how can we enjoy married life? Red cheeks and artful smiles are nothing but dewdrops on the grass, and the fragrant pledges of love are like willow catkins in the wind. I am a burden to you, and I worry because of you. Our former joys must have been the beginning of our grief. How did we come to this pass? I would be better to be a lone phoenix (luan) calling its mate in the mirror than like many birds dying together in hunger. It is intolerable that lovers should meet in prosperity and part in adversity, but it is all beyond our wish. Meeting and parting are ordained, so let us part." Chosin was relieved. And when they about to leave, each taking two children, the wife spoke again: "I am going to my old home. You go south." At this parting, Chosin awoke.

 

The candle was sputtering, and night was about to end. When the morning came, his hair and bear had turned all white. He had no more thought for the world. Though tired of the hard life - the hardships of so many years - he felt the greed in his heart melt away like ice. Ashamed to face the holy image of the Sound Observer, he could not suppress his remorse. When he returned to Haehyeon Ridge and dug up the grave where he had buried his child in his dream, he found a stone image of Maitreya [Maitreya is the returned Buddha - a sort of Buddhist second coming]. He cleansed it in water and enshrined it in a nearby monastery, went to the capital, and resigned his position. With private funds he build Pure Land Monastery and performed good deeds. We do not know how he died.

 

I remark as a comment: after reading the story and closing the book and recalling the past, I wonder, how could Chosin's dream alone be like this? Human beings know the joy of mundane life; sometimes they rejoice, sometimes they toil, but they are not yet awakened. I write this poem as a warning:

 

With a moment's accord, one's mind is at ease.

Unaware, sorrow made a youthful face old.

One should not await the cooking of the millet,

Now I know - a life of toil is a dream.

Cleansing the mind depends on a sincere wish,

A bachelor desires beauty, thieves treasures.

How could you only dream on an autumn night

And attain the clear and cool with eyes closed on and off?

Caveat: 주민 대피소

I keep not intending to continue on this topic. But it's... well, topical. I ran across a new posting on my building's bulletin board in the lobby by the elevators. It's a directory of local civil defense evacuation shelters. The picture is a little bit blurry - sorry.

Is it me, or this a new thing? I mean, that my apartment building's administration would see fit to put up an announcement about this? Maybe I just never paid attention before....  Anyway.

Good to know. Bring it on, Mr Kim.

Actually, I got an email from the US Embassy saying that they weren't issuing any advisories for US citizens in South Korea. And apparently the South is not moving to evacuate their workers from Gaeseong, despite the recent border closure. I really don't think it's as bad as the media likes to portray.

Caveat: Mirror-Lake

I went on a long walk around the lake after work. The lake was perfectly still, and it reflected the Ilsan skyline and the overcast orange of the sky with eerie, mirror-like fidelity.

This picture above shows the MBC television studios complex on the right and the area around the We-Dom Mall on the left, approaching huge plaza at Jeongbalsan subway station. Below is a another picture, from along the western end of the lake closer to where I live. The views in both pictures looking roughly northeast from the south side of the lake.

Caveat: War Makes the Commute to Gaeseong Inconvenient

I wasn't really intending to post more on this topic, but this video at BBC is absolutely the point I was trying to make in my previous post. Watch it (please), and marvel: despite North Korea's rhetoric, 30 minutes north of where I live people are still commuting back and forth across the NK border. That's the kind of war anyone can live with, and I'm inclined to agree with the reporter's citation: unless and until this border crossing closes, I'm going to take the bellicose rhetoric with a few grains of salt.

Caveat: The Ville

This morning, kind of early, I went all the way to Dongducheon. It's about 2 hours by subway: you go southeast from here on line three to downtown, then north-northeast from there on line one.

Why did I do this? I was meeting a sort of "friend of a friend" - a former coworker of mine has a friend who's in the US Army, and that guy recently got posted to Camp Casey, which is HQ to the 2nd Infantry Division that I was attached to as a US Army mechanic while at the 296th Support Battalion at Camp Edwards in 1991.

Because Camp Casey is one of the largest and longest continuously operated US Army bases in Korea, the surrounding town has a distinctive "US Army town" feel, that is utterly unlike any other part of Korea. It's both nostalgic and depressing to see, on the one hand, but on the other, I think about how its being a little bit frozen in time serves to underscore the amazing changes in the rest of the country, by way of contrast.

I talked with this friend-of-friend for a few hours. He's only been in-country for a few weeks, so I took him to a Juk restaurant figuring he hadn't had that yet - he hadn't. He's not that familiar with Korea yet, but he's very open minded, having served long bits in Afghanistan, Alaska and Honduras among other places. He's already mastered hangeul, which is pretty rare even among non-GI Americans in Korea, much less soldiers. Apparently, he's really good in Pashto, too (from his time in Afghanistan). As point of fact, he blogged about his experiences in Afghanistan, and he's a damn good writer, too. Because of identity issues since he's still active service, I'll not talk about who he is in public forum such as this blog. But he's an interesting personality, and good for many hours of conversation.

You know you're in "the Ville" (the once and current slang nickname that US soldiers have for the Dongducheon outside the gates of Camp Casey) when the waitress at the Juk joint drops US quarters as change (they are near identical in heft and size as Korean 100 won coins). I only noticed when I got to work and emptied my pockets looking for some change to buy some lunch later in the day - see picture above right. This is the first time I've ever received US coin as change in Korea (except back when I was soldier myself, probably).

Here's a picture of my new friend and me at the Bosan train station a few minutes south of the Casey gate 1.

 

Caveat: modernity causes suicide because it commodifies individuals

There's an excellent series over at the Ask a Korean website about South Korea's stunningly high suicide rate. The blogger there, known by the name "The Korean," generally starts in a humorous vein but his posts often pursue serious topics analytically.

His observation, that I wasn't really aware of, is that the Korean suicide problem is a recent development - very recent: post 1997 (which was a transformative date in Korean history because of the IMF Asian financial crisis of that year). Up until then, Korea's rate was lower than would be predicted based on other socio-economic factors. This is why, he eventually explains, culturalism is not a good explanation for the problem.

Considering that The Korean blogger is, in fact, a lawyer working in DC (according to his online bio), he makes a pretty trenchant observation:

"What is it about modernization that causes suicide? Modernity comes with capitalism and individualism, which travel hand in hand. Reduced to its core (and thus risking gross over-generalization,) modernity causes suicide because it commodifies individuals."

 

Caveat: Korean Independence Day

오늘 삼일절입니다. 지난주동안 저의 수업들에서 민족 자결권 각 국가의 권리를 토론의 주제로 가르쳐 했습니다. "우리 조선은 이에 우리 조선이 독립한 나라임과 조선 사람이 자주적인 민족임을 선언하노라." - 1919/3/1 운동 독립 선언

 

Caveat: 박근혜 대통령 취임

Korea inaugurated a new president today. I have ambivalent feelings about Ms Park, but I really don't see how she could do worse than Lee Myung-bak's charmless tenure, and I have come to respect the process whereby she became president - it's certainly no less democratic than what we have in the US - not that that's necessarily saying very much.

There was an interesting article at the Ask a Korean blog, ranking the past presidents of South Korea. Despite his dictatorial grip on power for almost 2 decades, Park Chung-hee, the current new president's father, received a high ranking, mostly because he propelled South Korea from "poorest of poor" to "Asian tiger" in a generation. I can see the logic of that. At the end of that article, the Korean (as the author of the blog idiosyncratically likes to call himself, always in the third person) remarks that depending on historical circumstance, Ms Park has the possibility of ending up near the top of that list, too. Arguably, that's true for any leader stepping into leadership, at any time, but I get his point - she seems to have a lot of potential to be a great president, but also just as much potential to be a sort of climax of Saenuri (conservative party) mediocrity, too (which is to say, 2MB [Lee Myung-bak] 2.0).

The Korea Herald posted a translation of her inaugural speech, which I read. It's a long speech, but here's a part that stood out for me, given that I work in Korean education, currently.

Fellow Koreans,

No matter how much the country advances, such gains would be meaningless if the lives of the people remained insecure.

A genuine era of happiness is only possible when we aren’t clouded by the uncertainties of aging and when bearing and raising children is truly considered a blessing.

No citizen should be left to fear that he or she might not be able to meet the basic requirements of life.

A new paradigm of tailored welfare will free citizens from anxieties and allow them to prosper in their own professions, maximize their potentials, and also contribute to the nation’s development.

I believe that enabling people to fulfill their dreams and opening a new era of hope begins with education.

We need to provide active support so that education brings out the best of an individual’s latent abilities and we need to establish a new system that fosters national development through the stepping stones of each individual’s capabilities.

There is a saying that someone you know is not as good as someone you like, and someone you like is not as good as someone you enjoy being with.

The day of true happiness will only come when an increasing number of people are able to enjoy what they learn, and love what they do.

The most important asset for any country is its people.

The future holds little promise when individual ability is stifled and when the only name of the game is rigid competition that smothers creativity.

Ever since childhood, I have held the conviction that harnessing the potential of every student will be the force that propels a nation forward.

Our educational system will be improved so that students can discover their talents and strengths, fulfill their precious dreams and are judged on that bases. This will enable them to make the best use of their talent upon entering society.

There is no place for an individual’s dreams, talents or hopes in a society where everything is determined by one’s academic background and list of credentials.

We will transform our society from one that stresses academic credentials to one that is merit-based so that each individual’s dreams and flair can bear fruit.

It goes without saying that protecting the lives and ensuring the safety of the people is a critical element of a happy nation.

The new government will focus its efforts on building a safe society where women, people with disabilities, or anyone else for that matter, can feel at ease as they carry on with their lives, no matter where they are in the country.

We will build a society where fair laws prevail rather than the heavy hand of power and where the law serves as a shield of justice for society’s underprivileged.

It's also remarkable that someone considered to be the Korean equivalent of a Republican would offer such a spirited (and well-argued) defense of the welfare state. But isn't it always the case that in truth, conservatives in most economically advanced countries are typically somewhere to the left of the US's Democrats?

 

Caveat: 링딩동

What I'm listening to right now.

샤이니 [Shinee, i.e. shiny], "링딩동" [ring-ding-dong]. 가사:

Baby
네게 반해 버린 내게 왜 이래
두렵다고 물러서지 말고
그냥 내게 맡겨봐라 어때
My lady

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding
Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding
Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

Butterfly 너를 만난 첫 순간
눈이 번쩍 머린 Stop
벨이 딩동 울렸어

난 말야 멋진 놈 착한 놈
그런 놈은 아니지만
나름대로 괜찮은 Bad boy

너는 마치 Butterfly
너무 약해 빠졌어
너무 순해 빠졌어
널 곁에 둬야겠어

더는 걱정마 걱정마
나만 믿어보면 되잖아
니가 너무 맘에 들어
놓칠 수 없는 걸

Baby 내 가슴을 멈출 수 Oh crazy
너무 예뻐 견딜 수 Oh crazy
너 아니면 필요 없다 Crazy
나 왜 이래

We wanna go rocka, rocka, rocka,
rocka, rocka, rock (So fantastic)

Go rocka, rocka, rocka, rocka, rocka, rock (So elastic)

(Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, fantastic
Elastic, elastic, elastic, elastic)

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

오직 너만 들린다

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

머릿속에 울린다

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

내 가슴에 울린다

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi (Ding Ding Ding)

I call your butterfly
날이 가면 갈수록
못이 박혀 너란 걸
헤어날 수 없다는 걸

나를 선택해 ( 돌이키지 말고)
선택해 (도망가지 말고)
네게 빠진 바보인 나
날 책임져야 돼

Baby 내 가슴을 멈출 수 Oh crazy
너무 예뻐 견딜 수 Oh crazy
너 아니면 필요 없다 Crazy
나 왜 이래

난 착하디 착한 증후군이 걸린 너를 이해 못 하겠다

넌 가끔씩 그런 고정이미지를 탈피 이탈해봐 괜찮다

Break out (Hey) break out (Hey) break out (Hey) break out (Hey)
Ring Ding Ding Ding Ding Dong Dong Dong Dong

사실 난 불안해 어떻게 날 보는지

어쩌면 어쩌면 내게 호감을 갖고 있는지 몰라

이토록 안절부절 할 수밖에 없어

돌이킬 수 없는 걸

Complicated girl( 절대 No란 대답하지 마)

나 괜찮은 남자란 걸( 내가 미쳐버릴지 몰라)

Don't be silly girl ( Silly girl)

You're my miracle ( My miracle)

너만 가질 수 있다면 내겐 다 필요없는 걸

Baby 내 가슴을 멈출 수 Oh crazy
너무 예뻐 견딜 수 Oh crazy
너 아니면 필요 없다 Crazy
나 왜 이래

We wanna go rocka, rocka, rocka,
rocka, rocka, rock (So fantastic)
Go rocka, rocka, rocka, rocka, rocka, rock (So elastic)

(Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic, fantastic
Elastic, elastic, elastic, elastic)

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

오직 너만 들린다

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

머릿속에 울린다

Ring Ding Dong Ring Ding Dong
Ring Diggi Ding Diggi Ding Ding Ding

Caveat: Out Of Grace

My coworker Grace ended her work at KarmaPlus on December 31st. I've known Grace longer than anyone in Korea (she's mentioned in my blog entry from my 6th day in Korea in 2007). We worked together at Tomorrow School, and then LinguaForum, where we worked for Curt. When I left LinguaForum to work at LBridge (because LBridged acquired my contract from LinguaForum - it wasn't a choice), Grace quit and went with Curt to start Karma. And it was perhaps "karma" that led to her and I being reunited later as I was hired by Curt to work at Karma (which became KarmaPlus by acquiring WoongjinPlus, which was the corporate dregs of LBridge, ironically).

Grace is the best ESL teacher I've ever met. She can be amazingly grumpy in staff-room interaction, and she's a little bit strict with the kids, sometimes, compared to my style. But she is very professional in the classroom and she has great talent for teaching "immersion" style to even low-level students. I will be sorry to see her go.

We had a goodbye lunch (hoesik) for her and another departing coworker at VIPS, a Korean chain of allegedly Western-style "steak and salad" restaurants. I say "allegedly" Western, since the buffet-style "salad" bar is exactly like the food at a Korean wedding reception (or "dol" reception or any number of other events). It's just as mish-mash of self-serve things: salads, soups, bibimbap, noodles, pizza, pasta, hoe (sashimi). Then they take orders for steak, which is kind of like the old US chain Sizzler, maybe. It's not bad. But I always feel embarrassed because I don't get 20 helpings of food like all the Koreans do - there's a social obligation to eat as much food as humanly possible at buffet-style events. I think this may be connected to the fact that only 50 years ago all Koreans had experienced literal starvation.

Grace is going back home to Canada. "Maybe permanently," she hinted. But I don't think so.

Here's picture of the VIPS at Daehwa, across from the Goyang Stadium, where we went.

Caveat: 가야금 산조

Sometimes I go off finding unusual or interesting things. I was surfing around some Korean traditional music. Here's one I found of the style called 산조 [sanjo]. It's a kind of improvisational folk style that seems to have emerged in the 19th century, based on what little reading I did about it.

What I'm listening to right now.

황병기류 가야금 산조.

Caveat: The Ajummocracy Comes Out

I coined the word "ajummocracy" a while back in this blog. I think today is a good day to return to it - because now South Korea has an ajumma for president - although Park Geun-hye breaks the stereotype in many ways: most importantly, she breaks the stereotype by becoming president, rather than just running things behind the scenes.

I was confident enough in my prediction that she would win to have published that prediction. My prediction was based mostly on following the news, and the atmospherics of my classroom discussions of politics with my middle-school students. I find the electoral map exactly matches the prediction I had made in my own brain, too - not that anyone cares. I think the electoral map is very interesting - I've written about that before too.

I want to be clear that I didn't "support" Park, however. Most of my coworkers are either disturbingly apolitical ("what, me vote?") or else vocally liberal (and therefore they voted for the opposition, Moon Jae-in). Several of them were rivetted by following the election returns on their web-browsers last night, and they were moaning and crying and gnashing their teeth. "Korean people are so stupid," one of them remarked. Another said, "There are too many old people voting." As you can see by these remarks, Korean electoral politics aren't that different from in US: people get very partisan, and the tropes are similar.

I don't really think it's my place to say which candidate I personally prefer - it's not my country. But I will say I think each of the candidates offered some important things. Park's election is ground-breaking in so many ways: she's a woman, she's the daughter of an asssassinated dictator, she's a leader of a conservative party but she's made several quite progressive proposals, she's unmarried - this last may be more surprising than the fact that she's a woman.

So in February, Park will return to the Blue House - the home where she grew up in the 1960's and 70's. Can you imagine entering the presidential mansion, as president, and recognizing and remembering a closet where you may have played hide and seek when you were 9 years old? That seems novelistic, to me - psychologically interesting.

I'll be intrigued to see how this plays out. I'm sure I'll be disappointed - I almost always am, in politics.

Caveat: Korean Presidential Debate

I watched the last of the Korean presidential debates. I understood almost zero of what the heck they were talking about. Yet I watched it, nevertheless, because politics is interesting to me even when I don't understand it. Because I'm weird.

I remember a lot was made of analyzing the body language of Obamney during the US presidential debates, and at the time, I thought, that's dumb - there are more important things in a debate. I still think it's dumb for serious political analysis to talk about those things, but in watching this Korean debate, I nevertheless basically did more of that than any actual content analysis, given how poor my Korean listening skills really are. Seriously - when I all I understand are the conjunctions and transition words, the debate is a sort of kabuki where I'm looking for nonverbal signals.

Here's one thought - Moon (the male, leftistish candidate) needs to get the stick out of his butt. He's about as charismatic as Michael Dukakis. Uh oh. Did I just say that? Park (the female, rightistish candidate) is much more personable. She will win. Admittedly, I'm bringing other information to the table - not least, the informal polls I periodically conduct in my middle-school classes. Over the years, these have proved remarkably representative of Korean public opinion. I'm not sure of the sociological reasons why tiny samples of Korean middle-schoolers in above-average-income suburbs of Seoul accurately reflect Korean public opinion, I'm just sayin'.

Caveat: Ah, Retribution... PSY Style

So I suspect I might be able to mention Korean rapper and satirist PSY without too many people not recognizing him, at this point. I was slightly ahead of the curve when I posted about his "Gangnam Style" way back in mid August.

But I recently ran across something interesting. His current social satire is pretty mild. Back in 2003, he as was full-on radical. And angry-radical, too.

In this short video clip, above, he's performing a song called "Anti-American" with a heavy metal band called "NEXT" and he's smashing a toy model of an American tank. Apparently the song included lyrics such as the following.

싸이 rap : 이라크 포로를 고문해 댄 씨발양년놈들과
고문 하라고 시킨 개 씨발 양년놈들에
딸래미 애미 며느리 애비 코쟁이 모두 죽여
아주 천천히 죽여 고통스럽게 죽여

Kill those —— Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives
Kill those —— Yankees who ordered them to torture
Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law, and fathers
Kill them all slowly and painfully

I did not do the translation, and it seems a little bit rough, but I found it online and it's close enough.

I do not condone, and never condone, violence as a response to violence. I dislike the ease with which people transition from violence they oppose to the idea of retributive violence such as that being espoused by the PSY and his metal-headed friends, above. Having said that, I, too, was deeply troubled by the US behavior in, especially, Iraq. I have long felt that Bush, Cheney, and subsequently the disappointing Mr Obama should be held responsible for war-crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Yemen and Pakistan and other places where drone attacks are still being carried out). So without agreeing with his prescription for retribution, I do agree with PSY's anger as expressed in 2003. And I actually find him more interesting, because he's clearly a politically conscious animal - as indicated by both his recent, milder satire as well as this.

[Update added 2012-12-10] I just noticed that blogger Ask A Korean has a very brilliant post on this same topic. Please read it if you're one of those people who are uncomfortable with PSY's rhetoric. Or even if you're not, but just curious about the context of South Korean anti-Americanism.

Caveat: Empire With A Smile

I got up early and went to the US embassy this morning. I have to renew my passport - which means it's been almost 10 years since that panicked moment right before my departure for my 2003 trip to Australia when my passport wasn't showing up and I had to change my schedule at the last minute, which is why I came to Korea as a tourist as part of a layover on that trip to Australia which is why I considered coming to Korea to teach in 2007 which is why I'm still here 5 years later. And my passport is full of stamps.

I went to the embassy once before, here - it was in 2008, when there was some quirk of my visa situation at that time that required a visit. The embassy is in an oldish (1970's? - that's old in Korea) building a block south of the restored Gyeongbokgung (Joseon Dynasty Palace), but until the 1990's it was the location of the Western-looking, German-designed, Japanese-built capitol. I actually rather liked that old building, but amid much controversy it was torn down as a lingering symbol of the Japanese colonial period, the palace that had formerly been on the same location was restored. I remember the capitol vividly from when I was in Korea in 1991.

I had a pleasant experience at the embassy, but it's always such a strange experience visiting a US embassy. The US is the closest thing, in today's world, to a world-spanning empire. But the imperialists treated me much better at this outpost than they do when I'm actually at home in the country itself. Very friendly, organized and courteous, despite the massive amount of security involved - entering the embassy is a bit like getting on an airplane in this TSA era.

Here's the embassy.

Turning the other way (about 90 degrees counterclockwise), you can see the statue of Sejong the Great, who reigned in the 15th century, the pinacle of Joseon civilization. Behind him, the palace gate and behind that in the distance, Bukhansan.

Caveat: Winter & Elections

I think winter has arrived. I checked my friendly local news website (naver.com) for the weather. Here's the five-day forecast.

So. Winter.

Yesterday, walking around, I saw banners strung across Juyeop plaza, for the upcoming presidential election (December 19). The two main-party candidates are on the two banners: top is Park Geun-hye (conservative) and below is Moon Jae-in (liberal). The daughter of the dictator versus the former student activist (who was once jailed and barred from politics for his activism). I think either candidate would be a milestone for Korea, and both have their merits. But I predict Park will win.

Let's see how it plays out.